Balance Pass, round 1

[Utaku Ichiro]

Yeah I'm against Inheritance boosting duels for the same reason it doesn't boost combat. It is broken at its point cost otherwise. Dueling may happen less often but it's no less important to the game and should be kept as balanced as possible - especially with the next game being a tournament.

[Vutall]

No ones inheritance (Unless they buy it with between game XP) will be a factor in Part 2. But I can put up a vote and see what players think (which will happen for all the mechanics we think of here in the Feedback)

I still need to think about the rank 7s for spears and polearms, suggestions are welcome

[Iuchi Prashant]

I was working on spears and polearms earlier, here is what I had.

Polearms:

MASTERY ABILITIES:
c RANK 3: Until you are hit with a melee attack, you gain +10 to your initiative score in combat when wielding a polearm
c RANK 5: Damage rolls made with polearms is increased by +1k0.
c RANK 7: Polearms may be readied as a Free Action.

Spears:

MASTERY ABILITIES:
c RANK 3: Until you are hit with a melee attack, you may spear may ignore 3 points of Reduction when wielding a spear.
c RANK 5: Damage rolls made with spears against mounted or significantly larger opponents is increased by +1k0.
c RANK 7: Spears may be readied as a Free Action.

A simple change to the R7 abilities would be to lift the restrictions on the R3 mastery abilities (think 'character is good enough with those weapons to be able to reposition himself to keep making the best use of them even if someone closes in).

I still think it's a bit odd that you lose the bonus even if someone hits you, then moves out to attack with a ranged weapon and you run back to them... But well, so much for realism.

Also - I may be misjudging how much Reduction bypassing is stronger than Initiative, but the way things are now Spears appear to be downright worse than Polearms. Not sure if that might be intentional too.

[Utaku Ichiro]

Reduction bypass is pretty strong really. If you're already faster than your opponent the initiative boost won't do much. But the reduction will be useful against pretty much anything other than unarmored humans.

[Iuchi Prashant]

Right, that makes sense. I was probably just weighing that against heavy weapons.

Well, with that then it might be doable to just lift the restrictions on Rank 3 as the Rank 7 ability, I guess?

Also as for the Kaiu school - I... See the possible uses for the Rank 2, but I tend to agree with Aii that it's rather underwhelming. Maybe increasing the bonus to larger structures a bit might make the char feel more important? I'm not really sure what else could be done there, though... It IS pretty situational.

[Yasuki Ginkarasu]

HEAVY WEAPONS (AGILITY)
SUB-TYPES: Weapon Skill
EMPHASES: Dai Tsuchi, Masakari, Ono, Tetsubo

MASTERY ABILITIES:
c RANK 3: Opponents with a Reduction rating have their rating reduced by 2 when attacked with a heavy weapon.
c RANK 5: Use of a heavy weapon confers one Free Raise toward use of the Knockdown Maneuver.
c RANK 7: Damage dice explode on a result of 9 and 10 when using heavy weapons.

Should Spears have better reduction removal then Heavy Weapons?

[Kaito Haruki]

Rank 3 for heavy weapons is essentially unrestrained reduction ignoring. They then get a rank 7 that let's them explode more on damage. The spears would only get first turn increased damage and then no limit after they hit rank 7.


Edit: my bad didn't look close enough at numbers

[Iuchi Prashant]

Haruki is right, but still good point. I was comparing from memory and I thought I remembered they having better reduction by rank 7...

Maybe a toned down version? let the char keep +5 to Initiative and 1 reduction even after they have been hit, then?

[Vutall]

It's a trade off. Heavy weapons get their reduction permanently, where spears only get it until the wielder gets hit.

Does anyone have the 3rd ed book? what were the spears and polearm masteries there? (Or weapon abilities)

[Kaito Haruki]

What's the trade off, they get it permanent in the beginning and they get to deal more damage by exploding on top of it.

[Bayushi Kaidan]

I want to say about this polearm rule, is that the interaction of the Bayushi bushi school... Granting a +10 to initiative and a +5 to ATN. I think a more modest number is a +5 rather than 10.

Rank 1: The Way of the Scorpion
You gain a bonus +1k1 to your Initiative Rolls. You also gain a bonus of +5 to your Armor TN against any opponent with lower Initiative.

[Utaku Ichiro]

It's a trade off. Heavy weapons get their reduction permanently, where spears only get it until the wielder gets hit.

Does anyone have the 3rd ed book? what were the spears and polearm masteries there? (Or weapon abilities)

The 3rd edition were the same for both Polearms and Spears - +1k0 versus mounted opponents at Rank 3 and a removal of a penalty they had against non-mounted opponents was the Rank 5

[Vutall]

Hmm.

Ok.

Polearms:

MASTERY ABILITIES:
c RANK 3: Until you are hit with a melee attack, you gain +5 to your initiative score in combat when wielding a polearm
c RANK 5: Damage rolls made with polearms is increased by +1k0.
c RANK 7: When wielding a polearm, add +3 to your TN when in Defense Stance

Spears:

MASTERY ABILITIES:
c RANK 3: Until you are hit with a melee attack, you may ignore 3 points of Reduction when wielding a spear.
c RANK 5: Damage rolls made with spears against mounted or significantly larger opponents is increased by +1k0.
c RANK 7: When wielding a spear, your rank 5 Mastery Ability applies to all targets instead of only mounted or larger opponents.

[Iuchi Prashant]

I was just checking 3rd Ed again. Expanding on what Ichiro said:

They had a FR against mounted or larger opponents out of the box (this was 3rd edition...), but -1k0 against human sized opponents.

All weapons had a rank 5 and rank 10 mastery which granted them a reduction to wound penalties equal to the weapon skill (rank 5) and exploding 9s (rank 10).

Then Polearms/ spears granted them an extra +1k0 against mounted or large for rank 3, and removed the -1k0 against human sized opponents in rank 5

There are also mastery abilities for all skills granting insight, changing the number of emphases one could have, and granting 1 FR (rank 5) and unlimited raises (rank 10).

I liked 3rf edition back then, but it was a mess.... I don't think looking for it for inspiration will help much

[Iuchi Prashant]

Hmm.

Ok.

Polearms:

MASTERY ABILITIES:
c RANK 3: Until you are hit with a melee attack, you gain +5 to your initiative score in combat when wielding a polearm
c RANK 5: Damage rolls made with polearms is increased by +1k0.
c RANK 7: When wielding a polearm, add +3 to your TN when in Defense Stance

Spears:

MASTERY ABILITIES:
c RANK 3: Until you are hit with a melee attack, you may ignore 3 points of Reduction when wielding a spear.
c RANK 5: Damage rolls made with spears against mounted or significantly larger opponents is increased by +1k0.
c RANK 7: When wielding a spear, your rank 5 Mastery Ability applies to all targets instead of only mounted or larger opponents.

I like the idea of Polearms helping with defense (although I tend to feel that's more of a Staff/ spear thing?), but doesn't that make Polearms a bit too defensive? I mean, bushi ain't often in defense stance.

Also - if keeping it like this - maybe Defence or Full Defence stances instead of only Defence?

[Utaku Ichiro]

I would say if it does go that route it should apply in Full Defense as well.

Having polearms be the defensive one does make some sense if only because of the Phoenix yojimbo offshoot dedicated to the naginata.

[Iuchi Prashant]

Ah, good point with the Shiba Yojimbo folks there!

[Vutall]

I could make it apply to both

[Kaiu Aiichiro]

1. If different clans have decreased bond values because of political alliances, shouldn't characters of the same clan have discounts too?

2. Although Shourido is an oldlore1167 thing, characters who died before this time period had, mechanically, Consumed by Shourido:
Gusai, consumed by Strength
Hantei XVI, consumed by Control
Kitsu Motso, consumed by Determination
Are you ignoring this as AEG getting confused and continuing to ban the Shourido-related advantages and disadvantages?

3.

--Note: Yogo characters must select the Bad Fortune: Yogo Curse disadvantage. They do not gain any bonus XP for this disadvantage.

Shouldn't it be optional? Some characters could have broken their curse as children.

[Vutall]

1: I'm not sure what you are asking? If you are X clan, and a bond gets X discount, it is cheaper.

2: I'm continuing to ban it for now. It may return later as something else.

3: Not optional. If you are a Yogo by birth, you've got it no matter what. I don't think a child can break it.