The New Winds

INHERITANCE [MATERIAL] (5 POINTS)
When you received your gempukku ceremony, your family honored you with an heirloom of your ancestors. It is among your most precious possessions, and you would die before you allowed it to be harmed or brought dishonor to it. You possess one item in addition to the normal starting equipment provided by your School. Whenever you make a Skill Roll using this item, such as a Perform: Biwa roll with a biwa, a Games: Goroll with a go set, or a Kenjutsu roll with a katana, you gain a bonus of +1k1 to the roll. This bonus does not apply to any attack or damage rolls, only Skill Rolls made for non-combat purposes (rolls made outside of a skirmish). Players and GMs may agree to allow a more powerful or unique item to be inherited for a higher Experience Point cost. Such special cases should be discussed carefully beforehand to ensure fairness and balance.

Yasuki Ginkarasu wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 22, 2020 12:15 am

It doesn't even need to be a Katana. I expect the best way to make this ruling is to say that a duel is part of a skirmish from start to finish.

Vutall wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 22, 2020 12:49 am

I already ruled that a duel is a skirmish

Clarification of the 4th edition dueling rules

The 4th Edition of the Legend of the Five Rings RPG extensively re-worked the rules for Iaijutsu Dueling, and based on the number of questions asked in the nearly five years since publication, the new dueling rules can be somewhat confusing to both old and new players. Accordingly, this section offers clarifications of the more frequent questions about dueling.

A Duel is Three Rounds: The rulebook mistakenly refers to an iaijutsu duel taking place over two Rounds. This is an editing artifact from an earlier draft of the rules that somehow made it into the final version. The correct rule is that an iaijutsu duel takes place over three Rounds (Assessment, Focus, and Strike).

A Duel is not a Skirmish: For simplicity of game terms and rules, the timing and structure of a duel is organized into Rounds rather than invent some other unique term for the three phases of the duel (Assessment, Focus, Strike). Also, by structuring a duel in Rounds, it can take place during a larger skirmish scene – for example, a duelist PC and a bandit leader might engage in an iaijutsu duel while the rest of the PCs and the remaining bandits fight a normal skirmish. However, it cannot be emphasized enough that the duel itself is NOT a skirmish; players should not assume that the normal skirmish rules and mechanics, such as Initiative, apply to duels.

Center Stance and Duels: In a normal skirmish, a character cannot stay in Center Stance for more than one Round. However, in an iaijutsu duel, the two duelists are assumed to enter the Center Stance at the beginning of Round One (Assessment) and remain in it until the end of Round Three (Strike), regardless of their normal Initiative. Thus, the Center Stance bonus will be available on both Round Two (for the Focus roll) and on Round Three (for either the Strike roll or a damage roll, as the player chooses). Rank 5 Kakita Bushi will also get the bonus on Round One (for the Assessment roll).

An additional note in this regard: If both duelists are still alive and fighting after the Strike phase, the duel becomes a normal skirmish. On the first Round of that skirmish, both duelists will emerge from the Center Stance and assume whatever other Stance they choose (again, if they are Kakita Rank 5 they can choose to remain in Center Stance). They will get the Center Stance bonus on one roll of their choice on Round One of the skirmish.

The Strike: The iaijutsu strike is a “normal” attack roll (albeit with extra Raises if the duelist won the Focus roll by a lot). The use of Maneuvers on the Strike roll is at the discretion of the GM, since some of them will be easier to justify in this context than others. The Called Shot Maneuver is probably perfectly legitimate in an iaijutsu strike, but a Disarm or Feint Maneuver is harder to justify. Defense and Armor TN: During the Strike phase of an iaijutsu duel, characters are assumed to have their normal Armor TN. The reference on Core rulebook page 139 to the Defense Skill applying to duels (“make you more difficult to hit in a skirmish or duel”) is an error and should be ignored.

Initiative and Duels: The references to Initiative in the dueling rules are included purely as a convenience for GMs who are running duels as part of a larger skirmish scene. They are intended to provide “timing cues” for when the GM should have the duelists perform their Assessment and Focus rolls in the Round. Initiative has no actual effect on the duel itself, and Techniques which rely on Initiative cannot be applied to iaijutsu duels.

Duels and Actions: Again, a duel is not a skirmish, so the rules on what Actions can be taken during a Round do not have any real applicability to a duel. Characters do not need to worry about whether they have an Action to draw their weapons, for example. Similarly, a character who can attack as a Simple Action will still only get one attack during the Strike phase.

The Physical Nature of a Duel: The ideal form of a duel consists of two duelists facing off, a few paces apart, with their blades sheathed until the moment of the Strike – at which point they leap forward, drawing their blades near-simultaneously. However, a duel does not have to exactly conform to this ideal – for example, many Dragon samurai will start a duel with their swords already drawn, and battlefield duels routinely take place with the characters already having their swords drawn. The one universal principle is that a duel is fought only with swords, and usually the katana. A contest fought with other weapons is not an iaijutsu duel – it is merely a one-on-one skirmish. Mechanically, these physical details make no difference to how an iaijutsu duel is resolved – the same Assessment/Focus/Strike format is followed. Mirumoto Rank 2: The bonus from this Technique applies to all three rolls in an Iaijutsu duel (Assessment, Focus, and Strike).

Vutall wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:26 am

I think it's comparable to the Kakita blade, personally. Re-rolling damage is big.