Naked Steel
The Great Clans
As has been customary so far, I want to start by sharing with you a little something from the Great Clans sourcebook that will be released later this month. I do want to point out that this will be the final Great Clans preview, however, since we will be selling a limited number of the books this week at GenCon; you should be seeing reports of its contents on the Internet soon enough! For those of you who may not be fortunate enough to be at GenCon with us, however, here’s a little preview (oh, and if you are at the show, please come by and say hello! I’d love to hear what you think of the column… it’s hard to tell if anyone’s reading!):
New Advantage: Void Versatility [Spiritual] [4 points]
You have a great capacity for drawing upon the strength of the Void as it exists within other elements. Select any one non-Void Ring. You may expend spell slots associated with that Ring to use Void spells in addition to their normal use. Only shugenja with an Affinity for Void spells may purchase this Advantage.
Today I thought I’d share with you a little something different, so I brought in a new Advantage, which I don’t think we’ve used as a preview before. This is actually a rather simple design fix for an unforeseen flaw in previous shugenja structure. The playtesters repeatedly pointed out (although in my defense, only after the fact!) that a shugenja who focused on fire, for example, could use his fire slots for fire spells and then use his Void slots for fire spells as well. A Void shugenja, however, not only suffered from a slightly less robust spell selection, but could only use her Void slots for Void spells, and nothing lent itself to additional spells. Well that’s just not cricket! So this Advantage was a simple fix that the playtesters agreed was an easy way to correct a problem. You’ll notice we kept the cost rather low to make sure Void shugenja are not being penalized for trying to get the same abilities everyone else has. (Although honestly being a Void shugenja is sort of special in and of itself, and given the unique nature of Void spells, a little bit of expenditure was appropriate.)
The Imperial Histories
Goodbye, Great Clans! Can’t way to meet you in person! But while we wait, let’s talk about the Imperial Histories for a bit. This book is unlike anything we’ve done before, which I’m sure I’ve probably said before, but I’m really very interested to see what kind of impact it has on the sort of campaigns that we hear about out there on the boards. Today, however, I’m cheating just a little bit. I’m going to share some mechanics with you that are not actually in the book, but rather were written for a bonus chapter that we will be releasing on the web closer to the book’s release. The reason is that this chapter is the default setting of our new base set releasing in the fall, Emperor Edition. And one of the new factors being introduced in that storyline is the existence of the Imperial Explorers in the distant Colonies.
Just for the sake of comparison, I’d like to show you the original version as presented to the playtesters, and then the version that came about as a result of their suggestions and testing of said mechanic. Here’s the original version:
New Path: Imperial Explorer
Technique Rank: 2
Replaces: Any Basic School at Rank 2
Technique: Seeking New Paths – An Imperial Explorer forges the way for the vassals of the Empress to follow. You gain Absolute Direction if you did not already possess that Advantage. After spending more than two days in any city or province-sized area, you may make a Hunting (Orientation) / Perception roll (TN 20) to gain the Way of the Land Advantage that applies to that region.
And here’s what we ultimately decided upon:
New Path: Imperial Explorer
Technique Rank: 2
Replaces: Any Basic School at Rank 2
Requirements: Lore: Cartography 3
Technique: Seeking New Paths – An Imperial Explorer forges the way for the vassals of the Empress to follow. You gain Absolute Direction if you did not already possess that Advantage, and you gain a bonus of +1k0 to the total of all Bugei Skill Rolls made in a region for which you possess the Way of the Land Advantage. After spending more than two days in any city or province-sized area, you may make an Intelligence / Lore: Cartography Skill Roll (TN 20) to create a map of that region. Anyone who possesses the map is considered to have the Way of the Land Advantage for that region as long as they keep the map in their possession.
You can see some obvious issues with balance depending upon the number of Way of the Lands a person could accumulate, and then there was also a bonus added in order to beef the Technique up a little bit to eliminate its largely flavorful nature. This was, in the opinion of the playtesters, the best way to make it a more attractive option. I think it worked out nicely!
The Book of Air
And here we are once again at what I consider to the be main subject of this column. I say that not because I consider the other sourcebooks less important or having any less quality content, but because the Book of Air has the potential to be shaped by your feedback as the process of finalizing it continues, and that’s the really interesting part to me. But I think I’ve gushed about that enough in previous installments, so let’s move a bit forward with what we’re talking about here. Before I do, however, let me say that I owe a big thank you to my fellow designer Rob Hobart. With the end of the arc that I’ve been dealing with for the CCG as well as the preparation for the events we’re running at GenCon, I’ve not had a lot of time to pull my own weight with designing the new mechanics. All of the mechanics you’ve seen so far, both the Crane Paths that you saw last week and the other things you’re about to see now, have been Rob’s creations. They’re undergoing some pretty significant playtesting even as we speak. That’s really important to all of us, everyone involved in the process, because the quality of the final product is paramount. I’m glad to have you all here with us, and I hope you’ll take the same pride in the work that we do.
The Book of Air deals with all manner of things associated with the element of air, whether it’s a purely mechanical association or more of a thematic one. Obviously there are lots of spells and kiho and all manner of such thing to cover in such a book, but what I’d like to talk to you about today is archery. Archery is an important art for many samurai families in Rokugan, and some consider the bow to be a weapon on par with if not superior to the katana (although I will point out this is a pretty rare philosophy). Obviously the Tsuruchi family of the Mantis Clan are the pre-eminent archers in the Empire, as demonstrated by the mechanical superiority of their School in the core rules. Many other bushi families have strong archery traditions, however. Today we’ll be looking at a couple of Paths for one clan that most people never really associate with archery, but who have a pretty strong tradition all the same: the Crab Clan. Again, these mechanics are brought to you by the fertile brilliance of Rob Hobart, based on the always outstanding work of one of our perennial freelancers, Kevin Blake.
New Path: Falcon's EyeSo those are two of the paths we currently have slated for development for the Book of Air for its archery subtheme. Neat, eh? Naturally this early in the process we noticed a lot of things right off the bat that we need to get sorted out. The Hiruma Tech replaces the double attack, which is a virtual assurance that it will never be taken, so we will likely reduce the Rank of this Technique to 3. Some of the other issues that Rob raised when presenting this material to the playtesters include the following:
Technique Rank: 2
Replaces: Toritaka Bushi 2. After the Falcon join the Crab, could also replace Hiruma Scout 2 or Hiruma Bushi 2.
Requirements: Kyujutsu (Yumi) 3
Technique: The Falcon's Eye is taught to use the bushi's deep awareness of their surroundings to strike the target regardless of concealment. When making a ranged attack with a bow, you may use your Perception or your Awareness (your choice) in place of your Reflexes for attack rolls, and in place of the bow's Strength for damage rolls.New Path: Hiruma Sniper
Technique Rank: 4
Replaces: Hiruma Scout 4 or Hiruma Bushi 4
Requirements: Kyujutsu 5, Reflexes 4
Technique: The Hiruma Snipers are trained to strike at specific weak points in their targets, getting their arrows past both mortal armor and monstrous shells and carapaces. When making a ranged attack with a bow, you may ignore a number of points of the target's Reduction (from armor or natural protection, but not from spells or other magical effects) equal to your Insight Rank x2. You may ignore half that much Reduction from magical effects.
Design Concern: I don't want these to turn into a horrible "this makes the Hiruma better than the Tsuruchi" two-path combo, so I am counting on you guys to make sure that doesn't happen. If the combo is indeed too strong, I see three possible fixes:
- Tone down one or both Paths.
- Tone down just the Hiruma Snipers, and make them Rank 2 so players have to pick one or the other.
- Restrict the Falcon's Eye to Toritaka Bushi only, even after the Falcon join the Crab (doesn't make a lot of sense thematically, but would fix the balance issues).
Now, obviously I already know how the playtesters have responded, but now I’m really curious to see what you think.
