If you're feeling lazy and want to make your giant snake homeboi pay rent
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
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Was it? I remember Jiradad telling Kei that summoning was used as one tool in a wide arsenal rather than a main strategy back during the Chūnin Exams.
I don't think that description conflicts.
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It is just one of their tools. It's just one of the better ones, as it happens.
Precisely.
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Hiruzen, Jiraiya, Orochimaru, Tsunade (presumably), F, and who else were you thinking?
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Sorry I wasn't super clear. I didn't mean that boss summons weren't seen in high level combat just they just aren't common enough to define the meta. You're only going to possibly consider them as a specific silver bullet that's a better option than investing more into your main skill set that improves all of your matchups
Kisame
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Condor summoner was alive at the time (and in fact summoned Conjura to defend herself)
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@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped
Hope you don't mind but I have another TH question for y'all.
How does this change if you (A) have a Wakahisa who can refill you, (B) have CP that reaches into a higher eff(CR AB) from a chakra hax such as ACE, or (C) are a Wakahisa yourself?
Also, on the subject of TH, are these questions still under discussion?
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"Main trick" vs "very situational tool" do conflict in my opinion.
(emphasis mine)
And this is for summoning at all, not just Bosses.
And at least two Summoners we know of were well known for dropping their Summon Bosses into combat on the regular. Hiruzen and Orochimaru. This might apply in general but it's Boss and Summoner dependent. Both of them have or had CR sauce that made Boss Summoning an inconvenience rather than 80% of their reserves.
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Looks like sampling bias tbh, if they're well known for doing it maybe it shouldn't be counted as the norm
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Barely anyone can summon at all, and barely anyone of that already-tiny group can afford a Boss, if the Boss even agrees to be summoned (Pantsaa certainly wouldn't, for instance.)
So it's not really surprising that it isn't the norm. Of the small handful who could do it, at least three of them whipped it out when they could, which seems to make it a fairly popular strategy amongst those who are actually able to do so.
Absolutely...? But we care about it being possible in general not what the average Summoner with <800 CP does.
EDIT: @Shrooms said this much better.
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Well, Jiraiya differed, and he had more information than we do.
I'm not arguing that it's impossible, I'm arguing that it is not a "main trick" and has explicitly been stated not to be one.
I don't even get what you're objecting to. This is some Zabuza-tier "any decent ninja has all 5 elements" opinion.
It's shrimply wrong, and Jiriaya was wrong and probably jealous of Oro when he said it. Notice that Jiriaya himself made every opportunity to Summon the TS when he fought for real which are more expensive than a Boss Summon.
He didn't even follow his own advice here.
Jiraiya did not in fact have more information than we do, on top of everything else.
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In fairness he referred to summoning as an ace in the hole for stronger summoners, but let's follow the train of thought back here:
1 ->
"Why don't Bosses/Summons dominate high level combat?"
2 ->
"They kind of often do for those who can use them."
3 ->
"Jiraiya says Summons are not a main tool for strong Summoners, only an Ace in the Hole."
I would say, refer back to point 1. Of course Jiraiya isn't going to summon Gamabunta or the Toad Sages to flatten a chuunin. That's not what we're talking about. The original conceit is about Top Level Combat, which in Jiraiya's own words should very much be a 'dire scenario', the kind he would bring out the big guns for, and in fact did.
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He's met more summoners and S-level players than we did, especially in combat, for longer than anyone in Team Uplift has been alive, and was either the best or second-best informed person in the Elemental Nations on behalf of that being his actual job that he crushed the competition with. Hell, he was one of our main sources of information. How could he not know more?
"Summoning Clan Bosses is a main tool for high-level summoners" → Not only are very few summoners able to, Jiraiya explicitly said that summoning itself is underutilised at high level.
To break it down further, I simply suggest that "ace in the hole" doesn't mean "it's very strong and if it doesn't come out much it's just because it's overkill, so high stakes they're going to come out no matter what" but that just like everything else in high level combat, you're trying to use the right tool, the scissors to defeat their paper, not just the biggest muscle you have on hand at extremely high cost. Summons are a specialised tool, even their Bosses.
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Note that Kei thinks Pantsā wouldn't let her summon him, and they don't exactly have a rosy relationship.
Because his backstory doesn't actually exist and it happened before Summoning was fully modeled. His knowledge isn't real.
Ours is.
EDIT: It's the same thing as what Shrooms said earlier about Zabuza saying every jonin worth a shit has 5 elements. At that point in time, it made narrative sense for someone to have that opinion. Then as we progressed and worked with the mechanics and discovered what sort of situations they resulted in, it turned out Zabuza was wrong and an idiot and elements costing 1,000 XP results in it being a terrible build choice in the vast majority of situations.
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I think 5 elements cost like 15k XP at the time 🗿
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Right, sorry, the point I was hoping to illustrate is that not all Summoners are on good terms with their Bosses, or at least not as strongly favorable as e.g. Hazou and Cannai. F and the Mara Boss have a pretty bad relationship IIRC.
A more neutral Boss may be sympathetic but still unwilling to risk their neck for a less favored Summoner (since, if they're actually popped and temporarily weakened, it allows enemies to move in on their turf.) So willingness is a big part of it.
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Hazou is probably on the best terms with his Boss out of any of the new generation of Summoners. (Except for maybe Kei Ruri -- she's scary).
Noburi -- 'Bunta is an asshole
Neji -- Neji is an asshole
Kurenai -- Been a Summoner for 6 months
Aika(?) -- Who?
Kei -- Pantsaa is an asshole
Kagome -- Kumo is fine, but Kagome is not exactly....social.
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PSA: We are rescinding our statement about Boss summoning requiring prep
We earlier stated that Bosses required advance notice of ~12 hours before they could be summoned. We are rescinding that statement; Bosses can be summoned like any other member of their clan. The rules document will be updated to show this.
Note: we are making this change for two reasons. First, it's a shift from Naruto canon that isn't specifically required by anything in our worldbuilding, so there isn't a strong reason to do it. That said, we probably wouldn't have backtracked on an already-made announcement except for the second reason, which is that @Sir Stompy called the issue to our attention and made a major effort to be nice about it despite admitting to being upset about the issue. Thanks, Stompy!
We earlier stated that Bosses required advance notice of ~12 hours before they could be summoned. We are rescinding that statement; Bosses can be summoned like any other member of their clan. The rules document will be updated to show this.
Note: we are making this change for two reasons. First, it's a shift from Naruto canon that isn't specifically required by anything in our worldbuilding, so there isn't a strong reason to do it. That said, we probably wouldn't have backtracked on an already-made announcement except for the second reason, which is that @Sir Stompy called the issue to our attention and made a major effort to be nice about it despite admitting to being upset about the issue. Thanks, Stompy!
Get ready for the Itachi Crow Boss drop everyone.
(I kid I kid)
Thanks for proving once again that MfD has the best QMs.