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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Oneiros said:
Is it really in Kiba's nature to be subtle? His aspects and the fact that he fought till he was fairly injured suggest that he went all out. Also team Kurenia jobbed to Team Goketsu. So not surprising that Akane and co smashed them.
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It's not.

On the other hand, I'd imagine that his mother, Jonin-sensei, or other related individuals would be subtle enough to confisticate any soldier pills or related equipment he would have otherwise taken, and/or bashed some sense into him in the process.
 
faflec said:
It's not.

On the other hand, I'd imagine that his mother, Jonin-sensei, or other related individuals would be subtle enough to confisticate any soldier pills or related equipment he would have otherwise taken, and/or bashed some sense into him in the process.
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Or he just might not be that talented.

On which note, I kind of feel like having a good (and dedicated) teacher should give some kind of multiplier to the XP you earn.

e: Or maybe it should give a mutliplier (to a limit based on the time they spend with you) on the skills they train? So, for instance, working with Jiraiya would give both Hazou and Kagome bonuses to learning Sealing better; training with Mari could improve their Alertness/Athletics/Water Ninjutsu/Taijutsu, etc.
 
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faflec said:
It's not.

On the other hand, I'd imagine that his mother, Jonin-sensei, or other related individuals would be subtle enough to confisticate any soldier pills or related equipment he would have otherwise taken, and/or bashed some sense into him in the process.
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Question if soldier pills are that strong of a buff why wouldn't everyone use them?
 
Cariyaga said:
Or he just might not be that talented.

On which note, I kind of feel like having a good (and dedicated) teacher should give some kind of multiplier to the XP you earn.
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That's...actually possible. Or more specifically Akamaru isn't that talented, since he spent the fight on Kiba's head instead of fighting as a separate unit like in canon. Hm.
 
faflec said:
That's...actually possible. Or more specifically Akamaru isn't that talented, since he spent the fight on Kiba's head instead of fighting as a separate unit like in canon. Hm.
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IIRC in canon he was too young at the time to do much?
Cariyaga said:
On which note, I kind of feel like having a good (and dedicated) teacher should give some kind of multiplier to the XP you earn.

e: Or maybe it should give a mutliplier (to a limit based on the time they spend with you) on the skills they train? So, for instance, working with Jiraiya would give both Hazou and Kagome bonuses to learning Sealing better; training with Mari could improve their Alertness/Athletics/Water Ninjutsu/Taijutsu, etc.
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So, I want to talk about this idea some more. It would make a certain amount of sense in the context of why Team Uplift is so far above the median for their age: In addition to being in the upper percentile of ninja talent-wise, it would also explain why people like Akane blossomed so thoroughly when brought into the group -- she was immediately trained both by Hazou, her then-superior inTaijutsu, and Mari, Women's CQC Champion of Mist.

Now, it might be difficult to quantify the bonus such a Teacher Bonus would give -- at least without a Teaching skill (which, now that I think of it, could be an application of the Academics skill) -- but we could use a combination of amount of time the teacher supplies the student -- which would, again, help explain Team Uplift's skill, having the tutelage of both Mari and (on the matters of Alertness, at least) Kagome for nearly 24/7, aside from when they needed time to themselves, and personal skill in the, well, skill being trained.
 
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Is there a term like shipping but for a student teacher relationship?

Because I want Mari to teach Sakura more.
 
Cariyaga said:
IIRC in canon he was too young at the time to do much?
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This was my understanding, yes.

In other news, given all the discussion I'm feeling nervous that I underspecced the clan kids. I didn't actually do character sheets for them so I may have lowballed them. I do know that allowing Akane to keep her old-system stats meant she was going to crush them, but maybe it shouldn't have been as utterly one-sided as it was, and maybe the clan kids should be more impressive compared to you guys. You've definitely earned more XP then they have; they're talented but Hazō is more talented than at least one of them so his base rate is higher, but you've well exceeded your base rate. You guys are crushing it on the power curve.

We'll do (non-player-visible, sorry) sheets for them once the rules are locked in. I'm pretty sure they won't end up either less powerful or enormously more powerful than they were in this update, but their level compared to Hazō will probably shift some. It wouldn't surprise me too much if Hinata ended up a little better at Taijutsu than he is, although he'd likely still have the edge with all his ridiculous advantages.
 
The clan kids were the scouting team, with all of the sensory powers, so it would make sense for them to have more lower skills as opposed to a combat focused team.
 
eaglejarl said:
This was my understanding, yes.

In other news, given all the discussion I'm feeling nervous that I underspecced the clan kids. I didn't actually do character sheets for them so I may have lowballed them. I do know that allowing Akane to keep her old-system stats meant she was going to crush them, but maybe it shouldn't have been as utterly one-sided as it was, and maybe the clan kids should be more impressive compared to you guys. You've definitely earned more XP then they have; they're talented but Hazō is more talented than at least one of them so his base rate is higher, but you've well exceeded your base rate. You guys are crushing it on the power curve.

We'll do (non-player-visible, sorry) sheets for them once the rules are locked in. I'm pretty sure they won't end up either less powerful or enormously more powerful than they were in this update, but their level compared to Hazō will probably shift some. It wouldn't surprise me too much if Hinata ended up a little better at Taijutsu than he is, although he'd likely still have the edge with all his ridiculous advantages.
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One thing to note is that Team Goketsu throughly trounced Team Kurenia in there spar under the old system. Akane was also rolling 50+ dice in the old system so was fighting at Jounin level. It's not surprising that she would crush Chunnin exam entrants who aren't Sasuke or Naruto. Powering up team Kurenia definitely would be a change in the switch over
 
The following is a current proposal being discussed among the QMs. We aren't sure we like it and we aren't close to having signoff on it, but I figured I'd throw it out for commentary.

Purchasing Skills
Skills cost N XP for rank N, and you must buy levels one at a time. E.g. in order to get level 3 you must spend a total of 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 XP. Some skills may cost more than the normal rate; this will be noted in their descriptions.

Civilians cannot buy chakra-related abilities and they usually earn far fewer XP per time unit, but they can achieve skill levels that make them worthy opponents in non-combat areas.

Skills Pyramid
The number of your skills with Aspect bonus N can be at most one more than the number of skills with bonus N-1, and you cannot have 0 skills at that level, although you are assumed to have an arbitrarily large number of skills at level 0. (Reminder: your Aspect bonus is the first digit of your skill level +1. 01-09 has a bonus of +1, 10-19 has a bonus of +2, etc. More mathematically, it's 1 + floor(Skill / 10))

For example, this is a legal distribution:


Taijutsu: 43 (Aspect bonus: +5) [two skills at 5]
Alertness: 41 (Aspect bonus: +5)
Athletics: 39 (Aspect bonus: +4) [two skills at 4]
Deception: 38 (Aspect bonus: +4)
Stealth: 28 (Aspect bonus: +3) [one skill at 3]
Presence: 18 (Aspect bonus: +2) [two skills at 2]
Physique: 17 (Aspect bonus: +2)
Henge: 7 (Aspect bonus: +1) [one skill at 1]


Using this distribution you could not buy your henge up to 10 because then you would have no skills with a bonus of 1. Likewise, you could not buy your Athletics up to 40 because then you would have 3 skills at +5 and only one skill at +4.

Note that your skill pyramid must be balanced at all times. Even if you had the XP to buy a skill from (e.g.) 0 to 40 in one shot you could not do so unless it was legal at every level along the way.

[EJ: Sorry for the lousy formatting on the skills distribution; SV doesn't support the 'pre' tag]

ClawClawBite said:
The clan kids were the scouting team, with all of the sensory powers, so it would make sense for them to have more lower skills as opposed to a combat focused team.
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Oneiros said:
One thing to note is that Team Goketsu throughly trounced Team Kurenia in there spar under the old system. Akane was also rolling 50+ dice in the old system so was fighting at Jounin level. It's not surprising that she would crush Chunnin exam entrants who aren't Sasuke or Naruto. Powering up team Kurenia definitely would be a change in the switch over
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Good points, both of you. Thanks, that makes me feel better.

Team Kurenai might get powered up from where they are, but they wouldn't get powered past Team Uplift.
 
Yeah... this is something that's concerning me a lot. Under the old system, Team Uplift had special jonins on it. Hazou was rolling jonin dice. Akane was rolling jonin dice. Noburi and Kei weren't, but they had other advantages that made up for it (ludicrous chakra and summoning, respectively). I don't really understand the new system very well, and this worry might all be completely baseless, but from the few bits I've looked at, it seems like our team is getting nerfed significantly.

Taijutsu styles seem to now do much less in the way of adding bonuses, cutting Hazou and Akane's combat numbers down from "jonin" to "genin/chunin boundary". Vampiric Dew has lost a huge amount of chakra, meaning Noburi can no longer spam expensive techniques.

I get the reasoning for changes like this, but I think that having the characters retain the power balance they were previously shown with in-story trumps "this is what I might expect kids this bright to have trained up to in this amount of time". I mean, like I said, at the start of the chunin exams, Hazou had special jonin punching. If EJ expects Hinata might beat him, then does that mean that she's also that good, or that Hazou's not that good anymore?
 
MadScientist said:
Yeah... this is something that's concerning me a lot. Under the old system, Team Uplift had special jonins on it. Hazou was rolling jonin dice. Akane was rolling jonin dice. Noburi and Kei weren't, but they had other advantages that made up for it (ludicrous chakra and summoning, respectively).
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Yes, and that was a bad thing that needs to go away.
I don't really understand the new system very well, and this worry might all be completely baseless, but from the few bits I've looked at, it seems like our team is getting nerfed significantly.

Taijutsu styles seem to now do much less in the way of adding bonuses, cutting Hazou and Akane's combat numbers down from "jonin" to "genin/chunin boundary". Vampiric Dew has lost a huge amount of chakra, meaning Noburi can no longer spam expensive techniques.
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Part of the reason for changing systems is that the old system was leading to undesirable outcomes where the characters were over-powered.

THAT SAID, I'll point out that how powerful the characters end up being is mostly a function of how many xp the GMs give the thread to use to rebuild Hazou's sheet.

I get the reasoning for changes like this, but I think that having the characters retain the power balance they were previously shown with in-story trumps "this is what I might expect kids this bright to have trained up to in this amount of time".
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See, I don't agree. I think we got lucky that "in-story" the characters were not firmly placed in any particular power balance. Can you name specific events you think would be different if the characters didn't have jounin dice? And are those events really important enough not to retcon a little?

I mean, like I said, at the start of the chunin exams, Hazou had special jonin punching. If EJ expects Hinata might beat him, then does that mean that she's also that good, or that Hazou's not that good anymore?
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He's not that good anymore.
 
Briefvoice said:
Yes, and that was a bad thing that needs to go away.
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It was something that was true in the story, that the characters had discussed being true. At this point taking it away is not a good thing, it's retconning the established canon.

Briefvoice said:
Can you name specific events you think would be different if the characters didn't have jounin dice? And are those events really important enough not to retcon a little?
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Yes I can. Just off the top of my head, I don't expect that Hazou would have been nearly so bold as to take his "making ourselves an obvious target for every other team" actions in the swamp if he didn't believe himself to be a special jonin. I know that that was the major factor behind my own support for that plan. Retconning this sequence makes Hazou foolish rather than justifiably confident in his abilities.
 
MadScientist said:
Yeah... this is something that's concerning me a lot. Under the old system, Team Uplift had special jonins on it. Hazou was rolling jonin dice. Akane was rolling jonin dice. Noburi and Kei weren't, but they had other advantages that made up for it (ludicrous chakra and summoning, respectively). I don't really understand the new system very well, and this worry might all be completely baseless, but from the few bits I've looked at, it seems like our team is getting nerfed significantly.

Taijutsu styles seem to now do much less in the way of adding bonuses, cutting Hazou and Akane's combat numbers down from "jonin" to "genin/chunin boundary". Vampiric Dew has lost a huge amount of chakra, meaning Noburi can no longer spam expensive techniques.

I get the reasoning for changes like this, but I think that having the characters retain the power balance they were previously shown with in-story trumps "this is what I might expect kids this bright to have trained up to in this amount of time". I mean, like I said, at the start of the chunin exams, Hazou had special jonin punching. If EJ expects Hinata might beat him, then does that mean that she's also that good, or that Hazou's not that good anymore?
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We are planning to port their numbers over directly, even if that means handing out hundreds of extra XP, so there's no power loss there.

The Iron Nerve translates directly -- it adds +3 to your physical skills, just like it used to. Come to think of it, we need to decide if it's counted when figuring your Aspect bonus, so it might actually end up being more powerful than in the original system.

Macerators will come straight across (<hat tip>I think it was @Oneiros who pointed out the correct translation for them</hat tip>).

The pangolin gauntlets translate better as a Weapon, meaning that they will yield damage bonus but not make you more likely to hit. That's a slight nerf but a more simulationist definition and is what we would have done in the first place if the old system supported it.

We don't have good definitions for the blast rings yet, but we'll get there.

We don't have good definitions for the combat styles yet, but there are a couple of proposals being discussed. We'd welcome suggestions, too.

All in all, I don't think the kids are going to be rolling significantly differently than they did before.
 
MadScientist said:
Yeah... this is something that's concerning me a lot. Under the old system, Team Uplift had special jonins on it. Hazou was rolling jonin dice. Akane was rolling jonin dice. Noburi and Kei weren't, but they had other advantages that made up for it (ludicrous chakra and summoning, respectively). I don't really understand the new system very well, and this worry might all be completely baseless, but from the few bits I've looked at, it seems like our team is getting nerfed significantly.
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From what I understand we never really rolled jonin dice. Or at least we were not meant to.

Yes we did encounter a jonin whose rolls were in our range, but that was back when the QMs were still using tables drafted at the beggining of the quest, when they had little idea of what sort of dice should jonin have. The quick learning curve of team uplift was a reason they have to review those, because we ended up being strong as jonin, while our training was meant to place us around unexperienced chunin range.

And that's the whole point. Team uplift is fairly talented, and we have way more experience than other genin our age (or possibly most genin ever), but we are still young, and thus unskilled compared to people who served several years as chunin. We may expect to be stronger than most chunin candidates (again, most, and most likely not all of them (the likes of Sasuke or Naruto are still above us)), and many of the recent chunin promotees even, but that;s about it.

As far as pure experience go (I mean things people live thrugh, not exp), we may have more than people several years our senior and being chunin for a few of those years. But they may still be stronger than us becouse with age comes a lot more time to train and refine skills (and mechanically the exp total would still be higher for older people, even if exp/day would be lower).
 
Briefvoice said:
Part of the reason for changing systems is that the old system was leading to undesirable outcomes where the characters were over-powered.
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Where was this said?
WanderingAirhead said:
From what I understand we never really rolled jonin dice. Or at least we were not meant to.
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Akane rolled 51 dice minimum (even if she got no bonus from her fighting style), without chakra boost.

Hazou rolled 50 dice, without chakra boost.

That was stated to be the lower bounds of jounin rolls. With chakra boost, they'd be a little less than an equivalent jounin, but that's explainable by their special jounin status.
 
I should say I still think that modeling NPCs by giving them more xp for more time alive is a bad way to build NPCs that contradicts how we know learning and skills work in reality.

I mean, sure an 18 year old will be better than a 12 year old at pretty much everything. So yes, it works for younger ninja.

But a 40 year old isn't terribly likely to be better than a 30 year old in any given profession. People level off, reach their natural level of talent in things, and stop getting better. Sometimes they get worse. Often they get to the point where it's all they can do to maintain their current skills and there's not a lot of room for growth.
 
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There are 24 skills in the list right now, and 9 meaningful minimal allocations for bonus 1-9 (1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80). There may be scenarios where going from 70 to 79 are useful, but I'm on my phone and out right now, so I'll omit additional analysis.

The end game optimal (for only aspect bonus) allocation is
1 - 1 skill. Each skill at this level costs 1 XP
10 -1 skill. Each skill at this level costs 5*11 = 55 XP.
20 - 1 skill. Each skill at this level costs 10*21 = 210 XP.
30 - 1 skill. Each skill at this level costs 15*31 = 465 XP
40 - 2 skill. Each skill at this level costs 20*41= 820 XP. 2 skills at this level cost 1640 XP.
50 - 3 skills. Each skill at this level costs 25*51= 1275 XP. 3 skill cost 3825 XP.
60 - 4 skills. Each skill at this level costs 30*61= 1830 XP. 4 skills cost 7320 XP.
70 - 5 skills. Each skill at this level costs 35*71 = 2485 XP. 5 skills cost 12425 XP.
80 - 6 skills. Each skill at this level costs 40*81 = 3600 XP. 6 skills costs 21600 XP.

The total XP cost to obtain this allocation is: 47541 XP.
An average ninja earns 3 (?) XP per day, and takes, at minimum, 15847 days (~43.5 years). This assumes no substantial additional sinks for XP.
An excellent ninja (6 XP/day ?) takes half the time (~22 years), with the same assumption.
Geniuses (9 XP/day ?) do it in a third (~15 years)

Village Ninja seem to start seriously earning XP around age 10 (+/- 2)

I'd put Jiraiya at somewhere between average and excellent. He's also 40-50 ish years old, I think. Say 35 years of XP growth. So possibly capped out.

--

If there's interest, I can automate this calculation, and add capacity to optimize for non-endgame levels of XP.

It would theoretically be possible to use this kind of calculation as a type of Bingo Book estimator (or character designer) using assumed character age and skill reputation (backing out an estimate for average XP growth)
 
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail

So, a question that's interested me for a while re: Iron nerve.

When does the reroll function of it activate? Like, say you're jumping over a pit, would it let you reroll to jump farther? Or would it let you reroll to catch the ledge (if you were given one)?

More saliently, would it let you reroll a sealing roll which would lead to a sealing failure?
 
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