The New Winds

Due to a discussion on Discord, the Kuni Purifier School has had the following rules added to it as part of its Technique.

-Due to their unique training, Kuni Purifiers may not take Multiple Schools to enter any other Shugenja or Bushi school, and no Bushi or Shugenja may take Multiple Schools to become a Purifier.Additionally, when you select this school, please note Bushi or Shugenja
--If you select Shugenja, you do not gain the Bushi discounts for Advantages or increases for Disadvantages, and may not buy Kata.
--If you select Bushi, you do not gain the Shugenja discounts for Advantages or increases for Disadvantages, and you may not buy Kiho (Essentially rendering Friend of the Brotherhood mechanically useless)

Just out of curiosity - is the intent here to prevent them from getting both Kata and Kiho?

And if so - is there a reason you thought why that might be potentially game breaking? I mean, I tend not to see that as such a big deal, as it would mean spending quite a bit of XP for the abilities, and I don't remember any obvious interactions between these abilities that might make things go out of hand... But I haven't looked for those interactions thoroughly, and I may be missing something obvious

It's a piece of advice regularly given in the book, sure we don't have a specific example just yet, but the designers didn't build with this in mind and it's better to be safe than sorry.

The concern some raised was that it gave them access to spells, kiho, kata and, under the new rules, simple attacks as well.

As they were previously they had access to:

Kata
Kiho
Spells
Every discount for bushi (and any bushi-only advantages)
Every discount for Shugenja (and any shugenji-only discount)
Simple action attacks

They had access to everything, which was unbalancing

I must say the new crafting rules are great. GJ.

Since this happened to Kokyou on the Bar Fight, I think it would be good to have it clarified for future reference.

The Jiujutsu skill says the following:

“...Jiujutsu can be used as a Weapon Skill, rolling Jiujutsu / Agility against an opponent's Armor TN to hit and rolling a number of dice equal to your Strength, keeping one for damage (so if you had Strength 3, you would roll 3k1 damage for an unarmed attack). Jiujutsu is also used for initiating and maintaining Grapples. The Improvised Weapons Emphasis allows you to use almost anything you can get your hands on to increase your capacity to inflict damage. The GM is the final arbiter of what damage a particular improvised weapon inflicts, but generally it should grant additional rolled or kept dice, but not both.“

Since the Mantis Bushi does have Improvised Weapons as an Emphasis, it would be good to have a better definition if it is considered unarmed damage, or not, since it is a Jiujutsu based attack.

This is a suggestion for future games. Add a day for tying loose ends. Concluding the game on a climax day feels incomplete. I understand not wanting to do it for scheduling issues but read this out. An RPG is sort of like an open ended story. So... we have an introduction... Day 1 we got the celebration. Presenting the conflict the Tea Visitation. The twists and complications on the main plot... it was nice. The Climax was Day 7... and then...what is the conclusion? The Gempukku Ceremony felt empty... what happened to Hitoshi? Will Toshimoko accept the Mantis? Will Doji Mushikage feel safe now? Will the Scorpion and the Lion will be now in unfavorable ground with the Crane because they won Courtier and the Iai competition?

What about individual plots? Some people don't feel compelled to play a post game day but if there is one extra day for conclusion of personal stories and plot makes it feel a bit more complete.


I am sorry if this looks like a rant... it is not... it is just a suggestion. =P