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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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MMKII said:
I note that this seems about right if you divide by 10.

If its 50 seals a month, or if there are 3 sealmasters who have the same license, or if this only applies in months you sell seals or something, or some combination of the above points it seems more reasonable. Perhaps its 100 a month and there are only six licensed sealmasters in Leaf, or something.
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It is worth noting that unless you reduce the number of sealmasters, or you make them spend their time doing other stuff (why tho??), you don't change the fact that that Leaf is going to be swamped with seals─you'd only change the price.

Fundamentally this happened when the QMs decided to go the "high risk high reward" route and make sealing scarily productive. If they made a seal take half an hour or so to make, the whole thing would be a lot more balanced.
 
A possible alternative, a weird and unrefined one but a possibility nonetheless, is that the vast majority of the seals we give Leaf don't go to personal ninja use. If we give Leaf 500 explosives a month and 450 of them go into something like official chakra beast exterminations or something, and only the remaining 50 are given out to Leaf-nin, then we get something that looks like Konoha without having only like 3 sealmasters.
 
@Veedrac
I agree with your concerns, but offer two mitigating factors that might not have entered your analysis:
1) Leaf likely stockpiles a large number of seals every month for wartime or emergency use. The daily throughput of 30 sealmasters would not feed the ninja war-machine. This would effectively remove some number of explosives from the market.
2) Leaf doesn't necessarily distribute the seals to the military free of cost - we already know that ninja buy/maintain their own gear, it is possible that Leaf uses the donated seals as a means to bolster their own finances - and keep the explosion market at an essentially fixed (lower than otherwise) price.
 
Adept_Woodwright said:
@Veedrac
I agree with your concerns, but offer two mitigating factors that might not have entered your analysis:
1) Leaf likely stockpiles a large number of seals every month for wartime or emergency use. The daily throughput of 30 sealmasters would not feed the ninja war-machine. This would effectively remove some number of explosives from the market.
2) Leaf doesn't necessarily distribute the seals to the military free of cost - we already know that ninja buy/maintain their own gear, it is possible that Leaf uses the donated seals as a means to bolster their own finances - and keep the explosion market at an essentially fixed (lower than otherwise) price.
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*imagines a stockpile of explosives seals somewhere in Leaf that matches up with the numbers*

KAGOME: THIS IS THE BEST SWIM I'VE EVER HAD!!!

*backstrokes through a warehouse of explosive tags*
 
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Oneiros said:
Oh I agree that we need to become filthy rich. Just that there are better ways to do it. I'm personally a fan of selling through the Yakuza. They will probably demand less of a cut
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How would this work exactly? Leaf doesn't have a proper yakuza presence anymore - and even if they did, the clan of the Hokage undermining the Tower is a really, really bad idea if people find out. Likewise with supplying Mist's yakuza. People would be using this to point out that we are indirectly supporting the old enemy (Mist) which coincidentally is where our ex-clans are from. This would be political suicide.
 
Tua said:
How would this work exactly? Leaf doesn't have a proper yakuza presence anymore - and even if they did, the clan of the Hokage undermining the Tower is a really, really bad idea if people find out. Likewise with supplying Mist's yakuza. People would be using this to point out that we are indirectly supporting the old enemy (Mist) which coincidentally is where our ex-clans are from. This would be political suicide.
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Fine just find a merchant in Tanzuku Gai to sell them
 
Id bet you that our current arsenal could withstand -1000 explosives for this months donation. Kagome has a room filled with seals.

Id also wager that we'd have enough seals left over and/or could make enough in a few days worth of Hazous spare time that we can get a sizeable pile of money this month.

Money we can use for tournament bets...
 
Another point to consider with these estimations: becoming a sealmaster is unlikely to happen unless you have a teacher, loads of reference materials, and the time to sit down and focus on that work for long periods, without having to worry about supporting yourself or your family. These conditions creates a heavy bias against clanless ninja, so I would estimate that a quite significant fraction of the 30 sealmasters in Konoha are either part of a clan, or at the very least heavily connected to an organization like the ANBU.

In these cases, they wouldn't be wanting licenses to sell their seals, as they would likely either just give them away to whoever the organization they were supplying, or be part of a clan's internal economy, which I don't really see the merchant council getting to mess with.
 
I'm surprised Tunneler's Friend didn't make the sale list. Is that a Jiraiya special OPSEC protected seal?

E: or the LBF. That's a pretty important one that's missing.
 
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I suspect the 500 seals a month is per clan license. 500 per individual sealmaster (who doesn't have the Iron Nerve) would be ridonkulous, as @Veedrac pointed out. Clans that get into the selling seals business will have several sealmasters so the donation is relatively reasonable, and there won't be many clans doing it so that explains why Leaf isn't drowning in seals.

Still, this seems like a counterproductive policy on the Tower's behalf. It discourages sealmasters from going into business making seals, which is a horribly bad idea. You want as many sealmasters making seals as possible so that Leaf as a whole has as many as possible, otherwise you're squandering resources. If the tower wants to issue seals to ninja instead of expecting those ninja to buy them, instead of demanding them for free they should just buy them from the sealmasters at some reasonable rate. That way individual sealmasters unassociated with a clan can afford to produce seals full time.

Or if the tower is broke and can't afford to buy seals because it doesn't collect taxes or something, they could make it an individual license at 100 seals per month per sealmaster or something. But I suspect the big clans would complain because it'd mess with the efficiency of their arrangement.
 
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Skywalkers should be pretty darn pricey, even if they're only sold to the Tower. They're more difficult than the explosive and storage seals which most sealmasters stop at after mastering and Leaf is in the middle of an all-out crash refit with them.
 
Veedrac said:
QMs say no. Drawing rate is constant. The ruling is in the list somewhere.
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That was prior to the rules rework, back when we didn't have a skill explicitly for drawing seal blanks. Now we do have a skill explicitly for drawing seal blanks, as well as a rule explicitly for speeding up checks.

Hurrying / Being Careful
If the QM allows it, choosing to take more time to accomplish something (moving steps down the time ladder) or attempting to do something faster than usual (moving up the time ladder) can provide a positive (moving down) or negative (moving up) CM. The CM is equivalent to your Aspect bonus on the relevant skill for each step that you move.


By default you cannot move more than 3 levels. QMs may assign smaller or larger maximum move ranges for a particular skill check.


Example: If your Aspect bonus is +2 then moving up the chart (hurrying) applies a -2 CM to your roll. Moving down the chart (taking more time and being careful) gives a +2 CM.

[...]

Time Ladder
  • An instant
  • Seconds
  • Half a minute
  • A minute
  • Several minutes
  • 10 minutes
  • Half an hour
  • An hour
  • A few hours
  • 12 hours
  • A day
  • A few days
  • A week
  • A couple weeks
  • A month
  • Three months
  • Half a year
  • A year
  • Several years
  • A decade
  • A generation
  • A century
  • Several centuries
  • ...etc.
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@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail

So. Um. Question?

The purpose of the MC is to stop ninjas from outcompeting civilians and wrecking their incomes by doing their jobs more efficiently with ninja magic. So... are civilians able to make seals?

Because if not, selling seals seems completely outside their jurisdiction. Whose income are we threatening by selling explosive seals? Or purifier seals?

I guess box-makers might be threatened by storage seals? Maybe?

But... air domes? Why would the MC care about a ninja selling air domes?
 
It's a safe bet that Skywalkers are outside of the Merchant Council's purview due to their confidential nature.
 
Veedrac said:
Kagome makes this more doable, but still, jeez
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Enjou said:
Does that 500 explosive seals a month apply to Kagome and Hazou combined, or to both making it actually 1000?
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Lailoken said:
However, the entity granting the license is completely independent from the one requiring the donation. The whole point of the Merchant Council is to give civilians the ability to laugh in ninjas' faces.
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Lailoken said:
Nevertheless, the entity demanding the seal donation doesn't actually have the power to grant nor rescind licenses. It has other bludgeons to wield, but the status of the license is unrelated to the donation because the entire point of the Merchant Council is to be able to tell the Tower, "hey, that's our turf, back off."
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Kiba said:
Previous fermi estimate was 30 sealmasters in Leaf, which was confirmed by QMs.
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We had forgotten that there were supposed to be 30 sealmasters; we were using a much lower number in our estimates, but we're happy to go with 30.

Given the change, it's only 100 seals per month, but that is per recognized sealmaster, which includes both Hazō and Kagome. (Jiraiya gets a pass because he's Hokage and therefore is fulfilling his duty to Leaf in other ways.)

Some of the seals are distributed to the ninja forces for personal use, some are stockpiled, some are issued for specific missions, etc.

This is not a Merchant Council rule; they have nothing to do with it and are not involved in the transaction in any way. Your license has no impact, whether or not you are selling has no impact, etc. This is a straight-up tax.

@Velorien will update the original post later.

Adept_Woodwright said:
or the LBF. That's a pretty important one that's missing.
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You did not give me a list of seals to ask for, so I went with what seemed sensible. To me, LBF seems like a significant advantage and therefore falls under OPSEC. I am not open to changing that retroactively, so let's just say that Jiraiya was the one who quashed the idea. You may attempt to change his mind if you wish, but you'll need a more compelling argument than "because we want more money."
 
We can produce 180 seals per month during meals (30 days, an average of 5 minutes per meal, meal length 30 minutes: 6 seals per meal) if we have a clone spoonfeed us during it.

We can probably produce 60 seals per month while using the restroom.

This is fine.
 
MadScientist said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail

So. Um. Question?

The purpose of the MC is to stop ninjas from outcompeting civilians and wrecking their incomes by doing their jobs more efficiently with ninja magic. So... are civilians able to make seals?

Because if not, selling seals seems completely outside their jurisdiction. Whose income are we threatening by selling explosive seals? Or purifier seals?

I guess box-makers might be threatened by storage seals? Maybe?

But... air domes? Why would the MC care about a ninja selling air domes?
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Economic regulation be complicated and not always sensible, yo.

Seals are ninja magic. Using ninja magic for commercial purposes is the purview of the Merchant Council. They are conservative and reluctant to approve anything for fear of unforeseen impact.

Be glad they approved as much as they did; the fact that you are the Hokage's family probably had something to do with it.
 
Ok that's much more reasonable. We still shouldn't have Hazō be a certified seal master because he can just draw kagome seals and sell those
 
eaglejarl said:
Economic regulation be complicated and not always sensible, yo.

Seals are ninja magic. Using ninja magic for commercial purposes is the purview of the Merchant Council. They are conservative and reluctant to approve anything for fear of unforeseen impact.

Be glad they approved as much as they did; the fact that you are the Hokage's family probably had something to do with it.
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I considered that, but then things get even more confusing.

We're basically weapons manufacturers selling high-end gear to a military force.

Why would a government -- a government in a constant state of war, at that -- allow one of their departments to make it more difficult for their military to purchase high-end weapons? Why would a government department want to make it more difficult for the military forces protecting their lives from a constant and very real threat to purchase high-end weapons?

I'm imagining an american government council on metalworking laws putting punitive regulations on missile construction during the cold war, and honestly I am so fricking confused at this mental image.
 
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eaglejarl said:
You did not give me a list of seals to ask for, so I went with what seemed sensible. To me, LBF seems like a significant advantage and therefore falls under OPSEC. I am not open to changing that retroactively, so let's just say that Jiraiya was the one who quashed the idea. You may attempt to change his mind if you wish, but you'll need a more compelling argument than "because we want more money."
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I figured with the change in the rules regarding the Alarm seals, and their relative importance for setting up a perimeter, that it was a casual omission. Note that the current ruleset tells us that Alarms make their noise for a few seconds on activation - and recommend LBF for use. They need to be activated by something to be useful, and LBFs are our teams only current method to activate them without poking them ourselves. If we need to donate several Alarms, it makes sense that we'd have to at least give something that also makes them useful. The original-original version of Alarms had a 12-hr timer that could be superseded by a secondary pulse, I believe. If that is what is desired, then just add that (or a shorter/settable duration) into the rules-doc.

The Tunneler's Friend just seems like an omission given the presence of Usamatsu's seal, but I don't really know if there is some importance to it that I just don't know about.

To be clear, I don't think we need to sell LBFs or other seals to make more money. The list of seals, as presented, should make enough money to get on with. My concern is with doing the thing that best utilizes the force multiplying effects our seals can bring to bear for Konoha.
 
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