- Location
- Yes.
Not naming any names here, bro.I was talking about - actually.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 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
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Speaking of @eaglejarl, I know I'm a few hours early, but I wanted to catch you before you went to bed and wish you a happy birthday!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
<throw where="under bus">
Hey, don't look at me! That bit was all @Velorien. I had nothing to do with it, so don't be pointing those assassiny looks my way.
</throw>
Thank you!
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
It's okay, you'll suffer too as we, literally inevitably, turn this into a time travel quest
Raxner
The most dangerous man in an empty room
- Location
- Israel
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not something we've considered yet. Maybe we just refund the points and she can put them elsewhere? Or I suppose we can do the same as we did in the old system -- add the skills together, but only when they apply. Or something.
That's fair. We generally prefer to talk about it in private first because we try to present a united front -- if one of us publicly says "We'll do X" then there is now social pressure on the other two to go along instead of making the first one look foolish in public. Better if we hash out those disagreements in advance. We can definitely provide more of a summary of the discussion, though.
We haven't talked about this yet, much less done any modeling, so the following should be taken with a grain of salt: my off-the-cuff instinct would be that the average ninja will pump their socials to a multiple of 10 -- probably either 10, 20, or 30 -- and then stop unless they're social spec. Maybe they raise them later on in order to keep the skill tree balanced, but I very much doubt you'll see every chūnin wandering around with 40 Presence. haven't thought about how that interacts with the fact that we've merged the Social and Mental tracks, though. And the others might disagree. Call this a lightweight anchor point.
Invented for dramatic purposes. Fire is an oxidation reaction and oxidation is (to the best of my knowledge always) exothermic.
Most ninja don't more than a couple of elements. The kind of people who do are probably all 99%ers with tons of XP who have a specific reason -- they are completionists, or jutsu hackers, or want to get a particular jutsu set that has synergy between elements, or etc. Keep in mind that the people in canon who have all 5 elements are mostly 50+, meaning they have ~40 years worth of ninja-ing under their belt.
No. You can have up to 1 more skill at level N than at level N-1. It's legit to have 8 skills at 80, 7 skills at 70, 6 skills at 60, etc. We did it that way because otherwise the skill tree was simply too crippling.
- Location
- Land of Confusion
Actually, depending on the definition of 'fire' that's not necessarily true. See St. Elmo's fire - Wikipedia for just one example; there are others, such as Cherenkov radiation. (Not that Cherenkov radiation being present isn't dangerous, it's just dangerous in a very different way from standard flames.)
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
FWIW, this cold fire was inspired by the "blue flame" in the Labyrinths of Echo fantasy novels, which burns reality as fuel and is essentially a campfire horror story for archmages. (This is one of my favourite series, and heartily recommended as long as you don't read it in English, as I'm given to understand that the translation is appalling.)
Raxner
The most dangerous man in an empty room
- Location
- Israel
Thanks, @eaglejarl and @Velorien. I thought it was probably a dramatic invention, but a few months ago I came across a reference in another story to a substance called chlorine triflouride that (among other things) makes water explode. That quite surprised me, and turned out to really exist, so I wasn't quite sure if cold fire might not also be a thing that actually exists.
Velorien, in what language is the Labyrinths of Echo series written?
Edit: I see from Wikipedia that it's in Russian. I do not know that language, so will have to pass on reading it.
Velorien, in what language is the Labyrinths of Echo series written?
Edit: I see from Wikipedia that it's in Russian. I do not know that language, so will have to pass on reading it.
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Russian. There are also translations into German, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Czech, Norwegian and Lithuanian (but I speak none of these, so I can't vouch for their quality either).
Did you learn of chlorine trifluoride from Dungeon Keeper Ami, by any chance?
As a side note, I just went to the author's website and saw that she has a page indicating where the stress falls in the series' names and other proper nouns. I think I'm in love.
Raxner
The most dangerous man in an empty room
- Location
- Israel
I don't speak any of those languages, either. Only English and Hebrew.
Yes, as a matter of fact DKA was the story I referred to.
The author of Labyrinths of Echo or of DKA?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Labyrinths of Echo. I also learned that the titular city's name uses a soft "e", pronounced "yeh" rather than "ae", meaning I've been mispronouncing it since the beginning.
- Location
- Galicia,Spain
Making water explode producing cloud of poisonous gas that kills you which contact is not as impressive as other things clf3 does, for example burning things like sand concrete, ashes, metals , and almost everything else.
( I also learnt about it in DKA)
Raxner
The most dangerous man in an empty room
- Location
- Israel
An impressive substance, to be sure.
- Location
- London
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
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- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You beat me to it. That series is hilarious. I also recommend the one on FOOF, which contains the following quote:
Derek Lowe said:
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Yeah, but wouldn't it still be better to do literally anything else? I mean, yes, it's reasonable to pick up one or two other elements (looking at you here, Pangolin Flash), but even a 50 year old shouldn't readily throw away three-five years of their life (at best, as a 99%er) that could be spent, say, learning sealing, technique hacking, medicine, AND medical ninjutsu to 80. Or higher!
@eaglejarl is 80 a hard cap now? This is very relevant to some optimisation discussions we've been having on discord.
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Raxner
The most dangerous man in an empty room
- Location
- Israel
We've got to find a way to smuggle those blogposts to Kagome.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Consider also azoazide azide:
"the whole thing is trembling on the verge of not existing at all"
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...wont_work_with_azidoazide_azides_more_or_less
"the whole thing is trembling on the verge of not existing at all"
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...wont_work_with_azidoazide_azides_more_or_less
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Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
I re-did my calculations: because of the skill pyramid you can only get 4 skills up to 80 for the price of getting fourth and fifth elements, but you also get 4 skills up to 70, 4 up to 60 and so on all the way down at the same time, so it balances out. That's what I don't really get. Suppose you are primarily a jutsu/fighting specialist. You have three elements already (for whatever reason) and have spent at least as much on skills as you have on getting new elements. That's enough to get two skills to 70. You can either proceed your training in order to get a skill pyramid like this with 5 elements:
- 70: Alertness, Taijutsu
- 60: Resolve, Physique
- 50: Chakra Reserves, Attack Jutsu
- 40: Attack Jutsu, Attack Jutsu
- 30: Maybe summoning if you are lucky?, Athletics
- 20: Bunch of utility jutsu (2)
- 10: Bunch of utility jutsu (2)
- 80: Alertness, Sealing, Taijutsu - three skills because Sealing is double cost
- 70: Resolve (mental attacks are scary), Technique Hacking, Chakra Reserves, Athletics, Stealth, Some Attack Jutsu No Jutsu
- 60: Deceit, Empathy, Intimidation, Caligraphy (probably enough for all seals), Physique, Presence (Not too cost effective to rise stress tracks above 60)
- 50: Rapport, Examination, Some Attack Jutsu No Jutsu, Some Attack Jutsu No Jutsu, Ranged Weapons (throwing kunai is nice), Melee Weapons (Why not level weapons too? You have the XP to waste and there is no reason to neglect it. Maybe you'll fight someone you can't touch because their skin is lava. Or maybe you'll want to use poison. Or cut sandwiches while really drunk.)
- 40: Effective summoning cost (Summoning is expensive but doesn't bring much benefit after you have a solid pokedex of contracts, so I randomly put it at 40 skill level-800 XP spent), MedKnow, MedJutsu (being able to heal yourself in a pinch is nice), Survival (how high do you even need to get it?), utility/ defence jutsu (2 if both at lv 40)
- 30: Cracking (if 30 isn't enough blow it up with jutsu), utility/defence jutsu (5 if all at lv 30)
- 20: Bunch of utility jutsu (6 if all at lv 20)
- 10: Bunch of utility jutsu (6 if all at lv 10)
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Raxner
The most dangerous man in an empty room
- Location
- Israel
No better present than a chair made of the bones of their enemies.
On top of that - with jutsu purchased as individual skills, buying a new element not only means giving up on the difference between bottom-S-rank and top-S-rank, you then need to spend another (admittedly somewhat less, but with those numbers what isn't) huge pile of XP just to get one or two of your new elemental jutsu up to the point where they're relevant in combat.
Unless you're going for utility/supplemental jutsu which don't depend on level, but if we start comparing those to attack jutsu things are just going to get weird (as they can vastly improve a character for much less XP than attack jutsu, which must be leveled to be comparable to your current attack Skill to be relevant in a level-appropriate combat: ie, the right armour or mobility power leveled to 20 [just over 200 XP] can still potentially make a huge difference even to an S-ranker, but someone with a primary attack Skill of 80 has to spend nearly 3k XP just to get a new attack power within 5 points of their main attack).
When potential force-multipliers cost 1/10th that of redundant attack powers, something in the system needs to have a good, hard look taken at it. And, yes, that's an extreme example at high-level play; however, even where the PCs are (with primary attack Skills between 30 and 40), you're still spending between 600 and 800 XP for each new comparable attack jutsu - new utility/force multiplication powers being 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of new, redundant attack powers is still a problem.
If you've decided against any sort of merged-together Jutsu Skill, then I'll back @Cariyaga's suggestion that utility and defensive Jutsu are treated as Stunts, not Skills, because their lack of rolled interactivity and disproportionate effects for their level don't fit well into that system. Being expensive Stunts instead of Skills that you level from 1 also helps explain why, in-world, armour and advanced utility powers tend to be rare and only possessed by high-level ninja (ie, people who could afford to save up for something big).
In fact, looking at it that way, I think my new favourite setup would be collapsed attack Jutsu skills (Fire Jutsu, Earth Jutsu, etc), with Stunts that have the appropriate elemental skill as a prerequisite for the defensive powers. That would allow for people to have a variety of mostly-redundant attack powers without screwing themselves over, while making the more potent and rare defensive abilities as special as they've been presented to be. Instead of a separate Stunt for learning a new element, you could just make the first level of each element past the first extra-expensive (like how Summoning and Sealing work, but even more so).
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Mind you, I don't want anyone to draw the conclusion from my post that there is an issue with the XP costs of elements. 5 elements are supposed to be rare in the setting, and this neatly mechanically backs that up.
As for jutsu as skills, I still think types of jutsu have to be rolled into general skills (e.g. "Water Jutsu" for all water-based jutsus) since otherwise you get a bunch of problems:
- Weird dissonance where "Ranged Weapons" is very general and handles all ranged weapons from shuriken to kunai to thrown bombs, while "Water Whip" is just this one specific jutsu that can be countered by enemies far easier if they prepare for it and also costs a resource to even activate. And a source of water. If enemies take all our kunai, Keiko can throw shurikens. If they take shurikens, she can throw explosive tags on wooden disks. If they take those, she can throw sharpened chopsticks. If a water-whip user loses a source of water (Wakahisa not being the baseline) he can't use water-whip at all, or do anything else with that skill.
- There is no strong incentive to level Water Whip over, say, Taijutsu-they are both melee attacks that work pretty similarly. Water Jutsu now has that "no counter attacks" clause, but that's mostly a matter of personal preference and is probably balanced out by having to carry a jug of water around. Not every Water Whip user is a Wakahisa. On the other hand, if Water Jutsu is a single skill, there is incentive to level it instead of taijutsu because it improves all your water-based jutsus.
- There is no real incentive to specialise in ninjutsu-jutsus don't play off one another by default, and as soon as you have 2-3 jutsu you need to supplement your attack skill of choice there is no incentive to get more jutsus of your element. This delegates jutsu to a primarily support/utility role. On the other hand, if each jutsu is learned as a stunt with a set learning XP cost, but uses general Water Jutsu skill to determine effectiveness, that heavily incentivises learning more jutsus of your element once you know some (since you already made the Water Jutsu skill investement)
- There is nothing that incentivises learning "easy" water jutsus before a "complex" water jutsu. It is exactly as easy to learn "Water Whip" as it is to learn "Turn All Non-Ally Blood Within 200 Meters To Plasma No Jutsu" provided you read the description in a book or have a teacher present. So an academy graduate genin could hypothetically learn that jutsu, provided he had enough chakra to cast it at all, and it would be exactly as easy as learning Water Whip. On the other hand, if a general Water Jutsu skill exists, it allows for gating learing complex jutsus behind a skill requirement, e.g. "must have 60 Water Jutsu skill to learn 'Summon 200 Meter High Tsunami No Jutsu'", which both fits the world, provides a feeling of progression and actually gives ninja a reason to learn inefficient low-level jutsus (since otherwise their Water Jutsu skill will be unused until they could learn the desired OHKO jutsu)