[L5R] Is my courtier build any good?

[Hyena]

So, before this I've played a couple of RPGs - DnD 3.5, 4e, 5e, oWoD, Star Wars Saga, but this is pretty much my first experience with Legend of Five Rings ever. So, I've made a Scorpion courtier, and I'm really wondering if what I've made, in the end, is an acceptable build. This is, of course, fourth edition.

Stats - everything is 2, except for awareness 4.
Insight: 142

Skills:
Acting - 2
Games (shogi) - 1
Kyunjutsu - 1
Knives - 1
Perform (songs) - 2
Caligraphy - 1
Defense - 3
Courtier (gossip focus) - 3
Etiquette - 2
Investigation - 1
Sincerity (Deceit focus) - 2
Temptation - 2
Ninjutsu - 2
Craft (poison) - 2
Craft (cooking) - 1
Forgery - 2
Stealth - 2
Sleight of hand - 2
Commerce - 1
Lore (history) - 1
Medicine - 1

Advantages: Dangerous beauty (2), benten’s blessing (4)
Disadvantages: Bitter betrothal (2), compulsion (2), jealousy (3), obligation (3)

[Lapsed Pacifist]

Looks decent, although I have a few suggestions. I see you want to be a courtier with the ability to murder people, and that's fine - you are a Scorpion, after all. But don't bother with Ninjutsu. Ninja weapons are inferior peasant weapons that could mean your death if discovered. You already carry a wakizashi everywhere you go. In polite company, you keep it knotted in it's sheath, but a Scorpion trick is a knot which appears to be the peace knot, but actually can be untied in an instant. (Wakizashi is governed by the kenjutsu skill, not the Knives skill). Another decent option is the simple han-kyu, the 'magistrate's bow'. It's portable, perfectly acceptable for a samurai to own, and you'll be naturally good at Kyujutsu because you'll want to raise your Reflexes to match your high Awareness. Just wait until your target is alone and unarmoured. Sit on a rooftop and pepper them with fleshcutter arrows. It won't take very many. Finally, I would recommend at least one rank of Athletics and Jujitsu. The first because you're a Scorpion, and you can swim. The second, because a Scorpion should never be unarmed, even in a bath house.

[Nerd-o-rama]

The first because you're a Scorpion, and you can swim.

I'm a newbie at L5R myself and this person looks pretty comparable to my attempt at a Crane courtier. I spread out her traits more (mostly to get her Air ring up to 3) and am using a Han-Kyu for self defense in, I believe, an effective manner. I also went more advantages and fewer skills, but I'm not playing a dirty dishonorable assassin

[TheOOB]

Seems mostly good, I would suggest getting a couple of traits to 3 at some point. You need something to do in a fight, as a PC I doubt you'll be able to avoid it entirely, and you also just need something to give you purpose and skill outside of just talking to people.

[BWR]

Conventional wisdom is Void 3 ASAP. Void is far too useful and necessary to leave at 2 and you don't need any Trait at 4 as a starting character. That's the only change I would recommend no matter what.
Apart from that, what do you see as the purpose of this character?
Why Defense 3? Or at all? Are you planning on fighting? Having a few ranks in some weapon skill just in case is one thing but you're a courtier and unless you plan to invest more heavily in fighting skills, Defense is not going to be much use.
As already pointed out, Ninjutsu is pretty pointless. Much better to stick with Knives. The only conceivably useful weapon from the ninja list is the tsubute, since people may think you odd for carrying around stones but they don't obviously look like weapons. Of course they are pretty useless in all other respects. I suppose a concealed blowgun and darts might be useful in some very special circumstances but unless you plan on being an assassin (and that's better left to the professionals) it's not going to be much use. Same with Poison.
Craft (cooking) is something peasants do. It may not be dishonorable to cook but some people may look askance at you for this. In the Emerald Empire, anything that is in any way out of the ordinary can hurt your public image. Being able to pull off a successful quirky character is great but quirks may make things more difficult for you.
Just make sure you don't ever combine this with Craft (poison). It's far too easy to get caught.

Apart from that, looks good. Nice spread of skills among the necessary and the flavorful. The only thing that's missing is Lore (tropical fish).
Thing about L5R, it's far less build oriented than d20. While you can optimize to a certain extent (Doji seppuku engine in 3e, the kill the world dancer, most noticeably), it's hard to really mess something up to the point of uselessness. Over-specialization is generally a far greater problem for a character than anything else.

[Kyuu Himura]

As far as skills go, you're good, probably would get rid of ninjutsu and beef up either knives or kyujutsu, but remember that your first weapon in any conflict is your charisma, you are not a bushi.

I think you should get at least one rank of athletics, but that can wait until you are actually running around and adventuring all over the Emerald Empire.

Craft (cooking) is something peasants do.

Nope, in 3rd and 4th edition cooking is an acceptable craft for a samurai, especially for a courtier, of course, this is not just boiling rice like a peasant without taste or skill, this is haute cuisine (or however you say that in japanese Rokugani).

[Nerd-o-rama]

Nope, in 3rd and 4th edition cooking is an acceptable craft for a samurai, especially for a courtier, of course, this is not just boiling rice like a peasant without taste or skill, this is haute cuisine (or however you say that in japanese Rokugani).

AIAN SHEFFU, clearly.

[JustIgnoreMe]

Doji seppuku engine in 3e, the kill the world dancer

Um... Can I get some details of those? Asking for... a friend, yeah, that's right.

[dezzmont]

Conventional wisdom is Void 3 ASAP. Void is far too useful and necessary to leave at 2 and you don't need any Trait at 4 as a starting character. That's the only change I would recommend no matter what.
Why Defense 3? Or at all? Are you planning on fighting? Having a few ranks in some weapon skill just in case is one thing but you're a courtier and unless you plan to invest more heavily in fighting skills, Defense is not going to be much use.
Craft (cooking) is something peasants do. It may not be dishonorable to cook but some people may look askance at you for this. In the Emerald Empire, anything that is in any way out of the ordinary can hurt your public image. Being able to pull off a successful quirky character is great but quirks may make things more difficult for you.
Just make sure you don't ever combine this with Craft (poison). It's far too easy to get caught.

Awareness 4 for a courtier is actually an extremely valid thing to rush, as for most purposes it is +1k1 to everything you care about, where as void 3 is just one more instance of +1k1 to things some of the time. The extra raise is extremely nice for courtiers but many players often care much more about stability early on. Void is extremely easy to recover as a luck mechanic in L5R. My current shugenja pretty much rides max void points at all times due to meditation. Tea ceremonies can easily be done in between scenes, as L5R plays slow in universe.

Defense 3 is arguably much more important than a weapon skill. In L5R going on full defense means that each point in your defense skill is an extra rolled dice to add to your armor TN. As a courtier in combat with 2 across the board, at least early on, in a fight you should be using the guard action in a chain with your team and sitting in defense or full defense at all times. With 2 ranks an air 2 courtier can count on an armor TN of 39 when guarding someone who is guarding them, which while not impossible to hit is rather difficult.

As someone else has pointed out, Cooking is considered an art in Rokugani society. Samurai can be found doing almost any non-low craft, even ones labeled merchant, as a public function, and many preform low ones as well. High arts just are seen as the peak of culture, but samurai have been known to master everything from cooking to carpentry. Mastering brewing, a merchant skill, likely makes you more popular at courts than mastering weaponsmithing, a high skill.

If someone were to mysteriously fall ill for a few days after eating your meal, no one in Rokugan would question you too much. You are an honorable samurai after all... Avoid flashy poisons and invest in the ones that simply make people queasy. As a Scorpion you should focus on the subtle result. Venom is in many ways better than nightmilk.


As for some advice for the OP:

If you do invest in a weapon skill strongly consider knives and athletics. Knives can be thrown with atheletics giving you a ranged weapon skill, and the value of range in L5R cannot be overstated. Furthermore because knives are not a warrior weapon, but are also not dishonorable, you maintain a lower profile than even a courtier with their wakizashi. It is actually considered somewhat agressive even to carry that, and while it is not uncooth or dangerous to honor to carry your blade, carying absolutely no weapon both helps you put people off guard as a scorpion but makes it uncouth to be too agressive against you in polite society. Ditch ninjutsu entirely. The weapons are all utility weapons for ninja or otherwise require extreme investment. A dart covered in poison is a fantastic delivery method, as no one really knows about ninja, but you are not a ninja. You aren't going to be sneaking around in black pajamas while the rest of the party is asleep, and there is going to be focus on you as a courtier.

You have a lot of skills at rank 1 or 2. A rank 1 skill is good because it lets dice explode, but with most of your stats at rank 1 many of your skills will be getting an average roll of 15, which is kinda average in the bad sense. It is however extremely efficient at raising insight, but if you want to raise insight and a lot of skills at once consider investing more in attributes. Consider scrunching down skills that aren't the focus of what you want to do, or raising intellegence if you want to be a crafty crafting courtier/doctor, which seems to be your angle. Most players focus on two rings to start out with to get their specialty rolling before broadening out. As a bonus, focusing on air and fire makes you sneaky and deadly as a pseudo-ninja.

Don't forget to declare raises. In L5R, rolling a high number doesn't mean anything unless you raise alongside it. Rolling 50 higher to negotiate a trade plan is still merely an acceptable result in your favor, but winning by 1 while factoring in 3 raises is a legendary deal. If you are sure you are going to beat your opponent by a wide margin, declare raises.

Void point any roll that is taking place during downtime or, if anyone in your party can tea ceremony, that will be followed by at least 30 mintues of quiet. Without decent void and meditation you can't recover your void yourself but unlike many other games void is an IC metric of inner grace that can easily be recovered, and samurai can and should use it actively. There is literally no reason to not void point a crafting roll that is taking place over the course of days.

Be aware of the little things, not to avoid being screwed, but to screw other people. L5R is a great game because your skills in crafting and poetry can be as helpful as anything else, and where artisan classes who make extremely good paintings can be as strong as a wizard, or perhaps even stronger. Smart gifts can turn the tide of a court, and can even be used to raise the party's glory. Tactics such as poison and spying are devestatingly powerful because society doesn't accept them as things that can happen. Even simply having the party split up in court to go to different activities allows you to gain more information, which is why even bushi should be skilled enough socially to walk around court without an escort. The gains by working different methods towards one goal are great.

[BWR]

Um... Can I get some details of those? Asking for... a friend, yeah, that's right.

Seppuku engine was a multischool combo of Doji Courtier and Otomo Courtier. DC had the ability to force people to make Tests of Honor, OC had the ability to force people to fail Tests of Honor on contested Social Skill rolls.
Net result: any person you didn't like could quickly lose honor to the point where a rabid Tainted berserker seems like a step up.

The details of the kill the world dancer escape me and a Google search fails to find it after 4 pages, but it was based off a couple items and effects from earlier editions that, IIRC were not updated but which still would work without alteration under the 3e rules, and the use of the Great Potential Advantage. The gist was to use GP: Dancing so you could call infinite raises, an item from an earlier edition to help you dance and some Bloodspeaker ability or maho spell to cause damage with dancing. Net result, you could deal infinite damage to a very large area. It was admitted by the creator that it was a rather questionable combination at best, not explicitly illegal and no obvious or implicit reasons the mechanics (despite being from different editions) wouldn't work but that's about it.

[JustIgnoreMe]

Wow. Thanks for the explanation. That's a pretty deadly courtier!

[Nerd-o-rama]

The Crane Clan: killing more people through passive aggression than the Lion do through active aggression.