zap lunch
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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
Okay, yeah, if it's a canon info post I'm obvious'y not going to win an argument with the QMs. Never mind then.
EDIT:
The thread should probably have a formal debate/discussion at some point about what techniques and seals the Goketsu clan is going to keep secret and what they are willing to openly use for sake of their reputation and because it's too useful not to use all the time.
EDIT:
The thread should probably have a formal debate/discussion at some point about what techniques and seals the Goketsu clan is going to keep secret and what they are willing to openly use for sake of their reputation and because it's too useful not to use all the time.
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Thoughts on secrecy level for Hazou's Techniques and Seals:
MEW - Signature technique; Hazou uses it all the time and it's hard to conceal.
Hiding Like a Mole / Tunnel Excavation Technique - Hazou probably doesn't want it publicly known that he can use these techniques and should instead claim that "a pangolin dug the tunnel" when discussing instances of going underground.
Pangolin Conditioning - Nobody needs to know about this.
Living Roots - Nobody needs to know about this.
Ghost Scales - It is unclear to me how visually obvious this is (see Earth armor). The description says, "The power of the Pangolin Clan encompasses you, creating chakra construct scales across your whole body." which implies it's pretty obvious? I think this is a "some people may unavoidably see it; don't talk about it" range.
Earth Armor - This one, on the other hand is definitely obvious. Would suggest making this the 'public' armor technique of, "I cover myself in Earth" and all references to Hazou having an armor effect will be attributed to it. This one he might want to use in the Tournament and brag about.
Pantokrator's Hammer - Too useful not to be casting all the time, and people will notice a jutsu... suggest referring to it as an "alternate chakra boost method" if it is necessary to talk about it, which makes it sound boringly mundane.
Earth Clone - Elemental clone techniques are common enough. No need to conceal.
Explosive Seals - Use openly.
PMYF - Discourage spreading stories about it but don't treat as a major clan secret.
Macerators - Clan secret.
MEW - Signature technique; Hazou uses it all the time and it's hard to conceal.
Hiding Like a Mole / Tunnel Excavation Technique - Hazou probably doesn't want it publicly known that he can use these techniques and should instead claim that "a pangolin dug the tunnel" when discussing instances of going underground.
Pangolin Conditioning - Nobody needs to know about this.
Living Roots - Nobody needs to know about this.
Ghost Scales - It is unclear to me how visually obvious this is (see Earth armor). The description says, "The power of the Pangolin Clan encompasses you, creating chakra construct scales across your whole body." which implies it's pretty obvious? I think this is a "some people may unavoidably see it; don't talk about it" range.
Earth Armor - This one, on the other hand is definitely obvious. Would suggest making this the 'public' armor technique of, "I cover myself in Earth" and all references to Hazou having an armor effect will be attributed to it. This one he might want to use in the Tournament and brag about.
Pantokrator's Hammer - Too useful not to be casting all the time, and people will notice a jutsu... suggest referring to it as an "alternate chakra boost method" if it is necessary to talk about it, which makes it sound boringly mundane.
Earth Clone - Elemental clone techniques are common enough. No need to conceal.
Explosive Seals - Use openly.
PMYF - Discourage spreading stories about it but don't treat as a major clan secret.
Macerators - Clan secret.
- Location
- UK
I'm pretty sure we've already discussed how long ordinary water and other objects hold chakra several times and it was significantly longer than a round (order of minutes?). Not 100% sure, and I don't really care if you change it, but FWIW.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Three massive, destabilising wars is exactly the kind of factor that you would expect to spur clans to develop superior ninjutsu, equipment etc. War is the mother of military innovation.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's more an issue of loss of control than of the storage properties of the water itself.
- Location
- UK
That seems like an odd ruling given that's how he transfers chakra to others. Checking back on previous rulings, he should actually basically be fine.
See my summary post on Vampiric Dew for more sources.
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail
If you're planning to do another great rebalancing that repositions the jonin boundary to 120 or something, can you please tell us in advance so that we can plan? It's sort of nerve-wracking not being able to tell whether this time next week Hazou's still going to be a special jonin or if he's going to be decreased to "average clan kid in his age group". Especially since we're in the middle of potentially deadly combat. Not knowing what our relative skill level's going to be in said maybe-deadly combat isn't fun.
Edit: Sorry, this comes across more accusatory than intended. I just want to be able to know to how, if at all, our relative skill level is changing.
If you're planning to do another great rebalancing that repositions the jonin boundary to 120 or something, can you please tell us in advance so that we can plan? It's sort of nerve-wracking not being able to tell whether this time next week Hazou's still going to be a special jonin or if he's going to be decreased to "average clan kid in his age group". Especially since we're in the middle of potentially deadly combat. Not knowing what our relative skill level's going to be in said maybe-deadly combat isn't fun.
Edit: Sorry, this comes across more accusatory than intended. I just want to be able to know to how, if at all, our relative skill level is changing.
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think I follow.
We're not moving any skill boundaries. This is specifically an issue of things unrelated to skills, e.g. what ninjutsu other ninja are likely to have.
Right, but if, say, every clan kid has the same sort of +20-something bonuses we've been stacking, then the jonin threshold becomes 80 instead of 60.
- Location
- Yes.
No, the Jonin threshold should still be ~60. I've always imagined that threshold as being a "raw combat stat" instead of being a "all your skills put together" thing.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Also RIP Keiko and Noburi if this happens
Well I've been viewing it as "what numbers are you actually rolling". In which case, right now Hazou is a special jonin with his 60+ numbers*, but if 60+ becomes the new value for "what an average clan min-chunin is rolling" then Hazou is no longer a special jonin, just a normal clan kid chunin.
(*once PH is at 10)
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Yes, but while that's a rebalancing of sorts it is different from the Great Rebalancings of old because we don't change our builds at all.
Personally, even taking this into consideration, Hazou has chuunin-grade Taijutsu and enough optimizations to at least equal any other clan kid, and likely surpass most, in an exam where the majority of contestants are high-genin low-chuunin and likely without so many optimizations. It makes sense, to me, for Hazou and the rest of Team Uplift to not be the strongest ninja in the exams (at least not when we're holding back our most lethal payloads), and the best way to do that is pit us against other chuunin-base ninja with roughly equal number of optimizations.
It does seem a little like the Red Queen's race. No matter how hard you run, that's taken as indicator of how hard everybody must be able to run, and you get shifted back into the exact same place in the pack you were predetermined to be at.
If the QMs troubled by Hazou's total bonus, I think a better choice is to be more cautious about some of the bonuses that got handed out. Particularly, I would lean more towards upping the Weapon rating that than giving a bonus on the to-hit roll. Macerators should do amazing things if they hit, but I don't know why they give a taijutsu bonus. If anything, I think they should give a slight taijutsu penalty in return for a much higher Weapon rating. The Pangolins gauntlets as well.
Basically, my recommendation is to take more advantage of how this new system differentiates between probability of hitting and degree of damage. It's relatively easy to increase the boom on a hit, but actually landing that hit is all on your individual skill. Very, very few things should directly add to taijutsu dice. Even fighting styles and the PH jutsu are technically creating an Aspect, whose effectiveness is largely determined by your underlying tijutsu score in the first place and which has the same limitation as other aspects.
If the QMs troubled by Hazou's total bonus, I think a better choice is to be more cautious about some of the bonuses that got handed out. Particularly, I would lean more towards upping the Weapon rating that than giving a bonus on the to-hit roll. Macerators should do amazing things if they hit, but I don't know why they give a taijutsu bonus. If anything, I think they should give a slight taijutsu penalty in return for a much higher Weapon rating. The Pangolins gauntlets as well.
Basically, my recommendation is to take more advantage of how this new system differentiates between probability of hitting and degree of damage. It's relatively easy to increase the boom on a hit, but actually landing that hit is all on your individual skill. Very, very few things should directly add to taijutsu dice. Even fighting styles and the PH jutsu are technically creating an Aspect, whose effectiveness is largely determined by your underlying tijutsu score in the first place and which has the same limitation as other aspects.
I'm not convinced those should exist, though. Hazou is a freak of nature.
He not only had a bloodline that helps his combat stat (expected for some proportion of clan kids) has a fighting style (again, expected for some proportion of clan kids), but he has specialist seals (not expected for most clan kids, sealmasters are rare and their work hours are too valuable to waste on churning out gear for the clan's chunins), rare special weaponry (expected for some clan heirs who inherited chakra blades, but not all the rich ones, the Hyuuga for example wouldn't even be able to use that because their style requires tapping with their fingers), and special ninjutsu from the seventh path (expected that some clans will specialise in clan ninjutsu, but most of the time that will be a seperate skill [Nara, Yamanaka] rather than a bonus to an existing skill [Akimichi], so it shouldn't actually push their numbers above curve).
So in the worst-case scenario, let's imagine we're fighting Ren's kid. That's bloodline [+3], not!Roki [+5], and let's be generous and throw in a chakra blade too [+3, assuming equiv to gauntlets]. That's a total of +11, from a really good set of bonuses that's going to come up once in a blue moon. Most clan kids are going to have one or two bonuses. Not three. Certainly not Hazou's 5 or 6. So, right, let's say Ren's kid has +11. Hazou's bonus-stacking is around twice that.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
The rest of it I'm all for, but I don't understand this as an example at all. How does point and shoot shotguns equate to "not easier to hit"?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We do not intend to change anything about how much XP you get or how many dice you get. We do intend to do more with your opponents -- instead of simply saying "here's how many XP they have, let's spend it on skills", we'll assume that they have put just as much effort into munchkinry as you have. They won't have access to all the same stuff but they will have more than "40 taijutsu plus a fireball or something". This doesn't imply that they will be your equals, or that every ninja in the world will get the same stuff, but it does mean that they will be more like the kinds of elite candidates that should logically be sent to represent their village at the International Ninja Olympics.
In other words, we're going to play fair with both sides.
Right. What that tells me is "Hazou's relative position is decreased going into this potentially lethal sequence of fights, and we don't know by how much." which is the exact situation that was causing the worry.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
But we've put literal thousands of man-hours into munchkinry.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Are you suggesting that we should nerf you by changing how the pangolin gauntlets and macerators work?
So, what you're saying is that in a simulationist quest Hazō should be the only one who did anything other than invest points in Taijutsu?
No, we want to write a simulationist quest. Y'all are well above average and will run roughshod over most ninja your age. If you wander around Leaf challenging other genin to spar then you will crush 95% of them. Right now, however, you are not challenging random genin. You are challenging the best of the best. The QMs have been being lazy with enemy design up until now and it's time for us to step up.
No. I'm saying that I'm unhappy that we've been debuffed by an unknown amount right before heading into fights that might kill our characters.
- Location
- Yes.
Kagome: *snorts* Might?
- Location
- Potato land
In a ruleset with linearly increasing XP costs per skill, flat bonuses are always going to be very valuable: +3 for someone with 10 Skill is worth 36 XP, for a character with 40 Skill it's 126 XP. So long as ninja are assumed to gain XP at a constant rate throughout their lives, each bonus of this kind is going to elevate them further and further above the curve as they age. This isn't a problem per se, but it does mean we should be careful about what costs and drawbacks any such bones comes with.
Combat Styles, for example, give an Aspect Bonus, which is very powerful, but they also require levelling an additional stat, and therefore cost tons of XP. Techniques like Ghost Scales or Pantokrator's Hammer cost chakra and combat actions, in addition to XP needed to level them. Iron Nerve is a Bloodline, major enough that it should be fine, so long as it's roughly in line with other Bloodlines. Pangolin Gauntlets and Macerators, though? I'd prefer that they do something else than a flat bonus to Taijutsu.
Personally, I'm fine with the idea that us having Pangolin Gauntlets means some other hotshot Chuunin candidate from Kumo has a chakra sword. However, I think it would be healthier for the mechanics if neither of these things (or the Macerators) gave flat Taijutsu bonuses. Or if they do give them, it should be tied to some significant cost in terms of XP or chakra, or something.
Combat Styles, for example, give an Aspect Bonus, which is very powerful, but they also require levelling an additional stat, and therefore cost tons of XP. Techniques like Ghost Scales or Pantokrator's Hammer cost chakra and combat actions, in addition to XP needed to level them. Iron Nerve is a Bloodline, major enough that it should be fine, so long as it's roughly in line with other Bloodlines. Pangolin Gauntlets and Macerators, though? I'd prefer that they do something else than a flat bonus to Taijutsu.
Personally, I'm fine with the idea that us having Pangolin Gauntlets means some other hotshot Chuunin candidate from Kumo has a chakra sword. However, I think it would be healthier for the mechanics if neither of these things (or the Macerators) gave flat Taijutsu bonuses. Or if they do give them, it should be tied to some significant cost in terms of XP or chakra, or something.