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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Adhoc vote count started by RandomOTP on Jul 4, 2023 at 7:32 PM, finished with 120 posts and 16 votes.
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Status of the current voting cycle
 
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

How do you feel about fate points bought being discounted from the stagnancy tracker? I feel it best because it encourages us to buy them and use them to overcome stagnancy rather than disincentivizing that by effectively-speeding-up when we next need worry about it.
 
Shrooms said:
[X] Treat Your Minions Right
Word Count: 292
  • Bring Yuno on beast extermination near Leaf (through Asuma).
    • Engage Jashinism seriously, but be authentic (e.g. Hazou's disapproval of Hidan's behavior is expected for Life priests, which Jashin knows.)
    • Apologize for lashing out about Jashinism.
      • Hazou's still getting used to the idea of working with Jashin. It's easier picturing him as an ally than something to venerate.
      • Yuno/Hazou publicly supporting Jashin is politically inconvenient to Hazou's goals (therefore inconvenient for Jashin's plans for him.) Leaf isn't ready for Jashinism yet. Hazou's still trying to persuade them to Uplift, to prepare them.
    • Hazou's been working towards Uplift since becoming missingnin. Hidan believes Jashin supports Uplift, and said conviction's the greatest virtue. Coupled with Jashin favoring Hazou at Bakuchioka and elsewhere, Hazou seems on the right track representing Jashin's Birth aspect. Given that humanity's declining, Hazou thinks the Death aspect is currently overrepresented.
      • Ask for Yuno's help representing Hazou's aspect.
        • Hazou's branch will kill those who threaten innocent lives.
        • They'll promote improved quality of life for as many people as possible.
        • They'll encourage voluntary births - willing parents are better at raising successful children.
    • Evaluate Yuno's knowledge about entities like Jashin.
      • Jashin's symbol was at her wedding, yet Yuno seemingly didn't know Jashin. What was Isan's knowledge of the symbol?
      • Hidan said gods in people's heads were responsible for Jashin losing his tongue. What gods are those?
      • Jashin apparently made the Sage bleed. Were they in conflict? Why?
      • Hazou's heard the moniker 'King of Hell' many times. Given Jashin's domains, is that him?
  • Attempt 3D sealing using one material (diamond?) to form chakra pathways inside another (corundum?); like putting ink on paper.
    • Consider infusing without withdrawing chakra from ink-analogue. Use a SC.
  • Sealing:
    • After mission, use Hazou's intuition for M7 and DE.
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Current version of plan. Clarified the mission is through Asuma & changed wording a bit to not imply Jashinism and Uplift are incompatible. I don't really have the word count to do anything fancy with the sealing section so I'm just continuing what we did before, as we know RRB will unstagnate. I personally expect this to be a one day update anyways so shouldn't we shouldn't lose out on much.
 
Rafin said:
Aren't we saying the same thing? Improving living conditions improves population numbers over the long run more than maximizing births/surviving children in one generation does. The question here is how to explain it to the now two Jashinists we know.
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Okay, then we're on the same page! I was distracted by the "voluntary birth" part, which doesn't seem relevant to me. I was not suggesting we establish baby factories :p as for our Death Jashinists, we should play on what they want: killing. The more births, the more criminals/bandits/people to kill (hopefully the proportion of criminals in the population will stay the same or decrease, though).
 
Adhoc vote count started by Velorien on Jul 5, 2023 at 9:49 AM, finished with 127 posts and 17 votes.
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Voting is closed.


I'll refrain from telling Yuno that you referred to her as a minion in the process of expressing your respect for her opinion.
 
Kiba said:
I don't understanding voting for us to be interested in worshipping a God that wants blood.
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I view this as damage control mostly. Yuno is a born Jashinist, which means we need to get this shit under control before she starts slaughtering civilian villages.

Like it or not, Hidan thinks Hazou is Chosen of Jashin and that means we need to engage with that, or die. Ideally he would fall into a deep well and we'd never hear from him again. But even throwing him at Rock was insufficient, so we need to move forward based on the assumption that we'll need to be justifying our actions to Hidan at some point in the near future.

That means figuring out the doctrine of the Birth side now, and doing our honest best to implement it.
 

Kunai Evasion Impulsor Seal


Steps:

Take Directional Explosives. Lower the output. Put a timer on it. Slap it on a kunai. Kunai's trajectory can now be altered, mid-air.

(Or, alternatively, you've turned a Kunai into a missile, which goes faster than you could ordinarily throw, making it harder to dodge)

Narrative Fluff:

Now you have a kunai that can be used to go around cover (MEW, Trees, Boulders, etc), or trick an enemy into dodging into the attack.

Requires some training to use effectively (similar to Rocket Boots).

Your preexisting skill with Ranged Weapons means that you can use this seal imperfectly, but it would take notable practice before being able to utilize the seal at perfect efficiency.

Proposed Mechanics:

With the stunt, add Sealmaster AB (at time of infusion) to your Ranged Weapons roll. Without stunt, add (1/2) Sealmaster AB (at time of infusion) to your Ranged Weapons Roll.

Alternative Mechanics: free reroll on the Ranged Weapons Attack, simulating the trajectory readjustment?

Prerequisites: Ranged Weapons 40 for half bonus ; RW 40 + Buying Stunt for the whole bonus

(Yes, I'm keeping the name :p )
 
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Kagome talked about the difficulty of seals with smart-targeting. You need a target definition that includes target, and excludes everything else.

Solution? Networked IFF seals that let us mark people a non-targets.

This would let us do rudimentary smart-targeting in the style of "target the closest chakra system containing more than 50 cp AND not connected to an IFF seal"

This would make a incredibly strong basis for or sealing portfolio going forward. Carrying swarms of MARS activated smart-munitions would be awesome and a huge boost to our combat.

We've already been working with networked seals (MARS), and chakra detection seals. So we'd already have veterancy.

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EDIT

This gives us a ton of options, and moves us towards more advanced programmatic sealing in general.

As one option: storage seals that unseal the contents a later-specified distance/direction, instead of being determined when making the seal. Combine with with MARS and IFF/detection seals, and we could unseal acid/lava physically touching the nearest N nonallies with chakra.
 
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Left-Hand Mutant said:
Kagome talked about the difficulty of seals with smart-targeting.
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It's not smart-targeting by design. It's just a timed Directional Explosive that requires a stunt to fully use.

It's meant to let you do cool trick moves (like throw your kunai over a MEW, and then the KEI seal causes it to suddenly change direction to behind the MEW).

Sure, if we need another Sealing Unlock by the time we get around to making it, then let's tack on IFF and Smart Targeting to raise the difficulty... but if we're going to do that, then I hope the mechanics are better than what I've proposed.

An S-Rank version of the KEI seal? I'd say that it adds 2x Sealmaster AB (at time of infusion) to the Ranged Weapons roll.
 
RandomOTP said:
It's not smart-targeting by design. It's just a timed Directional Explosive that requires a stunt to fully use.
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Ah, to be clear, I didn't think you were saying so. It just finally prompted me to make a post about IFF seals, which could enable a more advanced version of the effect you were proposing, as well as other stuff.

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Your proposed seal:

I'm skeptical that a preselected-delay thrust would help a kuni much, mechanically it's a buff, and buff-stacking has sharply diminishing returns. I also imagine the kuni would start spinning and generally wouldn't fly well, although that wouldn't interfere with it's ability to deliver explosives.

I don't know the mechanics well enough to know if your estimate for the buff is reasonable, of if it outperforms the other avaliable buffs enough to be worth it.

Also, Hazou, Maria, and Haru are Tajutsu fighters, while Nobouri uses water whip, so this seal+stunt would mostly be useful to Kei.
 
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Left-Hand Mutant said:
so this seal would mostly be limited to Kei
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RandomOTP said:
Kunai Evasion Impulsor Seal
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I do believe that's the joke.

That aside, I wouldn't worry about the spinning stuff too much. Could always use shuriken instead. This being a world of magic and supernatural martial feats, I imagine it's enough to say "explosion make thing go fast" and get a mechanical buff, possibly with XP stunt expenditure.
 
Left-Hand Mutant said:
I'm skeptical that a preselected-delay thrust would help a kuni much, mechanically it's a buff, and buff-stacking has sharply diminishing returns.
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Diminishing returns, yes, but it's still a boost.

Worst case scenario, it's something we sell to another clan in return for other stuff. Under the proposed Mechanics, it's a solid buff that scales with the sealmaster's ability (which synergizes well with the public Jiraiya Lootboxes).

If we really want to get fancy, we can toss in a few dozen of these seals made by Hazou, personally, to tide them over until their sealmaster researches it.


Left-Hand Mutant said:
I also imagine the kuni would start spinning and generally wouldn't fly well, although that wouldn't interfere with it's ability to deliver explosives.
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Then swap it out for a shuriken, a chakram, a boomerang, or another weapon, instead?

Honestly, I don't think this is a true concern. Marked for Death is a supernatural death world where ninja are supernatural Kung Fu Wizards that can water walk across the sea, shoot fireballs out of their mouths, teleport across a battlefield, spend all of their free time training (and thereby accruing xp), and seal magical Demons into human babies.

Whatever specific training that would need to occur to get a handle on how to properly use these seals would be folded under buying the stunt, or accepting a lesser bonus (as is the case with Rocket Boots).


Left-Hand Mutant said:
so this seal+stunt would mostly be useful to Kei.
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Yes, that's the joke... which is why it's named KEI (and also because wordplay never gets old). I still refer you back to our soon-to-be-fresh gennin, and the fact that we can sell it for shinies... or just release it to the public domain to raise Leaf's general military power.

It's no Goo Bombs, but it's also a reasonably powerful buff for Ranged Weapon users. And I think the hivemind would be more willing to give up this (either in the form of a sale, or in the form of public domain) than we would be for Goo Bombs.

EDIT:

ProperAttorney said:
I do believe that's the joke.



That aside, I wouldn't worry about the spinning stuff too much. Could always use shuriken instead. This being a world of magic and supernatural martial feats, I imagine it's enough to say "explosion make thing go fast" and get a mechanical buff, possibly with XP stunt expenditure.
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Rip. Ninja'd
 
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RandomOTP said:

Kunai Evasion Impulsor Seal


Steps:

Take Directional Explosives. Lower the output. Put a timer on it. Slap it on a kunai. Kunai's trajectory can now be altered, mid-air.

Narrative Fluff:

Now you have a kunai that can be used to go around cover (MEW, Trees, Boulders, etc), or trick an enemy into dodging into the attack.

Requires some training to use effectively (similar to Rocket Boots).

Proposed Mechanics:

With the stunt, add Sealmaster AB (at time of infusion) to your Ranged Weapons roll. Without stunt, add (1/2) Sealmaster AB (at time of infusion) to your Ranged Weapons Roll. Maybe up to a limit of +6?

Alternative Mechanics: free reroll on the Ranged Weapons Attack, simulating the trajectory readjustment?

(Yes, I'm keeping the name :p )
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I'm trying hard to visualise this in a way that makes sense. Let's suppose you have an indestructible arrow, and while it's in flight, something pushes violently against an arbitrary part of the arrow. Are there any circumstances under which the projected result isn't "the arrow ceases to behave like a flying arrow and turns into a generic physics object that careens off in an unpredictable direction until its motion is arrested by another object"?
 
Velorien said:
I'm trying hard to visualise this in a way that makes sense. Let's suppose you have an indestructible arrow, and while it's in flight, something pushes violently against an arbitrary part of the arrow. Are there any circumstances under which the projected result isn't "the arrow ceases to behave like a flying arrow and turns into a generic physics object that careens off in an unpredictable direction until its motion is arrested by another object"?
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My model of it (such as it is, given that it was an idle thought, born of wordplay) is as follows...

Hazou takes Directional Explosives, and tightly controls the output, giving it something akin to an Iron Man thruster (similar in concept to Rocket Boots, but scaled down and even more tightly controlled). It also has a timer, which is what allows for the change of direction to occur while the projectile is mid-air.

With extensive training (which is represented by the stunt), a Ranged Weapon users learns where to attach the seal onto their chosen projectile for optimal mid-air repositioning, how to throw their projectile so that it spins properly (in a kunai, it's pummel is pointed where it needs to be when the timer goes off), and how to time the previous two points with overall throw so that the kunai is at the proper location (ex: over a MEW wall) when the timer goes off.

The difficulty of this training could be reflected in a prerequisite Ranged Weapon level (to use the seal at all), in addition to a moderately-high xp cost to buy the stunt (which is necessary to use the seal at full effectiveness, a la Rocket Boots).

The baseline Ranged Weapons prerequisite (suggestion: RW40) would mean that it is possible for the ninja to use it at all (given their "Great" prowess with Ranged Weapons). However, their use of the seal would be imperfect until they've spent a notable amount of time learning how to use the seal properly (this narrative time spent training would be reflected in the xp cost buying the associated stunt... maybe, 75xp? 100?)


Edit:

And the reason that the bonus scales off of the Sealmaster's AB is because (much like Rocket Boots) that is what dictates just how controlled the impulse is.

A lower AB results in a less precise impulse, which leads to a lower bonus for the roll.

A higher AB results in a more precise impulse, which leads to a higher bonus for the roll.
 
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RandomOTP said:
With extensive training (which is represented by the stunt), a Ranged Weapon users learns where to attach the seal onto their chosen projectile for optimal mid-air repositioning, how to throw their projectile so that it spins properly (in a kunai, it's pummel is pointed where it needs to be when the timer goes off), and how to time the previous two points with overall throw so that the kunai is at the proper location (ex: over a MEW wall) when the timer goes off.
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I'm not sure how this works with dodging. If the RW user could anticipate which way the target would dodge, they'd just throw the kunai there instead. So redirecting the kunai into the opponent's dodge seems problematic, given that the opponent has many more degrees of freedom in which to dodge than than a single seal can cover.

IMO the proposed seal works better as a rocket booster to the kunai, so it moves faster than the user could otherwise throw it.
 
Sir Stompy said:
IMO the proposed seal works better as a rocket booster to the kunai, so it moves faster than the user could otherwise throw it.
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Then that, really. As long as we find an appropriate KEI acronym :p

(Noburi is going to tease us about how a notable percentage of our seals are some variation of "thing go faster")
 
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