[OSSR] Rokugan Campaign Setting (d20)

[ColorBlindNinja61]

OSSR: Rokugan Campaign Setting





Introduction
The Rokugan Campaign Setting is a 3rd party d20 book and was published a mere two months after D&D 3rd edition’s Oriental Adventures. The entire book basically comes off as an attempt to correct what the authors felt Oriental Adventures “did wrong”.

USING THIS BOOK WITH ORIENTAL ADVENTURES
The Oriental Adventures™ sourcebook presents a view of Rokugan compatible with most Dungeons and Dragons campaign settings, ready to dropped in in a moment’s notice. While this volume is compatible with Oriental Adventures, it is in a number of ways a more exclusive view of Rokugan as presented in the Legend of the 5 Rings card game, roleplaying game, and Clan War miniatures game.

Now, let it be known that have little in the way of knowledge of Legend of the 5 Rings. I’ve read the d20 Oriental Adventures but aside from that I’m basically ignorant of the setting. Furthermore, my knowledge of Japanese society is mostly what I’ve gleaned from video games and anime.

In other words, I’m not going to be able to tell if the fluff is off or the book gets basic facts about Japanese Rokugan culture wrong. I guess an outsider perspective might be useful?

I had a strong suspicion that the Rokugan Campaign Setting was going to be entertainingly bad and it didn’t disappoint. That said, I didn’t expect to find enough to complain about to actually write an OSSR about it and yet here we are.

The book opens with an italicized story about two samurai meeting on the field of battle and dueling one another. For honor! Honestly, it’s not terribly written and it’s pretty short, so I can’t complain too much.

The book does have a proper introduction explaining what this book is and Rokugan as setting, including the quote I cited above. It’s pretty brief and this entire section (italicized story included) consist of a single page. The book then jumps immediately into discussing characters.


Characters – Part 1

The book decides to start this chapter by talking the various clans of Rokugan and I’m honestly confused why they lead with this. While the title is a bit vague, this section is ostensibly about character creation. The book explicitly expects your characters to be from one of these families, but the crunch here is limited to some extra skills and what languages you can speak. If I wanted to make a character in this setting, I’m going to be more interested in what classes and races are available.

This section is fairly long, too, it goes on for nearly 30 pages and honestly wouldn’t make much sense without prior knowledge of the setting. I mean, by this point, you haven’t even been told what a Shugenja is.

It seems that the authors expected the reader to at least be familiar with Oriental Adventures before even cracking open this book. I honestly skipped this section on my first reading.

Fun note, they specifically call out that Unicorn Battle Maiden family were called “Otaku” at one point but it was changed to “Utaku.” I’m actually surprised they bothered to bring it up.

Buried here is information about playing as a naga or Nezumi, though later the book basically implies that everyone’s going to hate you if you aren’t human. More on that when we get to it. Barring that, I don’t think all that many people are going to end up playing as a naga, since most of them have LA. I was amused that the book specifically informs me that only the lady nagas can turn their tails into legs so you can fuck them.

Finally, after almost 30 pages, the book finally starts talking about the classes you can play as. One of the things I didn’t care for in the 3rd edition Oriental Adventures was that several of D&D’s iconic classes where told to go fuck themselves, because they don’t belong in fantasy Asia. This book begrudgingly acknowledges that people might want to play as one of the core classes in Rokugan.

As if to make up for this positive change, the authors take shit all over it by saying that the xenophobic assholes that make up the setting will hate your character for being a foreigner. Fucking seriously?

The stupid gets even worse, as they inform the reader that Clerics might have their spell casting taken away if Mister Cavern decides to fuck with them, supposedly because they’re “too far from their gods” or some shit. Clerics can still have their fucking spells if they travel to another plane of existence, but Rokugan is apparently beyond their power?! WTF?!

As if determined to piss me off even more, we’re told that it’s not setting appropriate for Rangers to cast spell and they should get Fighter bonus feats instead. Because of all the classes to nerf, the fucking Ranger clearly was at the top of the list.

The section on the Sorcerer might just be the worst. Firstly, the book can’t seem to decide if they actually exist in the setting. The first sentence tells us that Sorcerers are rare in Rokugan but the last sentence tells us that Bloodspeakers (a prestige class) are the closest thing that fantasy Asia has to a “true Sorcerer.” Well which is it asshole? Does Rokugan have Sorcerers or not? It’s worth noting that 3.0 Oriental Adventures explicitly allowed the class.

To add insult to injury, we’re told to see page 111 about Maho for more information about Sorcerers. This is a goddamn lie; all this page contains is a spell list for the Maho prestige class. It’s an honest to god page XX error. Fucking fuck!

The rest of the book seems to just assume that the Sorcerer isn’t a thing and gushes about the magic the Shugenia have. The ambiguity here is maddening, partly because Sorcerer is far and away the most powerful class “allowed” in the setting.

In all honesty, it would be trivial to snap the setting in half with a Sorcerer, but the same is likely true of the Shugenja as well. I’ll have to remember to see if they added any broken Shugenja spells when we get to that part of the book.

[Libertad]

Back in my teenage years I loved Rokugan d20 given it combined D&D and Japan, two of my favorite things. BESM d20 was a close runner-up.

Then I grew up and realized that there were cooler, more mechanically-balanced settings to play in while also indulging my inner weeb, D20 or no.

[amethal]

The Rokugan Campaign Setting is a 3rd party d20 book and was published a mere two months after D&D 3rd edition’s Oriental Adventures. The entire book basically comes off as an attempt to correct what the authors felt Oriental Adventures “did wrong”.

I hadn't realised the two books came out so close together. The whole project seemed very odd to me at the time. Oriental Adventures 3e ditched Kara Tur, to the apparent dismay of their fanbase, and introduced this Rokugan thing that I'd never heard of (presumably to the dismay of the Rokugan fanbase). And then Oriental Adventures won an Ennie for best setting.

Then it turns out that whilst AEG had created Rokugan, WotC somehow had the rights to it, but were licensing it back to AEG.

The decision of AEG to then produce their own d20 book also looked weird, but I suppose the explanation that they didn't like the more "generic" version in Oriental Adventures is as good as any.

However, the decision of AEG to dual-stat their subsequent products for their own system and d20 made perfect sense to me at the time - I'd buy any old crap if it had the d20 logo on it, and was very wary about buying anything that didn't (ahh, the follies of youth …)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this OSR, as the Rokugan Campaign Setting seemed to be written by people who loved the setting but had never played a d20 game in it and probably never would.

[Orca]

A badly played ranger or one who just doesn't know about spells beyond the PHB doesn't get a lot of mileage out of spellcasting. For a lot of players extra feats would be a better bargain, it's not a total nerf tho' it depends a bit on how many they'd get. No, I haven't read this book myself.

Edit: I assume that in Lot5R the clans matter a lot more to character creation?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Then it turns out that whilst AEG had created Rokugan, WotC somehow had the rights to it, but were licensing it back to AEG.

AEG originated the L5R IP, for the CCG of the same name. They spun off the CCG and IP into their own company (Five Rings Publishing Group) almost immediately, and licensed the RPG rights back from their own spinoff. WOTC later bought FRPG, but the license arrangement remained in place.

[OgreBattle]

That leaping cover is cool but i got the impression rokugan was more about sitting in social combat

[Krusk]

A badly played ranger or one who just doesn't know about spells beyond the PHB doesn't get a lot of mileage out of spellcasting. For a lot of players extra feats would be a better bargain, it's not a total nerf tho' it depends a bit on how many they'd get.

the value to me always came in if my ranger planned to multi/prestige class (almost all of them). Do i take 1 or 2 level 1 spells at most, or do I get to dump wisdom, and take an extra feat.

[deaddmwalking]

The value of the spellcasting feature comes from being able to use spell-trigger items, like a wand of cure light wounds or entangle at level 1.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Edit: I assume that in Lot5R the clans matter a lot more to character creation?

It depends on your class. Your clan choice determines your bonus feats if you're a Samurai and which element you have to ban if you're a Shugenja.

EDIT: Looks like it determines which element you have to specialize in as well.

Aside from that, clan mostly just gives you some extra skills, determines your starting gear and what languages you can pick. You also get a default honor score.

If you're a Ninja or a Courtier, I doubt you'd care what your clan is since most of that isn't very important.

At least from a mechanical perspective. We'll get to the problems of mixed clan parties later.

[Krusk]

The value of the spellcasting feature comes from being able to use spell-trigger items, like a wand of cure light wounds or entangle at level 1.

Didn't realize you could use wands and such before level 4. a 3rd level paladin is specifically the phb example though. learn something new every day.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Characters – Part 2

Now the book actually gets to talking about the classes that basically debuted with Oriental Adventures. First up, is the Samurai, the Complete Warrior Samurai is so bad even Fighters and Monks pick on them for sucking ass. The OA Samurai is a lot better but still not all that good of a class. They actually get a decent skill list, including some social skills, so you at least have something to do when you’re not stabbing fools. The OA Samurai is actually pretty good at stabbing fools, though, and unlike a Fighter it’s far easier to build an effective Samurai. Pump Iajutsu Focus and take the Quick Draw feat.

The OA Samurai really only gets bonus feats and the ability to enchant their katana and wakizashi. The latter is nice since you can keep your ancestral sword and just enchant it by spending some cash. It takes about 8 hours each day, so it’s only practical during downtime but it’s still a nice feature. Which means that the Rokugan Campaign Setting had to shit all over it. Now it costs XP instead of gold, which would already be enough to making useless, but now takes a day per each 40 XP you spend. I strongly suspect someone on the design team got their dick in a knot about how (relatively) easy it was in OA to enchant their weapons and wanted to shut that down.


But the next class is what prompted me to write this OSSR, the Courtier. You know how in Exalted you have the issue of the talky talky guys can’t effectively work with the stabby guys in a party? Well someone decided that this problem should exist in D&D too. So, the Courtier is a class with a chassis that’s almost as bad as a Wizard but with d6 instead of d4 hitdice. Except without the magic to make up for it.

The Courier is obviously designed to be a skillmonkey but they lack trapfinding and their skill list is geared almost entirely for social encounters. They do get a bonus feat that lets them get more class skills, but they don’t get the first instance of that until level 5. That basically makes this feature useless. They also get a shitter version of Bardic Knowledge where there’s a 50 + CHA percent chance the information you get is fucking wrong!

You also can get a shitty version of Charm Person that fails against targets that are higher level than you are, and also an ability that forces anyone lying to you to make a WILL save with a shitty DC. The only useful combat ability I see is the Courtier can cast Bless and Doom and that’s still pathetic. There are a couple other abilities but most of them aren’t worth talking about.

The major exception is that they also get Leadership as a bonus feat, but good fucking luck getting a DM to approve that. It’s easily the best thing the Courtier gets and that’s only because you might be able to get a Sorcerer cohort (assuming they exist in Rokugan, the jury’s still out on that).


As far as I can tell, the Shugenja class is completely unchanged from its Oriental Adventures counterpart, barring access to new spells, of course. It’s possible that they lost some spells, but you can’t tell that from reading this section. The Shugenja is a very flavorful class where you choose to specialize in one of the classic elements but must give up its opposing element. Picking air means you must ban earth and vice versa, while fire and water are opposed. You have to select a certain number of spells from your chosen element, but nothing is stopping you from learning spells outside of it (barring the one you banned of course.) There is a hilarious variant rule where Shugenja cast from different stats based on which element they specialize in. You can, no joke, pick earth and cast off your CON stat.


Unlike OA, the Rokugan Campaign Setting actually has the Ninja as its own class. The Ninja is basically a Rogue with less skills, no trapfinding, full BAB and some misc feats and abilities. You get Sneak Attack, at the same levels that a Rogue does, but not much else. You do get your INT to initiative (kind of handy) and can use poison (bleh!). It’s… somewhat functional as a sneaky martial class, but I suspect a Samurai with Iajutsu Focus will be dealing more damage. I guess the Ninja can use their full BAB to make good use of Power Attack. That’s nice, I guess…

The other issue is that you can’t tell anyone you’re actually a ninja or else everyone will want you dead. Because of course this book has to find some way to shit on easily the most popular character concept in Fantasy Asia.


The Inkyo is basically a shittier Monk, if you can believe it. The class mostly revolves around a subsystem called Void Points and they get some bonus feats relating to this subsystem. I feel like this class is redundant. Why not just grant Monks these feats as an alternate class feature or something?


Skills
Note we’re still in the character chapter, I just added that subheading for clarity’s sake.

Like most d20 products, the Rokugan Campaign Setting can’t resist adding more skills, even though this is almost always universally terrible for the game. There’s a Battle skill which doesn’t need to exist as well as a skill involving playing games. Like, board games and card games.

Of course, they add more knowledge skills, including ancestors (why not just history?), etiquette (royalty and nobility should work for that), elements (explicitly supersedes arcana!), law (local should cover that), shinato (why not religion?), fortunes (ditto), and the spirit realm (planes should suffice). You can also use knowledge to conduct research (why is this a separate skill?) and they added a skill for mimicry. I think where I officially lost patience was when I saw a skill for conducting tea ceremonies.

Feats deserve their own section and I’m not looking forward to it.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Feats
Once again, this is still in the character chapter.

It’s unusual for d20 produces to be able to resist the siren song of including an ass ton of feats and this book is no different. There are an ass ton of new feats. They list them in a huge table that tells you only what their perquisites are rather than what they actually do. I hate it when books do this…

Of course, they segregate feats based on clan, which means some players are almost certainly going to minmax this shit, but what initially caught my attention was the Void Use feat. It’s not, as far as I can tell, listed in the table I previously mentioned (why?!). Void Use involves the use of Void Points, which you can spend to power void feats or just get a +2 bonus per point spent on an attack roll, saving throw, skill check or to AC. Most of the void feats aren’t that impressive, TBH, but it’s worth noting this feat is human (or naga) only. Oh yeah, and it requires a DC 15 Concentration check to replenish them and you can’t use void feats if you’re frightened. Because they require “focus.” Why not just list a Concentration check DC, then? Wait, I’m expecting the book not to fuck the players over constantly, my bad.

Just looking at the list of feats makes my eye glaze over and we’d be here all year if I described each and every one, so I’ll just talk about the standouts. It probably won’t surprise you that most of the feats in the Rokugan Campaign Setting are crap, but Breaking Blow is… weird. It only works with an unarmed strike and you have to spend a full round action to use it. The idea is that you gain +1d6 times your STR mod, which, could be a lot of damage or it could do absolutely nothing.

Dancing with the Fortunes is a Unicorn clan feat that grants you a free reroll once per day, which is handy. Daredevil is a Hare clan feat that lets you add half of your character level + your CHA mod to a skill check if it qualifies as “risky or dangerous.” This is never defined but the feat also informs us that “This is especially effective when using the Jump or Disable Device skills.” Again, no further explanation.

But because this book can’t help but remind us how bad of a setting Rokugan is, we get a sidebar informing us that them foreign characters will have a difficult time convincing someone to teach them Rokugan exclusive feats. Assuming they want to, most of them are awful.

But back to the feats, and Elemental Attunement might be worth taking. If someone casts a spell within 100 feet of you get to make a WILL save and if you pass you instantly know the location of the caster. That’s probably worth a feat and I could easily see it derailing a DM’s choo choo plot.

Flee the Darkness is a void feat that lets you spend a single void point to get +10 to a WILL save but it requires you to be a Monk or an Inkyo. Innate Ability lets Shugenja cast up to three of their spells without their divine focus and if you use the focus anyway, you get a +1 to caster level. Depending on the spells you pick, that might be worth taking.

The Mountain Does Not Fall lets you spend a void point as a free action to become immune to a shit ton of stuff for a single round: dazed, dazzled, disabled, fatigued, nauseated, paralyzed, staggered, stunned and unconscious. Sounds useful, right? Well, it has a BAB requirement of +12 and requires three other feats. One of which includes the Mountain Does Not Move, which lets you spend two void points to make a FORT save to negate all (non-spell related) damage dealt to you (DC equal to damage taken). That feat requires a +6 BAB but if you’re high enough level, both feats are worth taking for a warrior type.

Another potentially useful feat is held back by having too many perquisites, The Pincers Hold, the Tail Strikes. As you might guess from the name, it’s a Scorpion feat and it allows you to get a critical hit if you hit someone after feinting. There’s another feat that lets you make a feint as a move action (Pincers and Tail) but The Pincers Hold, the Tail Strikes requires a BAB of +10 and 4 other feats. It’s also not very useful without Pincers and Tail.

I’m not evening kidding when I say most of these are just minor plusses saves or skills and it’s seriously sapping my will to continue reading this section. So, let’s talk about one more before moving on, Versatile. This feat lets you pick two cross rank skills and designate them as class skills. This is actually a feat I wish was in vanilla D&D 3rd edition, as it’s really useful.


Equipment
Still the in the character chapter if you were wondering…

Normally I don’t care much for equipment lists in d20 products because they’re just more weapons that are unlikely to see play, but in Fantasy Asia it makes sense to include different weapons. If only for flavor.

The sword nerd in me was pleased to see stats for the No-dachi (basically a huge ass katana) but really the armor section is probably more noteworthy. Basically, your armor choices suck, especially if you only get light armor. The Samurai’s great armor is the only heavy armor in the setting and apparently, they get pissy if they see anyone but them wearing it. Oh yeah and you can be executed on sight if you’re not a noble and you’re caught with a katana or the aforementioned great armor. Because grimderp.

The last thing worth mentioning is that apparently Light Crossbows are exotic weapons in Rokugan but I guess that’s only a problem for casters. Why this is I cannot say, because China has had crossbows for thousands of years.

Religion gets a single page devoted to it here but its own chapter later on. Next time, we’ll dive into Rokugan’s honor system. Trust me, it’s going to be stupid.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Honor and Alignment in Rokugan

You know what? I’ll just mention it when we’re finally in a new chapter.

The Rokugan Campaign Setting tells us that alignment is of lesser importance in Fantasy Asia and given of much of a clusterfuck the alignment system is, that’s probably for the best. While better, the honor system still is pretty bad and isn’t entirely divorced from alignment, as we’ll soon see.

The first red flag is we’re told that people with an honor score of 0 are usually evil and possibly foreign.

Honor is ranked from 0-5 and a chart is provided to tell us how much honor each rank gets from following Bushido. Apparently, it’s impossible to raise your honor if your rank is 0, which seems like a major oversight. The idea is that lower your honor rank is, the easier it is to gain a higher rank by doing honorable shit. But the higher your honor rank, the harder it is to gain more honor. The reverse is also true, the lower your honor, the harder it is to lose honor points and vice versa. For every 10 points of honor you gain, your rank goes up by one.

You gain honor for being honest (especially if would reflect badly on your reputation), being courageous (even if clearly outmatched), compassion (healing your enemies), courtesy (hosting enemy families), sincerity (keeping your word even if it’s costly), and duty (following orders). You gain the most honor from compassion, courage and duty, though courtesy nets you a lot of honor points if your honor rank is low.

You lose honor from practicing skills that are below your station (which mostly fucks over the Rogue), deceiving others (fuck you Rogue!), disobeying orders (:(), “unwarranted” violence (whatever the fuck that means), and breach of etiquette (never defined). Disobeying orders and practicing low skills lose you the most honor and TBH that first one is probably going to be a problem since I foresee most parties being rather rebellious.

We get a couple paragraphs telling us how honor relates to alignment and you’ll be unsurprised to learn that Lawful = honor (even Lawful Evil). Mechanically, there are some feats, skills and spells that have honor perquisites, but I didn’t notice any standout feats or skills of that sort. In fact, I only saw two feats that have honor perquisites and none of the skills seem to actually require honor or dishonor (did the editor fall asleep or something?). I guess we’ll have to wait until we see the spell chapter to find out how important this mechanic is. BTW, being “honorable” in this case means having an honor score of 3+ and “dishonorable” means having an honor score of 1.

A brief side note before addressing the key failure point of the honor system; one thing I liked about OA is that listed all of the clans in the game as Lawful Neutral (except the scorpions, who were Lawful Evil). Given how generally repugnant Rokugan’s society is, that seemed fitting to me. But the Rokugan Campaign Setting expects us to believe that the Crane and Lion clans are Lawful Good, and the Unicorns are Chaotic Good. That seems… off to me since these assholes seem to make war against one another at the drop of a hat. More on that later.

But the biggest reason that the honor system fails is that the players are unlikely to care enough about their honor that they’ll actually play along with the setting’s expectations. Perhaps it’s just my personal experience, but most of the players I game with tend to trash talk every enemy they meet and give zero fucks about traditional authority. I just don’t see most groups following their lord’s orders regardless of what they are. Rokugan is suffers too much from grimderp and makes the setting itself out to be an evil empire to be opposed. I would expect a lot of parties to go all revolution on its ass and try to institute their own government. With blackjack and hookers. And in all honestly, that’s probably the most moral choice you can make in this situation, which is a serious problem.

I’ll cover prestige classes next, in what has to be one of longest fucking chapters I’ve even seen in an RPG book.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Well, we don't want any dirty foreigners in our Fantasy Japan. Unless they're Fantasy Dutch! Then they're alright.
... right?

It sounds weird that there apparently aren't any ways of faking what your Honor score is when interacting with other people? That seems like something that would alleviate the Rogue problem. Sure, you're actually a dishonorable, backstabbing asshole, but your face is that of the orderly citizen. Seems kind of obvious, really.

[Krusk]

"honor scores" seem like a consistent and constant problem with RPGs that try to be fantasy feudal japan. Actually trying to follow Bushido, and have tea ceremonies, and doing your duty makes for a relatively dry story.

Whats an interesting story is being in a society that follows those rules, and breaking them. Whether forced, or because you are a rebel. Even a rules lite story game about having a tea ceremony is going to have stuff like "accidentally-on-purpose spill tea on the prince's kimono staining it so he has to leave the function, and can't meet the visiting dignitaries so you can shit talk him for bailing on the event". AKA, find ways to break the code with plausible deniability.

Mechanically punishing people for not following some code is dumb. Having social in game pressure to follow a code is fun. Why do designers keep doing the first one.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Well, we don't want any dirty foreigners in our Fantasy Japan. Unless they're Fantasy Dutch! Then they're alright.
... right?

It could be my ignorance of the setting, but I saw no Fantasy Dutch equivalent in Rokugan. It's like the writers didn't even consider that players might want to be foreigners without being treated like shit.

It sounds weird that there apparently aren't any ways of faking what your Honor score is when interacting with other people? That seems like something that would alleviate the Rogue problem. Sure, you're actually a dishonorable, backstabbing asshole, but your face is that of the orderly citizen. Seems kind of obvious, really.

If there is a way of doing that, the Honor section didn't talk about it. Which is doubly weird since I saw at least one NPC in this book who basic shtick was essentially this. She conspired with the Scorpion clan to kill her lord so she could take their place, then back-stabbed her fellow conspirators. Everyone else thinks she's an honorable person when she's anything but.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

If there is a way of doing that, the Honor section didn't talk about it...

While this is correct, I realized I missed a feat when I was reading that section; Perceived Honor.

It lets you pretend your honor is one rank higher than it actually is and the only perquisite is having a 13+ in INT. But it's practically mandatory for a Rogue unless you want people giving you shit all the time.

[OgreBattle]

Rokugan is Shogun novel Japan + Mongolians + chaos warp corruption yeah?

Is there actually a distinct China region?

[Koumei]

Rokugan is Shogun novel Japan + Mongolians + chaos warp corruption yeah?

Basically, but with a lot of questions unanswered.

Is there actually a distinct China region?

No, which is a shame, considering the great Chinese literary classics (Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh, Romance of the Three Kingdoms etc). I don't know what system would best capture those, but there'd still be interest in "Chinese stuff in D&D, keeping in mind that it's still D&D".

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Prestige Classes
I tend to dread reading the prestige class section of d20 books, they’re either a dark abyssal vortex of page count eating horrors or feature content so mechanically deficient it makes me want to slam my head into the nearest wall. Or worse yet, both at once.


When I first saw the Artisan prestige class, I seriously wondered if it was designed for NPCs but soon realized I was (sadly) mistaken. Most of its abilities are skill related and utter crap but easily the strangest one is the ability to send animated origami messages that seek out the intended recipient if they’re within a mile. Stranger still, if someone else gets ahold of the message, the animated origami tears itself to shreds.


The Butei is a shitty Rogue prestige class that’s best ability is a capstone that grants the use of Alter Self. The Emerald Magistrate is mostly a shitty social class, except it gets the ability to make more AoO in a single round. The Dragon Swordmaster is utter garbage with no useful abilities and the Elemental Master loses too many caster levels to be useful, but the exact mechanics are weird. It gains caster levels at certain levels but extra spells per day at other levels. I think someone didn’t know how d20 works…


The Kolat Agent is another Rogue prestige class that has a weird capstone that lets you turn NPCs into sleeper agents. It sounds badass, but of course, the mechanics are utter ass. It takes a day per character level of the victim, costs 100 XP per character level of the victim and allows a WILL save. You explicitly still lose the spent XP if they pass that save. Considering you’re around level 14 by this point, you could just play a spellcaster and cast Dominate Person instead.


Lion’s Pride is an awful melee prestige class, Master of the Akasha is only for nagas (which have LA), while the Mastermind class revolves around Leadership. Which would be good if it wasn’t the most commonly banned feat in D&D.


The Ratling Shaman is our first confirmation that there are indeed Sorcerers in Rokugan, as you need to be able to “cast 3rd level arcane spells without preparation.” This is a prestige class that fully advances spellcasting and the only meaningful perquisite is you have to be a Nezumi. That alone makes Ratling Shaman a no brainer to take if you’re a Nezumi, but the class features it grants are actually useful. One ability increases a spell’s casting time by an hour but in exchange get a boost their caster level equal to their CHA mod! You can also nab some spells from the Knowledge Domain (though they still count toward your spells known) and you can also get another ability that boosts your caster level by 1 in exchange for taking damage equal to the spell level of the spell you cast.

You can make a magic weapon for free with an enchantment bonus equal to half your Shaman level. Only you can use it and you lose 200 XP if it gets broken, but you may as well take it and make the poor Samurai cry. You also get Magic Jar as a supernatural ability, but it does require you to spend a week observing the target. Another ability has a similar perquisite and only works once a year, but you can make everyone forget the target exists! No save, no spell resistance, no rolls of any kind, just no one but you knows the guy exists. This could easily break a campaign if used correctly but there is an odd caveat where all the deeds the guy did are attributed to someone else. I could see that getting a bit wonky. The only real downside to this class is that you can’t take your first level in it until level 8. I’m convinced that this is the route to ultimate power in Rokugan, aside from Maho. As a Ratling Shaman, you still have to deal with the empire’s racism but that’s not as bad as being hunted for by everyone for practicing Maho.


Back to the terrible prestige classes. The Shadowland Veteran’s best ability is adding their class level to intimidate checks and being able to spend a void point to sense shadowland critters within 50 feet. The Shinto Explorer gets a weak ass animal companion and not much else, while the Siegemaster is so oddly specific it’ll rarely see play. The Storm Legion is a class that seems geared toward dealing slightly more damage when fighting with two weapons and the Sword of Yotus’s only noteworthy class feature is being immune to taint (unless they use Maho). The last prestige class here is the Wasp Bounty Hunter and its focus is archery. Its best (and easily strangest) ability is that you can automatically get a 20 when you make a single attack. You can’t crit with this capstone, but it certainly is unique.

Ratling Shaman aside, the prestige classes in this book remind me of the ones in the Complete Warrior and that’s not a favorable comparison.

[Grek]

Mechanically punishing people for not following some code is dumb. Having social in game pressure to follow a code is fun. Why do designers keep doing the first one.

Exactly. Social expectations should be the Courtier's version of the Rogue's "flanked, flat-footed or denied Dex to AC" and should open someone up to get hit with Embarrassed or Disgraced status effects. Something like:

Embarrassed: An embarrassed creature cannot speak (including to use command words or verbal components) except when ordered to do. An embarrassed creature takes a -2 penalty on all attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. Embarrassment is like shaken, except the creature cannot speak. Disgraced a more extreme state of shame than embarrassed.

Disgraced: A disgraced creature must flee from the source of its shame and from all other creatures it encounters at top speed, taking no other actions. In addition, the creature takes a –2 penalty on all saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks. It cannot speak (even when spoken to), cannot attack and can neither cast nor concentrate on spells. If cornered, a disgraced creature breaks down weeping, typically using the total defense action in combat. Disgraced is a more extreme state of shame than shaken or embarrassed.

[Krusk]

If you want status conditions I guess. Maybe for magical states of dishonor compared to just being dishonored.

I really think having NPCs tell you you can't come into this party because you are an uncouth barbarian who uses scary shadow magic is plenty. Or being told directly, I won't hire you for this quest, because you have a reputation for being a brute.

For the writings portion, you just put a little bit about the values of each group when you do their section. "the Crane clan is all about grace and elegance. They won't deal with folks who are dressed poorly, and if you are in the latest style you get a bonus. They also are prone to flattery and keeping up appearances, so try that tactic.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Magic of Rokugan – Part 1

Finally, a new chapter! At long last!

The book starts out by telling us that magic in Rokugan revolves around speaking to the kami and casting a spell is just getting various spirits to do what you want them to. Remember how I said the Rokugan Campaign Setting tends to act like Sorcerers don’t exist? This is part of what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t know the Sorcerer class is even a thing from reading this chapter. It’s pretty much all about the Shugenja.

We, of course, get a segment telling us that Shugenja who “abuse” the spirits might piss off the gods and there’s a heavy implication they’ll either take away your magic or smite your ass. Of course, we’re not told what this “abuse” entails, so I guess it happens whenever Mister Cavern feels like it.

But then the book shifts gears and starts talking about the Oracles. And the authors seem to think you should know what these are because they don’t really offer much of an explanation. I think they’re mortals that are representatives of the elemental dragons? They’re made out to be these uber powerful penis extension NPCs who’ll fuck you up if you mess with them. No statblocks provided, of course.

Next, we get an explanation of the Fortunes and dragons, who are basically gods. We get an explanation of the divine hierarchy and are informed the Fortunes are even more badass than the Oracles and indestructible to mere mortals (AKA the PCs). The most powerful beings in the setting are the Lord Sun and Lady Moon. Despite being told that these two are stronger than the Fortunes and dragons and it’s “suicide and insanity” to attack them, the book says:

When you feel as if your characters are on par with such power, feel free to call down the heavens.

Which is confusing on several levels. I think the implication is that once the party is high enough level, they can fight them, but there are no stats for the Lord Sun or Lady Moon, either. I suddenly feel the need to confirm that this book did indeed have an editor…


The next section is about ritual magic and the Rokugan Campaign Setting informs us:

In Rokugan, there are no spells. Instead, shugenja recite prayers to the Fortunes. These prayers, if recited properly, result in the intervention of the kami, elemental spirits who perform the function asked of them by the shugenja, thus achieving a predetermined effect. In essence, the shugenja uses his own spiritual energy to both request and demand the service of the elements themselves.

So, what about Sorcerers? Where do they fit into this equation? I think the book talks later about how the Maho are powered by Fu Leng, the evil god of evil but once again, nothing about Sorcerers. It’s like they forgot the class existed.

Ritual magic reminds me a lot of the circle magic that Red Wizards get in Forgotten Realms, though it’s a lot less broken. The basic idea is that you get a group of Shugenja to cast a spell together, which doubles its casting time and each individual caster must supply the material component separately (if any). It also requires a feat to work in the first place, for all participants. In exchange, you can alter the spell in one way for each Shugenja participating in the ritual beyond the first. You can increase a spell’s duration by one increment, in other words, from a minute per level to two minutes per level. You can increase the spell’s damage of a spell by one die, which is pretty similar to a duration increase (5d6 to 6d6 for instance). You can also increase the DC by +2 or the caster level by +2. That last one is probably the ticket to actually minmaxing this system, but it doesn’t strike me as all that practical.


Now we get more feats. Why the hell weren’t these in the feat section? This is just bad organization! I hate it when RPG books do shit like this! The flimsy justification is that these are secret feats and are therefore rare! Fuck this book.

The first feat lets you deal damage to yourself equal to your spell level in exchange for a +1 to caster level. Sounds good but then you realize there’s a 1% chance per point of damage inflicted you summon a Kansen. Which is basically a CR 2 Allip (both incorporeal and can deal WIS damage). The Ratling Shaman gets a nearly identical ability except without the risk of summoning a fuck you ghost.

Kitsu Blood lets you telepathically communicate with any spirit within a 100-foot radius and cast Augury for free once a week. There’s also a feat here to let you create these magic amulets called Meishodo. The way they work is they store a spell up to 5th level (or up to 9th if you use metamagic) and you have to expend a spell slot to cast the spell stored inside. The save DC sucks but it’s a standard action to activate, Meishoshodo don’t count as magic items worn, and you don’t’ need to know the spell stored in the amulet. The XP cost to make one is pretty low but the only good uses I see for making them yourself are abusing spells with long casting times. It would be nice to find as treasure if Rokugan didn’t have bug up its ass about magic items being rare.

This chapter also has a Crane exclusive feat called Craft Tsangusuri, which seems identical in every way the Oriental Adventures Craft Talisman feat. The major exception is if you make a Tsangusuri that deals damage, there’s a 10% per point of damage dealt a Kansen shows up (the fuck you ghost from earlier). I wasn’t going to use it for blasting anyway you idiotic fucks! Goddamn! But the stupid continues:

A talisman’s market value equals its base price, though of course no shugengja be so dishonorable as to sell his magic for dirty koku.

This is both wildly unrealistic and completely ahistorical. Rokugan is apparently supposed to be a low magic setting where you can’t buy magic gear. This has the usual consequences of shitting on the martial classes while making casters even better than they already are.

Taint Binding has nothing to do with getting Oni minions and instead lets you spend a spell slot to turn Shadowland critters. Remember, there are no Clerics in Rokugan (they’d be foreigners!), so this is the only real way to turn at all. The mechanics are shit, your turning check is equal to 1d20 + the level of the slot expended, and the turning damage is 2d6 + your Shugenja level. Rather than being able to destroy tainted creatures, you just deal 1d8 damage per spell level of the slot expended. Which amounts to fuck all.

You need a feat to cast void magic but as we’ll soon see, there aren’t that many void spells in this book and even fewer that you’d actually want to cast. We are just now getting to the actual part of the magic chapter that talks about spells, which I’ll cover in a new post.

[Orca]

Maybe it's just me, but 'feel free to call down the heavens' sounds less like letting the PCs fight the gods and more like 'rocks fall, eveyone dies'.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Maybe it's just me, but 'feel free to call down the heavens' sounds less like letting the PCs fight the gods and more like 'rocks fall, eveyone dies'.

The passage is kind of vague, but that's a distinct possibility. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if that's what the authors meant, this book seems to loath player agency with a passion.