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Pretty sure it's not too hard to min-max your way to 80-120 dice in this system, so I feel like 61 dice isn't particularly good. It's around what I'd expect someone pursuing uniquely good solutions to get to.
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
While I mostly agree with you (especially regarding the mind/body control powers), I'll throw out that a lot of what the others can do still depends on attack rolls (which having bigger numbers lets you beat), and beating the wizard's initiative and killing them in a single blow is pretty good. Hazou hit one of the targets in the last fight for 15 stress in a single attack. A lot of the Quadratic Wizard issue in D&D came from being better than the Linear Fighter at the Fighter's job (damage and tanking) while still having all the versatile Wizard nonsense on the side, and that's much less true in this system (especially since being a heavy melee fighter doesn't actually stop you from having some great utility powers on the side).
zap lunch
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
As foar another way to look at it, it'd cost ~1750-1900 XP to get Taijutsu up to 60-ish (-180-ish for Iron Nerve) depending on where you pegged it. It cost 820 to get it to 40 where it is for Hazou. He has around 4K XP. This means that he is getting approximately 800 additional XP of value -- or 20% his total XP -- out of his various seal, ninjutsu, and style cheatery. A very significant amount, but not quite as much as you'd think.
- Location
- Norway
This really hasn't been my experience. From what I've seen, D&D Quadratic Wizard optimizers had a near-universal rule that damage spells were crappy spells: damage spells meant slogging through the enemy's hit points/stress track, when ideally the munchkin Wizard would just cast some spell that bypassed such things entirely in favor of "Roll a saving throw or you lose", variant "Roll an unusual ability check or you lose" or just "You lose". Likewise, tanking spells were crappy because it still means you risk getting hurt if the Fighter rolls well enough, better to use spells that skip such things entirely, such as being invisible and flying and being able to teleport away reflexively so that the Fighter never gets a chance to attack you in the first place.
The issue in D&D wasn't that the Wizard was too good at the Fighter's job, it was that the Wizard got to ignore the Fighter's job. In the worst parts (high-level D&D 3.5 edition) you could give a straight Fighter +100 to all rolls and it would still lose to an intelligently played nominally-equivalent-XP Wizard.
I agree with this though, also this system has less in the way of Wizard bypasses.
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Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Most of those have relatively easy ways to counter them. Nara's thing has limited distance, relies on shadows and doesn't move instantaneously. Ino's mind-posessing projectile flies slowly and can be dodged. Neji is OP, yes, but if you can outfight him he can't do much. Plus, again, ranged projectiles. But there actually isn't that much you can do against someone who is just fast enough to outrun you, good enough at dodging you always miss and strong enough to cave your face in with a single punch.
...maybe we are just really talented? Like really, really talented?
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Yes, but summoning spells are pretty universally good spells.
- Location
- Potato land
While I do understand your point, you're mostly talking about fluff here. You say that Neji can shut someone's body down with a touch, but Jyuuken exists in the rules doc and is just another Combat Style (though the roll is basically impossible to fail if you're a Hyuuga). Akane beat Hinata in a straight-up Taijutsu contest. Team Gai, basically the ultimate "Linear Warrior" team, absolutely destroyed the "Quadratic Wizard" Team Asuma in a spar.
Even in canon, the wizards with "defensive roll or lose" types of skills have major limitations on their bullshit. And Hazou's Taijutsu, even though it doesn't have a singular, intimidating fluff justification, should give him a major advantage in a fight against the vast majority of exam participants. In the event of a Hazou vs Shikamaru fight in the tournament, it's not unlikely that Hazou will win in a single round, given his results in the latest update.
- Location
- UK
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- He/Him
I think the problem here is that the MfD rules need to at least make an attempt at sanity in order for this to work as a rational quest. Accurately modelling the effects of canon ninjutsu and Bloodline Limits would turn MfD into a true game of rocket tag where most things will one-shot you if they connect. Canon gets around this by either having techniques not connect in the first place (authorial fiat), or by having the characters pull out new and even more powerful techniques to counter them. Early on in the series, they survive attacks by using the likes of Substitution and Body Flicker. Later in the series, they survive them by shifting into pocket dimensions, rewriting causality and raising the dead. For obvious reasons, neither of these approaches is viable for the quest.
I don't really think it's unreasonable for Hazou to be rolling jonin-level punching when other people in his age-cohort aren't, considering that he wouldn't be if he wasn't exploiting
- A relevant bloodline
- Seals
- Seventh-path weaponry
- Multiple Seventh-path ninjutsu
- A taijutsu style
Well to be fair, in real life most attacks that use any kind of weapons are pretty deadly if they solidly connect.
If anything, a lot of the Naruto abilities are interesting for how non-lethal they can be, which is an option that's pretty hard to secure in normal fights. I mean, a lot of them are deadly sure (fire always burns), but water jutsu can choke people out, the more exotic ones like the Nara shadow jutsu can disable with no damage, Naruto can smother you with a swarm of clones, Neji can just turn your limbs numb and paralyzed, as a giant Chouji can easily achieve a grapple pin that leaves someone helpless but not crushed, an Itachi genjutsu just leaves you wishing you had died.... etc.
Even in basic ninja punching, I know blunt force trauma can be plenty lethal, but beating someone until their entire body is one giant bruise and they can't stand up is at least less likely to kill them than impaling them with a sharp piece of metal.
- Location
- UK
If you're a main character, stabbing has near-enough 0% fatality rate.
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- UK
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- He/Him
Bloodlines, superior ninjutsu and equipment and taijutsu styles are all entirely reasonable things for clan ninja to have (counting seals under "equipment", because even if they can't make their own, they can certainly afford to get some made by clan/village sealmasters). You can't be a ninja clan if you don't have at least one (you can count "wealth" as a proxy for "superior equipment"), and once you have one, you will doubtless work to acquire/develop others as well (e.g. the Hyūga, who went Bloodline Limit->taijutsu style->speciality ninjutsu). Not saying Hazō isn't exceptional for having all of these things, but a lot of the exceptionality comes from having acquired them without backing and before reaching chūnin level, rather than from being unique among ninja.
If anything, all of this is highlighting that we've been sticking too close to canon in modelling the resources and abilities of other ninja, rather than allowing them to optimise the way you optimise. The Nara have every qualification a researcher could possibly need--why wouldn't they have unique and powerful seals coming out of their ears? Likewise, the Hyūga are prodigiously wealthy. If they want superior gear for their most promising ninja, they should be able to afford it without blinking an eye.
I will make the comment that I've made a few times, though, which is to say that it's a mistake to project the present too far into the past. Remember the entire Village system sprang up in living memory and stabilized only after some horrendous wars. Before the village system, clans were much more mobile, guarded, and had less resources to spend on enhancement because the majority of their wealth and attention was going to the status quo. They had to live in civilian communities (because where else were they going to live, the woods?), and it's likely that many of them even concealed their ninja status a lot of the time. They didn't have big, vulnerable estates where they could work in peace and security on enhancing their ninja powers, secure in the knowledge that an entire ninja village stands between them and a sudden attack killing their entire family.
What you are seeing now, with this specific batch of clan heirs, are the first "children of peace". Children who had a chance to grow up with all the benefits of wealth and clan membership and everything starting to pull together and kick in as multipliers to their power, but without having to be marched off to war as soon as they could reliably chakra enhance themselves. Who actually have people outside their own clan they can go to for seals and equipment.
Mainly the Nara seem to have gone in for Technique Hacking over sealing, which is how they created all their shadow jutsu in the first place. Don't forget that what they do is technically not a bloodline, just some specialized jutsu that in theory anyone could learn. (Also, just going to put this out there, but I think this characterization you have of them as an entire clan of geniuses is really weird. There's nothing in canon implying that, and I don't know why you decided to do it for MfD.)
I can actually see why in some ways developing new jutsu techniques is superior to sealing on a clan level, even if sealing can achieve greater effects. Once a sealmaster creates a seal, he's the only one who can create it. If another sealmaster wants to duplicate it, it's an entire research project for them to be able to make that seal for themselves. Meanwhile, a new ninjutsu can be caught to a ninja in a day. And as we've seen, many ninjutsu can have useful and powerful effects even at Rank 1.
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- Location
- Potato land
I mean, I'd always assumed they did. How much of this would they let their clan heir use in a Chuunin exam, is the more immediate question. I'm more than certain Jiraiya has unique and powerful seals as well, and yet we only got some Goo Bombs from him.
Should, of course. But would they? Does Hinata get more stuff than Neji? I guess that's up to you to figure out.
Cue next update, Neji suddenly produces a huge chakra sword from a sealing scroll and singlehandedly dispatches whole enemy teams. "My dad bought this for me as a birthday present."
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- Location
- Yes.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's been a hundred years. Generations are short in a world like this -- people have kids in their early 20s or even teens.
I'm not sure they didn't live in the woods, but whether or not they did, why would they conceal their ninja status? One of the things that I hate about this setting, but was not able to refute during worldbuilding, is that ninja are effectively demigods who mostly regard civilians as chattel. As to their wealth, it's not hard to raid whatever civilian societies manage to build up some wealth.
...not really? Again, a hundred years and multiple generations.
- Location
- Yes.
I think the reasoning is to hide/keep safe from other ninja clans?
- Location
- Potato land
Do we know whether Neji's dad is dead in MfD, or whether the branch family seal even exists?
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- Yes.
Oh yeah that reminds me: @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail If someone broke Noburi's barrel, would the chakra in the water immediately dissipate or would he be able to still use it for at least a round?
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- UK
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Depends on exactly what happens, but if there's still a vaguely barrel-shaped thing on his back and it still contains some water, then the chakra won't disappear instantly. Assume 1 round unless Noburi is particularly lucky.
More like ~70 years since Konoha (the first village) was founded, unless you changed it. With the other villages being necessarily younger than that. And obviously Konoha as it exists on the present didn't spring up fully formed, but took some years to come together. Add in three massive, destabilizing wars that each upended the applecart and would cause people to be extremely hesitant about any plans assuming long term peace.
Because they're afraid of each other, of course. Setting yourself up as a local lord just makes you a target. A single clan doesn't have enough ninjas to provide real security and too many vulnerabilities. Safety would lie in no one knowing where to find you. That's not the only way things could have evolved, of course, but if you look at how they act and the culture it's probable that's the set-up they emerged from.
Probably some of them did live in the woods, but who the hell wants to live on a compound in the woods? Disguising themselves as wealthy members of regular society seems like a viable survival strategy, since safety involves other ninja clans not knowing where to find you.
I mean, that's explicitly what it was in canon and I don't see any reason it would have to be altered. Again, there should be old people in Konoha who were alive as children when the village was founded and can personally remember the first Hokage.
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- Yes.
Fascinating. Could Noburi theoretically dump the chakra water into another source of water, e.g., a lake to guarantee the 1 round with chakra?
And I guess, I just find the whole setting more fascinating if you take "the village system was founded 64 years ago" and run with it.
You don't see that enough in fantasy. So many settings assume this eternal, unchanging set of kingdoms and dynasties. The idea that the "present" is an unstable time of change and you can't count on the world looking the same in twenty years... or even ten years... is interesting.
You don't see that enough in fantasy. So many settings assume this eternal, unchanging set of kingdoms and dynasties. The idea that the "present" is an unstable time of change and you can't count on the world looking the same in twenty years... or even ten years... is interesting.