Problem is, if we need to have our jutsu be primary-combat-stat level to see the advantage, it's just never gonna be worth it. No amount of type advantage is going to make running multiple primary combat stats at once viable, which means we just won't do it.
Personally I don't think lowering the cost is the way to go if we want to reconcile mechanics and narrative. Rather, I think the thing that's lacking is the appeal/reward in having a second element.
Introduce a lot of multi-element jutsu, and the more elements a jutsu requires the more powerful/useful/flexible it is, compared to the best fewer-element jutsu of the same level? So, e. g., a five-element level-ten equivalent of WDB is about as good offensively as a level-forty vanilla WDB and it has some additional functionality?
Or just lean into the multi-functionality, with a many-elements jutsu being effectively equivalent to casting several one-element ones at the same time?
My worry there is that trying to enact the advantages on that level, well, it sounds like a huge headache to balance around. Astronomical. Having to keep track of what chakra natures you've used this fight is still additional bookkeeping but is relatively simple and tidy to keep track of, in comparison.
Introduce a lot of multi-element jutsu, and the more elements a jutsu requires the more powerful/useful/flexible it is, compared to the best fewer-element jutsu of the same level? So, e. g., a five-element level-ten equivalent of WDB is about as good offensively as a level-forty vanilla WDB and it has some additional functionality?
Or just lean into the multi-functionality, with a many-elements jutsu being effectively equivalent to casting several one-element ones at the same time?
I think there's something like that going on with, say, Swamp of the Underworld, but that also puts a sort of softcap on it. If a two-element jutsu is the kind of super-rare thing fit for an S-Ranker, it's not going to be the standard incentive for Joe Chuunin to pick up a second element, and there's not going to be a four or five element jutsu to strive towards.
I think there's something like that going on with, say, Swamp of the Underworld, but that also puts a sort of softcap on it. If a two-element jutsu is the kind of super-rare thing fit for an S-Ranker, it's not going to be the standard incentive for Joe Chuunin to pick up a second element, and there's not going to be a four or five element jutsu to strive towards.
How much of the jutsu-space is already nailed down by the narrative? Can it be reworked off-screen to suit, with there suddenly having always been many rare multi-element jutsu that most ninja are orienting their careers to get access to, and with some extant S-rank jutsu like SotU reworked into three/four-element jutsu?
Or, a different tack, make acquiring a new element improve your abilities across the board in some way, flavour-texted as "improving chakra control" or "learning to better focus the elemental energies by being able to differentiate them better". That'd boost the effective CR, or improve the stats of any jutsu you cast, something along these lines. (I haven't paid any attention to this discourse before this very moment, so apologies if I'm restating something that's already been considered and rejected.)
My worry there is that trying to enact the advantages on that level, well, it sounds like a huge headache to balance around. Astronomical. Having to keep track of what chakra natures you've used this fight is still additional bookkeeping but is relatively simple and tidy to keep track of, in comparison.
This may or may not address your concern but you can bake it directly into the jutsu. Like, a mediocre defensive earth jutsu gives a +5 against water attacks in addition to whatever it does normally, a good one gives +10, and so on. Or it gives other benefits, like "stress from water attacks is halved", stuff along those lines. Incorporating it into the jutsu makes it easier to keep track of regarding balance and such.
This may or may not address your concern but you can bake it directly into the jutsu. Like, a mediocre defensive earth jutsu gives a +5 against water attacks in addition to whatever it does normally, a good one gives +10, and so on. Or it gives other benefits, like "stress from water attacks is halved", stuff along those lines. Incorporating it into the jutsu makes it easier to keep track of regarding balance and such.
To quantify...maybe give a number of tags equal to the jutsu's AB, that the caster can use to boost whatever skill they need to gtfo? It would make a higher-level elemental ninjutsu more powerful against a weaker element so I dunno how that fits into the narrative.
To quantify...maybe give a number of tags equal to the jutsu's AB, that the caster can use to boost whatever skill they need to gtfo? It would make a higher-level elemental ninjutsu more powerful against a weaker element so I dunno how that fits into the narrative.
Sounds way too strong to me for every jutsu to have that. That's like making every jutsu flame aura basically. I could see there being really good, A-Rank defensive jutsu that do this though.
EDIT: I guess it depends on how big the QMs want the elemental superiority gap to be. For instance, think about what MEW can already do, including granting a tag. So MEW 50 would grant 7 tags total. 7×6 would be a +42, so you'd be blocking water ninjutsu rolling at 92, with a 50 stat. If this also applied to better jutsu that have better defensive capabilities than MEW the bonuses would be huge.
Or, a different tack, make acquiring a new element improve your abilities across the board in some way, flavour-texted as "improving chakra control" or "learning to better focus the elemental energies by being able to differentiate them better". That'd boost the effective CR, or improve the stats of any jutsu you cast, something along these lines. (I haven't paid any attention to this discourse before this very moment, so apologies if I'm restating something that's already been considered and rejected.)
This seems a pretty good idea. It also explains why EJounin and above obtain more elements. Because while a Chuunin prefer upgrading stats directly, a Jounin with already high stats would go for Element+Shinies. Then you upthe price and possibly the bonus the more elements you have.
Of course the upgrade must not be so good that everyone would go for the elements ASAP(Aside from ninjutsu spec) but not bad enough that a Ejounin wouldn't care.
Maybe CR? A genin/Chuunin doesn't care about CR, because they don't cast jutsu, but an EJounins cares, because it has an expensive kit.
Hazō couldn't decide what terrified him more about his situation. Was it the many recognisably human bones littering the floor of the cavern in which he found himself? The other, warped bones which looked like they belonged to particularly deadly chakra beasts? The sign on the wall, reading "Warning: biosealing experimentation zone. Trespassers will be volunteered"?
No, trick question. It was, of course, Mori Ami, cheerfully beckoning him deeper into all of the above with the hand not holding an ominously flickering torch.
"C'mon, Hazō. Daylight's burning."
"Ami, we are heading inside a cave," Hazō pointed out.
"Hey," Ami said, "you really want to be walking home through the Forest of Really Quite Significant Peril on your own after dark, be my guest. Completely unrelatedly, did you know that the Greater Dropbear can bite through a human spine three times in under a second?"
"And yet you're leading me to a cave littered with bones."
"Mmm. Borrowed them from a chakra bear cave a few kilometres thataway. Probably a chakra bear—I didn't exactly wait for it to come back. Proper showmanship requires props—it's in the name—and you should've seen your face in the moment before the 'Oh, wait, it's just Ami' realisation hit."
Hazō gave a mock sigh. "Welcome back, Ami. I was just thinking my daily life was getting too sane."
"You know it." Ami grinned.
The cave which served as their destination at the end of a long, sloping tunnel had not been optimised for intimidation. It was small and in fact quite cosy, and even more so after Ami unsealed some large cushions and strewed them liberally across the ground.
"So, what news from the west?" Hazō asked, picking out a deep blue cushion which left his back close to the wall, with a clear view of the entrance. "Have the Powers that Be signed off on world peace or do I need to be rushing back to get to work on my next paradigm-changing superweapon?"
"Yes," Ami said helpfully.
Hazō didn't let her get away with that, and let the disapproving silence speak for him.
Ami's smile widened a little. She sat down on a pink cushion by his side.
"They've got as far as 'war bad for profit'. 'Peace good' might be a little too sophisticated for them right now, but by this time next year, they should be seeing enough return on the massive investment of not punching each other in the face to realise it's worth their while to keep going. I maybe wouldn't tempt the Seventh with any city-killers you might have up your sleeve while the ink's still wet, but it also might not hurt to have a Plan B in case the Tsuchikage snaps and decides that avenging her beloved husband takes priority."
"It's amazing how informative that answer is while technically not answering my question at all," Hazō noted.
"I aim to please," Ami said. "You should've been there, Hazō. It was a wild ride. The most powerful men and women in the world, bickering like six-year-old girls each claiming ownership of the same straw doll. You and I both know that me weaselling my way into the Convenor role was about seventy percent shameless power grab, but in retrospect, we should all be glad those people had a neutral moderator with experience raising an actual six-year-old girl and a gift for being whoever the situation needed her to be.
"I may be boasting, because I've totally earned it, but I'm not exaggerating," she added. "We had a panicking Tsuchikage trying to massage Cloud into forming a bloc, and Killer B and Grandmaster F using weird poetry and religious bullshit to sidestep everything. Let me tell you, taken alone those two are just larger-than-life personalities with larger-than-life flaws to match—think Tsunade—but when they work together, they're an adamantine wall with zero openings. I got chills.
"We had Elder Takahashi flirting with the Kazekage on multiple levels while playing all the sides off against each other like a pro. We had Lord Utakata trying to be the one sane man and getting talked over because he's got a quiet temperament and a lack of political experience, and then Lady Fu shouting down men three times her size and age until they listened to him. I don't know whether that's jinchūriki solidarity or overtures to an alliance or opposites attracting in the first steps of a romance for the ages, but it was hella awesome and also made my job a lot easier.
"Seriously, I have stories for days, except that most of them are classified because the Hokage wants to be the one to make all the cool announcements—for which I can't blame him. After the fiasco of the war, that man badly needs to bring home a win, whereas my awesomeness goes without saying."
"That doesn't stop you from saying it at every opportunity," Hazō said, but with a touch of affection.
Ami shrugged. "If I stop reminding myself how awesome I am, my ambition might start flagging, and without my ambition, I'm just a smarter, sexier, less sane Anko. But enough about me—for now. I hear you've just come back from a trip abroad yourself. Regale me with tales of your wacky adventures."
Hazō considered regaling Ami with tales of his wacky adventures. In her own way, Ami had more faith in him than anyone else: she'd taken it for granted that he was researching immortality back when the Daizen gate and Project Necromancy were but dreams as yet unseen, and fully expected him to succeed (in her ambiguously-joking Ami way). Kei and Shikamaru had a lot to learn from her.
At the same time, Ami was near the top of the list of people who could find powerful applications for this information that Hazō might not necessarily want. Better to play it safe. He could share Project Necromancy any time he decided it was a good idea, whereas it would be too late for second thoughts once the octocat was out of the bag.
"Just early-stages research," he told her. "Nothing worth sharing yet."
"Yet another summoning scroll? Blowing up uninhabited Kanashii islands with weapons tests? Or did Hidan drop some clues about secrets left over on Nagi Island?"
Hazō gave her his best confused look. "Why would Hidan tell me something?"
Wait, no. Mistake. Bad mistake. Rookie mistake. That was way too specific for a blind guess, meaning Ami already knew something and was testing him—and he'd failed and also would now need a new Iron Nerve confused face now that Ami knew he used this one to lie.
Unless, of course, it was all about Nagi and she'd just thrown in Hidan because out of the two Akatsuki Hazō had had contact with, he was the one who wanted to murder Hazō less. There was no way to know.
Dammit, Ami.
"I'll let you off the hook," Ami told him a tense couple of seconds later, "as the bondage queen said to the lost telescope salesman. I got to chatting with Hoshigaki Kisame at the Exam—which was terrifying, but if these are the leagues I'm playing in now, I can't turn down opportunities for low-stakes practice. In between catching him up on Mist news and treating him like a proper Hoshigaki, something for which he'd been starved over a decade of Akatsuki shark jokes, I dropped a little tidbit about a Sage-made 3D seal on the Seventh Path, and Dragons, and how Gōketsu Hazō, the skywalker guy, was the person to talk to if anyone wanted to know more. And wouldn't you know it, he'd already heard all about you."
Hazō swallowed. "He had?"
"You never told me you were a Jashin priest in training. Apparently, Hidan won't stop boasting about how he's finally got an apprentice who's survived multiple tests and managed to earn Jashin's favour even before his first massacre. You know, I really thought it would be that other thing that put you on the S-rank track, but hey, you do you."
"Were there a lot of people involved in this conversation?" Hazō asked very carefully.
"Nah," Ami said. "I wasn't going to let another uncertain factor into the mix when Hoshigaki alone could bite me in half if I said one wrong word. That said, I would start thinking damage control, because it sounds like right now Hidan's social circle being more of a line is the only thing standing between you and a trial for heresy."
Hazō weighed his next words very carefully. He did not want to risk alienating Ami or Jashin (and there was room for heated theological debate over which was more dangerous).
"I am not a Jashin priest in training," Hazō said. "Hidan descended on me out of nowhere and I did what anyone would do when a homicidal demigod says he wants something from you, and I suppose I made a good impression. Also, Asuma knows, and he would not be happy if anyone started talking about it without his permission."
"Mmm," Ami said meditatively. "If there's one thing I love about you, Gōketsu Hazō, it's that you never let things get boring. Which is why I really hate that I have to do this."
Hazō tensed as Ami rose from her seat.
However, she merely moved to a lavender cushion a little further away from him.
Something about the atmosphere shifted, as if the playfulness had been a breeze and now the air was still and heavy. Hazō wasn't sure if he was still dealing with the same Ami, but at the very least, she'd stopped smiling.
"So," she said. "I'm going to try to do this without my superpowers, which, you should be aware, is much—actually, never mind. Kurosawa."
Kurosawa. Hazō didn't know exactly what Ami was trying to suppress. Her I&S training? Her general jōnin social skills? The Frozen Skein? Whatever undefinable phenomenon made Ami... well, Ami? Either way, he knew what she meant. The Iron Nerve wasn't even second nature to him. It was first nature, the way he lived every hour of the day, and suppressing it was like holding his breath. It was uncomfortable and it interfered with absolutely everything else. It made him feel clumsy, awkward, out of place. It made him feel not-him, even though it was technically his true, non-playback self.
Why would Ami, who took enormous pride in her uniqueness, do that to herself?
"Watching those six-year-old girls," she began, "made me think about some things. The path I was on. Some choices I'd made."
She shifted uncomfortably in her cushion. She wasn't looking at Hazō directly.
"You remember how I freaked out and threatened Mari and you and the Gōketsu?"
"I can't exactly forget," Hazō said.
"I lost control," Ami admitted. "You probably don't get what a big deal it is, from the inside, but it is. Control, freedom, and fun. Those are me. Knowing I lost control is..." She shook her head.
"I don't regret wanting to protect Kei over everything else," she said. "And there was a part of me, figuratively speaking, that tried to run damage control, and I don't regret that it did. But the whole thing... It wasn't Mori Ami. It wasn't what Mori Ami should have wanted to do.
"I don't just mean that it was a self-contradicting mess from an efficiency perspective, though that should have been enough of a red flag. I mean..."
She broke off.
Hazō opened his mouth.
She raised her hand. "Don't interrupt. This thing is hard and I want momentum. I'll tell you when you can talk.
"Mori Ami wasn't supposed to pick a fight with the Gōketsu. We're sometimes allies and sometimes rivals, and that's partly a KEI thing and partly various other things, but I have individual bonds with people in your clan. You, Noburi, Akane, Yuno, even, maybe, especially Mari... I could have played it any other way than 'Ami versus the Gōketsu'. I could have negotiated with Mari. I could have asked you to use clan head authority. I could have... No, I guess it doesn't matter anymore.
"I lost control, and I hurt people that... How do I even translate this?
"Ugh," she said after a few seconds. "Never mind. It's not a priority. What I'm trying to say is, I regret the choices I made, and if I had another chance, I'd make different ones. I think... that's what an apology means to Mori Ami.
"I'm sorry."
She bowed her head.
"You can talk now."
Now if only Hazō knew what to say. He wouldn't call himself an expert, but he'd met a number of different Amis now, and was probably more used to their foibles than most people not named Kei. This one, however, he had no idea what to do with.
Ami didn't show weakness, not for real. She didn't let people see the workings of her mind, or when she did, it was to show off the parts that looked best while obscuring anything that could be used to understand her. And ultimately, she did not apologise, not in a way that would be recognisable as a sincere apology by a normal person.
This Ami did.
Of course, despite everything, Hazō had already chosen his answer.
"I forgive you," he said. "That hasn't changed."
She shook her head.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me. This isn't... transactional. I'm not trying to balance the scales. There are my actions, and there are the consequences, and forgiveness doesn't change them. I just think that it's important for me to tell you that... your feelings and the bonds between us have weight to me. I regret acting in a way that disregarded it. That's it."
Hazō nodded mutely, still processing.
"That was the easy part," Ami said. "This feels awful. I don't know how you people do it over and over."
"The trick is making lots of mistakes," Hazō explained seriously. "I know your parents thought you were the second coming of the Sage, so if you count the head start I got just from apologising to Mum..."
"That's not what I meant," Ami said. "You should stop talking again."
Hazō stopped talking, and just watched Ami in silence for a while as she thought.
"When I was in Grass," she said, "I thought about the path I was on. I'd spent a year dithering between two options. Or... a blurry spectrum of options I couldn't really understand, and an option that was the other one. I made a choice, finally. But then I went to Grass, and I looked back, and I realised I didn't like my choice, and I didn't like where I thought it would take me.
"There's a lot I'm not going to unpack now. I'm prioritising accuracy, because that's what sincerity means to me, but the Frozen Skein won't work for this, and my normal self-expression is optimised for other things, and frankly, I don't have the data and this is all inferential work. I'd skip right to the end if I could, but there's nothing there that's solid enough without context.
"Kei's grown so much, Hazō," Ami said seemingly a propos of nothing. "She has new strengths, new values, new goals... She's redefined what I thought was possible for her. I no longer know where she can go or what she can become.
"I looked at myself, playing with the six-year-old girls, and I saw where I was going. I'd learn the strengths I needed to match their weaknesses. I'd reshape the world as I liked, and they'd be too short-sighted to stop me before they became irrelevant. I'd complete the master plan and then find something even more fun to do. I'd get ever more skilled, and ever more brilliant... and that's it.
"My little sister would surpass me in everything else. She has no idea what she can do yet. Her time started when she left Mist, while..."
Ami rose abruptly. "No. I can't do this. Sorry, Hazō."
Hazō, too well-versed in the ways of Mori girls storming off and how it invariably made things worse, did something one should absolutely never do to a jōnin, much less an armed, distressed jōnin, and grabbed her by the sleeve as she turned towards the exit.
"Ami," he said. "I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but you're doing it. Successfully. Just take your time."
Ami stood there for a while, thinking. Eventually, she went for a pale blue cushion a little closer to him.
"I don't know if I can be as incredible as Kei," she said. "Probably not. But in a choice between being like them but better and being like her... suddenly I start wondering what's on the other path, even though I know I can't understand it. I start wondering if I can still take a step back, to the branching point.
"Other people don't compartmentalise as much as I do. I get that. I hate Mari for taking Kei from me, and I love her for helping Kei grow when I couldn't, and I love her for guiding me further along my path, and I hate her for guiding me further along my path, and she is a glorious rival and an excellent lover and a dangerous threat and a powerful teacher and a gifted apprentice and a formidable obstacle, and all of these things and a thousand more are all true at the same time. They don't turn into some kind of homogeneous soup of 'Here is the aggregate feeling I have about this person'.
"But that's me. For the Gōketsu, the soup is always going to have a hefty seasoning of 'Ami threatened to kill us all'. That's a consequence of my actions. Mari certainly hasn't been hiding the aggregate feeling she has about me.
"I don't know if I've burned the bridge back to the branching point. I'm not the one who gets to decide that. I don't know if the other branch has control, freedom, and fun, or if trying to be someone I'm not will leave me melting into no one at all. I don't know anything, and it's the worst feeling ever. I just have this new fear that when she gets to the end, Omnikage Ami will look back and regret taking a path that just made her more Ami instead of a path that made her more Kei."
Hazō didn't know if she'd burned the bridge either. He didn't know how much he could or should trust Ami, not just because of the most recent conflict, but because... well, Ami. There were so many facets to his relationship with her, and so many ways in which their lives influenced each other—not just directly, but via Kei, the KEI, the unpredictable tectonic shifts of Uplift and AMITY, and their general escalating impact on Leaf and the world—that, whatever Ami thought, he could never boil it down to a single flavour of soup.
And then there were the other Gōketsu. Kagome-sensei considered Ami one wrong move away from being a crater, and contingencies be damned. Mari was opaque on the subject of Ami, but she didn't have a history of reacting positively to death threats, or indeed threats to her family. The others seemed more sanguine, but if they were anything like him, they would be nursing complicated feelings of their own. If Hazō decided to welcome Ami with open arms, his clan head authority was final, but what would it mean for his existing family?
"That was horrible beyond words," Ami said firmly, "and I am never doing it again."
She took a swig from a flask he hadn't seen her pull out. "Ugh, this stuff is also horrible beyond words when you take it cold. Though I suppose you already know that."
She stood up, and Hazō followed her.
"Ami," he said, because while he had no idea where to go from here, he absolutely couldn't leave a confession like that without a response, "I think—"
Ami held up her hand again.
"I didn't say you could talk again."
Hazō gave her a quizzical look.
"Sorry," she said softly," but could we walk back without talking, just this once?"
He helped her gather the cushions, though she left the bones and the sign in place.
I have no idea what to make of any of that, especially in the context of having expected this update to cover an introduction to recently-adopted Goketsu chuunin.
...we're sure that was Ami and not three chuunin in an overcoat, right?
It's nice to know that AMITY has some momentum, that Kisame is relatively sane, and that Ami understands she screwed up pretty bad. It's even nicer that she didn't poke us about FOOM.
With no further ado...
This plan has 3-ish scenes (Noburi could be punted but probably not moved offscreen) and it's been relatively thoroughly vetted already. The title is also exactly ten words.
[X] Action Plan: Should We Be Worried EJ Said This Meeting Sounded Fun?
Word Count: <300
(offscreen?) Get caught up on what we've missed.
MARI, AMITY, other acronyms/goings-on.
Catch up with family/friends. Spend time with Harumitsu.
Noburi:
Goal: confirm Noburi's intentions re: high-level training plan.
Tone: fully supportive, respecting his agency.
You want to learn Earth Element, medicine, jutsu - in that order? What's the priority?
Could you teach Toads MARI until you have Earth Element? (Joking: Noburi's Great Toad Road?)
Confirm it's appropriate to update Asuma/talk to Naruto. How can we optimize our approach?
Don't break OPSEC talking to Mari.
Asuma:
Update him on our breakthrough, and theory that the seal molds onto chakra systems.
May we continue investigating this? We hope to (eventually) make our findings available to Leaf's (cleared) sealmasters.
May we discuss this with Naruto? It's part of his legacy.
May ask Naruto about studying his seal, if/when it's necessary?
Strictly observation. Only what's necessary to confirm our theories. Nothing that could disrupt the seal.
We're asking you as the Hokage and someone who knows Naruto well.
Naruto:
Give an update on studying the rift.
If permitted, share Minato's notes/poetry.
We imagine he's already read them, but we have memories of our Dad doing romantic things for our Mom. Marginalia isn't the same, but if our Dad kept a journal or something, we'd want to read through it and feel close to him.
Explain the poetry contains instructions/notes.
Explain our chakra system theory.
Could be the critical insight in fixing the Great Seal/opening the Rift. Minato was a genius.
Feel him out on eventually studying his seal.
Tread very lightly - we don't need to do this anytime soon.
Leave it unless it seems likely to be well-received.
Ami knows how much they fucked up. They see Kei's personal growth, and wonder if they can emulate that. They're wondering if it's too late for them.
Ami is wondering if she made the wrong decision, to become the kind of person she was, and it's terrifying.
I want to foster her personal growth, and support her through the difficult change that she is both terrified and eager to make.
Ami was, at the end, too vulnerable, too fragile, for a Hazou-style insightful observation, or a Hazou-style Foot-in-Mouth. I want to help her, but don't know how. Not yet, anyway. I'll think on it.
I have no idea what to make of any of that, especially in the context of having expected this update to cover an introduction to recently-adopted Goketsu chuunin.
In the end, spoons rule over us all, and Ami has a tendency to write herself whereas I was struggling to figure out how to make a chūnin introduction sufficiently interesting.
"If your highest level skill has Aspect Bonus N, you must have at least 2 stats at AB N-1, 3 stats at AB N-2, and so on."
This means that you must have a full pyramid beneath your highest AB, though you may have any number of columns once that condition is met.
Examples:
VALID: 1x 60, 2x 50, 3x 40, 4x 30, 5x 20, 6x 10
This is the minimal pyramid that achieves a 60 stat under the new rule.
INVALID: 1x 60, 1x 50, 1x 40, 1x 30, 1x 20, 1x 10
This was the minimal pyramid that achieved a 60 stat under the old rule. Green means necessary and present, red means necessary but not present.
VALID: 4x 60, 4x 50, 4x 40, 4x 30, 6x 20, 6x 10
Columns are still allowed, as long as a full pyramid is somewhere in there. Green means necessary stats, blue means not necessary stats.
INVALID: 1x 60, 1x 50, 3x 40, 3x 30, 4x 20, 5x 10
This is Akane's pyramid.
F.A.Q.:
What will happen to currently invalid characters, like Akane and Kei and all the NPCs that don't quite fit the new rule?
All such characters will be treated the same way. No stats will be lowered, but the character will not be allowed to raise up a new capstone (i.e. increase their maximum AB) until they are valid under the new pyramid rules.
For Akane and Kei, this means you cannot vote in a training plan that raises a stat to the 70s until they are valid under the new pyramid rule.
What about ninja like Rock Lee and Gai, who focused exceptionally hard on one thing only?
Senior ninja acquire lots of overlapping or flat-out redundant jutsu. Why? Because they need new skills in their skill tree in order to push primary skills higher.
Senior ninja are good (or at least competent) at everything, not just at "See/Dodge/Punch". (Gai and Lee may be exceptions to this rule, or might simply have hidden depths.)
The newly added rule brings mechanics in line with the intended narrative.
Won't jounin and S-rankers have ultra-broad bases with many unused stats? For example, under these rules, jounin (60 max) need 15 stats <40 and S-rankers (80 max) need 21!
S-rankers are often exceptions.
Yes, and this level of diversity is expected. In the narrowest case, there is less room at the top of the pyramid than you think and many important stats will be forced into lower tiers (the narrowest jounin has only 6 stats >=40).
This makes people like Jiraiya and Hiruzen the default S-ranker build, rather than being exceptionally diverse. How is that justified?
All S-rankers are by definition exceptions, and are created bespoke every time. The pyramid rules cover the typical use cases (genin-jounin) best. S-rankers get special jutsu, stunts, etc.
If you have 1x 80 and 2x 70 for your combat stats, then your 60s and 50s fill out with crucial support stats (Sub, CR, Resolve, Physique, Buff jutsu, Stealth, Deceit, etc), allowing you to leave most skills at chuunin level and below. Hiruzen and Jiraiya with 3 or more 80+ stats and 12 or more 60+ stats, able to compete with jounin in their specialties, are rare.
S-rankers are defined more by their unique, game-winning abilities than by their raw stats alone. Many S-rankers have jounin stat lines.
Doesn't this mean that we'll need to spend XP on useless jutsu, or that QMs will need to spend spoons on designing useless jutsu, just for pyramid filler?
See the redundant techniques line above. This also creates interesting tradeoffs: learn another element for better (more diverse) techniques there, or learn redundant techniques of your own element?
Also, once it becomes a concern, the QMs are open to the possibility of leveling a placeholder technique to be filled in via Declaration later.
How are we supposed to make it to S-rank if we need to level all these extra stats?
S-rank is more about your unique, game-winning abilities than your stats. It should never have been possible to get a 90 stat with as little as 20k XP. This is correcting that oversight.
Won't a lot of NPCs have to be rebuilt?
First, there's no up-front work, as we're not lowering any stats. Second, almost all NPCs we have already adhere to this rule anyway.
Won't this make all NPC builds basically the same?
Kind of, yes. The room for variation drastically narrows as most NPCs hew close to the optimal pyramid or its variants (ignoring special stunts that may interact with the pyramid rules and such).
Is this a problem? No. Ninja are smart and very dedicated to getting stronger. In a vacuum, most ninja should naturally tend towards very optimal pyramid arrangements, even if specific allocations of XP here and there may be suboptimal.
Said another way, this nerfs Hazou's spreadsheet vision, which was never intended to be a power of his.
Give it to me straight. Are we being nerfed?
Yes and no.
Yes: Almost all NPCs matched the pyramid rules, so comparing the column builds to the pyramid builds, you're being nerfed.
No: Most NPCs are not S-rankers, and once your stats start to cap out, your buffs and hax become crucial. The Gouketsu buff stack is extremely strong and diverse. Comparing the pyramid Gouketsu to pyramid normal ninja, you're being buffed.
Overall, we expect this to have little effect in the short term, be a nerf in the medium term, and be a buff in the long term. We expect the medium term nerf to be balanced out by the more diverse stat arrays you'll need to have, which will hopefully encourage more missions and dynamic gameplay as you search for S-rank tricks (which is now appropriately difficult to reach on stats alone).
In the end, spoons rule over us all, and Ami has a tendency to write herself whereas I was struggling to figure out how to make a chūnin introduction sufficiently interesting.
@Paperclipped
When will the stunts for Kagome's Sealing Dances become available for player consumption, and do they still require wearing the TYS-incrementingly-bad underpants?
I dropped a little tidbit about a Sage-made 3D seal on the Seventh Path, and Dragons, and how Gōketsu Hazō, the skywalker guy, was the person to talk to if anyone wanted to know more. And wouldn't you know it, he'd already heard all about you."
Hazō swallowed. "He had?"
"You never told me you were a Jashin priest in training. Apparently, Hidan won't stop boasting about how he's finally got an apprentice who's survived multiple tests and managed to earn Jashin's favour even before his first massacre. You know, I really thought it would be that other thing that put you on the S-rank track, but hey, you do you."
So in terms of 'did Hidan survive attacking Rock?', the first quote is weak evidence in favour (Kisame is aware of Hazou passing multiple tests, and wasn't giving any clear hints that Hidan was dead) but the second quote is weak evidence against (since a successful Hidan rampage makes this outcome seem a bit less likely, imo). Of course, the safe thing to do is to plan for him to still be alive, which is why it's a good thing we have MaRI and NOBURI running, so if he shows up again to ask what's left in the way of uplift we can say "Yeah it's great, with the war over we can safely build all these walls and roads!"
"They've got as far as 'war bad for profit'. 'Peace good' might be a little too sophisticated for them right now, but by this time next year, they should be seeing enough return on the massive investment of not punching each other in the face to realise it's worth their while to keep going.
If this is the driving motivation behind world peace, we could stand to throw some more weight behind it. It's already great that we can export a ton of spider silk, but the more value we throw behind those trade routes the more stable the peace will be.
I'm honestly warming up to that Honey expedition a little more now, since if we can find something really good there we can start harvesting/hunting/growing that and add it to the trade network.
"If your highest level skill has Aspect Bonus N, you must have at least 2 stats at AB N-1, 3 stats at AB N-2, and so on."
This means that you must have a full pyramid beneath your highest AB, though you may have any number of columns once that condition is met.
Examples:
VALID: 1x 60, 2x 50, 3x 40, 4x 30, 5x 20, 6x 10
This is the minimal pyramid that achieves a 60 stat under the new rule.
INVALID: 1x 60, 1x 50, 1x 40, 1x 30, 1x 20, 1x 10
This was the minimal pyramid that achieved a 60 stat under the old rule. Green means necessary and present, red means necessary but not present.
VALID: 4x 60, 4x 50, 4x 40, 4x 30, 6x 20, 6x 10
Columns are still allowed, as long as a full pyramid is somewhere in there. Green means necessary stats, blue means not necessary stats.
INVALID: 1x 60, 1x 50, 3x 40, 3x 30, 4x 20, 5x 10
This is Akane's pyramid.
F.A.Q.:
What will happen to currently invalid characters, like Akane and Kei and all the NPCs that don't quite fit the new rule?
All such characters will be treated the same way. No stats will be lowered, but the character will not be allowed to raise up a new capstone (i.e. increase their maximum AB) until they are valid under the new pyramid rules.
For Akane and Kei, this means you cannot vote in a training plan that raises a stat to the 70s until they are valid under the new pyramid rule.
What about ninja like Rock Lee and Gai, who focused exceptionally hard on one thing only?
Senior ninja acquire lots of overlapping or flat-out redundant jutsu. Why? Because they need new skills in their skill tree in order to push primary skills higher.
Senior ninja are good (or at least competent) at everything, not just at "See/Dodge/Punch". (Gai and Lee may be exceptions to this rule, or might simply have hidden depths.)
The newly added rule brings mechanics in line with the intended narrative.
Won't jounin and S-rankers have ultra-broad bases with many unused stats? For example, under these rules, jounin (60 max) need 15 stats <40 and S-rankers (80 max) need 21!
S-rankers are often exceptions.
Yes, and this level of diversity is expected. In the narrowest case, there is less room at the top of the pyramid than you think and many important stats will be forced into lower tiers (the narrowest jounin has only 6 stats >=40).
This makes people like Jiraiya and Hiruzen the default S-ranker build, rather than being exceptionally diverse. How is that justified?
All S-rankers are by definition exceptions, and are created bespoke every time. The pyramid rules cover the typical use cases (genin-jounin) best. S-rankers get special jutsu, stunts, etc.
If you have 1x 80 and 2x 70 for your combat stats, then your 60s and 50s fill out with crucial support stats (Sub, CR, Resolve, Physique, Buff jutsu, Stealth, Deceit, etc), allowing you to leave most skills at chuunin level and below. Hiruzen and Jiraiya with 3 or more 80+ stats and 12 or more 60+ stats, able to compete with jounin in their specialties, are rare.
S-rankers are defined more by their unique, game-winning abilities than by their raw stats alone. Many S-rankers have jounin stat lines.
Doesn't this mean that we'll need to spend XP on useless jutsu, or that QMs will need to spend spoons on designing useless jutsu, just for pyramid filler?
See the redundant techniques line above. This also creates interesting tradeoffs: learn another element for better (more diverse) techniques there, or learn redundant techniques of your own element?
Also, once it becomes a concern, the QMs are open to the possibility of leveling a placeholder technique to be filled in via Declaration later.
How are we supposed to make it to S-rank if we need to level all these extra stats?
S-rank is more about your unique, game-winning abilities than your stats. It should never have been possible to get a 90 stat with as little as 20k XP. This is correcting that oversight.
Won't a lot of NPCs have to be rebuilt?
First, there's no up-front work, as we're not lowering any stats. Second, almost all NPCs we have already adhere to this rule anyway.
Won't this make all NPC builds basically the same?
Kind of, yes. The room for variation drastically narrows as most NPCs hew close to the optimal pyramid or its variants (ignoring special stunts that may interact with the pyramid rules and such).
Is this a problem? No. Ninja are smart and very dedicated to getting stronger. In a vacuum, most ninja should naturally tend towards very optimal pyramid arrangements, even if specific allocations of XP here and there may be suboptimal.
Said another way, this nerfs Hazou's spreadsheet vision, which was never intended to be a power of his.
Give it to me straight. Are we being nerfed?
Yes and no.
Yes: Almost all NPCs matched the pyramid rules, so comparing the column builds to the pyramid builds, you're being nerfed.
No: Most NPCs are not S-rankers, and once your stats start to cap out, your buffs and hax become crucial. The Gouketsu buff stack is extremely strong and diverse. Comparing the pyramid Gouketsu to pyramid normal ninja, you're being buffed.
Overall, we expect this to have little effect in the short term, be a nerf in the medium term, and be a buff in the long term. We expect the medium term nerf to be balanced out by the more diverse stat arrays you'll need to have, which will hopefully encourage more missions and dynamic gameplay as you search for S-rank tricks (which is now appropriately difficult to reach on stats alone).
Nice work! I agree with the need for this rework and support this method of solving the problem. I'm still a little leery on the 'swaths of low-level stats required' problem, the explanations given don't seem all that compelling, but I acknowledge that this decision is based on a bunch of modeling and number crunching while my concern is based on vague intuitions so if this is what makes sense in the end I'll set aside my qualms.
Ok this is incredibly concerning. Is Kei gonna grow to a god or something? Ami's love could be blinding her to Kei's abilities, but have we seen her love make her inaccurate with respect to Kei before?
It also introduces a new possibility. It's always been the case that Ami's personality when interacting with the Goketsu is possibly a mask, due to her social skills. But her love for Kei has existed since the beginning, and she would have had no reason to fake that to Kei. But if she knew that Kei would grow into a god, then she could have faked her love to Kei so that god Kei would protect her. Although the best lie is the truth so even then by now the love could be true.
Sidenote: A possible motivation for the timing of Ami's reveal is to butter Hazou before asking for FOOM. Again best lie is the truth so even then her reveal could be truth.
What will happen to currently invalid characters, like Akane and Kei and all the NPCs that don't quite fit the new rule?
All such characters will be treated the same way. No stats will be lowered, but the character will not be allowed to raise up a new capstone (i.e. increase their maximum AB) until they are valid under the new pyramid rules.
For Akane and Kei, this means you cannot vote in a training plan that raises a stat to the 70s until they are valid under the new pyramid rule.
So questions regarding Akane and Kei's character sheets, and also pinging @eaglejarl@Velorien@OliWhail for obvious reasons:
Are we required to fix their pyramids immediately? In other words, can we get Akane to train Resolve 68 even though it doesn't directly and immediately fix her pyramid?
If we are required to fix their pyramids immediately, are we also required to take the most straightforward path available to fixing the pyramids? In other words, can we get Kei to train 3 completely new jutsu from scratch in order to fix it, or does she need to train pre-learned jutsu or skills that would fix her pyramid sooner?
Do we need to care about pyramids breaking while fixing their character sheets?
@Paperclipped
When will the stunts for Kagome's Sealing Dances become available for player consumption, and do they still require wearing the TYS-incrementingly-bad underpants?
So two questions regarding Akane and Kei's character sheets, and also pinging @eaglejarl@Velorien@OliWhail for obvious reasons:
Are we required to fix their pyramids immediately? In other words, can we get Akane to train Resolve 68 even though it doesn't directly and immediately fix her pyramid?
If we are required to fix their pyramids immediately, are we also required to take the most straightforward path available to fixing the pyramids? In other words, can we get Kei to train 3 completely new jutsu from scratch in order to fix it, or does she need to train pre-learned jutsu or skills that would fix her pyramid sooner?
You may not vote in a training plan for Akane and Kei that raises a stat to 70 until they're pyramid-valid. Nothing else has changed.
Raising Resolve to 68 is permitted.
You are not required to do anything to fix the pyramids, you just may not raise a stat to 70 until they are fixed. I expect that the pyramids will be fixed in order that stats can go up.
In general, we expect that the need for extra jutsu will make you more intentional about finding and leveling new jutsu that are particularly good.
You may not vote in a training plan for Akane and Kei that raises a stat to 70 until they're pyramid-valid. Nothing else has changed.
Raising Resolve to 68 is permitted.
You are not required to do anything to fix the pyramids, you just may not raise a stat to 70 until they are fixed. I expect that the pyramids will be fixed in order that stats can go up.
In general, we expect that the need for extra jutsu will make you more intentional about finding and leveling new jutsu that are particularly good.
One question to people who can do math, is FOOM dead, mostly dead or, slightly alive?
Also this change makes getting the Kurosawa training techniques more valuable
edit: The good news is this means our sealing will be complete hax. Since we can get it two pyramid levels effectively higher without paying the cost. We 100% should go all in on grinding J's notes. (I have no idea if this is correct but it feels correct)
