#Chapter 9 — Growth

Contents

The hand that first grips a sword and the hand that makes its name ring through the Sengoku are the same hand. Between them lie ten awakenings. On odd dan you carve the battlefield's awakening into a specialty; on even dan, through ceaseless training, you shore up the foundation of attributes and skills. 1st dan is a greenhorn who has just grasped a blade, 5th dan is a commander whose name is known, and Tatsujin (10th dan) is a legend whose name rings through the Sengoku.

This chapter covers the rules by which your character grows. What promotion grants, how deep you can dig into a mastery grade, what name you leave at the last, tenth awakening — and it shows, on an actual sheet, how one warrior grows from 1st dan to 5th dan.

---

#Promotion — Ten Awakenings

#Milestone

Promotion is not a matter of piling up experience points. It is an awakening on the battlefield, a moment of growth met at the crossroads of life and death. The GM and you agree together to decide a promotion. If one or more of the conditions below is met, the GM declares a promotion.

Source: co-04-02 §promotion conditions.

#Odd Dan and Even Dan

The 10 steps give two things in alternation. On odd dan (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th) you gain a specialty. On even dan (2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th) you gain attribute +1 and 2 skill points.

• attribute +1: +1 to 1 attribute of your choice. The PC cap is +3.
• +2 skill points: freely distribute 2 skill points. However, you must observe the count limit on Licensed-and-above in the mastery grade section below.

Source: co-04-02 §Law — the 10-step cross growth table, §foundation growth details.

#The Freedom to Choose Lower-Dan Specialties

When promotion grants a new specialty slot, you can choose not only the specialty of that dan but also a lower-dan specialty. A 5th-dan samurai can belatedly learn the 3rd-dan specialty "Declare Duel" with a 5th-dan class slot, or a 9th-dan character can spend a 9th-dan slot on the general specialty "Tough." A general specialty slot is always chosen from all general specialties with no step restriction. You cannot acquire the same specialty twice (a specialty explicitly marked repeatable, like Tough, is the exception).

Source: co-04-02 §freedom of specialty choice.

#There Are Two Roads — Dual Build

Most characters dig into a single class to the end. But there are those who walk two roads — one who is samurai and scholar, one who is Pure Land Monk and arahitogami. This is the dual build.

After meeting the secondary class's prerequisite attributes and skills, declare a dual build when advancing to 3rd, 5th, 7th, or 9th dan; it cannot be changed thereafter. A character has only one Dan, all of it in the primary class. The secondary class has no Dan to record, divide, or accumulate. At the declaration advancement and later 5th-, 7th-, and 9th-dan advancements, you may pay at most 1 general-trait slot from that advancement to borrow one secondary-class 1st-, 3rd-, or 5th-dan class trait at or below your current Dan. You do not gain the secondary class's 1st-dan automatic trait for free. The skills eligible for Master become the union of both class lists, but skill points and all caps do not increase. At 10th dan, choose exactly 1 of the three Renown Title axes; a combination Renown Title is not an extra title and only replaces the class-capstone branch when that axis is chosen.

Among the extended classes, the 3 Outsider classes (modern person, heroic spirit, celestial) use Adaptation instead of the dual build. It is a rule for picking up this era's techniques by observation and imitation without formal instruction, and it is an alternative to the dual build. If you need the detailed tables of both rules, they are in the core rulebook (co-04-02).

Source: co-04-02 §dual build, §Adaptation.

---

#Mastery Grade — How Many Licensed-and-Above?

A skill has 5 degrees of mastery. Each degree differs in investment points and check bonus.

If you use a skill you do not even have at Novice, your check takes a -2 penalty (the unskilled penalty).

Source: co-04-09-00 §the 5 degrees of mastery.

#The Licensed-and-Above Count Rule (Re-Collation)

Because Licensed, Master, and Saint are powerful, there is a limit on how many you may hold, and the three share this limit. The limit rises with dan.

• 1st dan: 1
• +1 for each even-dan promotion (2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th)

Spelled out, this gives:

Three points to note.

• On 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th dan (odd dan) the cap does not rise. The count increases only on even-dan promotion.
• Master (4 points) is possible from 2nd dan, and only within the 6 skills the class permits. A 1st-dan character cannot hold Master.
• Saint (5 points) is 10th-dan Tatsujin only, gained solely through the "skill Saint" option of the Renown Title.

Source: co-04-09-00 §the 5 degrees of mastery ※, co-04-02 §foundation growth details.

---

#Renown Title — The Last Single Road

When you rise to Tatsujin (10th dan) through 10 promotions, three roads open. You choose only one of them. That choice completes the character's story.

Source: co-04-05 §Law — the 3-fold system.

#The Renown Title Is a Campaign-Ending Device

The effects of a Renown Title are deliberately designed to nullify the core system. The Sword Saint breaks the check itself (auto-hit, auto-dodge), the God of War breaks the Energy economy, the Dharma King breaks the incapacitation system. This is not a flaw but the intent. A character who has reached 10th dan stands at the apex of the story, and the Renown Title is meant for 1–2 climactic battles, not for grinding ten more sessions afterward.

The recommended campaign structure is three seasons. 1st–5th dan (Season 1) is when Breakthrough, Domination, the Core Zone, and squads are fully meaningful; 5th–9th dan (Season 2) is when specialties and schools bend the mechanics; 10th dan (Season 3) is when the Renown Title destroys the final antagonist and ends the story. If two or more PCs in the same party hold a Renown Title, the core mechanics are all nullified, so the GM treats the acquisition of a Renown Title as the signal for the campaign's end.

Source: co-04-05 §GM warning — the Renown Title and campaign's end, §recommended campaign structure.

---

#The 1st→5th Dan Chronicle — Kagura Masamune's Five Seasons

We connect the preceding rules into the growth of one character. We raise the samurai Kagura Masamune (Fallen Noble), made in Chapter 5 (the character-creation walkthrough), from 1st dan to 5th dan across five seasons. The fiction is written anew for the example, and the numbers are exactly the actual rules.

Remember the basic derived-value formulas: Energy = 10 + Finesse, Wounds = 3 + Physique, Domination aura = Presence (positive only), Fate Intervention = Fate (minimum 1). The even-dan attribute +1 pulls these derived values up along with it.

---

#1st Dan — Young Commander

The Kagura house was a martial family that served as the lord's vanguard for three generations. After the father Masatsugu died in battle during a yoma expedition and the fief was absorbed by a neighboring local clan, what remained was one old manor, two retainers, and a single uchigatana of the father's. In the spring of his sixteenth year, Koizumi, Kagura Domain's military officer, came and said — "Your father's shadow still remains on the battlefield." His first deployment was the extermination of ko-oni on a border mountain road. When he took an immovable stance on a narrow bridge with five ashigaru spearmen, Masamune understood in his body why his father had not yielded a single step.

Masamune held over his 1st-dan general specialty slot to the next season. Swordsmanship is already Trained (+1).

---

#2nd Dan — Through the First Winter (Even Dan)

In his first winter on border guard, Masamune fought two more close engagements. When an ashigaru dropped his spear with frozen hands on a snow-covered pass, he blocked the wind with his own body and re-formed the line. Strength came to him — the arm gripping the sword grew heavier, and his seat on horseback steadied. Even-dan growth is not flashy. The foundation only grows thicker.

A promotion pays only the difference between tier values — raising from Trained (2 points) to Licensed (3 points) costs 1 point. So 1 of the 2nd dan's +2 skill points is left over, and Masamune spent that 1 point raising Horsemanship from Novice to Trained — the balance atop a horse he learned on the winter mountain pass. The moment he raised Swordsmanship to Licensed, Masamune holds his first Licensed-and-above skill — with the Swordsmanship Licensed benefit "Blade-Screen," the reservation cost of the uchigatana's defensive technique becomes 1 → 0. Having used 1 of the Licensed-and-above cap of 2, he still has room for one more.

---

#3rd Dan — A Name Is Given (Odd Dan)

In spring, in a skirmish on the outskirts of Eizo Castle, Masamune faced the enemy commander, a ko-oni chieftain, head-on. For the first time he declared a duel — forcing a fight between the two of them alone in a narrow zone and pulling his subordinates outside it. It was the moment his father's inherited sword first sat in his hand as "his own." After the battle, he went himself to a Koga artisan's workshop and had the sword re-polished. "The blood that stains this sword is my responsibility." That resolve made his body harder still.

Confirm that on odd dan the Licensed-and-above cap does not rise. Masamune's cap is still 2.

---

#4th Dan — Setting the Sword Right Again (Even Dan)

In the second major engagement, he could not stop one ashigaru squad from being destroyed. That night in the tent Masamune wept for the first time, and from the next day he honed his handiwork. Drawing the blade and returning it began to flow smoothly within a single breath — the growth of Finesse is precisely the number of actions you can pack into one breath. Around this time he knocked on the door of Katori Shinto-ryu. The old master said, "You already know half of Katori from the battlefield. The other half is the art of reading initiative (先)."

With the even-dan promotion, the Licensed-and-above cap rose 2 → 3. Masamune raised Horsemanship to Licensed to fill 2, and still has room for one more. A school consumes 1 specialty slot but is unrelated to the skill count limit — a school merely replaces the maneuver of the Swordsmanship Licensed he already holds.

---

#5th Dan — The General of the Turnaround (Odd Dan)

At the siege of Eizo Castle, at the moment the allied line was broken through, Masamune blocked the collapsing line with Immovable Formation. He held out for an hour in a melee where ko-oni and ashigaru were mixed together, and during that time the rear rank succeeded in re-forming. After the battle the lord of Kagura Domain said, "Your line did not break." With that single word the house's fief was restored. Masamune chose the Path of Restoration. The old retainers who had left returned one by one and gripped their swords again with aged hands. He organized them into a single squad — a squad of those who had regained their name. His subordinates now call him "Iron Wall."

5th-Dan Completed Sheet

Kagura Masamune — Samurai 5th Dan
Courage+3 · Finesse+2 · Physique+1 · Wisdom 0 · Presence 0 · Fate-1
Energy 12(10+Finesse 2) · Wounds 5(3+Physique 1+Tough 1) · Defense 14 · Fate Intervention 1
Background: Fallen Noble Route A (Restoration) | Heart: Loyalty | School: Katori Shinto-ryu (Swordsmanship)

Weapon: uchigatana — Horizontal Cut(Courage 2) / Thrust(Finesse 2·[Pierce 2]) / Parry(res 1/imp 2)
      [Licensed] Issen(3 Energy·1/round) / [School Licensed] Attitude of Sen(stance)
Specialties: Immovable Formation(stance) · Family Name · Tough · Declare Duel(Kata)
      · Ironwall Defense(aptitude) · Retainer Summons(background A)
Licensed-and-above 2/3: Swordsmanship Licensed · Horsemanship Licensed
Squads: Kagura elite spearmen(5 Minions, Defense 13) + retainer squad(3 Veterans, Defense 13)

Over five seasons Masamune raised two attributes (Courage · Finesse), dug two skills up to Licensed, carved five specialties, and chose Restoration at his background's fork. Here he is at 5th dan. There is as yet no Sword Saint, no daimyo, no Renown Title. That is the story of Seasons 2 and 3. How Masamune becomes "Iron-Wall Masamune" and gains the Renown Title Peerless Full Body continues in the core rulebook's sample sheet (co-04-08-01).

Source: numbers cited from co-04-08-01 (samurai sample 1st · 5th dan), co-04-07-01 (samurai specialties), co-04-01 (Fallen Noble background), co-04-02 (growth). The fiction is newly written for the example.

---

#Summary

• Promotion is a milestone. The GM declares it on one of combat completed 2–3 times, a narrative milestone, an awakening from skill use, or a GM declaration at session's end. It is not the accumulation of experience points.
• Odd dan is specialties, even dan is foundation. Each even dan (2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th) grants attribute +1 (cap +3) and +2 skill points. A new specialty slot may choose lower-dan specialties too.
• A dual build pays to borrow secondary-class options on top of one primary-class Dan. It provides 1st-/3rd-/5th-dan trait borrowing, the union of Master-eligible skills, and a combination Renown branch that replaces only the class capstone. The secondary class has no Dan, and the character still gains exactly 1 Renown Title. The 3 Outsider classes use Adaptation instead, and the two are alternatives.
• The Licensed-and-above (Licensed · Master · Saint) count cap is shared: 1 at 1st dan, +1 per even-dan promotion (1st · 2nd · 4th · 6th · 8th · 10th dan = 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6). It does not rise on odd dan. Master from 2nd dan, Saint 10th-dan only.
• The Renown Title is one of 3 (Class Capstone · Background Capstone · skill Saint) and is a campaign-ending device. Its acquisition is a signal 1–3 sessions before the story's end.
• The 1st→5th dan chronicle: Masamune, through Courage · Finesse +1 each, Swordsmanship · Horsemanship Licensed, five specialties, and the Path of Restoration, became the 5th-dan "Iron Wall." The Renown Title is still far off.