Yin and Yang

Posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2017 at 22:44

Yin and Yang are the two smallest unit of Sway point that exist in T13. One point of Sway is a point of Yin or a point of Yang. Yin is associated with Yin Facets, passive, yielding, slow actions. Yang controls the Yang Facets, pro-active, aggressive and fast actions.

For example: hitting someone is normally a Trial Facet and very much a Yang thing if you want to do more damage you can always boost the damage roll (or Ordeal card played with Yang); being hit however is more of a Rook Facet and Yin thing, you can ‘soak’ damage with Yin.

Yin and Yang are the only forms of sway that a Grunt may directly spend on actions.

Storing Yin and Yang

A Character can store as much Yin as all the Boons of their Yin Facets added together (156 at 13), and as much Yang as their Yang Facet Boons all summed as well.

This number of Yin and Yang that can be stored will increase by 24 with each increase in Scale.

Grunts can store Yin and Yang in Descendants turning them into Trophies (the Yin and Yang is stored as Chi within the Descendant).

Gaining Yin and Yang

Characters gain Yin and Yang from their Geometry and I-Ching predominately, they may also gain them from small Handicaps and by generating rolled scores with the Sway gained equalling the rolled score less the Difficulty. Generally Yin and Yang are gained in small amounts throughout the game.

Character Type Yin / Yang gained from Geometry / I-Ching
Grunt 1 point
Mercari Lowest Handicap Boon
Solo Personality Boon Reduced

Spending Yin and Yang

Generally Yin and Yang can only be spent to increase rolls of the right Facet type, and such increases take place on a 1 point of Sway buys a +1. It can also be used to pay for Descendants (through Descendant Creation, Summoning and Purchasing rolls).

Yin, Yang and Difficulty

Because Yin and Yang operate at the same level of the game as Scores, dice rolls and difficulty they can be interchanged. A point of Yin or Yang is equal to a point of Score or Difficulty. To truly appreciate what is possible by generating Score you can look at the Sway Table.