So I've been looking through OA and Blood Speakers and I have a few questions.

[Holya]

Undead don't take the negative effects of taint right? I ask to make sure I am understanding this right. So the classes with a min taint score or classes that get stronger the more tainted you are synergies with undead yes? So if you were a necropolis or any number of sentient playable undead. Would using Maho spells and such which increase taint just continually make you stronger? More so since they don't take the negative effects do they still take the few positive effects that can happen from the taint in HoH and OA?

Now I have a somewhat potentially stupid question.. Since I just noticed Bloodpseakers is a Legend of the five rings book.. Would it work at all with the Dungeons and Dragons OA? Or does it only specifically work for Lotfr books?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Can't speak to Bloodspeakers since I've never seen it but it should say somewhere on or in it whether it has any D20 rules material. If it does, there's that answer.

As for taint and undead the common interpretation is that they can absorb as much taint as you please with no ill effects. However, page 235 specifies that shadowlands creatures do not gain taint but have a fixed value instead, modified by a +1 for undead. Heroes of horror then extended this to all undead and evil outsiders. Given the extremely exploitative nature of taint with no drawback, I strongly advise against the common interpretation.

[Holya]

Can't speak to Bloodspeakers since I've never seen it but it should say somewhere on or in it whether it has any D20 rules material. If it does, there's that answer.

As for taint and undead the common interpretation is that they can absorb as much taint as you please with no ill effects. However, page 235 specifies that shadowlands creatures do not gain taint but have a fixed value instead, modified by a +1 for undead. Heroes of horror then extended this to all undead and evil outsiders. Given the extremely exploitative nature of taint with no drawback, I strongly advise against the common interpretation.

It specifically says Shadowland subtype creatures do not gain taint. The problem is not all undead have the shadow land subtype. I'm gonna just copy and past that one specific section.

Creatures with the Shadowlands subtype (indicated in Chapter 9: Monsters) do not acquire Taint and are not harmed by it, since it makes up part of their very nature. For purposes of detect Taint, spellcasting, and other effects, a Shadowlands creature is considered to have a Taint score equal to half its Charisma score. Undead creatures add +1 to this number, while outsiders add +2. Thus, a Shadowlands skeleton has a Taint score of 6 (equal to half its Charisma score +1), a dokufu has a Taint score of 7 (equal to half its Charisma score), and a kyoso no oni has a Taint score of 12 (half its Charisma score +2).

So if we go look at heros of horror...

Creatures with the Evil subtype and undead creatures are immune to any negative effects from taint. They automatically have effective corruption and depravity scores equal to one-half their Charisma score, +1 for undead or +2 for outsiders. They take no penalties due to these taint scores, but they can use them to qualify for feats or prestige classes (see Chapter 5).

Hero of horrors makes it where they have a base line taint which implies they can also gain taint since it can qualify them for stuff.. This semi falls in with OA since none of the creatures in HOH have the shadowland type.. So if we go entirely off the wording. Creatures unharmed by taint can gain more taint..

I also have to thank you since I didn't even see that ruling in OA I just knew that undead in particular had no issues with any form that taint could take.

I will take it since Blood speakers says 'To use d20 system portions of this book a Dungeon master also needs player handbook, the Dungeon master guide, and Oriental adventures.' Implies even tho it has Legend of the Five ring in the title instead of Dungeons and Dragons it would work with 3.5/pathfinder?

[Kelb_Panthera]

-snip-

You'll note that the phrasing in heroes of horror is "X have effective corruption and depravity" not "X start witb corruption and depravity."

This strongly suggests to me that these are intended to be fixed values, especially in light of the fact that it is an adaptation of the OA material minus any mention of the shadowlands since they're not part of every campaign world.

Yours is the common interpretation but I really don't think it is at all the intended interpretation.


I will take it since Blood speakers says 'To use d20 system portions of this book a Dungeon master also needs player handbook, the Dungeon master guide, and Oriental adventures.' Implies even tho it has Legend of the Five ring in the title instead of Dungeons and Dragons it would work with 3.5/pathfinder?

Unless your DM vetoes, I don't see any particular reason it shouldn't. You'll want to keep an eye out for balance and flavor mismatches but that's not too hard.

[Holya]

You'll note that the phrasing in heroes of horror is "X have effective corruption and depravity" not "X start witb corruption and depravity."

This strongly suggests to me that these are intended to be fixed values, especially in light of the fact that it is an adaptation of the OA material minus any mention of the shadowlands since they're not part of every campaign world.

Yours is the common interpretation but I really don't think it is at all the intended interpretation.



Unless your DM vetoes, I don't see any particular reason it shouldn't. You'll want to keep an eye out for balance and flavor mismatches but that's not too hard.

Hmm I will have to see how my DM rules it. Since I honestly don't know which side of the intention of it works best for the game. If the innate taint scores are the absolute min a creature can have then those creatures also have auras of taint as described in HoH... But if it can increase then the aura of taint could arguably be said to not effect those creatures who are sentient enough to actually increase their taint score.

That and the only thing I really know of that snow balls out of hell with taint is the tainted scholar. But again it is one of those things that wouldn't even matter if the DM allows the spells without implementing the taint rules.

For flavor mismatch its just reflavoring it right? Balance in D&D is well eh. It is one of those touchy subjects because anything and everything can be broken if you attempt to break it but over all just using the spells as they are should be fine since they fall in line with most of the OA spells. Though does this mean any of the Legend of the five rings d20 books can work with normal D&D? Just keeping a eye out for mismatched flavor and balance?

[Kelb_Panthera]

The d20 system that is the core of 3e was built to be modular and the OGL was made to facilitate people making modules for it. Anything D20 should be compatible with some relatively minor adjustment.

I'm just leery of most 3p content because a lot of 3p devs have an even weaker grasp of balance than even WotC. If you remove the most egregious bits of 3e, the balance doesn't level out completely but it does get a lot closer than most give it credit.

[BWR]

The Taint in its pure form is basically a spiritual affliction that has physical manifestations. It twists your mind and soul to belong to Jigoku. The Taint/Jigoku, being semi-sentient, does have ways of bestowing its power without warping the mind of the Tainted. Undead found in the Shadowlands, like zombies and similar, have already fully succumbed to the Taint and are its loyal minions so in that respect they are not immune to Taint effects. Gaki, the hungry dead, are Tainted but belong to another realm of the afterlife. They are influenced to a degree but are mostly concerned with their own hungers and drives, which Jigoku is mostly cool with. Other things which would technically be undead in D&D are not considered so in L5R, like the ghosts and possibly shiryo (heavenly ancestral spirits), are not Tainted but can become Tainted and corrupted. In that respect they are most certainly not immune to the Taint.
Undead usually don't care about the physical effects, however.

The way Taint (http://l5r.wikia.com/wiki/Taint) worked in at least one edition of L5R is that it capped once it equaled or exceeded your highest Ring, though it was silent on what to do if your Rings increased at a later date. d20 obviously doesn't have Rings and trying to do something similar with ability scores doesn't make much sense. In 4th it caps at Taint rank 5, with some rare exceptions (akutenshi being the important one). So lacking any better way of doing it, I'd have (and do have in my games) the Taint cap once the target has become Lost unless they are akutenshi.

[Florian]

Now I have a somewhat potentially stupid question.. Since I just noticed Bloodpseakers is a Legend of the five rings book.. Would it work at all with the Dungeons and Dragons OA? Or does it only specifically work for Lotfr books?

The Maho Tsukai PrC and by extension the Bloospeakers are basic d20 compatible, but are explicitly created around the setting rules that come with OA/Rokugan (3E). The "Shadowlands" and "Lying Darkness" taint systems are very different from the later revision found in Heroes of Horror, with different taint mechanics and vastly different max caps.

In the original setting-specific rules, there are no playable undead and undeath is the direct result of getting "Lost" due to either create spawn or reaching max taint. Both "conversion classes" (Maho Tsukai, Maho Bunjin) and all of the associated PrC will turn a character into an NPC - which is fully intended.

[mabriss lethe]

I've yet to read Bloodspeakers, but here's what I remember: a large number of later 2e L5r books published by aeg have dual system rules to support Oriental Adventures d20 and L5r d10, since at the time they had a rather tangled relationship with WotC. Iirc, bloodspeakers wasn't even published by aeg. They licensed it to yet another company to publish. So anything in it is a 3rd party supplement to another 3rd party supplement to a book written for an outdated version of the system (3.0) ymmv.

[Holya]

The reason I asked specifically about the Blood speakers book is because it specifically calls out needing D&D OA so I thought it was a book made specifically to work with the Legend of the five rings addition to D&D in the form of OA without needed a lot of adjustments. Then I saw most classes required taint in some form like the snake charmer class and it brought up the questions about taint. If you go with a mixed ruling from OA and HoH in how they read. All undead are unaffected by taint but also produce auras of taint and can gain more. If we go purely by Oa only Shadowland creatures and a few other specific ones are unaffected by taint but they don't have the taint aura and most undead were unplayable in OA.

Then you have the blight from Unapproachable East which looks almost exactly like taint? I've not read that book in awhile so I need to go recheck it in all honesty.

But from everything I'm seeing and from all you helpful folk. It seems like some homeruling would be required to make the taint system work in mind with the classes since using purely Hoh would cause some of the Taint based classes from OA, Blood speakers and a few other Legends of the five rings book to be really borked in terms of balance.

Honestly I would love some first hand advice from those that have used each taint system or any good homebrew/homeruling for taint that makes it interesting and well functioning.