LogFAQs > #907200224

I_Abibde posted...

I know for certain that I played a sohei for one campaign, though that class only exists in Oriental Adventures, not Rokugan itself, IIRC.

Sohei are a class from the original Oriental Adventures supplements (ie, they were from Kara-Tur, in Faerun, circa AD&D 2e). When Wizards of the Coast got the rights from AEG to publish L5R material during the d20/3e era, they basically retconned the Oriental Adventure setting to Rokugan (the default L5R setting) instead of Kara-Tur. Sohei just got carried over and grandfathered in, even though it wasn't really a class in L5R before that.

It was really odd how they handled it - AEG had published L5R first edition and second edition themselves, then came out with the Oriental Adventures version of the rules, so most of the 2e sourcebooks for L5R wound up having rules for both the d10 drop/keep mechanic of the L5R system as well as the d20/D&D-based rules of Oriental Adventures. Which was kind of awkward.

It didn't really work well as an experiment, so AEG took the rights back and published L5R 3e and 4e themselves (and completely dropped all support for d20 rules). But they officially sold off the rights in full to Fantasy Flight Games now, who are supposedly working on a new 5e version of the RPG (though it seems they were far more interested in the CCG more than the RPG, so they may never get around to releasing the RPG).


Back to the original point, though - you could easily play something like Sohei in vanilla L5R, even if it wasn't originally native to the setting. Sohei are mostly just warrior monks, and there are rules for playing Brotherhood of Shinsei monks in L5R, who use Kiho (monk magic) and Kata (unarmed maneuvers) in combat. "Sohei" is actually used in the original edition as a term to describe the more militant monks in the order, though there isn't explicitly a mechanical distinction between them and other types of monk (Shinmaki, Questioners, Yamabushi, etc) - they're more distinctions between what sort of duties a given monk take upon themselves, and monks can switch between different factions over time as they feel their talents are required in other ways.

Which temple you were trained in makes more of a difference - a monk trained in the temple dedicated to the god of storms tend to be more physically bad ass, but are seen as being somewhat less honorable, while monks trained in the heart of the Empire are more focused on being political advisors and courtiers. There's also a hermit temple with the highest honor and a lot of introspective skills, a temple that focuses more on Kiho over physical combat (ie, they start with extra Kiho), and a couple others.

Some sample Kiho include stuff like being able to cleanse your body of poisons, hitting someone with a paralyzing strike, healing via pressure points, shattering solid objects with a single blow, making yourself effectively invisible as other people all ignore your presence unless you do something extremely blatant, and the ever-tradition DIM MAK (death touch).


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