Hey, Tsukaede...
Since Rich's "well, if I were a magical panda" posts are rules in the FAQ/Rulings pdf, (I realize that's prolly gonna change but bear with me ;)) Can the following please be an official change to the Sparrow Bushi Rank 1? *puppy dog eyes* "Q: Why is the cap on the Rank 1 Suzume Bushi School Technique still at double reflexes? Author fiat, and it did not seem to be broken or useless, so we left it as is when we were editing the chapter. I can see your point, however, and were I running a game with a Suzume I would certainly feel comfortable increasing the multiplier from x2 to x3 or x4 if I were feeling particularly generous." http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30550&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75 I'll be your best, poor dirt farmer friend!

Assuming your Reflexes was 5, the max you could do is to drop you Initiative by 20 to raise your TNtbH by 10. If it was x4 instead, then you could drop your Initiative by 40 to get +20 for a MIGHTY 10 point difference. I agree that it is not broken. It would require direct errata however. Shawn is very much against unnecessary errata.

So I guess the issue is correcting printed stuff (always a pain) vs. keeping a crappy school crappy. So when will the next time the "Erratta train" will pull in to the station?

I realize I'm probably in the minority with regards to this, but I prefer Schools not to be too closely balanced. It stretches plausibility that all Clans (including Minor ones) would be able to develop Schools and Techniques that are comparable in power, even if they have different strengths and focus on different things. It's a game, and we want things to be fair, but I see enough PCs taking ranks in supposedly weaker Schools or spending their CP/XP in less than optimal ways to be confident this is not a problem for my campaigns.

It's not about comparable power, because even with a cap of x3 or x4 it's still a really "Ugh" technique. Other MINOR CLAN techniques provide much better bonii with no sacrifice involved, or in the case of the badger, the Sacrifice is actually manipulate-able to the point of being an *advantage* if the GM doesn't give every NPC "posture declaration sense" and delay until right after posture declaration, but before your action ;) Coupled with the rest of the school being a monumental pile of fail, character railroading (Gee, so I need Theology 10, Meditation 5 , 26 seperate lore skills. So, at least I only need to route the first 49+14+72+26=161 exp into class requisite BS in order to be....less effective than Ronin Warrior. It stretches plausibility that a clan would cleave to a school that's this epic level of suck. It also stretches plausibility that the ridiculously small sparrow army, (Unless it was made up of a bunch of guys with different school, because if they were all Suzume Bushi the general wouldn't have had enough EXP to buy ranks of battle! At least, until the rules document make Battle and Battle Lore seperate so even the small benefit of being a Suzume Bushi gets relegated entirely to Medicine.) held off the Scorpion long enough for the other minor clans to rally at Three Man Alliance Plain. Just my opinion ;)