1) flouting everything yes, he's basically wanting to have a communist revolution that starts at his island and ends with him being crowned first among equals after being carried on the hands of his adoring fans to the capital. But yes, very insane.
2) Only the courtier survived correct, his yojimbo fought and died.
3a) Yes he was their lord an they basically said "Well up yours then laddie," when he revealed his new plan.
3b) Yes and its certainly cowardly as well.
3c) Well your response can be over the top, you're an honorable Matsu, you're pretty much meant to
OK, I'm getting ready to do something that might piss some people off. However, I want to be sure I understand things like Honor, the situation, and my understanding of my Disadvantages beforehand.
1) All land belongs to the Emperor, right? As I understand it, this mayor who wants to subvert the celestial order, he's committing a sin against the natural of order of things and flouting clan, daiyamo, and Emperor.
2) These ronin in the woods are composed of two groups of samurai - those who were loyal to the mayor, and those that survived from the first envoy. Or am I incorrect, and that only the courtiers survived?
3a) These men have not behaved honorably, but I'm not exactly clear at how deeply dishonorable they've been. Was the mayor the lord of these samurai?
3b) I think it's clear that they fled from the Dragon rather than face him. That's dishonorable.
3c) Just how deeply have they failed their duty? It seems pretty severe. I'm not entirely certain on this, and I'm trying to figure out if my response is over the top.
Don't worry, after this crisis is over, we can have them commit seppuku.
I think JDark is going to be pulling a classic lion. I approve of this.
I think Valkun is scary (player, not character :P).
Such an ethnocentric viewpoint. Even if we agree with them, they have broken the social standards of the Rokugen society. Although Oda probably couldn't care less since he's a practically minded Crab, some of the others might take great offense.
Would I be less scary if I told you I was, in fact, a fluffy bunny?
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
Basically we're a hair away from a duel, which is a-okay with me. Wouldn't be to the death obviously, but it might make it necessary to spend a day or two in the forest convalescing
Intelligence/battle tn 15 (thanks el skid) would be the roll if you want to help plan the battle, with a free raise (ie auto pass almost) if you actually think of something that could help us out. (The plans we'll keep abstract unless someone comes up with something specific and bonus worthy [which i encourage you to do]).
Our Matsu is actually the best general available since perception/battle is the roll that will be used by the actual generals. This should be apparent in the planning and though Sojuro won't suggest it taking over might be a good idea.
The battle is you + ronin, highly trained and very well armed versus a multitude of peasants and some samurai-ji. Far less organized and hopefully you'll think of one or two tricks to weight the odds in your favour further.
Am I missing something? That seems like quite a jump from where we were.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
I should be able to help out- let's get greedy and call for a raise (I'll put in my ideas in the thread and see if they're worth an extra raise). 4k3+3=21 =success with one raise
Am I missing something? That seems like quite a jump from where we were.
Well you're not yet in battle, let me be clear on that. This is basically just a "Lets all sit down and look over all our options roll." With insightfull comments being represented by the roll and your euh, insightfull comments?
edit: Battle is not decided, if someone makes a good case for diplomacy, then i'm fine and dandy with that option as well. since for example Tsuruchi aki's contribution is: "for gods sake bribe the dragon," but i was only going to bring that up a little later.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
I should be able to help out- let's get greedy and call for a raise (I'll put in my ideas in the thread and see if they're worth an extra raise). 4k3+3=21 =success with one raise
Why'd you add three to the roll? I'm still trying to figure out all the mechanics.
I'll probably be spending a void point on the Int/Battle roll. I'm re-reading a couple sections of the book to make sure I understand.
My technique gives me +<fire> to all bugei skill rolls, among other things.
I don't mind if I lose honor over that one. It's considered crude to talk about the Shadowlands when in any situation not involving a direct threat from them.
I should be able to help out- let's get greedy and call for a raise (I'll put in my ideas in the thread and see if they're worth an extra raise). 4k3+3=21 =success with one raise
Why'd you add three to the roll? I'm still trying to figure out all the mechanics.
I'll probably be spending a void point on the Int/Battle roll. I'm re-reading a couple sections of the book to make sure I understand.
Best to save your void for the actual battle i think. It'll be all the more impressive since your perception is higher than your int
So, the plan as it stands now is. Scout out when the mayor is speeching and attack him then? Lets plan out all the rest in the ooc for time's sake? At this point all kinds of alterations are still a-okay. Say you want to kidnap him or something, or really whatever you can think of.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
I dunno about kidnapping him. I'm thinking more along the lines of: Tell him he'd better retract his statements against the Celestial Order and get the peasants back to their proper place... or else.
I dunno about kidnapping him. I'm thinking more along the lines of: Tell him he'd better retract his statements against the Celestial Order and get the peasants back to their proper place... or else.
That would be the most honorable approach. There are better plans, of course, but that'd require us to lie, deceive, or strike from the shadows. Wonder how many of us are going to die to that yojimbo though.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
Wonder how many of us are going to die to that yojimbo though.
I'm already thinking about that. See below. I think that if I can tag him with my no-dachi (or anything, really), he's screwed.
I have a few question son combat. From what I can gather, it pretty much goes like this:
1) Initiative
2) When it's your turn, pick a stance.
3) Attacking: roll Weapon Trait + Weapon Skill, keep Weapon Trait. Add any modifiers (Emphasis, School, etc).
4) Attack resolution. The base DR to hit an opponent is Reflexes * 5. This is modified by armor, Skill, School abilities, etc. This is also modified by Raises, which can be used for things like disarming or called shots or attempts at extra damage.
5) Damage: roll whatever the weapon's damage is, including the Weapon Damage Trait (Strength for melee, ??? for ranged) for rolled dice. Add any modifiers (Strength * 1.5 for certain weapons, etc).
6) Damage resolution: the result of the damage roll is added to the target's Wounds. The target becomes more and more injured as it accumulates wounds in Earth * 2 increments.
Assuming that's all correct... well, the rest of this is about combat strategy.
1) Can you "size up" your opponent like in an Iaijutsu duel? ie, is there any way to figure out the defensive strength of an opponent without actually dueling or getting a swing or two in?
That's certainly not part of normal combat, and I don't know of a skill that would let you do this outside of a duel.
2) It seems like an Agile warrior is much more dangerous than a Strong warrior. Does anyone have the math handy for what the distribution of results of certain roll/keep combinations are?
Agility is generally much more useful than strength, I find. Yes, a crab with a tetsubo (which allows you to roll 1.5x str dice instead of 1x) can hurt alot...but he still has to hit you, and if he has no agility, that's a problem. And at high skill levels, more agi = more roll = more raises = more damage anyway.... so you can do large amounts of damage with low strength- especially with Bishamon's Blessing.
Having something to calculate dice probability is VERY helpful for determining how many raises you should call.
3) Is the first strike really as deadly as it seems? An Agile warrior with base Strength will hit with a katana for 5k2 damage. Again, I don't have the distribution charts handy, but let's say it averages out to something like 12 damage. A warrior with the base Earth of 2 would drop to Hurt and suffer the rather large +10 TN penalty to all actions (and movement reduction).
So... is the general strategy to just strike first?
Depending on who you are, first strike is very important. If you're a bit tougher and/or harder to hit, it's not as big a deal (someone with an earth of 4 has double the number of wounds at every level than your example, for instance), and things like heavy armour, defensive stance and/or school skills can make it tough to hit you.
Also, what's this about Raises being used to lower an opponent's TN to be hit? I couldn't find details on that anywhere.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, sorry
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
Oh, and ranged/melee damage is pretty much always based on strength from what I can remember. Can't say what would happen if you were using a cannon or musket or something, because that would be totally dishonourable, so I've never done it.
I think you can only use FREE raises to lower TN's.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
You can use a free raise to give you +5 to your roll. It doesn't actually lower the TN, which is equivalent in most respects but actually is very different in others.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
We're getting to combat shortly, methinks.
But yes, it is a raise that doesn't count towards your max number of raises. So if you had a 5 weapon skill (say katana), you'd get a free raise from that. You could use the free raise toward your damage roll, or to give you +5 to your attack roll, or towards disarming, extra attack, called shot, so your attack looks better....
Idea. Why don't we challenge the yojimbo to a duel? Before you call me crazy, we could sneak into town and see if there's anything he is considered skilled in besides combat. Drinking, flower arranging, poetry, what have you. We goad him into a duel on those grounds with the stakes being he has to help us or leave the island forever or whatever gets him out of our way.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
A duel would be the most obvious answer, but the problem is that a) we don't have any school-trained duelists, b) generally you fight a duel over something, and are bound by the terms if you lose. So if we challenge the mayor saying "you're a traitor" and the dragon wins for him (the dragon would likely fight the duel for him), then we'd be bound to the sure knowledge that the mayor isn't a traitor, because the Kami have decreed it so by us losing the duel.
I'm personally thinking the dragon is a bit higher level than us, and may or may not be in a duelist school (though the rumours of him taking out three crane outside of a duel might go against that theory). Regardless, it's anything but a sure victory in a one-on-one duel.
Best case scenario is we corner the two of them and they attack us all. I'm confident we can win a lots-on-two battle, dragon or no dragon.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
Not too shabby, Jdark.
Although the "averages" you give seem to actually be the mean, so be careful.
For example, rolling 6k1, you'll get a 9 or below 50% of the time (9 is the median). But the average listed is 12.17- which is indicating that if you rolled 10000 times (or whatever) and added the results together and divided by 10000, that's the average value.
So if you assume you'll roll a 12 based on the google doc...you'll actually succeed less than half the time (30% or so in this case, I think)
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited February 2009
They might have taken that into account.
Explains why 1k1 is listed as 6.1 anyways, sort of hoping that's the case since I've always wondered about that and I'm not good enough at math to figure out the averages on exploding dice. :P
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
Yeah, that's exactly it. You want to know what the odds are of you beating a certain TN, so this is the info you want. Then you can decide how safe you want to be (I'll hit the bad guy half the time if I call 5 raises, but 75% of the time if I call 3 raises. Let's go for 3 and be safe...), or even whether you want to do the action (I'll only hit .025% of the time, so not worth attacking. Defensive stance it is!).
I specifically meant that we do not try to challenge him in combat. Find something else he prides himself in and try to get him to commit to a "duel" on those terms. For all we know, he may be considered an expert at heraldry or tea ceremony and would be all too willing to take on such a contest if we insulted him on it.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
Interesting...though a duel in that context would only mean he'd have to agree that his heraldry or tea ceremony skills were indeed horrible. Is there a way we can turn that kind of duel into a positive for us?
Interesting...though a duel in that context would only mean he'd have to agree that his heraldry or tea ceremony skills were indeed horrible. Is there a way we can turn that kind of duel into a positive for us?
Sure. "And if you are indeed inferior to me in X, you must agree to immediately go to my family's school and learn our techniques in X. If I should lose, then I will stay here and become your pupil (slave) until my skills at X improve."
Although how we word such a thing might be considered on the edge of honorable/dishonorable.
18 samurai all in all. 5 skilled archers. If this seems low, remember its s small island and the worst you're likely to do is face 40 opponents a mix of ji-samurai and totally unskilled peasants. Mostly using the battle rules because oh god i don't want to roll ini for all of them. Do you guys need anything else before we can continue?
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
Oh man. Using the battle rules for a fight of this size is going to be so very horrible
Oh i'll be switching to the skirmish rules asap, if they're more appropriate. Say if you sneak in or challenge the dragon to a duel etc obviously the battle of distraction will be handled behind the scenes.
edit: you hit in on the slightly better than ji-samurai comment. Also that was not counting you guys, the 16 samurai.
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SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
I can live with switching over asap to the skirmish rules- we can see what battle is like and then ignore it forever and ever :P (not a fan of L5R battle rules, here).
I am somewhat skeptical about the whole "insult him and get him to agree to be our slave if he loses the poetry/tea ceremony duel" thing, but I'm all for the battle bit!
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edit: guess i'll put it up, but sojuro is closely related to Daitsuke, one can tell from the mon etc
2) Only the courtier survived correct, his yojimbo fought and died.
3a) Yes he was their lord an they basically said "Well up yours then laddie," when he revealed his new plan.
3b) Yes and its certainly cowardly as well.
3c) Well your response can be over the top, you're an honorable Matsu, you're pretty much meant to
Don't worry, after this crisis is over, we can have them commit seppuku.
I think Valkun is scary (player, not character :P).
Such an ethnocentric viewpoint. Even if we agree with them, they have broken the social standards of the Rokugen society. Although Oda probably couldn't care less since he's a practically minded Crab, some of the others might take great offense.
Would I be less scary if I told you I was, in fact, a fluffy bunny?
More crazy, less scary. 8-)
Our Matsu is actually the best general available since perception/battle is the roll that will be used by the actual generals. This should be apparent in the planning and though Sojuro won't suggest it taking over might be a good idea.
The battle is you + ronin, highly trained and very well armed versus a multitude of peasants and some samurai-ji. Far less organized and hopefully you'll think of one or two tricks to weight the odds in your favour further.
Am I missing something? That seems like quite a jump from where we were.
Well you're not yet in battle, let me be clear on that. This is basically just a "Lets all sit down and look over all our options roll." With insightfull comments being represented by the roll and your euh, insightfull comments?
edit: Battle is not decided, if someone makes a good case for diplomacy, then i'm fine and dandy with that option as well. since for example Tsuruchi aki's contribution is: "for gods sake bribe the dragon," but i was only going to bring that up a little later.
My technique gives me +<fire> to all bugei skill rolls, among other things.
Best to save your void for the actual battle i think. It'll be all the more impressive since your perception is higher than your int
You could do this yes, there are a few dudes skilled enough in stealth to make it worth a go.
That would be the most honorable approach. There are better plans, of course, but that'd require us to lie, deceive, or strike from the shadows. Wonder how many of us are going to die to that yojimbo though.
That looks correct.
That's certainly not part of normal combat, and I don't know of a skill that would let you do this outside of a duel.
Agility is generally much more useful than strength, I find. Yes, a crab with a tetsubo (which allows you to roll 1.5x str dice instead of 1x) can hurt alot...but he still has to hit you, and if he has no agility, that's a problem. And at high skill levels, more agi = more roll = more raises = more damage anyway.... so you can do large amounts of damage with low strength- especially with Bishamon's Blessing.
Having something to calculate dice probability is VERY helpful for determining how many raises you should call.
Depending on who you are, first strike is very important. If you're a bit tougher and/or harder to hit, it's not as big a deal (someone with an earth of 4 has double the number of wounds at every level than your example, for instance), and things like heavy armour, defensive stance and/or school skills can make it tough to hit you.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, sorry
But yes, it is a raise that doesn't count towards your max number of raises. So if you had a 5 weapon skill (say katana), you'd get a free raise from that. You could use the free raise toward your damage roll, or to give you +5 to your attack roll, or towards disarming, extra attack, called shot, so your attack looks better....
I'm personally thinking the dragon is a bit higher level than us, and may or may not be in a duelist school (though the rumours of him taking out three crane outside of a duel might go against that theory). Regardless, it's anything but a sure victory in a one-on-one duel.
Best case scenario is we corner the two of them and they attack us all. I'm confident we can win a lots-on-two battle, dragon or no dragon.
Although the "averages" you give seem to actually be the mean, so be careful.
For example, rolling 6k1, you'll get a 9 or below 50% of the time (9 is the median). But the average listed is 12.17- which is indicating that if you rolled 10000 times (or whatever) and added the results together and divided by 10000, that's the average value.
So if you assume you'll roll a 12 based on the google doc...you'll actually succeed less than half the time (30% or so in this case, I think)
Explains why 1k1 is listed as 6.1 anyways, sort of hoping that's the case since I've always wondered about that and I'm not good enough at math to figure out the averages on exploding dice. :P
Sure. "And if you are indeed inferior to me in X, you must agree to immediately go to my family's school and learn our techniques in X. If I should lose, then I will stay here and become your pupil (slave) until my skills at X improve."
Although how we word such a thing might be considered on the edge of honorable/dishonorable.
edit: you hit in on the slightly better than ji-samurai comment. Also that was not counting you guys, the 16 samurai.
I am somewhat skeptical about the whole "insult him and get him to agree to be our slave if he loses the poetry/tea ceremony duel" thing, but I'm all for the battle bit!