How does the stagnency mechanic interact with SC XP? Is it applied after the bonus XP or does it apply to base XP and then bonus XP is calculated as normal? How does stagnancy effect Brevity and QM Fun XP?
All XP associated with an update will be reduced by potential stagnancy multipliers. This includes base XP, brevity XP, QM fun XP, Ami-style training XP, SC XP, PCJ XP, YSJ XP, Lootbox XP, and any other sources yet to arrive.
Is this calculated from a formula, or was each scenario evaluated individually and assigned a value? A part of me wants to know what would happen if a ninja had 4 domains.
Assigned individually.
After making a successful infusion roll on Rocket Boots, does Hazou think they (a jounin-level seal) are a difficult enough project to unstagnate his Sealing domain?
He does not think they will be hard enough to unstagnate him.
Is the fact that some skills take a LONG time to work on, considered intentional? For instance, it might take weeks or months to finish an on-level seal; if you have a reasonable XP rate, you could pass several sealing barriers in that time, and never meaningfully catch up.
Yes, this is intentional. The 500 XP number is on the high end of what we were considering (see the 300 vs. 500 roll above), and given our calculations on XP rates, it seems appropriate.
Is there a number for the average amount of stagnancy that a ninja (or, for that matter, chakra beast) of X age and Y talent has experienced, so as to account for the penalty that stagnancy would apply to other ninja?
Other ninja will be expected to have faced some amount of stagnancy in the course of their careers, depending on, yes, their age, talent, and how much they've pushed themselves narratively. We won't tell you what numbers we're using, though.
Most of the OPSEC makes sense to me. But I don't quite understand why the Orochimaru stuff is top secret like that. At the same time I assume that there is some reasoning the QMs had for this and that it might be very good reasoning. Could you tell us please?
The ninjutsu, Hazō had no particular reason to share or not share. We defaulted to secrecy, but it wouldn't matter much since most of the scrolls were Fire Element and over half the clan is Lightning Element.
It gets nothing to share Orochimaru's personal affairs, but it could cost immensely if this somehow pisses Orochimaru off.
At what point does something related to Earth Shaping (construction?) become a domain?
When Hazō actually uses Earthshaping regularly in ways with meaningful stakes.
That being, when you say "overcome" a level-appropriate challenge, does that mean you're required to mechanically win whatever encounter removes your stagnacy?
Because if so, it would be rather flawed simulationist wise as humans IRL tend to actually learn more from failure then from success.
(A lesson paid for in broken bones or being humiliated at a party or something tends to sink in a lot deeper then when one reflects that they're damned lucky that their oppponent didn't exploit that opening.)
So by that measure, shouldn't the metric for removing stagnacy barriers instead be whether or not the challenge in question was a learning experience?
Perhaps it means "overcoming" in the same way that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing? It'd be fitting, given the deathworld.
I would also guess that the QMs are attempting to avoid the degenerate fail-state of "challenge something of arbitrarily high TN, fail as expected, make getaway".
Right, yes. We want to avoid "oh, we took a combat mission, made one roll, then desummoned. remove stagnancy plz.
Probably, "overcome a level-appropriate challenge" should be replaced with "meaningfully engage with a level appropriate challenge".
Just to clarify, this would mean going to Asuma personally and telling him we are going bandit hunting from [date] to [date]?
Yes.
Also, what kinds of payment contributions does Gokētsu have to do to Kakuzu? Trivial for a rich clan or something more notable?
Asuma elected to have the Tower cover the bulk of the cost. The remainder passed on to you would have been enough to make the clan bleed a month ago, but you're fine for now. Don't hire S-rankers if you can help it.
I have a question regarding sealing challenges: Hazō had the zero-G incident not too long ago, but that was a calligraphy failure iirc. Would a hard (for his level) calligraphy check also be a suitable challenge, or is it only the sealing proper?
The zero-G incident was over 2,500 XP ago for Hazō. A seal that is only challenging on Calligraphy would not suffice to undo seal research stagnancy.
Also, now that I think of it, did the special jōnin test not count?
He could not have failed it without some extreme sandbagging.
More generally, I wonder what constitutes a challenge - is it the same as the past unlock mechanic, wherein there must be something on the line (and you can't e.g. just spar with Lee for an "easy" (painful) unlock)?
Roughly, yes. The stagnancy system is supposed to incentivize interesting narrative things, not ever more creative lighthousing.