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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Veedrac said:
We made a puffer seal and it's landing blows at 100m. We made a runic HOWS, a seal that basically serves as candlelight, and it omnidirectionally blinds a full zone.
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Ehhhh

Puffer seals are equivalent to explosive seals. So not that impressive all things considered. Puffer runes are only modestly better than implosion seals. The rest is cool but not combat applicable in the slightest.
Veedrac said:
Fundamentally, if we can get kill spells reliably large, and it looks like we should, the Akatsuki have not shown that they would be immune to it.
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Sure, I have no doubt that given 3 years Hazou could solo Akatsuki with his runes. However it's very likely that we will not have that long.

The question is "can we make effects big enough to kill Akatsuki reliably in the timescale we have?" This is not clear at all. Most of our powerful runes are simply too difficult to research. Many potential avenues of attack are not panning out at all.
Cariyaga said:
I think that we should do work on those both if they are well within our capabilities regardless of if we also do prep days for them during that update cycle. But duly noted.
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Both of these seem sufficiently complex that I would want prep days on them before writing a conditional action plan.
 
Cariyaga said:
Ah, sorry, to be clear, implosion runes are not to make booms. They are to get rid of air.
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As noted you can suffocate an area if you do this underneath a Force Dome (or an Air Dome, just be careful about storing the dome I guess?). Even without that, I would hazard a guess that fighting in the 3s of vacuum that would exist if the implosion runes were actually big big would very much not be fun either.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Puffer seals are equivalent to explosive seals. So not that impressive all things considered. Puffer runes are only modestly better than implosion seals.
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I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Puffer seals are equivalent to explosive seals" (puffer seals are safe to hold in your hand), but anyway my claim isn't that the these runes specifically are the weapon we need. My claim is simply that per observations, if we take seals we already have and make runic equivalents we should expect some meaningful fraction of them to be both huge and deadly, and that this suffices as a battle plan that requires both minimal assumptions and the most limited exposure to risk that seems contextually plausible.
 
Veedrac said:
My claim is simply that per observations, if we take seals we already have and make runic equivalents we should expect some meaningful fraction of them to be both huge and deadly, and that this suffices as a battle plan that requires both minimal assumptions and the most limited exposure to risk that seems contextually plausible.
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Akatsuki is likely not going to be killed this way. What do we have left to look at?

Implosion Seals - Hidan/Konan/Sasori don't need to breathe. Big boom - but can't apply it just like explosive seals. Probably TN 120+
MARS - Useful! Especially if we can make a variant that activates other people's seals, but not going to kill them all.
Chakdar/Ninja Radar - Useful again! But too hard for us to research right now
Storage - we're working on this. Not likely to do much
DE/RB/RRB - not useful
Force Wall - redundant with Force Dome?
Force blades- not useful
Banshee Slayer - not useful
Banshee Fucker/Earbuster - plausibly a WMD, plausibly not possible to research without giving our position away. But potentially interesting
PMYF - not useful
Macerator - potentially a misterator variant would be useful but I'm not really seeing it tbh
Alarm Seals - Redundant with Earbusters
LBF - might be good as a runic array experiment, I want to prep day this now
5SB - potentially useful possibly redundant with other defensive runes.
Light Relay - not useful
Party Trick - not useful
Silence Mines - useful for testing Earbuster Runes.
Tunneler's Friend - not useful?
UGLSP - Might be useful if Leaf's air gets stale if it's Domed up for too long
Electrocution - not useful except as veterancy
Goo Bomb - similar to Explosve Runes or Implosion Runes not dangerous to Akatsuki since we can't reach them with it
Substitution Seals - Maybe? Seems doubtful they'd be useful
Dampeners - not useful
Strobelight - might blind them, but most of them can blindfight. Not very useful
SCSA/SSSA - not useful
Earth Pillar - not useful
Earth Bullet - not useful

Not an exhaustive list, but that's most of the seals we know. Most of them are useless or of limited offensive potential.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Macerator - potentially a misterator variant would be useful but I'm not really seeing it tbh
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If we can turn the velocity component up to 11, I note that we will maybe be shooting a Storage Rune worth of shrapnel at a given direction at approximately the speed of sound.

🥺 Can we kill them with rock go fast?
 
How about a runic air dome, iron earth dome, and a third rune which links the two of them together and then rotates the resulting sphere's entire contents 180 degrees, so that the top half is now filled with bedrock? Even those who could survive being buried under a kilometer of debris would presumably be having a very bad time, inefficient packing of shattered rock means they can't be confident they'll have a safe reverse-summon point, and it seems like the kind of easy-to-define-mathematically effect which runes might be really good at.
 
MMKII said:
If we can turn the velocity component up to 11, I note that we will maybe be shooting a Storage Rune worth of shrapnel at a given direction at approximately the speed of sound.

🥺 Can we kill them with rock go fast?
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Deidara and Kisame, we probably could. Maybe even Itachi.

Probably not Hidan or Konan, but that's okay. We don't need a Magical Solution to All of Them. We can design specialized weapons against each.
 
Onsighter
Rune
An explosive rune with a special trigger condition. Once infused and activated, it does nothing until it's seen by someone, at which point it detonates.

Hallucinator
Rune
Casts a simple Illusion-type genjutsu. The illusion, as well as all other properties of the rune (such as whether it's single-target or multi-target, how long the effect lasts, how difficult it is to resist, etc.), is picked to make the rune as easy to design as possible. Default idea: the target perceives a new cloud in the sky.

Deluder
Rune
Casts a simple Mind Control-type genjutsu. The effect, as well as all other properties of the rune (such as whether it's single-target or multi-target, how long the effect lasts, how difficult it is to resist, etc.), is picked to make the rune as easy to design as possible.

Distresser
Rune
Replicates the effects of a Dragon's roar, creating an AoE which targets the Resolve of everyone in the area and inflicts consequences if they fail the roll.

Oh-Fifty-Five
Rune
If anyone perceives this rune, it immediately erases their memory of perceiving it. The effect does not need to affect second-order information or indirect inferences. (That is: upon activation, it doesn't erase Hazou's knowledge of the entire project, and if Hazou tells someone there's an Oh-Fifty-Five sitting in some area, they would retain that knowledge of its existence even under its effect – they just wouldn't be able to directly perceive it, to form new firsthand memories about it.)

If that makes the rune easier to research, it may only affect the minds of people in its vicinity (e. g., within 100m of it, such that if someone stares at it from 1km away, they won't be affected).


Check out my badass word count-optimized names. 😎
 
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Sir Stompy said:
Do we expect sight triggering to be easy? This seems like such an obvious ...beyond... that I hesitate to even consider it.
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Shrug. Orochimaru is a lesser sealmaster today and he'd managed it decades ago, using mere graphosealing. I also expect a "beyond", because I don't expect this type of effects to be easier with runecrafting. But we haven't tried anything from this family of effects, IIRC, and it might well be that they're all also incredibly easier.
 
Noumero said:
Shrug. Orochimaru is a lesser sealmaster today and he'd managed it decades ago, using mere graphosealing. I also expect a "beyond", because I don't expect this type of effects to be easier with runecrafting. But we haven't tried anything from this family of effects, IIRC, and it might well be that they're all also incredibly easier.
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It's possible that was a countermeasure specific to SC rather than a general effect. But good point. Too bad Kagome destroyed the expended seal.
 
Paperclipped said:

Invisibility Detection Seal

Difficulty: Jōnin
Movable: No
Components: 3
Duration: 1 hour

Makes nearby chakra glow. There will be a soft ambient glow everywhere and otherwise-invisible chakra constructs become visible.
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Pinging also @Velorien @eaglejarl How large is the AoE on this? Do the notes say? It seems of very limited use if it's a small AoE. Since the invisible person just avoids the glowing area.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Since the invisible person just avoids the glowing area.
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They need to know what it is to guarantee avoiding it and even for general paranoia avoiding weird things, a soft ambient glow seems like it can be disguised p well with candles or other sources of lighting. Plus, it can just be placed on bottlenecks where they have to go, like the mission target or stuff like that.
 
DanZapman said:
They need to know what it is to guarantee avoiding it and even for general paranoia avoiding weird things, a soft ambient glow seems like it can be disguised p well with candles or other sources of lighting. Plus, it can just be placed on bottlenecks where they have to go, like the mission target or stuff like that.
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Yeah you don't often see candles in the woods. Which is where ninja combat tends to take place....

Also if the 3 of them were going to hunt the Sakamoto Clan using this seal then it must have some offensive applications.
 
Paperclipped said:

Invisibility Detection Seal

Difficulty: Jōnin
Movable: No
Components: 3
Duration: 1 hour

Makes nearby chakra glow. There will be a soft ambient glow everywhere and otherwise-invisible chakra constructs become visible.
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I wonder if this would provide a boost to THing? If it renders chakra constructs visible, then it might make the chakra you're tinkering with visible.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Akatsuki is likely not going to be killed this way.
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To each their own. An Akatsuki and two dragons died by running into wires. Another Akatsuki is made of paper. I don't understand why any of them would be expected to survive a significant amount of time against 190dB shockwaves. I don't understand what countermeasure they have gets around a zone being filled with shards of force. I don't understand why sufficiently intense light combined with sufficiently intense shockwaves wouldn't both permanently or semi-permanently blind and deafen most of them, or why this wouldn't be hugely crippling to them both at the time and after the fact, even the ones that specialize in backup senses. I don't understand what means any of them bar Itachi would have to escape the area. If you don't find any of that compelling, idk what arguments to make that would make them moreso.
 
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Veedrac said:
I don't understand what means any of them bar Itachi would have to escape the area.
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Kisame is also a Summoner with worryingly good sensory abilities and hax amounts of chakra/regeneration. Orochimaru specifically warned that he wouldn't be much less dangerous if he had to fight blind. If anyone other than Kakuzu could escape or tank getting hit with a light/sound/force-shard rune, I would expect it to be Kisame. For the rest, though, I agree that they would have to defy our understanding somehow. The problem is that I expect this to be possible to a limited degree.

It's worth noting that chakra has allowed ninja to do things that seem narratively ridiculous to us with our real-world standards, like dodging and surviving hand grenades right next to them. Ninja are superhuman and the strongest ninja can do ridiculous things, represented by being able to meet and beat TNs high enough to massacre 99.99% of ordinary ninja. Akatsuki are Essies, which means they're at least jonin with some hax abilities, so their main combat abilities should be 60s-70s. We've been told that combination buff stunts become more common at jonin levels of experience, so their buff suites are considerable and their chakra boosting/invokes also are, with ABs of 7 or 8.

In short, the stuff we do has to be represented mechanically somehow and I expect Akatsuki to be able to dump out rolls of 100+ pretty easily when it's life or death for them. One major reason I was big on using light to kill them was that even for ninja it should still be literally impossible to dodge light after it's fired, precognition hax notwithstanding. (Although the obstacles and risks we encountered with gamma so far have convinced me that we can just do UV death beams.)

To summarize, if our attack is fundamentally "kills you, harder than usual", well, we know Akatsuki can counter with "doesn't die, harder than usual". Stuff like invisible light immediately fucking you up eliminates their ability to dodge and severely reduces their ability to notice a threat. I value things like that.
 
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DanZapman said:
Fair point. Seems like a reasonably wide AoE for it to be practical.
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Hm. Maybe an AoE of 3 concentric zones?

On one hand: Paper Sealing lacks sufficient power to overcome chakra diffusion.

On the other hand: multi-element seals split up the load, and it was strong enough that they helped to wipe out a clan --or at least cripple one.
 
DanZapman said:
It's worth noting that chakra has allowed ninja to do things that seem narratively ridiculous to us with our real-world standards, like dodging and surviving hand grenades right next to them.
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I fully agree we should expect various forms of bullshit, but MfD is an offense-favouring format and we know what sort of things are characteristic within it. Dodging to the seventh path?, totally feasible, that's a reason to look for attacks we can sustain. Just tanking 190dB shockwaves?, I don't see it.

It sounds like you both agree with me that these should work in principle, but also think it won't play out that way because rolls. Personally, I strongly dislike the 'they roll high so they win' interpretation of physics (somewhat on merit and hugely on taste), and additionally I'm much more happy to say Naruto can rasengan an injured, blinded, and deafened Kisame on the off-chance he manages to break out of a Force Dome before we can build enough runes around him to prevent that.

DanZapman said:
One major reason I was big on using light to kill them was that even for ninja it should still be literally impossible to dodge light after it's fired, precognition hax notwithstanding.
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I note that I still think collimated light weapons are a decent idea, though I'm skeptical Hazō can build something that's both a) rapidly lethal over a longer range than runes already operate over, and b) not suicidal.
 
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Veedrac said:
To each their own. An Akatsuki and two dragons died by running into wires. Another Akatsuki is made of paper. I don't understand why any of them would be expected to survive a significant amount of time against 190dB shockwaves
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Easy Itachi and Kisame are Summoners. They Reverse Summon.

Konan is made of paper she doesn't, have lungs to liquify. Same for Sasori he doesn't breathe.

Hidan has non-standard organs and can survive being decapitated. He very likely won't die.

Deidara is toast. But he's the easy one anyway.
Veedrac said:
I don't understand what means any of them bar Itachi would have to escape the area
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Kisame - Reverse Summon
Hidan - This is really bad for him, not cuz he won't live but cutting off his arms and legs means he can't run away.
Sasori - It was a puppet. He can survive being sliced to bits as long as it doesn't hit his brain/chakra coils
Konan - Made of paper, hardly notices the slicing field
Deidara- would die, he's pretty easy to kill.
 
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