AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Generally tho, if they are that familiar with the setting... they're probably already playing L5Rd10.
I'd agree that approach can work for one character, but for an entire party it feels a lot less like you're trying to play L5R and more like you're trying to make an L5R house out of sticks while a house made out of perfectly good bricks is just sitting there saying 'Use me!'
And there IS a big bad wolf that can blow the house down in the form of your characters resiliency. 4th edition characters are elites compared to their common enemies. L5R characters are not. The system just is not designed to support it. Triple the damage of monsters (yes, MM3 monsters) and remove resurrection from the game, and you'll be closer.
Sure, if they want to play L5R then they should play L5R. I wouldn't see the point of trying to make 4e INTO L5R either. If they want to play 4e in Rokugan though it seems like they can reasonably do that. The feel of the game isn't going to be exactly the same, but that may be the point. I think you can portray the setting reasonably well in 4e is my main point. Whether you want to or not is really not answerable here, it is entirely up to the people playing the game.
I don't know all the details of the newest version of L5R. In previous incarnations it had some 'issues'. Maybe those are mitigated in version 4. 4e has its own idiosyncrasies but some people may just like the system better. It probably will handle some types of situations at least as well as L5R does, maybe better.