Martial Skills

Martial skills represent a character’s experience at fighting, preparing for war, and making decisions on the battlefield.

Fitness

Fitness is a reflection of a samurai’s capacity to perform feats of physical prowess and grace. It governs activities such as running, leaping, lifting heavy objects, marching long distances, swimming quickly, and other such physical feats that rely on quick bursts of power and precision or sustained physical effort. Additionally, the Fitness skill governs a character’s ability to avoid lethal harm when struck, resist the Shadowlands Taint, and recover from poison and disease. Finally, Fitness can be used to resist, withstand, or otherwise take a hit on the battlefield.

Fitness Approaches

The Fitness skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Withstand Approach (Earth Ring): Moving cautiously, pushing one’s body to the breaking point without suffering permanent harm, marching long distances, holding up heavy objects for long periods of time, hiding by standing still, taking a hit.

Shift Approach (Water Ring): Moving around obstacles and through crowds without slowing, fitting through small spaces, performing exercises to speed recovery from injury, losing pursuers in a crowd, rolling with the punches.

Overwhelm Approach (Fire Ring): Moving without heed for obstacles, leaping long distances, pushing and lifting heavy objects quickly, breaking things, catching someone in a footrace, meeting incoming attacks with equal opposing force.

Feint Approach (Air Ring): Moving stealthily, maintaining balance, trailing someone without their realizing it, falling safely and landing gracefully, evading someone in a footrace, controlling where hits land on your body.

Sacrifice Approach (Void Ring): Acting on sheer instinct, pushing one’s body beyond the breaking point to achieve a goal, overcoming physical limitations with sheer will, taking hits directly.

Martial Arts [Melee]

Whatever other arts they practice, a bushi’s foremost art is always the art of battle, and even samurai who rarely take the field often train extensively in the martial arts as an exercise in self-mastery. Nearly all of them receive some training in use of a melee weapon, even if they prefer a weapon such as a bow. While many samurai believe sword fighting to be the most refined of martial arts, there are numerous schools that are more renowned for their use of other melee weapons. Samurai in Rokugan use the great clubs known as tetsubō, spears, naginata and other polearms, and even staves, depending on the teachings of their school and their own personal preferences.

Martial Arts [Melee] covers combat with close-quarters weapons in both practice and theory.

Martial Arts [Melee] Approaches

The Martial Arts [Melee] skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Withstand Approach (Earth Ring): Fighting defensively, blocking carefully, exhausting your opponent, practicing techniques that rely on stamina.

Shift Approach (Water Ring): Fighting reactively, redirecting force, drawing out your opponent, practicing techniques that rely on fluidity of motion and flexibility.

Overwhelm Approach (Fire Ring): Fighting aggressively, attacking directly, unnerving your opponent, practicing techniques that rely on bursts of speed and power.

Feint Approach (Air Ring): Fighting subtly, attacking indirectly, outmaneuvering your opponent, evading attacks, practicing techniques that rely on grace and poise, reading your opponent’s moves.

Sacrifice Approach (Void Ring): Fighting instinctively or without regard for your life, attacking without regard for anything else, putting mind over matter.

Table 3–5: Sample Tasks (with Rings) and TNs for Martial Skills

TASK | TN

1

Vaulting over a short gap (Fire), slipping out of the center of a tavern brawl as it starts without being harmed (Water), identifying the best piece of cover nearby (Water), shaking off your fear after seeing a grisly corpse (Fire), assessing the strategic value of a piece of terrain (Water).

2

Sneaking past the average person (Air), hitting a target in range with the Strike action (see page 252) (Any), intimidating the average person with your fighting prowess (Fire), stoically bearing tragic news without allowing your true feelings to show (Earth), finding a gap in the enemy’s defenses that you can lead a force through secretly (Air).

3

Marching a long distance without tiring (Earth), stealthily dispatching a single isolated minion NPC guard outside of a conflict scene without alerting others (Air), maintaining a fortified position against fewer than ten attackers (Earth), subduing a small group of unarmed minion NPCs outside of a conflict scene without killing any of them or being hurt (Earth), determining whether someone’s desire is healthy for them or not (Water), coming up with tactics that obscure your identity even from an enemy commander you know well (Void).

4

Squeezing through a very tight gap (Water), safely subduing a small group of armed minion NPCs outside of a conflict scene without killing them or being hurt (Earth), picking off a single minion NPC sentry from afar without alerting their nearby comrades (Air), intentionally convincing yourself of a lie (Air), finding and sealing every entry point in your castle’s defenses (Earth).

5

Instinctively waking from unconsciousness in response to immediate danger (Void), discerning the best way to defeat a single foe in armed melee combat (Void), visualizing a target so accurately that you can hit it without any perception of it (Void), reflecting deeply on an upcoming decision to know which choice will help you achieve the outcome you intend (Void), orchestrating a plan to terrify an enemy force into fleeing despite its superior numbers (Fire).

Martial Arts [Ranged]

Any warrior who takes the battlefield regularly knows well the value of the bow—and the risks of underestimating it. While armor can often turn an arrow at range and it is no replacement for a melee weapon once battle lines close, the effect of a well-coordinated volley can be staggering, as each wounded warrior removes not just one enemy from the field, but any other combatants who move to retrieve them. A master archer is terrifying to behold, capable of slaying foes from considerable distances. Even humble ranged weapons, such as slings and hurled projectiles, can be quite deadly in a fight, removing combatants from the battle. On the other end of the spectrum, the Crab Clan has constructed numerous siege-scale ranged weapons meant to engage large demons and other supernatural horrors from high atop the Kaiu Wall.

Martial Arts [Ranged] covers combat with thrown and projectile weapons in both practice and theory.

Martial Arts [Ranged] Approaches

The Martial Arts [Ranged] skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Withstand Approach (Earth Ring): Maintaining a consistent field of fire, suppressing targets, firing to keep targets from overtaking a position, properly stowing ranged weapons.

Shift Approach (Water Ring): Fighting reactively, redirecting force, drawing out your opponent, firing to create openings to reposition.

Overwhelm Approach (Fire Ring): Firing to deplete enemy forces, firing to allow allies to advance, firing to terrify the enemy.

Feint Approach (Air Ring): Firing without giving away your position, hitting specific parts of your target, firing to create vulnerabilities in the target’s defenses.

Sacrifice Approach (Void Ring): Exposing yourself to get a shot on your target, putting your faith in the universe that your shot will find its mark.

Martial Arts [Unarmed]

Most samurai practice unarmed fighting. It is an important element of many armed combat styles, as in actual practice, armed and unarmed combat are deeply intertwined. Some schools, however, teach it exclusively, for philosophical or practical reasons. Monks, for instance, cannot legally wield daishō, and thus are often practitioners of advanced unarmed techniques.

As with other martial arts, traditions spring up and vanish frequently over the centuries, and when visiting a monastery, it is not uncommon to discover that its members practice arts rarely seen outside its walls.

Martial Arts [Unarmed] covers combat with the body as one’s primary weapon in both practice and theory, as well as the use of some improvised weapons.

Martial Arts [Unarmed] Approaches

The Martial Arts [Unarmed] skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Withstand Approach (Earth Ring): Fighting defensively, blocking forcefully, exhausting your opponent, practicing techniques that rely on stamina.

Shift Approach (Water Ring): Fighting reactively, redirecting force, drawing out your opponent, practicing techniques that rely on fluidity of motion and flexibility.

Overwhelm Approach (Fire Ring): Fighting aggressively, attacking directly, unnerving your opponent, practicing techniques that rely on bursts of speed and power.

Feint Approach (Air Ring): Fighting subtly, attacking indirectly, outmaneuvering your opponent, evading attacks, practicing techniques that rely on grace and poise.

Sacrifice Approach (Void Ring): Attacking without regard for anything else, including your life, putting mind over matter.

Meditation

The life of a samurai is one of stress and turmoil. Meditation helps a samurai look past worries about tomorrow, missed opportunities of the past, and even the insistence of the world of now to find peace within themself.

Martial skills are defined by struggle, and for many warriors, the greatest struggle is the one within. Meditation is the skill that covers the battles fought in one’s own mind. It is the skill used to process one’s own emotions, to recover mental control when shocked, and to resist confusion and supernatural influence of the mind. War might be a samurai’s pursuit, but a human being at war must face the steady erosion of the soul or risk succumbing completely to brutality. Most samurai train in Meditation both to ready their minds for the terrors of battle and to seek greater cosmic knowledge within themselves.

Meditation Approaches

The Meditation skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Withstand Approach (Earth Ring): Using logic to overcome your personal feelings, reflecting on the nature of your responsibilities, maintaining a level head despite challenges and provocation, resisting temptation.

Shift Approach (Water Ring): Understanding your own emotions and desires, reflecting on the nature of your desires, understanding how to align your goals with your desires, resisting rage.

Overwhelm Approach (Fire Ring): Using your emotions to reject a seemingly inevitable conclusion before you, maintaining concentration on a single topic, staying in an emotional state for long periods of time, resisting fear.

Feint Approach (Air Ring): Convincing yourself of the truth of something, finding weaknesses in your viewpoints and ideologies, understanding how to align your goals with your ideals, resisting despair.

Sacrifice Approach (Void Ring): Understanding your place in the universe, understanding the role fate has provided for you, knowing what you are willing to give up to achieve your goals, seeing glimpses of your own future, resisting supernatural mental interference.

Tactics

Leadership is not just charisma and force of will—a samurai who takes the battlefield must also make wise decisions. Battles are not won without casualties, and every commander spends the lives of their soldiers to achieve victory, but this does not mean that they value these lives any less.

Samurai learn many arts, but the practice of war is among their core functions. While it may be true that every battle’s outcome is decided before the first soldier moves, it falls to battlefield leaders, from generals to squad sergeants, to make that outcome a reality. Tactics governs battlefield leadership, from the general’s tent to the front line. It reflects a character’s awareness of the flow of battle and their ability to both stick to their orders and seize the opportunities that arise to greatest effect. While the Command skill is used to motivate soldiers, restore morale, and maintain order, the Tactics skill is used to effectively manage troops who are already obedient. Whereas the Government skill handles logistics in the lead-up to battle, the Tactics skill governs a character’s ability to think and react once the battle is joined.

Tactics Approaches

The Tactics skill can be used as follows with the appropriate ring:

Withstand Approach (Earth Ring): Resisting a head-on assault, holding a point at all costs, mitigating losses during a retreat, overseeing the construction of siege weapons.

Shift Approach (Water Ring): Executing a counterattack, repositioning swiftly after an attack, taking full advantage of useful terrain, moving and operating siege weapons.

Overwhelm Approach (Fire Ring): Executing a head-on assault, overrunning the enemy, breaking enemy morale with terrifying tactics, designing siege weapons.

Feint Approach (Air Ring): Executing a feigned retreat, flanking the enemy, discerning weaknesses in the enemy’s defenses and targets of interest.

Sacrifice Approach (Void Ring): Sending a unit to die to create a strategic opening, commanding a force without revealing one’s identity to the enemy.