OOC Discussion

[Marullus]

The Fog of War assumptions that surround these rule snippets are interesting... I'll be taking them into account.

Observe Situation
This Option allows the character to make observations of events
and circumstances surrounding him. Without choosing this Option,
a character is only aware of what is immediately in front of him or
what has been communicated to him by another character using the
Give Orders Option.
A character using this Option is allowed to move up to 1 yard.

Give Orders
This Option allows the character to speak in such a way that he
may communicate ideas, orders, comments, etc., to other
characters. When the Gamesmaster is being strict about
communication in Detailed Time Scale, this is the only way for
characters to communicate anything other than one- or two-syllable
comments.
A character using this Option is allowed to move up to 1 yard.

[jemmus]

I hadn't spotted those rules. Really interesting.

[Marullus]

Learning a lot about Bushido characters... Ignoring those physical attributes costs quite a bit...

Yeah, the best combatant build so far appears to be Katsumi the ninja! Having the speed for a great BMA and multiple actions means you can outrun people.


It looks like best option for you otherwise is to carry your bows and shoot people unless you're both committed to mutual-killing with swords. I also now respect the han-kyu more, since it can fire multiple times per round and the dai-kyu cannot.

Also, I think Toshizo was too hard on himself for wasting the arrow. There's a reason Rule #2 is Double-Tap.


We also learned that those encumbrance penalties are killer. Toshizo would have more speed and more actions if he wasn't overloaded (and conversely, Ha has huge strength but no armor!)


...and while I'm on a roll, Eiji the Buddhist is the walking personification of Rule #32.

[ffilz]

For magic use, I'm definitely preferring Taisho the Shinto Gakusho to Taka the Shugenja, both from a perspective of what the character can do mechanically and the role play.

[Marullus]

Do you want to change more about Taka? She's only used her Water path so far. You could swap the Wood path for Earth, or for Fire?

I'm also willing to add the Tea Magic (from this adventure sourcebook) retroactively instead of on your next advancement if that helps. It lets you brew Augmentation spells into your tea sachets (and Earth and Fire give more Augmentations, I think). I was very focused on getting Fetters of Truth (so she could compel people into honesty) but that can be changed. If you aren't trying to have the Wit/Will to get that option, you might be able to switch the attributes around, too.

I'd rather you adjust and enjoy the character.

[jemmus]

Those Rules. Yes, armor has some serious drawbacks. Toshizo was designed for speed and getting two actions per turn. But with the partial encumbrance, he loses one of them. On the other hand, the o-bakemono only managed two (I think) hits on Ito because of his armor. -7 or so to BCS didn't leave the NPC much margin for successful rolls. I'm thinking armor is great for the kind of fight against a stationary opponent. But you're not going to run many opponents down or escape from something that's trying to run you down. Maybe downgrading to a lower AC and avoiding encumbrance is a good balance.

Agreed, Katsumi has been a really effective PC so far. Runs fast, gets three actions per turn. And his kyotetsu-koge piling up those Distractions...!

[Marullus]

It looks to me like you can only do trip attacks with kyotetsu-koge and jujutsu. It makes a big difference!

If Ha and Toshi swapped armors, they'd both be better off! I don't know that they'd bring themselves to do so IC.

[ffilz]

Do you want to change more about Taka? She's only used her Water path so far. You could swap the Wood path for Earth, or for Fire?

I'm also willing to add the Tea Magic (from this adventure sourcebook) retroactively instead of on your next advancement if that helps. It lets you brew Augmentation spells into your tea sachets (and Earth and Fire give more Augmentations, I think). I was very focused on getting Fetters of Truth (so she could compel people into honesty) but that can be changed. If you aren't trying to have the Wit/Will to get that option, you might be able to switch the attributes around, too.

I'd rather you adjust and enjoy the character.

Let me contemplate some on changing Wood for Earth or Fire. And maybe dropping the Wit to 25 to get more Speed or Deftness, and maybe dropping Will a bit for the same. Also tempted to increase Strength to 8 to have better Shuriken range.

The real limitation in Shugenja is range at level 1 is very limited, get to level 2 and spell range improves a lot. And the spells with Very Long Range are high Knowledge...

Let's hold the Tea Magic as something to be earned in play. Plus, it would only allow Shadow Eyes without changing schools or Fire Eyes if change to Fire, and Armor of Heaven if change to Metal.

[jmacatty]

It looks to me like you can only do trip attacks with kyotetsu-koge and jujutsu. It makes a big difference!

If Ha and Toshi swapped armors, they'd both be better off! I don't know that they'd bring themselves to do so IC.

Why is that? Ha is not that proud, he just wants to get better at his blade work.

[jemmus]

Wait, the weapons chart on p. 58 shows Entangle and Trip attacks for kyotetsu-koge. Also a blade attack. I may have misunderstood Marullus's post.

No way Ha or Toshizo are trading for each other's sweaty armor, even if young Toshizo's is brand new.* I think we decided that since donning armor goes piece by piece, 1 AC per Detailed Turn, the opposite could apply. Weight could be reduced by removing pieces and losing AC. But we'd need a rule about how much weight is reduced per AC lost. Heavy Samurai Armor is AC 7 and weighs 25 lbs. That's 3.57 lbs per point of AC. If we did it according to this simple ratio, using Toshizo as an example:
-Not very strong Toshizo (STR 15) would have to lose 5 AC to get to below 30 lbs and be Unencumbered.
-AC would go from AC 7 to AC 4.
That seems like a pretty balanced trade off to me. Advantages and disadvantages to be weighed.

Or bushi could just sell heavy armor and buy lighter stuff. The first option gives them some flexibility in deciding on AC vs. encumbrance. The second, none. And with the first option, they have to manage to retrieve the removed and stored pieces after combat, or lose them. And if they do retrieve and carry/don them, they're back to the original encumbrance stats.

*Modern Japan cultural note - Because of the country's overall purity and cleanliness theme, people don't really buy used things, other than high quality antiques or out of print books. Something another person has already used is trash. And they throw perfectly goods things away and replace them with new ones. Once a month is "big trash" day. Perfectly good/operating furniture, TVs, rice cookers, microwaves, etc. are out on the curb. My extremely cheap American co-worker fitted his whole apartment out that way. But he had no On at all. The rest of us were too embarrassed to be seen picking through other people's trash.

[Marullus]

I had a whole post I wrote about varying armor class and now I cannot find it. Am I crazy?

[Marullus]

I found it! Whew. That was bothering me.

Question to GM: Can we take of armor components to lighten to, say, to Partial Samurai Armor? It seems like that would make sense. Because the donning armor rules say characters gain 1 AC per turn.

That is reasonable, within the confines of armor type.

Discussion:
Armor (1103.2) specifies that Samurai, Ashigaru, and Ninja armor are mutually exclusive and that Light and Heavy are made of different materials. Light is lacquered leather and heavy is metal plates. Scavenging Armor (1103.5) is also a thing, allowing you to take armor parts you don't have to reach a higher category, which implies you could willingly lower AC by doing the opposite.

Light Samurai armor can be: Partial (AC 3), Regular (AC 4), or Complete (AC 6).
Heavy Samurai armor can be: Partial (AC 5), Regular (AC 7), Complete (AC 8), Superior (AC 9), or Master (AC 10)

So, lowering to socially-acceptable armor levels as a Samurai is only possible with light armor, removing the limbs and face protection and wearing only the body armor and helmet.

Also note that actual armor class adds your level when using a Favored bugei, which I assume affects combat but not social mores.

What do you guys think of the optional rule for damaged armors?

[jemmus]

So in not very strong Toshizo's particular case, the only way to avoid encumbrance is to sell his Heavy Samurai and buy something lighter. No sure why Toshizo's parents bought him Heavy Samurai when they knew he was not a very strong kid.

I just realized something. Toshizo is already in Partial Heavy Samurai Armor (25 lbs), not Full Heavy (40 lbs). Way back during char gen Frank made a ruling and I set my char sheet up that way. If he were in Full Heavy he'd be good and well Fully Encumbered. So his AC should be 5 (not 7), +1 per level. And he has a -1 to all BCS for partial encumbrance. I have to remember that.

I like the armor damage rule about scavenged armor being partly damaged (AC levels lost). It's pretty simple. The rule about PCs' armor taking damage is realistic and interesting, but it adds another layer of bookkeeping and housekeeping for GMs and players. Are people up for that?

1103.5a OPTIONAL RULE: DAMAGE TO ARMOR
The Gamesmaster may wish to represent the damage to armor or
clothing that occurs when its occupant is killed. This may bedone by
rolling lDlO and subtracting the result from the fallen foe’s Armor
Class. This is the Effective Armor Class available for scavenging.
Forms of attacks such as Throws and Grapples will have little
effect on the armor. In these cases, the Gamesmaster may waive the
die roll or roll on a smaller die such as a D6 or a D3.

The wear and tear on armor may be simulated by rolling a D6 for
any Player Character who has received at least one Lethal damage
type wound in a fight, and lowering the character’s effective Armor
Class by the result. This damage could be repaired by a character
with Armoring Skill. Field repairs can be made with a simple BCS
roll. This roll receives a negative modifier equal to the number
rolled on the armor damage die. A Successful roll restores one-half
of the lost value.

Permanent repairs are a Task with a Period of 1 day
and a Task Point value equal to 3 times the difference between the
armor’s normal Armor Class and its Effective Armor Class.
E.G., poor Shimitsu has his Heavy Samurai armor damaged. The
D6 result is a 4, leaving him with an Effective Armor Class of 7-4, or 3.
He has an Armoring Skill BCS of 12. The armor damage die result
modifies this to8. The BCS roll is a 7, which allows him to make field
repairs to raise the Effective Armor Class by 4/2. or 2, to Effective
Armor Class 3 + 2, or 5.

To make proper repairs, he must have sufficient time to
accumulate Task Points equal to 3 times the difference between the new Effective Armor Class and the normal Armor Class. Since this
difference is 7-5, or 2, he need only accumulate 6 Task Points.

[jmacatty]

I personally don't care for the extra bookkeeping required. The last time I played Bushido (45 years ago) we never collected used armor. Weapons yes, armor never.

[Marullus]

My personal opinions:

• The optional armor damage rules seem to be the most benefit to the group who chose the Armorer skill. If someone chose that skill, it is worthless unless we also use this rule, and that's disenfranchising the the player who invested in it needlessly.
• We don't have anyone with the Armorer skill in my game. Toshizo is a Fisherman and Ha is a Bower. However, in the other game Kentaro is a Tracker but Omi and Ito are both Armorers.
• If we're scavenging within-type, then the only time our Samurai can improve their armor is when fighting another actual Samurai, and one who has better armor than them at that. Reducing AC of damaged armor by 1d10 is pretty brutal to do on top of that. I am okay with a decision to allow straight-swap for a better armor, and also okay if we want to allow swap for a damaged armor that an Armorer can repair.
• With encumbrance rules, I think weapons are good and armor is worthless for the purpose of reclaiming for bounty. There's a reason they only want us to turn in heads. I see us trading up for better gear for ourselves, but what we take back for rewards is different.

[jemmus]

This is kind of a quandary. Mac has said he doesn't care for the bookkeeping involved in tracking armor damage. I'm inclined to agree, for a PBP game at least. In practice, it could add another layer of players-GM communication (posting and responding), which could slow down the games' momentum. It would be different if we were playing live and could just mark character sheets on the fly. So if Omi and Ito want to swap out their Armorer skills for something else, feel free.

If people do loot, lug, and sell NPC armor, I'll go with the traditional RPG rule that selling is more or less at half the book price. That will kind of incorporate the damage the armor took. If a PC uses Armorer skill to repair it, the sell price will be higher. But sell prices will also depend on the class of the town, as well as factors influencing demand (current local politics, recent natural disasters, market gluts, etc.)

Any thoughts?

[ffilz]

To the extent that armor scavenging is appropriate for the culture, I'd say we should enable it. The armor damage rules do look brutal. Allowing armorer skill to enable scavenging would be a simple way to handle it. And maybe presence of armorer skill within a group should be relevant for a more abstract and less brutal armor damage system. On the other hand, I can imaging samurai style armor being far more prone to damage than European armor but if such damage is at all common and scavenging is common, it would also be reasonable to expect that almost any samurai is handy at most repairs, so maybe a less brutal armor damage system that only kicked in with severe wounds, or 1 in 6 chance after a battle or something like that which then DOES need a skilled armorer to repair. We definitely also want to make armoring down more reasonable, and I'm curious if there is a stripped down version of heavy samurai armor that would be acceptable to wear in public.

Of course all of these things don't concern my characters... At most Taka might scavenge weapons she can throw with Shurikenjitsu...

Taisho is never going to have more than a stout walking stick (aka a Bo...) and seasonally appropriate traveling clothes.

[Marullus]

We definitely also want to make armoring down more reasonable, and I'm curious if there is a stripped down version of heavy samurai armor that would be acceptable to wear in public.

...I kind of like that it doesn't. It gives a reason to have Light Armor exist. The economizing ronin is better with light armor he can partially don as he travels. Settled samurai-in-service who only don armor when doing the bidding on their Daimyo have incentive to keep their heavy armor at hand instead.

Also remember that winter clothes are AC 2 and the highest acceptable armor travelling is AC 3. You're talking about a single point of AC.

[jemmus]

I don't recall ever seeing anything about what happens to a defeated army's armor after a battle. In the movie Onibaba, the victors just leave the bodies and the local peasants come and loot them. But I kind of doubt that's what really happened. War was expensive in Japan, like anywhere else, and money was always a big consideration. I wouldn't think that the commanders would let valuable and expensive weapons and armor go to waste. The samurai may have had the ashigaru and conscripted peasant laborers do the dirty work and loot and transport the armor and weapons. If nothing else, the looted armor could be used to equip ashigaru. I kind of doubt a samurai would personally loot a body-- if anyone was looking. He'd be too proud, he'd have someone else do it for him. But a low-ranking foot soldier samurai might. All just conjecture though.

The Bushido rules don't mention any dishonor in scavenging armor, so I guess the above doesn't apply in any event. I suppose people could roleplay how their PC feels about scavenging/looting armor.

[Marullus]

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