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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Sir Stompy said:
Assuming we do not massacre every single human we meet. Some of them are going to survive and report that we were there. Is that a risk you're happy to take?
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Real talk: why do we think Pirate Lords are going to be a combat challenge? If they aren't ninja or samurai or otherwise chakra-capable we're going to go through them like a hot knife through butter.

Given the fact that Skywalkers are now available to every village with any real presence I'm shocked that policing the seas hasn't been a priority for nations that care about piracy. Unless the Pirate Lords have a source of Skywalkers, a chuunin can throw explosives at their ships then walk home.

All of this is to say: if we don't Summon or use obvious bloodline abilities, we probably just look like any other nin trying to beat piracy back a bit. Let's get haircuts and dye our hair and change our clothes.
faflec said:
jfc those people had families
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...this is true of everyone that we have ever killed and ever will kill?

The big point that I want to make is that we need to be ready for this to trigger some big PTSD without Akane or Ino to anchor us.
 
RandomOTP said:
Random idea: we have varying types of defensive seals (Kagome's 2 Part Earth Dome Seal, Air Dome, Force Walls, etc)...

How hard do you think it would be to turn them into an Armor Seal?

Take Air Dome, make it project a movable Air dome, and shaped like armor? Have it activate with CATEARS and gain a non-regenerative stress box or two.

I don't think the "shaping" it will be the hard part, but more the "mobility" feature. What do y'all think?
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Since Armor is supposedly one of the "holy grails" of ninja combat. Very very hard.
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
Real talk: why do we think Pirate Lords are going to be a combat challenge? If they aren't ninja or samurai or otherwise chakra-capable we're going to go through them like a hot knife through butter.
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These are ninja pirates

EDIT: Relevant quote
Velorien said:
As a side note, as a former Mist ninja, Hazō knows that while Mist claims the South Kanashii Ocean (and thus Crimson State Island) to be within its sphere of influence, in practice the region is ruled by the Pirate Lords, who are not AMITY signatories and unlikely to face repercussions if a team of village ninja went missing while trespassing in their territory.
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OliWhail said:
"Okay," Hazou acquiesced. "You know the Air Dome?"

"Huh? I would hope so, seeing as I gave you the damn thing," Jiraiya responded testily.

"You know how the dome it creates is fixed in place?"

"Sure. One of the most common ways seals like that operate. One of the banes of my existence, frankly, since it makes it damn useless as a mobile shield. Hell, it's the big reason I never spent much time messing around with Five-Seal… Barrier... oh no."
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I'm reasonably certain that Jiraiya tried creating Air Dome-based armor in addition to trying to make it a mobile shield.
 
Sir Stompy said:
If y'all can precommit, right now, to massacring everyone we come across, I got no issues with this. Go wild y'all.

But if we get there and people start whining about "war crimes" and "atrocities", I don't want to hear it.
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I have a lot fewer qualms massacring ninja who make their livings via violence than I do massacring random civilian traders who got unlucky. I'm down to shank some ninja pirates.
 
Let's just clear out some chakra beasts in north Iron or South Snow, that's sufficiently far from ninja population we'd be doing civvies a service and likely to run into some nasties.
 
Cariyaga said:
Let's just clear out some chakra beasts in north Iron or South Snow, that's sufficiently far from ninja population we'd be doing civvies a service and likely to run into some nasties.
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Hm.
Velorien said:
"But one day he was born. Ashikage no Yōtarō, the Liberator. The Liberator was blessed by the Heavens with more of the magic called chakra than a dozen of the cursed shinobi, and he had a vision. Hidden away in the wastelands of the north, he devised a sword art that drew its strength from any man's chakra, be it as mighty as a storm or as feeble as a falling teardrop, so that no longer would all power be held by a few oppressors while the greater part of mankind suffered beneath their yoke.
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A really long time ago, we had the idea of investigating Northern Iron to see if the source of the Liberator's power was still somewhere there.

Let's go on an adventure.
 
DanZapman said:
I have a lot fewer qualms massacring ninja who make their livings via violence than I do massacring random civilian traders who got unlucky. I'm down to shank some ninja pirates.
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Are you okay massacring the nearby civvies?

I want to stress and stress again, we don't know what we'd be walking into. If there are civvie witnesses, we would need to kill them. If you're cool with that risk, fine. Doesn't bother me any. Jashin will be happy at least.

But I do not want to deal with people trying to talk themselves out of eliminating them if it's necessary. If they see us, they're a leak risk, they need to die or be silenced.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Are you okay massacring the nearby civvies?
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I assume our plan will work to minimize civvie witnesses but I also understand that we're not likely to encounter an ideal situation. It's not great but it's necessary and something I can stomach.

Sir Stompy said:
But I do not want to deal with people trying to talk themselves out of eliminating them if it's necessary. If they see us, they're a leak risk, they need to die or be silenced.
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Agreed.
 
Here's your reminder that Sasha graduates the Academy in less than a month of IC time, and that the QMs have graciously allowed us to take control of Sasha's character sheet.

Given that, here's what I believe her starting build should be.

RandomOTP said:
Prospective Sasha Build
Academy Graduate Edition​


Okay, let's talk!

So we know that all Academy students get 1,000xp to assign to their various stats.

We've also been told that Academy students are allowed to buy stunts, but that the learning/xp-accrual stunts (such as the Pangolin Conditioning Jutsu, ACE, and the Yanamaka Stability Jutsu) don't retroactively earn XP for the 1,000xp that Academy Students receive.

That said, this is my suggestion for Sasha's Starting Build.

Stats
20AlertnessAthleticsNapalm Shot
10ChakraResolvePhysiqueSubstitution
And also Pangolin Conditioning Jutsu at level 1


Stunts
Yamanaka Stability Jutsu50xp
Rocket Jump10xp

We're going to have Sasha graduate from the Academy, having learned the Pangolin Conditioning Jutsu, Y.S.J., and the Rocket Jump stunt. This will maximize her growth with Pangolin/Yamanaka XP and make buying Physique and Resolve as discounted as possible.

Since we've invented RRBs, buying the RJ stunt seems like a no-brainer. It'll be a massive boost to her early-game survivability (+9 to "all Physical rolls," but the most important of which right now is Athletics).

Now, onto the build, itself.

Sasha has said that she wants to be a ninjutsu specialist, and Napalm Shot is a pretty nifty ranged ninjutsu that continues to do damage after a single hit. It should also relatively cheap to cast, if the bog-standard Fire Bullet is anything to go by. It's the sort of jutsu that'll serve as a decent starter ninjutsu capstone, and can be phased out later on by something more advanced.

Further, this build also sets up Resolve and Physique to be raised into the 20-slots in the near-future, which will give Sasha an additional Mental and Physical stress box, respectively (basically more HP, which is a must for a fresh genin).
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Re unstagnation options: can we please do something that won't consume too much time? We're still on a time limit with the anti-Akatsuki weapons research, we really want to just unstagnate as quickly as possible and get back to that.

And we need to play it smart, too. Getting consequences is the last thing we can afford right now.
 
Suggestion: Have Summons scout suitably-dangerous chakra monster locations and have Hazou join in only after the enemies have been found/right before attack.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Why Napalm shot and not Sundance? IIRC Sundance was pretty good.
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Eh, a couple of scattershot reasons
  1. Chakra cost is pretty high for a fresh genin. It's definitely something to learn later on, but with a CR 10, I'm a little concerned
  2. The suns that Sundance start out with receive a -AB when they're first summoned, and as a fresh genin, Sasha shouldn't be in the sort of protracted battle that would allow Sundance to power up.
  3. Sasha's going to be using/abusing the "Alertness roll + Goo Bomb TN 60" strat for the first bit, so attack jutsu aren't going to be strictly necessary at first. If she wanted to be anything other than a ninjutsu user (melee weapons, ranged weapons, genjutsu), then I'd suggest that we look into Fire Element Buffs like Basan's Glide.
  4. Depending on how "continues to inflict damage after a single hit" works, mechanically, Sasha can use NS to generate tags and pass them along to her jonin-sensei.

Again, I'd be down for Sasha to learn and level Sundance later on, but as a fresh and squishy academy graduate... I'd really rather not.

acidshill said:
And we need to play it smart, too. Getting consequences is the last thing we can afford right now.
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I mean, any combat we embark on needs to be challenging and risky, or else we won't even partially unstagnate. There's a reason why we can't just stroll up to the Goketsu Koi Pond, toss in an explosive tag, and unstagnate that way (well, multiple reasons).

I agree, let's not pop off a dozen shadow clones and pick a fight with Sasori, but there's going to be some unavoidable amount of risk.

It's also entirely possible that a single combat encounter won't be enough to unstagnate us.
 
RandomOTP said:
I mean, any combat we embark on needs to be challenging and risky, or else we won't even partially unstagnate. There's a reason why we can't just stroll up to the Goketsu Koi Pond, toss in an explosive tag, and unstagnate that way (well, multiple reasons).
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I was under the impression that unstagnation thresholds were relative to the character's skill, and that it was possible to use strategy to reduce the risk. Maybe I'm wrong about that, I don't really understand how the QMs decide unstagnation. Maybe we shouldn't try unstagnating at all and just prioritize research.
 
acidshill said:
I was under the impression that unstagnation thresholds were relative to the character's skill, and that it was possible to use strategy to reduce the risk. Maybe I'm wrong about that, I don't really understand how the QMs decide unstagnation. Maybe we shouldn't try unstagnating at all and just prioritize research.
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It's based on what your stats were when you broke the last barrier, iirc... unfortunately, we haven't really touched Hazou's combat stats (though I'm sure that RRBs will help in that regard).

That said, we definitely could delay combat for a while. We lose an extra 10% percent of XP accrual for every 100xp we gain after stagnation. And we need ~300xp to raise Primorial Sealing to 25 (which is where it caps out from our Sealing Bonus, iirc). We could wait the time and still be at 60% of our full XP Rate.
 
acidshill said:
I was under the impression that unstagnation thresholds were relative to the character's skill, and that it was possible to use strategy to reduce the risk. Maybe I'm wrong about that, I don't really understand how the QMs decide unstagnation. Maybe we shouldn't try unstagnating at all and just prioritize research.
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We need to do it sooner or later to keep up with our research stats. Might as well do it nowish
 
@eaglejarl , @Velorien, @Paperclipped

Forgive the presumption, but maybe it'll help lower the spoon-cost threshold to engage with Sasha's mechanics:

I drew up a potential character sheet for Sasha, based on what we've seen of her, on-screen (admittedly little, though Hazou has been personally tutoring her, offscreen, for much longer that what we've seen). The skill levels can all be fiddled with, but I'd like to draw your attention to the character Aspects/Troubles.

I've included my reasoning down below:
  • High Aspect: Such a Serious Child
  • Trouble: Insatiable Curiosity
    • Rather than asking Atomu, Jin, Hazou, or any one of the Goketsu Ninja how to use directional explosives (adult ninja who may say "no, you're too young"), Sasha instead manipulated Honoka into showing her how to use them, and made sure to tailor her words so that Honoka would be positively inclined to her.
    • While this reveals some jealousy towards Honoka, it also reveals a deep desire to learn, to know, and to understand. And it also reveals that Sasha isn't quite shy about being deceitful if she wants to learn something.
  • Uplift Idealist
    • Akane, by her own admission, helped troubleshoot problems with civilians who were scared of ninja. She, as someone who took up this duty, and as a civilian-born ninja, would've reached out to Sasha (who is also a civilian-born ninja) and Sasha's parents to ensure that they knew they had a familiar/trustworthy face in the Goketsu Clan. Akane was Friend-Shaped and Radiated Uplift. I can't imagine her not having left an impression on Sasha. An impression that was compounded by her years as a Goketsu, that Hazou's personal tutorship then ironed out into something a little more foundational.
  • Goketsu Clan Kid
    • Right what it says on the tin. She's one of us, and if we were willing to bring about a clan war because Ritsuo insulted Kei, imagine what we would do if someone tricked to screw over our freshly-graduated, vulnerable baby sister? Boom, squish. This represents those resources at her disposal, in addition to simply being a Clan Ninja.
  • Ninjutsu Fangirl
    • While Sasha takes pains to ensure that she's seen as a serious person, and that she's taken seriously, she also wants to be a ninjutsu spec, to throw fireballs and cast Omega Firefall 3000. So I imagine that she's a little bit of a nerd, a little bit of a geek, and that she has a secret passion for ninjutsu that she tries to hide/temper for fear of being seen as too childish.
 
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