Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
If they're better than you in your specialty, you're kind of fucked anyway. Aside from having good escape techniques, anyway.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
I still think that somebody should dual-class sealmaster and ninjutsu-hacker until there's a crossover and direct synergy.
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
this is true, but jutsu users can at least run away; engaging in a Taijutsu contest just opens yourself up to a kunai to the throat without being aware there's a contest
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The big advantage to jutsu is versatility. It just does so many different things that you can cover a lot more use cases than you can with just Taijutsu or just Ranged Weapons. Noburi, for instance, can use his Water Dragon Bullet jutsu to threaten multiple enemy ninja at the same time where a Taijutsu-spec could only Taijutsu against one at a time. This does include utility jutsu you don't have to level so much like Hiding Like a Mole, but if you can find a jutsu like Elemental Mastery that starts to get really strong in a unique way at higher levels then you can equip yourself to handle more kinds of situations than a straight DPS Taijutsu-spec.
So it's really a question, quite broadly, of whether you want to always roll the highest numbers in clashes or if you want to make sure you never get caught in an unfavourable situation. Pick a good jutsu suite and you can live long by virtue of not having weak points, or pick Taijutsu and let overwhelming numerical superiority win the day.
So it's really a question, quite broadly, of whether you want to always roll the highest numbers in clashes or if you want to make sure you never get caught in an unfavourable situation. Pick a good jutsu suite and you can live long by virtue of not having weak points, or pick Taijutsu and let overwhelming numerical superiority win the day.
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
hiraishin covereth a multitude of sins
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Oh, also buffs. High-level buff jutsu can bridge the XP gap pretty neatly. If you level your attack jutsu to 60 and your buff jutsu to 40, the buff jutsu was really cheap but you end up with a really strong buff to push your attack jutsu even higher.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Or you can pick sealing and make sure your taijutsu covers every option
e:
Personally, I still want a Null Chakra Zone technique that prevents all techniques from functioning, but allows seals and chakra boosting.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
It is by that merit that we outsource about half of cooking prep to it. Are there any other time-consuming things we can outsource to sealing as such?
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The rest of the cooking process.
Chewing.
Cleanup (disposal seals ho!)
Heck, just make a seal that snatches organic matter from the vicinity and puts it in our stomachs. Ain't nobody got time to actually eat.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
I meant things not likely to kill us
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Not likely to kill us!!
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Bah, fine.Not likely to kill us!!
Jiraiya has Sleep Seals. They can probably help with the nightmares.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hm. I see your point but I can't really agree. Obviously it's more expensive to level five skills (or even three skills) to level N than to level one skill to level N, but that's not an apples-to-apples comparison and isn't necessary anyway.
Let's stipulate that everyone needs to level Alertness and Athletics, so that's a wash. Let's only compare how you choose to deal damage, and we'll take Noburi and Hazō as our examples. We'll also compare only the skills themselves, not modifications, gear, etc.
| Taijutsu | Water Whip | |
| Range | -1 (melee) | 0 (whole zone) |
| XP cost | normal | normal or 1/2 normal |
| Attack action | Standard | Standard |
| Weapon Rating | 1 (Ninja Hands) | 0 |
| CP cost to activate | 0 | 38 (lasts 1 minute, i.e. longer than a fight) |
| Actions to activate | none | 1 Supplemental (has Reflexive Casting, so can cast off-turn) |
| Defend against Taijutsu? | Yes | Yes |
| Defend against Ranged? | No | Yes |
| Defend against Melee Weapons? | small or medium weapons only | Yes |
| Can you counterattack? | Yes | Yes |
| Prevents target from counterattacking? | No | Yes |
| Can use chakra boost with it? | Yes | Yes |
| Can use Vampiric Dew with it? | No | Yes (iff created from actual water; only on a grapple, not an attack) |
It is very much unclear to me why Water Whip is worse than Taijutsu. They both have pros and cons but, honestly, I think WW is probably the better option for a primary combat skill.
As to the question of jutsu spec vs taijutsu, it's the Linear Fighters / Quadratic Wizards thing. Jutsu specialists will have far more overall effectiveness, which is why there are virtually no pure physical-combat ninja in either canon!Naruto or MfD. Look at Hazō; the reason that he won his fight against Kazuzuzetsuzui was because Hazō had HLaM, PCJ, and Ghost Scales. (Pantokrator's Hammer is simply a more cost-efficient version of chakra boosting so wasn't strictly essential.)
As to the argument that a jutsu specialist will spread out across 5 skills while a taijutsu specialist will only have 1 -- first of all, that's not apples to apples. Still, even if we accept that, it's likely to end up in the favor of the jutsu spec. Superlinear costs on skills means that it's more efficient to buy (e.g.) Athletics 30 + Substitution 30 (930 XP, total dodge of 45) instead of buying Athletics 45 (1035 XP, total dodge of 45).
EDIT: Colorized and/or rephrased items on the table for clarity. Edited the first paragraph to specify that all skills needed to be raised to the same level for the comparison to hold.
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Just realized I didn't respond to this:
Your chakra is definitely low. It's much better than it was not too long ago, but bringing it up wouldn't be a bad plan. Certainly necessary if you want to learn Shadow Clone.
I'd say your career is active. You're out in the world doing things, not sitting in a lab doing research.
Short plans, you definitely win. You guys have been racking up that sweet, sweet bonus XP. We had to pull back on the scale of bonus XP in order to avoid y'all going orbital.
QM Incentives: Bleh, yes. All this...talking and drama that's been going on, ugh. And now the tournament is over, so it's only going to get worse. Hazō is going to spend all his time dealing with Ami and socializing and doing politics (ptui!). @Velorien will be deliriously happy but I shall be SadBird forevermore. Pity me, for my life is so hard. *drags wings, makes best puppy-dog eyes possible for a raptor*
That said...yes, it's a bit amazing that Hazō is still alive. There have been some really close calls.
Actually, Hazō's taijutsu is really well optimized. Dumping all the XP into it is less efficient than buying a buy of stacking bonuses such as Iron Nerve, Roki, and macerators.
Your chakra is definitely low. It's much better than it was not too long ago, but bringing it up wouldn't be a bad plan. Certainly necessary if you want to learn Shadow Clone.
I'd say your career is active. You're out in the world doing things, not sitting in a lab doing research.
Short plans, you definitely win. You guys have been racking up that sweet, sweet bonus XP. We had to pull back on the scale of bonus XP in order to avoid y'all going orbital.
QM Incentives: Bleh, yes. All this...talking and drama that's been going on, ugh. And now the tournament is over, so it's only going to get worse. Hazō is going to spend all his time dealing with Ami and socializing and doing politics (ptui!). @Velorien will be deliriously happy but I shall be SadBird forevermore. Pity me, for my life is so hard. *drags wings, makes best puppy-dog eyes possible for a raptor*
That said...yes, it's a bit amazing that Hazō is still alive. There have been some really close calls.
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
stack buffs fight gai get healed repeat
- Location
- how about no
If we could find some narratively satisfying way to spar with Gai would that be satisfying? Or would that be missing something?
You deserve to enjoy this quest more than we do considering how much effort you and your fellow QM's put into it.
E:
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Gai's always up for a spar, it appears. He was perfectly willing to spar with us all day when we were burning off our frustration from realizing Akane broke up with us. And, well, if you get totally trashed by the same guy over and over again, it'd be reasonable to start seeing them as a target.If we could find some narratively satisfying way to spar with Gai would that be satisfying? Or would that be missing something?
You deserve to enjoy this quest more than we do considering how much effort you and your fellow QM's put into it.
E:
Take the fact that Hazou's stressed and frustrated these days (though not as badly as after Akane), I don't think it would be strange at all for Hazou to try and see if he can finally land a punch on Gai, and it wouldn't be strange at all for Gai to oblige our sparring request.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'm fine with taking a weekend jaunt to hunt down Mizuki and beat him to within an inch of his life before dragging him into a cell, or dueling the Condor summoner with Gai-sensei in the sky over the open ocean with the kids primarily serving as support role, or what have you.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
First: Yes, I absolutely agree that Water Whip is comparable with Hazou's base taijutsu with gauntlets.
While I agree that my comparisons weren't apples to apples, neither are fights between ninjas. Many utility and buff techniques provide substantive benefits at low level -- as they reasonably should, for their benefit in question -- and so I cannot call them the domain of jutsu "specialists".
(I'm trying not to make this a dumb argument of definitions, to be clear: I'm just clarifying my definitions here.)
Most ninja (that live past genin, anyway) that have access to them are apt to level utility and buff techniques, but not multiple different attack techniques. That's what I'd say defines a ninjutsu specialist.
For instance, Noburi knows Water Dragon Bullet at 25, Water Whip at 40, and Syrup Trap at 30. Does that give him additional versatility? Yes, absolutely. However, my argument is that that versatility comes at the cost of XP that could be used to increase survivability by other metrics: Athletics, Alertness, raw Chakra Reserves, additional levels of Water Whip. Had he not leveled those, he could instead have Water Whip at 48, and been significantly better off against Hinata. He may not have won, but it would have been a closer match.
(And, of course, there's the underlying thought that seals can split the difference on a lot of XP-investitures: Syrup Trap is matched by Goo Bomb, which can be used by ranged weapons specialists.)
That's not to say that I think that jutsu are underpowered, of course. They're quite potent, and there's things that they can do with relative ease that seals (at least researched by anyone other than Jiraiya himself) cannot. But an explosive can cover a zone just as well as a jutsu can, and while Jiraiya has forbidden research into the arts of Summon Greater Boom, it's certainly possible to make one for multiple zones.
Modify the lifesaver seal to steadily extract disorganized organic waste within an area of effect to be explosively discharged upon destruction.
Have I mentioned how much I want the monkey scroll?
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
KAGOME: *feels justified*