Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[Sir Stompy]

We've mentioned wells and the players had a project (spearheaded, I believe, by @Kiba ) to build an aqueduct. I don't think we ever explicitly stated that it was finished but it was being worked on long enough that it probably wa

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We can also import water from the Seventh Path. Assuming we ration it, it looks like we can get by with 2L (kg) of water per person/day. Say ninja need 10x as much to do ninja things, and we have 1500 ninja and 28500 civvies to supply. We would need 570 storage seals worth of water for the civvies and 300 for the ninja.

Not that bad. If a Summoner is working for 12 hours on the bucket line and can do 100 storage seals per trip, that's less than 1 trip per hour.

If they have Summons to fill the barrels on the other side that is.

That said, we only need to supplement any well water we have. Nbd

 

[Sir Stompy]

I'd like to take this opportunity to reiterate that we really really should research Remote Explosives ASAP. Right now we have no idea what the range on them is; it could be kilometres for all we know, Runic Air Domes are a kilometre wide so it wouldn't be that odd, and if it is that's probably enough to win us the rift assault by itself. (Assuming Hidan isn't there to spot us with blood-sense, which is admittedly a significant assumption.)

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TN 100 to dodge, Akatsuki can do it (with mild difficulty). And some of them can't be killed this way (Konan). Now depending on how flexible RE runes are we could get multiple shots, but I wouldn't bet on it.

 

[FaintlySorcerous]

Would they be so aggressive if they thought the rift closed?

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If they thought Leaf closed it? Absolutely.

It would be tantamount to Leaf killing Pain - again. At that point, we're counting on them to resume normal relations with Leaf instead of deciding to raze the place to the ground.

If I was the Akatsuki, even putting aside the revenge angle, the only reason to leave Leaf standing would be that they're certain they can create a new Rift faster than we can. As long as we're alive, we're not going to stop trying to bring Jiraiya and Akane back. We're simply not.

The only way we can go back to Leaf is if the Akatsuki are dead, or convinced that we fucking with us isn't worth the risk that one day we crack the Rift and bring back all of Leaf's greatest heroes, likely kicking off a new war.

Frankly even if we KO the Akatsuki I'm worried about other nations figuring out that we have a plausible path to reviving every Hokage who ever lived and deciding that constitutes an risk so great that they band together and destroy us.

And this assumes the Watchers don't get involved and tell us to knock it off. Maybe if we wait long enough they'll take care of Sasori for us.

 

[Kyreneryk]

TN 100 to dodge, Akatsuki can do it (with mild difficulty). And some of them can't be killed this way (Konan). Now depending on how flexible RE runes are we could get multiple shots, but I wouldn't bet on it.

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Can they? I was thinking we'd make lots of REs - we can infuse them in 10 minutes if we make the blanks in advance and we can multithread with SC - and set their target areas at about three Zones apart (as in RE-zone-zone-RE). We could cover something like a 400x400-metre square that way with only 25 REs, and every Zone in the area would be the subject of at least a TN-80 attack, which most of the Akatsuki probably can't reliably dodge (since they wouldn't have buffs up) without spending Supplementals and/or FP. We might have to space them more tightly than that, thinking about it, but even under a strict reading we could place them in a chessboard pattern (180 x 180 metres fully covered with 25 REs) and then every Zone would be the subject of either a TN 100 attack and at least one TN 80 attack, or 3-4 TN 80 attacks. And that's assuming the TNs don't go up from multiple simultaneous attacks.

Re. killability:

• Konan is immune but is the Kage of Rain; I'm willing to discount the possibility that she's at the rift site unless Akatsuki has actually opened it.
• Kisame should be vulnerable.
• Itachi should be vulnerable.
• Deidara should be vulnerable if he's on the ground, though he may not be.
• Sasori should be vulnerable.
• Hidan might not die but would certainly be incapacitated, and we'd have ninja-radar to track him down if we knew he was there.

Actually, question @eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien ; what does dodging a TN100 explosive rune represent? For an explosive tag, it's diving for cover; but if I understand the power scales involved correctly, there basically shouldn't be any cover from the central Zone of a full-power explosive rune. Is it actually possible to dodge a TN100 explosion with Athletics alone, or do you have to have some way to move Zones out of turn (e.g. Substitution)? (Or indeed does rolling Ath 100 just let you move Zones out of turn?) Follow-up question; if you do have to have such a method, do you then have to defend again against the TN80 version of the attack from the same rune, or is the initial roll enough to both move Zones and find cover?

 

[Sir Stompy]

and every Zone in the area would be the subject of at least a TN-80 attack, which most of the Akatsuki probably can't reliably dodge without spending Supplementals and/or FP.

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Why do we care if they have to Supp dodge this? They can, easily. That matters in the context of a fight where they have to dodge many times. Not a single attack.

Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) = 86

And if they need to Invoke on the 100, fine.

Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) + 14 (Invokes) = 100

Now we've blown our attack and have nothing to follow up with. Runes are too slow to activate to reliably hit for multiple rounds. Given that they're likely to scatter in every direction and we can't cover a geometrically large area with explosions.

• Konan is immune but is the Kage of Rain; I'm willing to discount the possibility that she's at the rift site unless Akatsuki has actually opened it.
• Kisame should be vulnerable.
• Itachi should be vulnerable.
• Deidara should be vulnerable if he's on the ground, though he may not be.
• Sasori should be vulnerable.
• Hidan might not die but would certainly be incapacitated, and we'd have ninja-radar to track him down if we knew he was there.

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All reasonable takes except Sasori and Hidan I think.

There's absolutely no guarantee we will injure Hidan in a way that will incapacitate him, as you can see from the rolls, he's likely to survive uninjured and even if injured he's not likely to be Taken Out and he doesn't suffer Consequence penalties.

Sasori isn't likely to be present, but if he is, I think he'll be controlling his main puppet body from a safe distance.

 

[Shrooms]

Sasori isn't like to be present, but if he is, I think he'll be controlling his main puppet body from a safe distance.

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It's not clear to me that the user can actually be that far away, even one as adept as Sasori. Chakra diffusion bottom text etc

 

[Sir Stompy]

@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

Of the runes that Hazou has previously researched (TR125, explosive, HOWR....) can he determine the difficulty post-hoc?

That is, whether they were Trivial, Easy, or Medium. I assume none of them were Hard.

If he can, does size correlate with difficulty? All the Trivial Runes take 1 unit of substrate, all the easy ones take 5 units, etc.?

 

[Kyreneryk]

Why do we care if they have to Supp dodge this? They can, easily. That matters in the context of a fight where they have to dodge many times. Not a single attack.

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Right, fair - this makes more sense on the chessboard setup, where they'd be having to dodge against 3-5 TN80+ attacks in a single round. I was thinking that Substitution might not work if all the Zones you could substitute to were also simultaneously subject to an attack of the same strength, but I suppose if they had some other defense it might work. I was thinking (on the chessboard setup) that what would happen would be something like this:

First rune, TN 100: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) + 14 (invokes) = 100, 2 FP and a Supp burnt plus maybe another FP or two for rerolls.
Second rune, TN 80: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) = 86, second Supp burnt.
Third rune, TN 80: Ath 69 = 69, take 8 stress, be dead or Severe'd without rerolls or more invokes.
Fourth + fifth rune, TN 80: Akatsuki dies.

Or alternatively, only the four TN 80 attacks if they're in an off square (plus some TN 60 attacks that might become relevant if they take a Moderate or Severe). And again, this is assuming that there's no penalty from the fact that these attacks are ~simultaneous and dodging away from one means dodging into another (which we can achieve using landmine-style remote explosives that could be triggered in a single combat round by seal-activation levels of chakra). Granted, if they have something like SotS they might be able to dodge all four TN 80 attacks (2 tags, 2 tags, Sub, 2 invokes), but 25 runes is what's reasonable with just us and an hour of setup time; if we can get Oro involved and make sure he knows the rune, or if we can get more than an hour to set the runes up, we could plausibly put a TN 100 attack in every single Zone plus eight TN 80 attacks from the eight surrounding Zones in a pretty wide area, and that I think would kill Akatsuki.

All reasonable takes except Sasori and Hidan I think.

There's absolutely no guarantee we will injure Hidan in a way that will incapacitated him, as you can see from the rolls, he's likely to survive uninjured and even if injured he's not likely to be Taken Out and he doesn't suffer Consequence penalties.

Sasori isn't like to be present, but if he is, I think he'll be controlling his main puppet body from a safe distance.

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Re. Hidan and Consequences; I assume you're referring to this passage from Oro:

Rare is the injury that slows him down. I recall an enemy jōnin once decapitated him. He dispatched the jōnin while his head trash-talked a few meters away, then strolled over and placed his head back on his shoulders. Had his head been destroyed, I do not know whether this would have killed him or whether he would simply have regenerated a new one in hours or days. It is not as if he has a particularly complex brain to reconstruct. Naturally, he is very cautious about damage to the arms or legs that would actually impede his fighting ability, and his unerring luck lets him avoid critical wounds.

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Which is fair, but it explicitly points out that damage to the arms and legs would actually impede him, and "sudden, totally unexpected explosion" seems like the kind of thing he might not be able to keep the damage from away from the arms and legs - though I suppose there's Jashin-luck to consider. As for Sasori, I'm not aware of anything suggesting he has the necessary range with his puppets to do the safe-distance thing - Oro's dossier doesn't mention it - and I'd been assuming that as Akatsuki's primary sealmaster he'd be at the rift site more-or-less 24/7. I suppose he doesn't necessarily have to be, though.

 

[Left-Hand Mutant]

I think the biggest problem with that plan is that Itachi and the rest of the Akatsuki will not believe Naruto when he says that Leaf doesn't have the Rift after it goes missing. They will raze the place to the ground rather than risk Leaf having sole access to it.

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I don't think this is the case.

For one, they're presumably already working under the assumption that Hazou went rogue from leaf because Naruto told him to stand down. I don't see why this changes things.

It's easy to verify that Naruto and Tsunade didn't leave Leaf to attack the rift because there will be thousands of eyewitness to dozens Naruto clones doing business as normal, and It's similarly easy to verify that Tsunade has been in the Hospital every waking hour.

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For another, I don't see why they'd jump to that conclusion, instead of the other possibilities.

If I were the Akatsuki, and I found the rift site was the centre of a kilometers-wide death zone that had liquified the ground, my top theories would be:

1. Sasori hit a sealing failure, destroying the rift and the surrounding area.
2. The group responsible for Isan's destruction struck again, and either stole or destroyed the rift.
   1. Note that Leaf and Uplift were the parties most allied with Issan, and most hurt by its loss. Making them the least-suspect groups
3. The watchers did it.
4. Hazou somehow used his worse-than-sasori paper sealing skills to cause this, independent of Leaf.

These all seem much more plausible than "Assuming Leaf did it, while leaving 2/3rds of their Essies and most of their Jonin on the bench". And even that scenario looks a lot more like "Orochimaru did something by himself and isn't including Naruto/Tsunade" than "Leaf decided to go to war with Akatsuki".

 

[Halberdier]

First rune, TN 100: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) + 14 (invokes) = 100, 2 FP and a Supp burnt plus maybe another FP or two for rerolls.
Second rune, TN 80: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) = 86, second Supp burnt.
Third rune, TN 80: Ath 69 = 69, take 8 stress, be dead or Severe'd without rerolls or more invokes.
Fourth + fifth rune, TN 80: Akatsuki dies.

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I get what you're going for with this analysis, and I do think simultaneously big bombings might give good outcomes, if we can be confident they'll all go off at the same time in exactly the same space.

But. I think the assumption that the best that they have to work with is two regular substitutions is fundamentally flawed. I know that this is all just to give us an example set, and even ath 69 is a guessed approximation of their skill level (though for at least Kisame, I really wouldn't doubt if his base fundamentals are at least this high). But, like... I would argue that anything that doesn't assume a team of S-rankers, comprised of multiple seal masters and jutsu hackers, don't have things equivalent to SotS at absolute minimum is not gonna work out for assumptions.

After all, that was a powerful reactive supplemental technique we got from a single former member of Akatsuki, and one he was willing to give away, so not a core part of his kit. So, for the first alpha strike, it may look more like

First rune, TN 100: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) + 21(3xSotS) = >100, two Supp burnt, unlikely to need rerolls statistically.
Second rune, TN 80: Ath 69 + 14(2xSotS)= 83
Same for 3 onward, for 2*AB SotS uses.
If we assume SotS is level 40, which seems very low and reasonable for an essie with elemental investment, then there's still 5 tags left. That's dodging three and four, and maybe a single invoke or lucky roll on 5. At that point, that's the zone and all flatly contiguous zones unless we double up. Which I'd recommend, based on these numbers.

I'm not saying they have this ability. I am saying that any modeling we do needs to be based, at absolute minimum, on the most busted BS we have access to or are aware of. This is especially true for, example, Kisame. We know he has chakra for years (as opposed to days) and best in class jutsu for each niche. I'd be going in with the assumption he's got a reactive supplemental that trades being very inefficient (which he doesn't care much about) for being VERY good at moving or soaking damage. He can be overpowered. But we need to make sure we are actually using enough power to do it. One TN100 and four 80s I don't think gets us there.

(This doesn't include stuff like whether Itachi's jutsu reflective mirror would do anything, though I don't think it would as presented? Still, an assumption to state.)

 

[Kyreneryk]

I get what you're going for with this analysis, and I do think simultaneously big bombings might give good outcomes, if we can be confident they'll all go off at the same time in exactly the same space.

But. I think the assumption that the best that they have to work with is two regular substitutions is fundamentally flawed. I know that this is all just to give us an example set, and even ath 69 is a guessed approximation of their skill level (though for at least Kisame, I really wouldn't doubt if his base fundamentals are at least this high). But, like... I would argue that anything that doesn't assume a team of S-rankers, comprised of multiple seal masters and jutsu hackers, don't have things equivalent to SotS at absolute minimum is not gonna work out for assumptions.

After all, that was a powerful reactive supplemental technique we got from a single former member of Akatsuki, and one he was willing to give away, so not a core part of his kit. So, for the first alpha strike, it may look more like

First rune, TN 100: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) + 21(3xSotS) = >100, two Supp burnt, unlikely to need rerolls statistically.
Second rune, TN 80: Ath 69 + 14(2xSotS)= 83
Same for 3 onward, for 2*AB SotS uses.
If we assume SotS is level 40, which seems very low and reasonable for an essie with elemental investment, then there's still 5 tags left. That's dodging three and four, and maybe a single invoke or lucky roll on 5. At that point, that's the zone and all flatly contiguous zones unless we double up. Which I'd recommend, based on these numbers.

I'm not saying they have this ability. I am saying that any modeling we do needs to be based, at absolute minimum, on the most busted BS we have access to or are aware of. This is especially true for, example, Kisame. We know he has chakra for years (as opposed to days) and best in class jutsu for each niche. I'd be going in with the assumption he's got a reactive supplemental that trades being very inefficient (which he doesn't care much about) for being VERY good at moving or soaking damage. He can be overpowered. But we need to make sure we are actually using enough power to do it. One TN100 and four 80s I don't think gets us there.

(This doesn't include stuff like whether Itachi's jutsu reflective mirror would do anything, though I don't think it would as presented? Still, an assumption to state.)

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This is a good set of points. I admit, I came into this thinking of explosive runes being basically impossible to dodge without moving Zones; but you're right, something as good as SotS or better might well let them avoid these attacks (though I admit I don't see how you're meant to dodge four simultaneous explosions coming from four separate directions), and an S-rank reflexive barrier technique of some kind could plausibly stand up to it.

That said, I still think we should research Remote Explosives ASAP. RE carpet bombing would kill the Jashinist minions and destroy any traps around the rift site even if it didn't kill the Akatsuki, and perhaps more importantly, Remote Explosives are a test case for Remote [X]. We have lots of offensive runes, most of which would be much easier to deploy if we don't need to put the rune on top of the rift site to do it, and researching REs is the fastest way to find out how much range we can expect from remote runes. (I don't think we made the wrong decision in researching defensive runes first; but I do think our next plan should probably either be no-prep DotB cycles on REs and something else easy until it's done, or include no-DotB research track on REs along with two prep-DotB tracks.)

 

[Sir Stompy]

First rune, TN 100: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) + 14 (invokes) = 100, 2 FP and a Supp burnt plus maybe another FP or two for rerolls.
Second rune, TN 80: Ath 69 + 17 (Sub) = 86, second Supp burnt.
Third rune, TN 80: Ath 69 = 69, take 8 stress, be dead or Severe'd without rerolls or more invokes.
Fourth + fifth rune, TN 80: Akatsuki dies

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You're assuming the attacks will be sequential before they act and that Akatsuki won't scatter beyond our ability to target. The instant their turn comes up they'll move ~6 Zones from the aim point and since the number of Zones we have to target grows geometrically with how many rounds have passed since the first detonation, I don't think it's realistic to expect we'll get multiple hits. Since it takes a Full Round at best for us to set the Runes off, we can't track them at all. I think one, maybe two hits is the best we can expect.

Which is fair, but it explicitly points out that damage to the arms and legs would actually impede him, and "sudden, totally unexpected explosion" seems like the kind of thing he might not be able to keep the damage from away from the arms and legs - though I suppose there's Jashin-luck to consider. As for Sasori, I'm not aware of anything suggesting he has the necessary range with his puppets to do the safe-distance thing - Oro's dossier doesn't mention it - and I'd been assuming that as Akatsuki's primary sealmaster he'd be at the rift site more-or-less 24/7. I suppose he doesn't necessarily have to be, though

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I expect he isn't there yet, but would travel there once his research progresses far enough.

Include no-DotB research track on REs along with two prep-DotB tracks

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We don't have the chakra for more than 2 rune research tracks in paralell. So researching easy no-prep runes would be what you're asking for here. We can do it, but people aren't going to be happy.

 

[Kyreneryk]

You're assuming the attacks will be sequential before they act and that Akatsuki won't scatter beyond our ability to target. The instant their turn comes up they'll move ~6 Zones from the aim point and since the number of Zones we have to target grows geometrically with how many rounds have passed since the first detonation, I don't think it's realistic to expect we'll get multiple hits. Since it takes a Full Round at best for us to set the Runes off, we can't track them at all. I think one, maybe two hits is the best we can expect.

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I think the attacks being sequential before they act is a reasonable assumption, as long as we can get the detonations simultaneous to within a half-second or so. Remember, we can use SCs to activate the runes and it only takes a Supplemental to do it, so each SC could activate two runes at once, plus we could use a different trigger condition (the storage seal next to me that's linked to a MARS chain unseals a rock) if we needed to. There's no provision for it in the ambush mechanics, but those are designed for ninja revealing themselves and attacking, not multiple massive explosions; I think it's reasonable to expect that the Akatsuki wouldn't get to take a Standard partway through the bombardment.

I expect he isn't there yet, but would travel there once his research progresses far enough.

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Fair enough.

We don't have the chakra for more than 2 rune research tracks in paralell. So researching easy no-prep runes would be what you're asking for here. We can do it, but people aren't going to be happy.

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Ah - hadn't realised quite how limited we were. (Can we really not do it, even if we stockpile chakra for infusion day? I haven't been following the chakra budget calculations in detail, but making a blank should be something like 300 CP plus 60 to infuse it if you're a shadow clone and haven't regenerated that in the meantime, so 1020 CP for the infusions plus 275 for five clones plus 9x80 for FOOM is … yeah, alright, that might be too much chakra, and skipping out on FOOM for extra research is probably a bad idea at least until PS hits the softcap.) Still, we need to do it sometime, and it probably won't take many cycles; depends on whether we have another worthwhile rune in the same difficulty bracket, I guess, which I can't be bothered to check now.

 

[OrthernLight]

If I were the Akatsuki, and I found the rift site was the centre of a kilometers-wide death zone that had liquified the ground, my top theories would be:

1. Sasori hit a sealing failure, destroying the rift and the surrounding area.
2. The group responsible for Isan's destruction struck again, and either stole or destroyed the rift.
   1. Note that Leaf and Uplift were the parties most allied with Issan, and most hurt by its loss. Making them the least-suspect groups
3. The watchers did it.
4. Hazou somehow used his worse-than-sasori paper sealing skills to cause this, independent of Leaf.

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I mostly haven't been keeping up with discussion lately, but this seems correct to me, and has the additional advantage that it'd make hunting us less of a priority, rather than more.

Superheater runes can cause devastation on a scale that isn't conventionally considered possible for a seal or jutsu, but is considered plausible as the outcome of a sealing faulure. The Rift scar being gone doesn't make it much more suspicious, since it's what Sasori would've been working on, so if he had a major failure it's not strange for it to have been affected.
...Even Naruto would reasonably be uncertain about this, I think. He's aware of runecrafting, but all we had back then were explosives, which are a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than what we expect from heat runes.

I think the attacks being sequential before they act is a reasonable assumption, as long as we can get the detonations simultaneous to within a half-second or so. Remember, we can use SCs to activate the runes and it only takes a Supplemental to do it, so each SC could activate two runes at once, plus we could use a different trigger condition (the storage seal next to me that's linked to a MARS chain unseals a rock) if we needed to. There's no provision for it in the ambush mechanics, but those are designed for ninja revealing themselves and attacking, not multiple massive explosions; I think it's reasonable to expect that the Akatsuki wouldn't get to take a Standard partway through the bombardment.

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We'd have to solve the activation delay that explosive runes have, though - IIRC it was about 30s but not totally consistent.

 

[Sir Stompy]

Ah - hadn't realised quite how limited we were. (Can we really not do it, even if we stockpile chakra for infusion day? I haven't been following the chakra budget calculations in detail, but making a blank should be something like 300 CP plus 60 to infuse it if you're a shadow clone and haven't regenerated that in the meantime, so 1020 CP for the infusions plus 275 for five clones plus 9x80 for FOOM is … yeah, alright, that might be too much chakra, and skipping out on FOOM for extra research is probably a bad idea at least until PS hits the softcap.) Still, we need to do it sometime, and it probably won't take many cycles; depends on whether we have another worthwhile rune in the same difficulty bracket, I guess, which I can't be bothered to check now

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You're using the pool numbers. We no longer have access to the pool. We have 500 excess CP and each rune costs 350 CP, triple tracking would be 1250 over a budget of 815. Even double tracking runs a deficit now.

I think the attacks being sequential before they act is a reasonable assumption,

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I don't! Ninja react much much faster than a half second, even baseline human reaction time is faster than that. The instant the first rune goes off combat will start and they will get the opportunity to run for it.

 

[Kyreneryk]

We'd have to solve the activation delay that explosive runes have, though - IIRC it was about 30s but not totally consistent.

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Prep Landmine Rune. Hazō thinks that instantaneous rune activation is nearly impossible given the amount of power runes need to channe, so he prepares a rune which is primed over the usual ~30s and then remains dormant until a triggering condition happens, at which point it takes about 3 seconds (read: one combat round) to activate. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.

Hazō expects some trigger conditions will be more difficult than others – "a human with ninja levels of chakra is running past" would probably be relatively difficult but "a thing hit the rune with X force" would probably be relatively easy. He thinks the "seal-activation levels of chakra applied to the surface of the rune" trigger condition that he tried to make here is on the easy side, although it should be noted that this delayed-activation functionality is never going to be trivial to add in.

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The idea is to stick this functionality on remote explosives, bypassing the activation delay problem.

You're using the pool numbers. We no longer have access to the pool. We have 500 excess CP and each rune costs 350 CP, triple tracking would be 1250 over a budget of 815. Even double tracking runs a deficit now.

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Actually, I wasn't, I was just making them up from the cost of Earthshaping and assuming it took 3 hours to make the blank. Still, noted.

I don't! Ninja react much much faster than a half second, even baseline human reaction time is faster than that. The instant the first rune goes off combat will start and they will get the opportunity to run for it.

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Sure, but it's not about how fast they can react, it's about how fast they can actually do their response. It doesn't matter if they perceive the first rune instantly and start running away, as long as they don't finish running away before the last rune goes off; and my understanding is that a Standard action takes more than half a second. Running 6 Zones (what you suggested) in half a second with Zones being 30 metres across would require running faster than the speed of sound, from a standing start; you are going to have to provide very convincing evidence if you want to claim that S-rankers are that fast. (What I guess they might get is the opportunity to cast non-reflexive buffs, which in fairness would still be bad for this; but half a second is on the low end for how spread out the explosions are likely to be, IMO, and we might be able to get a quarter-second or less.)

 

[Emstar]

Can they? I was thinking we'd make lots of REs - we can infuse them in 10 minutes if we make the blanks in advance and we can multithread with SC - and set their target areas at about three Zones apart (as in RE-zone-zone-RE). We could cover something like a 400x400-metre square that way with only 25 REs, and every Zone in the area would be the subject of at least a TN-80 attack, which most of the Akatsuki probably can't reliably dodge (since they wouldn't have buffs up)

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I think most Jonin worth the rank would be able to reliably dodge a TN 80 Save-or-Die Athletics check in this system.

 

[Sir Stompy]

The idea is to stick this functionality on remote explosives, bypassing the activation delay problem.


Actually, I wasn't, I was just making them up from the cost of Earthshaping and assuming it took 3 hours to make the blank. Still, noted.


Sure, but it's not about how fast they can react, it's about how fast they can actually do their response. It doesn't matter if they perceive the first rune instantly and start running away, as long as they don't finish running away before the last rune goes off; and my understanding is that a Standard action takes more than half a second. Running 6 Zones (what you suggested) in half a second with Zones being 30 metres across would require running faster than the speed of sound, from a standing start; you are going to have to provide very convincing evidence if you want to claim that S-rankers are that fast. (What I guess they might get is the opportunity to cast non-reflexive buffs, which in fairness would still be bad for this; but half a second is on the low end for how spread out the explosions are likely to be, IMO, and we might be able to get a quarter-second or less.)

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A Supplemental takes about 1/2 a second, Vacuum Step can travel AB Zones with one Supp, seems safe to assume that they'll all have something roughly that good, roughly at 40 or better.

However this ends up operationalized, I think getting more than 2 hits is pure copium.

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

Are we not doing the rift-stealing plan, by the way? (Sorry, I haven't had the time to catch up on the intervening discussion.)

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Only just caught up on the thread now, but after reading all the discussion (which I think broadly covers all the major points) here's my approximate position from a what-do-we-do angle:

• Yoinking the rift sounds pretty nice to me, if we can pull it off.
• It sounds easier to pull off than our other plausible goal of "buff Leaf enough that they can kill the Akatsuki".
• However, we can't go this route without Rift runes, which we can't research without a rift.
  • I recently submitted an idea for a possibly-safe rift-creating rune, the Null Rift, which if it works would allow us to follow this research chain.
  • If the Null Rift doesn't work, I broadly think that our options for finding extant rifts (or returning to the Bladehorror rift) are too risky in terms of mission OPSEC.
• And, most crucially, most of our research overlaps no matter which route we choose to follow.

We want the rift runes in both worlds (mission-critical in one world, Orochimaru countermeasure in the other). We want a large amount of destructive power in both worlds (to capture the rift site by surprise in one world, to bolster Leaf's odds in the other world). We want Leaf-defense runes in both worlds (in case of Akatsuki retribution, in both worlds). Some of the particulars are different, and the necessary thresholds we need to hit are different (yoink route needs a lot less firepower, on expectation, than Leaf route), but most of the goals are the same.

So... I like the yoink route, but there's no need to make a decision just yet. I want to put the Null Rift into our research, hopefully kickstart the rift rune sequence, and from there we speedrun useful runes until we approach a point where the two routes require different decisions, at which point we have more information to decide with.

 

[Noumero]

However, we can't go this route without Rift runes, which we can't research without a rift.

Click to shrink...

Hmm. Is that necessarily the case?

Fundamentally, a rift is a chakra object anchored to a specific point in space, right? So, in theory, a tool that can displace any spatially anchored chakra object would suffice to move it. If we can come up with a design for such a tool, we can optimize it to handle various chakra objects we already have access to, and be secure in the knowledge that it would generalize to the rift. Primarily, we can test it on Minato's constructs, chakra-construct MEWs, and perhaps on reverse-summon points (though that seems dangerous); or we can even develop a suite of seals/runes that create some "basic" spatially anchored chakra constructs (which would presumably be dramatically easier than rift-creating runes).

Intuitively, some variation of Alcubierre Drive Runes should fit the bill. A rune that doesn't actually "move" anything in the affected area, but rather, acts on the boundary of a 3D volume of the area we want to affect, compressing the space between it and its new location, and expanding the space between it and its old location. (Here's a basic 1D example, where * is the rift, [>_<] is the space being compressed, and [<_>] is the space being expanded: ______*___ to _[>____<]*[<_>]__ to _[><]*[<______>]__ to _*________. Generalizes to 2D and 3D in an obvious way, but it's a bit harder to illustrate (particularly because the warp-curves stop being straight lines).)

Effectively, this essentially "re-attaches" the volume to a different location in the EN space-time, all without actually disturbing its contents in any way.

And given how relatively easy space-manipulation seems to be (the significantly more complicated Pocket-Space Rune isn't even a "beyond"), this should be tractable.

 

[Left-Hand Mutant]

Only just caught up on the thread now, but after reading all the discussion (which I think broadly covers all the major points) here's my approximate position from a what-do-we-do angle:

• Yoinking the rift sounds pretty nice to me, if we can pull it off.
• It sounds easier to pull off than our other plausible goal of "buff Leaf enough that they can kill the Akatsuki".
• However, we can't go this route without Rift runes, which we can't research without a rift.
  • I recently submitted an idea for a possibly-safe rift-creating rune, the Null Rift, which if it works would allow us to follow this research chain.
  • If the Null Rift doesn't work, I broadly think that our options for finding extant rifts (or returning to the Bladehorror rift) are too risky in terms of mission OPSEC.
• And, most crucially, most of our research overlaps no matter which route we choose to follow.

We want the rift runes in both worlds (mission-critical in one world, Orochimaru countermeasure in the other). We want a large amount of destructive power in both worlds (to capture the rift site by surprise in one world, to bolster Leaf's odds in the other world). We want Leaf-defense runes in both worlds (in case of Akatsuki retribution, in both worlds). Some of the particulars are different, and the necessary thresholds we need to hit are different (yoink route needs a lot less firepower, on expectation, than Leaf route), but most of the goals are the same.

So... I like the yoink route, but there's no need to make a decision just yet. I want to put the Null Rift into our research, hopefully kickstart the rift rune sequence, and from there we speedrun useful runes until we approach a point where the two routes require different decisions, at which point we have more information to decide with.

Click to shrink...

[X] Inferno Vulpix

---

The "Yoink" plan has two nessecary research projects.

A Superheater Rune(or other superweapon). This is supriseingly trivial, and can be rushed out out at almost any time.
Rift-Moving Runechain. This probably takes a longer time and includes 2-4 runes(riftmaker & 1-3 riftmover runes)

Proposed research schedule: we persue the rift-mover chain(starting with a rift-maker) on one track, while working on "Konoha Vs The World" runes on the other track(iron earth, mirror dragon, ect.)

If the rift-chain deadends or turns out nonviable for some reason, switch to double-tracking "Konoha Vs The World" research.
When the Rift chain is about 2/3rds done, take a few days off the "Konoha Vs The World" track to make a Superheater rune, and test it somewhere *far* outside the EN.

For now, all this means is starting rift research ASAP, while continuing our previously-slated projects on the other track.
(EDIT: oh, and setting things up to allow Oro to send us a single bit of information, "Leaf's about to go to war with Akatsuki". So that we don't miss it if Naruto runs out of time and starts the "Leaf Vs The World" plan)

 

[DanZapman]

Fundamentally, a rift is a chakra object anchored to a specific point in space, right?

Click to shrink...

Two specific points in space, surely.

 

[Sir Stompy]

Effectively, this essentially "re-attaches" the volume to a different location in the EN space-time, all without actually disturbing its contents in any way.

Click to shrink...

How do we know this works unless we test it on an actual, real, honest-to-Sage, rift?

Sure we can slice space up all we want, but unless we test it we've got only Hazou's intuition that it'll grab the rift scar. Do you feel comfy risking that? I don't

 

[Noumero]

Two specific points in space, surely.

Click to shrink...

Eh, semantics. The rift's EN-facing aperture is anchored to a specific point belonging to the 3D manifold in which the EN is embedded.

How do we know this works unless we test it on an actual, real, honest-to-Sage, rift?

Click to shrink...

How do we know that the Force Dome rune, whose functionality we only tested in Wind, would work in Fire? How do we know it would work on Fridays, if we've only tested it on Mondays?

Hazou and Kagome have studied rifts, and presumably have some basic theory of them down. If Hazou thinks a specific idea generalizes to rifts, yes, I would take that as decent evidence that it indeed generalizes to rifts.

Edit: I mean, picture that. Suppose that the Hazoupilot and Kagome indeed feel fairly confident that this idea would work. Suppose we develop the rune and go try to apply it to the rift. Do you imagine that we're suddenly startled to realize that it doesn't work, despite their previous confidence? I can imagine it, but this feels really improbable.

If we want more security, we could go try it on the bladehorrors rift after we've developed it.

 

[Left-Hand Mutant]

Hazou and Kagome have studied rifts, and presumably have some basic theory of them down. If Hazou thinks a specific idea generalizes to rifts, yes, I would take that as decent evidence that it indeed generalizes to rifts.

Click to shrink...

Which this makes intuitive sense to me, I think the QMs have said that we need to be able to test the runes(by having an actual rift) on each infusion day in order to advance our research.

So we *can* make a rune without a rift, but only if we can yeet it out in a single research cycle. Longer research projects rely on testing and refinement that would be impossible without a rift.