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Post by akavidar on Jan 28, 2018 10:47:10 GMT -8
I am not currently in a L5R game, so this idea has not been tested.
Listening to the feedback on the 5th ed beta, it seems the biggest complaint of 4th ed is the "Swingyness" caused by 10's exploding. Also some complaints that traits are as good as skills, and the thinking is skills should have more weight. Hence the new edition getting rid of traits and using the rings, and giving rings d6 while skills get d12. And with the funky dice d12 explode more than the d6.
Some people are resisting the change and want to keep 4th ed, so I had this idea:
Roll and keep works basically the same as now with one change. You roll d10's for your skills and d8's for your traits. And only 10's explode so a trait die will not explode. This will give skills more weight in the roll and also cut down on the "swingy".
For Example Kenjutsu (Agility) the player would roll a number of d10's equal to Kenjutsu and a number of d8's equal to Agility and keep a number of dice equal to Agility. If you have an emphases you would still get to reroll any 1's.
Again, not tested in any way, just a thought I had. Comments?
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fredrix
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Post by fredrix on Jan 28, 2018 21:49:24 GMT -8
In our group we think 4th is perfect, not too swingy because you have to gamble on raises before you roll. So in our group we wouldn’t use your houserule. Or 5th in is current incarnation (it’s not bad - we just love 4th)
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2018 22:37:16 GMT -8
I am not currently in a L5R game, so this idea has not been tested. Listening to the feedback on the 5th ed beta, it seems the biggest complaint of 4th ed is the "Swingyness" caused by 10's exploding. Also some complaints that traits are as good as skills, and the thinking is skills should have more weight. Hence the new edition getting rid of traits and using the rings, and giving rings d6 while skills get d12. And with the funky dice d12 explode more than the d6. Some people are resisting the change and want to keep 4th ed, so I had this idea: Roll and keep works basically the same as now with one change. You roll d10's for your skills and d8's for your traits. And only 10's explode so a trait die will not explode. This will give skills more weight in the roll and also cut down on the "swingy". For Example Kenjutsu (Agility) the player would roll a number of d10's equal to Kenjutsu and a number of d8's equal to Agility and keep a number of dice equal to Agility. If you have an emphases you would still get to reroll any 1's. Again, not tested in any way, just a thought I had. Comments? I know my complaint with 4th is that the swingyness serves no purpose. Raises being called in advance only ensures your awesome roll is indeed still dogshit (minimal success). An easy solution to the problem of skills being less useful is to allow the higher of skill or stat to be your kept dice. Lowering the die size makes it more likely to roll a particular face, which makes rerolls and explosions more powerful, which is an unintended consequence of making a die smaller. Hence it is good as a tactic if there is some rule that produces negative results on certain faces (like 1's in cortex+ being able to be used to create complications for the character).
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Post by akavidar on Jan 29, 2018 7:08:00 GMT -8
Steven Said "Lowering the die size makes it more likely to roll a particular face, which makes rerolls and explosions more powerful, which is an unintended consequence of making a die smaller."
Which is why I said only 10's explode. You can't roll a 10 on a d8. So Trait d8's won't explode.
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Post by akavidar on Jan 29, 2018 7:10:49 GMT -8
In our group we think 4th is perfect, not too swingy because you have to gamble on raises before you roll. So in our group we wouldn’t use your houserule. Or 5th in is current incarnation (it’s not bad - we just love 4th) I've never had any problems with 4th edition, either. I was just trying to address the problems other people seem to have. I also like Stevens idea of keeping either Trait or Skill whichever is higher, instead of always keeping Trait.
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Post by yojimbohawkins on Jan 29, 2018 13:55:00 GMT -8
In our group we think 4th is perfect, not too swingy because you have to gamble on raises before you roll. So in our group we wouldn’t use your houserule. Or 5th in is current incarnation (it’s not bad - we just love 4th) I've never had any problems with 4th edition, either. I was just trying to address the problems other people seem to have. I also like Stevens idea of keeping either Trait or Skill whichever is higher, instead of always keeping Trait. I don’t know that I like the sound of choosing whether you keep skilll or trait. It costs less XP to raise a skill, so why raise a trait? Sure it will increase your rings eventually, but who cares if you’re rolling 10K8 off the back of your Kenjutsu 8 skill. I think if you’re going to go with that, I think you’d need to make the cost of raising skills the same as raising traits. That would slow down character advancement though, unless you make it cost the same to raise traits as it costs to raise skills, but that increases character advancement. Maybe split the difference?
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Post by akavidar on Jan 29, 2018 16:23:01 GMT -8
I've never had any problems with 4th edition, either. I was just trying to address the problems other people seem to have. I also like Stevens idea of keeping either Trait or Skill whichever is higher, instead of always keeping Trait. I don’t know that I like the sound of choosing whether you keep skilll or trait. It costs less XP to raise a skill, so why raise a trait? Sure it will increase your rings eventually, but who cares if you’re rolling 10K8 off the back of your Kenjutsu 8 skill. I think if you’re going to go with that, I think you’d need to make the cost of raising skills the same as raising traits. That would slow down character advancement though, unless you make it cost the same to raise traits as it costs to raise skills, but that increases character advancement. Maybe split the difference? Or, maybe the folks who developed 4th edition had the right idea to start with. The more changes we come up with, the more we skew other parts of the game.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2018 8:17:16 GMT -8
I don’t know that I like the sound of choosing whether you keep skilll or trait. It costs less XP to raise a skill, so why raise a trait? Sure it will increase your rings eventually, but who cares if you’re rolling 10K8 off the back of your Kenjutsu 8 skill. I think if you’re going to go with that, I think you’d need to make the cost of raising skills the same as raising traits. That would slow down character advancement though, unless you make it cost the same to raise traits as it costs to raise skills, but that increases character advancement. Maybe split the difference? Or, maybe the folks who developed 4th edition had the right idea to start with. The more changes we come up with, the more we skew other parts of the game. Nah. Traits bump a slew of skills at once. Of course skills cost less. If they didn't no one would ever choose to take them.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2018 11:05:42 GMT -8
A good discussion. The more 'core' an idea, the harder it might be to recognize unwanted or undesired consequences, especially in how the math will play out.
An example I'd seen, but have yet to try, was John Wick's Santa Vaca. It's basically 3.x D&D, the only thing he wasn't allowed to change was the character sheet. Since he hates the '5%'-ness of a d20, he made it a dice pool/bell curve. Anything that would get you a +1 (Strength bonus, class bonus, etc) instead is a d6 in a dice pool. +3 for Strength? There's 3d6 towards hitting AC. It was an interesting experiment, but it really changes a lot of D&D by just changing the dice mechanics.
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Post by yojimbohawkins on Feb 1, 2018 7:35:58 GMT -8
Or, maybe the folks who developed 4th edition had the right idea to start with. The more changes we come up with, the more we skew other parts of the game. Nah. Traits bump a slew of skills at once. Of course skills cost less. If they didn't no one would ever choose to take them. Sure, Steven, but wasn't it your idea to choose whether to keep skill or trait dice? Am I confused by that? My point was 35XP gets you to from a rank 1 skill to a rank 8 skill, which would be pretty cheap to get you a 10k8 dice pool with an associated trait at 2, given that RAW it should take you 134XP. I suppose it depends what sort of game you want. Getting to some big dice pools would make for some over-the-top wushu-style adventures, I guess.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2018 23:13:25 GMT -8
Nah. Traits bump a slew of skills at once. Of course skills cost less. If they didn't no one would ever choose to take them. Sure, Steven, but wasn't it your idea to choose whether to keep skill or trait dice? Am I confused by that? My point was 35XP gets you to from a rank 1 skill to a rank 8 skill, which would be pretty cheap to get you a 10k8 dice pool with an associated trait at 2, given that RAW it should take you 134XP. I suppose it depends what sort of game you want. Getting to some big dice pools would make for some over-the-top wushu-style adventures, I guess. Yes, it would be much cheaper to get better at a single thing. Consider that in RAW, that 134 XP is not buying 10k8 with a single skill, but any skill that uses that trait and has a 2 in it. Likewise, that 134 XP only covers that skill so long as it is tied to that trait. If you had bought unarmed (jujitsu) with 134 xp into agility, you would still be bad at grappling, because that is based on strength instead. Also bear in mind that being a good swordsman was not just a single skill. You need Kenjutsu, defense, and Iaijutsu. So it would actually cost 105XP to get all three of those up to par. I do see your point though, which is why I think that FFG Star Wars and Genesys restrict stat increases after character generation.
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Post by yojimbohawkins on Feb 3, 2018 1:25:27 GMT -8
Sure, Steven, but wasn't it your idea to choose whether to keep skill or trait dice? Am I confused by that? My point was 35XP gets you to from a rank 1 skill to a rank 8 skill, which would be pretty cheap to get you a 10k8 dice pool with an associated trait at 2, given that RAW it should take you 134XP. I suppose it depends what sort of game you want. Getting to some big dice pools would make for some over-the-top wushu-style adventures, I guess. Yes, it would be much cheaper to get better at a single thing. Consider that in RAW, that 134 XP is not buying 10k8 with a single skill, but any skill that uses that trait and has a 2 in it. Likewise, that 134 XP only covers that skill so long as it is tied to that trait. If you had bought unarmed (jujitsu) with 134 xp into agility, you would still be bad at grappling, because that is based on strength instead. Also bear in mind that being a good swordsman was not just a single skill. You need Kenjutsu, defense, and Iaijutsu. So it would actually cost 105XP to get all three of those up to par. I do see your point though, which is why I think that FFG Star Wars and Genesys restrict stat increases after character generation. Yeah, and of course you really need to raise Your Air Ring (for Awareness & Reflexes) and your Void Ring as well as Agility to make good use of all of those skills. Pretty costly, but given duelling is the primary way to finally resolve a conflict, Bushi at least have to dip their toes in them.
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Post by Stu Venable on Feb 15, 2018 18:33:01 GMT -8
To me, the best houserule I've heard to "fix" the game (and I think it was SirGuido who mentioned it) is to allow the declaration of raises AFTER the roll. Declaring raises prior to the roll carries a lot of risk, as not making your raise means failure, even if it would otherwise succeed (IIRC, it's been a while...). And Steven is right, many times a declared raise will result in a failure, so my players at least rarely tried it. If I'm understanding the term "swinginess" correctly, meaning wild swings in dice results, that's an aspect of the game I like, as it makes the outcomes of combat unpredictable, making it a dangerous thing (as it should be). That's my 2 cents at least.
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Post by SirGuido on Feb 15, 2018 18:34:36 GMT -8
To me, the best houserule I've heard to "fix" the game (and I think it was SirGuido who mentioned it) is to allow the declaration of raises AFTER the roll. Declaring raises prior to the roll carries a lot of risk, as not making your raise means failure, even if it would otherwise succeed (IIRC, it's been a while...). And Steven is right, many times a declared raise will result in a failure, so my players at least rarely tried it. If I'm understanding the term "swinginess" correctly, meaning wild swings in dice results, that's an aspect of the game I like, as it makes the outcomes of combat unpredictable, making it a dangerous thing (as it should be). That's my 2 cents at least. Yeah I allowed raises after the fact at double cost. So 10 points on the dice per raise instead of 5.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2018 18:56:48 GMT -8
I like SirGuido's idea of the 'declare raises after the roll at 10 points per raise'. And since I'm an old traditionalist that still rocks the 1e L5R, with some additions, it also keeps the rank 5 Bayushi technique useful since they'd be able to declare their raises after the roll without that penalty.
Good job, sir.
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