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The more powerful summoning is, the less plausible it is that Jiraiya let some random missing-nin child keep the scroll. If he was able to turn a strong, loyal Leaf ninja into an instant S-ranker just by giving them the scroll, Jiraiya would have immediately bought it off you (or taken it off your dead body).

I am not quite convinced about the bolded part.
Either every one of your top S-ranks or Jounin already has a summoning contract (which could be true but we haven't seen any IC evidence of this) or there is a reason Jiraiya hasn't sub-contracted his toad summon to 20+ people and did the same with any other summon. Something has to be stopping this, be it the fact that you need to prove your worth to the summon itself like we did with Skytowers (something that gets increasingly harder when there is more demand from the ninja side; summons won't just pick any combat spec Jounin, you have to come up with something good like, again, Skytowers) or there is a hard cap on sub-contracts. Or something else entirely prevents this like a hard cap on how much chakra or how many constructs from the Summoning Realm can exist on the Human Path at the same time.

With that in mind, I do not believe we live in a world where all the top ninjas in a Village have or share a summon which, if we are given the choice, means we should accept that every skilled and creative enough summoner gets something akin to our armor. There will be significantly more non-summoners we will face than summoners and of that subset even less summoners who earned the right to such a jutsu.

EDIT: FWIW, a pretty recent update did discuss the bit about Jiraiya just stealing the pangolin summon and his reasons as to why he didn't.
 
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I am not quite convinced about the bolded part.
Either every one of your top of your top S-ranks or Jounin already has a summoning contract (which could be true but we haven't seen any IC evidence of this) or there is a reason Jiraiya hasn't sub-contracted his toad summon to 20+ people
Because you can't.

That is to say, one summoner per scroll as far as we know.
 
Our relationship with the Pangolin is rather unique though, I am sure that other Summoner did great and important things for their Clans (fight on the seventh path for them, acquired jutsu/ressources/intel for them, etc.) but we are providing the Pangolin with a powerful tool that only the Toad's would also get. So it's not unlogical that we get better stuff then even an average or good Summoner.
 
The more powerful summoning is, the less plausible it is that Jiraiya let some random missing-nin child keep the scroll. If he was able to turn a strong, loyal Leaf ninja into an instant S-ranker just by giving them the scroll, Jiraiya would have immediately bought it off you (or taken it off your dead body).

Well if we use my "jutsu arbitrage" model, then we can easily reconcile that by saying that Jiraiya either didn't know that pangolins were one of the rare clans that have techniques with no human-path analogue, or clans guard their secrets so jealously that even the summoners of such clans rarely get access to said techniques (and we only did because we offered local military supremacy in exchange).
 
Meh I was expecting to get hit with the nerf bat. I mean Hazō and Akane both have acess to jounin level combat stats. Was reasonably sure after they beat up everyone we'd get another great rebalancing so chunnin now have 50 dice in there speciality. Just happening a little sooner than I expected
 
We've indeed discussed that. But it's not an issue of whether you should have cool stuff as a result of successfully leveraging rare resources. It's an issue of whether the specific cool stuff you've gained is something that should have been available to you.

Here's the thing: in a simulationist game, whatever ability you have, NPCs with similar power levels and/or resource access must naturally have abilities of analogous effectiveness. If you live in a world where a chūnin-ish summoner can get an ability that lets them automatically ignore an attack that would cripple a normal ninja, then that means you live in a world where anyone of similar resourcefulness can get, say, an ability that lets them automatically inflict an attack that would cripple a normal ninja. In other words, if you've obtained a poor man's Earth Spear with your resources, then other highly-advantaged new chūnin out there are walking around with a poor man's Rasen-Shuriken or a poor man's Mangekyō Sharingan. Such a world is a lot more lethal than the world you thought you were living in.

The more powerful summoning is, the less plausible it is that Jiraiya let some random missing-nin child keep the scroll. If he was able to turn a strong, loyal Leaf ninja into an instant S-ranker just by giving them the scroll, Jiraiya would have immediately bought it off you (or taken it off your dead body).

As for the other point, you're not unbalancing the world if you have crazy strong techniques. Those are part and parcel of the Narutoverse (even if we've been toning down the more egregious cases). You're unbalancing the world if you have crazy strong techniques at a level which means lots of other people must have them too. Your examples are a Kage and a guy who used biomodification to gain an ultimate Bloodline Limit power ten times. If that power level is something you can attain just by being a highly-advantaged new chūnin, then what does that say about clan heirs, and Bloodline Limit holders, and actual jōnin and above? MfD!Nagato should be able to implement the Eye of the Moon plan just by snapping his fingers.

A point on the value of the techniques vs. Jiraiya letting us keep the scroll: we had to trade the Pangolins the means to conquer multiple other Summon Clans and forge an alliance with a powerful ally on the Human Path before they were willing to give us access to these Jutsu. That isn't something most chuunin, highly advantaged or not, could have done.
It could be plausible that our current position is largely unprecedented, even among the ranks of those few ninja who become summoners.

I'm not entirely against the techniques being brought down a bit (aside from my general aversion to retcons), but I don't think the logic behind it is entirely airtight.

EDIT: An example
Imagine that we offered the Uchiha* something so valuable that a few of them would willing give up an eye for transplantation**. Should the world be retconned so that every ninja at our rough XP bracket had access to something of the same tier as the Sharingan/Should the Sharingan be nerfed?

* In a world where they weren't wiped out.
** And where Sharingan Eye transplants are a thing that actually worked.

EDIT: This interpretation would have GS and EA be retconned into top-tier secret Pangolin techniques, possibly putting them into the same barrel as Mist Draining OPSEC wise.
 
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@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail : Wait, we seem to be mostly taking about the armor techniques. Is there still hope for us keeping PC, esp given my suggestions to nerf it. They would make arbitrage more likely because it only really becomes efficient with pangolins, as you would expect from a hack that only exists to let humans connect up to the existing pangolin technique.

Please, little Panipuri would be sad if you took PC away. :(
 
I'm not entirely against the techniques being brought down a bit (...)

Just for full disclosure: Same here, I just find it more enjoyable to have a discussion about this than wonder how our team is going to do next update. :V

EDIT: This interpretation would have GS and EA be retconned into top-tier secret Pangolin techniques, possibly putting them into the same barrel as Mist Draining OPSEC wise.

Good thing, too. We were running uncomfortably low on techniques to blab about at the wrong time.

Please, little Panipuri would be sad if you took PC away. :(

I had quite forgotten how real pangolins looked like. For some reason I was thinking more scaly bear with a long snout and tail than scaly rat crossed with a snake. *runs off*
 
You're unbalancing the world if you have crazy strong techniques at a level which means lots of other people must have them too.

So what would it take for someone to be "on an S-Rank trajectory like Naruto and Sasuke"? What would that person look like? Presumably there are some people that have those crazy strong techniques, even if they're very rare.
 
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The more powerful summoning is, the less plausible it is that Jiraiya let some random missing-nin child keep the scroll. If he was able to turn a strong, loyal Leaf ninja into an instant S-ranker just by giving them the scroll, Jiraiya would have immediately bought it off you (or taken it off your dead body).
Counterpoint: our summons are only so willing because we traded them skytowers, and because they are only parting secrets to a small group. Leaf would not be able to reliably offer such services to each new summoning clan, and would find it harder to argue that they will keep useful techniques secret, so their marginal gain from each scroll would be much less.
 
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I mean, I get where they're coming from, but our clan has produced seals that are going to revolutionize modern warfare, established a political marriage with the hokage of leaf, discovered a lost hidden village, gotten a summon contract, and generally leveraged those things pretty effectively.

Not to mention Hazo's uncanny ability to build optimal training plans, using data he wouldn't have in reality, like the exact expected gains from training. You have to count that as a superpower along side the quickly-making-plans thing. Perfectly accurate combat simulation and knowing exactly what an extra die of tacmove means in-game...

If you give bilbo a lightsaber...
 
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I mean, I get where they're coming from, but our clan has produced seals that are going to revolutionize modern warfare, established a political marriage with the hokage of leaf, discovered a lost hidden village, gotten a summon contract, and generally leveraged those things pretty effectively.

Not to mention Hazo's uncanny ability to build optimal training plans, using data he wouldn't have in reality, like the exact expected gains from training. You have to count that as a superpower along side the quickly-making-plans thing.

If you give bilbo a lightsaber...

Yeah this is where I'm coming from. We've accomplished a ton in story. We should be ready to take our place as some of the movers and shakers of the world. Instead of barely hanging on for dear life.
 
It's also worth noting that there are a lot less people in ninja-land than exist in real-land. That kind of "if it's doable, someone has already done it" thinking probably isn't nearly as applicable, just because if the difference of an order-of-magnitude (or two). The efficient market hypothesis isn't nearly as useful in small markets.
 
So what would it take for someone to be "on an S-Rank trajectory like Naruto and Sasuke"? What would that person look like? Presumably there are some people that have those crazy strong techniques, even if they're very rare.

S-class is basically ninja who have some advantage that other jounin are unable to learn or duplicate even with a reasonable amount of effort. I would say that in most cases this goes beyond merely "no one will teach them how" and into "most other people can't pick it up even when the S-class tries to show them how it's done".

In addition to obvious bloodline hax, people like Itachi Uchiha and Hatake Kakashi probably have what the game system would translate as a permanent XP discount allowing them to learn faster and with less effort than anyone else.

TRAIT: "Prodigy". All XP costs for chakra-related purchases are reduced to 25% standard cost.

Or something like that.
 
We've indeed discussed that. But it's not an issue of whether you should have cool stuff as a result of successfully leveraging rare resources. It's an issue of whether the specific cool stuff you've gained is something that should have been available to you.

Here's the thing: in a simulationist game, whatever ability you have, NPCs with similar power levels and/or resource access must naturally have abilities of analogous effectiveness. If you live in a world where a chūnin-ish summoner can get an ability that lets them automatically ignore an attack that would cripple a normal ninja, then that means you live in a world where anyone of similar resourcefulness can get, say, an ability that lets them automatically inflict an attack that would cripple a normal ninja. In other words, if you've obtained a poor man's Earth Spear with your resources, then other highly-advantaged new chūnin out there are walking around with a poor man's Rasen-Shuriken or a poor man's Mangekyō Sharingan. Such a world is a lot more lethal than the world you thought you were living in.
So, I think the strongest argument to keep PC and the other Pangolin jutsu is as follows:

Summoners aren't normally terribly useful to their summons. Summon clans care about their own path, and don't care too much about the human path. In fact, sometimes, summoners are detrimental to the clans (see: the crow stuff). It also provides an additional way of secrets leaking to their enemies. As a result, while Summon clans are happy to be summoned by summoners, and appreciate another small way to interact with the human path, it normally doesn't matter. Additionally, as they have few ways of directly influencing the human path, it is difficult to protect secrets. So, normally, they don't give away secrets to their summoners, as the risk of other clans' summoners discovering their techniques is unacceptably high, especially for a world which works off a much slower time-scale (where individuals live for centuries rather than decades).

This is significantly different for the Pangolin tribe in particular. They now have a summoner who provides outside context solutions to problems within their own path via sealing. Additionally, due to their isolation in the summon path, they have a limited number of solutions without appealing to dangerous and risky methods, such as their secrets being discovered by other summon clans due to propagation of their techniques on the human path. That said, they are building towards an endgame in their war - Skytowers are a huge advantage to them, as demonstrated by how it allowed them to enslave a clan within a year or two. Additionally, they expect that if they keep Keiko and her friends alive and safe (via strong techniques) they will be able to receive additional, new, war-changing inventions before the other summon clans.

All this means that they *are* willing to trust their summoner with their most forbidden secrets because they're getting new forbidden secrets in return, secrets which have allowed them to rapidly expand their empire. This almost never happens, as atested by the relatively few "total change in how warfare works" events there have been in the past. The Pangolins wish to maintain this superiority as long as they can, which means keeping Keiko and friends as safe as possible for as long as they can provide the Pangolins new seals. As this has a strong chance of winning them several wars within the next few decades, it's worth the significant risk of leaking secrets to their enemies over the next couple centuries.

As a result of the above, most clans keep their techniques, or, at least, their very best techniques, away from their summoners. This means that the human path is relatively unchanged as a result of the Pangolins choosing to give away their crazy powerful abilities to Keiko. Additionally, it means that enemies of the Pangolin clan, if they saw both the skytowers and the fact that there is now a Pangolin summoner would likely gun very hard for Keiko's death, as it would be a significant detriment to the Pangolins. So, I don't think this would increase the deadliness of the world at large per se, since most summon clans wouldn't give out secret forbidden techniques, but *does* increase the risk that random summoners begin targeting Keiko (thus increasing the rate at which we will encounter people with esoteric and dangerous abilities).
 
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Or that it is particularly strong ninja who obtain and possess summon scrolls. Which is what you'd expect given that the most common way of getting a summon scroll is by taking it from its previous owner.

Well won't matter for long any way. We just need to learn some techniques from Jiraiya and we will be back on to the path to S-rank even with nerfing what we get from the pangolins
 
If there's a case to be made for why armour techniques aren't overpowered in the Naruto setting, I'd be willing to hear it. Just bearing in mind that in canon there's exactly one technique which tanks wounds, and it's a forbidden technique used by Kakuzu.

There's also Tsunade's bullshit.

When we get back we absolutely have to work on getting a chakra beast farm set up for Noburi to drain regularly to fuel his use of Shadow Clone for training.

You jest, but this sounds like it might have quite the ROI, especially considering how effortlessly the team can take out chakra beasts now. Noburi could also share the chakra and help the rest of the team bootstrap upwards if they learned the technique too. Why haven't we done this already?
 
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You jest, but this sounds like it might have quite the ROI, especially considering how effortlessly the team can take out chakra beasts now. Noburi could also share the chakra and help the rest of the team bootstrap upwards if they learned the technique too. Why haven't we done this already?
That is 100% not jest. I was completely serious there.

Also probably because we didn't think of it. The best part, though? Shadow Clone is a secret leaf technique. There has never been a Wakahisa in leaf. This is some cleverness that we can actually do without other people having thought of it already.
 
That is 100% not jest. I was completely serious there.

Also probably because we didn't think of it. The best part, though? Shadow Clone is a secret leaf technique. There has never been a Wakahisa in leaf. This is some cleverness that we can actually do without other people having thought of it already.

Definitely need to pitch the idea to Hmm, do we actually know anything about it IC? =/

"So, tell me how you learned the workings of the forbidden secret Kage Bunshin no Jutsu again?"
-Jirayia, holding us in another killbox
 
Definitely need to pitch the idea to Hmm, do we actually know anything about it IC? =/

"So, tell me how you learned the workings of the forbidden secret Kage Bunshin no Jutsu again?"
-Jirayia, holding us in another killbox
Actually, we have a way to know about Shadow Clone as well.

He described that Nagato pulled a Naruto clone up and Itachi used what could be assumed to be genjutsu on it before popping it. From this we can figure out the secret of the technique.
 
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