XP costs in Way of the Samurai

[hong]

Since now I know someone from AEG is reading this board, I will shamelessly exploit their presence in order to get my stupid questions answered.

How are the XP costs for the kata in WotS calculated? Is there any particular formula, or do you just eyeball it and say "this looks right"?

If it's the latter (which I suspect), what sort of considerations went into your decisions? Eg was there a particular power level you were aiming for, or did the RP factor of gaining entry to a dojo come into it, etc. I'm not saying that the results are wrong or anything, I'd just like to know a bit more about how these numbers came about.

Ta!

 

[Shawn Carman]

Honestly? A little of both.

Rich Wulf, head writer for L5R and d20 genius extraordinaire, established some rough and tumble guidelines for what the costs should be relative to the power level of the kata.

Personally (and I'm sure this will sound odd), I have a much easier time determining the appropriate cost in the original d10 system. Then I just use our handy dandy conversion figures, tweak them to match the specific mechanics of the d20 kata, and go with that.

Shawn Carman
L5R Story Team

 

[hong]

Thanks again Shawn!

If it's not asking too much, would you beable to give a rundown of these rough-and-tumble guidelines? I'm looking at writing up some homebrew kata, and it would be nice to have something concrete as a starting point. I know I could just look at the existing kata, but I don't know how much the numbers are tied to the Rokugan setting itself.

Not that I have anything against the Rokugan setting, but the kata concept strikes me as a waycool mechanic that could be used in a lot of other settings too. One of the warts about D&D has always been that "mundane" classes like fighters, rogues, etc rely on magic items for a lot of their power at high levels. Anything that reduces this dependency is a Good Thing in my book, and kata fit the bill perfectly. Even if you don't call them "kata" as such, the underlying concept of gaining special abilities by spending XP is something that could work everywhere.

Hm. I'm not treading on copyright toes too much here, am I?