In this page I have collected some rules I use in my games. These rules were made to fill the gaps in the official rules and all have given good results during gameplay, buy some have been created to modify lightly some official rules that were good enough.

This is what you will find inside this page:

i) Maneuvers and general rules

ii) Weapons and skills

iii) Reincarnation

MANEUVERS

Here are my maneuver rules as an answer to the questions that generated them. I've tried to keep rules as simple as possible but, in some cases, if the rule was to be scarcely used (weird maneuvers like stopping a sword with the hands) I have kept the original idea although it's not very easy to use (to keep players from using it often).

And thanks to my players for asking some of this questions in the less opportune moments...

- How far can I run in a single turn?

In a Normal Attack on in Full Defense you can move a number of feet equal to 5+Stamina. In Full Attack you can move a number of meters equal to 5+Stamina. This movement do not count as an action and can be distributed as the player wishes during her turn.

- From how may attacks can I defend myself at the same time?

You can defend yourself from a number of attacks equal to your Defense +1. If this number is exceeded, every additional enemy has a -5 to your TN. This bonification adds for every enemy, buy you decide which enemy has which bonificacion (before initiatives are rolled). Ex: Shiba Daito is fighting against 7 ronin. This poor samurai has Defense: 3, so he can defend himself from only 4 opponents (this means there are three ronin he can't control). Before initiatives are rolled he decides to defend himself from the most dangerouse-looking ronin, so he gives the -5 TN, -10 TN and -15 TN to the three less dangerouse-looking ronin. Shiba-san has Reflexes 4 and wears a Light Armor, so his TN is 25 for 4 ronin of his choosing and the other three ronin will see Shiba's TN decreased by 5 accumulatively (your TN will be 20 for the first, 15 for the second and 10 for the third).

But there is also the possibility that your enemies cannot attack you all at once or that the defender can make a raise in his attack in order to increase his TN to the next enemy following the rolled initiatives (+5 to TN). This raise means that the defender uses the body of some enemy to block her next enemy (or something similar), and therefore the number of times this can be done depends on the maximum distance the defender can move in one turn.

- Can I parry a sword with my own hands?

To parry a weapon with your hands you have to act before your enemy. The TN for this action is calculated by adding the base TN (see below) +5 for every Strength Rank of the attacker. You can can also add 5 for every raise to damage the attacker plans to do. The defender has to roll Reflexes equal or higher than the TN if he doesn't want to end up sliced... Ex: Shiba Daito wants to parry his opponent's katana (Strength 3), and his opponent wants to hit him hard, so he does a raise to damage. The TN of the action would be 25+3x5+1x5= 45!!!!!. Shiba Daito has Reflexes: 3 so he'll be spending some Void... (who says that Shiba Rank 1 Technique is not useful?)

If you're trying to stop a chain (Kawanga, Chijiriki...) instead of Strength you add Weapon Skill Rank X 5 to the base TN.

On this table you will find the base TN for each weapon. In some cases you will find then weapon name instead of the Skill name given in WoL. If there is the weapon Skill and the weapon name the correct base TN is the one given with the weapon name.

 

 

*Base TN is 10 if the attacker is on foot. If the attacker is astride the base TN is equal to the number of turns of charge (minimum 1) by 5.

**You cannot parry it. If you don't believe me it's because you've never tried...

 

- How can I attack more than one opponent with one strike?

You need two things:

a) your opponents must be able to hit them (depends on the size of your weapon and the distance you can move)

b) you need to do enough raises. The number of necessary raises depends on the weapon. The base TN will be the higher TN among your objectives. Ex: Shiba Daito wants to hit the remaining 3 ronin with only one strike of his katana so he needs to do 4 raises. The ronin have Reflexes: 2,3 and 4 so the base TN will be 20 (none of them is wearing armor). If you add the four raises you get TN 40 (who said it would be easy?).

The table below shows the number of raises you need to do for every additional objective for each weapon. The weapons have been grouped following the WoL. If both the name of the Skill and the name of the weapon appear, the correct amount of raises are those of the weapon name.

 

The No-dachi and the Unicorn broad sword have a very loooong blade, so they need less raises.

The katana and wakizashi have "similar" blade lengths. The weapons used with Yarijutsu and Ono skills need 2 raises too, but they reach farther.

You can't attack more than one opponent with weapons used with Subojutsu skill.

If the weapon is small (Nofujutsu...) and has a blade you can do raises for additional objectives ( it will be hard to hit, but you can). It they are stunt weapons you cannot do raises.

If the attack hits, you roll damage for each opponent... but if it misses you miss all of them.

- My weapon Skill doesn't add to my TN?

It is easier to hit an unarmed samurai than an armed one, obviously. One way to show this is to add your Weapon Skill X 2 to your TN. If you don't know the Skill of the weapon you are using, you can add your Agility Rank to your TN (a weapon is always useful, altought you aren't an expert with it)

Long weapons (Naginata, Yari...) do not give additional TN but they give the official initiative bonus.

- So I'm dying and my TN doesn't go down??!!

Ooooook, substract your Wound Level from your Reflexes (and recalculate your TN, of course) and from your initiatives. This is a good way to prevent dying samurai with TN 35...

- I would like not to be the only one to fall from the horse. How can I unhorse my enemies (or friends)?

This is quite simple: first you have to succeed in a to-hit roll with two raises and after that you have to do a contested roll with the Strength + Weapon Skill of the attacker and Strength + Horsemanship of the defender (mounted). This maneuver can only be done if the attacker uses a Yarijutsu-like weapon( but not nage-yari), chain weapons, a no-dachi or a dai-tsuchi (in this case you gain a free raise). If the attacker succeeds in both rolls the rider falls to the ground (and that should hurt a lot). You can't do this maneuver with any weapon because some of them are not hard enough or simply they were not designed with this objective. If the raider was charging, it is possible for the attacker to win some free raises (GM discretion) but the attacker should have won initiatives in order to win them.

- How can I break some bones?

If you want to crush (literally) your enemy, you only have to do enough raises to hit where you want and hear the crushing sound of breaking bones. If you are using a tetsubo or dai-tsuchi you will break arms or legs as easy as you cut them with a no-dachi or a katana. If you hit his head, you will crush it. Very simple. If you want to break some ribs, you just have to do one raise to hit the torso and each hit will make your opponent lose 1K0 (count how many ribs remain unbroken...). When using small stunt weapons (nunchakus, tonfas, boken...) you have to do your opponent StaminaX 3 in damage points to break bones. If not broken, you only do half the rolled damage...

It's also a bit surprising that only twisting thumbs or wrists you can kill someone (see Mizu-do and Kaze-do for more on this). You can solve this nonsense by following the Stamina X3 explained above but with two small modification. First, it will work for joints too and second if the damage done is less than necessary to break the bone or joint all damage is lost.

- Something about rerolling tens:

So you don't like that thing about rerolling tens, hu? You think it is too random? Well, check this out: the Void Rank tells how many times you can reroll 10s on a roll. This means that if you have Void: 3 and you roll 4 tens you can only roll again three of them, or two of them once and save a reroll to roll any ten you can score with the two rerolled dices, etc.

WEAPONS AND SKILLS

I use this rules in addition of those in the main rulebook:

i) Weapons

ii) Skills

-WEAPONS-

- Sasumata and lajatang: you have to succeed in a contested roll to get free from the chains: if you are trapped against a wall, tree, another sasumata, an Oni... you use Strength, and if you are not, Agility. If you are trapped by more than one sasumata or lajatang, all your opponents gain a free raise (for extra damage and Strength!!!) for every sasumata or lajatang additional to the first one.

- Bo: you roll an additional 1K0 on initiatives.

- Day-kyu: the starting bow Strength depends on the starting character's Strength Ex: a Kakita with Strength 2 would begin the game with a 2K0 Strength bow, while an Akodo with Strength 3 would begin with a 3K0 Strength bow. If the bow is Fine you can use this to increase its Strength following the WoU rules, but you can't use a bow with a Strength higher than your own (a Strength 2 character cannot use a Strength 3 bow). The bow maximum range is calculated by multiplying the bow Strength by 150 meters.

- Ashi-kyu: the Strength of this bow follows the Day-kyu rules, but the maximum range is calculated by multiplying the bow Strength by 300 meters. It must be noted this bow Strength cannot be compared with the Day-kyu Strength because you need to use all your body to pull it. This is why normal and watakusi arrows are treated as AP and roll an extra 1K1 of damage.

- Shakwo: used with bojutsu (and you have a free raise to sweep).

- Kama Yari and Magari Yari: two kinds of yari, with small blades going out of the main blade perpendicularly. Use them with Yarijutsu skill.

- Die-Tsuchi: the mass of this weapon is not distributed evenly. This is why with every hit the opponent must succeed a Stamina roll TN 10 in order not to be thrown back a number of feet equal to the attackers Strength The attacker can do raises to increase the TN of this roll (+5 for every raise).

 

-SKILLS-

- Yarijutsu: all the weapons used with this Skill (not nagamaki) give a free raise to sweep.

- Subojutsu: weapons used with this skill are too unbalanced to give initiative bonus. Nage-yari is balanced, but it's too small to give initiative bonus.

- Onojutsu: this weapon lowers the armor protection (samurai or oni armor) by one for every impact and treat heavy armor as light armor and ignores light armor. This weapon has no initiative bonus because it's too unbalanced.

- The general weapon skills in WoL include too may weapons in order to attain equal mastery in all of them. This is why you can't reroll tens (hit or damage) when you use this skills. If you have Rank 5 in one (or more) of this skills you can learn the specialized Weapon Skill for a given weapon, but you have to pay 6 experience points (and you learn that skill at Rank 1). If you don't have the Skill necessary to use effectively a weapon you can still reroll tens, because you are using your natural talent (usually Agility) to use that weapon, without forcing you to move in an artificial way.

Stealth (Agility)

Armors are cumbersome, so the wearer of a light armor has to make two raises in order to be able to succeed in any Stealth test. If he's wearing heavy armor, then he needs three raises... Note that with no raises the roll fails automatically.

Courtier (Awareness)

This Skill looks quite useless, this is why in my games I have fused this Skill with Gossip Skill (see Kyuden Kakita for more details).

Lore: Fortunes (Intelligence)

This Skill gives deep knowledge about the Fortunes and their nature. Due to the myriad of things you have to learn this Skill cost twice as normal experience points to gain the next Rank. This is a High Skill.

Yadomejutsu (Reflexes)

With this Skill you can cut arrows on air. The TN to do it is equal to the
Strength of the shooter's arrow multiplied by 10. For every additional arrow the TN is increased by + Shooter's bow Strength If the incoming arrows have been shot whit different bows use the highest Strength to calculate the TN, and if the arrows come from different directions the TN is increased by 10. This is a Bugei Skill.

Forensics (Kuni only) (Intelligence)

This Skill helps the character to tell precisely why someone died (-5 to TN) because of the extensive knowledge about human anatomy he learns. Unfortunately, in order to use this knowledge you have to rip open the bead's body (unless you can tell the reason obviously). If the dead has been poisoned the character needs the Poison Skill in order to detect it (if he doesn't have it, he still can detect the effects of the poison). This Skill can also be used with Shadowlands creatures, but the character needs Shadowlands Lore Skill. This Skill can be used to investigate the anatomy of unknown creatures (for detecting weaknesses for example) but remember you need time material and some creatures to study... This is a Low Skill.

 

"REINCARNATION"

Here are the rules I use in my games to handle reincarnation. This set of rules have been extensively tested and can be used without many problems.

a) Substract 117 from the dead character Insight. This number is the amount of Reincarnation Points you have to build your new character

b) Spend your Reincarnation Points as Character Points but using the following costs: 5 points per Characteristic Rank, 10 points for Void. Everything else you can think of costs the same as stated in Character Points.

Note that this rules give some advantage to those Schools that give bonus to Void, but I think Void is special enough to allow this.

Some last words. My personal opinion is that a character has to EARN what he's got and not just WIN it. This is why I don't let Rank 5 characters use this rules. If I did, the next character would be Rank 5 too, or at least Rank 4 or even a powercharacter.