Quick answer: The Todo clan's Life Bonus (Stamina) perk in Nioh 3 is currently bugged — it calculates your HP bonus using all of your stats instead of only Stamina, which can roughly double your health pool even with minimal Stamina investment. No official fix has been deployed yet.
What the Todo Clan Offers
The Todo clan in Nioh 3 provides two Clan Protection bonuses. The first is Life Bonus (Stamina) C, which is supposed to grant extra maximum HP that scales with your Stamina stat. The second is Ninjutsu Gauge Charge +10.0%, which increases to +17% at elder rank. On paper, Todo is a straightforward survivability pick for heavy-armor builds that invest heavily in Stamina — a role it filled in both Nioh and Nioh 2.
In practice, the Life Bonus perk is not working as described. Instead of reading only your Stamina value, the game appears to factor in every stat on your character sheet when calculating the HP increase. The result is an enormous health spike that has nothing to do with how much Stamina you actually have.
How the Bug Affects Gameplay
Players have reported their HP jumping from around 2,300 to 4,800 — or even from 3,700 to 6,000 — simply by pledging to Todo and activating its blessing. This happens regardless of Stamina investment. A character at level 108 with only 22 Stamina and an even stat spread can still see the massive boost, because the calculation pulls from the combined total of all attributes.
The downstream effects are significant. Elixirs in Nioh 3 heal a percentage of your maximum HP, so doubling your health pool effectively doubles the flat healing you receive from every elixir, auto-recovery source, and life drain effect. Pair that with a life-on-kill bonus from another clan (more on that below), and most bosses in New Game become trivial. Some players have described face-tanking NG+ bosses without meaningful risk of dying.
How to Activate the Todo Clan Bonus
Step 1: Unlock the Hidden Teahouse by progressing through The Battle of Saigagake main mission. After time-traveling to the Heian Period, fast travel back to the Eternal Rift and speak with Matsunaga Hisahide in the southeastern building.
Step 2: Pledge allegiance to the Todo clan. You will be locked into this clan for eight hours before you can switch again.
Step 3: Visit a shrine and change your active clan blessing. This is a step many players miss — simply joining a clan does not automatically apply its bonuses. You need to go into the "Blessings" menu at a shrine and select the Todo protection. Some players have also found that switching between Samurai and Ninja forms and back can force the game to recognize the new bonus if it doesn't appear immediately.
You'll know it worked when your HP bar visibly extends well beyond what your stats and gear should allow. If you had roughly 2,000–3,000 HP before, expect to see something in the 4,000–6,000 range depending on your total stat investment.
Mixing Clan Protections With Todo
Nioh 3 introduces the ability to mix and match Clan Protection bonuses from different clans. Once you reach a certain rank within a clan — generally the third rank, achieved after two promotions — you permanently unlock that clan's passive bonuses for your account. You can then switch to a new clan and keep the old one's perks active through the Blessings menu. You can even assign different clan protections to your Samurai and Ninja forms independently.
This makes the Todo bug especially potent when combined with other clans. A popular pairing is Satake, which grants High Stance Martial Art Damage +9.0% and Heal Self & Allies (Melee Kill) 280. Players who rank up in Satake first and then defect to Todo can stack a 280+ heal-on-kill effect on top of their inflated health pool, creating a build that is nearly impossible to kill in normal content.
When you leave a clan, you retain the rank you achieved. Your previous rank is displayed next to the retained abilities, and the bonus strength corresponds to whatever rank you reached before defecting.
Will Todo Be Patched?
The community widely considers this an unintended bug rather than a design choice. The tooltip explicitly states the HP bonus scales with Stamina, yet the actual behavior scales with all stats. No official patch has addressed the issue yet, though players expect Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja to correct it in a future update. The Life Bonus (Stamina) grade stays at C even at elder rank, which suggests the intended scaling was meant to be modest — not the massive multiplier currently in effect.
If you want to take advantage of the bug while it lasts, there's nothing stopping you. Just be aware that the difficulty curve of the game will flatten considerably, and any build planning around the inflated HP values will need to be revisited once a fix arrives. For players who prefer to preserve the challenge, sticking with other survivability clans like Kato (which reduces damage taken while attacking by up to 20.6% at elder rank) or Uesugi (which provides Toughness +5 and Life Drain on melee kills) offers strong but non-bugged alternatives.
The Todo clan has always been the go-to pick for tanky, heavy-armor builds across the Nioh series. In Nioh 3, a calculation error has turned it into something far more powerful than intended. Whether you exploit it or avoid it is a matter of personal preference, but it's worth knowing the bonus will almost certainly shrink once Team Ninja pushes a correction.