Scholar Skills

Scholar skills are those for which the primary sphere of expertise is not physical practice, but a body of knowledge that must be acquired, maintained, and honed through academic study.

Culture

Like most countries, the Emerald Empire has a wealth of ceremonies, festivals, social trends, and local practices that locals largely internalize. The Culture skill can be used to procure knowledge of these traditions and practices, even when a character is far from home.

The Culture skill covers knowledge of the Emerald Empire’s customs, traditions, families, trends, geography, and practices. This includes recent goings-on, historical events, and persons of significance, as well as staying current with the fashions that hold sway over the courts of provincial lords and the Emperor.

While such knowledge might seem trivial, it can allow a character to learn where to meet people of importance in a new place, how to interact comfortably with the locals, and what recent news to avoid mentioning while making pleasant conversation.

Culture Approaches

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

Recall Approach (Earth Ring): Remembering the names of the most influential members of a particular court, knowing the particular customs of a region, remembering the geographical features of an area.

Survey Approach (Water Ring): Identifying a fellow samurai using their clan, family, and personal mon (crest); identifying an object’s region of origin; identifying a samurai’s general status by their manner of dress; identifying which cultures have influenced a location; determining one’s location in an unfamiliar city based on common architectural patterns.

Theorize Approach (Fire Ring): Guessing where an influential person might go in an unfamiliar city, conjecturing about the proper decorum for an unusual social situation, anticipating social trends in different regions.

Analyze Approach (Air Ring): Detecting traces of a regional accent in a character’s speech, noticing slight imperfections in a mon or personal chop that reveal it to be a forgery, assessing the way a practice differs in a specific region.

Sense Approach (Void Ring): Identifying the purpose traditions fulfill in society, identifying the rising stars at a particular court, intuiting the supernatural underpinnings of a cultural practice.

Government

The daimyō of the samurai clans, who rule the various provinces of the Emerald Empire in the Emperor’s name, must serve in many capacities. Each of these individuals must be part warlord, part courtier, and part bureaucrat, and they must act effectively in each of these spheres to maintain their rule. This encompasses a strong understanding of political machinations, a solid foundation in logistics, and a familiarity with Rokugan’s strict and sometimes arcane legal system, which favors status rather than testimony and propriety over evidence. Most daimyō keep a number of valued retainers who are experts in these fields close to them for consultation.

Government Approaches

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

Recall Approach (Earth Ring): Knowing the letter of the law, knowing the explicit structure of government, knowing about past events and legal precedents, knowing political history and precedent in detail, knowing past scholars of history and law and quoting their works.

Survey Approach (Water Ring): Identifying an illegal act, reading the tacit structure of power, determining who to ask to get something done within a bureaucracy, noticing classic bureaucratic schemes and ploys put into play by one’s opponents.

Theorize Approach (Fire Ring): Understanding the various ways the law could be applied in an unprecedented case, framing an argument about why the law should be applied differently in a particular instance, guessing the political ramifications of a new ruler’s ascension.

Analyze Approach (Air Ring): Finding a contradiction or loophole in a system or the law, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a legal argument, studying a system in detail to find the places where pressure can be applied to get specific results.

Sense Approach (Void Ring): Knowing how likely a given verdict is in a particular case, identifying the candidate most likely to hold a position next, knowing the likelihood of success for a particular ploy or scheme.

Medicine

The healers of Rokugan, epitomized by Lady Asako herself, have dedicated themselves to understanding the mystical underpinnings of wellness and disease, and to rebalance the body’s natural ability to heal itself using a combination of pressure points, correspondences, and herbal remedies. The Medicine skill encompasses all of these elements.

Prospective healers must first understand the systems of the body, and then gain the practical knowledge of how to apply their knowledge to properly diagnose and treat their patients. Of course, some dishonorable characters use their medicinal knowledge to cause harm instead of to heal, meddling with doses to create deleterious or even deadly side effects, or selecting toxic herbs with which to poison a rival.

More practical in its application than some other Scholar skills, Medicine covers knowledge of the human body and its functions. However, Medicine is also a practiced art, so it often behaves like an Artisan skill when used to heal injuries or create medicines. While any skill can operate with another skill group’s approaches, it is fairly common for the Medicine skill to do so. Thus, several examples of when it uses Artisan skill approaches are noted in the following text.

Medicine Approaches

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

Recall Approach (Earth Ring): Studying and recalling existing remedies, creating bandages and medical supplies (Restore), stanching blood loss (Restore), mending other minor harm (Restore).

Survey Approach (Water Ring): Identifying helpful and harmful herbs, gathering ingredients, finding hazards and contaminants in an environment, brewing remedies (Adapt), relieving exhaustion and pain (Adapt), speeding patients’ recovery from long-term illness and injury (Adapt).

Theorize Approach (Fire Ring): Studying new medicines and treatments, treating unknown ailments, experimenting with unknown ingredients (Invent), brewing poisons (Invent), instilling patients with energy (Invent).

Analyze Approach (Air Ring): Recognizing symptoms, diagnosing diseases and ailments in patients, performing surgery in the field or a place of healing (Refine), administering medicines and poisons in the proper dosage for the desired effect (Refine).

Sense Approach (Void Ring): Detecting spiritual ailments, working entirely without ingredients, realigning the energy in others (Attune), treating spiritual ailments (Attune).

Sentiment

The Sentiment skill reflects a character’s ability to understand the psychology and emotions of others. It is used to spot emotions like hostility and fear in others, to empathize, and to know how people will behave based on their emotional state. It is also used to see through lies—and understand why those lies are being told.

Sentiment Approaches

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

Recall Approach (Earth Ring): Detecting inconsistencies between someone’s current and past behavior, understanding someone’s fears and responsibilities, determining how best to set someone at ease.

Survey Approach (Water Ring): Discerning someone’s personal feelings about a person or subject (and whether they are positive, negative, or neutral), detecting whether someone’s intentions are hostile, understanding someone’s desires, determining how best to win someone’s approval or support.

Theorize Approach (Fire Ring): Determining whether someone has left out important details or told you a lie of omission, catching that someone has left out something important, understanding someone’s convictions and ideals, determining how best to excite or enrage someone.

Analyze Approach (Air Ring): Knowing whether someone is lying to you directly, knowing how a choice or action will make someone feel, understanding someone’s self-perceptions and vulnerabilities, determining how best to get someone to do something you want.

Sense Approach (Void Ring): Determining whether someone is under the effects of supernatural persuasion or a supernatural being, studying and understanding one’s own emotions, determining whether someone is acting in opposition to their own desires or is suppressing their emotions, knowing the purpose behind someone’s words.

Theology

Theology covers knowledge of religious philosophy, doctrine, and practice. Rokugan is often called the Land of Ten Thousand Fortunes, and a proper grounding in Theology is required to know of even a portion of them. A character can use Theology to know about kami, the Fortunes, and the powers and deities associated with Shinseism and other religious traditions, as well as to make supplications to these powers. A character versed in Theology is also versed in religious history and associated knowledge, including astronomy (for the study of portents) and the related fields of metaphysics and science with mystical implications.

Theology is also the skill used for most invocations—the powerful appeals to the kami that shugenja make to wield astonishing elemental powers. However, for most characters, Theology does not involve such flashy displays, dealing more in the doctrines and histories of the various spiritual traditions of Rokugan. It usually entails knowledge of rituals of philosophical and religious significance, as well as of communion with the forces of the universe on a more subtle level. Not everyone has the potential to become a shugenja—and perhaps more importantly, the shugenja schools guard their secrets jealously—so most priests in the Emerald Empire are humble keepers of the faith, serving the kami via proper veneration and performing social and religious functions for their communities. Monks, courtiers, and even bushi are also likely to study Theology, for a variety of personal and societal reasons.

Theology Approaches

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

Recall Approach (Earth Ring): Knowing facts about the formal doctrines of religious traditions of the Emerald Empire, knowing about historical occurrences of supernatural events, correctly reciting scripture, remembering the weaknesses of a supernatural being from folklore, communing with earth kami.

Survey Approach (Water Ring): Identifying religious artifacts and supernatural phenomena, knowing how the average person of a given walk of life interacts with spiritual traditions, researching a piece of scripture to learn its meaning, communing with water kami.

Theorize Approach (Fire Ring): Guessing what supernatural forces might be at work based on secondary evidence, reconciling two contradictory pieces of religious doctrine, offering a novel explanation of the meaning of a piece of scripture, communing with fire kami.

Analyze Approach (Air Ring): Determining how religious or spiritual a person is and what traditions they follow, finding and untangling subtle nuance or apparent contradictions in scripture, noticing the telltale signs of a supernatural creature walking among humans, communing with air kami.

Sense Approach (Void Ring): Performing divinations, determining the veracity of a supernatural occurrence, predicting the behavior of supernatural entities, knowing the philosophical ramifications of a decision, communing with the root of the universe.