- Location
- United States
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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
why would people prefer hazou to die if captured? Do they believe that zetsu will trick a revived pain into doing non uplift things? Or do they think that hazou living and cooperating with Akatsuki would neither harm nor help uplift. And if hazou's life has no influence they'd prefer hazou to die?
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
[X] Action Plan: Wrapping Up (This Is A Constrictor Pun)
- Location
- Pacific standard
This is going to lead to little but the creation of shell companies, I'm afraid.
Ninja will not do the due diligence required to find out who is actually responsible for shorting civilians some grain, and will happily lop off the first 'responsible' head they find. A whole wave of daimyos will 'retire' after neutering the powers of their office, allowing their less well informed political rivals to take the actual blame while doing a whole host of unpleasant things
Like, Daimyo A raiding Daimyo B's lands. The citizens have no way to tell the difference. The ninja have no way to tell the difference. Suddenly, civilians have a very strong incentive to SWAT each other.
Daimyo B could be a stand up dude, and he'll still die.
Nah, what we need is a census, and an organization to get a town crier in every population center in Fire. Someone who can keep the people informed of their rights/the news. The issue is that there's not a single group whose incentives align with the civilians, because everyone is way too short sighted. We need to artificially create a bureaucracy that is aligned with them, then watch as the profits logarithmically grow.
I think the best single way to combat the middle man issue is to have ninja keep food/ryō on them, turn it over if civvies report tax collectors skimming, send a chūnin+ social spec out to confirm/get more information, then the important part
Bill the daimyo for the cost of both missions, as well as the cost of reimbursing the civvies. Make that in particular very generous. Make a portion a bonus that goes to tbe auditors. Lastly, if you get caught doing this, you cant buy any tax licenses for 10 years.
You could sign up to be an auditor, though, if there's some grudges you feel like resolving...
Now, we've got ninja who want the easy, fun missions where they're always the good guy and never even need to kill anyone, while still directly improving the lives of their charges.
The daimyo will never escalate because their necks are no longer on the line - this is now a cost of doing business. They will report each other for the possibility of snagging top tier tax districts, leading to a race to the bottom in the private sector, empowering the public sector. Exciting stuff.
The civvies? Can't get worse. Now, if they off-handedly mention the daimyo taking more than they should, a ninja who wants some pocket money might take the case.
- Location
- Liverpool
What's with y'all making 600 word plans? Especially for short plans, we keep eating losses here. Heck, last cycle I managed to shave 100 words off the winning plan, and while I swapped out some content with others, I freely offered the word optimization up and nobody used it. The QMs wanted shorter plans to make it easier to work through. Getting the toad teaching? Yeah sure, worth it. But here? We're giving up XP for flavor it seems. I'd rather just give the QMs guidelines for these conversations and let them go. Goodness knows that we need XP for lots (TH buying, PS, sealing, potentially Minato sealing, and any investment to actually get complement as a personal fighter). Can we at least try to edit it down to reduce losses.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Yeah, I'll expend the effort to massively cut my plan down later, if it starts getting traction.
If you can edit my plan down while keeping the argument intact, I would be delighted.
Would you give it a try?
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- Location
- Pacific standard
[X] Action Plan: Parselmouth
- Location
- Liverpool
Got it to 399 words, as of the internet word counter I used. Let me know if it is still sufficiently within your messaging.
(For actual plan feedback, backing off if Oro decides that Noburi not wanting his stuff may be worth including, since he only ever promised to try, and we were unhappy with his last earth jutsu. Notes for substrate so we can both work on our projects and save each other time makes sense as an exchange at least, and sets the tone of the conversation well I think. Though his suggestion for what to do about uplift is going to be, at least partially, "git good".)
Sanity check/optimize with Mari/Kei
Noburi
Ask Yakushi if he can do Oro's examination instead.
If it's Oro or nothing, let Noburi back out.
Ask Oro to teach us an Earth-element Taijutsu/Ath buff instead.
Orochimaru
Talk while Noburi's being taught.
Noburi: We're gonna talk to Oro in the terms he understands. don't be alarmed, let us try.
Trade our rift resources for a few chakra-barrels worth of BoC substrate.
Kagome&Hazou's notes on MS1-8, RS0, and our planed sequence of Rift Seals. (Purge any hint of Minato, TH, or MS9+).
The location of the bladehorror Rift in Iron, for testing.
What might long-term equilibrium will look like between immortals?
If immortals see each other as threats, they fight until only one remains?
That's inefficient. Idiots killing each other for minimal gain. If they could coexist, everyone would be better off.
Amicable immortals means allies against external X-risk.
Is long-term peace or collaboration possible? Among those wise enough to truly persist forever?
Hazou wants to build a better world, not surviving standing in the graveyard of humanity, but where humanity can last growing wise and stable,
If Orochimaru dismisses us out of hand: Ambition and Cowardice are incompatible, Uncle.
You scorn most humanity for it's failings. But we find most of these failings are from circumstance, not inviolable nature.
They aren't you, they haven't the vision and brilliance to begin their own chain-breaking.
But they can be taught, incentives can be changed. Just because the bulk of humanity is lesser than you, they don't need to be this lowly.
We know you've found the existence of stable competent people useful (Tsunade, Enma, Kumokogo). We want everyone to be more like that.
Civilization is ending itself, it's a spiraling pattern. Villages spend their resources empowering the shortsighted to destroy each other while everything else burns.
We want to change the (political/economic/social/institutional) balance so collaboration and improvement are what's rewarded instead of wasteful self-destruction.
It's possible. Heck, if Akatsuki weren't largely made of short-sighted and unstable people, AMITY would be a viable route to world peace. After a generation, human culture could shift to new incentives and let people believe that peace is real.
We'd like advice:
Given our values, are there flaws in our goals or approach?
What should we do to maximize Uplift short/medium term, and to help humanity become stable for the infinite future.
Noburi
Ask Yakushi if he can do Oro's examination instead.
If it's Oro or nothing, let Noburi back out.
Ask Oro to teach us an Earth-element Taijutsu/Ath buff instead.
Orochimaru
Talk while Noburi's being taught.
Noburi: We're gonna talk to Oro in the terms he understands. don't be alarmed, let us try.
Trade our rift resources for a few chakra-barrels worth of BoC substrate.
Kagome&Hazou's notes on MS1-8, RS0, and our planed sequence of Rift Seals. (Purge any hint of Minato, TH, or MS9+).
The location of the bladehorror Rift in Iron, for testing.
What might long-term equilibrium will look like between immortals?
If immortals see each other as threats, they fight until only one remains?
That's inefficient. Idiots killing each other for minimal gain. If they could coexist, everyone would be better off.
Amicable immortals means allies against external X-risk.
Is long-term peace or collaboration possible? Among those wise enough to truly persist forever?
Hazou wants to build a better world, not surviving standing in the graveyard of humanity, but where humanity can last growing wise and stable,
If Orochimaru dismisses us out of hand: Ambition and Cowardice are incompatible, Uncle.
You scorn most humanity for it's failings. But we find most of these failings are from circumstance, not inviolable nature.
They aren't you, they haven't the vision and brilliance to begin their own chain-breaking.
But they can be taught, incentives can be changed. Just because the bulk of humanity is lesser than you, they don't need to be this lowly.
We know you've found the existence of stable competent people useful (Tsunade, Enma, Kumokogo). We want everyone to be more like that.
Civilization is ending itself, it's a spiraling pattern. Villages spend their resources empowering the shortsighted to destroy each other while everything else burns.
We want to change the (political/economic/social/institutional) balance so collaboration and improvement are what's rewarded instead of wasteful self-destruction.
It's possible. Heck, if Akatsuki weren't largely made of short-sighted and unstable people, AMITY would be a viable route to world peace. After a generation, human culture could shift to new incentives and let people believe that peace is real.
We'd like advice:
Given our values, are there flaws in our goals or approach?
What should we do to maximize Uplift short/medium term, and to help humanity become stable for the infinite future.
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I strongly expect Oro to be offended with the substitution here. Noburi's cowardice is not his problem. I think that line should just be cut.
Is this a typo or is MS8 intentionally being left out for some reason?
thank you <3
and wow, this did a super impressive job of keeping every detail while dropping a hundred words! I was expecting the conversion to be loss-y. you might be wizard.
It does kinda run into the "telegram-style writing" that QMs ask us to avoid, so I'm not gonna implement it verbatim. but I've spied a few line I can rephrase to dramatically shrink, so I'll do that, use the slack to reinflate the dialogue, and post if I can make it work.
this dosen't quiiite parse for me. can you restate this please?
I'll rephrase a bit, but I'm still asking. I don't think he'll be that offended, and the upside is huge.
remember that our current optimal combat path probably involves learning freaking Lightning element so we can get a buff jutsu. this saves something like 750 xp. sure, the buff jutsu probably won't be quite as insane, but it'll be way cheaper. and we'll have the option to combine both.
oops. fortunately you and Halberd both caught this. thanks.
I think this is foolish, but if you're determined, I guess that's that.
Alright, here's what I've got. I'm allllmost hapy with it. the whole "civilization is ending itself" section isn't as clear or as strong as I want it to be, but I was struggleing with it even in the origional version.
If @anyone can try to rewrite that part of the argument, it would be realy helpful.
If you need a bit more wordcount to make it work, we could(with great sadness), cut the bit where we tell Oro that ambition and cowardace are incompatable.
[X] Action Plan: Parselmouth
Word Count: 399
Word Count: 399
- Sanity check/optimize with Mari/Kei
- Noburi
- Ask Yakushi if he can do Oro's examination instead.
- If not, ask if Oro will teach us an Earth Taijutsu/Ath buff instead?
- Ask Yakushi if he can do Oro's examination instead.
- Orochimaru
- Noburi: We're gonna talk to Oro in the terms he understands. don't be alarmed, let us cook.
- Trade our rift resources for a few chakra-barrels worth of BoC substrate.
- Kagome&Hazou's (sanitized!) work on MS1-8, RS0, and our planed sequence of Rift Seals.
- The location of the bladehorror Rift in Iron, for testing.
- What might long-term equilibrium will look like between immortals?
- If immortals see each other as threats, are they forced fight until only one remains?
- That's pointless. Idiots killing each other for minimal gain. If they could coexist, everyone would be better off.
- Other amicable immortals means allies against X-risks.
- Is long-term peace and collaboration possible, at least among those wise enough to truly persist forever?
- That's pointless. Idiots killing each other for minimal gain. If they could coexist, everyone would be better off.
- If immortals see each other as threats, are they forced fight until only one remains?
- Hazou seeks more than just his own survival among the few immortals standing in the graveyard of humanity. He wants to build a better world, one where humanity can last forever, growing wise and stable.
- (If Orochimaru dismisses us out of hand): Ambition and Cowardice are incompatible, Uncle.
- You scorn most humanity for it's failings. But we find most of these failings are from circumstance, not inviolable nature.
- Yes, it is a failing that they aren't you, that they haven't the vision and brilliance to begin breaking their chains on their own.
- But they can be taught, incentives can be changed. Just because the bulk of humanity is lesser than you, they needn't be so lowly as this.
- We know you've found the existence of stable competent people useful. We want everyone to be more like that.
- Civilization is ending itself. It's caught in a downward spiral, empowering shortsighted fools to destroy each other while everything else burns.
- We want to change the (political/economic/social/institutional) balance so collaboration and improvement are what's rewarded instead of wasteful self-destruction.
- It's possible. Heck, if Akatsuki weren't largely made of short-sighted and unstable people, AMITY would be a viable route to world peace. After a generation, human culture could shift to new incentives and let people believe that peace is real.
- We want to change the (political/economic/social/institutional) balance so collaboration and improvement are what's rewarded instead of wasteful self-destruction.
- We'd like advice:
- Given our values, are there flaws in our goals or approach?
- What should we do to maximize Uplift short/medium term, and to help humanity become stable for the infinite future.
- Location
- Pacific standard
I see an issue, we have made it a point of Hazō's pride as clan head that Noburi will do as Hazō says. We're skating by on that by just not bringing it up, but renegotiating off noburi not cooperating won't work well, I think.
Frankly asking for a earth taijutsu buff would probably work better, but we do already have a Summons clan armor jutsu at our disposal. Unknown if Oro knows that. @faflec any chance?
I think the better ask would actually be the Dragon-tech seal oro made to give the Bosses at the ravening that they didn't seem to use. Would make our research on the mirror dragon seal smoother.
We should bring up civvies learning how to fly. That will legitimately rock Orochimarus world view, and might lead to Leaf getting actual flight infrastructure as Orochimaru unlocks the Physics double cost research stat.
Lastly, I think it may be better to approach this as collaboration of two loyal leaf ninja on their assigned missions, rather than as another deal. We're slowly getting out of the headspace where we need to be in strict deals to be safe with Orochimaru. He's actively pro-social towards us with the only people whose words actually have weight to him. He'll accept the framing.
Please don't cut the Cowardice and Ambition line. Thats absolute gold.
Frankly asking for a earth taijutsu buff would probably work better, but we do already have a Summons clan armor jutsu at our disposal. Unknown if Oro knows that. @faflec any chance?
I think the better ask would actually be the Dragon-tech seal oro made to give the Bosses at the ravening that they didn't seem to use. Would make our research on the mirror dragon seal smoother.
We should bring up civvies learning how to fly. That will legitimately rock Orochimarus world view, and might lead to Leaf getting actual flight infrastructure as Orochimaru unlocks the Physics double cost research stat.
Lastly, I think it may be better to approach this as collaboration of two loyal leaf ninja on their assigned missions, rather than as another deal. We're slowly getting out of the headspace where we need to be in strict deals to be safe with Orochimaru. He's actively pro-social towards us with the only people whose words actually have weight to him. He'll accept the framing.
Please don't cut the Cowardice and Ambition line. Thats absolute gold.
[X] Action Plan: Parselmouth
Word Count: 398
Word Count: 398
- Optimize with Mari/Kei
- Noburi
- Ask if Yakushi can do Oro's examination instead.
- Orochimaru
- Noburi: We're gonna talk to Oro in the terms he understands. don't be alarmed, let us cook.
- Exchange resources for the Loyal Leaf sealmasters missions.
- Give Oro Kagome&Hazou's (sanitized!) work on MS1-8, RS0, our planned sequence of Rift Seals, and the location of the bladehorror Rift in Iron, for testing.
- Request several barrels worth of BoC substrate, as well as the dragon killer seal Oro created.
- What might long-term equilibrium look like between immortals?
- If immortals see each other as threats, are they forced to fight until only one remains?
- Wasteful. Idiots killing each other for minimal gain. Cooperation has a plethora of benefits.
- Other amicable immortals means allies against X-risks.
- Is long-term peace and collaboration possible, at least among those wise enough to truly persist forever?
- Wasteful. Idiots killing each other for minimal gain. Cooperation has a plethora of benefits.
- If immortals see each other as threats, are they forced to fight until only one remains?
- Hazō seeks more than just his own survival among the few immortals standing in the graveyard of humanity. He wants to build a better world, one where humanity can last forever, growing wise and stable.
- (If we're dismissed out of hand): Ambition and Cowardice are incompatible, Uncle.
- You scorn most humanity for it's failings. But we find most of these failings are from circumstance, not inviolable nature.
- Yes, it is a failing that they aren't you, that they haven't the vision and brilliance to begin breaking their chains on their own.
- But they can be taught, incentives changed. Just because the bulk of humanity seems lesser than you, they needn't stay that way
- We know you've found the existence of stable competent people useful. We want everyone to be more like that.
- Lastly, civilians are capable of far more than anyone, even themselves, give them credit. The Gōketsu have civilians learning to fly.
- Civilization is dying. It's caught in a downward spiral, empowering shortsighted fools to destroy each other while everything else burns.
- We want to change the geopolitical balance so collaboration and improvement are what's rewarded instead of wasteful self-destruction.
- It's clearly possible. If Akatsuki weren't largely made of short-sighted and unstable people, AMITY would be a viable route to world peace. After a generation, human culture could shift to new incentives and let people believe that peace is real.
- We want to change the geopolitical balance so collaboration and improvement are what's rewarded instead of wasteful self-destruction.
- We'd like advice:
- Given our values, are there flaws in our goals or approach?
- What should we do to maximize Uplift short/medium term, and indefinitely stabilize humanity.
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- Location
- Liverpool
[X] Action Plan: Parselmouth
(Personally, I doubt we'll get anything if Noburi doesn't want the water whip scalpel hack, but it would be cool. I doubt Oro would give us another full jutsu, because he just said he'd try, but I'll take any chance to potentially get a cool earth jutsu (I just want Earth Kraken dang it!). But if we do get water cutter whip (water lash? Mercury Blade!), an improved attack Jutsu, with ma and pa drilling fundamentals? "Rock solid fundamentals with a toolkit response for every niche situation" was how Jiraiya and Kisame were described, I think.
Honestly, I could see it being worth getting Noburi another element, just to get him PEA, or SotS. Hozuki's mantle plus PEA makes him a tank, with no one elemental weakness, and SotS plus some Athletics investment and a stronger offense just makes him better at dodging and hitting than most opponents. (Adding Lightning gives a counter to his counter element, which is worth considering). Add in water dragon bullet for multi target/multi hit area, and some journeyman water jutsu support? And maybe a couple better toad contracts (courtesy of the tutors), and more Chakra (Naruto will want that strategically, and being able to summon and still have a mostly full tank would be a big addition)? Like, if we don't work on med skills for a while (which are already comfortably upper chunin), in like a year Noburi could be a real combat monster.
If we do work on med skills? He can still be a solid combatant. It'll just take a while longer. But considering his strategic importance to Leaf, as long as he isn't the target of some high power assassination attempt, he's got time. Still, it would be cool to see him high with some of the middle-big bads soon.)
(Personally, I doubt we'll get anything if Noburi doesn't want the water whip scalpel hack, but it would be cool. I doubt Oro would give us another full jutsu, because he just said he'd try, but I'll take any chance to potentially get a cool earth jutsu (I just want Earth Kraken dang it!). But if we do get water cutter whip (water lash? Mercury Blade!), an improved attack Jutsu, with ma and pa drilling fundamentals? "Rock solid fundamentals with a toolkit response for every niche situation" was how Jiraiya and Kisame were described, I think.
Honestly, I could see it being worth getting Noburi another element, just to get him PEA, or SotS. Hozuki's mantle plus PEA makes him a tank, with no one elemental weakness, and SotS plus some Athletics investment and a stronger offense just makes him better at dodging and hitting than most opponents. (Adding Lightning gives a counter to his counter element, which is worth considering). Add in water dragon bullet for multi target/multi hit area, and some journeyman water jutsu support? And maybe a couple better toad contracts (courtesy of the tutors), and more Chakra (Naruto will want that strategically, and being able to summon and still have a mostly full tank would be a big addition)? Like, if we don't work on med skills for a while (which are already comfortably upper chunin), in like a year Noburi could be a real combat monster.
If we do work on med skills? He can still be a solid combatant. It'll just take a while longer. But considering his strategic importance to Leaf, as long as he isn't the target of some high power assassination attempt, he's got time. Still, it would be cool to see him high with some of the middle-big bads soon.)
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[X] Action Plan: Parselmouth
"sanitized" seems a little too vague to me (who knows how the QMs will interpret that) and I would rather you were explicit about scrubbing the notes of any reference to Minato or further members of the minatoseal series. Overall though, seems like a perfectly fine plan.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
By the way, I don't follow this quest but I'm curious about something:
Discussion elsewhere resulted in someone mentioning some kind of 'checklist' associated with votes. I'd be interested to see it, if anyone can tell me where it is to be found. What's up with that?
Discussion elsewhere resulted in someone mentioning some kind of 'checklist' associated with votes. I'd be interested to see it, if anyone can tell me where it is to be found. What's up with that?
I have no idea what you're referring too. Pretty sure we don't have any checklists.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I could be wrong here; I'm going off what someone else said.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Probably one of our attempts to introduce a more rigid/formal system which can be used to maintain plan quality. I think there were several that could be described this way.
They never work and are always abandoned.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I can't recall any specific checklists that were followed widely enough or over a long enough timespan to be a meaningful answer here. It's likely that the person who mentioned this to you was talking about our situation somewhere around chapter 100-300 or so, where we struggled the most against making our plans as perfect as possible lest a minor line in the plan turn out to have outsized consequences.
(The most notable such moment was when someone wrote a plan which included a direct line in quotes, which the QMs took to mean "Hazou says this verbatim". Unfortunately for us, the line was a very bad thing to say in this ninja culture and almost earned us a Game Over then and there.)
This time period featured an ever-expanding list of contingencies, details, and explanations. In the worst cases, our plans became thousands of words long and an utter nightmare for the QMs to read through and try to faithfully interpret (here's an example I found while digging around). This got reined back over time, both because the circumstances in-character became more robust to mistakes in the plans and because the QMs instituted an XP penalty for overly long plans (with a bonus for sufficiently succinct plans). Now we're more or less in a comfortable equilibrium where we make sure our plans are less than 300 words long unless it's a very important plan that needs extra specification and attention, in which case we trade away a couple XP to make sure we get it right.
I'm sure people have posted explicit checklists of things we ought to do when examining a plan, I think I even have vague memories of one of them, but unfortunately they tend to meet the fate of "this sounds very reasonable, but it takes energy and focus to bring it up and ask people to adhere to it every cycle, and the regular method of people just organically discussing the plans works well enough without it."
But I did some digging anyways, and I found something that I think is what you were looking for. This is the most comprehensive plan-evaluating checklist I could find searching through the history of the thread, hosted on the Marked for Death wiki (which I keep forgetting we have). As I mentioned above, this is more "something that was made in the hopes it would be useful" more than it is "something we used and tested and polished over many chapters", so I can't give stories of its efficacy, but I'm sure if you did apply to it to a plan you would get some useful insights out of it.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Reading that plan-evaluating checklist, I can't help but grin, imagining that every one of those rules represents a separate and independent instance of someone going "WELP, SHOULDA THOUGHT OF THAT." 
PEA vs Buff comparison
("buff" meaning directly increasing the skill result, normally via tags)
First, lets convert PEA to buff-equivalents to better compare
PEA gives 1 armour per AB. 1 armour protects against 1 stress. 1 stress = 1 shift = 3 skill.
so at a glance PEA looks like a +3x(PEA AB) defensive boost.
but the first catch is, it only applies if we get hit, it won't help us dodge.
the second catch is the -(PEA AB) to Athletics. this offsets the damage mitigation, and also means some attacks will hit PEA that would be dodged normally
PEA gives:
+3x(PEA AB) to defensive taijutsu.
+2x(PEA AB) to Athletics vs attack that would hit anyways.
+2x(PEA AB) and -6ish to Athletics vs attacks we would have dodged.
the 3x(PEA AB) taijutsu defense looks sweet as hell, but we're rarely going to defend with Taijutsu. our Athletics is better, and it stacks with Sub.
once we boost PEA to 20 or 30 we can ignore the "attacks we would have dodged" case, except against rasengan/samehada/ect, because marginal hits will only hit for ~weapon value, and PEA can outscale normal weapons.
so, once leveled to ~20+, PEA is a effectively +2x(PEA AB) defensive buff.
This buff is pretty chakra-intensive and takes a standard action. unlike tag-based buffs, it applies against an unlimited number of attacks.
then come two more big catches: PEA cares about it's own AB, not the AB of the skill it's buffing. to compete with other buffs that can be fully effective at level 20-30, PEA would need to sit at the top of our pyramid, which is an insanely high cost.
also, this is an exclusively defensive buff. most conventional buffs we've seen can apply to attack and defense, PEA is only defensive.
In conclusion: PEA badly underperforms as a combat buff, and Hazou would be better-served by something that gives +2x(taijutsu/athletics AB) twice a round. we currently have no direct numerical earth element buffs, but getting a good one would be useful.
bonus: Hazou's buffs.
assuming 3 buffs is his limit let's look at Hazou's likley best options for the future.
defensive: RRB+Sub+OneManArmy
offensive: RRB+OneManArmy+???(Force Claws? Ghost Scales? SotS?)
wow! this looks great. notably, these are mostly seals, which are very cheap in terms of both xp and chakra.
this does assume that One Man Army is at least +2xAB, which it would need to be to be worthwhile for Minato.
if One Man Army is either a debuff(which would makes sense), or is mechanicaly non-viable, that would open up a spot for an powerful offence+deffense buff. because the other buffs are extremely cheap, this can afford to be a real chakra-guzzler. this would probably be SotS, an insanely good buff, but getting it will take a hefty 1000xp. if we get a good Earth buff, that would be a much more affordable alternative. or we could just wait untill we reinvent Hirishin or whatever for the third buff slot.
("buff" meaning directly increasing the skill result, normally via tags)
First, lets convert PEA to buff-equivalents to better compare
PEA gives 1 armour per AB. 1 armour protects against 1 stress. 1 stress = 1 shift = 3 skill.
so at a glance PEA looks like a +3x(PEA AB) defensive boost.
but the first catch is, it only applies if we get hit, it won't help us dodge.
the second catch is the -(PEA AB) to Athletics. this offsets the damage mitigation, and also means some attacks will hit PEA that would be dodged normally
PEA gives:
+3x(PEA AB) to defensive taijutsu.
+2x(PEA AB) to Athletics vs attack that would hit anyways.
+2x(PEA AB) and -6ish to Athletics vs attacks we would have dodged.
the 3x(PEA AB) taijutsu defense looks sweet as hell, but we're rarely going to defend with Taijutsu. our Athletics is better, and it stacks with Sub.
once we boost PEA to 20 or 30 we can ignore the "attacks we would have dodged" case, except against rasengan/samehada/ect, because marginal hits will only hit for ~weapon value, and PEA can outscale normal weapons.
so, once leveled to ~20+, PEA is a effectively +2x(PEA AB) defensive buff.
This buff is pretty chakra-intensive and takes a standard action. unlike tag-based buffs, it applies against an unlimited number of attacks.
then come two more big catches: PEA cares about it's own AB, not the AB of the skill it's buffing. to compete with other buffs that can be fully effective at level 20-30, PEA would need to sit at the top of our pyramid, which is an insanely high cost.
also, this is an exclusively defensive buff. most conventional buffs we've seen can apply to attack and defense, PEA is only defensive.
In conclusion: PEA badly underperforms as a combat buff, and Hazou would be better-served by something that gives +2x(taijutsu/athletics AB) twice a round. we currently have no direct numerical earth element buffs, but getting a good one would be useful.
bonus: Hazou's buffs.
assuming 3 buffs is his limit let's look at Hazou's likley best options for the future.
defensive: RRB+Sub+OneManArmy
offensive: RRB+OneManArmy+???(Force Claws? Ghost Scales? SotS?)
wow! this looks great. notably, these are mostly seals, which are very cheap in terms of both xp and chakra.
this does assume that One Man Army is at least +2xAB, which it would need to be to be worthwhile for Minato.
if One Man Army is either a debuff(which would makes sense), or is mechanicaly non-viable, that would open up a spot for an powerful offence+deffense buff. because the other buffs are extremely cheap, this can afford to be a real chakra-guzzler. this would probably be SotS, an insanely good buff, but getting it will take a hefty 1000xp. if we get a good Earth buff, that would be a much more affordable alternative. or we could just wait untill we reinvent Hirishin or whatever for the third buff slot.
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