This does not make sense to me wouldn't trying to mess with the same technique over and over again make it easier to mess with that seems to make more logical sense
Does doing a single day on a project, then abandoning it because it's too hard, permanently increase the difficulty if we ever want to revisit the project?
Also, do we have an idea from the of the degree of failure that cannot be contained in a flaw? Is it 4+ shifts, or like 10+ shifts that makes a fracture?
Wouldn't having access to Wakahisa refills remove this limitation entirely?
Also, more questions, how do Shadow Clones interact with this system? Do fractures spread from Clones to Prime? Does a TH research day take 4 training blocks like Sealing does or 3 training blocks like studying to learn TH?
Does this apply if you are doing unique things each time with the technique, rather than just doing like, repeated redos to try to get a better version out of the technique gacha?
I am asking because of a proposal to make a bunch of tweaks from Geode Coffin to make it more usable from a chakra-expenditure perspective by making basically, multiple version of it for buffing earth jutsu, or defense, or offense.
Ohh, we can exploit this! We can deliberately repeatedly hack some technique over and over to make its TN go into the stratosphere, in order to make it impossible to modify! It'd be useful if we were to, for example, create a bunch of powerful humanitarian techniques and decide to proliferate them: we'd add some flaws to them that'd make them combat-unusable, then repeatedly hack them until chakra is so sick of them it'd never listen to foreign hackers trying to modify them into weapons.
(I assume this doesn't actually work and the TN only goes up for this specific technique-hacker, not all hackers worldwide.)
A Tweak, which is a slight modification of an existing ninjutsu.
A tweak is a stunt, which will usually cost between 0 XP and 50 XP to learn.
A tweak cannot be shared with others.
A tweaked ninjutsu uses the level of the ninjutsu it is based on. When casting a ninjutsu, you may choose to use the ninjutsu's original spec or any tweak you've learned.
You cannot use two tweaks at once to modify a ninjutsu as you cast it.
If you want to combine tweak effects, that requires researching a new tweak.
For example: Hiruzen is tired of Water Dragon Bullet taking his Supplementals every time he casts it. He makes a tweak which changes the cast time from Full Round (-20 strain) to Standard (+0 strain), in exchange lowering the attack bonus from +AB (+30 strain) to nothing (+0 strain). The resulting stunt, Rapid Water Dragon Bullet, costs 5 XP to learn.
If he wants to cast the original Water Dragon Bullet, he can.
He can also cast Rapid Water Dragon Bullet at the same level as Water Dragon Bullet. This costs 2 CP less, and takes a Standard instead of a Full Round.
Thinking about this a little bit: tweaks seem like they have the potential to be really useful (GOATed, even). But for simulationist reasons, they can't be too useful, or else a lot more ninja would pick up TH than would seem to be the case. Like, it seems to me that, unless the TNs are impractically high, most ninjutsu-spec jounin (or just any jounin that regularly makes use of ninjutsu) would eventually pick up some TH, just to do tweaks. And that doesn't seem to be the case from what we know so far, although maybe it's just never been mentioned onscreen. But if the TNs are impractically high (i.e. in order to get useful tweaks, you would need to level TH so high that it's not worth it) then tweaks don't have much purpose unless the TNs for making new ninjutsu are even higher (in which case you really have to put a lot of levels into TH before you're able to develop useful new jutsu for other people).
So like, how many technique hackers are there? The impression I've got is that there aren't more than a handful in Leaf (and the one we met didn't even seem very good) although presumably there were more before the Collapse and the wars and so on. (I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that a lot of Leaf's jounin that died had 10-29 levels in TH for the tweaks.) But even so, it seems like there should be more hackers. Hacking is both less dangerous than sealing research and more compatible with a combat-focused build—TH benefits from leveling CR and jutsu, which are useful in combat, but a sealmaster must level both sealing and calligraphy, which don't have any direct combat utility. And although sealing is very useful, it doesn't seem dramatically more useful, or to have dramatically more low-hanging fruit, than hacking does. So I would expect more people to go into Technique Hacking than Sealing, at least twice as many.
Uh, anyways. I hope the QMs are thinking about how useful TH is in general and how many ninja study it, and would appreciate hearing more about these topics from them.
"Lochagos Panado," Kei said, intertwining her fingers as she stood before her superior. For every day she had thus far attended the matutinal briefing on the Pangolin-Hyena border, the Lochagos had expeditiously granted her dispensation to tend her own affairs. Today, however, he failed to immediately dismiss her.
"The Hyenas are growing more aggressive with their troop movements," the Lochagos said after scrutinizing her hands for a moment. "They will soon overextend themselves. You will take your squad and travel to the village of Chūkū to aid in its defense."
"I request additional mission-pertinent information, Lochagos," Kei said. "Is Chūkū a village of strategic relevance, such that my presence is particularly important?"
"On the contrary, Ypolochagos," the pangolin replied. "Chūkū has minimal strategic relevance, compared to a number of other similar border fortress-villages which guard key passes and keep Hyena from gaining access to the plains where they will have an advantage in strategic positioning. As a result, Chūkū is relatively under-defended, and the Hyenas have never held back from striking at a soft target. Your mission is to ensure that Chūkū's people are not harmed by Hyena savagery.
"An additional goal is to give your squad combat combat experience. It will not be battle-hardened Hyena skirmishers who attack Chūkū. Given that your squad has not fought any battles together yet, the relatively undisciplined raiders will be a better whetstone for your team's claws. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Lochagos Panado," Kei said, standing stiff.
"Then go. Your squad is ready to march."
o-o-o
Hazou SandPincher looked up to see Kagome-sensei walking towards him in slow motion. The older man crossed an invisible boundary and stopped abruptly, looking around. After a couple moments, he continued forward at normal speed, grumbling all the while.
"Stinking rune messing with the flow of time, going to pull open the folds of the timestream and let the chrono-reavers out so they can eat our faces. Are you sure you should be spending so much time in here, Hazou?"
Kagome glanced around at the other four Hazous and their storage-seal-manifested research stations that surrounded the glowing, humming rune on the island's wide beach. The Hazous were arranged in a ring, each about sixty meters apart from the others, all affected by the time acceleration provided by the central rune. Near the rune, a squat and sturdy MEW hut gave Hazou Prime a dark place to sleep when the time acceleration forced him to sleep during the day. Spent Daybright Lantern seals scattered around showed the price of Hazou working through the nights.
"Time is the only thing I need more of, Kagome-sensei. Do you think the rune is secretly poisoning me?"
"No…" Kagome said. All their tests with various flora and fauna had shown no harm from being within the rune's effect.
"Do you think the rune is going to fail?"
"No…" The rune didn't do anything dangerous when it ran out of power. The time acceleration just gradually faded away to zero and the rune turned back into an ordinary rock.
"Then I can't afford not to use every advantage I can get to win the rift war."
"Hmph," Kagome said, crossing his arms and quickly surveilling the field. "You're still going to the proper facilities for any infusion?"
"Of course, sensei," Hazou said. "Given what the rune infusions do to the environment, I wouldn't want to expose our actual camp to any risk. I really don't want to risk any infusion failures affecting the time rune while it's running, too. This is all only prep work."
"Fine," he said. "I just woke up. I saw what you're working on. Those are the copies I made of the Hokage's seal notes, right? From when he put the Fox in his kid's body."
"That's right," Hazou said. "Akatsuki took the originals, but we're lucky that Asuma had us make copies to give back to the Tower. I needed to decode them again, but it was faster the second time."
"I thought we gave up on those notes because they were full of face-on-fire gibberish," Kagome said. "Let me guess, now that you can make ninjutsu, you're trying to figure them out again?"
Hazou nodded. "I think… Kagome-sensei, I think I can figure it out."
Kagome's eyes went wide. "Show me," he said.
"I don't know if there's anything to show you," Hazou said, turning the notes around for Kagome-sensei to see. "You already read the decoded versions. You remember when I went over them with Asuma? He said that the technique hacking stuff was gibberish too – just weird exercises and ways of stretching your chakra that didn't actually achieve anything."
"Then what is it?"
"I think it's a manual," Hazou said carefully. "Look, you know how you have a chakra system, and by pushing and twisting chakra in just the right ways, you can cast a ninjutsu? Well, when you're pulling a ninjutsu apart or putting it together, you can't always keep the chakra entirely contained within the regular, easy-to-control parts of your chakra system. Sometimes, you make these weird little channels of pure chakra to redistribute chakra from one part of your system to another directly, when you normally wouldn't be able to transfer it because it would cause a counterflow or make the technique trigger prematurely or something.
"Well, those weird little channels of pure chakra? I think what the Fourth Hokage did is use those channels of chakra… to make seals."
Kagome-sensei frowned. "I don't get it."
"I don't think I fully get it either. But the channels basically let you move your chakra around with direction in a constrained flow. It's the same as chakra ink, and it's the same as the cave crystal used for runes. Well, pretty different given that it's maintained only by your willpower instead of any physical medium, but it's at least theoretically something that you could make seals out of."
"Sounds stupid. Like, really, monumentally, damnbeasts-eat-your-face-off stupid. You said you need to be focusing the whole time on maintaining the seal's structure? How hard is it to manage each of the chakra channels?"
"Well…" Hazou said. "I can make one channel and keep it stable. I can imagine a couple of reasons why I would need to manage two at the same time, but that would be really tricky. Maybe if I were a bit more skilled, I could try, but I'd probably fracture my chakra system. I bet a good technique hacker could handle it though."
"But each channel is like the stroke of a paper seal, right?"
"Right…" Hazou said.
"And there are thirty-six strokes in just the first seal that the stinking Hokage made!" Kagome said. "You can't do this Hazou. You'll just die. And then you need to keep it all stable while you're infusing it? Bioseals are deadly because the patterns change over time after you infuse it, but even biosealers are smart compared to the kind of dummy it would take to try to infuse a seal whose patterns can change while you're infusing it. How would you even infuse a seal if it's made of your own chakra? You can't touch it like a normal seal, and you can't push your chakra through it if it's already made of your chakra. And what happens after you infuse it? You just need to keep focusing on it forever until you eventually need to sleep and then the seal fails and your chakra all gets sucked into a rift and one of the whispering schemers starts piloting around your body since you're gone and then it starts secretly killing us all one by one until-"
"It's not that bad, Kagome-sensei," Hazou said quickly. "That's what I meant when I said there's a manual. Those weird exercises that Asuma talked about? They're exercises for improving your ability to maintain those chakra channels. And the seals are apparently kinda stable once they're infused. You can't just ignore them, but if you can apply a little bit of… 'pressure', they'll just keep their shape and stay anchored to your chakra system. There's exercises for that too, to teach you how to maintain the 'pressure' to keep the seal stable even when you sleep. As to how you infuse it… I don't know. I tried to read that part, but I don't think I really got it. There's more complicated stuff in here, but I don't think it's completely unachievable."
"Yeah, probably," Hazou said. "Honestly, I have no clue how the Fourth Hokage figured this out. The exercises aren't written like a pedagogical tool – like 'you need to be able to do this skill, so practice this until you hit this benchmark.' It's all first person. 'I tried this, and it didn't work out,' or 'After three days of this exercise, I was able to stabilize two more channels than before.' I don't know how he had the idea, chased it, and mastered it without killing himself in a chakra fracture or a sealing failure or some unholy combination of the two."
"The Sage cheats, Hazou," Kagome said. "You can't trust him. You should put those down for now, Hazou. You said you can't waste time? From the sound of it, that stuff is a giant stinking time-wasting mudslide with a fully-armed killbox at the bottom."
"I suppose so," Hazou said, setting the pile of notes down. "What are you working on today, Kagome-sensei?"
As Kagome-sensei started to talk about his latest adjustment of the trap arrays to account for the Scenery Clone and Silence Shell seals, even the growing brightness of dawn couldn't keep Hazou's tired mind from wandering. He'd been working day and night on seals and runes of every type to try to find one that could credibly oppose Akatsuki, to little avail. But if it did work out, his work would look like the Fourth Hokage's. The Fourth's notes were the path that did work. Hazou would never know how many dead-end research pathways the man had explored. If Hazou found something, would anyone but him remember the hundreds of ideas that had died on the pyre to make the one critical rune work out?
Or maybe Hazou's work wouldn't end up like the Fourth's. The Fourth had made these seals over the course of years of research in peacetime. Hazou, on the other hand, had weeks or months at most. What would happen if Hazou's hands were still empty when Naruto finally gave word that Akatsuki had opened the rift?
o-o-o
Kei looked over the village of Chūkū. Doing so required no great feat of athleticism – the Pangolin settlement boasted barely ten dozen pangolins of various ages and subspecies, though only two of them stood above her shoulder. The corresponding earthen domes of the village's denizens, arranged in neat, honeycomb rows, were barely taller, and two minutes at a civilian's walking pace up the village's eastern acclivity sufficed to observe the miniscule colony in its entirety.
At the surface, it was an ordinary Pangolin settlement. Hardworking laborers heaped wet grasses and wood chips into the termite mounds, artisans huddled around the community board to read the local authority's latest decrees, and even a few pangopups were rolling through carefully-chosen streets far from the watchful eyes of those who might report them for their lack of discipline.
Still, any dullard would be able to tell that the village was not ordinary. Even a Hagoromo would have seen that in the sky, barely a half-dozen miles away, the Pangolin brown faded to a Hyena yellow: a sign of the land's recent conquest. Hyena had halted the Pangolin advance in the mountains, but the fertile fields had been claimed.
And claimed they had been. The treeline had receded perhaps thirty meters from logging, and deep troughs in the ground marked where they had been dragged to sit in the stream so that their wood might be softened to more easily appeal to the termites' palate. The scythed grasses and bare roots of the forest beyond revealed additional fodder fed to the termite piles – inadequately, Snowflake had noted yesterday, as the piles were approximately thirty percent larger than optimal. The typical comestible termites from the Pangolin heartlands were not thriving with their new food source, and the settlers of Chūkū were attempting to resolve a problem of quality with additional quantity.
Even the village looked bare. The painted earthen domes only bore colored splashes on their bottom two rows at most, indicating particular honors or service to the community performed by the occupying family. Compared to the multifarious colors she had seen in larger settlements, it was clear that Chūkū had no storied history in Pangolin's annals.
Yet, the pangolins believed they owned it all the same. She would certainly never second-guess the Ministry of Doctrine's claims of the supposed alliance between Hyena and Condor (excepting of course the extent to which the story justifying Hyena's persecution had led Conjura and the Wings of Liberty to fight on Hyena's behalf for years), but unlike the Condor lands supposedly owed to the Pangolins, the Ministry made no ancestral claim on Hyena lands. The land had been claimed and settled purely as restitution for Hyena treachery.
And now she was required to fight to defend it. From her vantage point, she could easily mark the three burly pangolin warriors she had been assigned to command. Two were aiding with tasks around the village, but Panga, on lookout, noted her gaze and swiftly crossed his claws together for his Ypolochagos. Kei quickly returned the salute so the pangolin warrior would redirect his attention.
Would she defend the village? She knew she needed to, if she wished to keep the Pangolin Scroll, but perhaps the moral compromises required by the contract outweighed the potentially-diminishing utility of a clan finally coming to terms with her lack of loyalty to the regime they all unquestioningly obeyed.
Word had come through the chain of command that Hyena had finally broken the truce, attacking a seemingly under-defended battlegroup camping in disadvantageous terrain. Those hyenas had discovered that they'd pounced directly into a claws-out ambush by a fully armed subterranean platoon. Distantly, the fighting had resumed in earnest, with hyenas killing pangolins and pangolins killing hyenas. The conflict would soon spread parasitically, even to this nearly-idyllic corner.
She would defend the village. In the short week that she had watched over it, she had come to know its inhabitants. They wholeheartedly endorsed Pangolin's colonial expansion, of course, but they were no part of it. They had left to the newly-conquered lands because they knew they would find easier work, better resources, and more readily-assigned breeding licenses. They were not at fault for the war that she and Pantsaa had instigated any more than Condor was.
She looked down at the kunai she held, checking once again that the various tags were appropriately affixed. If she was going to fight for the pangolins, she would be fighting against hyenas.
Kei's hands were stained as red as anyone's could be (bar a few extravagantly evil exceptions such as Hidan or Orochimaru), and she did not deny the extent of the harm, suffering, and death she had caused. Yet, foolish as it was, she had still found comfort occasionally in a shallow, irrational moral observation: for all that she had done, she had yet to end the life of a sentient creature by her own hand.
She had certainly tried to do so, so this false freedom was one granted solely by her own incompetence as a shinobi, but it was still the case that she had not killed human or summon. When the unending torrents of blood spilling forth from the Pangolin war machine kept her from sleep, she had at least been able to lie to herself. It was not I who did this, she would tell herself. The foot-soldiers and warriors, who know nothing but following orders, who are nothing more than gears in a machine, are the ones to blame. I, who set everything in motion, never held the knife.
How would she sleep without such lies? Similarly poorly, she suspected. In Kago, she had traded the life of five condor slaves for her reputation, and then at the Conclave, she had traded the life of another for her freedom. How many hyenas would she kill as the price of her conceited conception of justice?
The wind shifted.
"Hyenas!" Panga called out, nose going up in the air and sniffing rapidly. "Coming in from the south."
Her training overrode any moral inclinations and Kei substituted into the town. An additional substitution brought her into the south-facing blind. She could see movement in the grass, but she couldn't see how many hyenas there were. A dozen or less.
Kei started to make handseals to prepare the Ghost Scales technique, only to freeze as the first of the hyenas broke out of the tall grass onto the dirt strip surrounding the town. Another followed, then another, until six stood on the town's outskirts. They gazed atop a dome where Snowflake stood.
Snowflake threw a kunai. The hyenas tensed, but the weapon flew short by a dozen meters and landed in the dirt. A single tag fluttered in the gentle breeze.
The hyenas watched the tag as the trio of bulky pangolin warriors stepped forward from the domes, spreading into the dirt-covered no man's land between the grasses and the village.
One by one, the hyenas slinked back into the tall grass.
"No," Snowflake's voice called out sternly, and Kei turned to see one of the pangolin warriors preparing a ninjutsu to strike at the fleeing hyenas. "They're too far, and striking now would prematurely reveal tactical information about our ninjutsu."
"We should hunt them down," Kei heard Panga tell Snowflake, and knew already that Snowflake would refuse. "They will be back."
And when they returned, they would be prepared for a summoner.
Perhaps Kei would require additional explosive tags.
While this update lasted 10 days subjectively to Hazou, it only lasted 9 days on the calendar. In future long/research plans, please list the intended subjective and objective duration. You may list this at the top with the wordcounter, so that it doesn't penalize your overall word count.
Naruto has a response for your questions. He says the ideal attack scenario is against the rift site as you suggested – take out whichever subset of them are guarding the rift and clean up whatever Jashinists and Rain ninja are present, then close the rift to trap and kill any rift explorers via the afterlife's chakra drain before moving the rift to a more secure location. Consequently, the expected scenario is against a static target where you're unlikely to get on-site prep time.
He expects Leaf's surveillance/tracking capabilities to be minimal, as Itachi will be aware of many of Leaf's tricks. He thinks that they will try to avoid being predictable if possible – for instance, they likely won't sleep on-site at the rift, but might instead pick a location a few miles out in a random direction. Still, they probably will need to visit the rift site at some point, which may be observable (e.g. by tunneling Hyuuga).
He does not think finding a pair at random is a particularly viable path, much less finding two pairs in quick succession, except perhaps when they cluster up at the rift site to pull Pain out. He doesn't expect them to have any noteworthy long-distance communication abilities, so if you manage to kill a pair, then the others probably won't be alerted for at least a couple weeks (except Itachi/Kisame, who will probably quickly notice the other's absence on the Seventh Path).
Finally, he has cajoled certain limited information about the abilities of the Sharingan out of Sasuke: As far as Sasuke is aware, the Sharingan is doing "true" precognition, instead of making predictions based on what Sasuke knows. In practice, its useful predictions are usually within three seconds or less. It can theoretically see farther – perhaps half a minute – but predictions beyond a few seconds quickly become so hazy as to be mostly useless. It can be sustained for a long time – minutes easily, but hours will start substantially digging into one's chakra reserves, and it can be activated and deactivated near instantaneously.
Hazou writes a letter to Sasha congratulating her on her graduation. It is set to be delivered on the 25th of August (5 days from the end of this update) when she graduates. Mari has been pulling the strings of sensei assignment on her behalf for months. A party has been ordered.
Day 1
Prep TR75. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks he could maybe do this rune.
Prep Runic Air Dome.
Prep Runic HOWS.
Prep Draconic Decay Explosive. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks he could maybe do this rune.
Prep Air Leadening Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.
Day 2
Prep Force Blades.
Prep Runic Air Dome.
Prep Runic HOWS.
Prep Telescope Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks he could maybe do this rune.
Prep Hotbang Seal. Difficulty Result: Jiraiya.
Perhaps if he'd been using SSA, Hazou would have finished this. Instead, he thinks he's nearly done.
Prep Hotbang Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks he could maybe do this rune.
Prep TR50. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
Day 4
SSA recovery.
Day 5
SSA recovery.
Day 6
Prep Force Blades
Prep Runic Air Dome.
Prep Runic HOWS.
Prep Jinchuuriki Chain Seal #9. Hazou gains access to a new stunt, details forthcoming.
Prep Icarus Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.
Day 7
Prep Force Blades
Prep Runic Air Dome.
Prep Runic HOWS.
Prep Atmospheric Collapse Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
Prep Anti-Reverse Summoning Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities
Hazou completes the Runic Air Dome! Over the course of ~30 seconds, the rune forms a dome of solidified air fixed in place relative to the surface of the earth with the rune at the center of the dome. At infusion (not activation) time, the diameter of the dome can be varied between ~60 meters (the rune's Zone and every surrounding Zone) and 1 kilometer. Lasts ~1 week.
Can displace or destroy some matter to form the dome (e.g. trees will be bent or broken) sufficiently sturdy material (e.g. solid stone buildings) will disrupt the dome's formation.
The dome has Durability 10 (TN100 to damage, 10 stress boxes) and reduces its stress by 1 every 30 seconds. If the dome's stress track is exceeded, the entire dome is destroyed for 1d4 hours, after which it reforms.
Hazou thinks it may be possible to research a rune with even greater range and durability, perhaps by using pure force instead of compressed air.
Hazou completes the Runic HOWS! Within the rune's Zone, everyone is effectively blinded by intense omnidirectional light. The light is white by default but can be tuned at infusion time just like seal-based HOWS. Outside the Zone, the rune's Zone is perceived as a white sphere, providing bright illumination for around 5 zones in every direction. The rune lasts indefinitely.
Prep Chakra Drain Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
Prep Lesser Runic Prison. Difficulty Result: Hazou thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
Day 9
SSA recovery.
Day 10
SSA recovery.
Hazou is not entirely confident in his ability to prepare a scroll of Furrowed Brow of the Earth Mother, given that he's only just created it and the technique hasn't fully stabilized. It will be hard to accurately describe the technique in a scroll such that anyone can learn it when he has only 1 level in the technique.
Hazou offers Tenten Rocket Boots in exchange for her help on the Rocket-boosted kunai project. Kei thinks the odds of Rocket Boots being stolen and reverse-engineered in the next couple months before she is able to return to Leaf and resolve the ambiguity in the Concubine Laws in her favor to be minimal, especially given that Tenten is generally quite discreet. Tenten accepts, with the caveat that she won't interrupt her regular mission schedule.
Cannai says that border skirmishes with Leopard are increasing in frequency, but the most impactful combat available to the Dog Summoner would be in Hyena.
Kagome reports within a couple of days that a number of Arachnid jutsu exist to manipulate silk, though the silk isn't suitable for runecrafting on account of not being chakra conductive. He didn't find any such jutsu adapted to human use, though he says that the relevant Arachnids are willing (or would be, on Kumokougou's orders) to work with a human technique hacker to adapt the techniques.
Kagome has finished the Silence Shell Seal Array and will start using them in his defense formations. By default, he'll go back to working on the rift seals. He's willing to do so from within the time acceleration rune.
For this update, I'll award brevity XP based on subjective rather than objective time, but we don't have a policy one way or another.
Hazou completes the Runic HOWS! Within the rune's Zone, everyone is effectively blinded by intense omnidirectional light. The light is white by default but can be tuned at infusion time just like seal-based HOWS. Outside the Zone, the rune's Zone is perceived as a white sphere, providing bright illumination for around 5 zones in every direction. The rune lasts indefinitely.
Failures on a technique hacking roll are less dire, as chakra prefers you to work with it instead of breaking the universe with exploits.
The most common result of a failure is adding a flaw to the target technique. This changes the spec (usually to be worse), and lowers the project's TN and completion counter correspondingly. This means that the final spec is not necessarily the same as the original spec!
Can we choose the flaw upon failure? Can we deliberately take flaws during the initial design of the new technique in order to reduce the TN of the original spec?
Technique hacking projects cannot be broken up with more than a day's break without losing progress. A project must be focused on from start to finish.
What is "progress" in this context? My attempts to loophole the TH rules gave me the idea of a researcher who flubbed rolls and inserted flaws into their work deliberately stopping their research to start over and hopefully get better rolls the second go-through.
Wait, then how did Noda's glitched TH roll end up killing Morita? If assistants aren't a thing why would any working TH user be anywhere near another one another, risking harm to each other for zero gain?
Hazou completes the Runic Air Dome! Over the course of ~30 seconds, the rune forms a dome of solidified air fixed in place relative to the surface of the earth with the rune at the center of the dome. At infusion (not activation) time, the diameter of the dome can be varied between ~60 meters (the rune's Zone and every surrounding Zone) and 1 kilometer. Lasts ~1 week.
Can displace or destroy some matter to form the dome (e.g. trees will be bent or broken) sufficiently sturdy material (e.g. solid stone buildings) will disrupt the dome's formation.
The dome has Durability 10 (TN100 to damage, 10 stress boxes) and reduces its stress by 1 every 30 seconds. If the dome's stress track is exceeded, the entire dome is destroyed for 1d4 hours, after which it reforms.
Hazou thinks it may be possible to research a rune with even greater range and durability, perhaps by using pure force instead of compressed air.
"I don't think I fully get it either. But the channels basically let you move your chakra around with direction in a constrained flow. It's the same as chakra ink, and it's the same as the cave crystal used for runes. Well, pretty different given that it's maintained only by your willpower instead of any physical medium, but it's at least theoretically something that you could make seals out of."
Hazou completes the Runic HOWS! Within the rune's Zone, everyone is effectively blinded by intense omnidirectional light. The light is white by default but can be tuned at infusion time just like seal-based HOWS. Outside the Zone, the rune's Zone is perceived as a white sphere, providing bright illumination for around 5 zones in every direction. The rune lasts indefinitely.
Hazou completes the Runic Air Dome! Over the course of ~30 seconds, the rune forms a dome of solidified air fixed in place relative to the surface of the earth with the rune at the center of the dome. At infusion (not activation) time, the diameter of the dome can be varied between ~60 meters (the rune's Zone and every surrounding Zone) and 1 kilometer. Lasts ~1 week.
Can displace or destroy some matter to form the dome (e.g. trees will be bent or broken) sufficiently sturdy material (e.g. solid stone buildings) will disrupt the dome's formation.
The dome has Durability 10 (TN100 to damage, 10 stress boxes) and reduces its stress by 1 every 30 seconds. If the dome's stress track is exceeded, the entire dome is destroyed for 1d4 hours, after which it reforms.
Hazou thinks it may be possible to research a rune with even greater range and durability, perhaps by using pure force instead of compressed air.
This does not make sense to me wouldn't trying to mess with the same technique over and over again make it easier to mess with that seems to make more logical sense
It seems to me that, unless the TNs are impractically high, most ninjutsu-spec jounin (or just any jounin that regularly makes use of ninjutsu) would eventually pick up some TH, just to do tweaks. And that doesn't seem to be the case from what we know so far, although maybe it's just never been mentioned onscreen. But if the TNs are impractically high (i.e. in order to get useful tweaks, you would need to level TH so high that it's not worth it) then tweaks don't have much purpose unless the TNs for making new ninjutsu are even higher (in which case you really have to put a lot of levels into TH before you're able to develop useful new jutsu for other people).
I think you're mostly right. Ninjitsu spec Jonin from certain Clans might not need TH as much, because they have inherent advantages or ready access to highly effective clan secret ninjitsu.
However a clanless ninjitsu spec jonin might have much more reason to learn TH. They have to invent their own tricks.
Now TH seems like it is probably prevalent amongst s-rankers...
Hazou completes the Runic HOWS! Within the rune's Zone, everyone is effectively blinded by intense omnidirectional light. The light is white by default but can be tuned at infusion time just like seal-based HOWS. Outside the Zone, the rune's Zone is perceived as a white sphere, providing bright illumination for around 5 zones in every direction. The rune lasts indefinitely.
He expects Leaf's surveillance/tracking capabilities to be minimal, as Itachi will be aware of many of Leaf's tricks. He thinks that they will try to avoid being predictable if possible – for instance, they likely won't sleep on-site at the rift, but might instead pick a location a few miles out in a random direction. Still, they probably will need to visit the rift site at some point, which may be observable (e.g. by tunneling Hyuuga).
One hopes that the hypothetical Telescope Rune pairs well with the Hyuga Clan's Byakugan, such that they can accurately scope out the entire island from miles away.
In practice, its useful predictions are usually within three seconds or less. It can theoretically see farther – perhaps half a minute – but predictions beyond a few seconds quickly become so hazy as to be mostly useless.
Alright what I'm getting out of this is that, in an active combat scenario with people making rapid decisions and adjustments to plans, the typical situation Sasuke might experience, this statement is true. Action + reaction + reaction + reaction + reaction = hazy future.
But if we're trying to apply it to something like a trap, especially if it activates automatically given conditions like proximity, then Itachi would likely be able to see the trap the full 30 seconds in advance. The 'haziness' of a typical combat situation wouldn't apply to a trap that absolutely activates in every single future he steps too close to it, after all. The question then becomes; what does it mean for him to be able to 'see' 30 seconds in advance? If Itachi is moving at speed down a corridor, turns a corner and that corner would trigger an explosion, would Itachi see that explosion from along the length of the corridor? What if it was a directional explosive with no part of it's effect being visible from the corridor?
and just out of pessimism, I recommend we double it, assume Itachi has a full minute of warning. I'm not sure if Sasuke is talking mostly about his own eyes or if he's basing this information off of clan scrolls, but either way Itachi has more powerful eyes than is typical of the Uchiha. I'm not trying to say it's the most powerful sharingan ever, but any Uchiha in the past who may have had a similar strength of their bloodline might not have dutifully written down their limits for the clan.
Alright what I'm getting out of this is that, in an active combat scenario with people making rapid decisions and adjustments to plans, the typical situation Sasuke might experience, this statement is true. Action + reaction + reaction + reaction + reaction = hazy future.
But if we're trying to apply it to something like a trap, especially if it activates automatically given conditions like proximity, then Itachi would likely be able to see the trap the full 30 seconds in advance. The 'haziness' of a typical combat situation wouldn't apply to a trap that absolutely activates in every single future he steps too close to it, after all. The question then becomes; what does it mean for him to be able to 'see' 30 seconds in advance? If Itachi is moving at speed down a corridor, turns a corner and that corner would trigger an explosion, would Itachi see that explosion from along the length of the corridor? What if it was a directional explosive with no part of it's effect being visible from the corridor?
and just out of pessimism, I recommend we double it, assume Itachi has a full minute of warning. I'm not sure if Sasuke is talking mostly about his own eyes or if he's basing this information off of clan scrolls, but either way Itachi has more powerful eyes than is typical of the Uchiha. I'm not trying to say it's the most powerful sharingan ever, but any Uchiha in the past who may have had a similar strength of their bloodline might not have dutifully written down their limits for the clan.
The corresponding strategy, therefore, is to inevitably kill Itachi a full minute before his Sharingan-prediction allows him to see any sign of the murder coming. For example, if the plan is to poison Itachi (yes I know poison is a joke sue me), we should use a poison that is completely undetectable and does absolutely nothing for a minute, after which point the poison will display lethal symptoms and kill Itachi.
Kei SC XP: 25*2.1 = 52.5 SC XP
Our boy is back to 19 training blocks/day after finishing his time in the TH mines, at five sealing tracks that leaves him with 6 days at 0.3x modifier and 4 days at 1.4x modifier
Hazou SC XP: 2.5(0.3*6+1.4*4) = 18.5 SC XP
Hazou is also reading Sealing Notes on his rest days. At 2 blocks/day that means 8 blocks
The corresponding strategy, therefore, is to inevitably kill Itachi a full minute before his Sharingan-prediction allows him to see any sign of the murder coming. For example, if the plan is to poison Itachi (yes I know poison is a joke sue me), we should use a poison that is completely undetectable and does absolutely nothing for a minute, after which point the poison will display lethal symptoms and kill Itachi.
Finally, he has cajoled certain limited information about the abilities of the Sharingan out of Sasuke: As far as Sasuke is aware, the Sharingan is doing "true" precognition, instead of making predictions based on what Sasuke knows. In practice, its useful predictions are usually within three seconds or less. It can theoretically see farther – perhaps half a minute – but predictions beyond a few seconds quickly become so hazy as to be mostly useless. It can be sustained for a long time – minutes easily, but hours will start substantially digging into one's chakra reserves, and it can be activated and deactivated near instantaneously.
Hm. I would assume that Itachi is periodically flickering it on and off as a matter of policy, and that he can see at least a minute into the future. And while "haziness" makes far-future visions useless for detailed combat predictions, it's probably still very useful for spotting ambushes.
Like, if the Sharingan lets him see a vast spread of possibilities without actually pining down which one will become true, with the breadth of these possibilities increasing combinatorially the farther he looks, then yes, that'd be useless for combat (since he'd be looking at a set of timelines corresponding to every possible action his opponent could take). However, if he flickers it on at rest, then if he's safe, none of the possible futures he sees would contain him being attacked. If he's about to be ambushed, however? Then at least some of them would involve that ambush; some of them would involve the attackers fucking up and giving the game away early; etc.
Roughly speaking, even a "hazy" vision one minute into the future would likely still let him see any particularly "big"/"unexpected" developments.
And since the cost for momentarily flickering it on and off seems to be negligible, and seeing at least 30 seconds into the future is possible, and Itachi is smart...
That's not great. It may be straight-up impossible to ambush him, except in his sleep. (He definitely sleeps on the Seventh Path, doesn't he?)
... Alright, I'm now in favor of developing some sort of esoteric attack vector, such that he can't put up any defense even if he sees it coming 30 seconds in advance. Alternatively, we need some sort of clever plan to isolate him from the rest of the Akatsuki while we kill them off (the rift ambush might work).
The corresponding strategy, therefore, is to inevitably kill Itachi a full minute before his Sharingan-prediction allows him to see any sign of the murder coming. For example, if the plan is to poison Itachi (yes I know poison is a joke sue me), we should use a poison that is completely undetectable and does absolutely nothing for a minute, after which point the poison will display lethal symptoms and kill Itachi.
