Posted on February 16, 2023
L5R fights in slow motion
So there are obviously still large gaps in my understanding of how the fights work in L5R, because I can’t stop thinking about them as a simple depletion of a finite resource: i.e. hit points. Which isn’t really how the fights work, so I’ve been trying to rethink the process. I was doing armour backwards, it isn’t critical strikes it guards against, it is damage. Apologies to armour wearers. Wearing armour when you are travelling now seems like a pretty smart idea.
You (samurai, bold, correct) are being struck by an assailant (despicable, cowardly, incorrect). When their attack does “damage” you either suck up that damage with your armour (which I was doing wrong last night) entirely or your armour takes some (or none) of it and you buy off the rest of it with Fatigue. I keep thinking of Fatigue as a resource to be depleted, but it’s really a thing you can accrue to a point… we should probably decide whether we’re going to talk about fatigue going up or down in combat. When that opponent’s Fatigue surpasses their Endurance, they are incapacitated and will automatically suffer critical hits when hit (regardless of the damage you do to them). Critical hits you can do all the rest of the time by spending opportunities. Someone who suffers a critical hit when incapacitated also falls unconscious; someone who suffers a critical hit while unconscious adds 10 to the severity of that critical.
Once the opponent has 0 fatigue left to buy off damage, doing more “damage” with extra successes isn’t really useful except to overcome armour: That job is done. From then on, Opportunities are probably more useful. It is much easier to end fights if I’m reading this correctly:
Matsu Ono takes up Fire stance and two-handed grips a katana to use a Strike action against a filthy bandit: Rolland rolls two successes, two strife and two opportunities. Two successes mean Ono hits, two strife in Fire stance means he can count those as two bonus successes (not successes, bonus successes) increasing the katana’s damage by two. The bandit has to buy off all that damage with his meager Fatigue, but that leaves him incapacitated. But there’s still those two opportunities to spend on inflicting a critical strike.
I can’t see any note about the timing of when that happens, but since one action isn’t simply one single chop of a sword, but a few seconds of swordplay, I think it’s reasonable to assume – until contradicted – that you can apply that critical strike to the newly incapacitated bandit. The bandit would normally get a Fitness TN 1 test to reduce the severity, but he can’t because he is incapacitated and can’t make tests. He takes the full severity of the katana’s deadliness, is now unconscious because crit while incapacitated, and very maimed. Opponent eliminated from the fight in one round. Ono takes two strife because he got a face full of that guy’s arteries.
So that’s assuming a pretty useful roll of the dice, but not outside the realms of possibility, even with Rolland’s rolling. And… yeah, you’re big bad samurai, you should be able to scythe your way through grotty starving peasant bandits.
It also means the bandit might not actually tire his opponent out very quickly, hitting with a low damage weapon against an armoured opponent, but they can still score sneaky Crits with Opportunity, reflecting that they can still find gaps in the armour occasionally.
Because the receiver gets to apply a Fitness check to reduce the severity, Critical Hits caused by Opportunity spends are likely to be less effective, but it’s still a cool way of delivering wounds while a person is still fighting. Crits from Opportunities < Crits against Incapacitated < Crits against the Unconscious.
There’s one more response a person can have to damage coming their way (as opposed to letting armour eat it or buying it off with Fatigue) and that’s to voluntarily accept the critical strike for some tactical advantage. It costs a Void point to do it. I’m pretty certain that’s how the boy-hero in The Wheel Of Time got the devil close enough to stab him, so you know, there’s precedent.