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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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@Rihaku:

So, the major thing I was unaware of was that Hunter-nin would go after missing-nin of other villages, not just their own. That puts a fairly large damper on my analysis, since you lose the major benefit of being known for only killing Mist missing-nin. Still, he could have similarly developed a reputation for never having killed anyone who wasn't a missing-nin, regardless of village.

That was why I assumed the alpha-strike potential for Zabuza would not be utilized, since it is literally a singular possibility - if he's never killed a non-missing-nin (or non-Mist ninja at all, in my original assumption) who wasn't actively attacking him, then it only takes a single event to lose that claim, and any other Hunter-nin from Mist would similarly lose that advantage. Thus, it would be to the village's benefit not to use him in that manner. Likewise, this "free pass" would only really apply to other Major villages with enough reputation to lose from violating their precedent to allow their travels.

Additionally, allowing one Hunter with a basically pristine reputation from an enemy village into your territory for one purpose alone also likely means that Leaf would similarly be able to develop their own Hunter with similar free-reign to cross borders relatively unmolested. Perhaps Jiraiya?

Essentially, I'm not yet fully convinced that this is a massive vulnerability to Leaf.

Your points about Mist not wanting any info to spread all still are on point to me, so I can still see them proceeding with extreme caution.

@eaglejarl:

Just to verify, is this assumption correct? That most/all Hunter-nin (and Zabuza in particular) go after all villages' missing-nin, not just their own? And does Zabuza and possibly a corresponding Leaf Hunter have a similarly impeccable (as far as we know publicly) record when it comes to hunting missing-nin only, even when he was in position and could have been used on other ops?

Most of Rihaku's post makes sense to me, but we've already been burned once by making assumptions that were incorrect and this is a verifiable piece of data.
 
@MadScientist:

  1. Short term victory - We are alive, our team is alive, and we have completed a mission
  2. Medium term victory - We are alive, our team is alive, our skills have increased, and our immediate threats are neutralized (Zabuza/Mist/Leaf/etc)
  3. Long term victory - We have established our Hidden Village of the Death Swamp as a recognized/sanctioned/whatever ninja village, and have a steady growth curve. We are either leaders or at least near the top of the food chain. Abilities/skills continue to increase.
  4. Longer term victory - All of the ninja world is an extension of Hidden Village of the Death Swamp, external existential threats have been identified, and we personally are leading the charges to eliminate them all
  5. Longest term victory - All of humanity and many minor species are fully sentient, have full and equal access to magic Chakra, are immortal, and are living happy, interesting, and fulfilling lives. All existential threats have been eliminated permanently.
 
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Now I'm curious.

If any GMs, can speak on Hiden techniques.

How would clan/specialized jutsu work in the place of a bloodlines?

I got that such techniques could be taught to anyone yet it looks like they might not be as effective if not used by the clan of origin.

And to add to that, I would assume that inheritance would come in to play as well.

So ultimately I'm asking if Hiden techs be handled like psuedo-bloodlines? They'd cost 30 pts but would have the perk of being able to be taught to others which would be a huge advantage over blood-lines.

I'd expect teaching others to come with a penalty, of course.

:D

Any thoughts on the matter?
 
Icehawk, I'm on my phone so unfortunately unable to give a comprehensive discussion of that possibility, but my eyeball analysis says it is fairly improbable. We have to think about the order of events necessary to reach the world state you propose.

1. Mist would have to be willing to waste Zabuza's potential on all other mission types, including not taking advantage of opportunities as you noted, for a potential benefit that relies on, of all things, the trust and whims of their rival states.

2. The instant any Shinobi with this reputed privilege is even in the remote area of Fire, and some apparently uncorrelated non-hunting action occurs that would benefit Mist, his pristine status would fall instantly under suspicion regardless of whether he's actually guilty. You would need to be able to either control the occurrence of suspicious coincidences - or have an objective omniscient third party observer - to maintain this state.

However, I have just thought of some information our character would have that gives us a ton of falsifiable data on this exact issue. Writing it up now.
 
faflec said:
@AugSphere: Since I can see you here, can I ask what sort of restrictions would be needed to create a bloodline capable of absorbing chakra from enemies/the environment in a vein similar to this guy or that guy?
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Hmm. Well, the obvious one would be the inability to suck anything out once the character has topped his chakra out. The second obvious one would be the rate of draining and the ability to simultaneously drain many people: we'd have to balance that. The third one would be mostly the flavour thing: don't want to copy existing bloodlines too much, so you'd have to put some original (Water related preferably) spin on it.
 
@Rihaku: Makes sense. And honestly, I actually hope you're right, as Zabuza not having free passage into Leaf makes all our lives significantly safer.

For 1, that really depends on whether the benefit of having an operative who can act outside borders is worth the cost in not using him on other missions. However, that's not something we need to guess on, we can literally verify whether it's true or not.

I'm not certain how common 2 is likely to be, without having a better scale for how large the general ninja lands are (Maine or China?) and how common altercations are.

AugSphere said:
Hmm. Well, the obvious one would be the inability to suck anything out once the character has topped his chakra out. The second obvious one would be the rate of draining and the ability to simultaneously drain many people: we'd have to balance that. The third one would be mostly the flavour thing: don't want to copy existing bloodlines too much, so you'd have to put some original (Water related preferably) spin on it.
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How about an ability that simultaneously drains the enemy's Chakra and replaces it with water, causing weight imbalances, and possible cases of water poisoning?
 
@AugSphere: Maybe requires touch or water-related contact? Like using chakra to connect an existing water source between the user and the victim to absorb chakra?
 
Suggestion: if we want a water user, we might also want them to have some kind of bloodline that increases the availability of water for them to use.

Perhaps they can transmute other materials into water by touch, or maybe they exhale water vapour instead of CO2?

I'm not especially in favour of a water user (I still think we should go for one of the anti-ninjutsu teams), but some other people are, so...
 
faflec said:
@AugSphere: Maybe requires touch or water-related contact? Like using chakra to connect an existing water source between the user and the victim to absorb chakra?
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Might make an interesting downside of the ability as well. Maybe the bloodline allows the user to drain chakra from water and things in touch with water in order to fill their reserves, but makes it impossible to recharge through any other means. The regen stat would then govern the rate of absorption.

One could even combine it with the chakra battery line, meaning that the user cannot store more than one point of chakra inside his body, with the rest being bound in a reservoir that he has to carry with him. The chakra capacity stat would then govern the energy density of the water.

Other ninja could then be given chakra by the simple means of having them drink part of the reservoir.
 
Well, my current expectation is that Zabuza is coming for us, likely running black without official sanction from Leaf, which will slow him down / reduce his team size (possibly down to just himself), but not ultimately stop him. It is also possible that Zabuza is running clear with implicit permission from Leaf, and we should plan for that with a lower probability.

However, since we can't fight or even meaningfully impede someone of Zabuza's physical stats, there's really not much planning to be done. The most we can really do is ask our Jounin what plans they have to deal with his arrival and see if we can offer any suggestions.

Well, that and some low-probability plans to manipulate Leaf patrols into chasing him, but those are too risky to attempt. This is why being a genin sucks. We have no agency to confront the problems most relevant to us.

I guess there's nothing really stopping is from going to a village 200 miles away and sending an anonymous chakra-infused letter to Sarutobi informing him that Momoichi Zabuza will soon or is in the process of trespassing into Leaf. If notice was given, it doesn't worsen our situatuon. If notice wasn't given as we suspect, it might complicate things for him. I doubt the Hokage would actually see the letter, but making it chakra infused might at least get the attention of his mail sorter to include it in his executive summary. Of course that does include some risks.

My falsifiable data post is taking too long and may be impractical on the phone.
 
The staff has been wrangling and we've got a couple rules for you guys:

  1. Your remaining XP (as well as any you earn in the future) is fungible between attributes and skills. Originally we'd intended that anything banked from the 72 initial attribute points could still only be spent on attributes, but we're letting that go.
  2. Your teammates get built on 75 points total, but it's completely fungible between attributes and skills.
Enjoy.
 
Icehawk78 said:
How about an ability that simultaneously drains the enemy's Chakra and replaces it with water, causing weight imbalances, and possible cases of water poisoning?
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Do you mean water as water chakra, or literally H2​O? Because, I'm not seeing replacing the opponents chakra with literal water. Could probably replace it with water chakra. Would require some points in water element though.
 
eaglejarl said:
The staff has been wrangling and we've got a couple rules for you guys:

  1. Your remaining XP (as well as any you earn in the future) is fungible between attributes and skills. Originally we'd intended that anything banked from the 72 initial attribute points could still only be spent on attributes, but we're letting that go.
  2. Your teammates get built on 75 points total, but it's completely fungible between attributes and skills.
Enjoy.
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I assume that the Best Skill is four limitation is still in effect?
 
DonLyn said:
Might make an interesting downside of the ability as well. Maybe the bloodline allows the user to drain chakra from water and things in touch with water in order to fill their reserves, but makes it impossible to recharge through any other means. The regen stat would then govern the rate of absorption.

One could even combine it with the chakra battery line, meaning that the user cannot store more than one point of chakra inside his body, with the rest being bound in a reservoir that he has to carry with him. The chakra capacity stat would then govern the energy density of the water.

Other ninja could then be given chakra by the simple means of having them drink part of the reservoir.
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Oohhh, I like the creativity. I'd approve that one. We'd have to set some sensible rate of absorption, but it looks pretty good.
 
eaglejarl said:
Before I do, though, I want to make one comment: pretty much the entire argument rests on one axiom, and I would suggest you re-examine it. I won't say anything more specific, but only "think carefully about your values."
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Why do we think the Mizu civil war didn't happen, again? I remember seeing some posts saying that it didn't, or maybe something like Zabuza was still loyal. But I don't think I saw where we got that idea.

If it's that Zabuza isn't known to have defected, it might be that "Zabuza did try to kill the Mizukage, we just don't know about it." That Kiri is having the civil war, but we were not trusted with such information. In fact, the impetus for the mass disposal of elements of the Kiri forces seen as seditious might have been Zabuza trying and failing his (literal) decap strike.

...

Huh.

You know, if this is "cleaning house", we might not be the only assets that they have attempted to eliminate. We were mostly genin and chunin. Surely there's elements that would be too dangerous to send on a suicide mission, as they might have a higher chance than we did to figure out that the mission was a setup, or, perhaps worse, successfully complete it and come back home. If Mizu had a failure rate of 1+ ninja, there might be other high-value missing-nin from home that might appreciate friendlies (or ruthlessly take over/eliminate them for personal reasons).

And now I'm hitting a wall on finding out information the QMs have given us that might be relevant to this line of thinking. I thought I saw someone volunteer to pull all the QM posts together but I think I'll start cataloguing, as well. If I get anywhere with it, I'll follow up.
 
@dwibby: It was stated outright Kiri never had civil war, Yagura's an asshole but mellowed out, and bloodline slaughters never happened.

Jackercracks said:
The demon fox rampaged across Konoha approximately 12 years ago. There, confirmed (for like the third time).

It's eastern standard of Last Name, First Name.

And now for today's instalment of

Things your genderless genin thinks s/he knows about the Mist!​


Your Kage is Yagura. Starting his rein in blood and tyranny, Yondaime Mizukage Yagura later became the host of the Three Tailed Beast. You heard about it when Hoshigaki Kisame famously killed his mentor and betrayed the Mist, and though Yagura's wrath was terrible at the time he seems to have mellowed out since then, ending the Bloody Mist graduation exams and generally being much more lenient. You're really not sure why. There was some trouble slowly building up between the clans and the civilians after the third war but the matter was resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Anyway, you're kind of terrified that they'll send captain Zabuza after you, that guy is scary and works in the hunter-nin division.
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Rihaku said:
Repay in Kind

It was the day of the bet, and Hazou intended to collect. He rocked on his toes, back and forth across the precipice,
[snip]
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If you make the following changes I'll canonize this:

"and he was almost eight, basically a ninja grown. "
and he was eleven, basically a ninja grown.

"His first year at the academy "
His third year at the academy

" A first year can't make that jump!"
A student can't make that jump!

Move the part after the break ("Kurosawa Hazou, genin, missing-nin, traitor to the Hidden Mist...") to a separate post. For now that part won't be canon, but it might become so if the story catches up to it.
 
Bloodline -----
Attributes:
Intelligence=1 Wits=2 Resolve=1
Strength=1 Dexterity=2 Stamina=1
Presence=1 Manipulation=1 Composure=1
Capacity=4 Control=1 Regeneration=4
Free affinity 1: ZZZ=2
Skills:
Taijutsu=2 Weapons=2  
Awareness=4 Stealth=3 Knowledge: Deadly Swamp=1
Transformation=1 Clone=1 Replacement=1
Wall walking=1 Water Walking=1 Tactical Movement=1
70/75 points
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We have 5 points to work with which means we have a fuckton of skills available. Greater flexibility means we can afford to balance for long-term survival as well as the short-term.

I suggest one of our guys focuses on defensive jutsu (e.g., Earth Wall, burrowing) and another have some form of offensive jutsu (chakra enhanced weapons?). I don't want to rely too much on the chakrawater-absorption bloodline for offense since we won't always have water to use for ranged.
 
Icehawk78 said:
@Rihaku:

So, the major thing I was unaware of was that Hunter-nin would go after missing-nin of other villages, not just their own. That puts a fairly large damper on my analysis, since you lose the major benefit of being known for only killing Mist missing-nin. Still, he could have similarly developed a reputation for never having killed anyone who wasn't a missing-nin, regardless of village.

That was why I assumed the alpha-strike potential for Zabuza would not be utilized, since it is literally a singular possibility - if he's never killed a non-missing-nin (or non-Mist ninja at all, in my original assumption) who wasn't actively attacking him, then it only takes a single event to lose that claim, and any other Hunter-nin from Mist would similarly lose that advantage. Thus, it would be to the village's benefit not to use him in that manner. Likewise, this "free pass" would only really apply to other Major villages with enough reputation to lose from violating their precedent to allow their travels.

Additionally, allowing one Hunter with a basically pristine reputation from an enemy village into your territory for one purpose alone also likely means that Leaf would similarly be able to develop their own Hunter with similar free-reign to cross borders relatively unmolested. Perhaps Jiraiya?

Essentially, I'm not yet fully convinced that this is a massive vulnerability to Leaf.

Your points about Mist not wanting any info to spread all still are on point to me, so I can still see them proceeding with extreme caution.

@eaglejarl:

Just to verify, is this assumption correct? That most/all Hunter-nin (and Zabuza in particular) go after all villages' missing-nin, not just their own? And does Zabuza and possibly a corresponding Leaf Hunter have a similarly impeccable (as far as we know publicly) record when it comes to hunting missing-nin only, even when he was in position and could have been used on other ops?

Most of Rihaku's post makes sense to me, but we've already been burned once by making assumptions that were incorrect and this is a verifiable piece of data.
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Yes, both villages and civilians post bounties, on missing-nin and also on non-ninja. Anyone who brings the person back (alive or dead) gets the money. Some of the bounties are pretty impressive, so if you're badass enough it can turn a tidy sum.
 
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Now, for some exposition! Man did we have to work hard to make genjutsu balanced, in its canon form it's essentially an "I win" technique even at the lowest level.

A Genin Level Guide to Genjutsu​


Genjutsu techniques are categorised as either Dream or Illusion types. They both have significant prep-time as the shinobi mentally crafts the illusion. Dream makes them think they're in a different forest, (or building, or planet, sky's the limit) leading them to take actions as if they are in that forest and stand around like a lemon in real life. Illusion types change something about their perception of the environment they're already in, like making them see an attacker, or an attack, or a cliff where one isn't. So they end up attacking an illusion, or dodging air, or jumping a meter too low and smashing into a cliff instead of landing on top.

Dream takes longer to create, because you have to craft the whole thing. Illusion is shorter to create, but still significant, because you only have to change some things. Dream requires significant skill and experience, low A-rank level stuff.

All genjutsu also require channelling for as long as they are in effect, so you have to stand still and concentrate while you mentally construct the thing that your opponent is seeing.

Certain masters are rumoured to have overcome these limitations, but you've never seen such for yourself.

Chakra Changes​

Edit: A note on chakra costs. We decided that some more granularity would be nice for chakra costs. Now every point of Capacity gives 10 point of chakra. The regeneration and skill costs were rescaled to match. Adding chakra to rolls now only costs half as much, at 5 instead of 10. Apart from that, you have exactly the same size chakra pool as you did before and can cast as many techniques as you could before, and regenerate it just as quickly. Everything is the same as before, we're just using different numbers, this just gives us a little more freedom when choosing technique costs in the future. For more details, see the rules doc.

There is now a cap of (skill level/4) rounded up on the maximum amount of bonus dice that can be gained by adding chakra to rolls. Because otherwise 12 year old Naruto would be capable of punting Gai through a wall by sheer force of bonus dice.
 
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Rihaku said:
"generally useful techniques should be bought for use outside of opposed rolls"
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When did I say that? I think you're confused.

You're meaning 'opposed rolls' as 'against an opponent.' But there can be rolls that aren't against opponents. AugSphere confirmed this.
Rihaku said:
"spending chakra to boost a skill is potentially wasteful"
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I said that spending all of our chakra is wasteful, and that those assumptions skew the EV calculation you were using as your argument.
Rihaku said:
I am not sure that water-walking will actually give us any benefits we could not live without, especially considering the Chakra cost.
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What chakra cost! It's not even considered a technique!
Rihaku said:
we have an EV of 1 for saving the XP until the use is needed.
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No, because we can only spend XP during training. The EV of XP that we don't spend on leveling cheap/general-use skills (as opposed to 'career-path' type skills, Technique Dev, Sealing, and Medical Ninjutsu, which we're less likely to invest in) to 1 is strictly less than the EV of simply spending it on the cheap and general-use skill. To use the impromptu option risks the XP, and does not actually give us more options, particularly when we know our next scenario. You may also note that we have more than 1 XP, and that spending one point on water-walking still leaves us with the option to risk one of our remaining XP to attempt one of our very few zero-level skills that will be useful in the situation we know we're going into! And in that case, the same arguments apply to leveling those skills in the first place (Repulsion, Tac. Movement, maybe Adhesion or Medicine).

However...
eaglejarl said:
And figure out which of the missions you think you'd be best suited for -- scout and hunt, or scout and trade. I won't promise you'll get what you want, but it's a good exercise in tactical analysis.
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Some unanswered questions:

@eaglejarl @Velorien @AugSphere @Jackercracks Can water-walking (repulsion) be used to, say, skate across land?

@eaglejarl @Velorien @AugSphere @Jackercracks What is the nature of the transformation? Does effective size and/or mass actually change? How robust is it, does it stand up to a hit? Do we have to concentrate on the transformation to sustain it? Do we have to concentrate on it to make it appear realistic? How easy is it for the average ninja to detect? The average jounin?

Same questions about the clone, minus effective size and mass.
 
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