"Right. Where was I? Oh, there's Hidan the Blood Reaper. Everyone's heard of him. Deadliest scythe-wielder in the world."
"How many scythe-wielders are there in the world?" Hazō asked.
"He's the only one I know of."
"Right. And what's he the summoner of?"
"Death," Kagome said simply. "Nobody knows what he had to do to get the Death summoning scroll, because he hunted down and killed everyone who knew. When he summons Death, he becomes completely unkillable, and every wound he deals is fatal, even if he just nicks you. He's head of a vast secret cult, and everyone in it worships him as the avatar of Death itself.
"Nevertheless, it is a relief that Kagome's ramblings appear to be just that. I take it that the same applies to the bewildering idea of summoning Death?"
Pandā went very still.
"Death isn't a summon the way I'm a summon. Death is… something else," he said in a hushed voice.
"Come now." Kei's patience had been bolstered by Pandā's extensive knowledge of the crows, and at least that had already been confirmed by Jiraiya to be Uchiha Itachi's summon. But there were limits.
"How can a theoretical abstraction of the process by which living organisms cease to function be summonable? At least a Fire elemental summon is intuitively comprehensible, even if that intuition does not match reality."
"Dunno," Pandā said. "But summoning Death is one of the things summoners are forbidden to do on the Seventh Path, like making seals."
And of course, there was no way of distinguishing prohibitions laid down for good and sane reasons from meaningless superstition, just as with many of the "essential" sealcrafting procedures Kagome insisted on during research. (Kei refused on principle to believe in the efficacy of the "Please Don't Let This Seal Draw the Attention of the Nameless Hunger that Dwells in the Gaps between Minds" Dance.)
"Well," Kei said, "I assure you that I have no intention of summoning Death in the foreseeable future. I feel that towering war machines with razor-sharp claws and impenetrable armour fulfil my day-to-day summoning needs quite nicely."
"What about seals?" Hazō asked, violently twisting the conversation into the first unrelated direction that came to mind. "There's supposed to be a ban on seals on the Seventh Path, right? And on summoning Death, though I'll admit I'm not sure what that would entail."
"No such thing," Enma said very briskly. "All are equal before Death, so it signs no contract. All submit before its power, so it takes no master. All will one day be in its possession, so it cares not for reward.
"And we don't use seals because the Sage said so. That's reason enough. But if you want an educated guess from someone who's graduated from the school of hard knocks with flying colours, two words. Sealing failure. I've juggled flaming torches with my tail before—it was for a dare, don't ask—and even I think you're crazy to be playing with fire that hot. I'm not having that brought into my home, and, speaking bluntly, the Gōketsu aren't in the Seventh Path's good books right now for doing it, especially with the Pangolin War still raging. You're lucky the clans who've already figured out what you did are on the wait-and-see side, and you're lucky you stopped before the Pangolins got to the heavy hitters. And that you have a loyalty pact with our summoner.
"There's other stuff you don't bring to the Seventh Path, and people who don't ever come to the Seventh Path, and stuff you don't do on pain of creativity, but by and large, the people who need to know already know, or got told up front, and the people who don't know are better off not knowing."
Enma either does not believe Death can be summoned or is trying to keep that information hidden. Either way, he clearly knows something about Death.
Next Steps: Tell Enma that Alatsuki might have to be brought in to the Great Seal situation, and then tell him about Hidan. Probe him on Death further.
"Oh, can I?" Yuno shifted around to face the others, sitting cross-legged in a circle. "This is a true and unadulterated story, as passed down from Kanda Yukari herself, and may the Crocodile of Separatism consume me if I change but a single word.
"Once upon a time, there was a man, the last survivor of a great and mighty clan, and he had a son. The son had a sharp mind, quick hands, industrious kidneys, and chakra that shone bright and orange. Unfortunately, the father was crippled by war, and he could not pass on the way of the ninja. So he set out on a journey to find an instructor whom he could trust with his only heir.
"The first person they met on the road was the Sage of Six Paths. 'Let me teach your son,'" the Sage of Six Paths said, 'for I am ancient and wise, and know all the hidden lore of the world.' But the father said, 'If you are so wise, why did you create shinobi to do nothing but fight and die?', and spat at the Sage's feet.
"The second person they met on the road was the One Who Bids the Trees to Walk as Gods, greatest of the asura. 'Let me teach your son,' the One Who Bids the Trees to Walk as Gods said, 'for I am mighty and brutal, and there is no one stronger than me.' But the father said, 'The power that violence promises is a lie; I have lost everything I have to it', and spat at the asura's feet.
"The third person they met on the road was the King of Hell. 'Let me teach your son,' the King of Hell said, 'for I govern both life and death, and I wait at the end of every path.' And the father said, 'In this world, Death alone is honest', and offered the King of Hell his son.
"The King of Hell taught the son the divine art of medical ninjutsu, which can heal the most grievous injury and banish the deadliest sickness. Then, when the son had mastered medical ninjutsu, he gave him the power of Deathsight. 'When a patient is dying and you see me at the foot of the sickbed, you may use the arts I have taught you, and I shall spare him. But if you ever see me at the head, then his time has come, and you must not interfere, lest you disrupt the cycle of life and death itself.
"The son agreed eagerly to his master's instructions. He travelled the land, far and wide, healing the sick and saving the injured. He became very famous and very rich, for he was a ninja like no other. Every time he stood by the dying, the King of Hell appeared before him, and every time the son respected the King of Hell's judgement.
"But one day, the lord of the Ui Clan fell sick, and the call went out to any doctor who could save him. Naturally, this doctor came as well, for the Ui were the greatest and the strongest of all ninja, and to have their lord in one's debt would be a great treasure. But when he came to the sickbed, he saw the King of Hell standing at its head, gazing balefully down on the clan lord.
"Then, the doctor thought to himself: surely, the King of Hell would overlook just one deviation. After all, he was the man's own instructor; what deeper bond could there be? He reached down and turned the sickbed around so that the King of Hell was at its foot, and then he unleashed his medical ninjutsu and cured the lord of all his ailments.
"The doctor was lavished with rewards for his success where everyone else had failed. He was given riches and rare techniques and ancient secrets, and his name spread far and wide. He taught many apprentices. For a while, all was well.
"Then, Lord Ui's daughter fell sick, and he called for the doctor at once. The doctor took one look at the Ui princess, the most beautiful woman in the world, seeing her luxurious pink hair and deep crimson eyes, and he fell instantly, madly in love.
"But once again, the doctor saw the King of Hell standing at the head of the sickbed. 'Surely,' the doctor thought, 'if he overlooked it once, he'll overlook it just one more time?', not seeing how the King of Hell was baring his teeth and how his eyes blazed in fury. So he used his medical ninjutsu and he cured the princess of all her ailments.
"When the King of Hell saw what the doctor had done, he waited no longer. He opened his mouth and swallowed the doctor all in one go. 'You have betrayed your oath to me as a man of medicine,' he said, 'and now your own life is forfeit.'
"The doctor looked around and saw inside the King of Hell's mouth, where there was a forest of trees of every colour. He asked the King of Hell what they were. 'Every tree is a soul awaiting transmigration,' the King of Hell said. 'The white will be reborn on the Deva Path, to enjoy beauty and bliss for the lifetime of a deva. The red, on the Asura Path, to drown in violence and bloodlust for the lifetime of an asura. The black, on the Naraka Path, to be tortured for the long, long lifetime of a fallen soul. 'Please,' the doctor said, 'will you not give me the colour of the Human Path, so that I may return to my beloved princess?' 'Very well,' the King of Hell said, and turned him into a tree at once.
"But the King of Hell lied. In his vengeful anger, he turned the doctor into a tree of the deepest black. Then, as punishment for humanity's weakness and disloyalty, he took medical ninjutsu away forever."
Nobody said anything for a while.
"That was certainly grim," Hazō said.
"All the traditional stories are like that," Yuno said. "Doesn't it make sense? The world is a horrible, pointlessly cruel place, so any story with a grain of truth to it must be horrible as well. That kind of honesty is what made Akane's story of tragic love so good."
Next Steps: Look into Death =? King of Hell connection. Learn what else these Isanese "traditional stories" have to say. Isan seems to know a great many things.
"Akatsuki, you say," Kagome said thoughtfully. "Well, what I know is—"
He paused so as not to be interrupted by that weird gurgling screech that came from the bowels of the mansion every fifteen minutes between four and five pm. The Gōketsu Clan had long since decided that it must be malfunctioning pipes, and silently agreed that there was no need to go and investigate further.
"Akatsuki is a society of summoners," Kagome continued.
"But the really dangerous one is Deidara, the Last of the Dragonlords. He swoops in on his legendary grey dragon with his blond hair streaming in the wind, saturates the battlefield with perfectly-made explosives, then watches and takes notes on exactly how everyone dies so he can make the next batch even better. They say half of all explosives used in the last Fang-Claw war had his mark on them."
"That doesn't sound like fun. But if it makes you feel better, I can tell you lots about the Crow Clan. We've got an up-to-date intel package on them in case they decided to back up the Condors for some reason."
"Go on."
"They live way up in the mountains. They're weird, because they don't fight much—they send their young to do most of the fighting, and—get this—they actually think that war is less important than abstract knowledge. Crazy, right? So they're ruled by sages instead of generals, and they're all into medicine and philosophy and stuff, except they won't share any of it because they think they're better than everyone.
"Only ever since they made their contract with the Uchiha—and only the Uchiha, by the way, which is weird too—their military started expanding, and now there's loads of tension between the sages who are in charge and the military faction that thinks it ought to take over. Then there was this big kerfuffle a few years back when something big happened on the Human Path, and they had a completely different split over whether to keep supporting the Crow Summoner or not. That lasted until the Crow Summoner himself came to the Seventh Path and flattened everyone who didn't like him. Right now he's probably the second most important person in the clan after Karanium himself.
"That's everything I have clearance for. There's some other stuff marked Top Secret, but the overall gist of it is that the crows aren't going to mess with us, and we have to make absolutely certain we don't give them a reason to. It's actually a little weird how emphatic the tablets are about that part."
"I'm afraid it's mandatory," Ami said. "But this time it isn't traditional Ami-brand genius. The first thing I did when I got Leaf jōnin clearance was head to the archives and memorise everything I could get my hands on. I had a lot to catch up on since I had to hit the ground running, and also my Mori blood demanded it."
"Exactly," Hazō said. "I'm glad you understand. But even with that limitation, I think I could comfortably request special jōnin rank if you think it would help."
"I don't see why not," Ami said. "Your threat level is already sky-high anyway. You don't especially need the perks, being a clan head and all, and you're a summoner, so you should already be getting sent on stupidly dangerous missions and I have all sorts of interesting theories as to why you're not. On the other hand, the rep bonus from being a spec jōnin is nice. Having a clan led by a young chūnin may be the in thing these days, but everybody else has clan training to earn them respect by default. People look at you differently when you outrank them, whether it makes sense or not."
But if there was one thing he could not do, it was to involve Akane. Akane did not belong in the same thought as Jashin. Akane was precious. Akane was holy. Akane was pure. Hazō's feelings for her were pure. The idea of drawing Jashin's attention to her, or even just using her as a tool to draw Jashin's attention to himself, was disgusting. It was like using one of Jiraiya's haori to clean the latrine.
Huh. Akane was holy. It was a thought that might never have crossed his mind if he hadn't been thinking in a religious register to begin with. It sounded like something Kei would say about Ami, or maybe Ami about Kei, and therefore not exactly a healthy way to think about a relationship. But on the other hand, maybe their attitudes made a little more sense now. This was what it was like to have a person occupy a special, unique position in your heart, to the point where it felt like even thinking certain kinds of thought about them would sully them. No wonder Kei got murderous at the idea that a lowly mortal whose flaws she knew intimately and could list alphabetically on request might try to seduce her immaculate icon.
"No, you're missing my point. What you see is not real, but what you experience is. Time isn't what you think it is...it doesn't really exist, it's just an artifact of our limited perception. The truth is that everything is eternal, and our perception of past and future as distinct things is a limit of our own minds." He paused for a moment and then started over. "A person exists apart from time. They are whole things, spanning four dimensions and stretching into the future and the past. What we see in the present is no more the person than a slice taken out of the middle of a carrot is the carrot. Except there isn't really a 'present'. A human mind takes time to perceive things, and therefore what you see always lags behind what's actually out there. You don't interact with people as they are, you interact with them as they were. You aren't actually hearing what I say as I say it, you're remembering what I said a moment ago. Your family are exactly what they always were: The memories you have of them. Every moment of joy at your son's accomplishments, every argument and flash of love for your husband, every good meal that he cooked...all of those things are exactly as real as they were before the cave-in, because you remember them. The only thing that has really changed is that you will not be able to make more memories of them. That's a tragedy, and it's entirely reasonable for you to grieve at that...but your people haven't actually changed in any real way. They still exist in the true reality just as they always have, and they aren't completely gone from this reality as long as someone remembers them. If you share the memories with other people then they are strengthened. Your family will continue to exist in reality because they aren't part of time, and they will continue to exist in our world so long as someone remembers them. If we all share what we have lost then our loved ones continue to exist, exactly as they always did. And if I tell you my memories and you share them with someone else, my loved ones will live on when you and I are not here to remember them."
He paused, studying them and gauging their reactions. "You don't have to come," he said carefully, "but please consider it. I don't want to lose my people; I want to share the warmth and wonder that was my time with Jiraiya, and the little that I knew of Minami Nikkō, and what I remember of my father before he died." He extended a hand and made eye contact with each of the women in turn. "Please, help me keep them alive?"
"There's other stuff you don't bring to the Seventh Path, and people who don't ever come to the Seventh Path, and stuff you don't do on pain of creativity, but by and large, the people who need to know already know, or got told up front, and the people who don't know are better off not knowing."
My personal stance is that I don't care one way or the other about taking vengeance, but I like moves that advance our strategic goals and don't like moves that hinder them.
Jiraiya's Epic Seal of Awesomeness With A Really Awesome Name That You Have To Say All Of Every Time Or It Won't Work And Also I'll Punch You In The Face, This Means You, Hazō
Jacuzzi seals emits a series of puffs of warm air. They are a minor modification on the Tunneler's Friend seal, which emits a steady stream of cool-ish air.
...
Success!
@eaglejarl@Velorien@Paperclipped
Could we please get these seals moved/added to the "List of seals Hazō can make" section of the known seals document? Also Skywalkers, but I can't find the quote for when that happened.
Discord, but Paper mentioned that Yuno and Akane brought home a handful of seals from that one Cloud MW lightning user that Hazō got a look at (and maybe keep as research material?).
Based on what we've seen of it (like Hazou teaching Kagome) it seems like there is enough "Downtime" between instructor commentary that you could feasibly be training multiple people at once but on the other hand, it seems that at some point there would be too many students to keep up with.
Just throwing out a number, 3 seems like a reasonable amount to me. Jonin train teams in threes, Kagome was teaching 3 people Sealing at once (actually, it might have been 4...?) Etc.
As a full-time activity where the instructor does literally nothing else with their time, 3 is possible. 1 is standard for those with other responsibilities.
However, note that Takahashi trained Kei blind purely for lack of other options, and it's far from standard practice: without a scroll, you have nothing to attune to and no way to get internal feedback on whether you're performing the technique correctly until your first live run (where a failed interdimensional journey may mean death). This is the reason why summoners don't routinely have a heir pre-trained and ready to make a contract on the spot in the event of their sudden death.
The Fated to Die XP system works reasonably well in most cases, but there are some things it doesn't capture very well. In the real world, improving at a skill is based on acquiringnew information and then finding and overcoming appropriate challenges in order to truly master the information. If you want to get better at playing the guitar then you need to learn how fingering works (new information) and then practice it enough that it becomes something you can do without thinking (finding and overcoming an appropriate challenge). Someone who picked up a guitar yesterday can improve by running scales, but if Santana runs scales all he's doing is preventing his skills from degrading from lack of use. Santana will stop advancing as a musician unless he challenges himself with harder pieces of music, new genres, etc. In game-mechanical terms, his XP rate declines to show that he's not improving. Likewise, programmers who spend 20 years writing shopping cart apps in C will barely improve while ones who master Perl, Python, PostgreSQL, R, machine learning, Lisp, Haskell, and information security will continue to improve.
We want the experience system of the Marked for Death universe to work on the same model, both because it's simulationist and because it explains why senior ninja aren't literal gods with unlimited power.
We implemented @Inferno Vulpix's stagnancy system around six months ago, but haven't used it much. It required active effort to consider and required judgment calls to implement. However, we still believe it's a good mechanic that represents something important in-universe. To get more use out of it, we're grounding it mechanically in total XP earned.
This change allows us to resolve several issues that have been building up in the narrative:
It normalizes older S-rankers somewhat. While talent can help you reach higher heights faster, in the long run it is more important to work hard at new things – i.e. to continually have new experiences and surpass new practical challenges. Top-end S-rankers are differentiated by the types of challenges they surpassed.
It explains why talented ninja have such impressive mission records. If you have a higher talent rating, you need to take more and harder missions in order to find challenges, as you hit stagnancy faster than your peers, despite stagnancy happening at the same XP totals for both of you.
It puts a more realistic premium on life experience. We've introduced many mechanics that scale off of talent rating (Shadow Clone, training techniques that grant a fraction of your base XP, lootboxes). This new system helps age and experience have a greater effect on ninja XP totals (and therefore, strength).
It rewards being good at multiple things so that you can seek out different types of challenges. As your XP total grows and finding appropriate combat challenges becomes harder, it becomes favorable to have more domains to unstagnate more easily. This is yet another reason why jōnin-level characters tend to branch out after attaining adequate combat stats.
It allows different character archetypes that we've portrayed on screen but that aren't officially supported in the demographics. E.g. a jōnin who had high base talent but stagnated taking easy missions as a genin and only blossomed once a war put pressure on them, or a chūnin that retired early and has been stagnating since.
Simplified Summary
Every character has one or more 'domains' that they focus in. Nearly all ninja have the combat domain while some will have additional domains such as sealing, socials, technique hacking, etc.
Every 500 XP is called a 'stagnancy barrier'.
Barriers are associated with a domain.
Barriers must be removed by a challenge in that domain. You cannot remove a combat barrier by doing a socials challenge and vice versa.
Your XP rate drops by 10% when you hit the barrier.
Your XP rate drops by another 10% for every 100 XP past the barrier.
There is a minimum XP rate; you will never go below 10%
By overcoming a level-appropriate challenge you can:
Remove an in-effect barrier, thereby removing its effect on your XP rate; or,
Remove a barrier at the next multiple of 500 before it goes into effect.
Noburi, Kei, and Hazō all have 2 domains and are stagnant in 1 of them, meaning that their XP rate will slow slightly when this rule goes into effect.
Note the implications: eventually, senior ninja reach a point where there are no level-appropriate challenges and their progress slows to a crawl. This is why (e.g.) Kakuzu, the Akatsuki member who is a century-ish old, is extremely powerful but not a literal god.
Full Details
(Note: There are illustrations below this that will, er, illustrate all of this.)
Characters have 'domains' of skills. For example, Gai's only domain was combat (specifically taijutsu) while Hazō has both combat and sealing. Jiraiya had combat, sealing, and socials. It is normal to pick up new domains as you advance.
You pick up new domains by spending significant amounts of XP in relevant skills.
Every character has a "stagnancy barrier" every 500 XP.
Barriers are associated with a particular domain, such as 'combat', 'sealing', 'socials', etc.
Stagnancy barriers accumulate; for example, at 1,000 XP you will have two barriers in place, one at 500 XP and one at 1,000 XP.
When you reach a barrier your XP rate is reduced by 10%
For every 100 XP past a barrier, your XP rate is reduced by an additional 10%.
Overcoming a meaningful, level-appropriate challenge in the appropriate domain removes the earliest barrier in that domain. This might be a barrier that you have already passed (if you currently have an XP penalty) or the next one in line if you are at full XP rate.
For characters with multiple domains, the stagnancy barriers cycle through their domains.
Within a given domain, only one barrier into the future can be removed; if you're at (e.g.) 10,000 XP then a level-appropriate combat challenge will remove the barrier at 10,500 but a second level-appropriate combat challenge will not remove the one at 11,000.
It is possible to remove the next barrier in each of your domains before you get to those barriers.
Only a challenge in domain X can remove a barrier in domain X – you cannot get rid of combat stagnancy by doing a socials challenge or vice versa.
Your XP rate never goes to zero. No matter what, you will always earn a certain percentage of your XP rate. That minimum depends on how many domains you have and how many of them you are currently stagnant in:
Stagnant in all domains: 0.1x (10%)
Stagnant in 2 of 3 domains: 0.2x (20%)
Stagnant in 1 of 2 domains: 0.3x (30%)
Stagnant in 1 of 3 domains: 0.4x (40%)
As you can see, stagnancy comes in degrees; someone who is stagnant in 1 of 1 domains is more stagnant than someone with 2 domains of which 1 is stagnant, who is in turn more stagnant than someone with 3 domains of which 1 is stagnant.
Stagnancy is based on total XP, not base XP. That means that Shadow Clone XP, Lootbox XP, OOC XP and so on are all included in the stagnancy counter. The logic here is that you can only learn so much from finite practical experience. Shadow Clone accelerates your learning by helping you memorize/rehearse a given amount of information more quickly, but it doesn't give you new experiences from which to gain new transformative insights. Likewise, XP lootboxes can teach you a lot through book-learning, but their understanding is best conveyed in tandem with real experience. Consider learning to play an instrument with only textbooks on mechanical skill and music theory, with only an instrument, or with both; you will advance fastest when you have both.
Let's look at some examples.
Scenario 1: The Basics
As mentioned above, Gai has only one domain: combat. As the starting point for the example let's arbitrarily say that he's at 20,000 XP and not stagnant.
Gai has been keeping up with his challenges, so he is not currently stagnant and therefore is earning his full XP rate. At 20,500 XP, he hits his next stagnancy barrier and his XP rate drops to 0.9x. It will drop by an additional 0.1x for every 100 XP that he remains stagnant – first to 0.8x, then 0.7x, etc, until he is earning only 0.1x his base rate. (0.1x is his minimum rate since he is stagnant in all of his one domains. If he picked up a second domain then he would be stagnant in 1 of 2 domains, so his minimum rate would suddenly be 0.3x. If he became stagnant in that domain as well then his rate would once more decline to 0.1x.)
If Gai has a meaningful combat encounter after hitting the barrier (e.g. at 20,617 XP) then his earliest stagnancy barrier (the one at 20,500) will be removed and he will be restored to 100% of his XP rate until he hits the next barrier.
Scenario 2: Removing a Future Barrier
As with the previous scenario, Gai is at 20,00 XP and not stagnant. Suppose he has a meaningful combat challenge at 20,300 XP, before reaching the stagnancy threshold. This would remove his next stagnancy barrier (the one at 20,500 XP) before he even got there! Now he would earn his full XP rate until the 21,000 XP barrier.
Of course, you can only remove one future barrier at a time, so it won't help him to have another meaningful combat challenge at the 20,400 XP mark.
He had already removed one future barrier (the one at 20,500), so that second encounter will not remove the one at 21,000 XP stagnancy. Only once he is past the 20,500 mark can he remove the 21,000 XP barrier.
Scenario 3: Multiple Barriers in Effect
Gai was at 20,000 and not stagnant, then he hit the 20,500 barrier and started to stagnate. He doesn't manage to find any worthy opponents, so he continues to face no challenges until after the 21,000 XP barrier. He now has two barriers in effect: the one at 20,500 and the one at 21,000. Here is where he currently stands:
With 21,000 XP and two barriers in effect, Gai's XP rate is at 0.4x his base rate and still dropping. His earliest stagnancy barrier would be the 20,500 XP mark, so that's the one that will be removed when he finally has an encounter. Suppose that happens at 21,167 XP:
This removes the earliest barrier (the one at 21,500) but not the second barrier. His stagnancy counter would be pushed back to 21,000 XP, and his XP rate would become 0.8x. He would need to find another challenging encounter to fully unstagnate and earn his full base XP again.
Scenario 4: Multiple Domains
So far we've been looking at a character with only one domain. Let's now look at Kurenai, whose two domains are combat and socials.
As in earlier scenarios, she is at 20,000 XP and not stagnant. With two domains, Kurenai has a minimum XP rate of 0.3x when stagnant in one domain, or 0.1x when stagnant in both. If she has a combat encounter at 20,100 XP, the next combat stagnancy barrier is removed; note that this is not the next barrier, the one at 20,500, since that is a socials barrier. Despite removing a future barrier, she will still grow stagnant from not testing her social skills.
If she then faces a social challenge at 20,300 XP, she can remove her socials stagnancy barrier before reaching it and will have a long stretch of full-rate XP gain:
And, of course, after her XP threshold crosses 20,500, she can then do another socials challenge and hold off stagnancy for even longer.
For a character with three domains, the situation would be much the same. Jiraiya, whose domains are combat, socials, and sealing, would still have one stagnancy barrier every 500 XP which would cycle between his domains, meaning that for each of his domains there is a barrier every 1,500 XP – e.g. combat at 21,000, socials at 21,500, sealing at 22,000, combat at 22,500, etc.
Hopefully this is all clear. The following stagnancy barriers have been added to the players' character sheets:
Noburi:
11000 XP: Combat. He has not had a challenging combat in over 300 chapters and 6000 XP, so he starts off slightly stagnant in this domain.
11500 XP: Medicine. He has been working hard at this and therefore is not stagnant in this domain.
Kei:
13000 XP: Combat. Again, she has not had a fight in a long time and therefore is slightly stagnant in this domain.
13500 XP: Leadership. She has been working with the KEI and the Nara, which has been keeping her leadership skills sharp, so she is not stagnant in this domain.
Hazō:
13500 XP: Sealing. Hazō is a jōnin or S-rank sealmaster who has been working only on easy seals, so he starts off slightly stagnant.
14000 XP: Combat. We want all the characters to have their combat domains on the x,000 marks, and Hazō fought recently in Hyena (though at a distance).
Please ping us with any questions or suggestions on how to clarify the writeup of these rules.
This post summarizes the rules that Hazō will use to determine who is allowed to use which seals or learn which ninjutsu.
"Inner circle" here means Team Uplift + Yuno.
Default Policy
For all new acquisitions, unless otherwise stated, Hazō will keep it a secret to only himself + the person who acquired the new secret. For example, Rapid Rejuvenation is currently a secret between Hazō and Noburi.
Ninjutsu:
This list includes who knows about the listed ninjutsu. The list of who actually can cast the ninjutsu is smaller in almost every case.
Clan members must share their ninjutsu into the clan vault (and Sage praise the clan secrets laws that make having such a vault be a not terrible idea). Exact ninjutsu collected in this manner are TBD.
Kagome being Kagome, everyone has been thoroughly informed that he has definitely NOT been working on a top secret project related to the Fourth Hokage, the Fox, and definitely super-duper not at all related to the Tailed Beast Breeding Program, which is DEFINITELY FAKE and NOT REAL.
MARS is the only seal which has a strict top-secret order (i.e. never leave survivors).
Bloodline Details
General outline (IN reproduces movements; VD drains + redistributes chakra through water)
Everyone
Full details (IN copies seals; VD can drain through mist)
Inner circle
Misc.
WHOOSH
Hazō, Mari, Noburi (+Kei)
Earthshaping's various abilities & Hazō's ambitions for 3D sealing
Inner circle (+Asuma)
Necromancy
Inner circle (+Shikamaru, Ami, an unknown number of other people that have been within earshot of Kagome)
Ritual to contact Jiraiya
Hazō, Mari, Noburi (+Naruto, Kei, Ino?)
Hazō's Jashinism
Hazō (+Kei/Shikamaru suspect Jashin may be real but do not know that Hazō is a Jashinist)
Hazō's SSA
Hazō
Orochimaru's XP lootboxes
Everyone (there is only one copy so Hazō keeps them and lends them out)
Orochimaru's personal affairs, excluding the egg custard
Hazō
Orochimaru's egg custard
Everyone
Let us know if we missed anything. Any further changes to OPSEC policy need to happen in plans.
Clarifying stagnancy interaction with sealing research
After receiving abundant feedback on how stagnancy might interact with sealing research, we want to make the following tentative statements about how we'll handle the interaction. As with stagnancy as a whole, these are all things that we're trialing – and if they end up producing unfun or unintended results, we'll simply change or remove them.
First, Hazō does not necessarily need to finish a project to remove stagnancy. Similarly, a single project may not necessarily be enough to remove stagnancy, if the complexity is low. Fewer rolls will be required the harder the project is.
Second, Hazō can roughly tell whether a project is likely to challenge him, and to what degree. For projects that he has more veterancy in, he'll only know after an infusion roll. For other projects in completely new domains, he may know after only a single prep day. This is because in newer domains, he can more easily understand what all he doesn't know and needs to learn, whereas in areas where he has veterancy, he needs to get more in the weeds to discern whether there's any new experiences for him to learn from.
Third, if you pick some axes of variation (e.g. numerical bonus, # of activations) and request that Hazō adjusts the project along the axes so that it removes stagnancy, we'll try our best to pick appropriately so that the project is difficult enough to remove stagnancy. Example:
Research Reusable Rocket Boots (vary bonus, # of activations to remove stagnancy)
Finally, in the interest of good faith, Hazō can remove the XP penalty associated with one Sealing stagnancy barrier while he is working on an appropriately difficult project. This is meant to match combat stagnancy, where we said we'd suspend penalties as soon as Hazō took a combat mission that was likely to remove his stagnancy.
An additional note: Hazō should try to remove sealing and combat stagnancy with his main body. Due to the inefficiency of SC memory-transfer, it will be much harder to remove stagnancy through Shadow Clones.
PSA: Ruling about adoptees
The Gōketsu adoptees (Mio etc) have been feeling cranky lately and in chapter 607 Snowflake mentioned that they have the legal right to leave the clan and return to the KEI. There's been player discussion about this and the QMs would like to nail down the cultural expectations:
Ordinarily, adoptees would be given basic clan techniques relatively quickly (although likely not day 1) but top-tier secrets would take much longer to earn. Born-clan will generally be given the basic techniques as children and will usually not get access to top-tier secrets until they are teens or twenty-somethings and have demonstrated sufficient power that the secrets are unlikely to be taken from them.
The sequence here went:
The Gōketsu adopt people
They immediately give the adoptees PCJ and other good stuff, but not FOOM or MARS (or probably some other stuff)
They do not ask for anything from the adoptee
The war happens and some members of the adoptees die
Mio, and probably others, are angry because they feel that those adoptees might not have died had they been given the good stuff
Over the past couple days I've been trawling through the timeline docs and noting every major event in the quest, in order to assemble this visual timeline of MfD:
(Edit: now updated for chapter 700!)
Each row covers 100 chapters, and each line is either a major event or something that we might care to know the timeframes of. For instance, it is now a lot easier to figure out when the Pangolin deal started, expanded, and ended. On the bottom side of each row is the in-universe time, tracking how long or how short each month was.
In terms of colours, I've split up the timeline into loose story arcs as best as I can, and the months are coloured according to what season they belong to.
My next update to this will be after we pass Chapter 700, because then I'll be able to add a new row to it. I've conferred with people on discord about whether I've missed anything so I'm relatively confident this is complete, but if anyone recalls anything I've missed I'll note it down and add it to the 700 edition.
In the meantime, I hope this proves useful to people who want to get a better grasp of what's happened in the quest and when![/SPOILER]
This jutsu specifies 'enemy' unnecessarily. Allies might be aware of the effects of it in a way enemies are not, but that does not preclude them from being affected by it. Posited change: Allies get +AB Athletics to avoid it, but still must make the roll. Alternately, if this still seems a little too strong, that could apply to only the user (because mumble mumble they're connected to the jutsu mumble mumble).
Exploit Potential:
No new things here, unless you consider the effects of Mud Trap to be distinct from those of Syrup Trap or Goo Bomb, in which case yes, there's that.
Combination Potential:
Combine with explosives or wide-area techniques to prevent dodging. May require additional adjudication if the techniques are sufficiently-expansive -- ie, if it covers the whole area regardless of cover (requires dodging out of the zone), will those stuck be forced to take the hit? If so, how is the amount of stress taken adjudicated?
Potential edge case:
How does this interact with explosives (zone-wide, implied damage if within the aoe at the end)? How does this interact with Vacuum Step or other non-substitution movement techniques? Suggestion: roll (non-substitution) jutsu level versus set TN (20? 30? AB+1*10?)
Soundness:
Rules clarification necessary here. Does this penalize other things similar to taijutsu and melee weapons, like Water Whip? Proposed solution is the addition of the phrase "Or jutsu of similar function" to the end of the phrase " the target takes a penalty to Athletics, Taijutsu, and Melee Weapons".
Good comment, fixed the 'enemy' line. Not changing the mechanics – if you prepare with allies that you might use Mud Trap on them, you might be able to create a taggable Aspect for them to dodge. (+1)
Would be good if you laid out those exploit effects.
Mechanically, a -3*(Effect) penalty doesn't keep you from moving, it just slows you down a lot. That would be accounted for in a roll against an AoE technique, as you can still technically move enough to find some cover.
Pretty weak in terms of attack power, though its stated to be "the most basic Earth-style ninjutsu," so that's likely by intent.
It has great range (being able to be cast from 2 zones away from the target), which is what likely makes it a viable attack jutsu.
Exploit potential:
This jutsu doesn't seem to do anything different. It molds the chakra in the users gut, and spits out a stone bullet (similar to Fire Dragon Bullet).
Since it is so low level, it may be a common jutsu to for Earth-element THers to hack. This may serve as narrative cause to have more Earth Element jutsu be formed by spitting the chakra shell out.
Combination potential:
The jutsu may combine well with fire jutsu (flaming bullet, incendiary ammo) or lightning jutsu (stun ammo).
In the case of lightning jutsu, it may be incompatible due to Elemental differences (Lightning beats Earth)
Edge cases:
A TH-er might be able to turn it into a long-range MEW or MARI, where you spit out a glob of Earth Element chakra that, upon landing on Earth, forms a MEW/MARI Wall.
Potential as a stealth attack with chakdar?
Since the flavortext is "spitting," ghost scales may prevent the expulsion (have we ever spat phlegm while GS was active)? I suggest that GS perceive outgoing jutsu as part of the caster, and allow it to pass.
Flame Aura might set the Stone Bullet on fire, if it is active prior to being cast.
Suggestions:
This changes the damage to Elemental, accounting for the fire.
This may cause the Stone Bullet to be treated as a Fire Element jutsu for the sake of the Elemental Typing Supremacy
Weakness to lightning could be supplanted by a weakness to water, and lose its strength to Water but gaining a strength to Wind
Flame Aura does not count the chakra shell to be sufficiently solid enough to set aflame (we know that it doesn't set the eyeballs of the caster aflame)
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me
No changes needed. These interactions are mostly things you don't need to worry about – two jutsu won't interact unless they say they do (e.g. Flame Aura won't set Earth Bullet on Fire, Ghost Scales will nicely let Earth Bullet to pass through).
This has pretty strong attack power if you level it up enough, and can target a lot of enemies at once if you level it up as well.
It has a pretty good range, able to target an enemy from 2 zones away.
The fact that the number of targets scales equally with Effect (which, in turn, scales with the AB of the jutsu) slightly worries me. It has a massive stronk factor going for it.
This is slightly diminished by the fact that each target can only be hit once, and that just because you have (random number, say...) 3 different attacks, doesn't mean 1 enemy can be hit 3 times.
I would recommend that this be further gated behind requiring a mid-tier elemental stunt, or perhaps doublecost to level if you're feeling ruthless. Or both, if you're feeling particularly sadistic.
Exploit potential:
Allows multi-targeting jutsu to be a thing for THing, but also pairs that with a high chakra cost. It may be that very few level it to that degree due to the cost in scaling. And it may be that those who do are forced to level chakra to an unusual amount out of necessity, leaving little room for getting TH high enough to make a meaningful change
Combination potential:
Since it shoots spikes out of the ground, it could be affected by jutsu that change the ground (such as Jiraiya's Swamp of the Earth, Syrup Trap, or Water Prison Jutsu (if your feet are still touching the ground)).
In the case of Syrup Trap, or other such Elemental Jutsu, I would posit that we refer to the Elemental Supremacy Chart to see who wins.
Earth beats water, so I'd say that ENS beats out Syrup Trap or Water Prison Jutsu.
If there's a Lightning Cage, then I'd say that Lightning Cage Jutsu wins.
In the case of an Earth Element like (maybe?) Swamp of the Earth, then I would rule that ENS would need a higher AB than SotE to be successfully cast.
Unless it was cast by the same ninja who is now casting ENS. In which case, I would rule that it "recognizes" your own chakra is "friendly" And passes. Though still subject to the aforementioned Elemental Supremacy Chart if applicable.
Edge cases:
Can it be cast through MEW? I would rule "Yes, but only if the MEW is a permanent chakra construct, and thus, real granite. Otherwise, the jutsu fails."
Overall soundness:
No typos, miscalculations, and the description seems sound.
This is very close to a "Save or Die" roll, with a losing roll not killing you but having essentially the same effect (capture or kill at the user's leisure). Most ninjutsu require handseals and those that don't do not generally mesh well with being stuck underground, like Substitution.
Moreover, the technique costs 12CP (holy balls is that low); and the enemy is (almost) always aboveground, disadvantaged, and cannot counterattack, meaning that very little prevents the user from using the technique.
NB: Does the enemy defend with Athletics, Taijutsu, xor do they choose? It's not fully clear from the jutsu description.
The user is also underground. Tunneling techniques tend to have the "0 Alertness relative to each other", so enemies tend to have significant difficulty targeting each other.
Unless the QMs have forgotten to add it, the user is not stated to need to know the target's location, so sensory techniques like Living Roots may not be needed. *hint hint*
Overall, this is an *extremely* strong jutsu with the only weakness being the strict leveling requirements needed to actually make use of the jutsu against the most powerful opponents. But this technique's design speaks to me as a capture/assassination ninjutsu against ninja on patrol or in a major city.
Exploit potential:
This gives tunneling enemies the ability to attack from underground, without having to surface or be put at risk of counterattack. Let all ninja fear underground shinobi assaults.
While the technique doesn't make the user S-rank or anything close to it, it makes them a Jonin-level threat against most enemies. Very few ninja have shown capabilities to fight against burrowing enemies, even with knowledge of their presence.
If these capabilities were widespread...there would be a lot more anti-Doton ninjutsu, or tactics to fight against burrowing enemies.
Combination potential:
The obvious combination potential involves HLaM, but a much more dangerous case would involve Tunneling Excavation, which makes the tunnel permanent for more time to use Headhunter and permits ease of jutsu-casting, (can speak and make handseals easily).
Since making sensory techniques a requirement will likely be added in, Living Roots and related sensory techniques are also important here.
No 'break-the-world' capabilities exist with the technique at this time.
Edge cases:
Goketsu is the clan of explosives, and an obvious combination potential would be to have the user attach an explosive to the target's leg, or simply push explosives up in lieu of actually grabbing an enemy.
I'm uncertain if this would allow the user to use Taijutsu instead of the jutsu, but it would at least provide a safe way to deliver explosives (as the user is in another Zone).
I would suggest the following changes:
Make explicit that Substitution cannot be used if they are trapped by Headhunter.
Make a sensory technique mandatory to make a target.
Permit counterattacks with some additional penalty in order to successfully counterattack. Example:
If the defender wins but below ...say, 9 Shifts, the attacker doesn't take damage.
If the defender wins but goes above 9 Shifts, the attacker still doesn't take damage but is forcibly moved onto the same Zone as the defender.
State that the user cannot plop explosives below an enemy's feet instead of making an attack or any actions along that vein.
Overall soundness:
No typos or miscalculations.
I fail to see the difference between passing a Physique 60 roll to get out and passing 10 Physique 50 rolls to get out, beyond the latter taking 10 Standard Actions. It's supposed to be louder, but the relevance seems unclear???
Good point in terms of using underground – added that it's nonverbal as you cannot speak underground. Added that the enemy may defend with a melee skill, but cannot deal counterattack damage. Details added. Added that the user can only attack an enemy they are aware of. Otherwise, the jutsu's strength is held back by it rolling ½ Taijutsu, basically crippling it against peer opponents. (+1)
You're right that techniques are needed that can fight against underground opponents. Considering that for the future.
Yep.
In general, we haven't gotten into the sticky situation of "hey, can we stick explosives onto someone on a hit?" Fortunately, I don't intend to get into that here. Explosives rules cover what happens if you push up an explosive already. Made Substitution explicitly forbidden. Good comment that a counterattack could move the attacker into the defender's Zone – I like that mechanic. Adding it. (+2)
Counting some of the comments under "strength" as soundness concerns. Difference in Physique is to make it possible for a Physique 40 person to escape in time. (+1)
This is a ranged weapon so it seems unreasonable for Kei not to be able to use it better than Akane, had they both the same level in it. Maybe it should roll the mean of its level and the user's ranged level, plus a small bonus? Which would make it worthwhile if you leveled it up to stronger than you could throw a kunai, but still had all the skills needed to make that throw count. (NB: I don't understand mechanics.)
Headhunter
This seems like it should be a variable effect depending on terrain type, with soil being meaningfully easier to escape from than these numbers suggest.
It seems pretty cool for nonlethal takedown, but much less in-principle useful than 'stick a finger above the surface and blast-ring them' if you aren't going for nonlethal. (Or just place a normal explosive, if you aren't Gōketsu.) So I don't expect this to be that useful for normal combat just based on the description.
Earth Pillar Jump
u feckin made MEW hop a jutsu. dude nice. i like ur jive
But seriously doesn't this make more sense as a stunt? Why would someone go through all the effort to Technique Hack a jutsu here, rather than just design an athletic technique?
Guiding Light
This seems weirdly short-lived, and I'm not sure why, given it has no significant combat applications and fire isn't hard to emulate.
Will O' The Wisp
I don't understand why this has no combat effect. Surely if you shove it in someone's face then it's going to do stuff? I thought maybe it's too slow, but it moves ~as fast as a fighting ninja, if I understand the zone rules.
Blazing Willpower
I don't understand why this exists.
If you could, like, directly will the seals in someone's pockets to catch on fire, I could see this being useful in niche cases. But my vague read is that it'd spawn closer to you, and they'd then see it approach.
Salamander's Breath
The leidenfrost effect might mean a person using this could wade through LN2 from an EN nuke. I don't expect anyone to know this, but then I also I don't expect anyone who has used it to realize it has limits, nor for those limits to have been tested in the aftermath of the first use.
If this is cheap, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone in Leaf who can learn it is suddenly encouraged to do so.
Controlled Immolation
I also don't understand why this exists (but this time you also have to sink levels into it?)
This seems awkward not to be sealless.
Flame Bullet
cf. Stone Bullet
I'm not super fond of Stone Bullet being equivalent to Flame Bullet but with a different chakra type. Eg. it'd make more sense for Flame Bullet to be harder to block with a kunai, but do less impact damage. Maybe this is something you do at the narrative level, but if you take the advice to mix the roll in with Ranged Weapons and then add a bonus, one option is to just make Stone Bullet have a bigger bonus to damage, versus Flame Bullet have a bigger bonus to hit chance. (Again, I don't know mechanics well enough to say what that looks like.)
Flame Eruption
I don't understand mechanics well enough to get why this doesn't obsolete Ranged Weapons for us. (Ranged Weapons stunts might change that, if we had some.)
I read this as being instakill, and this seems like a mistake, versus just doing high stress damage.
Flameburst
This seems pretty strong intuitively, even at low levels, but I'd suggest someone who understands mechanics better to actually verify that.
Burning Cloud
I think this is the sort of jutsu that deserves a more explicit account of what it actually does, outside of the combat-mechanical interpretation. Like, where is the cloud, what are people dodging, what sort of structures does it annihilate?
Flame Sphere
Sorry, is this literally rolling, or is it meant metaphorically? It's literally, right?
Chain Bullet Swarm
Sorry for being pernickety about combat mechanics not matching intuitive consequences, but surely shooting multiple targets with Chain Bullet Swarm should mean each target is less threatened by the attack than if all the bullets were aimed at a single target?
Blazing Dive
Is this good? Please someone tell me if this is good.
Skywalkers obviously make this better than it was initially, when some weird-ass ninja with an inevitably-short lifespan decided it needed to exist.
Volcanic Blast
This is a Kamehameha.
As such, it should take more chakra to charge.
I mean, c'mon, it's only honorable.
This seems damn strong as an ambush attack. Is anything else +3xAB? I think skill pyramids make this a pretty great pick for a runner-up jutsu, because of how well it can scale without being the capstone. (Again, I don't actually know what I'm talking about wrt. mechanics.)
Blacksmith's Blessing
The flavor doesn't really match the duration. I honestly don't think it'd hurt to up the cost and make this last a lot longer. At the same time, I get not wanting to risk cheap armour being in a library, even conditionally.
I would be shocked if there aren't synergies here. Akane definitely wants this.
Burning Fist
Something about the chakra cost of this being higher than so many other things, like Rising Sun Dragon, just feels really incongruous. The flavor would work better with the mechanics if it sounded correspondingly intense. Idk, maybe call it 'Nova Fist' or something, 'said to be as hot as the surface of the sun.'
Blazing Fists
OK but why is this one plural and the first one not, when they both affect both hands?
Since when is 'Burning' hotter than 'Blazing,' but more transient? These names are backwards.
I assume Burning and Blazing Fist/s aren't meant to stack (?).
Red Rain
This seems really good. The downsides are super manageable.
At level 70 this is AOE range 5, with a +16 to the roll, for 222 CP.
The 44/220 in the CP/strain total should be 42/210, I think.
Burning Chains
I'm possibly just being dumb but I don't see where it says what an attack rolls as.
Stone Bullet - Alas, ranged ninjutsu and ranged weapons are currently completely separate systems. This is a problem for later.
Headhunter - Good idea, added that the TNs can change depending on QM preference. (+1)
Earth Pillar Jump - The level matters, also this way it fills the pyramid.
Guiding Light - Sure, increased duration to half an hour, multiplying cost by 10x. (+1)
Will O' The Wisp - 1 Zone per round is about as far as a ninja can move when they're also fighting and casting ninjutsu and doing everything else a fight entails. A ninja can actually run much faster. Moreover, it isn't very maneuverable.
Blazing Willpower - E.g. you're tied up and need to escape the ropes.
Flame Bullet - It is already the case that parrying (e.g. with Hazou's gauntlets) affects physical projectiles like Stone Bullet but not energy ones like Earth Bullet.
Flame Eruption - Changed text to "dodge or get burned".
Flameburst - With some levels, it's a good "get off me" to buy a round in combat.
Burning Cloud - Added detail. (+1)
Flame Sphere - Yes, literally. (+1)
Chain Bullet Swarm - The mechanics do not support making multiple attacks on one person with this technique. If you want, pretend that the bullets travel on straight lines, so attacking one person 6x would be as easy to dodge as attacking them 1x.
Blazing Dive - It's a massive taijutsu buff and a decent AoE. Best use-case: one-shot the enemy commander with the TJ attack and get all the minions at the same time.
Volcanic Blast - Good point, added an explicit discount in the jutsu spec for the charging cost. (+1)
Blacksmith's Blessing - Good point, increased duration. (+1)
Burning Fist - The chakra cost starts higher, but doesn't scale as well. This is because a lot of perks are being purchased up front (e.g. Supplemental, weapons rating). If you want, pretend that the cost is because chakra is being used inefficiently in order to be fast.
Blazing Fists - Sure, made them both "Fist" and swapped the names. Nothing at the time stopped them from stacking. Now, the buff rework keeps same-element jutsu from stacking. (+1)
Doesn't deal damage, so that knocks it down about half a tier; enough, I think for it to fit comfortably within the confines of the public jutsu repository. CP seems reasonable. Range at first seemed low, but then I noticed it rounds up, which seems reasonable enough. A little on the weak side as far as its effects go, perhaps, but there's lots of potential in jolly cooperation, whether from clones or other people, to balance that out
Exploit Potential:
Can't see anything wrong in this regard.
Combination Potential:
Well, once we get some decent armor ... actually, no, come to think of it, this jutsu can possibly make *wearing* armor viable. More into that later. But once we have some armor, this combines well with any number of sealtech things. Drag someone into melee with a banshee while we have a slayer on, Just Explode Them, etc.
With a bit of hacking, this could be made into a jutsu that either delivers seals more easily and effectively, or one that wields many weapons. Either would be cool, though I don't see them being particularly broken.
Edge Cases: Lots here.
What happens if you grab yourself?
Does the jutsu leave objects wet?
Can the jutsu deliver something (a seal) to the target?
My suggested answers, ordered:
No mechanical benefit or drawback (A stunt or different jutsu might allow using this jutsu instead of Athletics).
Yes if cast from real water, no otherwise. If cast from real water, a wakahisa user may drain a target connected, though this does require a standard action as usual, and so vampiric dew may not be used by the wielder of this technique.
Yes, though the user cannot supply it, nor do they emerge at set locations around them, so placing them on the ground is insufficient. A clone or ally can supply them with activated seals, resulting in the jutsu being rolled for damage as well, in like manner to Ranged Weapons.
Regarding the comment on armor above: It seems plausible with the stunt that would allow use of this technique instead of athletics, that it would elide the ineffectiveness of actual armor, and allow use of point-blank explosives to people that do not have the Iron Nerve.
Soundness:
The text of the jutsu is easy enough to understand, absent the above edge cases.
I will note that the strain calculations are... strained by the existence of multiple variables in its calculation (effect, range, and aoe). They seem accurate, but it's difficult to judge.
Clarified edge cases. Cannot grab or move yourself, can damage objects that are damaged by water, doesn't necessarily leave water behind, and the jutsu is an instant "reach, grab, pull" that doesn't let you deliver objects. (+1)
When you say the strain calculation is correct, our expectation is that you will have actually checked it with a calculator.
What counts as an object? Is it more similar to a storage seal's definition or to 5SB's definition of object?
If there are multiple objects in your hands can you choose one of them or are all automatically chosen?
Do chakra/chakra constructs count as objects (ex: stone/fire/air bullet)?
Exploit Potential:
If object definition is closer to 5SB's. And you can choose which objects in your hand to immolate. Can create vacuums by holding a metal sphere filled with water. And immolating the water. Unclear applications for small vacuums.
You would also be able to dissect small body parts. Holding a finger between palms. Remove the skin of a finger. Then the collage/muscles. Then the bones. Etc. Applications for leaf's medical people.
If you can immolate chakra. You can immolate just the chakra from small living animals. Potential applications in studying chakra and their effects on biological systems. As the alternative to removing chakra from a living animal is to like stab it until it dies.
This is a weaker Substitution. Bonus to dodging via Athletics as a Supplemental Action, but as a generally smaller bonus and costing more per cast.
The real benefit is the fact that it works as a Supplemental Action, AND seems to be stackable with Substitution itself to avoid attacks in general.
Furthermore, in pitched combat the user may need to roll Athletics multiple times; this jutsu works really really well with that since it's a one-cast technique for 30s (ie the duration of most ninja fights).
It's not a jutsu that will be leveled to the extreme, but is rather useful for ninja that use Athletics (which is, quite honestly, all of them).
Exploit potential:
Anything this can do Substitution can do [better/differently].
Without hidden mechanics or additional details, no obvious exploit seems present.
Combination potential:
Combination with Substitution to increase dodging abilities is highly useful, and the multi-tag aspect allows the user to save chakra in more pitched combat.
If Windwalker works with Skywalkers, it would provide a way to boost Athletics-related skills during Skywalker combat where Substitution cannot (due to being in midair/no valid targets).
Edge cases:
Kei and Mari are the only major Goketsu with this ability, and while it synergizes with both, they already have Substitution and Wind Wall and Skywalkers which accomplish most of the same goals; adding Windwalker to their arsenal grants additive bonuses and not synergistic bonuses.
Goketsu seals do not strongly synergize with this technique, save Skywalkers which have been mentioned earlier.
An amusing interaction (which may be incompatible with the narrative) would involve using Windwalker at a high enough level to smash to an enemy who has burrowed under the ground. This interaction may need to be patched by more clearly determining what the Border to go underground is.
Personal mechanics question related to a rules clarification (not necessarily this jutsu): How many times can an Aspect like Windwalker be tagged on the same roll?
Overall soundness:
No miscalculations and clear mechanics.
The strain calculation has been miswritten as "145, 165, 195, 235, 285… CP".
Thankfully, we're not concerned with the "Border" of passing from above-ground to below ground – that's a transition that's going to be covered by narrative abilities, not by regular combat Sprints.
Good catch (+1)
In general, any Aspect can provide only 1 tag per roll. For multiple tags to be applied to one roll, the jutsu must contain the "Multi-taggable" advantage (e.g. Pantokrator's Hammer, Flame Aura).
Cast atop an Earth Dome or a permanent MEW Wall (such as the one we've put up around the old Goketsu estate, or Leaf's Wall) could allow for a larger block (such as blocking a meteor-esque attack) than originally intended
Combination potential:
Can't think of anything
Edge cases:
We already have the superior MEW
Casting MEW atop this jutsu might be wonky, since it conjures a "stone" wall, and "stone" might count as sufficiently "earth" for a successful cast. I would rule that MEW either fails completely, or disintegrates when the EW does.
Overall soundness:
The Range is listed as (-2) which is "personal effect, only the caster." However, the text description says "...Any ranged attack targeting you or your allies within Melee of you..."
The wording of this implies that EW can be used to protect allies as well, meaning that the Range of the jutsu should, perhaps, be (-1), which is "within melee range of the caster.
I suspect the intent of the jutsu may be "this is a primary self-defense jutsu, but the width of the construct means that allies who are within melee range of the jutsu are serendipitously protected by the rising Earth Wall."
Guiding Light
Strength:
Good utility cantrip.
No combat potential, but could be used to burn rope, canvas, cloth, or other such things (molotov cocktail?)
Cannot be used until level 10 is a decent enough drawback that (along with its uselessness in combat) I could see it being overlooked by most ninja
Exploit potential:
It might light things on fire.
Combination potential:
Does it stack with other Alertness-boosting things (such as chakdar?)
Edge cases:
The Goketsu carry so many storage seals that its a meme. Carrying flammable-level alcohol/oils seems reasonable.
May want to rule about the creation of molotov cocktails.
Maybe the chakra construct burns brightly, but does not burn anything?
If the light is bright enough to give a boost towards Examination or Alertness, then it should give an equal debuff towards stealth.
perhaps the enemy ninja also gets a free tag on the "Guided by the Fire's Light" for the purposes of Alertness?
This could(?) be resolved by saying "everyone within the zone, or close enough narratively to benefit from the additional light, receives the associated buff, but only the caster gets a free tag."
Overall soundness:
No typos, math is correct, rules are precise.
Reminds me of Uncle Iroh in the tunnel with Aang.
Earth Pillar Jump
Strength:
Seems really good at first glance, especially with the two stunts available for it.
Earth Element Rocket Boots, basically
Might want to raise the XP cost of the aforementioned stunts, and/or the EPJ level prerequisite
Exploit potential:
Can Substitution or Vacuum Step be cast mid-air? If so, then this has some really powerful synergy (especially with the stunt that extends the duration of the jutsu).
Combination potential:
Aforementioned Subsitution or Vaccuum Step.
Could make it so that the caster cannot perform jutsu while midair.
Maybe the sheer speed you're moving at means that you can't focus enough to mold chakra properly.
Maybe an additional stunt bypasses this, with a high stat prerequisite (Resolve? Sub/VS 50? Both?)
Edge cases:
See: Aforementioned Vaccuum Step, but Rocket Boots could also serve as an additional factor. When stacked with the baseline ESP, it could, potentially, achieve the "30 seconds" duration that the second available stunt provides without actually buying the stunt.
Maybe it's more uncontrolled? Harder to dodge as effectively? Caster counts as "flat-footed" unless they have the Rocket Boots athletics training stunt "Rocket Jump!" ?
Overall soundness:
No typos, stat calcs are right, and mechanics seem right
You say "weaker MEW", I say "defensively viable MEW" – note how it gains a very high defensive bonus at high levels. E.g. at level 60, you can cast it at Effect 4, getting a bonus of 7*4 = 28 on your defensive roll. Adding boost, that means you could defend yourself and all your (potentially squishy) allies at 60 + 7 + 28 = 95, at the cost of a lot of chakra and a Supplemental.
We'll rule this as it comes. Not worth making a ruling about.
Yep.
Clarified that this is chakra construct stone (+1)
You cannot cast it away from you, but the AoE (melee) lets you protect allies.
Guiding Light
Yep. Note pyramid filler potential.
Yep.
Yep.
I don't particularly want to rule on molotov cocktails. A bonus to Alertness is effectively a malus to Stealth. The Aspect will exist – anyone can invoke it but only you get the tag. Narratively, you'll also be very visible.
Yep.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Earth Pillar Jump
Yep. No need to raise the stunt price, they're just supposed to be a minor barrier to give you the option of forsaking those capabilities.
Why would being cast midair have an exploit here? The jutsu definitely requires contact with the ground to have any benefit.
It's a ball of flame, so I doubt it'll be very stealthy (depending on lines of sight, weather conditions, and the like)
Potential to set things aflame from hella long distances
Set mundane traps (alcohol spills, oil barrels, ropes holding traps)
Combination potential:
How does wind jutsu affect it? Does it cause firestorms, or give it meaningful damage? If it burns, does that fire spread? Potential for Cat Firestorm shenanigans (but at a distance, and/or Very Long Width firestorm)
Edge cases:
Misterator with alcohol?
Storage seal shenanigans?
Wind jutsu creating meaningful damage?
Overall soundness:
No typos or miscalculations.
Can you do the handseals, and then have the fireball appear 5 zones away, or does it appear beside the caster and then have to traverse the distance?
Blazing Willpower
Strength:
Useless for combat
Sealless and silent, which are pretty hecking good things to have
It's only utility that I can think of is to break rope.
Does it burn through Earth bonds (like if you were trapped in an Earth Element stocks) at a longer duration?
It's explicitly stated to have been made for escaping bonds, and is useless in combat due to focus and casting speed.
Might be ripe for munchkinry if it burns that hot.
It does one thing and it does that one thing well. I doubt it's a popular jutsu, but I imagine that Fire Element I&S ninja probably learn it.
Exploit potential:
I can't really think of anything.
Might be able to boil water, set things aflame, and change temperature of the room they're held in.
Combination potential:
Maybe buff techniques?
What about if the user is already on fire (a la Flame Aura?)
Edge cases:
I can't really think of anything.
Kagome's Isanese not-girlfriend invented locking seals. Locking is a type of bond or restraint. If this jutsu is used to burn through a locking seal, does it decrease the chance of sealing failure?
Overall soundness:
No typos, mechanics are clear, and the calculations look right.
Salamander's Breath
Strength:
Seems decent utility for cold weather environments? Save money on cold weather gear, but not overwhelmingly so.
Exploit potential:
Does this technique create any new qualitatively new capabilities?
If these capabilities were widespread, how would the world look different? Why doesn't it look different?
Can it warm the area around the caster, by warming the caster? Could cause snowmelts, or burn up seals?
Combination potential:
May allow the user to endure EM Nuke weather?
Edge cases:
Does it stack with armor jutsu, like Ghost Scales? What about buff jutsu, like Flame Aura?
I would rule "yes," provided that they do not break the special breathing exercise (idk, a stunt to that effect? SB at lvl 20?)
Since the flavor text is "fire chakra in stomach," can a ninja have SB active and also cast something like Earth Bullet?
I would rule "no," unless they have the aforementioned stunt about being able to maintain the special breathing technique
Overall soundness:
No typos
Calcs are correct
What happens if the user is unable to maintain the special breathing exercise (out of breath, punched in the diaphragm, etc)? Does the jutsu fade immediately? Does it break painfully?
I would suggest that the duration continues, but that the caster receives a moderate amount of stress once the duration ends.
You should really clarify what you mean by "storage seal shenanigans" – I have no clue what the exploit could be based on this line alone.
Yep, you can make it appear 5 Zones away. If this seems like a dangerous thing, we can add "only appears next to the user" to the spec later.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Blazing Willpower
We'll leave the question about it being used to escape Earth Element bonds to the narrative circumstances in which it arises.
Yep.
Yep.
I don't particularly see why it would reduce the chance of a sealing failure.
Yep.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Salamander's Breath
Yep.
You may have forgotten to change the stock text for this section. It warms the area around the caster only as much as normal radiating heat would. Not enough to burn seals, yes enough to melt snow (slowly).
Yep.
Yep, it stacks with armor jutsu, as it isn't armor. It doesn't provide a buff to any roll by default, so it stacks with buff jutsu (but it could provide a tag on e.g. a Physique check to brave the cold, in which case it may require a stunt to combine with e.g. a Physique bonus granted by PEA).
If you fail to fulfill the requirements to cast the jutsu, as elsewhere, the chakra is lost and the jutsu fails to take effect. Once the jutsu is cast, it carries on to completion regardless of the user's level of distraction.
We may require rulings on its combination with rocket boots, as the unique nature of rocket boots in explosive adjustment of momentum makes me think that you might find use in the EPJ tags for taijutsu.
Good thought. Earth Pillar Jump now allies to all physical combat skills. As per usual, you can buy a buff combination stunt to combine EPJ with Rocket Boots. (+1)
Difficult to discern, because it is unclear if this jutsu does damage.
If not, it seems... workable but weak as a utility jutsu, if you have the element stunts Paper likely has on the docket for you.
Without those, I cannot imagine anyone ever using this without something to combine it with.
If so, there's friendly fire risk, but otherwise a fairly good attack.
Exploit potential:
Forced movement is a whole can of worms, as any tabletop GM can agree with. Lots of potential there.
However, this would be no more or less damaging to the cohesion of the story than any other forced movement. It gets a pass here for me.
Do remain aware of the complications it could introduce, though, as I will discuss in later sections
Combination potential:
Combine this with literally any "hazardous border" technique (Flame Wall, 5SB nets, etc.), , and it turns what's already inconvenient or dangerous (Raging Wave) into an existential threat. This does require adjudication, though.
Doesn't break the world, though, as it still requires you hit, something which carries along with it a number of other nasties if you were to use a different jutsu instead.
Edge cases:
Note: Many of these edge cases are not unique to this jutsu, and may be reused for other forced-movement jutsu, if there are any.
Here we get into the nitty gritty:
How does this function with Borders of zones? Does it ignore them? Does it subtract the number of zones? Add additional damage?
I'd suggest an amount of stress (either 1 or 2, depending on your ideas of balance) based on how many zones aren't crossed.
What about non-physical borders (ie flame wall instead of earth wall)?
Setting aside the question of the elemental interactions (which may reduce the effectiveness of the Raging Wave-Flame Wall combo in particular), how does this function in the general case? It seems a little weird for a jutsu pushing you through a wall to ignore the effectiveness of the wall in blocking you, or its extraneous effects. I'd suggest the following:
For any Border whose crossing has an effect determined by Athletics, treat the Raging Wave roll as the athletics check for crossing
For instance, being pushed across a Flame Wall would be modeled as [Forced Movement Tech roll that pushed target, in this case Raging Wave] versus Flame Wall's TN
For any Border whose crossing has an effect determined by Physique (IE, a Lightning Wall that locks up nerves or whatever), roll as normal, but if Raging Wave does not ordinarily do damage on excess shifts, on a failure of the example jutsu, it would, due to inability to brace themselves.
For any Border whose crossing has an effect determined by Alertness (IE, a 5SB web), roll at narratively appropriate penalty. This is not intended to be easy -- something like a -2 or 3xAB would not be inappropirate. Sucks to suck, but I cannot imagine having the spatial awareness to contort yourself as you are being sent flying to avoid a barely visible web to be easy.
How does being tossed into a bunch of pre-set-up traps, both sealing and otherwise, work?
I suggest a penalty to rolls to avoid said traps, in addition to some amount of unavoidable stress from them, depending on the nature of the traps in question. Or instant death, if the traps are sufficiently well made.
Overall soundness:
As mentioned, unclear if this jutsu does damage -- it is an 'attack' and not a 'maneuver' jutsu, but it does not have weapon numbers.
If it does not do damage, then it should probably have a disadvantage for that. If it does, it should have a weapon number either listed or described.
Otherwise, the mechanics are clear, with the exception of the lack of clarity in Strain numbers due to the multiple variables in its calculation, something I mentioned in a different technique.
Yes, it does damage (as should any ninjutsu with the "Attack" type). Clarified. (+1)
Yep.
Yep.
Excellent feedback. Added "at GM's discretion, the target may not be moved and instead will take stress representing being slammed into a wall or other border (amount determined at the time)". The target will mostly have to suffer the effect of being pushed through traps and ninjutsu. While this seems like a pain to have a rule for, I'll make a first pass at one: "Untargeted effects (that don't provide an opportunity to dodge) automatically trigger as the target passes through the relevant Zones. Targeted effects are applied as if the Raging Wave roll is used to dodge (though the target may have some influence – e.g. applying an Aspect related to uncanny coordination). If Substitution was used to dodge Raging Wave, the target may evade some or all of the effects of being moved at GM's discretion, as they trigger their Substitution only after being attacked." The penalty to avoid traps would be related to the Consequences they just took, if any. (+2, as this was particularly helpful)
The low chakra cost combined with Shadow Clone makes for a theoretically interesting combo, since it could allow a ninjutsu spec to fight with SC in combat. Assuming you leveled a good jutsu to 60, a half-cost Bullet at level 60 several times a turn is somewhat practical (but not overwhelmingly good) with SC.
Edge cases:
Unlike the other Bullet techniques, this one presumably has some solid weight to it, which could trigger pressure-sensitive things.
Overall soundness:
Seems fine.
Earth Needle Spears
Strength:
Multitarget for a low cost is solid, but lack of attack bonus makes it just alright.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Does this work even when not standing on earth? As it's worded, it seems to work anywhere, and doesn't possess the 'elemental requirement' tidbit. So does it only matter that the caster casts from flat ground, or does it also need to emerge from flat ground? If you were indoors on the second story, would this come out of the wood floor?
Overall soundness:
Seems good. Fun jutsu, I like it.
Headhunter
Strength:
Save-or-suck is usually good, but the half-taijutsu roll prevents it from being too good. Even an EJonin with Taijutsu 80 is only going to be rolling at most at 40 + flat-footed bonus without investing in other stunts/bonuses. At that point they may as well just punch the chuunin they're fighting instead (since I doubt they'll be hitting a jonin with it). Seems basically useless on peers without investing a lot of FP which would likely be better spent on a standard taijutsu attack, especially for higher-level fighting, even keeping in mind that successfully landing this attack probably instantly wins the fight.
Exploit potential:
Doesn't seem too egregious. May be a useful way to capture and contain chakra beasts.
Combination potential:
Pairs well with any debuffs/environmental factors allies can create, since you only need them to last for a single round to instantly defeat the target of this technique.
Edge cases:
Goo bombs better CMV
Overall soundness:
Seems a bit weak to me, but that's probably okay. It can be usable, but it feels to me like you need to intentionally build around it somewhat, rather than picking it up to add to your build.
Mud Trap
Strength:
Works well as a block/battlefield control. I kinda hope Syrup trap gets updated to function similarly to this one.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Assuming that the elemental superiority still holds, presumably striking a trapped victim with lightning would be notably more effective.
Edge cases:
It says it targets "Enemies in that zone and any enemies that enter that Zone" which would imply it doesn't affect allies or the user. Does the user need to actively prevent it from affecting their allies for the entire duration of the jutsu or does it know who to target at the time of casting?
Overall soundness:
I like this jutsu a lot.
Earth Wall
Strength:
An expensive but extremely potent defensive option, especially when fighting as a group. Even at Chuunin level, this can block a pretty good chunk of potential attacks, though of course at a high chakra expense for a Chuunin.
Exploit potential:
Having a group of 3-4 ninja who all know this technique could allow each of them to use it once per combat and be nearly immune to ranged offensives for the whole combat. Not overpowered since there are ways to force people to move, just interesting.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
It says that you and allies can't be hit by ranged attacks if they don't exceed the block, but does this still apply to people who attack from a zone that's behind the wall? Is that something kinda abstracted away? Or is the wall circular?
Overall soundness:
It says 'strain' twice at the bottom, when the lefthand box should say 'CP.'
Otherwise fine.
Earth Pillar Jump
Strength:
Multi-taggable is always good. Seems like a decent option to raise along with Substitution for a good defense. Depending on how Extended Earth Pillars works, the stunt could either be outstandingly good or just good. Two tags to add to Athletics every round seems very strong if it doesn't cost additional action economy, considering that this is also a supplemental by default.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Curious how this interacts with Rocket Boots.
Does it stack with Substitution? Considering that it throws the user in the air it intuitively doesn't seem like it would.
Does this allow for additional Zones of movement per round?
When using Extended Earth Pillars, does it cost a supplemental every time to add this to a dodge roll, or does it take any action economy at all?
All check / things that don't need changes/ruling imo. No bonus XP since this one was already audited.
Earth Needle Spears
Yes, it would come out from a wood floor (as it does not have "Elemental Requirement" on the jutsu spec). It would not work in the sky for narrative reasons. Added a line clarifying this (+1).
Headhunter
Because it is based on ½ Taijutsu, note that you can use it at ~max efficacy by keeping it halfway down your pyramid. You're right that it's mostly better to just attack them directly almost always.
Mud Trap
Why would striking a victim with Lightning chakra be more effective? My interpretation of elemental superiority would be that someone trying to struggle free with a Lightning ninjutsu would have an advantage.
Someone already caught the "enemies" line.
Earth Wall
The wall has some size and bend, but there should be a way for ranged attacks to circumvent it as it is not fully circular. Added a line saying that subject to QM judgment, ranged attackers that spend movement to reposition may circumvent the wall. (+1)
Earth Pillar Jump
It can stack with Rocket Boots – just requires the combination stunt.
Stacks with Substitution. It's not throwing the user around so much as it is pushing the user along, but not breaking contact with the earth. Here's a reference for how I imagine it: 28 Earthbending Abilities (Avatar)
As per usual with buffs, it costs the action economy to activate, then you receive tags on it at the start of every subsequent turn without sustain action economy required.
The low chakra cost combined with Shadow Clone makes for a theoretically interesting combo, since it could allow a ninjutsu spec to fight with SC in combat. Assuming you leveled a good jutsu to 60, a half-cost Bullet at level 60 several times a turn is somewhat practical (but not overwhelmingly good) with SC.
Edge cases:
None
Overall soundness:
This is more of a general observation, but if Lightning tends to beat out Energy Armor, Energy Armor seems to not be that useful against anything but Fire, which may or may not be intended, since Earth, Wind, and Water are generally Physical. Maybe this is why the techniques are rare lmao
44. Claw of the Storm
Strength:
Slightly underpowered, which seems right.
Exploit potential:
None
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
May make sense that this jutsu also ignores cover, considering that it hails down from the sky.
Overall soundness:
Solid.
45. Electroweb
Strength:
Pretty powerful debuff.
This makes for a decent capstone imo, I don't see anyone who gets hit by this avoiding further damage afterward, and if you're not a ninjutsu user your own attacks are also debuffed. Even at level 40, that's a -10 to Athletics/Taijutsu/MW/RW, a huge penalty to fleeing, on top of any actual damage/consequence inflicted by the jutsu. This is, if anything, too much on the stronger side for a Leaf library Lightning jutsu, especially since it attacks an entire Zone.
Exploit potential:
If this stacks with itself, it makes it significantly stronger. A Cloud squad all carrying this in their back pocket could take down a much stronger opponent very quickly. Still not busted by any means, but that's a use case I could envision.
Combination potential:
Goes well with basically everything, including itself.
Edge cases:
None come to mind that aren't raised in other sections.
Overall soundness:
I would possibly make it inflict no stress, or maybe ⅓ instead of ½. Bumping up its chakra cost could also make sense. As it stands I think it's a bit too strong for being in the Leaf library. I'd happily take no nerfs, of course.
Very fun jutsu, I like it.
46. Thunderburst
Strength:
Good but very expensive buff.
Exploit potential:
None comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
I assume this stacks with ACE pretty naturally.
Overall soundness:
Simple and cool. Thumbs up.
47. Lightning Bucklers
Strength:
Pretty strong, worse but akin to Flame Aura. Worse in that the tags are more limited in use and not multi-taggable, but better in that it doesn't explode in your face upon ending and costs substantially less CP. Also, it's a Supplemental, which is really good for a buff of this strength. I suggest making it a Standard but it's probably still balanced either way.
Exploit potential:
None unique to this jutsu come to mind.
Combination potential:
None unique to this jutsu come to mind.
Edge cases:
None unique to this jutsu come to mind.
Overall soundness:
Solid jutsu.
"When the user lands a Taijutsu attack, the target must roll Physique against Sparking Touch" and similar quotes name "Sparking Touch" as the skill to roll against. I feel like that should say roll Physique against "Lightning Bucklers" since Sparking Touch is the name of the aspect, not the opposed skill. I don't really understand how one could roll against an Aspect. It goes on to say things like:
"The initial roll to avoid getting the Aspect is made with Physique vs Sparking Touch"
"The second roll at the end of the target's turn is made with Physique vs Sparking Touch - AB"
"The third roll at the end of the target's next turn is made with Physique vs Sparking Touch - 2*AB"
It sounds like maybe this was originally called Sparking Touch (perhaps it was lifted from LotroL or something?) but I think those need to be corrected.
48. Divine Serpent
Strength:
This seems like better Lightning Dragon Bullet (from LotroL, though it also seems better than MfD WDB) to me. It's much cheaper for one thing. You lose out on the attack bonus, but it has way better casting range and being able to use the preceding roll for the other attacks makes me think that you could stack up on bonuses and invokes for the first attack and then use that roll several times, which is way better unless you're out of FP. This is especially true if your opponent is forced to repeatedly burn FP to dodge the successive attacks.
Yep (Lightning's special quality either makes Lightning really good… or Energy armor really bad).
(+1 for doing an audit)
Claw of the Storm
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Good point, added a line about it ignoring certain kinds of cover. (+1)
Yep.
Electroweb
Yep.
Clarified that it does not stack with itself (no jutsu stacks with itself by default, Blood Bullet from the Chuunin Exams is a notable exception). (+1)
Yep.
Yep.
I thought it was fine, but I'll trust your balance intuition and reduce the stress down to 1 per 3 shifts. (+1)
Thunderburst
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
…yes, this stacks with ACE in a way that evades the buff stacking limit.
Yep.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Lightning Bucklers
It's been a Supplemental before – this is Haru's technique that he handed in to the Contest on Gouketsu's behalf.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, this was lifted wholesale from elsewhere and renamed to Haru's technique. Fixed in all locations. (+1)
Divine Serpent
The intention is to make a FP-efficient attack. Made the following balance changes accordingly:
Decreased initial range to 2 (in the text).
Increased the cost of the "Roll choice" advantage.
Added a line clarifying that a single target can only be targeted once.
The low chakra cost combined with Shadow Clone makes for a theoretically interesting combo, since it could allow a ninjutsu spec to fight with SC in combat. Assuming you leveled a good jutsu to 60, a half-cost Bullet at level 60 several times a turn is somewhat practical (but not overwhelmingly good) with SC.
Edge cases:
None
Overall soundness:
Seems fine.
50. Heavenly Typhoon
Strength:
Decently strong. Making (Effect) attacks is pretty good even without getting a bonus to the roll. Making (Effect) attacks per person in melee range is even better but I'm not sure that's what was intended. It may mean (Effect) attacks total, to be distributed among valid targets.
Exploit potential:
None unique to this jutsu come to mind.
Combination potential:
Assuming it's (Effect) attacks per target, seems very good action-economy wise if the user or their allies can first force multiple enemies to enter melee with the user.
Edge cases:
We need those Flood Seals ASAP!
Overall soundness:
I think it should be a little more clear whether it's (Effect) attacks total that can be used on targets in range, or if it's (Effect) attacks for each target in range. I assume it's the former, but I'm not sure.
Balance wise, I like it.
51. Raging Wave
Strength:
Interesting utility but not strong per se.
Exploit potential:
There may be some cheese I'm not thinking of, but I doubt there's anything setting-breaking.
Combination potential:
Pairs well with lining up targets for other small AOE jutsu or pushing them into traps.
Edge cases:
Curious to see how this interacts with skywalkers. How high does it reach?
How does Substitution interact with this jutsu? I assume you can't warp through it, and if you teleport somewhere else that still gets hit by the wave that doesn't seem to help much. Can you only substitute away from it?
Overall soundness:
As with the preceding entry I think it should be a little more clear whether it's (Effect) attacks total that can be used on targets in range, or if it's (Effect) attacks for each target in range. I assume it's the former, but I'm not sure.
I'm not certain this is actually worth leveling even as a half cost skill, despite me thinking that it's cool, since it needs to be at the top of the pyramid to do anything at all against peers. A full standard to maybe push people seems kind of weak. It's at least cheap unless you've got like 5 people in melee I guess. May need to be buffed just a bit.
If used over a body of water I think the zone-pushing should be increased by 1 to a max of 3.
Could specify some kind of interaction with Fire Jutsu, perhaps it could be able to be cast reflexively to block them or something.
Maybe the user could target themselves to move?
It could inflict a fragile aspect or some Flat-Footed equivalent on the affected target.
52. Water Wall
Strength:
Decent defensive/battlefield control jutsu.
Exploit potential:
None immediately spring to mind.
Combination potential:
Surrounding someone in a given zone by putting borders on all sides of the border they're in seems like it could lead to interesting strategies.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Cool and clear in purpose. I like it.
53. Hiding in the Water
Strength:
Situationally strong.
Exploit potential:
Could combine with jutsu that create bodies of water for hiding purposes, but given that those are generally Chakra Constructs, probably isn't exceptionally useful.
Combination potential:
Nothing immediately springs to mind.
Edge cases:
If there is a fight occurring underwater, could this come up the way Hiding in the Mist does?
Gotta get those dang flood seals!
Also note to self, commission or create waterproof pilot-esque helmets with air seals inside…
Overall soundness:
Solid.
54. Grasping Tentacles
Strength:
Useful but not particularly powerful without a secondary melee effect.
Exploit potential:
None immediately springs to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo at the bottom, says CP in both column 2 and 3.
Very cool, I like it.
If I were to change anything I would have it persist between rounds, though I'm not sure if that would be too strong or not.
Heavenly Typhoon lets you select (Effect) targets and make 1 attack per chosen target, with the attack being rolled against everyone in melee. This has been clarified. (+1)
Yep.
This was clarified above. It's a ranged attack.
Yep.
Yep.
Raging Wave
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
No special interaction with skywalkers – skywalking targets can be pushed away by the jets as well. No special interaction with Substitution, the jets are targeted enough that it's possible to Substitute laterally and evade the jets. Maybe narratively, this should be a more AoE-y wave, but Surging Seas has already kinda got that covered. Still, changing the name to "Raging Waves" to better indicate that the waves are distinct. (+1)
Clarified targeting language. Note that it's not just moving people around, it also does stress (as it is an Attack-type ninjutsu). (+1)
Water Wall
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Hiding in the Water
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Added a line saying that any bonuses are halved against opponents that are also underwater. (+1)
Yep.
Grasping Tentacles
Yep. Would be great with an auto-attacking skill like Storm Wisps…
The low chakra cost combined with Shadow Clone makes for a theoretically interesting combo, since it could allow a ninjutsu spec to fight with SC in combat. Assuming you leveled a good jutsu to 60, a half-cost Bullet at level 60 several times a turn is somewhat practical (but not overwhelmingly good) with SC.
Edge cases:
None
Overall soundness:
Seems fine.
56. Silent Sickle
Strength:
Doesn't seem very strong until AB:4, where it starts to become pretty good. Being able to attack (Effect) Zones within (Effect) Range is well worth the increasingly exorbitant cost. I could potentially even see this being used by jonin with sizeable chakra pools, since they could basically sweep the entire battlefield, though they probably find a superior replacement by that point.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Solid.
57. Windwalker
Strength:
Acceptable movement/athletics buff.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Does this work with Skywalkers?
Overall soundness:
Typo at the bottom, it says CP in the second and third column.
Straightforward and balanced.
58. Razor Shuriken
Strength:
Pretty strong for a Supplemental Buff especially since carries over to the next round, but appropriately expensive as well. Weapons 2 and Range 3 for RW and +Effect are no joke for a supplemental.
Exploit potential:
None immediately comes to mind.
Combination potential:
None immediately comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Does this only apply to shuriken or is that just the name of the jutsu?
What counts as a shuriken for this purpose? Does it need to be made of a certain material for instance? What about a conjured shuriken?
Overall soundness:
Simple and strong. Kei may want to pick this one up.
59. Gale Strike
Strength:
Possibly a bit underpowered, but more akin to what I'd want from Raging Wave. No limit on number of zones moved and also inflicting stress and aspects makes it much better for the same niche imo.
Exploit potential:
There's probably some cheese I'm not thinking of but I doubt it's setting-breaking.
Combination potential:
Lots of possibilities come to mind when controlling opponent movement, especially for traps/difficult terrain.
Edge cases:
What happens if there are no more zones to move in that direction? Does hitting the wall cause damage?
Overall soundness:
Solid, and more in line with what I would want from Raging Wave.
I think it should be a little more clear whether it's (Effect) attacks total that can be used on targets in range, or if it's (Effect) attacks for each target in range. I assume it's the former, but I'm not sure.
60. Great Tornado
Strength:
Funny jutsu, not sure if it's that practical or not. Leveling to 40 might be worth it.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu immediately comes to mind.
How does this jutsu affect seals? The flavortext of the jutsu says that "immolates [objects] in an instant." Does that mean that it burns through the seal too fast for the seal to properly "fail?"
If an Akimichi casts their size-enhancement thing, does that increase the size of things they can immolate?
What does this jutsu count as an "object?"
Does this jutsu affect living beings (such as ants, beetles, turtles, squirrels, beavers, or tigers?)
How does this jutsu interact with chakra envelopes?
If a Summoner summons a tiny Summon (such as, let's say, a baby Arachnid), and the caster casts this jutsu while holding the tiny Summon, does this mean that the chakra shell is instantly immolated?
What about chakra shells/constructs?
Let's say the user manages to catch a chidori, or an Earth Bullet, in their hands while casting the jutsu. Does the Earth Bullet vanish (and how does the Elemental Supremacy Chart come into play)? Is the Chidori dispelled (and what about the momentum driving it)?
What about a Water Dragon Bullet?
Maybe the rule for this jutsu should be "nonsophontic objects, not including chakra shells/constructs/envelopes"
If chakra shells are confirmed to fall under the "immolate" category, then Earth Bullets should have some resistance/immunity in accordance with the Elemental Supremacy Chart.
Overall soundness:
No typos, and the calculations are correct
This jutsu gets Effect 2 at level 10, and Effect 3 at level 20. Does this trend continue, or does it remain at Effect 3 regardless?
Flame Bullet
Strength:
Seems decently strong genin-level jutsu. Throw from a distance, hide behind sensei (or taijutsu specs)
Exploit potential:
Doesn't seem too exploitable... set off flammable traps?
Boosted from an ally's Wind jutsu?
Combination potential:
...No idea, but I also don't have the best mind for this.
Edge cases:
I can't really think of anything.
If we use a Misterator filled with oils or alcohol, could we set it on fire with this?
Overall soundness:
Everything seem alright. Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Fireball
Strength:
Wow, this seems like a pretty strong jutsu if you put in the legwork.
It's not world-breaking, but the fact that it's AoE is an entire Zone (on top of its scaling range) makes me raise an eyebrow
I doubt it's too worldbreaking, since very few people would level it to 70 or something, but I still might recommend turning the range into something like (Range 2).
This would give it a temporary boost up until level 19, but it would prevent someone from blasting a Huge Fuckoff Fireball from the other side of the planet, and I don't think this jutsu is intended to be that sort of jutsu?
Exploit potential:
I feel like there's a strong potential for setting off traps, since it has an entire zone as its AoE, but I can't think of anything else.
Combination potential:
It doesn't seem too esoteric, so other than the standard stuff (flammables turning the Zone into an environmental hazard, Wind Jutsu buffing it, etc) I can't think of anything.
Edge cases:
I can't really think of anything.
Overall soundness:
Mechanics are pretty clear, calculations are correct, and no typos
I don't want to specify things like this, because doing so seems like it may limit creative play. Mountains don't fit within a character's hand, but heating a kunai to cauterize a wound seems kosher.
You appear to have copy-pasted some of the initial prompts in here. Most seals would be immediately destroyed.
Destroys most seals, HDK how it would interact with Akimichi size-changing, and Hazou would need to test to see if it works on living things. Note that Water resists Fire, not Earth.
It remains at Effect:3. Notice how it doesn't depend on AB anywhere.
Since the attack is rolled with the jutsu's level against athletics, it probably won't get much use unless it's moderately high leveled (though in a genin battle, it probably wouldn't be too bad as a capstone/secondary)
I'm not sure how good "weapons1" is when paired with "effect 2," but given that Weapons:1" costs strain, I'm guessing it's a damage multiplier of some sort.
It has a pretty good show with "reflexive casting" and "supplemental" casting speeds, though the Effect 2 hinders it a bit. Not the most powerful attack (and it won't get more painful with leveling, only more accurate), but it's a handy attack to have up your sleeve.
It has an amazing Duration, which would be a useful feature to transfer onto a new jutsu via Hacking
Exploit potential:
It doesn't really "create" the idea of jutsu making weapon constructs (water whip already does that), but this opens the door for Fire Element constructs
I could see how this could be Hacked into a restraint/binding jutsu (lash to lasso)
Combination potential:
Standard Fire Element stuff (flammable traps, burning seals, etc)
Since it creates a weapon construct with a "same zone" range, could it knock ranged weapons out of the air (kunai, Goo Bombs, etc)?
Can the "2x targets" be "a single target, twice?"
Edge cases:
...can't think of any.
Would Salamander's Breath mean that this doesn't hurt the target?
Overall soundness:
No typos, mechanics are clear, and the calcs are correct
Flame Eruption
Strength:
...This jutsu seems to imply "insta-kill" as a feature. Not that I'm complaining, but I do not believe this was the intent. May want to reword the flavortext?
Weak attack, ignores cover, good range (salute to the taijutsu fighters out there, serving as our meatshields)
Exploit potential:
Allows Fire Jutsu to burst from the ground (traditionally, a feature for Earth Element jutsu)
"Ignores cover" is pretty broad. What if the person isn't anchored to the ground (such as hiding in trees, or is hiding in a Sand Sphere, or on a Skytower?). May want to include a line about "subject to battlefield environment, chakrAI, and QM-fiat, this jutsu ignores cover"
Pretty sure the "ignores cover" feature comes from it bursting out of the ground. May want to clarify that, so that people don't argue that Flame Eruption should hit a target who's hiding in a tree (from the branches they're standing on), or riding a Dragon (from the scales they're sitting on).
Combination potential:
Since the jutsu doesn't demand "line of sight," Hazou could throw up MEWs to protect the party, and then Akane could cast Flame Eruption while hiding behind the Wall.
Enviornmental Effects (pillar of fire) could be used to create thermals/updraft to help an ally on a skyglider achieve greater heights
Since it's sprouting from the Earth, it could be used to move boulders?
Edge cases:
...nothing that I can think of.
Overall soundness:
No typos, mechanics (other than the INSTAKILL question and the clarification about cover) are clear, and the calculations are correct.
Limited hacking potential there since I don't think it's ever implied that the technique is solid.
Nope, can't parry, the rules never say it can. It cannot target the same target twice (as is the case for pretty much any other ninjutsu you currently have access to other than WDB).
Nope, Salamander's breath provides cold resistance, not heat.
Yep.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Flame Eruption
Fixed already.
Added a line about "subject to QM judgment", and that it doesn't work on skywalking targets. (+1)
Seems like a pretty useful jutsu, especially for Taijutsu builds
The fact that the enemy must dodge with Athletics against FE's level means that it's useful as a capstone, or in genin-level fights, (as most ninja seem to have Athletics as one of their top 3 leveled skills)
Since the stress dealt is (FE Level)/3, higher levels make this jutsu a "dodge or die" jutsu. However, given the fact that the jutsu's AoE is restricted to melee, and that Athletics is so highly leveled within the world of the EN.
Exploit potential:
Other than the standard Fire Elemental stuff (set off flammable traps, burning through seals, etc), I can't really think of anything.
A Taijutsu user with this as their capstone would be OP once they hit jonin.
of course, if they're jonin, then they're likely to fight other jonin, who may specialize in RW (or else have a high enough Athletics to dodge)
This could be the build of a jonin who fall to the new-jonin meatgrinder?
Combination potential:
Can't really think of anything.
Edge cases:
Would this burn through the seals in a CHAOS suit?
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me
Flame Wave
Strength:
It's Range is tied to its Effect, which is tied to its AB. Always a potent combo, if you have the pyramid-freedom to level it.0
Exploit potential:
Could set off traps at a long range, cause environmental hazards, hit medics who are healing teammates (provided that the medic is within Melee Range of their wounded ally, rather than providing the healing from range)
Combination potential:
May tie well with jutsu that allow for a certain degree of fire resistance (blacksmith's blessing, depending on if the Aspect is strictly Fire related, or if there's a Heat factor). Caster has the buff up and running, casts Fire Wave, and is able to endure/dodge the new Aspects.
Edge cases:
How would this work against jutsu such as MEW, or other elemental jutsu Blocks?
I would recommend it come down to jutsu AB, with the higher AB winning out (though, perhaps the Elemental Supremacy Chart would raise the "winning" Element by an AB or two?).
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct.
Slight question about the mechanics: It says that the Fire Wave may target [Effect] targets in [Effect] zones, assuming said zones are in a straight line.
Does this mean that if the AB is 2, then the caster may designate two targets within the same Zone as the caster?
Does this mean that the jutsu spits out one Wave per target, or that a single wave goes from Target to Target?
Blast Palm
Strength:
Pretty decent strength, with some range (with the option to hit multiple targets if they're clumped together)
I'm still not quite sure what having a Weapons Rating in addition to the normal Effect damage does, but I'm presuming that it heightens lethality in some way.
All in all, it looks like a solid genin-to-chunnin jutsu. Not crazy, but not horrible.
I love the imagery the name evokes
Exploit potential:
Other than the standard Fire Elemental stuff (set off flammable traps, burning through seals, etc), I can't really think of anything.
Combination potential:
Can't really think of anything.
Edge cases:
Can't really think of anything.
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me.
Burning Cloud
Strength:
The damage scales to Effect (AB?), and the Duration is tied to Effect. This makes it doubly powerful the more you invest in it.
Good opening cast.
Exploit potential:
I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
Combination potential:
Wind jutsu might extend Burning Cloud into the next zone, or increase the volitivity of the environmental Flame Aspects, but that's already stated within the text.
Vacuum Step might leave a singular trail of fire behind the caster, creating a sort of Fire Wall behind them... or it might simply extend the range of the environmental Aspects.
Would Tunneler's Friend help in this scenario?
Edge cases:
How would traversing through/out of this Zone look like? Vacuum Step and Substitution, in particular?
Would a Misterator be enough to put the flames out, or would we have to create a specialized Misterator that creates more "explosion of water" than "Creates Mist"?
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me
I believe that the Effect is meant to be "1 to AB," instead of "1 to Effect"
Rising Sun Dragon
Strength:
Very strong, it's Range scales with its Effect, which scales with its AB, and its AoE means that it hits everything within all of the Zones it can reach.
Exploit potential:
Standard Fire Elemental stuff (set off flammable traps, burning through seals, etc).
Since it's hot enough to create a "glassed" Aspect, then it might be hot enough to boil Water Elemental traps and constructs
Combination potential:
Wind jutsu boost
Earth jutsu that alters the terrain into something more easily "glass-able."
Edge cases:
What if it comes across a sufficiently powerful Water Block jutsu (i.e. The target wreaths themselves in a Water Prison Jutsu with a higher AB than the Rising Sun Dragon).
I would recommend that the RSD flow over them and onto the next Zone (if applicable).
Depending on the details of the Water Block may cause the caster Heat/Steam damage from the RSD, and it may prevent the Glassing of Terrain within the target's zone.
How would this jutsu be boosted, if it was cast in conjunction with an Ally's wind jutsu?
I would recommend raising the jutsu's AB by a point or two, and maybe stretch the definition of what can be "glassed" if the resulting AB is sufficiently high.
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me.
I assume this audit is meant to reference Flameburst? But yes, the damage rules were unclear, fixed. (+1)
Yep.
Yep.
In general, ninjutsu attacks (especially Water/Fire/Lightning) have a chance of destroying seals and possibly causing a sealing failure.
Yep.
Flame Wave
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
As per usual, if Flame Wave exceeds the jutsu's block (adjusted by elemental supremacy), the block fails, otherwise the ninjutsu is stopped.
Yes, it's a single wave – added some language to clarify that. It's a single target, and yes, you may choose 2 targets in the same Zone. (+1)
Blast Palm
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Burning Cloud
Yep.
Yep.
TF wouldn't help you avoid getting burned, sadly.
Sub wouldn't let you get through the Zone in one swoop. VS could, so I would probably abstract it as VS vs Burning Cloud to dodge damage. More for on-the-fly ruling, I think. And yes, a conventional Misterator doesn't pack enough of a punch.
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Rising Sun Dragon
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
As per usual, if RSD exceeds the jutsu's block (adjusted by elemental supremacy), it overcomes the jutsu and the block fails. Either way, it would continue onward to fill its full AoE (unless a QM rules otherwise, depending on the circumstances). No need for specific rules on Wind interaction.
It scales up to Effect/AB, and its Duration Scales accordingly
Supplemental Action allows for a second attack
Pretty awesome, though I'm not sure how much being restricted from Chakra Boost is an adequate nerf. Could be a doublecost level?
Exploit potential:
Standard Fire Elemental stuff (set off flammable traps, burning through seals, etc)
Shadow Clone fuckery
Can Prime move a SC's FS?
Can SC1 move SC2's FS?
Combination potential:
Shadow Clone awesomeness
Edge cases:
Other than the question of Shadow Clone v Prime, I can't think of any
Overall soundness:
No typos, and mechanics are clear to me
I think the Effect is meant to say "1 to AB," rather than "1 to Effect"
Strain calculations are off
Missing 10 strain/2CP
110, 135, 170...
22, 27, 34...
Chain Bullet Swarm
Strength:
Pretty straightforward, solid jutsu.
Able to attack more targets as the AB increases.
Decent Range, too.
Exploit potential:
Can't really think of anything.
Combination potential:
Other than the standard Fire Elemental stuff, I can't really think of anything.
Edge cases:
Can't really think of anything.
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me
Blazing Dive
Strength:
Pretty strong Effect, with some strong synergy with Leaf's natural environment + the various Sky Seals.
Exploit potential:
If the caster uses Rocket Boots right before hitting the ground, they may be able to reduce the fall damage.
Ghost Scales may reduce fall damage.
Earthshaping beforehand could provide a sandpit to fall into, reducing fall damage
Syrup Trap may reduce fall damage (it's Water Element, and the thick consistency could distribute the force of impact better than solid ground
MEW or other Earth Element Jutsu could "raise" the ground, and end the fall prematurely (thus causing the jutsu to expel above ground-level, and with a lesser bonus).
Combination potential:
Standard Fire Elemental stuff (flammable traps, heat-triggered seals, etc)
Rocket Boots, Skywalkers, Skytowers, Skygliders, Earth Pillar Jump, would all increase the height the caster could fall (and thus, more easily reach the Maximum multiplier).
Edge cases:
What happens if the caster is caught, mid-air, while the jutsu is active (ex: enemy uses Water Whip to grab them as they fall)?
Suggestion: the jutsu treats being grabbed mid-air as a successful "fall" and the jutsu is cast. The height bonus only counts the caster's starting height, to the point where they were grabbed.
Overall soundness:
No typos, and strain calcs are correct.
The Blazing Dive roll gets a bonus of +1 for every meter that the caster falls vertically as part of their Taijutsu attack, to a maximum of 3*(Effect).
The Effect of the jutsu is 3, meaning that the maximum bonus (3*(E=3)) that the caster could achieve is +9. However, in the example given, it suggests that a bonus of +10 is achievable.
"Immediately after the Taijutsu attack, a wave of flame rushes outwards from the target."
This states that the wave of fire expels from the target who was hit, rather than from the caster.
Having your jutsu cause effects from the enemy's body opens up a barrel of questions ("can the target's chakra fight off the effect," "if the target has armor jutsu, does the effect rebound onto solely them," "does the caster's chakra infest the target's body like a genjutsu to achieve this," and so on)
Strong jutsu, though somewhat mechanically complex (RIP QMs)
The jutsu appears within melee of the caster, and must be moved via the caster's supplemental. A bit bad for action economy.
Exploit potential:
Introduces concentration mechanics, allowing for interesting jutsu to be Hacked
Combination potential:
Other than the standard shadow clone fuckery, I can't think of anything.
FOOM and "Toughened Mind" Stunt boost Resolve, meaning that jutsu that have such concentration mechanics are useful.
Edge cases:
Can a Shadow Clone spend chakra to boost Prime's VB Orb?
If the caster has an armor jutsu up, and the armor jutsu absorbs stress, does that count as "taking stress" by the jutsu's description, thus invoking a roll for Resolve
Overall soundness:
Strain calcs are correct.
Effect row states "1 to Effect," but I think it might mean to say "1 to AB"
When this jutsu is cast, a massive orb of fire appears in melee with the user. As a Supplemental, the user may fire this jutsu at a target in range. The user rolls Volcanic Blast, and the target and anyone in melee of the target must defend against the user's attack roll. The jutsu then ends.
Does this mean that the chakra construct dispels? Does this mean that, in order to give the orb more charges, the jutsu must sit idle?
Blacksmith's Blessing
Strength:
Good utility jutsu, though the duration is a bit short for noncombat usage.
Possible target for THing?
Exploit potential:
"Narratively, the user is unaffected by some situations that would otherwise be harmful due to heat"
Does this mean that the 1 point of non-ablative armor is cold to the touch?
If it's cold to the touch, that might be leveraged for other purposes (though, admittedly, I can't think of any at the moment)
Could be used to mitigate environmental aspects related to Heat in Combat?
Combination potential:
Could be used to mitigate feedback from Flame Aura (though not substantially so, and it would require time enough to cast both jutsu back-to-back... which is only really possible when you have prep time, since an enemy isn't going to let you stand around and cast repeated buffs).
(IIRC) Macerators with sawdust cause a wave of hot fire whose damage mostly comes from heat? Would BB negate damage like that?
Edge cases:
Would this negate Heat-activated Seals?
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me.
Burning Fist
Strength:
Good buff jutsu that scales with AB.
Short duration is mitigated by being able to cast as a Supplemental
High chakra cost keeps everyone from using it
Exploit potential:
Standard fire jutsu stuff (flammable traps, Heat-activated seals, etc)
Combination potential:
If a wind jutsu is cast while this is active, would it synergize as a normal Wind/Fire jutsu combo?
Fists are on fire, if the wind jutsu involves the hands (such as the known Wind Shaper) then it could set the Wind Jutsu Construct aflame.
Edge cases:
Does this allow for jutsu to be cast while this is active?
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me.
Blazing Fists
Strength:
Good buff jutsu that scales with AB.
Longer duration is compounded by being able to cast as a Supplemental
Buff is less than Burning Fists, but the chakra cost is lower (and thus more accessible to taijutsu specs)
Exploit potential:
Standard fire jutsu stuff (flammable traps, Heat-activated seals, etc)
Combination potential:
If a wind jutsu is cast while this is active, would it synergize as a normal Wind/Fire jutsu combo?
Fists are on fire, if the wind jutsu involves the hands (such as the known Wind Shaper) then it could set the Wind Jutsu Construct aflame.
Edge cases:
Does this allow for jutsu to be cast while this is active?
Overall soundness:
No typos, strain calcs are correct, and mechanics are clear to me.
Wrathful Grasp
Strength:
Good buff, extends range of taijutsu at the cost of decreasing your ability to hit with taijutsu
Exploit potential:
Standard fire jutsu stuff (flammable traps, Heat-activated seals, etc)
Traps/Heat-activated seals at range?
Combination potential:
Does it boost wind jutsu that are cast while this is active?
Edge cases:
Does this allow for jutsu to be cast while this is active?
Overall soundness:
No typos, and mechanics are clear to me.
Doesn't have taijutsu penalty strain present
I suggest (-20)
Lifted from MfD's jutsu design rules: "-20: Major penalty to relevant-but-noncritical skill, or minor penalty to a skill that is likely to be important while the jutsu is being used (e.g., combat jutsu that mildly penalizes Athletics)"
Calculations are not present within the table
Strain with my above suggestion: 40, 80, 130, 190...
Strain without my above suggestion (leaving the strain from Skill Penalty blank):
Chakra Cost with my above suggestion: 8, 16, 26, 38...
Chakra Cost without my above suggestion (leaving the strain from Skill Penalty blank):
Phoenix's Talon
Strength:
Increases any weapon up to a possible Weapons:3 (which, as per the MfD rules, puts it on par with "really large and/or 'magic' weapons such as Kisame's sword, Samehada"
It's not really worth leveling beyond 30, but it's really good for taijutsu users
Exploit potential:
I can't really think of anything off the top of my head, save for the standard fire jutsu stuff (flammable traps, heat-activated seals, etc)
Combination potential:
I can't really think of anything
Maybe chakra metal weapons would raise it to Weapons:4?
Edge cases:
Does this jutsu damage the weapon's durability?
I would suggest that improvised weapons (doors, planks, tree limbs, chairs) burn up after a round or two, that civilian tools (scythes, pitchforks, hammers) melt once the duration ends, that normal ninja weapons (kunai, swords, spears) last for a few years, and that chakra metal weapons suffer no notable damage
What happens when the user doesn't grab a weapon? Grabs a doorknob, or a wall... or a person, or even a clone? What counts as a "weapon?"
I recommend "weapon" be defined as "whatever the caster intends to use as a melee weapon" and that sentient beings (including clones and Summons) are not counted as a "weapon" under this jutsu.
Overall soundness:
Spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Strain Calculations are off by +15
Strain: 155, 215, 305
Chakra Cost: 31, 43, 61
Divine Odachi
Strength:
Gives taijutsu users a ranged option
Exploit potential:
I can't really think of anything off the top of my head, save for the standard fire jutsu stuff (flammable traps, heat-activated seals)
Combination potential:
Heat-activated seals at range?
Edge cases:
Does this jutsu damage the weapon's durability?
I would suggest that improvised weapons (doors, planks, tree limbs, chairs) burn up after a round or two, that civilian tools (scythes, pitchforks, hammers) melt once the duration ends, that normal ninja weapons (kunai, swords, spears) last for a few years, and that chakra metal weapons suffer no notable damage
What happens when the user doesn't grab a weapon? Grabs a doorknob, or a wall... or a person, or even a clone? What counts as a "weapon?"
I recommend "weapon" be defined as "whatever the caster intends to use as a melee weapon" and that sentient beings (including clones and Summons) are not counted as a "weapon" under this jutsu.
Overall soundness:
Calculations, spelling, and mechanics are all clear and correct.
Good environmental effect, with Friend or Foe targeting (though if Concentration is broken, it loses that)
Not many (or any? Maybe?) ninja grind Resolve as much as the Goketsu do, so jutsu with Concentration are a mixed bag for most ninja
Exploit potential:
Set off all heat-activated seals in the Zone? Pseudo-MARS?
Combination potential:
FOOM and "Toughened Mind" Stunt mean that the Goketsu are uniquely suited to jutsu that require Concentration
Set off flammable traps
Edge cases:
Does the stress that an armor jutsu absorbs (Ghost Scales or Blacksmith's Blessing) count as "taking stress" and invoke the Resolve check?
Overall soundness:
Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Is it "Hells Roar" or "Hell's Roar?"
The Range is set to 2 (meaning a target a Zone away from an Adjacent Zone to the caster), but AOE is set to [Effect] Zones... When the AoE surpasses the Range, what happens?
Red Rain
Strength:
In a gathered battlefield, it'd kill all the genin with ease (and most of the low-to-mid chunnin)
Stupidly strong at high levels, but that seems to be by design (judging by the description)
Almost certainly a suicide jutsu at higher levels
Surprisingly low chakra cost, but I imagine it's hard to train without Shadow Clones
Hampered by it's very long casting time, but with Shadow Clone and teammates, it reduces the danger. Indeed, this seems to have been designed for a large-scale battlefield.
The user rolls Red Rain + (2*Effect). Every target in range (including the user) must dodge against the user's roll.
This means once you hit lvl 50, the caster begins to cast at an AB higher than the jutsu's base AB (50 + (2*5)=60)
Well, technically level 42, since 42+(4*2)=50
It's a bit odd for such a strong jutsu to be available in Leaf's public jutsu library. Are suicide jutsu that normalized/passively encouraged within Leaf (let alone one that is explicitly stated to be able to wipe battlefields, at higher levels)?
Exploit potential:
Shadow Clone minimizes the risk of actual suicide
Combination potential:
Wind jutsu boost?
Setting off all the heat-activated seals in the area for more insanity?
Edge cases:
What happens when Red Rain hits an EM Nuke?
What happens if an enemy ninja attacks the jutsu construct as it's flying into the air?
I recommend ruling that it would burst, somewhat mitigating its Range (with some fuckery from the Elemental Supremacy Chart)
Overall soundness:
Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Red River
Strength:
Needs to be level 30 before it generates more than 1 tag, but the user earns these free tags per round and can share them with allies.
Stupidly strong at high levels, but that seems to be by design (judging by the description)
Almost certainly a suicide jutsu at higher levels
Surprisingly low chakra cost, but I imagine it's hard to train without Shadow Clones
Faster casting time
It's a bit odd for such a strong jutsu to be available in Leaf's public jutsu library. Are suicide jutsu that normalized/passively encouraged within Leaf (let alone one that is explicitly stated to be able to wipe battlefields, at higher levels)?
Exploit potential:
Shadow Clone minimizes the risk of actual suicide
Combination potential:
Wind jutsu boost?
Setting off all the heat-activated seals in the area for more insanity?
Edge cases:
What happens when the enemy is off the ground (such as MEW, or chakra-adhering to a cliffside/tree)
What happens when Red River hits an EM Nuke?
What happens if an enemy ninja attacks the jutsu construct as it's heading towards the ground?
I recommend ruling that it would burst, somewhat mitigating its Range (with some fuckery from the Elemental Supremacy Chart)
Overall soundness:
Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Red Runoff
Strength:
Holy fuck is this jutsu strong! How is it in the public library?
The max AB is the combination of Red Rain and the Red River jutsu, so if you have them both at level 40, then you can cast this jutsu at AB 8. Seriously, how is this not under lock and key? Is Asuma tossing us a bone or something?
Surprisingly low chakra cost, given the 2-for-1 aspect of it, and it's casting time is long-isn (though that can be mitigated with teammates, range, or shadow clones)
I imagine it's hard to train, given that you have to have the previous two jutsu leveled to a decent amount
Exploit potential:
Shadow Clone minimizes the risk of actual suicide
Allows for "multi-cast" jutsu to exist within MfD, where casting one jutsu invokes automatically another.
I suspect this feature is locked behind a crazy high Technique Hacking TN, and can only be done with jutsu that were designed specifically to mesh well with each other.
Since the jutsu cannot be leveled on its own (though leveling one of the previous two parts automatically levels this one), I would suggest that this jutsu be exist in the form of an expensive Stunt, and requires the caster to already know both jutsu.
Combination potential:
Wind jutsu boost?
Setting off all the heat-activated seals in the area for more insanity?
Other jutsu that create environmental aspects (such as Rising Sun Dragon creating a "glassed" Aspect may allow for Red River's lava to more easily flow?)
Edge cases:
What happens when Red Runoff hits an EM Nuke?
What happens if an enemy ninja attacks the jutsu constructs as they're flying?
I recommend ruling that it would burst, somewhat mitigating its Range (with some fuckery from the Elemental Supremacy Chart)
Overall soundness:
Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Nothing happens, though note that within a 2 Zones of you, there may be many more than just 2 Zones. In fact, there are at least 3 – your Zone, the one 2 away, and the one between that. Good catch on the name. (+1)
Red Rain
With the Nara docents, not everyone would take this technique. It's not really good for general use due to very high chakra cost and extremely indiscriminate targeting, but when it's strong, it's very strong.
Hard to use it with a SC due to high chakra cost.
Not gonna rule on this stuff.
HDK the Red Rain vs EM nuke interaction. We generally don't let people interrupt jutsu mid-cast ("what if someone slashes the WDB as it's forming?").
Yep.
(+1 for doing an audit)
Red River
Note that this is just a passive battlefield control technique – so it isn't lethal to the user.
Yep.
As before.
Enemies off the ground would be unaffected – added a note to that effect. (+1)
Yep.
Red Runoff
Ah, good point, the Effect line is confusing. I'll clarify that. (+1)
Yep. These are good jutsu.
As per usual, not going to make specific rulings here.
Yep, and armor piercing grounds out as a line in the jutsu's spec.
Claw of the Storm
Yep.
Electroweb
Yep.
Thunderburst
Now we have rules for buff stacking. Note that the tags on Thunderburst are not multi-taggable. Good catch on the AB thing. (+1) Remember that AB is the leading digit plus one.
Lightning Bucklers
It doesn't make your attacks armor piercing, it just makes them electrocuting.
Divine Serpent
It cannot attack one target multiple times, this was already clarified.
Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Heavenly Typhoon
Strength:
Strong attack that scales well
Super good if on the water
Exploit potential:
Anything that can change the terrain of the battlefield into water
Combination potential:
I can't think of anything
Edge cases:
If cast on someone trapped in a Water Prison Jutsu, does the boost occur?
Overall soundness:
Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Raging Wave
Strength:
Good scaling, terrifying Range with additional pushback
Exploit potential:
I can't think of anything
Combination potential:
I can't think of anything
Edge cases:
I can't think of anything
Overall soundness:
Math, spelling is clear and correct.
Strain Calculations are off
Strain: 60, 100, 150, 210, 280...
Chakra: 12, 20, 30, 42, 56...
It says that the jutsu cannot push someone more than 2 Zones away from the caster, but the range of the jutsu is 2 zones away from the caster. If someone is already 2 zones away from the caster, and flubs their roll, do they receive no knockback?
Can it attack 1 target, multiple times?
Hiding in Water
Strength:
Generates a lot of tags at higher levels
Good duration
It costs a full round to cast, which nerfs it significantly.
Exploit potential:
I can't think of anything
Combination potential:
Used in conjunction with other stealth related Aspects (i.e. "murky swamp water")
Iron Lung jutsu, Tunneler's Friends, and other jutsu that extend one's ability to hold their breath underwater.
Trail leading up to the water could be mitigated by Hiding Like a Mole, and then tunneling directly to the river/lake/whatever
Edge cases:
I can't think of anything... What if a lightning jutsu is cast in the water (i.e. "enemy sees chakra beast in water, throws a Radiant Javelin at it, which misses the chakra beast, but hits the water.")
Overall soundness:
Math, spelling, mechanics are all clear and correct.
Grasping Tentacles
Strength:
Seems good for a Taijutsu user, but bad if the caster is attacked by more than 1 enemy at the same time (though that's true in the general sense, too).
Exploit potential:
I can't think of anything
Combination potential:
I can't think of anything
Edge cases:
I can't think of anything
Overall soundness:
Math and spelling are correct
It's effect is "1 to AB," and each tentacle can more 1 kg per level of GT... So a level 40 could make 4 tentacles, with each one capable of moving 40kg per level. Assuming 80kg enemy, at least 2 tentacles would have to hit... does each tentacle make its own roll?
Should make EM nuke fallout region survivable, since even at the point of casting, it's at most -200 celsius, which would feel like -26 Celsius with this jutsu active. Very cold, but easily survivable.
Overall soundness:
Solid.
Controlled Immolation
Strength:
None
Exploit potential:
None
Combination potential:
None
Edge cases:
Does an Akimichi getting a bigger hand allow them to torch bigger objects
None
Overall soundness:
Acceptable.
Flame Bullet
Strength:
Not strong at all, unsurprisingly.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
The low chakra cost combined with Shadow Clone makes for a theoretically interesting combo, since it could allow a ninjutsu spec to fight with SC in combat. Assuming you leveled a good jutsu to 60, a half-cost Bullet at level 60 several times a turn is somewhat practical (but not overwhelmingly good) with SC.
Edge cases:
None
Overall soundness:
Seems fine.
Fireball
Strength:
Low, as expected.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
As with the bullet techniques, the low cost for range of 1 zone could be interesting with SC, but it doesn't strike me as a dominant strategy or anything.
Edge cases:
None
Overall soundness:
Acceptable.
Fire Lash
Strength:
Not very strong, but not bad.
Exploit potential:
Nothing specific to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Can the whip hold any weight?
I almost feel like you should be able to use MW with this technique, though it would probably be outright worse than a physical weapon of similar shape, besides not being able to be disarmed of this one. At the least, any whip-based MW stunts you might pick up could plausibly apply to this technique too.
Overall soundness:
Solid.
Flame Eruption
Strength:
Decent situationally.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Pairs well with sensory abilities like Living Roots or Byakugan, would likely make sneak attacks feasible.
Edge cases:
Does this still work when standing over e.g. water?
Overall soundness:
Acceptable
Flameburst
Strength:
Situationally useful get-off-me tool, but not notably strong.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Having teammates use blocks that prevent people from leaving melee like Earth Wall or something could allow guaranteed damage.
Edge cases:
Is it theoretically possible to take more damage from trying and failing to dodge than staying in melee?
Overall soundness:
Acceptable
Flame Wave
Strength:
Inexpensive AOE attack, seems fine.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Acceptable
Blast Palm
Strength:
Weapons 2 is good. AOE is fairly limited since enemies don't tend to group up within melee reach of each other too often, and you don't want to fry your teammates. Range is also not great. Seems on the weaker side but still reasonable.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Acceptable
Burning Cloud
Strength:
Ongoing zone control is pretty decent. Elemental interactions are also interesting. Seems middling but potentially still useful in strength.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Do succeeding attacks on later turns cost an action to make?
Can someone else cast the same jutsu on the same zone and have the attacks stack?
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Acceptable
Rising Sun Dragon
Strength:
Pretty strong. Weapons 2 and line AOE, plus a free tag. Only really held back by cost, but even then that's only if higher Effect is needed.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
On the stronger side, but solid.
Flame Sphere
Strength:
Supplemental attacks are good and the main draw here. I'm still skeptical that melee AOE is that much more useful than single target though.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Acceptable
Chain Bullet Swarm
Strength:
Good if you can actually make use of a bigger number of targets, but otherwise not a particularly appealing option. Plausibly not ever worth leveling past geninhood since after that the main threats will not be big, weak groups but rather other ninja who are seldom in groups large enough to make use of this technique efficiently.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Could be useful for targeting several non-enemies in one turn, like supports on a bridge or fire-triggered explosive seals or something.
If your teammates have any buffs that are boosted by fire jutsu then you could hit them all and target your enemies.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Acceptable
Blazing Dive
Strength:
Essentially a free +9 to taijutsu for a supplemental, which is pretty good. May want to tweak this to not do anything until Level 10 or something or a lot of people would likely buy lvl. 1 just for that. A taijutsu attack followed up by an AOE attack for a Standard and Supplemental is still good too though, action economy wise.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
I actually have no idea how fall damage works in this system. How high can you go without injuring yourself?
Could you feasibly be launched upward by something like Rocket Boots and use this technique while crashing into a target?
Overall soundness:
Very cool, I like it.
Volcanic Blast
Strength:
Potentially strong in ambush scenarios, but imo too slow outside of them to make use of the charging mechanic which leaves this on the weaker side.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Can other users with the same jutsu help feed it faster?
Overall soundness:
Typo: Says "1 to Effect" for Element. Seems to be missing the Effect row in the table.
The charging mechanic doesn't seem particularly useful in most scenarios, and it's already a standard just to summon it. Taking two turns to attack is kind of bad in my opinion, or if you're suicidal you can burn your standard, a supplemental to charge it, and a supplemental to fire it for a slightly-better-than-nothing bonus. The bonus may need to build up faster (and potentially cost more) for charging to actually be worth it. AOE is only Melee of target, too, which is seldom better than and sometimes worse than single target given that your allies will be the ones in melee range.
I think that having the unfired orb on the battlefield should have some sort of beneficial effect as well.
In general, not much more useful than the basic Fire Bullet attack in my opinion.
Fiery Dance
Strength:
Seems alright as Blocks go.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Does the entire line need to be within 2 Zones of the caster, or does just the tip of it need to be within Range?
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
I'm not certain it makes sense to me that the border is just blocked if you can't contest the roll, given that the fire doesn't seem to be solid (and that solid fire is a Hagoromo gimmick). I would instead have it inflict stress on the person crossing the flames depending on how many shifts they failed to beat the TN.
In terms of flavor and other mechanics, it is acceptable.
Blacksmith's Blessing
Strength:
Niche but still useful.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
I like it.
Burning Fist
Strength:
A straightforward but potent Taijutsu buff, and a Supplemental to boot. Weapons Rating and +Effect are both always good. Tags that can be invoked offensively and defensively. No real downsides besides a high cost for a single-use buff.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Acceptable.
Blazing Fists
Strength:
A still useful buff, but one that isn't notably strong. Another one to go ahead and cast if you have prep, and isn't horrible in a fight either if leveled high enough.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Acceptable.
Wrathful Grasp
Strength:
Ranged Taijutsu is pretty good as Macerators prove, and even with the debuff to the attack roll, I expect this would see a decent bit of use.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Missing CP and Strain totals at the bottom.
Also missing Element row at top of table.
Phoenix's Talon
Strength:
Weapons 3 is a decent buff, and the tag generation is very nice especially since it doesn't seem like the enemy can get rid of it.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Would probably pair well with Ranged Weapons.
Edge cases:
Would something like Hazou's pangolin gauntlets count for this technique?
Overall soundness:
Missing the word Strain at the bottom.
Divine Odachi
Strength:
Losing Weapon Rating at range is a bummer, but the range extension is still situationally useful and so are the free tags.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing the Element row at top of table.
Otherwise, an acceptable jutsu.
Hells Roar
Strength:
Situational but useful. Provides serious battlefield control opportunities.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Potential typo: Maybe should be titled "Hell's Roar" instead? The flavortext uses an apostrophe.
Acceptable.
Red Rain
Strength:
Full round casting time is always an unfortunate downside as is self-damage, but it's very potent otherwise.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Pretty strong, very cool.
Red River
Strength:
Is this also an attack in addition to the provided effects? I assume it is. Even if so, it is somewhat expensive to use at high Effect. Still, the AOE/range is very good.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Solid.
Red Runoff
Strength:
Very strong, but requires a lot of investment (both XP and chakra).
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
I'm curious to see what happens to this monster if struck by wind jutsu.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Solid.
It's interesting to know jutsu can be designed to interact in this way.
Burning Chains
Strength:
Attacking as a supplemental is pretty good.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Seems to pair well with Taijutsu/MW given that they could attack minimum twice per turn with it active by using their standard and Burning Chains supplemental, or potentially defend themselves twice against melee users with Burning Chains Standard (once when they enter melee, and a second time to counterattack, if applicable.)
Edge cases:
If the Standard to make them attack anyone who enters melee range is used, I presume the user can then enter melee with anyone in their zone on that same turn, which could be a good option if there is a good number of enemies in the zone and many chains were spawned.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Interesting and unique. I like it.
Flame Vortex
Strength:
Decently but not overwhelmingly strong.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Could intentionally trap melee teammates inside with enemy ninja so they can't get away or substitute.
Edge cases:
If the enemies inside fail to dodge while inside of the tornado, are they dragged to the new location or do they fall out of it after taking damage? That could be up to 2 zones of movement if the user for example attacks the zone in front of them, and then the one behind them next turn.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Pretty cool.
Falling Skies
Strength:
Doesn't seem particularly strong, though it does seem uniquely useful against skywalkers.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Acceptable.
Crimson Swords of Destruction
Strength:
Functionally similar to an AOE attack that targets surrounding zones, since you can only actually attack a single target once, albeit picking the best roll.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Missing Element row at top of table.
Acceptable.
Explosive Burst
Strength:
Decently powerful attack bonus and big AOE. The self damage isn't horrible either.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Edge cases:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Overall soundness:
Pretty good.
Immortal Hunting Phoenix
Strength:
Decently strong. Attacking until a successful hit is pretty good as is a +2*AB to hit.
Exploit potential:
Nothing unique to this jutsu comes to mind.
Combination potential:
Jutsu or seals that would block or disrupt allied jutsu may only disperse the Phoenix temporarily instead.
Edge cases:
May be especially helpful towards enemies that rely on hiding from their targets, like the invisibility bloodline people, assuming the Phoenix isn't also fooled by hiding.
Overall soundness:
Typo: Element says "1 to AB/2"
Otherwise fine. Interestingly, very conceptually similar to a wind jutsu I submitted called "Whispering Death", though I think it was coincidence.
Fists of the Asura
Strength:
Weapons: Effect, while also targeting (Effect) zones is pretty strong, even with the AB/2. This is definitely a jutsu that could be carried in a build through joninhood.
Like with Water Whip, I think this ninjutsu is manipulated via mental/chakra control more than it is through physical weapons skill. Added that the whip cannot hold weight.
Flame Eruption
Strictly speaking: yes, it does work on water.
Flameburst
Yes, this would combo well with someone else Blocking you into melee. The damage rules were revised.
Flame Wave
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Blast Palm
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Burning Cloud
No, no action economy is required for subsequent rounds, and yes, it can stack in the same Zone. Clarified. (+1)
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Rising Sun Dragon
Yep.
Flame Sphere
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Chain Bullet Swarm
Yep.
Blazing Dive
Already tweaked to have the Effect scale with AB -- so not capped at +9.
We don't have strict fall damage rules as it seems very circumstantial. Still, worth asking the others about it. (+1)
Volcanic Blast
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Interesting point about the charging taking too long. I'm going to buff it so that you can spend as many Supps/Standards as you want feeding it (with a Standard counting for 3 charges). Let's see how that turns out. (+1)
Fiery Dance
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Good catch, added language to clarify. (+1)
Fixed Element and revised mechanics substantially to make it possible to take damage and bypass the Block. (+1)
Blacksmith's Blessing
Yep.
Burning Fist
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Blazing Fist
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Wrathful Grasp
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Phoenix's Talon
It could combo with the Pangolin Gauntlets, you'd have to try and see! Added the word "strain". (+1)
Divine Odachi
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Hell's Roar
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Red Rain
Yep.
Red River
No, it's just a maneuver. Let's say that the flames spreading out from the user aren't fast enough to catch any serious opponent.
Red Runoff
Yep.
Burning Chains
Good catch, fixed. (+1)
Flame Vortex
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Good catch, clarified that the attack they dodge against is harder due to being trapped within, and that they escape on taking damage. (+1)
Considering I think normal fire is the electromagnetic radiation emitted by hot soot/particulates (although there are fire variants where it's actually something else). Moving the ball of flame means moving the soot. Therefore acting as telekinesis. Normal fire is teardrop shaped, so altering the shape into a ball also uses telekinesis. Zephyr's Reach already exists but this gives telekinesis to Fire element users as well.
Or if it is a chakra construct. Presumably chakra construct fire still has force? Even light produces force. If so then it's still telekinesis.
Overall soundness:
The jutsu does not have the Permanent advantage but is also not listed as a chakra construct. Does that mean it is real fire?
Fire will normally consume fuel and oxygen to generate heat, particulates, and CO2. The jutsu does not mention any fuel visible in the ball of flame so if it is real fire presumably it just spawns particles and directly heats them up. Since no chemical reaction means oxygen is no longer required, when the ball of flame moves does the gas move along with it or only the particles move?
After the jutsu, if real fire, do the particles just fall to the ground? What particles are they? Wood ash, charcoal, etc.?
The flame can be moved up to 5 zones apart. But how far can it be spawned?
What happens if you spawn, or move the ball of flame into, solid rock? What happens if you then move it out of the solid rock?
Can it be spawned inside people? If so, how does the "No combat effect" disadvantage work?
The soot the flame produces isn't moved. Everything made by a jutsu is a chakra construct by default. HDK anything about the chemistry of fires. The particles are below the level of what needs to be ruled. It can be spawned anywhere in range. It can't move through objects. It can't be spawned inside people.
Audit XP total:
Cariyaga: 8
RandomOTP: 41
faflec: 5
Veedrac: 9
Shrooms: 48
Finally, +19 XP to RandomOTP for their incredibly helpful post collating 19 different audits from throughout the thread.
Audit XP total:
Cariyaga: 8
RandomOTP: 60
faflec: 5
Veedrac: 9
Shrooms: 48
We discussed all outstanding comments above this line, and have a couple comments on balance:
Headhunter: We recognize this ninjutsu's potential to be OP if its ½ Taijutsu restriction is lifted, so we want to note now that a substantial portion of the penalty is due to the disadvantageous nature of the attack (being made from below, needing to grasp the opponent rather than just strike them), so we will be fairly stringent about this penalty.
Salamander's Breath: While it will make EM-nuke somewhat less lethal, the winds, flood of liquified nitrogen/oxygen, and the fact that even -25 C is not survivable for long means that this is not a "now you're EM-nuke-proof" jutsu.
Blazing Dive: While the ninjutsu makes reference to fall damage, and fall damage is absolutely a thing that will be applied in certain scenarios, we're not going to make any rules about it. Fall damage will be adjudicated with on-the-fly rulings.
Raging Wave and Gale Strike: We recognize that forced movement can be very strong. We're going to tentatively approve these ninjutsu and will make rulings about forced movement on a very case-by-case basis, and we may remove these forced movement techniques if they turn out to be OP. As we're tentatively approving the ninjutsu, this kind of removal will not penalize the players – either the ninjutsu will be improved in some other way to make up for it, or the XP will be refunded.
Okay, this is finally done. On account of the length of the Leaf Ninjutsu Library catalogue, it will be linked to from the main jutsu doc rather than copied wholesale.
PSA: We are going to be strengthening NPC agency and Hazōpilot.
"Hazōpilot" is Hazō-the-character, as distinct from Hazō-the-avatar of the players. Hazōpilot was created to abort or modify plans based on cultural knowledge that Hazō would have and the players do not. We try to use him as lightly as possible because we don't want to interfere with player agency, but he has saved the day on a few occasions. For a recent example, check chapter 505.1 when the plan called for Hazō to lawyer at Orochimaru and Hazōpilot recognized that this was pissing the Sannin off and he should swerve into a more streamlined mode.
After the events of chapter 607, multiple players asked why Hazōpilot didn't deal with this for them. The QMs talked about it and decided that the events of the chapter were generally appropriate but there needed to be a small retcon in the timeline in order to address valid points the players had made. We also discussed whether Hazōpilot should have dealt with it for the players. It's a complicated issue (read the spoiler at the top of chapter 505.1 for more details) but the important part is we decided that no, he should not have stepped in this time. This time there was a choice: denounce Jashinism and maybe piss of Hidan, or don't denounce it and definitely piss off Leaf. That sort of thing definitely needs to be a player decision. That said, we're going to start using Hazōpilot more often.
Keep reading before you break out the champagne!
We aren't going to have Hazōpilot save the day every time, or even have him offer advance warning of the day needing to be saved. We don't currently have a specific set of criteria for when he should step in so we're going to have to feel our way through it and learn as we go. We welcome feedback on this but ask that it be kept polite.
What will this look like in practice? A variety of things. We'll lean a little harder on NPC agency, having them warn him when negative things might be coming down the pipe. We might occasionally make OOC announcements with big bold letters saying "Hazōpilot thinks you should do X!" or "Hazōpilot thinks dealing with Y soon is important!" (We actually did this already and it didn't work; shortly before chapter 607 we made an OOC post saying "Asuma told you to denounce Jashinism" but the plan didn't incorporate it; okay, it was one line in a larger post and not everyone reads the non-update posts. Hopefully if it's more dramatic it will help.)
It's still on the players to anticipate problems and resolve them. There are going to be times when Hazōpilot does not warn you; this might happen for any number of reasons including but not limited to: we didn't think of it until after the fact, we decided that Hazōpilot wouldn't notice and the NPCs weren't available / didn't have time to get to him / didn't have necessary information, etc.
Tl;dr: We're going to have Hazōpilot avert more problems in the future, but we don't have firm rules on when or how to do this so we're going to be feeling our way through it. Please give us feedback, but also the benefit of the doubt.
