Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

eaglejarl · Dec 17, 2015

dwibby said:
As far as Naruto lore is concerned, it was at least available enough by the time of the Third Shinobi World War for a Rock ninja to be skilled enough to create 20 Shadow Clones. Mizuki was trying to collect the Scroll of Seals, which contains many techniques, including the Multiple Shadow Clone technique (a forbidden variation of the normal Shadow Clone technique due to the vast amounts of chakra needed for the volume of Shadow Clones) and Uzumaki Clan's Eight Trigrams Sealing Style (a foundation of techniques like the Shiki Fūjin, and possibly a hiden, as both the First and the Fourth Hokage might be considered Uzumaki by marriage and it appears to be secret otherwise).

Rihaku said:
The Sealed Scroll has the Mass Shadow Clone Techinque, which is a kinjutsu because the chakra division kills most ninja. This is why Naruto's first combat use of Shadow Clone is Mass Shadow Clone Technique.
[...]
You guys are the GMs and can rule otherwise, but as dwibby mentions above, this is fanon. The version of Shadow Clone which is a kinjutsu is Mass Shadow Clone Technique; other countries do have Shadow Clones in canon.

I sit corrected. SC itself is not a forbidden technique, MSC is. Still, in this game SC is a technique restricted to Konoha, at least at this point in time. OOC: there may be a few high-end people who know it, but none of you have heard of it.

Silver719 · Dec 17, 2015

Could we possibly get a map of the swamp made? Even if areas of it are grayed out due to lack of exploring.

Rafin · Dec 17, 2015

Radvic said:
Constricting snake

Food? - could leave this if necessary.

Two potentially edible fish

Food? - could leave this if necessary.

Huge eel

Potentially food

Very low chance of being electric

Should leave because it's heavy.

We're 27 people. Regardless of how big the alligator is I am pretty sure that those extra food sources will be useful. I would only leave them behind if they definitely encumber us too much to be worth the risk. I mean we can always sling the eel and snakes around the crocodile and carry it in three if necessary.

Radvic said:
Have Noburi and Hazou carefully advance. Noburi uses waterwalking to gain height and uses chakra on awareness to look up and to sides. Noburi drags gator and pays attention to the ground.

Noburi both uses water-walking and drags the alligator?That seems hard to do.

Radvic said:
Use luminous green thing as a light for the cave

Whatever it is, it probably won't stay luminous for long if it isn't alive anymore. Studying it in at least a basic fashion comes first. And if we tell the jounin/chunin in detail what exactly what we want to happen with each item we may come over as obnoxious.

Radvic said:
Place dead spike fish near entrance to cave as early warning system, and propose future applications in providing mechanical energy.

Same applies to this. We can test it of course but I am pretty sure that the QMs didn't just let us fish up perpetual motion machines on this little trip. At the latest it will stop doing its spike thing when it starts to rot.

Radvic said:
-[X] At village, use time gained from dropping eel to observe first and verify village has not been wiped out while we were gone.

I don't know the sizes but if the eel doesn't make us more than ~15% slower I say we keep it. I don't expect it to be suddenly much darker in 2h18m than it would be in 2h00m.

Edit: I slightly edited my vote to mention that our report should include all the details of our mission observations.

will408914 · Dec 18, 2015

[X] Plan Return with Full Report
-[X] Note location of natural shelter on map
-[X] Have left the eel to travel to the village - it has minimal worth
-[X] At village, use time gained from dropping eel to observe first and verify village has not been wiped out while we were gone.
-[X] Provide Shikigami with a full report. Suggest the following uses for the materials we found.
-[X] Propose using the luminous green thing as a light for the cave
-[X] Propose placing dead spike fish near the entrance to the cave as an early warning system
-[X] Propose mechanical energy applications for spike fish
-[X] Propose giving poison snakes to our medical-nin in training and ask her to remove their poison and attempt to make antivenom, or preserve it to allow for future poisonings. Attempt to safely determine how poisonous it is.
-[X] Propose using Alligator skull as base for a shovel if we lack one.
-[X] Consult with Keiko before enacting plan to fix anything we missed.

I like it. Even if not all of the ideas pan out, some of them almost certainly will, and it's better to come up with more ideas than fewer. I doubt that Shikigami will be annoyed by excessive creativity, particularly since he'll want to cultivate good relations with every ninja in our "village", given how few we are.

Radvic · Dec 18, 2015

Rafin said:
We're 27 people. Regardless of how big the alligator is I am pretty sure that those extra food sources will be useful. I would only leave them behind if they definitely encumber us too much to be worth the risk. I mean we can always sling the eel and snakes around the crocodile and carry it in three if necessary.

The average American Aligator weighs 790 pounds. Assuming these aren't smaller than that (my impression is that they're larger) and assuming only 2/3 of the Aligator is edible, that's still 525 lbs of food. Without refrigeration, meat will spoil within 2 or 3 days, probably faster in a swamp. With constant strenuous excercise, people burn up to 5000-7000 calories per day. 1 lb of meat has approximately 800 calories in it, so each person who does strenuous activity all day is likely to eat about 6.25-8.75 lbs. Thus, the aligator alone is enough food to feed our entire camp for 2.2-3.1 days. I'd expect all the meat we've collected so far to spoil within that time frame. Note that these estimates are the lower limit for how much food we'd get out of the aligator as it assumes everyone is doing strenuous activity all the time, super gators are average sized, and 1/3 of it is inedible. The reasons for taking the other food at all is mostly to know more about what's in our area, and in case there's something wrong with the aligator. Obviously, this changes if we have a preservation method, but I don't think we do (it wouldn't make sense for a ninja strike team to bring salt).

Rafin said:
Noburi both uses water-walking and drags the alligator?That seems hard to do.

Indeed. That was a typo, I meant Noburi use water-walking and Hazou drag the gator. I still think it's a bad plan, just figured I'd suggest it in case someone had a refinement to it which was good.

Rafin said:
Whatever it is, it probably won't stay luminous for long if it isn't alive anymore. Studying it in at least a basic fashion comes first. And if we tell the jounin/chunin in detail what exactly what we want to happen with each item we may come over as obnoxious.

Depends on why it's lite up. If we killed it, it SHOULD have stopped providing energy to its cells within a few minutes or hours. This makes me think either it's not dead, or it's not a physically biological function, though potentially chakra related or related to the material properties of the skin. I'd assign at least a 10% probability we can use it as a rechargeable light source of some kind. At the very least it's worth attempting. On coming off as obnoxious, it's only obnoxious if we phrase it wrong horribly. If we include it as an assessment of the materials we've found and the assets we've gained, I doubt Shikigami would be upset. Most likely, I think he'd find it prudent and be happy we're contributing. He's got enough problems.

Rafin said:
Same applies to this. We can test it of course but I am pretty sure that the QMs didn't just let us fish up perpetual motion machines on this little trip. At the latest it will stop doing its spike thing when it starts to rot.

You never know. One can always dream. It almost certainly runs on chakra, so it might be rechargeable. I wonder if Noburi watering something can eventually be enough to give it chakra. Also, leaving it somewhere it's regularly activated should allow for good observation.

Rafin said:
I don't know the sizes but if the eel doesn't make us more than ~15% slower I say we keep it. I don't expect it to be suddenly much darker in 2h18m than it would be in 2h00m.

The main reason I figure we can drop the eel is that we've already got way more meat than we can eat before it goes bad, see above. Also, it should make us more combat ready if something ambushes us, and every minute counts when returning and running from sundown. Especially if you're in a swamp which requires constant vigilance. The eel seems like the thing we've gathered that's the hardest to take with the least gain.

transfuturist · Dec 18, 2015

faflec said:
@transfuturist: Could you edit your threadmarked post (character sheet) so it has Mori/Wakahisa's characters?

I'm not sure exactly what the QMs are doing with the character sheets, Velorien linked an entirely different set with the bloodlines rewritten as a copy-paste, where I was trying to summarize...

[X] Plan Note and Return
[X] Mark it on the map.
[X] Find Shikigami-sensei immediately after returning and tell him that we found something suspicious.

Rafin · Dec 18, 2015

Radvic said:
Obviously, this changes if we have a preservation method, but I don't think we do (it wouldn't make sense for a ninja strike team to bring salt).

Maybe someone has a water-jutsu to drain all liquid from a defenseless target? Honestly, we can't really assess how much that eel would encumber us or increase the risk to our lives because we (the players) can't pick it up and carry it around. I'd rather take everything by default and drop stuff if it makes sense to Keiko/our character IC.

Velorien · Dec 18, 2015

faflec said:
@transfuturist: Could you edit your threadmarked post (character sheet) so it has Mori/Wakahisa's characters? It'll be easier for people to see who everybody is.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @AugSphere @Jackercracks What is our relative chakra level right now?

Hazō and Mori are mostly full. Wakahisa has used Water Whip once, maintaining it for several minutes.

Rafin said:
@Velorien et al. Is that undead pufferfish still attached to a fishing line? If not I guess we can always spear it. I'd rather not leave it behind.

Yes. There were no volunteers to go extract it.

faflec said:
Rihaku is right, Deidara and Mahiru could use the technique in the manga (Deidara in conjunction with Suicide Bombing Clone to escape Team Kakashi/Guy during the Rescue Gaara Arc; Mahiru as sentries that Kakashi killed during the Kakashi Gaiden Arc).

However, those were the only two non-Leaf users (at least in manga canon), as contrasted with quite a few Leaf ones, and both came from the same village (Hidden Rock).

As a point of interest, we never receive confirmation that Deidara's technique is the Shadow Clone Technique. In both instances when a clone is exploded in the series, we don't get to see its original creation, and the clone doesn't do anything *other* than explode.

As for Mahiru, I'm filing that firmly under "why, Kishimoto, why?!", especially given the fact that Mahiru was apparently a jōnin capable of making twenty shadow clones, but got almost defeated by a nine-year-old (or possibly a thirteen-year-old, depending on which timeline calculation you follow).

transfuturist said:
I'm not sure exactly what the QMs are doing with the character sheets, Velorien linked an entirely different set with the bloodlines rewritten as a copy-paste, where I was trying to summarize...

You have edit access, so feel free to make any necessary corrections. These were just quick sheets to have on hand so I could figure out the next post without trawling through the forums and getting lost between various concept and in-progress versions.

chaonaut · Dec 18, 2015

Velorien said:
As for Mahiru, I'm filing that firmly under "why, Kishimoto, why?!", especially given the fact that Mahiru was apparently a jōnin capable of making twenty shadow clones, but got defeated by a nine-year-old (or possibly a thirteen-year-old, depending on which timeline calculation you follow).

This is one of the things that I've spent far too much time researching, and I came to the conclusion that Kakashi entered and graduated the Academy with everyone else. He's visible at the end of the Academy entrance ceremony with an entrance packet, and all of Team Minato participates in the chūnin exam where Kakashi makes chūnin. Since the databooks lists Kakashi and Obito as the same age, and Rin and Obito as graduating at age 9, I figure wartime Academy is from ages 6 to 9, and peacetime is 6 to 12. Kakashi was a genius in that he managed jōnin as quickly as he did, and possibly also entering the Academy at 5 instead of 6 (I haven't done the calcs on birthdays to figure that one out), but his rise to high ability doesn't seem to be as fast in the manga as the databooks described.

As for Mahiru, Kakashi was also a freshly-minted 13-year old jōnin at the time of Kakashi Gaiden, so it might not be as horribly lopsided as it might seems, but it's still a fairly notable achievement to take down 17 opponents at 1/20th of a seasoned jōnin's ability. Even if said jōnin may have been a bit more concerned about the flee-on-sight weapon of mass destruction standing nearby.

Orisha91 · Dec 18, 2015

Changing my vote to Radvic's.
It's very thorough and comprehensive. Plus it puts everything we came across into good use somehow even not some things might not pan out.

[X] Plan Return with Full Report
-[X] Note location of natural shelter on map
-[X] Have left the eel to travel to the village - it has minimal worth
-[X] At village, use time gained from dropping eel to observe first and verify village has not been wiped out while we were gone.
-[X] Provide Shikigami with a full report. Suggest the following uses for the materials we found.
-[X] Propose using the luminous green thing as a light for the cave
-[X] Propose placing dead spike fish near the entrance to the cave as an early warning system
-[X] Propose mechanical energy applications for spike fish
-[X] Propose giving poison snakes to our medical-nin in training and ask her to remove their poison and attempt to make antivenom, or preserve it to allow for future poisonings. Attempt to safely determine how poisonous it is.
-[X] Propose using Alligator skull as base for a shovel if we lack one.
-[X] Consult with Keiko before enacting plan to fix anything we missed.

Walkin' Man · Dec 18, 2015

[X] Plan Note and Return

chaonaut · Dec 18, 2015

Radvic's thinking seems sound enough. I'll toss my vote behind it for now.

[X] Plan Return with Full Report
-[X] Note location of natural shelter on map
-[X] Have left the eel to travel to the village - it has minimal worth
-[X] At village, use time gained from dropping eel to observe first and verify village has not been wiped out while we were gone.
-[X] Provide Shikigami with a full report. Suggest the following uses for the materials we found.
-[X] Propose using the luminous green thing as a light for the cave
-[X] Propose placing dead spike fish near the entrance to the cave as an early warning system
-[X] Propose mechanical energy applications for spike fish
-[X] Propose giving poison snakes to our medical-nin in training and ask her to remove their poison and attempt to make antivenom, or preserve it to allow for future poisonings. Attempt to safely determine how poisonous it is.
-[X] Propose using Alligator skull as base for a shovel if we lack one.
-[X] Consult with Keiko before enacting plan to fix anything we missed.

Traiden · Dec 18, 2015

Agreed Radvic's plan has my support as well.

[X] Plan Return with Full Report
-[X] Note location of natural shelter on map
-[X] Have left the eel to travel to the village - it has minimal worth
-[X] At village, use time gained from dropping eel to observe first and verify village has not been wiped out while we were gone.
-[X] Provide Shikigami with a full report. Suggest the following uses for the materials we found.
-[X] Propose using the luminous green thing as a light for the cave
-[X] Propose placing dead spike fish near the entrance to the cave as an early warning system
-[X] Propose mechanical energy applications for spike fish
-[X] Propose giving poison snakes to our medical-nin in training and ask her to remove their poison and attempt to make antivenom, or preserve it to allow for future poisonings. Attempt to safely determine how poisonous it is.
-[X] Propose using Alligator skull as base for a shovel if we lack one.
-[X] Consult with Keiko before enacting plan to fix anything we missed.

Radvic · Dec 18, 2015

Rafin said:
Maybe someone has a water-jutsu to drain all liquid from a defenseless target? Honestly, we can't really assess how much that eel would encumber us or increase the risk to our lives because we (the players) can't pick it up and carry it around. I'd rather take everything by default and drop stuff if it makes sense to Keiko/our character IC.

Yep, those are possibilities, though I don't think we have strong reason to think they're likely, this is why we ask Keiko before enacting on the plan. If there's food preservation, the ~30 lbs of eel meat is possibly worth it. If Keiko says the eel doesn't encumber us much and we won't gain time by dropping it, then we take it. If ninja have a method of preserving food on the go, she should know that too, and then we can take the eel at the encumbrance cost. Ultimately, our number 1 priority is not dying on the way back to the village. I'm inclined to settle for 30 lbs less of spoiling food for a few more minutes of daylight, which substantially increases our chances. Also might allow us to determine if Zabuza's wrecked the place or not.

Rihaku · Dec 18, 2015

Mechanics Questions
@AugSphere @Velorien @eaglejarl @Jackercracks

1. In the last update, surprise was contested as Alligator vs Mori's Awareness. In the event of a surprise attack, is the attacker not required to beat the Awareness of all parties present? Or would the Alligator have checked against us if Mori had failed? I know Hazou and Waka were busy at the time, but given that "target is asleep and a civilian" only provides a +3 bonus to enemy Stealth, I can't imagine being occupied with a moderately demanding task to be more than -1, if a penalty at all? I really hope Awareness doesn't only work if you're explicitly keeping watch, that does not seem to be realistic or consistent with Naruto ninja feats.

2. Will our characters use chakra to boost their dice pools instinctively when confronted with stronger opponents? It makes sense not to waste chakra against an enemy with only a 3-die defense pool, but will we have to specify "use chakra boost against stronger/equal enemies" in future plans? Mechanically speaking, chakra boosting our primary attack pool gets us to 7 dice from 5, which is a huge bonus.

3. Now that we've encountered an alligator through the sober eyes of being non-exhausted and at full chakra, what does Hazou rate his chances as, against one in straight combat? It looks like it's fighting with a dicepool of 3 against Hazou's natural dicepool of 5 / peak dicepool of 7, which should result in something like this. I understand if the surprise bonus may have made the alligator more threatening, but I can't imagine it would overcome a gulf of potentially 4 dice, given that even a +2 dice bonus is supposed to be huge - a genin might surprise a chunin, but the chunin would likely still dispatch him handily. That's very much not to say that I think the alligator's dice pool was inappropriate, since you guys designed the world before we made any characters and that world would be survivable for the average chargen genin, not only our combat monster.

I imagine individual alligators might have different dicepools, how big is this one compared to the biggest we've seen?

4. What is Waka's drain rate at Vampire Dew level 2? I know his previous level 1 drain-rate was 1 chakra a minute (is that per-target or total, btw?). Since he knows Water Condensation as well, we should be topped off anytime we get downtime of more than an hour, since that only takes 5 minutes and a bit of chakra for 4 doses, compared to his drain rate of 60+ chakra / hour.

WanderingAirhead · Dec 18, 2015

[X] Plan Note and Return

Silver719 · Dec 18, 2015

[X] Plan Return with Full Report
-[X] Note location of natural shelter on map
-[X] Have left the eel to travel to the village - it has minimal worth
-[X] At village, use time gained from dropping eel to observe first and verify village has not been wiped out while we were gone.
-[X] Provide Shikigami with a full report. Suggest the following uses for the materials we found.
-[X] Propose using the luminous green thing as a light for the cave
-[X] Propose placing dead spike fish near the entrance to the cave as an early warning system
-[X] Propose mechanical energy applications for spike fish
-[X] Propose giving poison snakes to our medical-nin in training and ask her to remove their poison and attempt to make antivenom, or preserve it to allow for future poisonings. Attempt to safely determine how poisonous it is.
-[X] Propose using Alligator skull as base for a shovel if we lack one.
-[X] Consult with Keiko before enacting plan to fix anything we missed.

You've got my vote

Icehawk78 · Dec 18, 2015

My only concern with the more detailed plan is that it includes carrying much more than just the windgator, including at least one thing that will be trailing along behind us on a line, which seems like it would be inviting further attack from other flora/fauna.

Whether that's more/less than us traipsing through the swamp on foot is harder to say.

Silver719 · Dec 18, 2015

Icehawk78 said:
My only concern with the more detailed plan is that it includes carrying much more than just the windgator, including at least one thing that will be trailing along behind us on a line, which seems like it would be inviting further attack from other flora/fauna.

Whether that's more/less than us traipsing through the swamp on foot is harder to say.

Think of it this way; if anything DOES attack, they'll go for the dead thing being drug on a line instead of the three very much alive genin.

Icehawk78 · Dec 18, 2015

Silver719 said:
Think of it this way; if anything DOES attack, they'll go for the dead thing being drug on a line instead of the three very much alive genin.

I'm actually more thinking about this in a manner similar to my cats.

Carrying a laptop around my house has a very low probability of them trying to pounce on me.

Carrying a laptop around my house with the power cable dragging on the ground behind me has a very high probability of them trying to pounce on me.

faflec · Dec 18, 2015

Icehawk78 is right, there's no reason to increase the odds of something finding our general area in exchange for them not immediately attacking us. If it does miss us there's nothing stopping it from attacking us next.

Is there any reason we're dragging anything behind us instead of stacking it ontop of the gator?

Icehawk78 · Dec 18, 2015

faflec said:
Is there any reason we're dragging anything behind us instead of stacking it ontop of the gator?

I was assuming if we brought back the undead blowfish, since it was mentioned that it was still on a fishing line, that we would need to be dragging it behind us. I'm not certain if we can get it safely stacked on top of the gator, and my assumption is that we don't want to risk possibly cutting/poisoning ourselves without a field medic nearby.

Radvic · Dec 18, 2015

Icehawk78 said:
My only concern with the more detailed plan is that it includes carrying much more than just the windgator, including at least one thing that will be trailing along behind us on a line, which seems like it would be inviting further attack from other flora/fauna.

Whether that's more/less than us traipsing through the swamp on foot is harder to say.

Keep in mind that it's on a line because it has an automated defense system. Swamp creatures should know that and avoid it. If they don't, then they get 2 foot long spikes through their mouth, which seems good for us. Also, we're dragging an aligator. I doubt other things we do will add or subtract much from our stealth. We're relying on awareness for safety at this point.

That said, if we want, we can use waterwhip to put it and other materials on the gator (heaviest thing on top, held down by waterwhip), then approach it and make the undead blowfish spear through all the materials with the automated spikes. Note that I'm not confident this would work (depends on strength of scales of materials - we'd certainly need to prep the aligator scales, explosive force and sharpness of spikes, and carfully ensuring the whole contraption doesn't go flying), it would cost us chakra and time, and would degrade the quality of the materials we brought back (food rots faster with holes, we might puncture the venom sacks of the snakes etc.).

faflec · Dec 18, 2015

Note of funny: We should throw the pufferfish at the next enemy we see.

ClawClawBite · Dec 18, 2015

Question: how good is our heng? In particular, is it good enough to heng into a spy glass and let someone else use it to take a closer look at the suspicious place without getting closer?

There needs to be more useful applicarions of this classic wonder twins power past the 'I am a knife, throw me.'

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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