Regarding the above, you should assume that there are chained stunts and chakra powers that can drastically pump up the numbers for really skilled sealcrafters. 'Sealcrafter' is just the gateway stunt.
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 open voting
Cariyaga
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Some things worth noting on first lookover @Briefvoice (though, to be 100% clear I am personally grateful for the work you've put into this, and these critiques should be taken as ways to improve upon it, not a personal attack):
Sealing doesn't require significant chakra control in the context of Marked for Death, as far as I'm aware.
Infusion does not require any noteworthy amount of chakra, to the point where if a civilian was capable of accessing their chakra, even if they weren't particularly good, they might be able to do it. Assuming the seal isn't stupid like Night Light seals are, anyway -- so I don't think Chakra Capacity is appropriate there.
MfD-canonically, seal blanks require ~5 minutes to create, not 15.
Explosives seem to be more contingent on the user's skill in whether they affect someone and more contingent on the explosives power in the effect accomplished by them. Not sure how to represent this. Likewise, I'm not sure that "number of people affected" is a particularly good balance point. Sealcraft isn't, in the context of the universe, as far as I'm aware, actually intended to be balanced, though that also conflicts somewhat with the QM's desire for having a system they can reference for sealing difficulty... That said, it can be a good thing, sometimes; it's dependent on the seal. For instance, something like macerators is a relatively simple modification with a lot of potential effects; I don't think it'd be appropriate to make it 'cost' more to infuse or research for the esoteric stuff like fuel-air bombs, etc.
On the note of which, I do not think it is appropriate to be able to "choose" how much progress you make in researching seals; by my read, this would allow a novice to work at large scale projects easily.
Stuff like Air Domes' Block rate can be easily scaled -- it's been stated to take at least a hit from a chuunin well enough, so that's what it can be adjusted to. (commentary, not critique)
Critiques aside, that's a great start! Thanks for this!
Sealing doesn't require significant chakra control in the context of Marked for Death, as far as I'm aware.
Infusion does not require any noteworthy amount of chakra, to the point where if a civilian was capable of accessing their chakra, even if they weren't particularly good, they might be able to do it. Assuming the seal isn't stupid like Night Light seals are, anyway -- so I don't think Chakra Capacity is appropriate there.
MfD-canonically, seal blanks require ~5 minutes to create, not 15.
Explosives seem to be more contingent on the user's skill in whether they affect someone and more contingent on the explosives power in the effect accomplished by them. Not sure how to represent this. Likewise, I'm not sure that "number of people affected" is a particularly good balance point. Sealcraft isn't, in the context of the universe, as far as I'm aware, actually intended to be balanced, though that also conflicts somewhat with the QM's desire for having a system they can reference for sealing difficulty... That said, it can be a good thing, sometimes; it's dependent on the seal. For instance, something like macerators is a relatively simple modification with a lot of potential effects; I don't think it'd be appropriate to make it 'cost' more to infuse or research for the esoteric stuff like fuel-air bombs, etc.
On the note of which, I do not think it is appropriate to be able to "choose" how much progress you make in researching seals; by my read, this would allow a novice to work at large scale projects easily.
Stuff like Air Domes' Block rate can be easily scaled -- it's been stated to take at least a hit from a chuunin well enough, so that's what it can be adjusted to. (commentary, not critique)
Critiques aside, that's a great start! Thanks for this!
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Could just roll chakra lore, though I'm reluctant to put everything on one skill. You could do it the other way around and have it be chakra lore modified by chakra control. I think it makes certain amount of sense that good chakra control would at least help.
Okay, I guess I misremembered that.
I'll leave that one up to the GMs to decide how many seals they want a person to be capable of making in a day. Note that getting it from 15 minutes to "a few minutes" would only require taking a -1 to the roll to draw it faster. I mean, seal blanks are nothing but non-chakra calligraphy. You can draw them as fast as your nimble fingers allow.
See, I don't actually think that's true. More powerful ninja rarely seem to bother with explosive. If explosives were a power magnifier they absolutely would be used more. But if they're more of a flat attack then they'd be greater for weaker ninjas and increasingly pointless for jounin who can get better results by throwing a kunai. Powerful ninja use them more for tricks like slipping an explosives tag on a thrown kunai to trick their opponent into parrying it instead of dodging it and then eating an explosion that can't be parried.
That said, if GMs want to do it that way they could just let a ninja roll an attack and use that, with the seal providing only a weapon value. (Though in that case you might want to increase the Complexity cost of the weapon.) There's ways to play with that.
Makes some intuitive sense, I think, since it's really about area. Are you affecting a person-sized area, a wide area that can catch multiple people, or a huge area? You would expect difficulty to scale up there.
Yeah, I'm really open to suggestions there. It's a tricky beast to balance between not wanting to make research impossible for a novice (and what is a novice, anyway? +2 in chakra lore? +1? +3) and not wanting to make it easy. I seriously considered some sort of "you have to make it in X number of rolls or it's impossible". I think you'd need to play with the numbers a few times and run it until you hit something that makes sense.
I recalled that air domes were specifically supposed to be somewhat fragile. Able to take "a hit" and then pop. But again, that's stuff you can go back and adjust.
Cariyaga
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Yeah. It does make sense in some contexts -- ie explosive or implosion seals -- but in others like macerators where the area affected is more a matter of cone size and speed, less so, or banshee seals where the area is dependent on the power of the effect itself (as decibels decrease by ~6 per doubling of distance).
Still, that's something that can be adjusted, I just wanted to make note of it.
Hm. Well, think about in this context: Jiraiya specifically asked Kagome for his implosion seals when fighting other S-rankers. If nothing else, that definitely signifies that they're a power magnifier.
As far as other ninja go, they seem to mostly rely on ninjutsu to fulfill the effect of explosive seals. For instance, the Uchiha's Grand Fireball technique doesn't seem very different from an explosive seal.
The implosion seals seem to be just better than standard explosives (unless you're trying to set something on fire, or other niche cases).
I think part of it is just OOC narrative decisions - more ninjutsu people got written than weapons people (for coolness reasons, I suspect - who's going to get added more, someone wielding the same explosive tags anybody can [and random mooks often do] use, or a shiny new jutsu?). On top of that, the explosive tags are presented in canon as pretty cheap and easy to access (think of how early and often Naruto himself starts using them, and what that says about availability). So, if they're a basic part of ninja equipment that any random Genin might have, it makes sense they don't end up getting any focus as things go on.
In the harsher, stricter setting of MfD, it in turn makes sense for the seals to get more attention - they cost a negligible amount of chakra to activate, can be produced at the cost of time and paper/ink, and do a lot of damage if they catch someone off guard (also, for the PCs in particular, most of our attention has been a) at the lower ranks and b) focused on force-multipliers; even if explosive seals and the like don't scale well enough to make it in the big leagues, they're a heck of a lot better than no area-effect attacks at all). On the other hand, the fact that sealing is more special and dangerous here than in canon makes getting even basic seals a bigger deal, which from a metagame/balance perspective lets them be more powerful.
On the bright side, I don't think there's necessarily much conflict when it comes to offensive seals; if an explosive tag counts as a weapon, that's likely more useful for lower-ranked people (who don't have high-damage jutsu) but still scales effectively with skill (suggesting high-end weapon users will use weapons enhanced with seals - and whether or not canon agrees, I suspect most-if-not-all of the special weapons [like those used by the Seven Swordsmen of Mist] were now created with sealing).
The other tricky bit is unusual applications of sealing - I'm pretty sure Kagome's "stupid box" is just a very dangerous application of a storage seal, and it's often going to be messier than an explosive tag by a fair margin. I think best use is probably going to be building the stats for seals based on standard use, and then if someone cleverly weaponizes an edge case just let it be.
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Cariyaga
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IIRC Kagome's stupid box is basically explosives + napalm in a storage seal.
e: Our fuel air bomb does it better, though. Cuts out the explosive middleman
IIRC Kagome's stupid box is basically explosives + napalm in a storage seal.
e: Our fuel air bomb does it better, though. Cuts out the explosive middleman
Stupid box = water, oil, and hot coals = instant flaming oil + steam blast.
Well, fuel air bomb. Only to be expected
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This seems like a lot more Skills than you really need. Why not take the Skills from Fate: Core, drop Driving, split Lore into Ninja Lore (history, jutsu knowledge, technique hacking) and Medicine (for med-nin stuff), then have a Jutsu skill to handle general chakra techniques, and have another skill call Reserve to determine a stress track for chakra, as well as for other things that require great reserves of chakra. Discipline and Conviction from DFRPG get folded into F:Core's Will and Presence gets folded into Rapport.
As someone who's played sessions of both: Fate Core is easier to learn/master than DFRPG. The skills of Fate Core are also a little more straightforward. Fight is melee, Shoot is ranged, supernatural stuff is usually it's own skill. Etc.
Final list would be something like: Athletics, Burglary, Contacts, Crafts, Deceive, Empathy, Fight, Investigate, Jutsu, Medicine, Ninja Lore, Notice, Physique, Provoke, Rapport, Reserves, Resources, Shoot, Stealth, Will.
Phsyical Stress keys off of Physique, Mental off of Will, Chakra off of Reserves, Social (if you really want it) off of Empathy or Rapport or whatever.
If you really wanted it to, you could have most Jutsu work off of Will as well, given Disciple and Conviction get folded under them in Fate Core. Seals will most likely work off of Ninja Lore - aka why Sealmasters like Kagome sometimes doubled as codebreakers and the like.
It might be nice to pull from DFAE as well because Mantles are a good concept, and having dedicated Conditions you can check off based on your Mantle is a cool idea, as well as special stunts and permissions that come from having such. The Magical Practitioner Mantle in DFAE is pretty good for most Ninja, as well as some of the social-minded ones like Medic and One Percent or Leader of the People Mantles that folks definitely have.
Cariyaga
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As far as progression itself goes, I think that, as I've mentioned before, larger numbers and wider fudge dice margins are the way to go. This'll allow for proper simulationistic scaling -- I'm not sure that stuff like getting more power at milestones fits with MfD.
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I'll admit that I haven't read any of the proposed rulesets we're considering transitioning to, but I'm unsure what the major difference between getting power at milestones vs. getting power by spending XP at specified times is.
Cariyaga
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You only get to advance skills on significant milestones, of which are described as the culmination of an adventure. So like, getting Kagome, getting the summon scroll, fucking up in hot springs, getting Arikada, etc. This wouldn't allow very granular advancement. It may be as much a matter of 'feel' as anything, but I don't think that would work well with Marked for Death, where downtime gets you skill just as well as active engagement and age is important for skill level, not just "I'm going to make trouble in Leaf for the next six months and get more skills every time".
e: Honestly, it's that last part that bothers me most, because it basically means that if you're not actively on adventures, you can be training for two years and get nothing out of it.
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And milestones cannot be awarded for things like "trained for a while on this specific manuever"?
Cariyaga
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They can be, but that would, well, not be milestones as they are written in DFRPG, at which point my complaints are addressed.
Milestones are story-based. You get them after bigger and smaller inflection points in the story. In MfD they'd probably work something like:
Minor Milestone - One every update. You can switch the values of any two skills, replace a skill at Average with one that isn't on your sheet, change any stunt for another stunt, or rename one aspect.
Minor milestones allow you to fiddle with your character sheet without making the character any more powerful.
Significant Milestone - Probably one every "mission". For example, passing the first stage of the chuunin exams by learning the exam location. Finding the village hidden in the Mountain and gaining entrance. Grabbing that yakuza accountant successfully. A significant milestone lets you do all of these: Gain one additional skill rank* and one benefit of a minor milestone, also buy stunts or powers if you can afford them.
*One skill rank is actually a big deal in this system.
Major Milestone - This is the culmination of an entire arc. Leaving behind the Village Hidden in the Swamp. The entire time in Mountain. The mission to Hot Springs. These are significant, character-altering events. A major milestone gives you: An additional point of refresh (which can be used to buy powers or stunts), the ability to "clean out" an Extreme Consequences slot, and all the benefits of a Significant milestone.
See above, because you and I disagree about this. To me those things are major milestones. Significant milestones ought to come every few updates and should be the result of sub-missions within those.
I think that was a bad part of Marked for Death, though! It certainly was no more "realistic", and in practice things never worked that way anyway.
Almost no game system anywhere is set up to do that. If for some reason the GMs decided that they wanted to do a huge timeskip and they want the characters to grow in power during that time, they could certianly go, "Go ahead and take X significant and Y major milestones." True they'd just be making that up, but you'd be making it up in any system.
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They can be, but that would, well, not be milestones as they are written in DFRPG, at which point my complaints are addressed.
XP/Milestones are ultimately a metagame mechanic, not an aspect of simulation. They reward players for playing the game.
Cariyaga
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I mostly don't like milestones because they come across as very similar to 'levels' in D&D or whatever, and that doesn't seem very appropriate to me at all here. It just feels icky to me
Additionally, I don't think such low skill numbers as DFRPG uses by default are appropriate; it could very easily lead to a genin (or a sufficient number of them) wrecking a jounin.
Also:
The only major milestones I can think of have been us leaving Mist and researching/giving Skywalkers to Leaf, whereas your examples for Major Milestones seem more appropriate for Significant Milestones.
Additionally, I don't think such low skill numbers as DFRPG uses by default are appropriate; it could very easily lead to a genin (or a sufficient number of them) wrecking a jounin.
Also:
(quoted under Fair Use)Dresden Files RPG said:
The only major milestones I can think of have been us leaving Mist and researching/giving Skywalkers to Leaf, whereas your examples for Major Milestones seem more appropriate for Significant Milestones.
I think leaving the Village in the Swamp shook up the campaign. I think the escape from and downfall of the Liberator in Iron shook up the campaign. I think the mission to Mountain shook up the campaign. I think the events in Hot Springs shook up the campaign. I think getting off Jiraiya's shitlist by capturing that sealing master, then getting kicked out of Leaf and leaving Akane behind shook up the campaign. I think subsequently inventing skywalkers, evading Zabuza, joining Leaf, and getting adopted by Jiraiya shook up the campaign. I think the battle of the gods and our spy mission that ended in Manami's death shook up the campaign. And I think the chuunn exam arc will also be a major milestone when it's done.
So I'd say that in the approximately two years this game has been running, it's seen about seven Major milestones. That seems about right to me, and I think it's the speed of advancement that players be happiest with, especially if you want to drastically increase the power gaps between genin and more powerful ninja. Seven refresh also seems like about the amount of power that the various characters have grown.
Mind you, I can see how you could read the passage your way, but I think my way of reading it gets better results and is more likely to result in a satisfying game with a brisk rate of advancement that allows the players to drop in a skill point every couple of weeks and a new power/stunt every couple of months. Like many things in Fate, Significant versus Major is on purpose very subjective.
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Cariyaga
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That's fair. I guess it's mostly a matter of how the milestone system is used. Personally I'm more fond of high-granularity point-based systems, so I am certainly biased in that regard.
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Note that the desire for a very high-granularity system that rewards training instead of important milestones doesn't particularly reflect reality or the prior fiction, even in MfD. We typically earn more exp for more daring, intelligent, or otherwise interesting plans and these plans happen to have a significant overlap with important milestones. Whenever we just train or do very little on a plan, we tend to earn very little exp. Moreover, consider how training and getting better at things happens in the real world. You go through periods of slow improvement where you get slightly better or slightly more knowledgeable, and then go through a-ha! moments where you realize a more central idea that makes you progress much more significantly. This is clearly observable at large scales if you just look at the history of science and mathematics, but it's also true at smaller scales if you go through the process of getting better at any skill. Take math for an easy example. If math is just memorizing a million different theorems, then a high school graduate and a PhD aren't significantly different in their knowledge of the subject. This isn't reflective of reality, however; a PhD doesn't just know more theorems compared to a high school graduate, they also understand relationships between them and how to use those relationships in order to solve new problems or come up with new theorems. In a highly granular system tied to explicit training plans, you don't see this type of advancement. Your advancement is entirely of the same type that you would get out of telling someone to memorize yet more theorems.
That's my viewpoint at the very least. Perhaps it's not entirely accurate, but I certainly believe that it's at least mostly accurate.
That's my viewpoint at the very least. Perhaps it's not entirely accurate, but I certainly believe that it's at least mostly accurate.
Cariyaga
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I... haven't really experienced that with learning programming. It's always a steady progress for me, as far as I can tell, when making progress at all.
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Physical skills are also highly granular: if you're e.g. lifting weights, you'll improve steadily, not in bursts. It might be that different skills have varying degrees of "bursty-ness"; learning math is certainly less of a steady grind than lifting weights. However, I think this is an area where simulationism must take a backseat in favor of practicality. I don't really have a strong opinion on which side it should lean towards.
Cariyaga
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To be honest, part of it's just that I find granularity more fun.
It's worth considering it from the QM-side, though: Is it going to be easier or harder if they have to build NPCs with number-of-milestones as an analogue for experience versus using natural-talent-augmented-XP-per-day?
It's worth considering it from the QM-side, though: Is it going to be easier or harder if they have to build NPCs with number-of-milestones as an analogue for experience versus using natural-talent-augmented-XP-per-day?
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Or they could go all Skyrim, with (mostly) granular skills and milestone based technique development/improvement.
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My experience with RPGs, and obviously this isn't a perfect analogue for the Quest format, is that the more detailed a system is for character creation, the more difficult it is to generate more characters. So in a system where you are have x numbers of points and then have to spend them and these all have variable costs and so on, it can be a slightly more involved process. This is probably not a huge deal - the biggest problem and reason why large combats are so draining on the GMs is because there's a million different combatants and, within the current simulation, every single character has to be accurately simulated. It's always going to be a pain in the butt to make a pile of character sheets. I mean, I can't actually say anything about the problems facing the GMs presently because I'm, y'know, not involved but I imagine they consist of the brain drain behind making 20 character sheets and the problem of running 20 person combats where they have to simulate each character. The easiest solution is to just not simulate each individual combatant and instead perhaps simulate groups of enemies. The next best solution is to not develop full character sheets for every combatant and instead just get numbers of dice for their relevant skill sets; maybe develop a technique for a few characters, but most characters will just roll Generic Ninjutsu or Generic Taijutsu with perhaps some fluffyness in the text to mask exactly what's going on behind the scenes. Then again, this could actually be exactly what's happening behind the scenes. It's hard to really tell in which direction the system needs to go without really knowing the exact issues with the current system.
There's probably a neat way to handle milestones and a granular skill system. For example, you could have it so that every x points in a skill, you get to choose either a new technique or an improvement to a previous technique or something like that. The only issue here is that it has the same issues that we have now. Perhaps you could have a Suiton skill, which represents all of your water techniques, and then individual milestones would say that you can roll Suiton in different situations. You could grab Water Whip as your milestone at, say, 5 points in Suiton and it says you can roll Suiton against your opponent at Near and Medium range. This is more or less the same as the current system, just collapsing different skills down into one, but it's something.
There's probably a neat way to handle milestones and a granular skill system. For example, you could have it so that every x points in a skill, you get to choose either a new technique or an improvement to a previous technique or something like that. The only issue here is that it has the same issues that we have now. Perhaps you could have a Suiton skill, which represents all of your water techniques, and then individual milestones would say that you can roll Suiton in different situations. You could grab Water Whip as your milestone at, say, 5 points in Suiton and it says you can roll Suiton against your opponent at Near and Medium range. This is more or less the same as the current system, just collapsing different skills down into one, but it's something.
Dissenting voice on the granularity of physical skills - raw strength and general fitness, sure, but I've often found with skills that I make steady progress for a bit, then plateau for a while, then figure out some new trick or combination of techniques and make a larger improvement in little time.
I think you're talking about a different type of milestone than Fate uses - their Milestones are the points at which your character gets more stuff on their sheet (how much stuff dependent on the type of Milestone, as @Briefvoice describes above). It's not the best metaphor, but you can think of it as kinda halfway between a point buy system (like the Storyteller system World of Darkness uses) and a level system (like D&D).
Hmm. This gives me the thought to take things to the next step from what @MadScientist did and try a test build of current-Hazo, as opposed to starting-Hazou (using the SRD Fate rules, not the DFRPG, 'cause I only have access to the former). For this build, I'll mostly be using the list of skills @Briefvoice put together a few pages back, but I think I'll fold Fists and Weapons together into Melee - if we're willing to abstract kunai and scythes into the same skill, rolling punching into it shouldn't break anything, and fists are honestly about as lethal as most melee weapons in this setting, anyway. Also using Fate Core's merging Endurance and Might into Physique - pure physical strength divorced from combat ability is pretty niche, and the idea of someone particularly muscular being physically fragile is a slightly odd one (if, yes, a fairly common one in tabletop games. Meh). Of course, Aspects and Stunts are intended as ideas and starting points.
Final conclusion: holy carp, you guys have been running this game for a really long time, thanks and compliments again! Trying to quantify it across from a tabletop game-equivalent really drove home just how long and how frequently the QMs have been putting stuff out.
I think you're talking about a different type of milestone than Fate uses - their Milestones are the points at which your character gets more stuff on their sheet (how much stuff dependent on the type of Milestone, as @Briefvoice describes above). It's not the best metaphor, but you can think of it as kinda halfway between a point buy system (like the Storyteller system World of Darkness uses) and a level system (like D&D).
Hmm. This gives me the thought to take things to the next step from what @MadScientist did and try a test build of current-Hazo, as opposed to starting-Hazou (using the SRD Fate rules, not the DFRPG, 'cause I only have access to the former). For this build, I'll mostly be using the list of skills @Briefvoice put together a few pages back, but I think I'll fold Fists and Weapons together into Melee - if we're willing to abstract kunai and scythes into the same skill, rolling punching into it shouldn't break anything, and fists are honestly about as lethal as most melee weapons in this setting, anyway. Also using Fate Core's merging Endurance and Might into Physique - pure physical strength divorced from combat ability is pretty niche, and the idea of someone particularly muscular being physically fragile is a slightly odd one (if, yes, a fairly common one in tabletop games. Meh). Of course, Aspects and Stunts are intended as ideas and starting points.
As a rough-approximation, here's what Hazou might have looked like at the start of the quest:
High Concept: Idealistic Missing-Nin (Hazou's painful earnestness has always been both strength and vulnerability. Also, y'know, missing-nin)
Trouble: Social Outsider (Hazou wasn't a member of the Kurosawa even before he went missing-nin, and has always had issues relating to most people. On the bright side, he tends to get along well with other unusual sorts [see: CCnJ, Akane])
Aspects: Relentless Optimizer (On the bright side, inventions! On the down side, lists), Team Kurosawa/Inoue against the World (fairly self-explanatory, name changed fairly early when they broke off from Hidden Swamp with Mari), Hold the Line (both from his team position as melee specialist, and the Kurosawa Clan motto).
Stunts: Ninja (Has Chakra, can learn jutsu, various advantages; given the game's conceit, I feel this should probably be considered a free Stunt, as no PCs [and few mechanically relevant NPCs] will be built without it), Iron Nerve (Allows for perfectly repeating physical motions - means the character doesn't need to roll to repeat a previous successful action, as long as the circumstances haven't changed; can give bonuses to rolls where this is helpful but not automatically successful, like board games; 2 pts), Roki (If Hazou has a higher Deceive bonus than his opponent's Empathy bonus, add +2 to Melee; technically he didn't have it at creation, but nothing else jumped out as more appropriate for early-game Hazou to spend that last stunt point on)
Refresh: 3
+4 (Great): Melee
+3 (Good): Athletics, Physique
+2 (Fair): Chakra Capacity, Infiltration, Alertness
+1 (Average): Chakra Control, Survival, Deceit, Willpower
(A seriously combat-specialized build, I know, but I seem to recall [and a brief skim of the early chapters supports] that Hazo was pretty specialized at the start)
High Concept: Idealistic Missing-Nin (Hazou's painful earnestness has always been both strength and vulnerability. Also, y'know, missing-nin)
Trouble: Social Outsider (Hazou wasn't a member of the Kurosawa even before he went missing-nin, and has always had issues relating to most people. On the bright side, he tends to get along well with other unusual sorts [see: CCnJ, Akane])
Aspects: Relentless Optimizer (On the bright side, inventions! On the down side, lists), Team Kurosawa/Inoue against the World (fairly self-explanatory, name changed fairly early when they broke off from Hidden Swamp with Mari), Hold the Line (both from his team position as melee specialist, and the Kurosawa Clan motto).
Stunts: Ninja (Has Chakra, can learn jutsu, various advantages; given the game's conceit, I feel this should probably be considered a free Stunt, as no PCs [and few mechanically relevant NPCs] will be built without it), Iron Nerve (Allows for perfectly repeating physical motions - means the character doesn't need to roll to repeat a previous successful action, as long as the circumstances haven't changed; can give bonuses to rolls where this is helpful but not automatically successful, like board games; 2 pts), Roki (If Hazou has a higher Deceive bonus than his opponent's Empathy bonus, add +2 to Melee; technically he didn't have it at creation, but nothing else jumped out as more appropriate for early-game Hazou to spend that last stunt point on)
Refresh: 3
+4 (Great): Melee
+3 (Good): Athletics, Physique
+2 (Fair): Chakra Capacity, Infiltration, Alertness
+1 (Average): Chakra Control, Survival, Deceit, Willpower
(A seriously combat-specialized build, I know, but I seem to recall [and a brief skim of the early chapters supports] that Hazo was pretty specialized at the start)
There's been ~160 chapters, perhaps 7 Major Milestones, and the SRD suggests having a Significant Milestone "when in doubt, at the end of every two or three sessions" (which I'm going to arbitrarily translate into every 5 chapters and see how that looks). So, 80 skill points and 7 points of Refresh/new Stunts (two updates a week for near two years is a lot of chronicle!).
One of the less obvious rules is that there's a skill cap (defaults to +4, though given ninja are absolutely superhuman it's most likely pushed to +5 or even +6) that you can only raise at Major Milestones, so that suggests Hazou can't have any skills above +11/+12/+13 (depending on starting cap). This may be slightly awkward in a game that assumes characters won't generally go past +8; we'll see how much it matters. Finally, given the sheer number of points (and level of specialization the characters should be able to pull off), the skill column won't be able to hold up forever - I'm going to be kinda arbitrary about it here, 'cause I haven't settled on any ideas I particularly like as to how to systematically move past it.
High Concept: Idealistic Ninja of the Leaf (Still dedicated to his high ideas, but with a new home and allies)
Trouble: Social Outsider (Much of Leaf may now see him positively, but he's still an outsider, and still socially awkward at times)
Aspects: Relentless Optimizer (as above), Team Uplift! (fairly self-explanatory), Hold the Line (as above).
Stunts: Ninja (as above), Iron Nerve (as above; 2 pts), Roki (as above), Sealmaster (exact mechanics TBD, but "able to research and create seals" should cover it for now)
(possibly more Stunts, but pretty much everything else he has or does is jutsu, which are their own thing; maybe some kind of upgrade/sequel to Sealmaster? He's got more than enough Refresh to buy a couple)
Refresh: 9
+8 (Legendary):
+7 (Epic):
+6 (Fantastic): Melee
+5 (Superb): Athletics, Deceit
+4 (Great): Chakra Control, Chakra Lore, Alertness
+3 (Good): Chakra Capacity, Infiltration, Physique
+2 (Fair): Provoke, Empathy, Rapport, Willpower
+1 (Average): Survival, Investigation, Medicine, Ranged, Crafts
So, that's 30 points spent (which is, on the outside, about 90 sessions of tabletop game worth), and that seems to be as far as the column takes us (without adding filler +1s that Hazou really hasn't bothered with, like Administration, and there aren't many of even those left to pick from). The funny part is, glancing between this and Hazou's character sheet, I think it looks pretty accurate. He's terrifying in melee, tricky as hell, solid at using his jutsu, and vaguely socially competent when not lying.
I'm honestly not sure how to handle the remaining 50 skill points - maybe allow you to buy a skill above where it should be in the pyramid for extra points? Maybe add a mechanic where skill points are involved in buying jutsu, or make jutsu-specific skills? The answer, I believe, has to flow from what you want a top-level character to look like - figure that out, then figure out what sort of rules would incentivize (or at least support) building them (sadly, no ideas here as of yet in that direction).
Some of these issues are because this is translating from a system where individual jutsu cost xp to one that doesn't (which I do think fits the fiction better - higher-ranked jutsu specialists are portrayed as having a fair variety, but even with secondary-jutsu-of-that-element discounts it seems odd they'd have more than a couple, especially for elements like Fire where canon mostly boils down to a bunch of different ways to shoot fire out of your mouth). Some is just the fact that MfD is a game that's been running for a long time, with frequent updates, in a setting with a high power ceiling, and "start running into power ceiling issues after 90+ sessions of game" is hardly unusual. I've certainly had D&D games hit level 20 (the usual cap) in much less than that (seriously, that's almost two years of weekly sessions worth by itself, which is pretty long for a tabletop chronicle).
One of the less obvious rules is that there's a skill cap (defaults to +4, though given ninja are absolutely superhuman it's most likely pushed to +5 or even +6) that you can only raise at Major Milestones, so that suggests Hazou can't have any skills above +11/+12/+13 (depending on starting cap). This may be slightly awkward in a game that assumes characters won't generally go past +8; we'll see how much it matters. Finally, given the sheer number of points (and level of specialization the characters should be able to pull off), the skill column won't be able to hold up forever - I'm going to be kinda arbitrary about it here, 'cause I haven't settled on any ideas I particularly like as to how to systematically move past it.
High Concept: Idealistic Ninja of the Leaf (Still dedicated to his high ideas, but with a new home and allies)
Trouble: Social Outsider (Much of Leaf may now see him positively, but he's still an outsider, and still socially awkward at times)
Aspects: Relentless Optimizer (as above), Team Uplift! (fairly self-explanatory), Hold the Line (as above).
Stunts: Ninja (as above), Iron Nerve (as above; 2 pts), Roki (as above), Sealmaster (exact mechanics TBD, but "able to research and create seals" should cover it for now)
(possibly more Stunts, but pretty much everything else he has or does is jutsu, which are their own thing; maybe some kind of upgrade/sequel to Sealmaster? He's got more than enough Refresh to buy a couple)
Refresh: 9
+8 (Legendary):
+7 (Epic):
+6 (Fantastic): Melee
+5 (Superb): Athletics, Deceit
+4 (Great): Chakra Control, Chakra Lore, Alertness
+3 (Good): Chakra Capacity, Infiltration, Physique
+2 (Fair): Provoke, Empathy, Rapport, Willpower
+1 (Average): Survival, Investigation, Medicine, Ranged, Crafts
So, that's 30 points spent (which is, on the outside, about 90 sessions of tabletop game worth), and that seems to be as far as the column takes us (without adding filler +1s that Hazou really hasn't bothered with, like Administration, and there aren't many of even those left to pick from). The funny part is, glancing between this and Hazou's character sheet, I think it looks pretty accurate. He's terrifying in melee, tricky as hell, solid at using his jutsu, and vaguely socially competent when not lying.
I'm honestly not sure how to handle the remaining 50 skill points - maybe allow you to buy a skill above where it should be in the pyramid for extra points? Maybe add a mechanic where skill points are involved in buying jutsu, or make jutsu-specific skills? The answer, I believe, has to flow from what you want a top-level character to look like - figure that out, then figure out what sort of rules would incentivize (or at least support) building them (sadly, no ideas here as of yet in that direction).
Some of these issues are because this is translating from a system where individual jutsu cost xp to one that doesn't (which I do think fits the fiction better - higher-ranked jutsu specialists are portrayed as having a fair variety, but even with secondary-jutsu-of-that-element discounts it seems odd they'd have more than a couple, especially for elements like Fire where canon mostly boils down to a bunch of different ways to shoot fire out of your mouth). Some is just the fact that MfD is a game that's been running for a long time, with frequent updates, in a setting with a high power ceiling, and "start running into power ceiling issues after 90+ sessions of game" is hardly unusual. I've certainly had D&D games hit level 20 (the usual cap) in much less than that (seriously, that's almost two years of weekly sessions worth by itself, which is pretty long for a tabletop chronicle).
Final conclusion: holy carp, you guys have been running this game for a really long time, thanks and compliments again! Trying to quantify it across from a tabletop game-equivalent really drove home just how long and how frequently the QMs have been putting stuff out.
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