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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
Adhoc vote count started by eaglejarl on Sep 17, 2022 at 1:40 PM, finished with 42 posts and 7 votes.
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Voting is closed.
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WE'RE ALL GONNA STAGNATEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
 
Velorien said:
After the announcement that they are getting rusty, they have 4 updates or 4 in-game weeks (whichever comes sooner) to avoid stagnation by exercising that domain.
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eaglejarl said:
You went to Asuma to clear the mission. He has no problem with Hazō, Akane, Kei, Snowflake, and Yuno going. When the name 'Noburi' was mentioned he got much frown and 'changed the subject' to how badly Leaf has been hammered lately. He segued from there into singing the praises of Noburi and how much safer Leaf was and how much the casualties had been reduced as a result of Noburi helping jōnin train and also fueling the Zoo Rush. This was followed by a peroration about duty and how much faith he has in Hazō and the honor that the Gōketsu have shown since their founding. He did not literally say 'hint, hint', but the meaning was clear. He can't or won't explicitly confine Noburi to the village, but Asuma is going to be pissed if Noburi leaves in the next few months (3-6, maybe?).
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I will observe that it is going to be VERY hard to get Noburi an appropriate combat encounter given that he's confined to the village for literal months on end. He's essentially limited to doing stuff with his reputation on the line, which...uh...is he supposed to piss of Ritsuo or something? Rematch against Hinata?
 
eaglejarl said:
Explosives do not stack; the first one to go off will destroy the others, so putting multiple tags on the same kunai does not help. (What's that? Why was Hazō able to simultaneously use two dropped tags in his fight against Kitty-Kat? Because hush yourself, that's why.)


Comments welcome; unless we hear something that we missed this will be added to the rules doc shortly.
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Hold on a moment, we literally have a seal that can make two seals go off simultaneously in the form of MARS, shouldn't that allow us to stack explosives akin to blowing up two sticks of dynamite instead of one?

With Mars, both seals should be able to explode before being destroyed.
 
Velorien said:
Hazō and Kagome have finished decoding the first set of the Fourth's journals. These contain research notes sufficient to attempt to reproduce the first 10 seals in the jinchūriki seal chain.
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Velorien said:
They both estimate that the first couple of seals are well within their capabilities, though each will require at least a month of careful work.
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Clarification: Kagome has been working on the notes since at least the beginning of the Squirrel mission. Is this the fruit of his labours, or has he made progress on the first seal?
 
Kiba said:
3D sealing might overcome the fact that neither Hazo and Kagome are genius in sealing.
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*Looks at SSA* I dunno man, I'm fairly sure Hazou does qualify as a sealing genius.

Also Hazou will have a effective sealing stat of 70 once he's finished combing through Jiraiya's sealing notes.

So we're really not hurting when it comes to sealing.
 
faflec said:
I will observe that it is going to be VERY hard to get Noburi an appropriate combat encounter given that he's confined to the village for literal months on end. He's essentially limited to doing stuff with his reputation on the line, which...uh...is he supposed to piss of Ritsuo or something? Rematch against Hinata?
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I think Nobby's stagnation in the area of combat is inevitable. The village doesn't *want* him specialising in it, and likely never will again. Competency, sure, but not an elite frontline fighter.

Maybe he could try pushing his second specialty to another non-combat area (leadership/diplomacy/whatever)? Though getting him to agree will be an interesting conversation, and even if he agrees it would take time and effort and slowdown to shift gears.

Or maybe he just tops out here, seeing slow gradual improvement with the occasional burst of inspiration. Getting to S-Tier isn't something everyone achieves, after all.
 
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Gavin Prince said:
I think Nobby's gonna have to accept a certain level of stagnation in the area of combat. The village doesn't *want* him specialising in it, and likely never will again. Competency, sure, but not an elite frontline fighter.

Maybe try pushing his second specialty to another non-combat area (leadership/diplomacy/whatever)? Though getting him to agree will be an interesting conversation.
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Not to mention the fact that Noburi doesn't want to be a legendary combat ninja. He wants to be a legendary medic. Sure, combat skills, survivability, and all that.

But his passion is healing others, not hurting others.
 
eaglejarl said:
PSA: Rules expansion​

The rules currently have an issue dealing with explosives, especially explosives that are simply dropped on the ground instead of thrown at a person. We are filling that in as follows:

Every tag has a minimum dodge TN of (Weapons Rating x 10). This means that against a standard Weapon:4 tag you need to roll at least 40 to dodge.

There are three cases:

  1. You are the target of a thrown weapon with an attached explosive tag.
  2. You are in Melee range with a person who is the target of a thrown weapon with an attached explosive tag.
  3. You are in the same zone when an explosive goes off.
In case 1 you dodge against the higher of the attack or the explosive's dodge TN. If you fail, you take damage based on how much you failed by, plus the weapons rating of the tag.

In case 2 you dodge against the explosive's dodge TN and take damage based on how much you failed by.

In case 3 you dodge against the explosive's dodge TN and take damage based on how much you failed by, except the damage is capped at the weapons rating of the tag.

For example, assume that Alice, Bill, and Charlie are in the same zone. Alice and Bill are in melee, Charlie is standing around gormlessly a few meters away. A jōnin with RW 80 throws a kunai (Weapon:1) with a Weapon:3 explosive tag (minimum dodge number 30) at Alice.

  • Alice:
    • Dodges TN 80, because max(80, 30)
    • Takes damage based on how much she fails by
    • Takes 3 extra stress from the weapons rating
  • Bill:
    • Dodges TN 30
    • Takes damage based on how much he fails by, but the weapon rating does not apply.
  • Charlie:
    • Dodges TN 30
    • Takes at most 3 stress.
A moment later, a genin with RW 10 throws a Weapon:3 tag at Alice. Everything is the same except Alice has a lower dodge:

  • Alice:
    • Dodges TN 30, because max(10, 30)
    • Takes damage based on how much she fails by
    • Takes 3 extra stress from the weapons rating
  • Bill:
    • Dodges TN 30
    • Takes damage based on how much he fails by, but the weapon rating does not apply.
  • Charlie:
    • Dodges TN 30
    • Takes at most 3 stress.
These examples used Ranged Weapons as the attack skill because that will be the most common option. It could also be Trapmaking or potentially other options.

Explosives that are simply dropped on the ground are dealt with by case 3 – victims dodge the minimum TN and take at most the weapons rating in stress.

Notably, if you make a Taijutsu Block to keep someone in the range of an explosive, you are also in the range of the explosive, and would take (weapons rating) stress.

Explosives do not stack; the first one to go off will destroy the others, so putting multiple tags on the same kunai does not help. (What's that? Why was Hazō able to simultaneously use two dropped tags in his fight against Kitty-Kat? Because hush yourself, that's why.)


Comments welcome; unless we hear something that we missed this will be added to the rules doc shortly.
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Exciting to have these rules now. Just to clarify, anyone who attacks with a weapons: 4 explosive will be attacking with TN 40, even if they have RW: 1?

On the one hand, I think this fits a lot better with how explosives were narratively supposed to greatly improve survivability of genin and chuunin but mechanically they were somewhat negligible until now.

On the other hand, I'm wondering about balance. It seems like every genin fight would be decided simply by who has explosives, and those would end up mattering more than any actual skills they have, with a Ranged 40 attack with high weapons rating being so much better than, say, Taijutsu 30. I know seals are expensive for clanless genin, but a big chunk of genin would still be able to afford them since many of them are clan and it's not that hard for village sealmasters to collectively churn out thousands of the things. Explosives are one of the easiest and most common seals after all.

If this is indeed a concern, perhaps WR: 3 could be the substantially more common variant rather than WR 4? I'm not entirely sure at the moment if it is in fact a problem or if it is, if it's a very big problem. I'll have to think on it. Besides that, I really like this change!

Tangentially, do these rules apply to Goo Bombs as well? perhaps with a different TN and such, but otherwise similarly?
 
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RandomOTP said:
Not to mention the fact that Noburi doesn't want to be a legendary combat ninja
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I have never gotten the impression that he doesn't want to be a good combat ninja tbh. In fact it seems like he brags about his offensive capabilities at basically every opportunity, and is also insecure about the prospect of being weaker than his family members after FOOM. He just wants to be good at both with a preference for medicine

faflec said:
I will observe that it is going to be VERY hard to get Noburi an appropriate combat encounter given that he's confined to the village for literal months on end. He's essentially limited to doing stuff with his reputation on the line, which...uh...is he supposed to piss of Ritsuo or something? Rematch against Hinata?
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eaglejarl said:
He can't or won't explicitly confine Noburi to the village, but Asuma is going to be pissed if Noburi leaves in the next few months (3-6, maybe?)
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It's already been over a month, perhaps we can get his freedom soonish. Not to mention he's been running the clan while we've been gone and knows he can leverage his importance... maybe Asuma will get over himself if Noburi's sisters are in town, for instance.
 
faflec said:
I will observe that it is going to be VERY hard to get Noburi an appropriate combat encounter given that he's confined to the village for literal months on end. He's essentially limited to doing stuff with his reputation on the line, which...uh...is he supposed to piss of Ritsuo or something? Rematch against Hinata?
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Noburi works treating professional killers that have magical powers and no psychological support. Even without the Satsuko factor, I'd say he gets more combat now than ever.

Edit: Ever had to get a cat to swallow a pill? Imagine the cat is Sasuke, just back from the frontlines with a clear case of hallucinogenic poisoning.
 
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Velorien said:
PSA: Jinchūriki Seal Chain

Hazō and Kagome have finished decoding the first set of the Fourth's journals. These contain research notes sufficient to attempt to reproduce the first 10 seals in the jinchūriki seal chain.

They believe these are basic descriptions of the seals in the chain.

  1. Creates a probably-invisible, tiny chakra construct that immediately dissipates.
  2. Creates a chakra construct that intakes a huge amount of environmental chakra, then slowly dissipates.
  3. Another chakra construct. This one holds the environmental chakra in it for a few minutes before dissipating.
  4. Another chakra construct. This one interacts with the environment around it in some unknown way.
  5. The same chakra construct as above, except the interactions are displayed on the seal. Kagome thinks there are similarities with his chakrascope seal.
  6. Another chakra construct that interacts with the environment around it, but this one channels an even huger amount of chakra.
  7. The same chakra construct as above, with interactions displayed on the seal. A scrawled note says "To do - ask Rin about med nin uses?"
  8. A variant of the seal above, taking in even more ambient chakra.

It is no surprise to Hazō and Kagome that the sealing failures encountered in the study of these seals were as bad as Asuma described, given the apparently huge amounts of environmental chakra these seals manipulate.

They both estimate that the first couple of seals are well within their capabilities, though each will require at least a month of careful work. The later seals are thoroughly beyond them. They hope that working through the chain will build important veterancy.

The last two seals whose research notes they have decoded are completely incomprehensible. Unlike Jiraiya's most advanced seals, these notes are not incomprehensible because of the incredible depth of sealing fluency needed to understand them. Rather, the notes use a set of jargon the vast majority of which bears no relation to anything Hazō nor Kagome have ever seen before, although the word 'headseal' does appear several times. It's all combined with dizzyingly advanced sealing theory. Still, despite the effectively-meaningless scribing and infusion notes, the testing information has let them surmise the behavior of the seals.

  1. Creates a probably-invisible, tiny chakra construct that immediately dissipates.
  2. Creates a massive chakra construct that interacts with the environment around it, and displays interactions on the seal. A scrawled note says "This is going to be very useful."

Notes for both these seals suggest that Seal 8 must be used during infusion.

The original research notes for all the other seals have been sent back to the Tower at Asuma's request. He will want the originals of the current set back before lending you the next.
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I think I understand what's going on here. The ultimate goal of the seal chain is to take a bijuu (a heckhuge amount of chakra) and store it in a chakra construct. These first ten seals are the low-veterancy training seals that establish and test the fundamentals: draw in a large amount of chakra (not a bijuu's worth, but increasingly large), create a chakra construct to hold it, and then shove the one into the other.

And along the way this creates other opportunities for him, like Tsunade's headseal that faflec mentioned. If you know how to store a large amount of ambient chakra in a chakra construct, that's something you could theoretically use to make a sizeable powerup for someone. We'll have to actually work our way down the chain to see exactly what those opportunities are, but this is looking pretty dang nifty.
 
Velorien said:
We are not moving forward with the uncap system. All rules and rulings related to uncaps no longer apply.

We will be trialing the stagnancy system, described here by @Inferno Vulpix. In short:
  • Each character will have 1-3 primary "domains" of specialization.
  • If the character is not regularly challenged in a given domain, they will get rusty in that domain.
  • After the announcement that they are getting rusty, they have 4 updates or 4 in-game weeks (whichever comes sooner) to avoid stagnation by exercising that domain.
  • Eliminating stagnancy requires engaging with that domain in a meaningful way. That means there have to be stakes to the action and they need to be level-appropriate or higher.
    • For example, if your combat skills are getting rusty, it is not sufficient to:
      • Go out into the woods and punch a chakra vole
      • Spar with another ninja around your skill level
      • Be on a mission with much weaker or stronger allies, for whom the fight is level-appropriate
    • Instead, you could:
      • Fight a creature that is hard to kill, that could hurt you or destroy something you care about
      • Have a spar where losing is going to damage your reputation in a major way
      • Go on a mission to a foreign non-allied nation and have a daring escape in which you need to fight your way past the guards
      • …etc.
  • If this does not happen, the character stagnates. They will lose 10% of XP from the following update.
  • The penalty increases by 10% per update (to a maximum of 90%) until the character takes action to exercise that domain.
  • QMs will apply reasonable judgment; if we tell you that your combat skills are getting rusty and you immediately leave on a punching-oriented mission but it takes a few updates to get to the actual punching, we aren't going to penalize you as long as you're making a good-faith effort and not sneaking around doing everything you can to avoid the punching.
  • One final point to be clear about: in order to keep bookkeeping to a manageable level, XP is generic and not tracked at the individual level. Yes, this means that if you are getting a stangancy alert in combat skills you will have less XP with which to raise Stealth, Sealing, etc.
    • From @Inferno Vulpix's original post: "The narrative side of it goes as such: A ninja who neglects their specializations, the skills which they forged in trials by fire, will naturally find themselves losing that 'edge', that something that kept them in top form. It takes more and more effort to simply avoid falling behind, cutting into the rest of their training time."

We have identified the following domains as specialties for each of the PCs. Feel free to double check our work here and suggest changes or additional domains.

Hazō: Combat, Sealing
Kei: Combat, Leadership (Presence/Intimidation-based)
Noburi: Combat, Medicine
Akane: Combat

In keeping with this system, we have the following announcement:

Hazō, Kei, and Noburi think their combat skills are getting rusty...
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The autist in me sees this and immediately goes:

(Unironically here, I at first didn't like the change over to the current dice system as opposed to the festering abomination we started with as a matter of a kneejerk reaction to change)


Besides my ingrained misgivings though, I feel like I probably should give my own take on this

This system (And the uncap system before it) is essentially meant to force us (Or rather that's what this stagnacy system effectively does) into going out and having all sorts of dangerous combat heavy adventures.

Now aside from the obvious issue of the fact that under present circumstances, going on such adventures would be incredibly ill advised.

(If for instance Hazou dies right now the world is probably doomed to die a death by Dragon)

This stagnacy system in particular doesn't seem very simulationist friendly, besides the fact that in real life, never experiencing a fist fight to the death doesn't stop people from becoming great martial artists.

The specific requirement of risk in order to prevent stagnation not only feels rather gamey, but rather more importantly it seems rather unnecessary in light of the actual purpose of such a system.

(Which mostly boils down to giving Eaglejarl the opportunity to write more fight scenes)

A alternative way for giving Eaglejarl more opportunity to write fight scenes, might for instance be to on occasion write elaborate fight scenes for the various Goketsu sparring sessions. (Hardly anyone is going to complain if said sparring sessions are a tad more intense then strictly realistic)

Another idea that we might want to do regardless, is for Hazou to create what's essentially a professional boxing league, except instead of boxing it's Taijutsu, and instead of weight classes you have the shinobi ranks of Genin, Chunin and Special Jonin/Jonin.
 
cog-nito said:
The autist in me sees this and immediately goes:

(Unironically here, I at first didn't like the change over to the current dice system as opposed to the festering abomination we started with as a matter of a kneejerk reaction to change)


Besides my ingrained misgivings though, I feel like I probably should give my own take on this

This system (And the uncap system before it) is essentially meant to force us (Or rather that's what this stagnacy system effectively does) into going out and having all sorts of dangerous combat heavy adventures.

Now aside from the obvious issue of the fact that under present circumstances, going on such adventures would be incredibly ill advised.

(If for instance Hazou dies right now the world is probably doomed to die a death by Dragon)

This stagnacy system in particular doesn't seem very simulationist friendly, besides the fact that in real life, never experiencing a fist fight to the death doesn't stop people from becoming great martial artists.

The specific requirement of risk in order to prevent stagnation not only feels rather gamey, but rather more importantly it seems rather unnecessary in light of the actual purpose of such a system.

(Which mostly boils down to giving Eaglejarl the opportunity to write more fight scenes)

A alternative way for giving Eaglejarl more opportunity to write fight scenes, might for instance be to on occasion write elaborate fight scenes for the various Goketsu sparring sessions. (Hardly anyone is going to complain if said sparring sessions are a tad more intense then strictly realistic)

Another idea that we might want to do regardless, is for Hazou to create what's essentially a professional boxing league, except instead of boxing it's Taijutsu, and instead of weight classes you have the shinobi ranks of Genin, Chunin and Special Jonin/Jonin.
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Something that should be clear: when EJ says he likes punching, he doesn't mean 'the act of fist impacting with face', he means 'high stakes intense conflict'. The shorthand I use is, basically, "Jiraiya": Jiraiya can go toe to toe with the best fighters, can throw verbal punches in the clan council, can get into whatever high-stakes conflicts he likes because he trusts that he's good enough to pull through.

Or in other words, the problem with sparring matches is that they're boring. Nothing's on the line, nobody's pushing themselves to their limits, and the whole affair is easily soon forgotten. What EJ wants are challenging high-stakes conflicts that we'll remember years down the line, like Let The Bodies Hit The Floor or Never Break Character.

Of course, this system isn't just an attempt to make EJ happy at the expense of simulationism. Training can take you a long way but there really is something to pushing yourself to your limits, putting everything on the line and coming out on top. There are plenty of irl soldiers who train years and years but when they go onto the battlefield can't shoot with lethal intent, let alone perform at the peak of their ability. Real field experience matters, and the ninjas who are going to fight best are the ones who know what it's like to be in a fight with everything on the line.

I could see the stagnancy system going wrong in a couple ways (both as a game mechanic and as a simulationism mechanic), but mostly as a matter of implementation and parameters. The overview and broad strokes of it all, that if you just coast by without ever testing yourself you'll always be holding yourself back, seems fine to me on both subjects.

(The main things I'm planning to keep my eye on are 'how close does the fight have to be to count as level-appropriate' and 'how often do we find ourselves out on stagnancy-compelled excursions'. Too lenient or strict on either metric would undermine the point of the system, so it's likely something we'll have to fine-tune as we go. But since it's just started, we're still in preliminary data gathering to just kinda see how this all shakes out in practice.)
 
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Inferno Vulpix said:
And along the way this creates other opportunities for him, like Tsunade's headseal that faflec mentioned. If you know how to store a large amount of ambient chakra in a chakra construct, that's something you could theoretically use to make a sizeable powerup for someone. We'll have to actually work our way down the chain to see exactly what those opportunities are, but this is looking pretty dang nifty.
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I really want to know how long those early-tier seals take to draw in environmental chakra, and if we can accelerate the process without causing Bad Things to nearby people (or maybe with them, if we want a suicide clone rush).
 
faflec said:
I really want to know how long those early-tier seals take to draw in environmental chakra, and if we can accelerate the process without causing Bad Things to nearby people (or maybe with them, if we want a suicide clone rush).
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Maybe it would help with the Great Seal?

The problem is that it's leaking chakra, right?

The HOWS are safely channeling that chakra into light? So what if we reclaimed that expended chakra, and helped funnel it back into the Great Seal?
 
RandomOTP said:
Maybe it would help with the Great Seal?

The problem is that it's leaking chakra, right?

The HOWS are safely channeling that chakra into light? So what if we reclaimed that expended chakra, and helped funnel it back into the Great Seal?
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eaglejarl said:
Besides, he had what he needed. For days now, he had pored over the image of the Great Seal that he held stored in the Iron Nerve. He had traced its every curve, reviewed the angles and twists and thicknesses, all in a desperate attempt to seize the key insight that would let him understand what was going wrong and how to fix it. Yesterday's meditations had brought a hint of terror to the back of his mind, leaving him no choice but to return to the Seventh Path and once more infiltrate the butte atop which rested one of the Sage's greatest works. He had swum through the mundanity of the sandstone, running his hands slowly and carefully along the smooth and unfamiliar mineral that comprised the Seal.

As he had feared: There were tiny cracks all through the bottom.
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I'm not sure if the Great Seal can repair itself with chakra but if we don't know it for a fact I'd rather not test it.
 
Random thought: if there are enough hidden hamlets for Kakuzu to make worthwhile profit off of them, then when we find them (NOBURI Roads), Leaf will get a sudden influx of chakra capable children, and the long term boost will be more than we initially projected.
 
Unaligned Player said:
Anyone got an idea for how long Hazou's hair is at the current time?
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I wonder if Snowflake would like to braid Hazou's hair? Kei's fear of touch (which Snowflake imherited) seems to be primarily angled towards other people touching her (Kei touched Hazou's hand after Snowflake, Kei reached out and touched Hazou's shoulder post-execution, and Kei was able to hug Jiraiya in a possible future timeline, if he remained still).

While we don't know to what extent Kei's fears are reinforced onto Snowflake with every Summoning, Snowflake is also her own person and may have done personal work to help overcome her inherited fear. And if social stats are passed on, too, then Snowflake has a Summoner's Resolve stat.

If Hazou swore to remain still (resolve check?), and Snowflake trusted him to follow through, it could happen, I think.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Goo bombs roll infusers Sealing vs Athletics.

Which opens up the strategy of Goo bombing someone to immobility and just dropping explosives on them until they die. Good strategy foe Hazpu with his bad combat stats
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I think previously you still needed to make a RW attack roll to see if they actually get hit by the goo bomb before rolling to see if it traps them. With the change to the explosives bypassing a RW roll I'm wondering if we can do the same for goo bombs.
 
@eaglejarl @Velorien Would a combat spar in the Seventh Path risking the Summoner's reputation among the Toads/Pangolins/Dogs be a thing that could be arranged? Like, we challenge some Doggo to sign a contract if we can beat him in a spar, or something?

Stuff on Discord brought up this idea to stop stagnancy, and I wanted to know if it was plausible.
 
faflec said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien Would a combat spar in the Seventh Path risking the Summoner's reputation among the Toads/Pangolins/Dogs be a thing that could be arranged? Like, we challenge some Doggo to sign a contract if we can beat him in a spar, or something?

Stuff on Discord brought up this idea to stop stagnancy, and I wanted to know if it was plausible.
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HIDAN:

HEY KID, JASHIN SAYS YER COMBAT SKILLS ARE STAGNATING, SO OL UNCLE HIDAN IS HERE TO HELP! HERE, FIGHT ANOTHER ONE OF MY CULTISTS TO THE DEATH!
 
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