Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- 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
- Location
- Europe
- Location
- Washington, USA
Could just have prearranged "all friendlies GTFO" signals as a generic contingency against e.g. spreading-AoE runic failures, or Deidara charging up something special. Maybe even separate ones for "avoid sky" and "avoid ground."
It would be ironically funny if Akatsuki discovers Hazou before the opening RER assault but after infusion starts, kills his bodyguards, and then Hazou pulls a Pain deal. It's a very narrow time window so unlikely, but I vaguely think someone saying either IC or OOC that if the Battle of the Gods was a few hours earlier Pain woulda been free to smash everyone so extra ironic. Jashin could do it, but I think he wants this bloodshed and the ensuing world war. And it would be need to timed close enough to completion that Akatsuki can't just run out of range, since the full half an hour is plenty of time. Although I dunno if Hazou can even talk while infusing lest that distract him and make a failure.
Actually, the consequences for Pain's ritual failure being only destruction of an island is pretty tame now that I think of it. Given I fear the potential esoteric sealing failures of runes.
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we should ask kei whether to empower jashin. and snowflake, the chakra cost is worth it. While she's alive can ask her to brainstorm battle tactics to minimize the costs. Maybe she'll say to cancel the assault too. and ask yuno what hidan told her about jashin, but don't ask yuno who worships jashin whether to empower jashin
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oh lol. I didn't read all the chapter yet. this makes hazou, let me resurrect all my friends, deal more possible now
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This idea might be half-baked, but - what if we don't open with the RERs? A likely outcome given the current plan is that the fortress + Sasori's seal arrays are destroyed by the explosion, but prevent it from killing those inside.
Suppose that instead we hold fire after setting up the runes, an Oro clone, a Hazō clone, and some snakes go in first to attack the fortress in some approximation of what Oro would've tried if he didn't have runes or Leaf assistance, the Hazō dispels once either the static defenses are breached or an Akatsuki member comes out to fight, and we fire the RERs as soon as the Hazō dispels. Might a plan along these lines have a higher chance of catching S-rank enemies in the S-rank explosion, rather than possibly just using it to take out their fortifications?
Suppose that instead we hold fire after setting up the runes, an Oro clone, a Hazō clone, and some snakes go in first to attack the fortress in some approximation of what Oro would've tried if he didn't have runes or Leaf assistance, the Hazō dispels once either the static defenses are breached or an Akatsuki member comes out to fight, and we fire the RERs as soon as the Hazō dispels. Might a plan along these lines have a higher chance of catching S-rank enemies in the S-rank explosion, rather than possibly just using it to take out their fortifications?
There is not necessarily any safe range when it comes to a runic failure...
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It would be kind of cool to see a recent bingo book entry for team uplift. I think we're the world's most prolific missing nin, having arguably defected on three different occasions, though Oro matches our record if you don't count Hidden Swamp or if he ever had Rain citizenship while in Akatsuki.
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
This ninja would have had time to put on their combat buff stack. If they were a summoner they might have sent a message through the Seventh Path. Giving them time to react to a less-dangerous challenge can only complicate things imo
I'm not really convinced by my own idea, but to make the case for it anyway:
The chance to get a Seventh Path message out is a major downside, but won't they be pretty likely to have their buff stack up by the time they see combat anyway? Given the conversation in the last chapter, I consider something along the lines of the following scenario to be likely:
Opening: RER barrage. Destroys sundry static defenses very thoroughly, destroys but does not penetrate 5SB- or force-wall-equivalents on the fortress
Round 1: Akatsuki members activate a supplemental buff and a standard-action movement technique. As they beat Hazō's initiative, they can get out of the targeted area before any further RERs go off.
Following rounds: Leaf forces approach, but will take multiple rounds to get within combat range; during this time, enemies will have to split their actions between activating buffs, avoiding long-ranged attacks, and finding attackers to engage. RERs can't retarget fast enough to hit an S-ranker on the move and are thus no longer significant.
- Location
- United States
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
:/
I remain discontent with this, and extremely wary of its implementation.
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Rihaku
The Internet
We know by Efficient Ninja Hypothesis that seal arrays have several (unspecified?) practical and theoretical limits, such that Hazou and the entirety of Leaf's sealmaster corps (which included Jiraiya and Minato, extremely skilled sealmasters in their own right) basically never considered them for serious deployment in combat situations. This very strongly limits what "seal arrays" can accomplish without breaking simulationism. For them to also be capable of surviving an RER 2.0 barrage seems unlikely.
That said, if Konan is onsite then such things become more believable, since she could assemble one out of her own body at combat speed, assuming she had veterancy in the relevant seal array (though unless she has Skitter-level multitasking, doing so with the precision necessary still seems improbable). But something as broad as "chakra constructs" (per the earlier ruling that all non-permanent Sealing and most ninjutsu effects are chakra constructs) might kill the components of Konan herself that are within the radius, and denying Itachi and Kisame their summons truncates a large fraction of their survivability and combat power, respectively.
Given that even paper sealing can at high enough skill levels accomplish almost anything (Jiraiya had a seal that no-sold Flying Thunder God), destroying summons and shadow clones in a limited radius doesn't seem impossible, but doing so unconditionally (the Summon / Shadow Clone has no ability to resist said attack) and in a large radius, for a long duration, seems unlikely.
Jiraiya's Flying Thunder God counter might in fact be a good point of reference for range, duration and practical limits of such an effect - Hazou could ask Oro and Tsunade about it and plan with that in mind. Hazou downloaded all of Jiraiya's blanks so can even reproduce the blank for inspection and analysis, and Oro should have deep familiarity with Jiraiya's sealing style given how often they collaborated.
That said, if Konan is onsite then such things become more believable, since she could assemble one out of her own body at combat speed, assuming she had veterancy in the relevant seal array (though unless she has Skitter-level multitasking, doing so with the precision necessary still seems improbable). But something as broad as "chakra constructs" (per the earlier ruling that all non-permanent Sealing and most ninjutsu effects are chakra constructs) might kill the components of Konan herself that are within the radius, and denying Itachi and Kisame their summons truncates a large fraction of their survivability and combat power, respectively.
Given that even paper sealing can at high enough skill levels accomplish almost anything (Jiraiya had a seal that no-sold Flying Thunder God), destroying summons and shadow clones in a limited radius doesn't seem impossible, but doing so unconditionally (the Summon / Shadow Clone has no ability to resist said attack) and in a large radius, for a long duration, seems unlikely.
Jiraiya's Flying Thunder God counter might in fact be a good point of reference for range, duration and practical limits of such an effect - Hazou could ask Oro and Tsunade about it and plan with that in mind. Hazou downloaded all of Jiraiya's blanks so can even reproduce the blank for inspection and analysis, and Oro should have deep familiarity with Jiraiya's sealing style given how often they collaborated.
In poor taste.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is the subject of a reasonable quantity of player unhappiness, so I'm going to kick in my two cents - at least, on the topic of sealing arrays.
We know that they're worse than Runes in pretty meaningful ways: if sealing arrays were rune-level good, Orochimaru wouldn't have invested time and energy into leveling not one but two skills to produce runes. The question is, in what ways are they worse than runes?
- It can't be that runic arrays are static. Runes are effectively static.
- It can't be that they take a long time to create. So do runes.
- It can't be that they're slow to activate - so do runes.
- It can't be that they take a particularly long time to research: runes aren't exactly quick and Sasori didn't really have time for a months-long research project here. He needed to rebuild his puppets (which, in addition to the labour, requires finding and killing some pretty powerful ninja) and research rift-opening runes. Sealing research does not really tolerate side projects; even if Itachi taught him Shadow Clone and he used it to great effect, training it also takes time/XP.
- It can't be that they take massive amounts of chakra to infuse or activate; so do runes (at least, relative to seals).
- It can't (really) be that they're single-use - so are most runes unless quite specifically designed to the contrary.
- They're weaker. In this case, I would expect the anti-chakra-construct effect to be either extremely limited in area of effect or to be a TN for SCs and Summoners or Summons to roll against as opposed to an automatic pop.
- They require continuous operation. You can't simply activate an array and leave it running - you need to be pumping chakra into it and manipulating that chakra the entire time.
- Their duration is short. In this case, they can't run continuously. If given a chance, the Akatsuki will be able to get their countermeasures up. An RER to the face should ensure that doesn't happen and the subsequent removal of much of the topsoil should delete the prepared ground advantage - after all, the ground is gone. If they want to try to set up a sealing array while our collective forces are bearing down on them, they can be our guest.
I'm also reassured by the fact that Mari seems to have a good idea about how to deal with this problem. Singing implies...coordination? We'll have to see.
Runes also have TNs for avoiding their harmful effects, even if they're quite high TNs. I wouldn't consider this a weakness of sealing arrays, especially since sealing arrays seem to be able to get stronger by incorporating more sealing elements.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped
If you do decide to potentially go with the Akatsuki developing anti shadow clone and summoning sealing arrays a way to assuage player salt would be to have Sasori make the rolls and then release them to us. That way he runs the risk of causing sealing failures or running out of time.
Consider the five-seal barrier, the only thing we know that's more-or-less a sealing array. It seems pretty likely that the 5SB-protected object will survive an RER 2.0 explosion, but the seals won't. This sets my expectation that an S-rank sealmaster's defensive arrays can't survive an RER barrage, but can blunt it enough that those inside the defense survive the first barrage.
It sounds like they're describing seals to pop fragile physical chakra constructs like shadow clones and summons, not jutsu-disruption, so I think Konan wouldn't be harmed, probably.
But while I think Sasori is pretty close to Jiraiya's level in sealing, it sounded like Konan's actual sealing rank, aside from her ability to mass-produce, is merely jōnin-level.
Leaf's sealmaster corps lost a lot of institutional knowledge in the Collapse, and we never actually Jiraiya fighting seriously on prepared ground... would we know if they did use big sealing arrays in the previous world war?
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Honestly the pressure wave might just turn your brain into goop. At the very least your eardrums aren't going to be good for much.
Cue the embarrassing fusion dance.
Rihaku
The Internet
That shouldn't be an issue since the overlapping components of the barrage (multiple explosions each with a heat / kinetic component) will hit at different points in time, each of which strikes with overwhelming magnitude.
I don't think summons are fragile chakra constructs, they've been shown taking significant (sometimes grievous) damage without popping. Any class that includes both summons and shadow clones is necessarily quite broad.
This response doesn't suffice - enough sealmasters survived that Hazou had a proctor for his specjounin sealing exam. A single jounin-level sealmaster would know of this info and, if the utility were substantial, the concept would be well known of in the general sealing research community. It is extremely implausible that a sealmaster of Hazou's skill would not be aware of this, especially if he specifically looked into this topic before at the players' direction.
If Sealing Arrays were a major component of prior world wars, Hazou of anyone would be expected to know, and would know details of their general strengths, limitations, etc! Plus, he has the entirety of Jiraiya's seal stash and associated notes, which contains higher-quality contextual info than Tower archives.
Of course, the specifics of implementation can be subject to infosec. But everyone knows the Flying Thunder God "exists and is incredibly useful," even if they don't know how it was done. Same with Shadow Clone, creating jinchuuriki, etc.
My expectation remains that any seal array will have limitations similar to the Anti-[Element] and Anti-Hiraishin seals we saw in Jiraiya's stash - very limited range, low duration etc. If Oro is right and Konan isn't onsite, then RERs should clear the field as Oro mentioned when he saw their specs. If Konan's onsite but doesn't have the Sealing to assemble Jiraiya-tier arrays at combat speed, the Summons should also be fine. The Toad Sages may also have exotic effects that counter this one, as seen in the BotG when they tanked Pain's anti-summoning ability of which this is an (presumably) inferior replica.
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So..... The plan is to just leave the Superchiller rune sitting there, right at the centre of the giant circular cut marks made by the force dome, waiting for someone to discover it?
It's not like we have a way to ever discharge it safely.....
I don't think I can vote for this as-is, sorry.
Can we at least hide the Superchiller somewhere besides the most-obvious-possible spot? (And also a spot somewhere where Oro has no business popping in to check on us?)
Heck, why not have our emergency procedure be dumping all remaining fate points to timeladder to a 30-second infusion?
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- Location
- Texas
In case it wasn't clear, this is specifically what this was referencing. By and large the signatories of that letter were extremely unsatisfied with the Akatsuki being handed this capability at the last second, through a mechanism that was never an option for us even when we looked up ways to protect large areas from skywalker bombardment and EM level threats.