But if he dies as a result, he'll probably leave behind some rather pissed off friends, who might come after us anyways. Still probably worth putting some points into combat.
If he died of his wounds? Absolutely. If he died because he dishonored himself so badly that his Lord called for his seppuku? Not so much - especially since we *haven't* done any knife-twisting. (Yet again I give thanks that the penalty of my own errors were not visited upon us.) We've merely acted the part of an honorable samurai who had this guy go off on them for no reason.
Now, what we might wind up getting is a series of challenges to spars or light duels. If we wanted to work on our Matsu cred even more, then pushing our combat stats a bit so that we can be more competitive there would be a solid way to do it... but that's not necessarily who we want to be right now. With respect to influencing various groups and pursuing various plots...
- Direct Matsu Influence: Combat skills - so that we can keep winning fights with whichever Matsu decide they want to fight us.
- Crane influence: push awareness and court skills. Don't dip too deep on Matsu influence.
- Pheonix influence: our int is already pretty high, but notching it up another point is sure to help.
- Crab influence: Intelligence and Commerce.
- Mantis Influence: Intelligence, Commerce, Reflexes, and Kyujutsu. Crane influence helps. Difficult, and probably not worth it.
- Solving the Crane Mystery: Crane influence, Perception, and Investigation. Intelligence likely to help as well.
- Dominating at the Go table: Intelligence, Go, and Battle skill
- Otomo Influence: Intelligence helps here - it makes us more useful. Investigation set also likely to help. Other than that, currently unclear. Garnering Phoenix influence and Crane influence probably helps.
- Marry Matsu Ketsui: Combination of Direct Matsu Influence and Solving the Crane Mystery. Continues to be arbitrarily difficult. Probably conflicts horribly with Otomo Influence. Conflicts at least somewhat with Crane Influence. This one is *tricky*.