Why don't you get the benefit of Immunity to your locations ?

[Kalanyr]

I remember there was a reason but comparing the appropriate paths I can't see where the problem is that they don't.

Yakuza
Special Powers and Abilities
Thug: Signature Style, Dirty Trick, Gang Member
Gang Boss: Signature Location, Sneaky Trick, Gang Member
Gang Lord: Signature Location, Dirty Trick, Gang Member
Warlord: Signature Style, Poison Blade, Gang Member
Overlord: Signature Location, Poison Blade, Overlord
Oyuban: Signature Location, Poison Blade, Cunning Defense

Honour
Yellow Belt: Signature Style, Dojo Style, Fist of Fury,
Green Belt: Signature Style, Dojo Style, Chi Strike, Master of Emotions
Brown Belt: Signature Style, Dojo Style, Fist of Fury, master of Movement
Black Belt: Signature Style, Dojo Style, Mastery, Master of Shadows
Grand Master: Signature Style, Dojo Master, Mastery, Master of Wealth
Perfect Master: Signature Style, Perfect Attack, Mastery, Supreme Master

Now then: A brief analysis
A sig style = a Sig Style not a lot of argument there. Honours get 6 of these, Yakuza get 2
A sig location is inferior to a Sig style, Yakuza get 4 of these instead of 4 sig styles of honour.
A Gang Member is Inferior to a a Dojo Style, Honours get 4 Dojo Style, Yakuza 4 Gang Members.
Currently it leans well in honours favour

A dirty trick is slightly better than a Fist of Fuy, Honours get 2 Fist of Furys, Yaks get 2 Dirty Tricks

A sneaky trick is vastly inferior to a Chi Strike as far as powers are concerned. A Sneaky Trick does very very little for a Yakuza while a Chi Strike can prevent all of the Yakuzas active powers.

All up this doesn't seem to change the balance much with honour being better.

Dojo master is better than Overlord, you can choose a Dojo master to negate a foes mastery, you can choose an overlord for pretty much nothing.

Honour gets the various Master of Emotions,etc Yakuza gets nothing. This is obviously in honours favour.

Masteries and Poison Blades are pretty close to equal with maybe a slight advantage to mastery since you can double up on a sig style. The advantage of being able to dodge around a sig immunity with a mastery is negated by being unable to use a mastery on someone with the style.

Perfect Defence = Perfect Defence when two Tier 7s fight, Perfect Defence is a slightly better power when fighting those weaker than yourself.

Really I can't see how Yakuza can be considered even remotely balanced with honour as things stand.

Edit- I can see 1 reason why Locations don't grant immunity. A Tier 2 Dark would be vastly stronger than a Tier 2 Light all of a sudden. But surely there is some way to fix this ?

Oh Another Thing in Honours favour is there superior buffer system, they have further to drop and they go back to 0 from win. A yakuza has 2 buffers and must work his way back up. A yakuza can get bonus ranks but a higher tier has no incentive to accept such a challenge and a very strong disincentive (the loss of extra ranks).

 

[Rathan]

I fought in a fight with Kal's Yak Kendaz eariler... I belive he is totally correct... and if his sig locs had given him immunities I belive he would have at least had some sort of shot of winning the 10 flag speed we fought... the result was I think ten flags me to four or five to him.....

The Yak path is supposed to be the tier that is to match power with the Honor path and IMO does this VERY VERY poorly... no offence to wicht in the way he made his paths but it was to my understanding that these two paths as well and dark and light were supposed to opposed to eachother in some sort of close to equal power... I feel this is not so in either case...

I feel the something needs to be done about this because other than fittng your characters scheme... Light and Yak paths aren't really worth following... I'm sorry if people disagree... but this is just how I feel....

 

[Kalanyr]

Does anyone have any comments?

 

[Left-handed Hummingbird]

It's legacy from YB1 isn't it?

Back then locations didn't grant immunity as the dark side had Dirty and Sneaky Tricks while the Honor side only had style immunities.

 

[Kalanyr]

Ah yes, I meant is there a reason why we canotinue to have it in YB2, since there are now powers on the Honour side.

 

[Wicht]

I think it is the way it is for a couple of reasons.

First off, in YB1 the honor path was incredibly weak and no one wanted to play it, though the perception I had was that it should be the main path of the game. Therefore there was a conscious effort to make the honor path at least as strong as any other path, no exceptions so that a good number of the players would choose that route.

Secondly, it was desired by the majority I believe to have the styles work slightly different then the locations. In YB1 the locations are weaker than the styles and in YB2 they are as well, though they have been given some defensive value. This is, depending on your view point, either a sacred cow or a bit of game flavor.

The issue came up during the rules writing but the consensus seemed to be to leave it the way it was (with of course some very vocal exceptions.) The fact however that Meowth managed to climb all the way to the top of the Yakuza path shows the path, while perhaps weaker than the honor path in the big scheme of things is still playable.

I don't agree that sneaky trick is completely useless, but it is I acknowledge perhaps the one weak point in the yakuza path. There has never been a credible suggestion however on what to replace it with or what minor power to add to it.

 

[Kalanyr]

I can see about 1 path that is weaker than Yakuza, that is Sash without Items*. Its viable yes, enjoyable no, there's pretty much even fewer Yakuza in YB2 than there were honours in YB1. There's a whole 3 Yakuza and one of them is one of my secondary characters, because I already reached Tier 7 in the path I picked. I just think there should be some equality, honour basically is about one or two Tiers of power ahead, at the higher tiers due to the immunity.

*Light is stronger vs Yakuza, but weaker vs pretty much everyone else than Yakuza is.

 

[Wicht]

One other problem with over tinkering is that it is entirely probable that one path will always be slightly better than eny other and that tinkering will not even them out perfectly but just change which path is better at any given moment whilst creating rule confusion.

 

[Creamsteak]

That's a bit bad for philosophy when doing game design, Wicht, the same as the concept of things being sacred cows. I highly recommend that a few very minor changes be made when they hurt no-one and support equality directly, like allowing sig locations to be = to sig styles. It most likely would not cause any catastrophe in the rules to make a small change. It's a change to make one thing equal to another, and not a change to the power of anything else.

Also, note that not a single player would need to change his/her character. It's a change to one or two sentences...

 

[Kalanyr]

Actually not so Creamsteak, sneaky trick would have to be a Go First to Use Power. And the Tier 2 Light and Dark Spirit powers would need to be made equal to each other. If that was changed. Oh, Changing sneaky trick to master of movement for Yakuza wouldn't be too bad would it? The agile criminal type and all.