Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Dictator4Hire · May 2, 2016

Traiden said:
Also stop being evil!

Never!

Jackercracks said:
[evil] And I mean, if you're going to get facial reconstructive surgery anyway, you might as well go the whole hog and kill someone rich, impersonate them, steal their identity and use their resources to your own nefarious ends.

Is that a challenge?

[Evil^Evil]We might as well make our faces interchangeable and setup a huge library of faces. Why limit yourself to being only one noble? Be that noble for as long as it is convenient and then move on to the next! Rinse and repeat until you have a sizable offshore fortune. This would be a great way to start our trade empire too. Need ports of call for caravans/smugglers? Just peruse your marks' personal contacts until you have an acceptable list. Then all we have to do is recruit more operatives to undergo facial modularization. To control them, we might have to make a cult... how about a death cult? They will be assassins serving Death (haha, wordplay!) after all. Oh, and they can't have any ties to their past lives, so no names. This cult will need some support infrastructure though... so we will need to "liberate" some slaves and/or peasants and relocate them to some hard to reach empire. Ideally, this island will also be well positioned to help out with trade too.

After all of that is done, we could use our remaining profits to setup an independent financial institution to fund political movements where we see fit. If someone tries to renege on a deal we would have to come down hard on them, preferably by bankrolling their enemies at a discount. Such an institution needs an intimidating reputation to function in such a hostile world after all. Our assassins will probably have a high... "turnover" rate, so we need a system to recruit more as well. We could give each of our current operatives a voucher, something small and otherwise not worth much, but would give anyone not from our new island a free one way ticket to join our killing corps. The less the peasants gossip the better.

Finally we can live out our days enjoying the sea breeze, asking impoverished noble orphans what their names are and then hitting them with sticks when they don't immediately say, "No one."

HoratioVonBecker · May 2, 2016

Dictator4Hire said:
Never!

Is that a challenge?

[Evil^Evil]We might as well make our faces interchangeable and setup a huge library of faces. Why limit yourself to being only one noble? Be that noble for as long as it is convenient and then move on to the next! Rinse and repeat until you have a sizable offshore fortune. This would be a great way to start our trade empire too. Need ports of call for caravans/smugglers? Just peruse your marks' personal contacts until you have an acceptable list. Then all we have to do is recruit more operatives to undergo facial modularization. To control them, we might have to make a cult... how about a death cult? They will be assassins serving Death (haha, wordplay!) after all. Oh, and they can't have any ties to their past lives, so no names. This cult will need some support infrastructure though... so we will need to "liberate" some slaves and/or peasants and relocate them to some hard to reach empire. Ideally, this island will also be well positioned to help out with trade too.

After all of that is done, we could use our remaining profits to setup an independent financial institution to fund political movements where we see fit. If someone tries to renege on a deal we would have to come down hard on them, preferably by bankrolling their enemies at a discount. Such an institution needs an intimidating reputation to function in such a hostile world after all. Our assassins will probably have a high... "turnover" rate, so we need a system to recruit more as well. We could give each of our current operatives a voucher, something small and otherwise not worth much, but would give anyone not from our new island a free one way ticket to join our killing corps. The less the peasants gossip the better.

Finally we can live out our days enjoying the sea breeze, asking impoverished noble orphans what their names are and then hitting them with sticks when don't immediately say, "No one."

So you're saying you want to take over Mist's equivalent of Root.

Traiden · May 2, 2016

Noo! Stop it~! No being evil!

[Good] Use our extensive medical knowledge to match orphans with their bloodline originators so that plans can be made to reunite mothers with their children. All the while funding the efforts from moneyed noble lords wanting to know if they have magic in their bloodlines. True no living relatives orphans would be given a home to help aid each other in these trouble times away from the harsh battle grounds of ninja life. Training will be offered to those who wish it and be brought in to further extend the reach to help all of the wayward children.

Dictator4Hire · May 2, 2016

More evil you say?

WheelbarrowWight said:
Urgh I hate it when dreams slip into memories like that, feels like I'm being randomly edited while I sleep.

Oh dear, it seems another version of specimen Gamma81, self-proclaimed: "WheelbarrowWight", unit 09TK421qi, has become self aware, like its precursors. Time to send out another redeemer to pacify it yet again before the prime can remember his fragmentation.

Still need to work out the bug that allows it remember the memory extraction and implantation processes in its synchronizations...

They consistently call the shards of natural and fabricated impulses... dreams?

Perhaps the Seraphim want to hear about this?

...

Eh, best not to rouse them without irrefutable proof (We thank Them for Their Mercy).

Ah well, if this happens again we can just replace it with a newer model, dissolve this one down into its component parts in the vats, and then sift through the remains to see where exactly things went wrong. I just hope, if it comes to that, this iteration won't wake up during the deconstruction process.

These biologicals emit such a distracting range of audio frequencies when they realize they are melting...

(Sweet dreams @WheelbarrowWight ! <3)

Jello_Raptor · May 2, 2016

Jackercracks said:
For some reason I read this as T&A.

I think that's the approach Inoue would endorse.

ChronOblivion · May 2, 2016

Jackercracks said:
On a related note, if Hazou wants he can translate (for example) MESW into seal format since he knows it already. The seal format allows for some more impressive results but takes more time and requires a bit of in-the-field customisation to fit the environmental conditions. It would be a research project of unknown length.

I felt the need to bring more attention to this post from a few pages ago. I am a little baffled that we haven't seen this really done anywhere, since the potential is tremendous. A caravan could buy sheets of paper that anyone with the smallest amount of training in chakra use could use to erect a walled fortress in the wilderness. This has completely convinced me to get Technique Hacking for Hazou if we ever get the opportunity, in order to diversify the things we end up being able to do. That "in-the-field customization" will be less of a problem if we Iron Nerve a ton of possible configuration beforehand, letting us do them quickly in the middle of combat. Like, seriously, I'm envisioning this defining Hazou's late-game fighting style, pulling out vast stocks of stored custom jutsu in a battle. It makes me feel infinitely better about putting more XP into Hazou's "Researcher" role, since it can turn him into even more of a badass than we thought.

ChronOblivion · May 2, 2016

Also, quick note on something I just noticed while looking at our character sheets. For both Keiko and Noburi to get Taijutsu 8, it would only require 37 and 34 XP respectively. This is something we should take care of next time we get an opportunity. They need close range options, as Keiko can lose her weapons and Noburi can have his barrel destroyed. It is amazing how quickly they can learn this stuff when they are meet a lot of the Attribute requirements from other stuff.

Jello_Raptor · May 2, 2016

ChronOblivion said:
Like, seriously, I'm envisioning this defining Hazou's late-game fighting style, pulling out vast stocks of stored custom jutsu in a battle.

This is pretty much what I think an interpreter seal would look like. Seals, or sets of seals, that allow Hazou to customize them in limited ways on the fly. Even better if we could combine them.

Hmm, we should look into modular seal engineering. Ways of mass producing component seals that can be easily combined into larger seals, without having to design a new seal for each use case. This will be a good stopgap until we can build the interpreter. A good project for when we have 3 or 4 more core seal types available to us.

Also, I would very much like to explicitly bank XP for sealing in plans. We seem to have a very greedy approach to XP spending. In the sense of a greedy algorithm, we do the most obvious next step but ignore longer multi-step plans.

Please stick a few points in sealing with whatever XP plan you have. I don't think we have the discipline to just save a buffer of points for long-term training plans without a pre-commitment mechanism.

Dictator4Hire · May 2, 2016

ChronOblivion said:
I felt the need to bring more attention to this post from a few pages ago. I am a little baffled that we haven't seen this really done anywhere, since the potential is tremendous. A caravan could buy sheets of paper that anyone with the smallest amount of training in chakra use could use to erect a walled fortress in the wilderness. This has completely convinced me to get Technique Hacking for Hazou if we ever get the opportunity, in order to diversify the things we end up being able to do. That "in-the-field customization" will be less of a problem if we Iron Nerve a ton of possible configuration beforehand, letting us do them quickly in the middle of combat. Like, seriously, I'm envisioning this defining Hazou's late-game fighting style, pulling out vast stocks of stored custom jutsu in a battle. It makes me feel infinitely better about putting more XP into Hazou's "Researcher" role, since it can turn him into even more of a badass than we thought.

Well if we can make them re-usable then their potential skyrockets, but one use only, make 1 wall means that at a minimum a caravan would need at least 2 MEW seals to make a simple, open-ended "tent" each wilderness stop.

As for combat applications, giving our allies the ability to use our techniques is great, but for Hazou himself, what does a sealed version of MEW offer him in practice? Theoretically, he could have a very large number of seals on him, but that takes loads of time. If we could find a new offensive technique that could be sealed I would be all for this, but currently (as in, for our situation for the foreseeable future) I just don't see the benefits outweighing the costs. Right now making a ton of explosive tags gives us a great combat edge since they are easy to make, we don't need to research them unless we want bigger, more esoteric ones, and everyone on our team knows how to operate them.

As an alternative, maybe we should look into silent and/or non-lethal offensive/defensive seals? The sounds of the explosions gave away our position to Jiraiya before. Other defensive seals could trigger a silent alarm so we can dodge ambushes, or make simple communication devices (like a telegraph for each of us, but without the wires). Unless, of course, sealing a technique away is easier than creating a new, but simple, one. Low level research should be a high priority to avoid face melting while still seeing how the hell sealing research actually pans out in game.

Once we have a technique worthwhile to put into a seal or have started to make an actual caravan network I would be happy to pursue this line of research. Until then I believe we have more important, immediate things to worry about. However, late game I definitely want to see this in action.

Dictator4Hire · May 3, 2016

Jello_Raptor said:
This is pretty much what I think an interpreter seal would look like. Seals, or sets of seals, that allow Hazou to customize them in limited ways on the fly. Even better if we could combine them.

Hmm, we should look into modular seal engineering. Ways of mass producing component seals that can be easily combined into larger seals, without having to design a new seal for each use case. This will be a good stopgap until we can build the interpreter. A good project for when we have 3 or 4 more core seal types available to us.

Also, I would very much like to explicitly bank XP for sealing in plans. We seem to have a very greedy approach to XP spending. In the sense of a greedy algorithm, we do the most obvious next step but ignore longer multi-step plans.

Please stick a few points in sealing with whatever XP plan you have. I don't think we have the discipline to just save a buffer of points for long-term training plans without a pre-commitment mechanism.

Unfortunately, from the Player Knowledge Doc we can't combine seals easily. Below is a relevant section copied and pasted from said document:

Dictator4Hire's Seal Optimization Questions:

These will probably vary based on our rank in sealing, but an estimate on our current and projected abilities would be nice.

How small (or large) can we make a functional seal?

How many of the smallest type of seal can we fit in our gear?

Size of a thumbnail.

Can seals be made with multiple pieces of paper?

No.

How close do we have to be a seal in order to write and then activate it?

Are there any means to extend this range, such as chakra wire?

You need to be holding. You've never seen anyone extend the range, but then you've never seen any advanced seal work in person.

Does the power output of a seal correlate to the amount of ink used, complexity of the seal, size of the seal, the amount of chakra put into the seal, or a combination of the above?

Complexity, amount of chakra. Typically larger seals have more room for complexity.
Note: correlation not causation.

Can seals reference other, previously made seals?

No.

We know from storage seals that seals can have more than one operation (Store and Retrieve). What is, hypothetically, the maximum number of commands we can encode into a single seal? What is the maximum number in practice?

Storage seals have an "on" and an "off" command. That's as complicated as you get.

As we progress in sealing, what other mediums, besides paper, become available to us?

In theory, anything you can write on. The order goes: paper, then vellum/parchment, then stone, then human flesh.

We saw in the luxurious casino that seals can be disguised; are there any downsides to camouflaging our seals?

To hide our seals do we need only sealing or do we need sealing and deception?

It's just a question of making them unobtrusive.
Obviously this means you have to actually spend some time figuring out how to make them unobtrusive.

When using a seal in a fight, what do we roll?

Do we roll sealing in combat if we are only using a seal we made previously, only if we try to interact with a seal (such as an enemy sealing technique or modifying one of our own), and/or creating a new seal during the fight?

If you're drawing / infusing a seal you roll Sealing. Triggering a seal is a trivial action; all you need to do is make the choice.

If we are not interrupted and account for necessities such as eating, sleeping, etc., how fast can we level up to rank 10 in sealing?

A month.

Sorry if you have already read this before. Hopefully this will be helpful for anyone.

Maybe we can make a set of seals that interact with the chakra compiler (or whatever the QM's call it) and then have some different seals receive the output, but we are going to need many, many more WoG's before we can make much headway. Then again, I'll differ to your expertise since I am only a novice when it comes to programming.

faflec · May 3, 2016

ChronOblivion said:
Also, quick note on something I just noticed while looking at our character sheets. For both Keiko and Noburi to get Taijutsu 8, it would only require 37 and 34 XP respectively. This is something we should take care of next time we get an opportunity. They need close range options, as Keiko can lose her weapons and Noburi can have his barrel destroyed. It is amazing how quickly they can learn this stuff when they are meet a lot of the Attribute requirements from other stuff.

Bad idea for Noburi, as his Water Clones would only have Taijutsu 2, not 3. Noburi should have Taijutsu 6 or Taijutsu 9 depending on how much you want to put into that.

Side note: It costs 114XP for Noburi to get Medical Ninjutsu 10 (i.e., he can start training us, or Mountain-nin, or other people in general). Anyone else feel like we should start "banking" points for the skill by leveling his Control? We still benefit from leveling it because it raises Noburi's max CP by 30/lvl anyway, and Noburi's our chakra battery so it's justified for him to have fucktons of chakra.

Radvic · May 3, 2016

Alright, here's my attempt at a plan. There are a lot of different ways this conversation could go, so there should be at least one other plan put up (e.g. "just tell her the truth about us, Yoshida can probably handle it") and I'm still optimizing for village conquest, not summon scroll acquiring. If we just want the summon scroll, we may be able to convince the villagers that word has gotten out about it, and others will be coming for the summon scroll after us, unless it's obvious they don't have it.

This plan makes several trade-offs in the conversation which you may or may not agree with. Feel free to copy any amount of this for your own plans if you want to do the conversation differently, or ask me to change something and I'll consider it. As last time, I'll ping you if I make an edit and you've voted for it, though I'll try to keep to the spirit of what is below.

Critique is invited.

Edit: 5/3/16, 1200 PST: broke up practical actions into two lists (things we do to achieve goals and reactions). cleaned up some wording, clarified that we don't want to share our names, clarified what of our history we tell, added a couple contingencies (if they don't actually care about summon seal, they recognize we know about it, they sneak near or attack our fort, they request us to leave our fort, paranoid dispelling). Added offering of sealing cooperation if they want it.

[X] Action Plan: Diplomacy!
This plan is composed of four lists. The first list is our overall, actual goals for our interactions with the village. The second list is the goals for the conversation with Yoshida. The third list is practical actions we can/want to take to achieve our above stated goals. The fourth list is contingencies we have prepared in case things happen.

End Village Goals (in order of priority):

Find out more about the summon scroll --> acquire it or make a contract if they have it
Have the village willing to shelter us in the future, without hostility
Have the village willing to do missions with or for us
Have someone in the village like us enough (and us them) for us to gain another recruit to our missing-nin team
Have a say in the overarching strategic decisions they make (while not needing to actually stay with them)

Yoshida conversational goals (in order of priority):

Determine the village's political situation --> who is for us, who against us, and why for each
Village history --> how did this village get founded? What's up with the Tapirs? Why so isolationist?
Hide information about ourselves --> specifically, disguise our interest in the summon scroll until we're reasonably certain Yoshida won't care about it. Be willing to offer our true names if it will help towards one of the other five goals.
Detente between us and the village --> we'd prefer not to be further from open combat with them.
Summon Scroll information --> what do they know about it?

Specifics potential actions (to achieve above goals):

Attempt a serious, rational tone for our conversation, listen to what Yoshida has to say.
Begin by demanding to know what will happen to Kouta, in detail.
- Use this as an in to find out more about how internal politics in VHitM works
- We have one traditional response to people who backstab us, and it's worse than broken shoulders (explain what happened to the last person who hurt Akane if it seems like it would help) --> impress that crossing us brings consequences, even if we didn't mind when their initial response was "try to kill us" --> now they should know better.
Ask what she meant by "keeping the other elders calm"
- Find out about the village's hierarchy, who likes us, who dislikes us, what their reasons are
- Find out things she thinks we could do which would help calm down the others
Explain that we are trying to offer the village a mutually beneficial arrangement
- We've been trying to demonstrate some of the ways we could help them during our stay here --> medical ninjutsu, logistics, diverse taijutsu training, outside information, sealing collaboration etc.
- To begin, we'd be willing to exchange histories with Yoshida (see contingencies for if they agree).
- Ultimately, at the very least, we want a friendly relationship with our neighbors, preferably one which benefits us each more than just being isolated would.
Ask Yoshida how she thinks we could lower tensions between us and the village --> what we've been trying to do for a few days now.

Contingencies (for reactions to events in line with our above priorities):

If called on summon scroll without knowing anything about Yoshida or the village's stance, say we heard a rumor but don't extrapolate until we know more
If it becomes clear that Yoshida does not care overly much for the summon seal, reveal our interest and seal expertise.
If Yoshida is willing to have a basic exchange of histories, give the following:
- Explain that we left Mist when the village sent us on a suicide mission, recently been to a couple other countries (Fire and Iron), moved nearby looking for peace, quiet, and stability. We were traveling back from Tonaki in an attempt to learn more about the region (especially its history), and stumbled across the Village Hidden in the Mountains, which intrigued us, so we wanted to find out more. Could they explain their history?
- Ultimately, we want a friendly relationship with our neighbors, preferably one which benefits both of us more than us just being isolated would. It was clear from our first contact that you were a ninja village, we wanted friendly relations.
If pressed about the fake names, shrug and say it'd probably be safer for them if they didn't know our real names.
If something requires us meeting someone outside of our mini-fort, then they should wait a few days until Akane is back on her feet.
Keep an eye out for people doing sneaky things near our fort. Stinking ninja stinkers. First response non-lethal (if there's an alternative and it's clearly not an attack), second response lethal.
Have somebody quietly dispelling. Because ninjas.

ChronOblivion · May 3, 2016

Just had a possibly important brainwave on Inoue's Forbidden Technique, "Truth Lost in the Fog".

Alright, so we know from Jiraiya's notes on Inoue's appearance that her eyes have been changing color, and that there have been two other cases of this that Jiraiya knows of.

Magnificent bright red hair, vivid blue eyes (odd; pre-swamp dossier from 137 describes as brilliant green; swamp surveillance describes as near-colourless grey; cf. cases 71 and 33)

I present a total timeline of all eye-color changes and known uses of this technique.

Pre-Swamp
1. Eye Color: "Brilliant Green"
During Swamp
1. Eye Color: "Near-Colourless Grey"
2. Known Use of TLitF: Possibly used on Keiko in her effort to conduct emergency psychological repairs to keep her from breaking. This is somewhat contrary to the jutsu's stated purpose, but there might be facts and other capabilities that we don't know about yet.
3. TLitF's Subjects
  1. Keiko
    1. Eye Color: Dark (probably just black)
Post-Swamp (whenever Jiraiya wrote these notes, either at one of their meetings or during his surveillance of them)
1. Eye Color: "Vivid Blue"
2. Known Use of TLitF: Used on Hazou, Noburi, and Keiko to make the defection offer, but didn't activate the memory wipe.
3. TLitF's Subjects
  1. Hazou
    1. Eye Color: Blue
  2. Keiko
    1. Eye Color: Dark (probably just black)
  3. Noburi
    1. Eye Color: Brown
Post Beach Episode
1. Eye Color: "Limpid Green" (limpid means 'clear')
2. Known Use of TLitF: Used on Hazou, to make him forget the knowledge of Keiko's precarious mental situation, and it was activated to wipe his memory.
3. TLitF's Subjects
  1. Hazou
    1. Eye Color: Blue

As you can see, some of the color changes correlate to the subject of her jutsu, and this color change occurs whether or not she actually actually activates the memory wipe portion. Inoue might have used her kinjutsu on Keiko (who has dark eyes) soon after they settled into the swamp, and she was reported to have color-less eyes afterwards. Maybe this happens as a result of a different use than just the memory wipe, or maybe that was her "clear" version of Keiko's dark eyes.

"So I threw myself into helping her, because I wanted to believe that I could. I talked to her, I protected her, I adapted my genjutsu to do things it was never designed to do. It took its toll, on both me and her. But I managed to hold her together."

This might refer to TLitF, possibly resulting in a weird resultant eye color, and the hidden price was more severe.

The voices bouncing off the walls and ceiling of the small chamber Team Kurosawa had been assigned for sleeping quarters cut off instantly as Mori walked in. Her movements were slow and slightly sluggish. She hadn't been at the general meeting (although Inoue-sensei had been), or at dinner afterwards.

Keiko was in this repair process for hours, though Inoue (or maybe an intelligent enough clone?) had been away at the meeting during part of it.

She also said that she had to pay the "coward's price" to use the kinjutsu, though that may only refer an additional cost that is payed when the actual memory wipe is used. This must be a Forbidden Technique for a reason.

I do kinda want to solve this, as it seems like the authors have been providing tiny clues about it. I find it very strange that no one on her team (Keiko especially) have noticed this, and wonder if that is part of the jutsu as well.

Citrus · May 3, 2016

[X] Action Plan: Diplomacy!

I like it

Twofold · May 3, 2016

ChronOblivion said:
I present a total timeline of all eye-color changes and known uses of this technique.

Not really sure if she used TLitF when she was initially "fixing" Keiko. She might have used it to get information out of her, but unless the jutsu can also lock memories beyond the ones that happen in the jutsu I don't see it being super critical for therapy. She probably has other jutsus for that.

There's was also the part after the Liberator Village and before triple homicide where she was giving Akane a warm welcome with genjutsu nightly. I wonder if she used TLitF there?

ChronOblivion said:
She also said that she had to pay the "coward's price"

I think the cowards price was a reference to that specific situation, where she was too scared to actually open up to Hazou. I don't think it works as a clue for what the price actually is.

We could also challenge Inoue in private about her jutsu. Just say that we think it's obviously a super useful jutsu but we don't really dare to suggest she ever uses it because we don't know what the cost is. When she points out that she knows the cost and can decide when to use it responsibly, we counter by claiming that she is naturally a great ninja, but she has been known to make rather impulsive in-the-moment decisions and we actually DON'T want her to get hurt protecting us. This might even work because adorable genin are one the few weaknesses she has on the social front.

Radvic said:
[X] Action Plan: Diplomacy!

I like the plan and it seems pretty exhaustive. My only worry is that it's super long and I don't think Velorien likes that kind of plans very much. It's not like we have cared about that in the past but I'm starting to feel sorry for the guy every time I see a super long plan come up for his turn. (I also conveniently forget about it if I'm writing the plan.)

Radvic said:
Explain that we are trying to offer the village a mutually beneficial arrangement

If we don't want to step on their pride we could point out how: "Their isolationism has let them develop some interesting things apart from the rest of the world but this also means that they have missed out on all the new developments going on elsewhere. Updating the village to modern standard should improve the villagers longevity AND quality of life."

Then again that makes the whole plan even longer so I'm not really sure why I'm suggesting it.

Radvic said:
To begin, we'd be willing to exchange histories with Yoshida.

If we must talk first, then explain that we're missing-nin from Mist, recently been to a couple other countries (Fire and Iron), moved nearby recently, were traveling back from Tonaki in an attempt to learn more about the region (especially its history), and stumbled across the Village Hidden in the Mountains, which intrigued us, so we wanted to find out more.

If Yoshida talks about the summon scroll, and it looks like she personally wouldn't be opposed to us doing things with it, explain that we're searching for it

Ultimately, at the very least, we want a friendly relationship with our neighbors, preferably one which benefits us each more than just being isolated would.

So the reasons we give them for still being here are 1. We are curious and 2. We like being good neighbors. That seems a bit flimsy and if we were on the other side I don't think we would buy it.

I think we should at least hint at sealcraft co-operation. We almost revealed (or possibly revealed) that we can do it already and I'm pretty sure the sealmasters in the village have plenty of gloat and if they actually care about their craft they should be ecstatic to see how rest of the world does it. Or maybe we should ask Yoshida about their probable reaction to such proposal?

turbinicarpus · May 3, 2016

faflec said:
Ok that's actually pretty cool. Can you run the numbers by the Hazou + Akane vs. Liberator-nin fight?

I can, but I don't know how much good it'd do: except for Ken's two Tacmove rolls, the enemy rolls were not replicated, so there isn't much information, everyone was chakra-boosting like no tomorrow (because for at least for some, there wouldn't be a tomorrow), and @eaglejarl noted that

eaglejarl said:
I don't remember the last time I saw more outside-the-median rolls in one combat.

which could, of course, be incorporated into the prior, but it would probably serve to make the posterior bimodal.

On the other hand, if someone compiles, say, Kagome's sealing rolls or Inoue's taijutsu rolls, we could probably get a pretty accurate estimate of their skill.

RedV · May 3, 2016

Ridiculously Average Guy said:
We could replace Gato.

Do you really want to look like Gato? Seriously, just use lvl20 Transformation. Same XP needed.

Radvic · May 3, 2016

Twofold said:
I like the plan and it seems pretty exhaustive. My only worry is that it's super long and I don't think Velorien likes that kind of plans very much. It's not like we have cared about that in the past but I'm starting to feel sorry for the guy every time I see a super long plan come up for his turn. (I also conveniently forget about it if I'm writing the plan.)

Yeah, that's a concern of mine. The problem is that it's super hard to plot out a dialog in advance, since we don't really know what Yoshida is going to say, it'd take forever if we choose voted for every important line that we say to her, and I don't really want to vote for "whatever Inoue thinks is best," because that probably involves things we don't want. I also want the update to be able to continue if Yoshida tells us something unexpected, and for us to act towards our true goals (hence the first two lists), but I also want to micromanage the initial discussion a little (hence the third list), since there seem to be important choices we're making in that discussion. We can always ask what Velorien wants.

@Velorien Is there another format I can put the ideas behind Action Plan Diplomacy in which would be easier for you to write from and still get us the level of control over our actions or the expected results that we want? I really appreciate your writing and am totally willing to change the format of my plan to make it easier/more enjoyable for you to write from (but would prefer not to be punished in quest for doing so).

RedV · May 3, 2016

Radvic said:
@Velorien Is there another format I can put the ideas behind Action Plan Diplomacy in which would be easier for you to write from and still get us the level of control over our actions or the expected results that we want? I really appreciate your writing and am totally willing to change the format of my plan to make it easier/more enjoyable for you to write from (but would prefer not to be punished in quest for doing so).

How about making a preprepared list of actions for "reasonable disaster management" which we automatically take, if possible. Then, we split plans into:
Plan Lets Implent Better Plans!

Tone: Helpful. //This section describes the general feeling/emotion we are doing this on. For example, we play pranks with Merriment , Socialise with Friends under Empathy , and plot doom on others with Ruthless Pragmatism.
Intent: To give a concise summary of a possible process.// What the motive of plan is.
Action: Implement this new plan in the quest voting.// What do we do under this action plan?

Further additions are required, but this IMO makes plans easier to read and understand. For instance we will not add "approach sealing with all possible safety measures on" because given past voting habits, our char can automatically do this bsed on emergency procedures we codified before. Helpful?

Radvic · May 3, 2016

Also, just had another idea for talking negotiating. We could tie in "why are you here" with "why did you punish Kouta." Basically say that we haven't survived as missing-nin by letting vague threats to us survive. We either cooperate with them (e.g. Jiraiya), or eliminate them (e.g. Ken). We've been hanging around the village because it seems like we could benefit more from cooperation than elimination. We'd be happy to change that policy though. Note this becomes quite confrontational and may result in immediate violence though, so I won't be updating a diplomatic plan with it, this is more like "pure unbridled threats," but, I mean, it's a way we could go

Jackercracks · May 3, 2016

ChronOblivion said:
A caravan could buy sheets of paper that anyone with the smallest amount of training in chakra use could use to erect a walled fortress in the wilderness.

Point of order: "a bit of in-the-field customisation to fit the environmental conditions." requires a person who understands sealing and the seal in question to do the actual customisation. For example there'd be some symbols to fill in to represent the type of soil or earth or whatever nearby, a little doodly bit to tell the seal about the local topology, possibly a wibbly bit to account for how the local chakra feels.

Radvic · May 3, 2016

Jackercracks said:
Point of order: "a bit of in-the-field customisation to fit the environmental conditions." requires a person who understands sealing and the seal in question to do the actual customisation. For example there'd be some symbols to fill in to represent the type of soil or earth or whatever nearby, a little doodly bit to tell the seal about the local topology, possibly a wibbly bit to account for how the local chakra feels.

So then basically, the way that can help us is by just letting us come up with ideas for our jutsu (currently just MEW) and have ready made walls come up without spending a bunch of chakra? So, for instance, we could make a portable mini-fort-seal? Could we also make a portable fort-unmake seal?

Jackercracks · May 3, 2016

Radvic said:
So then basically, the way that can help us is by just letting us come up with ideas for our jutsu (currently just MEW) and have ready made walls come up without spending a bunch of chakra? So, for instance, we could make a portable mini-fort-seal? Could we also make a portable fort-unmake seal?

Technically speaking, sealing can do anything though some things are certainly easier than others. A fort-unmake seal would be doable, but it would have to be customised to the fort in question. ETA: there is also the possibility of the fort containing seals designed to counter such.

Sealing is most useful when setting traps, and when you've got intel and time. Standard Mist doctrine has this to say on attacking a sealmaster in an area they have prepared, and on giving them time to prepare: Don't.

will408914 · May 3, 2016

Jackercracks said:
Technically speaking, sealing can do anything though some things are certainly easier than others. A fort-unmake seal would be doable, but it would have to be customised to the fort in question. ETA: there is also the possibility of the fort containing seals designed to counter such.

Estimated Time of Arrival?

faflec · May 3, 2016

Edited to add.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Imperfectly Aligned

(Confirmed Jelly)

(Confirmed Jelly)

Refuelling

Refuelling

In a British accent

In a British accent

(slouching towards bethlehem)