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I've just started a new chronicle in Kindred of the East (Blood and Silk) and one of my players plays a Devil Tiger. Now I have problems with his Dharma rolls. Kindred of the East Rulebook states (p. 53):

As your character reaches a moment of insight, make a resisted roll pitting the Virtue rating of your chosen Dharma against your P'o rating. Do so even if P'o happens to be the Virtue in question – there's a difference between mastering the Demon and having it master you.[… balanced …] The Difficulty of the roll is your permanent Willpower Trait; to reach a higher state of awareness, you must first triumph over your ego.

Later, it says you aren't allowed to use Willpower on that roll.

  1. Am I right that you roll twice, with the same amount of dice, and hope that one of them is higher? (Resisted roll against the same Virtue). From the discussion in Flamma's answer it doesn't seem clear what difficulties to use. (both times Willpower vs. one time Willpower, one time Standard (= six))

  2. What can a Devil Tiger's character do to raise his chances of advancing in his Dharma? All characters following other Dharmas (except the Scorpion Eaters) can simply raise their virtues much higher than their P'o rating and have a higher chance of succeeding in moments of insight (and acts of blindness). But whatever the Devil Tiger does, he'll always have the same value to compete with.

Edit: Some clarifications and extended the quote.

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    \$\begingroup\$ You're right about how resisted rolls work, although you should probably roll on behalf of the Demon so the player doesn't need to dice off against himself. Since I don't have a proper answer about your main question, I figured I'd leave this is a comment and let you edit the question accordingly. And welcome to the site! \$\endgroup\$
    – Jadasc
    Jun 5, 2013 at 17:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks. Till now I've let my characters play their Demons mostly themselves with little interverntion. Reduces the complexity for me a lot (- number of Players NPCs to handle). \$\endgroup\$
    – Patrick J. S.
    Jun 5, 2013 at 17:19

1 Answer 1

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  1. You're right. You roll the same amount of dices, but it is not the same roll as the difficulty varies. The virtue roll uses Willpower as its difficulty (enlightenment is the negation of the self), while the Po difficulty is not specified (so we should assume it's 6, although I roll at 7 to give the players fairer chances).

  2. Two things:

a) Keep a low Willpower rating. This way your first roll have more chances to succeed against the second. On the other hand, having a low Willpower sucks.

b) Follow avidly your Dharma so you can get more auspicious moments, that means more rolls, and more chances to best yourself on enlightenment.

It's hard to be a Devil Tiger despite having a more relaxed moral. On the good side, you can raise Po without severing hardly your enlightenment chances, as happen with all other Dharmas.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ But isn't a low Willpower rating contrary to the “ride vs. let ride” tenet? If you have low willpower, you also might have much more difficulties with soul state changes that should force a Dharma roll ("loosing yourself to the P'o" in the Dharma chart). \$\endgroup\$
    – Patrick J. S.
    Jun 5, 2013 at 17:52
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PatrickJ.S. Soul state changes are resolved as Virtue (Yang, Yin and Hun) vs Po, at difficulty 6 (again I favour my players with 7 for the Po). The only thing willpower has to do with that is that you can use Willpower points to get automatic success to the virtue (or to the Po!). I understand losing to the Po as following too much the Po archetype, or calling too much your base instinct in detriment of a higher self. \$\endgroup\$
    – Flamma
    Jun 5, 2013 at 18:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, but the archetypical Devil tiger rises their p'o virtue and not their virtues to withstand them (looked at some NPCs in the hong kong book). I just feel like the system is at this point not being able to represent what the texts say. \$\endgroup\$
    – Patrick J. S.
    Jun 5, 2013 at 19:11
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PatrickJ.S. I don't think so. Being Po imbalanced sucks much. Even having more Po than Hun (or the other virtues) sucks a little. If you look at the Devil Tiger Dharma books, the templates use to have fairly high Hun ratings, so they can ride instead of being ridden. Only 2 in 5 have higher Po than Hun, and none of them have a Po higher than the minimum (3). \$\endgroup\$
    – Flamma
    Jun 5, 2013 at 23:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ So you would recommend not to raise the P'o? But I thought that's the point of the Devil tigers. Arrange with your inner Devil and draw strength from it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Patrick J. S.
    Jun 5, 2013 at 23:56

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