Utaku Rank 2 and Full Defense
This came up on the AEG Forums. I thought I would post it here and see what you guys thought. 4. Speaking of the Utaku's rank 2 tech, is this trick legal? In round 1 Utaku goes on full defense. At the beginning of round 2 ("...before any postures..."), they switch their buffed TN for initiative, then declare regular attack posture and attack before anyone else? This one is tricky. I do not know if there is an official ruling on this. The Technique says, "you may choose to exchange your Initiative and TNtbH for the duration of the round." Full Defense says that, "you make an Agility/Defense Skill roll and add the result to your TNtbH until your turn in the following round. This bonus can apply only to a number of opponent's equal to your Insight Rank. This bonus can only be applied to enemies you are aware of, and cannot be used against an unseen enemy." Since Full Defense is a bonus that only applies to a finite number of opponents and not all opponents, I would say that this does not work.

I would say that the Full Defense bonus to TNtbh, rather than an actual part of your TNtbH, is a conditional bonus to your TNtbh and therefore wouldn't factor in to the switching. Otherwise we are going to have to assume that you can switch all other conditional modifiers to TNtbh, such as Know the School:*Bushi* as well.

This was my thinking as well. Of course, as so often happens, the rules are not clear on this. I put it here for the God of Errata.

Alternately, the Technique never says you exchange values. It says that exchange your Initiative and TNtbH, which means, if we wanted to, we could use the Skill Swapping model. Anything that would normally enhance Defense would instead enhance Initiative and visa-versa but not it's own 'normal' stat. Therefore, while the swap is in place Full Defense only ever effects Initiative (no going Full Defense, swapping TNtbH and Init, and then going Full Defense to buff both).