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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Lailoken said:
Deploy upside down air dome a jump from the edge of the top of Mizukage Tower. Fill with hot water. Glass-bottomed flying hot tub. Bonus points if it's right outside Ren's window.
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Not a bad idea in principle, though I have privacy concerns due to the fact that our hot tub is so close to Ren that all she has to do is open the window to be considered a participant of the date.

PurposefulZephyr said:
Give her a few rolls, and he'll listen to her like his own moma.
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Jiraiya is going to pull another woman's hair and punch her, isn't he?
 
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Velorien said:
Nice. I like your choice of theme, you apply it creatively to both strengths and weaknesses, and there's a variety of material to work with.

My main criticism is that it ties together a lot of elements which are not really related to each other. It's better than having technique-copying eyeballs that can set things on ever-burning fire, summon chakra mechs or rewrite causality, but it comes across as "if it involves patterns, you can do it", which isn't quite how sane Bloodline Limits work. Compare the Byakugan: "We have super vision, and because we can see your chakra, we can see how to shut it down", as opposed to having a variety of powers relating to the general concept of vision.

(It says much about the Narutoverse that I have to specify "sane", as distinct from the likes of the Rinnegan.)

It also has to be said that the benefits err on the practical side while the flaws err on the social/roleplaying side. (Of course, the personality flaws would probably be less obvious to the players if they encountered a Kakero NPC.)

These two key features do make it broken in my opinion. If I were to introduce this Bloodline Limit into MfD, I would limit the number of positive features to two or three, and the negatives to one or two, and make sure the negative features come up regularly and influence the PC's capabilities/behaviour.

RE the Frozen Skein, I don't think the overlap is strong enough, or at least the Shattered Heart's features could be pared down to those that minimise it. It would also have interesting interactions with certain worldbuilding features that have yet to come into play.
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I know the shape that this bloodline ought to take, and it's definitely narrower than "if it involves patterns, you can do it." It's very specifically about being unable to not notice a certain kind of systemic failure.

Let me try and pare it down by describing a pile of limitations that I have in my head but maybe did not express very well:

- This bloodline does not do things like "notice the flaw in your opponent's armor as they approach", "notice the explosive tag you saw is nonstandard", etc. It specifically detects flaws in environmental or behavioural patterns.

- The one exception to this is that you can use it to detect flaws in yourself or your own work. (You can notice that you drew this seal blank wrong because you're intimately familiar with your own work, and it's different from how you do it. You can't do that for anybody else unless you have been making seals with them for literally decades - that's how long it takes to develop an instinctive understanding of how they do things.)

- Using this bloodline requires active exploration and observation of a living environment. You could theoretically apply it to running a spy network or other organization, but only to the extent that you had face-to-face interactions with your subordinates.

With regard to manufactured objects, it will tell you about their purpose and maybe a little of their history - how they fit into their environment, in other words. It won't tell you if they're properly made or not unless you've already built one yourself. (See the exception above.)

If you have a dozen bits of someone's personal belongings, it can tell you a little about what kind of person they are - their habits, inclinations and everyday desires. Things they care about a lot and handle often are more likely to give you useful information.

If you have a living-space kept by someone, their home, that's the best case possible. That kind of deeply-interacted-with environment can tell you about their plans, their values, and maybe, if you're lucky, even their secrets.

If you spend about a day talking with someone, or about a week observing their daily life, you can get the same kind of information a close examination of their personal belongings could give you.

If you spend about a week in close contact with someone, or a month observing their daily life, you can start getting the kind of details that their home would give you.

You can use this to "detect lies" by noticing when what someone says goes against their own nature. That doesn't strictly mean they're lying, though: it just means that if they did what they said, they had to force themselves to.

- This bloodline will not warn you of natural hazards. Avalanches, Chakra beasts, storms, sucking tar pits, and other things that are inherent parts of the environment you're in don't ping as "disturbances" to it. Notably, this means it will not detect traps that are part of established fortifications, regular guard patrols, etc. (Those traps and guards are right where they belong, thank you.)

- This bloodline will let you know what you should do. It will not give you the ability to actually do it. This is particularly relevant to the "immersing yourself in a social role" application: just because you know what you ought to be doing does not make you necessarily capable of suppressing your ninja reflexes/boiling emotions/etc.

With regard to the application to stealth, this bloodline does not make you inherently more stealthy: it just tells you when you fuck up. That means you can train for stealth faster, but if you haven't it'll just hurl a constant stream of useless criticism at you.
Infiltration specialists might be able to use it to realise when they've been detected, but that would be a specialized technique, like Roki is to the Iron Nerve.

- Seriously, you do not want to be on the front lines if you have this bloodline. I would expect you to be making Resolve rolls against shifts of mental stress whenever anybody on either side of the fight suffered a Consequence. Being in a disaster area or major battle might be outright incapacitating without use of Fate Points.

Summary edit:
This bloodline lets you ask the question "Does [fact X] fit as a natural part of [natural pattern Y]?", and get a true yes-or-no answer.

If Y is "my current environment", or "me", you are able to ask the question without spending an action and/or Fate point.
 
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Evenstar said:
If you have a living-space kept by someone, their home, that's the best case possible. That kind of deeply-interacted-with environment can tell you about their plans, their values, and maybe, if you're lucky, even their secrets.
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Imagine if Yagura had had access to this bloodline. It would have made eliminating dissidents even easier.

Great material for an omake, IMO:

To see people live in constant fear of a visit by the Kakero (possibly being referred to as the Shattered Peace bloodline by those unhappy with or scared of Yagura). Bonus points if it is written in the Kakero PoV and people have been deliberately trying to mess with their homes to distort the Kakero's readings.
 
Guys I figured out how to beat Shikamaru.
Sasuke Uchiha and the Power of Lies said:
"For example," I said, "he once told me that the only way to beat a Nara is to not have a shadow, and I didn't think that was possible. But when I was fighting Shikamaru, I realized that all I had to do was set myself on fire."
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Evenstar said:
I know the shape that this bloodline ought to take, and it's definitely narrower than "if it involves patterns, you can do it." It's very specifically about being unable to not notice a certain kind of systemic failure.

Let me try and pare it down by describing a pile of limitations that I have in my head but maybe did not express very well:

- This bloodline does not do things like "notice the flaw in your opponent's armor as they approach", "notice the explosive tag you saw is nonstandard", etc. It specifically detects flaws in environmental or behavioural patterns.

- The one exception to this is that you can use it to detect flaws in yourself or your own work. (You can notice that you drew this seal blank wrong because you're intimately familiar with your own work, and it's different from how you do it. You can't do that for anybody else unless you have been making seals with them for literally decades - that's how long it takes to develop an instinctive understanding of how they do things.)

- Using this bloodline requires active exploration and observation of a living environment. You could theoretically apply it to running a spy network or other organization, but only to the extent that you had face-to-face interactions with your subordinates.

With regard to manufactured objects, it will tell you about their purpose and maybe a little of their history - how they fit into their environment, in other words. It won't tell you if they're properly made or not unless you've already built one yourself. (See the exception above.)

If you have a dozen bits of someone's personal belongings, it can tell you a little about what kind of person they are - their habits, inclinations and everyday desires. Things they care about a lot and handle often are more likely to give you useful information.

If you have a living-space kept by someone, their home, that's the best case possible. That kind of deeply-interacted-with environment can tell you about their plans, their values, and maybe, if you're lucky, even their secrets.

If you spend about a day talking with someone, or about a week observing their daily life, you can get the same kind of information a close examination of their personal belongings could give you.

If you spend about a week in close contact with someone, or a month observing their daily life, you can start getting the kind of details that their home would give you.

You can use this to "detect lies" by noticing when what someone says goes against their own nature. That doesn't strictly mean they're lying, though: it just means that if they did what they said, they had to force themselves to.

- This bloodline will not warn you of natural hazards. Avalanches, Chakra beasts, storms, sucking tar pits, and other things that are inherent parts of the environment you're in don't ping as "disturbances" to it. Notably, this means it will not detect traps that are part of established fortifications, regular guard patrols, etc. (Those traps and guards are right where they belong, thank you.)

- This bloodline will let you know what you should do. It will not give you the ability to actually do it. This is particularly relevant to the "immersing yourself in a social role" application: just because you know what you ought to be doing does not make you necessarily capable of suppressing your ninja reflexes/boiling emotions/etc.

With regard to the application to stealth, this bloodline does not make you inherently more stealthy: it just tells you when you fuck up. That means you can train for stealth faster, but if you haven't it'll just hurl a constant stream of useless criticism at you.
Infiltration specialists might be able to use it to realise when they've been detected, but that would be a specialized technique, like Roki is to the Iron Nerve.

- Seriously, you do not want to be on the front lines if you have this bloodline. I would expect you to be making Resolve rolls against shifts of mental stress whenever anybody on either side of the fight suffered a Consequence. Being in a disaster area or major battle might be outright incapacitating without use of Fate Points.

Summary edit:
This bloodline lets you ask the question "Does [fact X] fit as a natural part of [natural pattern Y]?", and get a true yes-or-no answer.

If Y is "my current environment", or "me", you are able to ask the question without spending an action and/or Fate point.
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A question that strikes me as difficult to adjudicate with this is 'When do you have enough information to make the determination?'. How much do a user need to see/know to perceive a valid pattern that they can extrapolate from, and what sorts of facts qualify? Can you apply it to hypothetical fact patterns?

For instance, say a user who's heard of the Daimyo dying suddenly in his sleep with a pronounced bloodless pallor to his skin.
  1. The user hasn't seen these facts personally, they could be wrong. Does that matter?
  2. If they are wrong and the power works anyway, does it give a wrong answer based on the false input?
  3. Can the user say 'Is this fact pattern consistent with murder?' and get an answer if the given information isn't enough to conclusively rule out natural or accidental death? (For instance if there are both poisons and diseases that could explain the unusual pallor?)
  4. If they get an answer, is the answer correct even though a human in the same situation doesn't have enough information to make a correct deduction?
I suppose in part I'm asking whether this power is like Sherlock Holmes' superpower, or if it's like asking the universe questions and getting answers.
 
faflec said:
Guys I figured out how to beat Shikamaru.
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There may be yet hidden depthts of their shadow techniques, beating even our flames of youth:
eaglejarl said:
There had been a concern at the (terribly exhausting) hour-long strategy session that Father had made him attend that perhaps Ito would bring lantern seals in order to dispel shadows and thereby render the Nara techniques 'useless' (Because of course non-Nara would feel that Nara techniques were only useful when there were extant shadows. The rest of the world lacked imagination.) which could have perhaps been challenging,
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MadScientist said:
Doesn't Ghost Scales glow, I seem to recall? Do we cast a shadow while using it?
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Methinks not using Ghost Scales (our secret armor jutsu) is a good idea for the rest of the tournament.

Keiko can just summon a pangolin.

Hazou can sneak in some chakra water, go underground and begin Operation Kamikaze Clones
 
Tua said:
Can I think of a way to get Hazou and Ami to have a dinner date on top of clouds without Skywalkers?

Not without eliminating @eaglejarl and @OliWhail so @Velorien is the only remaining QM.
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Please don't do this. There'll be nobody left to write the punching, and believe me, in the aftermath there will be punching.

Tua said:
To see people live in constant fear of a visit by the Kakero
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I originally misread this as "To see people live in constant fear of a visit by Keiko".
 
Velorien said:
Please don't do this. There'll be nobody left to write the punching, and believe me, in the aftermath there will be punching.
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Don't worry, upon further reflection this won't be necessary even as a plan B because bribery would likely work just as well. We could promise that every alternating plan that Hazou would not talk except through his fists.

Velorien said:
I originally misread this as "To see people live in constant fear of a visit by Keiko".
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Why would they do that? Keiko is positively delightful.

(Also is this a hint that you have finished writing the Ami date aftermath already?)
 
TaliesinSkye said:
A question that strikes me as difficult to adjudicate with this is 'When do you have enough information to make the determination?'. How much do a user need to see/know to perceive a valid pattern that they can extrapolate from, and what sorts of facts qualify? Can you apply it to hypothetical fact patterns?

For instance, say a user who's heard of the Daimyo dying suddenly in his sleep with a pronounced bloodless pallor to his skin.
  1. The user hasn't seen these facts personally, they could be wrong. Does that matter?
  2. If they are wrong and the power works anyway, does it give a wrong answer based on the false input?
  3. Can the user say 'Is this fact pattern consistent with murder?' and get an answer if the given information isn't enough to conclusively rule out natural or accidental death? (For instance if there are both poisons and diseases that could explain the unusual pallor?)
  4. If they get an answer, is the answer correct even though a human in the same situation doesn't have enough information to make a correct deduction?
I suppose in part I'm asking whether this power is like Sherlock Holmes' superpower, or if it's like asking the universe questions and getting answers.
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1: Yes, that matters.
2&3: The bloodline doesn't have enough information to work reliably. The relevant requirement is that you have direct experience of [Natural Pattern Y].

With the given information, you could ask "Is [the reported manner of the diamyo's death] a natural part of [his being assassinated]?"

To which the answer is "yes", regardless of whether he was assassinated or not.

To ask a better question, you would need Y to be "his life", "the current political situation", etc. Which would require that you have direct experience of those things. Note that this still isn't an absolute answer, but it can still reveal surprising truths. For example, if the political situation is unstable but you get the answer "no, it's not a natural part of the local political situation", then that could mean it was a natural death, or it could mean he was assassinated by someone outside the local political situation/for non-political reasons. Similarly, if you get the answer "no, it's not a natural part of his life", that could mean he was assassinated, or it could mean he came under some unnatural stress that made him vulnerable to illness.

4: Yes, the answer is correct even if a human in that situation would not be able to make that deduction. You do need solid premises to start from, though - it needs half-decent priors!
 
Tua said:
(Also is this a hint that you have finished writing the Ami date aftermath already?)
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I already have some promising material for the date itself (promising from a QM perspective, not promising for Hazō), but the aftermath will be at least partially in your hands. I've learned my lesson about writing great scenes of doom only to have the players treacherously vote in something sensible.
 
Velorien said:
I already have some promising material for the date itself (promising from a QM perspective, not promising for Hazō), but the aftermath will be at least partially in your hands. I've learned my lesson about writing great scenes of doom only to have the players treacherously vote in something sensible.
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@Roomba bring your A game.
 
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