Dueling: Focus + Exceptional Raises

[Yasuki Ginkarasu]

Focus
Roll: Iaijutsu (Focus)/Void

During the focus stage your center stance bonus kicks in. Both duelists gain +1k1+[Void ring] to their roll. If you have Heart of Vengeance (Opponent's Clan) you gain +1k1 to your roll. If you have 5 skill ranks of Iaijutsu you gain +5 to the total of your roll. If your assessment was 10 or more higher than your opponent you gain +1k1 to your roll (+2k2 if you have Iaijutsu 7).

If you win the contested roll by at least 5 points then you get to strike first. For each additional increment of 5 you gain a Free Raise on your strike roll. If neither duelist wins by 5 or more the duel is a kharmic strike and both duelists will strike simultaneously.
*Kakita bushi 1 grants an additional bonus of +1k1+[School rank] to your focus roll. Mirumoto Bushi 2 grants +Kenjutsu skill to your focus roll. Sun Tao ronin 1 rants + Honor Rank to your focus roll.*

As this already has a mechanic for giving free raises, do exceptional successes also add to this?

If you ever exceed a roll by 10 or more, for every increment of 10, you gain a free raise AFTER the roll to be used as you see fit. You may only gain this bonus equal to your Void Ring, So for example, if a TN is 25 and you rolled a 55, and have a Void of 2, you would gain 2 free raises to utilize after the roll to enhance a spell through its listed Raise abilities, perform a Maneuver on an attack, or be used for an event mechanic.
NOTE: You may NOT gain these free raises if you are unskilled in the skill the roll required unless an event says otherwise.
NOTE 2: Contested rolls do not have TNs initially, so this rule has no effect on Contested Rolls

It seems like it shouldn't for balance.

[Utaku Ichiro]

Since there is no TN there is no way to exceed the TN by 10 so I would say not.

[Kaito Haruki]

But there is a tn on the strike roll, so that roll can basically give you void free raises if you're that much better than your opponent.

Which is what the free raises go towards

[Yasuki Ginkarasu]

That solves it!

But yes, there is also the strike roll that gets a TN, and if you won the focus roll you've already been given access to a bank of free raises.

[Vutall]

As Ichiro said, since the contested roll doesn't have a TN you can't get exceptional successes.

Now, the strike roll does, and since you could have a Kakita get like +10 free raises from Focus (Beat your focus by 30), with the average TN to be hit being 25. aso you are automatically getting hit and they gain +5k0 damage just from free raises alone. Likely Void 5, so 5 called raises means TN50. They need to roll a 25 (Since the TN is 50 technically, but 5 of the free raises from focus go into adding +25 to their strike roll...

Getting an Iai/Strike roll over 50 isn't difficult, but I wouldn't think you'd be able to get more than 1 or 2 from exceptional successes...so I think it could stay

[Kaito Haruki]

We can't see all the character sheets like you can vutall, so I'll trust your judgement

[Iuchi Prashant]

Fair enough V!

tbh I also think just going with how things are without tinkering too much for now sounds easier. If we run into something that looks too unfair or unfun during the game, then maybe thinking about changing it might be more worth it.

(I know, I'm saying that and yet I'm defending changing the Inheritance Katana, but well... )

[Vutall]

For clarity, I added this line to the Exceptional Success, as this was always how it was intended to work in the first place, it just wasn't clear:

NOTE 3: You only count the dice roll, not bonuses from free raises or other straight modifiers (Such as the +Void from center stance)