For the New-ish Player: 4th edition l5r's little rules.

[Cearnach]

Skill Rolls

When you are rolling a skill check, you will see it notated thus: Jiujusu/Agility.

That means that you will roll your Jiujutsu skill+your Agility Trait, keeping a number of dice equal to your Agility trait. You can keep low dice or high dice.

If you do not have the skill that is asked for, you can roll unskilled. In that case, you'd just roll and keep your trait. Unfortunately, your dice do not explode in that case, nor can you call Raises or apply Free Raises.

When you make a roll, you can call raises. Raises increase your TN to be successful by 5, but may give you an extra success or trigger a different kind of success in an event. You can call a number of raises equal to your Void Ring.

Sometimes you receive a Free Raise. You can apply a Free Raise to a roll (usually you'll be told which when you get it), and it can be used to do one of two things when you apply it to a check. 1) Act like a Raise that you have earned without raising the TN of the check. 2) Lower the TN of a check by 5.

Void Points
You have a pool of Void Points equal to your Void Ring. You can spend a Void Point to do a couple things. Many of the uses are for combat, but we'll start with the things that affect skill rolls.
1) Receive +1k1 on your Skill, Trait, Ring, or Spell Casting roll (so not damage, unless you are using a katana).
2) Receive a phantom rank (+1k0) on a roll in which you are unskilled. You'd do this if you need to call raises on the roll.
3) Subtract 10 from the number of Wounds you take on a single attack.
4) Raise your Armor TN by 10.
5) Switch your initiative score with another willing player.
6) Raise your initiative score by 10.

In our next post [in a day or so], we'll cover combat.