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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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T_of_A said:
That's easy. We just won't find Akane until we can match her (very impressive for her age) combat stats.
The "quick" afterlife arc will last until we progress enough to escape, knowing that the progression metrics have just been entirely reworked and that the QMs themselves probably can't estimate our XP gain rate in the future. We'll be out of here by the end of the Trump presidency. The Barron Trump Presidency.
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I'm hopeful that the combination of constant level appropriate challenge and an incentive structure to only level up/use combat stats will lead to making that period shorter than expected due to bloody minded determination if nothing else, but that is something that has been concerning me.
 
Raichu1972 said:
I'm hopeful that the combination of constant level appropriate challenge and an incentive structure to only level up/use combat stats will lead to making that period shorter than expected due to bloody minded determination if nothing else, but that is something that has been concerning me.
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Another solution is that we find Akane, but she isn't resistant to Path Drain and is now a genin too.
 
Paperclipped said:
We want suggestions of why Hazō isn't substantially affected by the afterlife's memory drain diegetically
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A few low-hanging fruits:
  1. DotB/Out-Touched Genius - Hazō's mind is already permeable to experiences of... the Path-building stuff, rather than a passive receptor of them. "I let the Path drain pass through me, and where it has gone, there will be nothing. Only i will remain." Most people's minds are like a vessel for Path experiences and influences, but Hazō's is now like a colander... or maybe a spiderweb covered with paint? After a first seeing-or-thinking-about-things-he-oughtn't period, Hazō notices that an element of the Paint there is different. Being aware of the string of pulling on his mind lets him spare a little focus to stop it. (Pro/Con? Allows for a diegetic explanation of it being imperfect. Hazō can't and won't maintain 100% concentration. A sufficient shock and he'll lose his grasp, and now the thread keeps unraveling.
  2. Hazō already entered and left the afterlife. Hazō already contacted it from the outside. It is not that he built up an immunity, but that his soul is "not quite totally there," familiar with the warp of the plane enough to settle there while avoiding its weft by being ever-so-slightly offset from the whole canvas.
  3. Hazō's memes are just that much more competitive. Sorry for Richard Dawkins-ing it up. It's a more meta approach because Hazō's meme preservation is arguably us, the "aberrant personality manifold"-slash-Hivemind, using the search function and collectively remembering things.
  4. All of Hazō's Gs from when he was in zero-G mode? Yeah they're here. Come on, it's stupid but enjoyable.
  5. Hazō died so close to the portal (which was, quite frankly, inexpertly opened) that something weird happened. Corollary: there are many cultists in there with full memories. Might make for fun times, when everyone here is immortal. Sparky Sparky Boom Boom Man may or may not have had the same problem.
 
With all this discussion, I think there's an important question left to ask and answer.

Hazou's story was originally (like actual years ago at this point) supposed to end when he died.

Obviously that's not happening now, which raises the question: what is the win(?) Condition of the quest? What event will mark the point where the qms pit down the pen?

Quests usually end with a wimper, updates stop coming, hiatus, etc. I'd rather avoid that here.
 
Paperclipped said:
The QMs feel fairly anemic with regards to Hazou getting an immediate power-up. We're interested in ideas here, but good suggestions will be 1) relatively minor in scope, 2) lead to interesting gameplay, and 3) as an extension of (2), not give ways to solve problems non-interactively.
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Paperclipped said:
We are going to switch to XP/feat, based on Hazou's current base rate. The XP/feat will be calibrated to "normal feats" for a ninja of roughly Hazou's caliber. We're not attached to any effective XP rate that will result – if the players are exceptionally active (as is enabled by being unable to truly die), Hazou can earn far more XP than his base.
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In response to these passages (and also pinging @eaglejarl @Velorien), it seems to me that there is a strong disconnect between the game-state that both players and QMs want to see, and the proposed mechanical levers to get us there:

1) General consensus of the playerbase (and QMs?) is that everyone would like to see Hazou being more active, doing cool quests in-person, engaging directly with the setting without excessive risk aversion, etc. From the player side, the chief complaint I see repeated a lot is something along the lines of "This quest has gone on for 10 years and Hazou has spent 7+ years of it as essentially an Essie wrangler."
2) Hazou's build as it currently stands is fairly trapped in this paradigm. It would take an enormous amount of XP to alter his build in such a way as to make the desired play style viable. The concern with feat-based advancement is that it's very IRL time-consuming, so even if very little time passes ingame it could still be like 5+ years before Hazou is actually a jounin. This would only not be an issue if the XP chunks were enormous relative to IRL time, at least ~10k XP per IRL year.
3) Here are some possible solutions:

*Timeskip Feats: For example, if Hazou spends a month reconstructing the theoretical and practical basis of Minatosealing and creating several novel Minatoseals, this could be covered in a single update and count as an epic feat worth hundreds or thousands of XP.
*Bigger Numbers: Instead of, say, -50 XP and +150 XP for a feat, make it more like -500 and +650 XP. This would allow Hazou to, for example, respec out of Resolve + Shadow Clone + Primordial Sealing in exchange for combat stats and Minatosealing.
*Mangekyo Iron Nerve: I understand the caution behind your avoidance of dramatic capabilities changes for Hazou. However, this is fundamentally a Naruto quest that does contain almost all the bullshit abilities in Naruto canon. Why not leverage this bit of Kishimoto worldbuilding for our mutual gain and allow Hazou a Mangekyo evolution that is comparable (or only moderately weaker than) the Mangekyo evolutions of the Sharingan? In the poll this was the most popular powerup option by far and one many players were excited to see. It does seem player excitement and engagement has fallen off considerably with the recent lull and this is a way for you guys to express your creativity in a narratively- and thematically-aligned way that also fits the existing worldbuilding.

If the Mangekyo Iron Nerve requires the user to die (due to a betrayal, plus a high Resolve or TYS prerequisite) in order to awaken, it would explain why we've not seen it before. Only a Kurosawa who had successfully died and resurrected would be able to deploy it on the Human Path.
 
A thought: the current Stagnation system is incompatible with everyone's stated goals. You want an arc with significantly less research and the players seem to want less research and more punching progression... But the Stagnancy rules explicitly force us to keep doing challenging research. In theory half our main achievements should be Sealing !

Solution: just dump the entire Stagnation system. XP/feat solves the problem that Stagnation was meant to solve, after all. Just get rid of the whole mess ! Old essies can't get XP through easy feats, so their leveling will slow due to lack of great challenges in peacetime, and so the worldbuilding issue is done with without needing a rule that hamfistedly forces us to go fight Leopards every so often.
 
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CaramilkThief said:
It is basically baby's first ninshu, seeing as it lets you commune with earth
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It is not. I don't mean to be read as rude but please let's not start this again :p
Analysing the jutsu feedback as actually communing with the Earth is what made some of us go from "this means that the crystal cave feels wrong" to "holy shit the crystal cave is sapient we need to preserve this big rock as it is essentially First Contact, what are its goals, can we share the world peacefully"
eaglejarl said:
Not really but I didn't have a clean way to describe it. When the rock 'speaks' it's a metaphor for Hazō understanding. When he 'speaks' to it he is simply changing the conditions of reality. It's like how you can't redirect a river by pushing on it but you can 'convince' it to go where you want by digging a new channel.
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Addendum: to find this quote, I had to look for a long time. Did anyone else remember that we originally described the jutsu as Stonecarving or Stoneshaping? I didn't!
 
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Rihaku said:
In response to these passages (and also pinging @eaglejarl @Velorien), it seems to me that there is a strong disconnect between the game-state that both players and QMs want to see, and the proposed mechanical levers to get us there:

1) General consensus of the playerbase (and QMs?) is that everyone would like to see Hazou being more active, doing cool quests in-person, engaging directly with the setting without excessive risk aversion, etc. From the player side, the chief complaint I see repeated a lot is something along the lines of "This quest has gone on for 10 years and Hazou has spent 7+ years of it as essentially an Essie wrangler."
2) Hazou's build as it currently stands is fairly trapped in this paradigm. It would take an enormous amount of XP to alter his build in such a way as to make the desired play style viable. The concern with feat-based advancement is that it's very IRL time-consuming, so even if very little time passes ingame it could still be like 5+ years before Hazou is actually a jounin. This would only not be an issue if the XP chunks were enormous relative to IRL time, at least ~10k XP per IRL year.
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Iirc, we were on pace to be hitting ~3-4k XP+ per year at our previous XP rate. The playerbase voted to increase this rate but it sounds like instead we are actually going to be massively decreasing that rate.

Rihaku said:
*Bigger Numbers: Instead of, say, -50 XP and +150 XP for a feat, make it more like -500 and +650 XP. This would allow Hazou to, for example, respec out of Resolve + Shadow Clone + Primordial Sealing in exchange for combat stats and Minatosealing.
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If they aren't open to Sealing/THing - which it sounds like they mostly are not - then it is very unlikely that they are open to Minatosealing, which would necessitate doing substantial amounts of research and use lots of chakra, both of which we will not have access to.
 
Answering the questions I feel comfortable doing offhand, more will come later.


Emstar said:
TBF I am reading all of the "research takes a backseat" stuff as "Okay well this will happen in between cool adventures to a limited degree" or something. Is that accurate? I worry that the QMs have updated very,very, very strongly towards "Research is the problem" when this is not really true IMO. Strong positive incentives for doing cooler, more active things means that the incentive gradient will sort itself out, I think, and this was all that was really needed. Getting the XP directly from the cool stuff you do sounds like it will do enough heavy lifting from my perspective.
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My understanding is that yes, research will happen in between doing cool stuff but it will face some challenges, such as there not being enough chakra available to create runes. Likewise, it's already established that the afterlife drains seals to uselessness very quickly (Hazō's older storage seals stopped working after a few minutes), so if you choose to do seal research then you'll need to deal with the fact that seals will now be something you need to prep immediately before use. TH and Minatosealing haven't been discussed among the QMs yet.



ProperAttorney said:
It's been said, but I just want to reiterate that this continues to be an over-correction. Research spam is not possible anymore with the changes to prep days.
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Fair point. Thank you for reminding us.

Sir Stompy said:
In addition @Paperclipped, @Velorien, @eaglejarl how is this going to interact with stagnancy? Especially if research is significantly reduced in this arc, we'll need to keep up with our Sealing stagnancy at least.
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There is another post coming that goes into more detail. Quoting from it: "Hazou will also not be subject to stagnancy while we're trialing this [XP/feat system]. NPCs will still remain on XP/day since our back-end infrastructure is based on this, and it's easy to balance the game around."

T_of_A said:
The "quick" afterlife arc will last until we progress enough to escape, knowing that the progression metrics have just been entirely reworked and that the QMs themselves probably can't estimate our XP gain rate in the future. We'll be out of here by the end of the Trump presidency. The Barron Trump Presidency.
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Not sure if you intended that to come off quite so bitter, but it did.

Also not sure where you got the idea that the afterlife arc was going to be quick. That's definitely not what the players voted for. The actual votes were:

30 people have voted:
[x][AfterlifeExitSpeed] Hazō can learn of a way out of the afterlife, but finding more lore or discovering its location will be an odyssey in itself

Velorien DanZapman RandomOTP ProperAttorney Black King Inferno Vulpix Noumero faflec sophistsDismay Cariyaga Zerovirus Sir Stompy Dissonance Dorian Shrooms Halberdier FaintlySorcerous Jaedar Emstar Vesk MinTaxer Langevin DomusJam apooooop roobee Retalnus Lysbeth Succubus Iris-Iven-Ibis OrthernLight coldcutconvict

26 people have voted
[x][AfterlifeExitSpeed] Hazō soon learns of a way out of the afterlife, but it will take a while to get there

Velorien will408914 DanZapman Raichu1972 ProperAttorney Heleor Rihaku faflec Spector29 Zerovirus Eisenhelm 18scsc Shrooms Halberdier ContextBot FaintlySorcerous Anderkent Vesk MarsIronPI Langevin AlphaDelta apooooop cog-nito Retalnus Lysbeth Succubus OrthernLight


7 people have voted:

[x][AfterlifeExitSpeed] Hazō soon learns of a way out of the afterlife, and can get there almost immediately

Velorien Rihaku Spector29 T_of_A Shard Ishtar OrthernLight



We gave a very approximate estimate, which came with lots of caveats about how it was mostly a guess, was that the arc would run something like 50-150 chapters if "a while" was voted in. At 2 chapters/week, that's an average of an IRL year. Of course, that's not what the players voted for. The players voted for the arc to be longer than that. (Edit: my mistake, "a while" won since we factored in more than raw vote count.)

...oh, wait, I see the issue. You wanted the afterlife arc to be quick but that isn't what the rest of the community wanted, hence you are upset. Yeah, that's a tough one and I sympathize.

For the love of fuck, don't give the universe any ideas about a Barron Trump Presidency.


chryssalideater said:
Hazou's story was originally (like actual years ago at this point) supposed to end when he died.

Obviously that's not happening now, which raises the question: what is the win(?) Condition of the quest? What event will mark the point where the qms pit down the pen?
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Speaking for myself, I'll start looking to wrap things up once there's no plausible threats to Hazō's goals. Either that or when the interaction with the community (QMs and/or players) gets net-negative on spoons for long enough. Fortunately, this is the nicest corner of the internet in existence so I doubt that will be the issue.

Even when we do wrap things up, I suspect we would immediately start another project together. I very much enjoy working with @Velorien and @Paperclipped and would hate to give it up.
 
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eaglejarl said:
Not sure if you intended that to come off quite so bitter, but it did.
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No ?
It was meant to be pulling Raichu's leg. My actual opinion is my next post, which is "Akane will just be weak enough to hang around with us, she's been here for ages".

eaglejarl said:
We gave a very approximate estimate, which came with lots of caveats about how it was mostly a guess, was that the arc would run something like 50-150 chapters if "a while" was voted in. At 2 chapters/week, that's an average of an IRL year. Of course, that's not what the players voted for. The players voted for the arc to be longer than that.
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Huh. I was under the impression that the moderate length option had won.
Thanks for letting me know !

I'm well aware that my own preferred option didn't win - I voted against having an afterlife arc at all. However the playerbase as a whole seems quite hyped for planehopping and/or afterlife, and it's been quite heartening reading some of the ideas people were sharing a month ago.
You yourself turned up in a few of those discord conversations and reassured me about the actual content of an afterlife arc and/or Jashin powerup. Since then, I've been less negative about the internal verisimilitude of the arc.
Of course, my favorite parts of the quest being "research" and "Honoka interludes", I'm not exactly hyped for the upcoming arc. But it's nice to know that internal consistency and simulationism aren't being abandoned (which I was scared of for a while during the votes).
 
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There is a quadruaple cost skill for keeping one's XP that DotB applies to, and that is doublecost below Resolve. Due to [mumblemumble] reasons, Hazou's skill in it starts at 30.
 
I'm going to be honest and say that y'all should absolutely consider redoing the chakra vote because the Afterlife arc is going to be a miserable experience if all we can really do is punch stuff in the most vanilla way possible. We are losing RRB, Force Claws, Macerators, and probably won't really be able to use PEA or any other ninjutsu.
 
sophistsDismay said:
I'm going to be honest and say that y'all should absolutely consider redoing the chakra vote because the Afterlife arc is going to be a miserable experience if all we can really do is punch stuff in the most vanilla way possible. We are losing RRB, Force Claws, Macerators, and probably won't really be able to use PEA or any other ninjutsu.
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That leaves us RFP.
What is RFP, you ask?
Why, Righteous Face Punching!
Bonus: the tales of the Righteous Face Puncher can be an element of finding Akane
 
sophistsDismay said:
I'm going to be honest and say that y'all should absolutely consider redoing the chakra vote because the Afterlife arc is going to be a miserable experience if all we can really do is punch stuff in the most vanilla way possible. We are losing RRB, Force Claws, Macerators, and probably won't really be able to use PEA or any other ninjutsu.
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They don't have to redo it if it's miserable, they can just change it.
 
My vote for an odyssey length afterlife arc hinged on there being a bunch of planes to walk through

I wouldn't want to be only in the afterlife for what sounds like much longer than an irl year potentially

Knowing planes-walking isn't happening, I'd rather vote for the second most popular option

I may not be the only one with that opinion

A second round of voting would be helpful in more accurately identifying the desires of the players

Edit: Thought about it more, it seems to me that no Planes-Walking, XP rate, Length of the afterlife, and Chakra Access are very interconnected such that there may be large shifts in how folk would vote now across all those categories (with the exception of planes-walking, but the lack of it would affect 2nd round voting)

Feeling excited by movement toward a new state of MfD :)

I like all the ideas put forth on how to navigate Hazō being special enough to escape the afterlife. A combination of MIN, Out influence is what I favor for mechanical and narrative reasons. I think RedZoneJoe's thoughts on the emotional side of things is on point.
 
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Paperclipped said:
The QMs feel fairly anemic with regards to Hazou getting an immediate power-up. We're interested in ideas here, but good suggestions will be 1) relatively minor in scope, 2) lead to interesting gameplay, and 3) as an extension of (2), not give ways to solve problems non-interactively.
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What I'd like to see here from MIN is something like an additional +3 to the Iron Nerve numbers and plot hooks as to whether it does anything else. Like for instance maybe we need to find and convince one of the Kurosawa clan elders that've died to tell us how to make it work on ninjutsu as it was in the past, etc. Does this seem amenable to y'all?

(e: Also I'm completely fine with needing to do something to get the +3 to begin with)
 
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faflec said:
I think this should be boosted higher.
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Maybe call it a stunt with multiple purchases that have increasingly strict requirements: first one needs accurate secondhand knowledge of a proven method for escaping the afterlife, so Jiraya and Akane fade slower than average. For the second, must have personally used the method in question before. Then maybe successfully rescuing someone who couldn't reach the rift on their own - which Hazo also accomplished almost immediately, day one.
eaglejarl said:
My understanding is that yes, research will happen in between doing cool stuff but it will face some challenges, such as there not being enough chakra available to create runes.
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Fortunately we already have veterancy on a chakra capacitor rune, and optimizing rune designs for minimal startup cost is unexplored territory since, with Noburi available, it was never a significant constraint before. Might be some chance to bootstrap our way out of that.
 
The QMs feel fairly anemic with regards to Hazou getting an immediate power-up. We're interested in ideas here, but good suggestions will be 1) relatively minor in scope, 2) lead to interesting gameplay, and 3) as an extension of (2), not give ways to solve problems non-interactively.
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I can work with that, although I think you may want to give leeway on "minor" given the strength of playerbase opinion on the matter.

So there's three highly plausible sources for powerups — MIN, Jashinism, and Out.

MIN (to copy in my ideas from our discussions in PM)
  • I'd go with the obvious part of scaling up the boost to physical skills, maybe unlocking the dormant proto-IN power of copying physical skills you see in action (so seeing Orochimaru attack Hazou gives him Orochimaru-like Taijutsu and the chance to fight him off, etc.).
  • You could give MIN the power to get flashbacks to the past (eg. Hazou gets to watch interludes now, solving the problem of OOC information), emphasising the IN's established theme of recording and replaying stuff.
  • Let the players do a Research Plan every update instead of requiring research to be done in real-time in action plans, abstracting away that MIN lets Hazou figure research out in easier and faster ways. This means that the players no longer need to lighthouse to do lots of research, and it doesn't slow the action down.
  • Chakra-mech fuses with his body, giving him a temporary super-state he can use to gain armour/physical boost at a chakra cost.
  • A super-powerful Gentle-Fist tier fighting style.
  • Another friggin super-genjutsu.
    • Maybe something that Hazou needs to train under Mari to make the most of, giving opportuities for them to bond more on-screen.
    • Sharingan hypnotises people with eye-contact -> MIN hypnotises people with dancing??
  • Ninjutsu element for indestructible black stone.
  • Battle-teleportation that gives you a death save for tele-dodging attacks that would kill you.
  • Some kind of IN-social related power that Vel would enjoy writing?
    • Maybe a polygraph-sense that lets Hazou just look at someone and see their involuntary physiological emotional cues?
  • Hazou gains immense control over his emotions. If he wants to be calm, then he's calm, and your Intimidation attempt doesn't matter. If he wants to be manic and super energized then he is. If he wants to be happy, or enraged, or miserable, or mildly perturbed, then guess what. This manifests as a bonus to Resolve and Deceit, and allows some interesting narrative options.
  • Weakspot Vision. Hazou can sense the chinks in his enemy's armour, both physical and mental. What buttons to push and what bodyparts to punch. The longer he goes against someone the deeper that analysis goes. Gain stacking bonuses each round to aggressive actions. Looks a bit like arguing with Tattletale or fighting Mace Windu.
  • Expand the postcognition idea (thoughts on that, btw?) so that Hazou can see flashes of someone's past when he focuses on them, relevant to helping him understand their position. Essentially get a free win or two on an Empathy attack.
  • Hazou's body control now extends to autonomic stuff. He can control his eye-dilation and sweating, for example, giving a boost to Deceit. Be careful you don't act on an intrusive thought to stop your heart, kid!
  • Hazou and his mother's mental acceleration thing expands. Now Hazou can speed up his thoughts at will, giving him more time to strategize and think consequences through mid-fight/conversation.
  • The sharingan's dormant precognition becomes active, giving Hazou that one-second warning bloodline from character creation. He can use this to realise when he's about to say something dumb and do his best to pivot away from it.
  • Hazou gets a mental mode he can toggle where he sees everything as an engineering problem from a superintelligent perspective. Using this mode, he can add his Sealing AB to all rolls including social rolls (human minds are really just like the interaction between x and y seal components, so to smooth out the metaphorical chakra conduction of this jonin not fearing him, he should do the conversational equivalent of adding component z), but while using it he has a detached and dehumanising view, almost like an rpg player trying to make an npc do what they want. In other words: You're a Thinker, Harry! I'm sure the rest of the five six will be completely calm about this.
  • Some other Thinker entity mode? One based on physicality? Or replaying the past? Idk
  • MS has a lot of spacetime stuff. Maybe Hazou can tune into the physical sensations being felt by another person, even over vast distances?
  • Can super-genjutsu others into repeating actions/approaches he's seen that person use already. Make others repeat their mistakes, or get stuck in a loop of bad decisions. The more directly they're repeating, the easier it is for them to notice that their actions aren't their own. Essentially, taking his "I can repeat stuff" power and turning it onto others against their will.



Jashin
  • So the obvious concept is immortality and regeneration, as copied over from Hidan. If you want to scale it down to be less powerful, then try something like "Hazou doesn't take penalties from consequences in the combat that he suffered them, and major consequences heal at moderate-consequence speed" or something.
  • If you want to try something that isn't regeneration/immortality, then the next most obvious angle is some sort of melee buff. Maybe Jashin gives Hazou an S-rank nin-taijutsu or something. Maybe a giant scythe-blade made of blood or bone hovers over him and attacks as directed by Jashin while the jutsu is active.
  • Maybe you want to incentivise Hazou to punch strong people. So, we can cannibalise the basic premise of the souldrinker bloodline -- when you kill someone, you get to keep a portion of what the purifying lands wash away from them. Hazou gains something whenever he kills a jonin or higher. Be it access to one of their jutsu, a level in something they specced into, or plot-relevant information they knew.
  • Some kind of divinely-guided strikes translating into a critical hit mechanic. When Hazou rolls a +12 on an attack he is garunteed to inflict major damage, even if he would normally not be able to hit at all.



Out
  • Scrape Away the Paint -- Upgrade DotB to also work on combat stats. Hazou is getting very good at disrupting the painted world.
  • Eldritch Element -- Hazou can make ninjutsu that interact with dimensional/lovecraftian effects. Maybe he can use his sealing level instead of TH or something.
  • Consider reviving some of my previous suggestions, such as Lens of Violence.
  • Grue Jinchurikki -- in his way to the afterlife, the grue makes an attempt to eat Hazou. Hazou, miraculously, wins that fight, and manages to seal the grue inside of himself using the last of his chakra. Hazou is now able to remember the previous versions of reality, the way Kagome can, and gains some standard jinchurikki powers.



But those aren't the only potential sources for powerups. For example, maybe Hazou's devotion to helping civilians has earned him the attention and warlock-patronage of a deva. That would feel rewarding and validating at a time when, frankly, the kid really needs it. It would also give you a QM mouthpiece mentor figure to use, providing quest hooks and advice, and providing potential new challenges as the celestial bureaucracy tests and assigns missions to Hazou. (Normally devas have rules against getting involved in mortal affairs outside of specifically defined measures, but with the afterlife rift open, heaven is buzzing over how to handle the situation — our new patron proposed using Hazou to fix any problems that arise, and were granted a limited mandate to do so).
  • Heavenly Protection -- Hazou can never take more than X stress/consequences per hit.
  • Maybe grant access to sun/star/moon/etc elements, and have the deva patron teach him jutsu for them?
  • Divine Revelation -- Hazou can pray to his patron for guidance. He might get a full conversation, or he might just get a dreamlike image or vague feeling. Used mid-encounter this gives an aspect tag.
  • Mandate of Heaven -- Hazou has some visible supernatural mark such as a halo or eyes full of stars. Mere mortals can recognise that he has divine backing, and this gives him an effective bonus to Presence/Intimidation.



Maybe Oro seriously fucked up by putting seals inside the body of someone with a bloodline that famously eats seals, and now Hazou is developing biosealing-flavoured mutations as the Iron Nerve fights to incorporate biosealing into his biological structure.
  • Hazou gets effective bonus to Physique, with bonus stress boxes. Possibly effective bonus to other physical skills. Hulk smash!
  • Probably some kind of bonus to CR. Like it becomes single-cost or something. The Iron Nerve has gotten a taste for biosealed chakra systems, and it's hungry for more.
  • Oro's kill-switch gets digested into something like the explosion element bloodline. Hazou can generate explosions from his body now. Bakugo.png, Kagome.gif, Ikeda.jpeg
  • Hazou's body is able to integrate other biological matter, stealing traits from chakra monsters/bloodline holders/bioseals in a way that would make Oro cry tears of jealous rage. You hunt down interesting subjects, kill them, and absorb their biomass. Then Hazou has to consciously try to nurture the characteristics he wants to keep (level them up), while excising the ones he doesn't (spend negative XP to get rid of them).
 
I've not really been following the thread, so apologies if this has been brought up already, but a fairly simple "powerup" option would be that Hazou gets a big old bonus to resisting any type of intimidation and or fear effects. Why? Well, because he's dead. He died an unpleasant and violent death at the hands of someone much stronger than him, and it wasn't so bad after all. We can say that kind of thing is spiritually resonant, more than bog standard surviving torture and whatnot would be - it's carved into his soul.

For versimillitude, everyone else who's died - violently, otherwise, pick as you like - can have the same bonus. A general perk of joining the afterlife club.
 
MadScientist said:
Let the players do a Research Plan every update instead of requiring research to be done in real-time in action plans,
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I like this a lot, independent of MIN or any other power up.

I'm sure there was a lot of discussion about why research was the way it was back in the day, but given the current discourse around research and wanting to limit our time spent on it, I think having a slower, 'passive' research track would make a lot of sense. It's also fitting with Hazo not having any of his old notes or infinite writing supplies anymore.

I'd make a larger list explaining how it all fits narratively, but it's probably the mechanical side of things that needs adjusting and on that I'm fairly clueless.
 
It is a little bit frustrating, I will admit, that we don't get many of your individual objections to some of these, because we have historically (the FTG thing, as the nearest-chronologically example) been able to come up with mutually-beneficial solutions.
 
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T_of_A said:
Huh. I was under the impression that the moderate length option had won.
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My post edited as follows:
Of course, that's not what the players voted for. The players voted for the arc to be longer than that. (Edit: my mistake, "a while" won since we factored in more than raw vote count.)

T_of_A said:

Of course, my favorite parts of the quest being "research" and "Honoka interludes",
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Not sure why you keep burying these in ispoilers -- do you think that they can't be seen and therefore it's a way to get away with saying something you wouldn't say in the open? FYI, they can be seen by anyone with the correct plugin/theme. Regardless, I'll answer in one to be polite.

My first reaction when I read this was that you were saying these are the only parts of the story that you enjoyed, which made me wonder why you were still reading. Then I realized that another interpretation is "I like other things too, but especially these bits." I hope that's the case.



DomusJam said:
I wouldn't want to be only in the afterlife for what sounds like much longer than an irl year potentially
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See above.
 
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