Frankenstein's Ishiken

So I wanted a place to ramble a bit about my current Frankenstein's Monster - a Void shugenja for the L5R RPG. I'm running a campaign now that just switched over to being a magistrate dealie. The players were previously an all-Crab party dealing with Crab lands being overrun by the current storyline problems, and I decided to drop a Black Scroll on their laps for a laugh. Anyway, that's wrapped up and they decided that though they enjoyed their first characters, they wanted to branch out some and I offered to start a newer campaign with characters that were possibly the descendents, students, associated of the previous characters. These characters would be given 90xp (+10 if they were players from the previous campaign).

I was talking to Elo-Brian about this, and he was jiving with the thematic flavor of the Phoenix - stoic masters of ridiculous power that they are reluctant to use. He also wanted to make a shugenja, so I decided to talk to him a little about what each element was good for. Now, at the time, I was still sort've in the mind set that Air had some of the best utility spells for social settings for things such as divination and manipulation. I told him that realistically, the biggest toolbox is going to be a Void shugenja with strong access to Air spells (either through a Air affinity or a high Air ring), BUT, I had already seen about 100 Void/Air and Void/Fire shugenja. What I had always wanted to see in play was a Void/Water shugenja, for various reasons.

Brian was kind enough to humor me and I explained to him what he needed to do, statwise to get this guy going. First, you have to go with the Isawa school, because it's the only one that allows you to pick any Affinity (so it's the only way to get a Void affinity), but you also get no deficiency. That is super important and I'll get to that in a second. Second, you need to pick a family that gives you a water-related bonus. Thankfully, the Agasha somehow get a Perception bonus despite being a Fire shugenja family. But even if you don't like the Agasha, you can pick a Shiba and be a super weird exception to the family of bushi (they also get Perception).

Since the Isawa school grants you +1 Int, you have a pretty quick jump to 3 Water, 3 Fire, and 3 Void (this wouldn't work at rank 1). Brian opted to go ahead and hit 4 Void, which is a pretty big XP dump, but for this character it really works since you can abuse the holy fuck out of your Void Ring and Void Points. The only problem is that it leaves a very small amount of XP for skills, since you have to blow 6 on the Ishiken-do advantage. Even after recovering 10 points of disadvantages, skills are gonna suffer a little. So really the choice was blow 24 points on Void 4 or have 24 points for skills. It's something of a toss up, since you're going to have a shit ton of Void to blow when it matters and some spells to help.

So this is where you play with the mechanics. Due to the need to have a good Water Ring for some ridiculous water combos later, you have a good Strength. Due to getting +1 Int from the school and wanting to push up another Ring to have another strong element to cast, you now have 3 Agility. You have now accidentally stumbled upon a competent melee shugenja if you focus on disabling and not killing (which, incidentally, fits with the Phoenix pacifist stance). Bo of Water gives you a free raise for knockdowns (and you'll get another at Staves 5, making every attack a possible knockdown), and with a 3 Agi and 3 Str, you can now get people into a grapple with Jiujutsu and maintain it relatively consistently.

Of course, bushi will have higher Agi or Str (if not both), but they don't get an infinite goddamned Void pool, now do they?

This is where the spells come in and really make the damned thing ridiculous. I told Brian he had his starting spells (3, 2, 1, and 1 of any given element), then three he would choose as spells "gained" after his character's rise to Rank 2 (so any three spells he could cast at Rank 2), and then his 3 Rank 2 spells. It's important to note that with no Deficiency, your potential spell list becomes goddamned amazing. But you also have Importune, which is the ultimate "I have some downtime, so now I can cast any spell" mechanic.

So for spell selection, I suggested -

Rank One Character Creation Spells - 3 Void, 2 Water, 1 Fire, 1 Earth

3 Void (Rank 1 or 2): Drawing the Void, which allows you to cast a Rank 1 spell and recover 3 Void Points (given his stats), or 4 if you're feeling froggy and Raise three times (twice, due to getting a Free Raise on any Void spell). Touch the Emptiness, which is a nice quick combat spell that confers the statusfuck of Daze. Altering the Course, letting you blow as many Void Points per roll as you like. Which is kind of ridiculous especially when combined with Drawing the Void, which allows you to temporarily have more Void Points than your actual Ring.

2 Water (Rank 1): Bo of Water, for a good standby weapon that will eventually turn into Excalibat. Path to Inner Peace, the standard healing spell. Yup.

1 Fire (Rank 1): This was a toss up between Fires of Purity, which deals damage whenever the target attacks or is attacked, causing a ridiclous amount of damage overall, or Never Alone, which is sort've like a Bless that works even out of combat.

1 Earth (Rank 1): Earth's Stagnation, making one or more targets useless piles of inaccurate, slow moving non-threats.

Then three spells he could cast at Rank 2 (So Ranks 1-3 of Void, Rank 1-2 of anything else):

Moment of Clarity (Void Rank 3): The ability to just assume Rank 4 (or higher, as your Void increases) in a skill has endless usefulness. Combined with the ability to blow a shit ton of Void on a single skill roll (per the previous Void combo) means you can essentially make master-level rolls on any one skill roll a couple times a day.

Kharmic Intent (Void Rank 3): You share your Void pool with another target, letting them draw from your ridiculous Void, and/or you can use their points, which you will put to potentially better use.

Rejuvenating Vapors (Water Rank 2): Shugenja can cast a number of spells per Element per day equal to their Ring in that Element. They then get a pool of "any spell" slots equal to their Void Ring per day. This spell will refresh that once per day.

Reversal of Fortunes (Water Rank 1): For three rounds, a target simply rolls twice on any given roll and picks the better roll. There is no point at which this is not handy.

Soul of Stone (Earth Rank 1): This grants a huge bonus to avoid mental coercion and manipulation, which will be pretty handy for a socially driven campaign.

Benten's Touch (Air Rank 2): As mentioned, this will be a very talky-centric campaign, what with the law and all. Giving out 1k1+2 to social skill rolls is going to be damn useful.

Now, that's a pretty standardized toolbox for a shugenja to have. This doesn't even abuse one of the most abusable Water spell combos in the game Silent Waters, which allows you to store a spell on yourself to activate later as a Free action, and Sympathetic Energies, which is already ridiculous when used with Silent Waters, but doubly good since most of the Void's best spells are self-only buffs. Being able to move spell effects off yourself to others is great, and then you realize that Importune, which allows you to get temporary access to any spell you could cast but haven't learned is a skill roll. Since you have no deficiency, the spells you can choose from to Importune are much more than most Shugenja. And you can have all the Void in the world to spend on that roll.

So you can potentially drop two spells - I suggest Bo of Water and probably Soul of Stone, to get those. But without Bo of Water, you can spend less time worrying about combat (sticking to Jiujutsu), and free up some skill points you would have put in Staves.

I'm not sure which setup I like better, but I'm personally leaning towards the latter one. I'm probably going to end up making this character as well and playing it in a game Kim is running.