- Location
- Liverpool
[X] Action Plan: Here be Dragonsorcery
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
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- Book Fort
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- They/Them
How do bioseals interact with this? Is it up to the nature of the bioseal (ex: a flat buff to Physique versus a grafted tentacle that makes an automatic attack when enemy enters melee range), or are they all equally treated as "seals?"
MrRobot
In doubt there's always the Sun!
What I read from it was, lets making hazõ an eathbender, there's a lot of tricks from the legend of ang that could be adapted, for what toph does with her tremor visions to the dai li burry you in the ground do the classic stomp hard on the ground to it behave like a floor plank conveniently placed to hit the enemy in fron of you on the balls. Adding the seals on to of it and we have a lot of combat options.
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- Location
- Texas
We'll, it was nice while it lasted. We'll need to adjust the expectations of our combat abilities quickly or we'll die on our first serious combat.
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- The Void
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- She/Her
First of all totally understand wanting to simplify things. It did feel like we where getting into another situation where since we had a bunch of combat abilities that of course are enemies do as well. So even though it felt like we where hitting numbers high enough to start hanging with essies it turns out we where still strong chunnin scrubs. As a balance and a simplifying combat change it's all good in my eyes
The thing I do want to work out is how the new rules work with MARS. Will we have to buy a stunt for every additional seal we would like to use in the chain? Or are most of the seals we would want to trigger are considered debuffs?
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- She/Her/They/Them
When EJ isn't enjoying some very lethal punching as much, we may have munchkinned beyond the pale.
Well, this feels almost like a return to easier times, when we rolled Keiko: Ranged Weapons versus Chakra Monster: Being-A-Horrible-Monster...
This makes having one very good stat more valuable, and a couple great buffs more valuable, and lots of cross-skills less valuable unless they're specialised enough that using them makes
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How so? Seems like if anything your tertiary skills (that likely don't have as many buffs as your primary stat) would become better, since people can't buff their Athletics/Alertness/whatever to the high heavens.
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- Book Fort
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- They/Them
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
I'm still nowhere near up to date on the rules so apologies if I phrased that ambiguously or plainly wrong for those who do know the lingo.
What I meant by "lots of cross-skills" was "lots of previously bonus-adding, non-game-breaking-on-their-own buffs".
Now it's better to have a few very solid buffs, and having many underpowered specialised/diversified ones will usually fall somewhere between "useless" and "cute". Oh this adds +3 and this adds +2, and you have ten others that could add +3 or +2 too but can't use them here? That's cool, Orochimaru has this bioseal that adds +17 to taijutsu-
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Ah, I see. The thing is, that strategy wasn't very helpful anyways because of action economy. Majority of buffs take too long to activate for that to help you in a fight. And in an ambush scenario you were still limited to one buff per element so if you don't have multiple elements with buffs you can't feasibly apply much anyways.... unless you use Sealing, because seal buffs could stack on each other.
So uh, it kind of does disproportionately affect the players imo since Sealing is the main issue at hand when it comes to "too many buffs" and it's a very rare skill in the ninja world. But that's okay, the buffstack was honestly getting a little ridiculous to track already (as a DM I know that feeling all too well.)
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- Book Fort
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- They/Them
"Hazou, what caused you to switch from Buffs to Attacks? Finally deciding to embrace your 'Warmonger' moniker?"
"The Hyenas pissed me off, I lost people I should've been able to save, and I refuse to allow that to happen again."
How to Vote in Marked for Death…
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How to Vote in Marked for Death…
Marked for Death uses approval voting, meaning that you can vote for as many plans as you want in a given cycle. At the close of voting, we will write whatever is in the action plan with the most votes. Also, we'll pick the highest-voted training plan for each character and implement that, modulo some provisos listed below.
In addition to the above features and requirements, Marked for Death has the following rules for plans:
- Plans earn bonus XP if they are under 300 words, and penalty XP if they are over 400. We determine plan length using the Google Docs word counter, not the one here on SV. (The one here on SV can be a bit dodgy.)
- Plan titles and indication of plan length are not included in calculations of plan word count.
- Plan titles…
- Should be relatively short, around 10 words at most
- Are not considered part of the plan and are normally ignored
- If a plan has no content, QMs will loosely interpret the plan title as a general statement of intent. By omitting content, you waive your right to object to the QM's interpretation of the title. Interlude requests are a good example of titles that don't need content, e.g. "[x] Interlude: Games Night" or "[x] Lore Update: The Warring Clans Period"
- Exception: If the plan title is "Continue Previous Plan" (or some variation thereof) and the title consists of a link to the previous plan, that's fine. This is useful because sometimes we can't get through an entire plan if it covers a lot of ground.
- Plans cannot include links or references to previous plans or other posts: they must stand entirely on their own. (The 'Continue Previous Plan' item mentioned above is an exception.) This is so that we-the-QMs don't have to go chasing all over to find out what to write, and so that we don't accidentally miss something. This restriction may be relaxed on a case-by-case basis; feel free to ask us.
- Interlude and Lore Update votes are requests, not mandates. The QM will usually go with it but might opt to take the highest-voted action plan instead.
- The QMs may occasionally call for votes on specific subtopics: in these cases, we will offer copy/pastable vote options with an appropriate tag, such as "[x][Asuma] Tell him to jump in a lake". For such votes, write-ins are not allowed unless explicitly offered as an option.
- Training plans:
- The players control Hazō and make all decisions about what skills he buys.
- The QMs don't have the juice to manage all the NPC sheets so we have mostly delegated that to the players for Akane, Noburi, and Kei. In-universe this is Hazō making recommendations to the person in question about what they should train. Sometimes they will ignore him.
- To be implemented, training plans must be clearly labeled as such and must include the character's name in the title. Only the highest voted plan with that person's name will be implemented.
- A good title template would be something like: "[x] Training Plan, Noburi: The killer surgeon", followed by some details on buying up medical ninjutsu and Water Whip.
- Location
- Pacific standard
I like this change, it feels like a puzzle piece slotting into place. The world *should* look a bit different if stack-buffs-punch-hard is the default winning strategy. Stunts definitely felt a bit under-utilized, so all plusses from my pov.
I like it being *our* unique winning strategy lol. Just need to get a Master of MARS stunt.
edge case: PCJ? It's a malus but has a crazy strong buff attached. I think it should be acknowledged as a buff that normally you'd need stunts to use alongside other things, but part of the summon ninjutsu sauce is that PCJ doesn't use a buff slot.
If that makes any sense at all lmao. On second reading I'm making a problem then saying nvm this isn't a problem, so shrug
[x][Asuma] Tell him to jump in a lake
I like it being *our* unique winning strategy lol. Just need to get a Master of MARS stunt.
edge case: PCJ? It's a malus but has a crazy strong buff attached. I think it should be acknowledged as a buff that normally you'd need stunts to use alongside other things, but part of the summon ninjutsu sauce is that PCJ doesn't use a buff slot.
If that makes any sense at all lmao. On second reading I'm making a problem then saying nvm this isn't a problem, so shrug
[x][Asuma] Tell him to jump in a lake
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- USA
Minor ACE Revision
For balance purposes, the cost of the ACE stunt is being reduced by 10 XP and the bonus to maximum chakra boost is being reduced to +1 per instance of the stunt.Noburi will be refunded the difference.
- Location
- United States
Please flair this as Informational.
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- He/Him
Right, this was going to be our whole strategy for the next in-game year. Use many buffs to make up for our lack of base stats. Cheese the action economy for activating them using MARS and CATEARS. Looks like we need to revisit this
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- UK
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- He/Him
Estate Architecture
There was discussion recently about what the new Gōketsu estate should look like. In Chapter 564, Hazou visited a number of clan compounds to get a sense for their design and aesthetics. There were two that he wasn't able to visit at the time. Since then, he has had the chance to view them:The Hyūga compound is the embodiment of traditional perfection. In the center of their compound is a large and beautiful castle, just a hair shorter than the Tower. The rest of the clan's buildings are no less beautiful, though they are substantially less ostentatious. The compound is structured like a lotus flower, with the castle being the bud and the remaining buildings outlining layers and layers of petals, with substantial open spaces dedicated to large and well cared-for gardens. The interlocking lines of buildings and seemingly random walls and hedges give the compound a maze-like feeling – within minutes of entering, Hazō is completely lost and would have needed the Iron Nerve to backtrack. Hazō is certain that there must still be more than what was visible, either underground or through false walls and hidden passageways in the compound. What else would a clan with the ability to see through walls do?
The Uchiha compound is a city unto itself, clearly constructed as a fortress for the express purposes of defense. Its walls are tall with numerous fortifications and defensive structures, though they've clearly fallen into disuse. Thriving businesses grow within those walls, ringed around the outside of a second, sturdier set of fortifications that defend the Uchiha inner city. Compared to the hustle and bustle of the main compound, this area is quiet. Prior to the Collapse, visitors were not permitted here, and the clanless ninja that Ami moved in have by and large moved back out. The inner city is even better defended than the outer one – Hazō notes that, unusually, everything here is made of stone, clay, brick, or other non-wood materials. Their central building is a sturdier fortress yet, small and compact, placed far enough from other buildings to prevent easy rooftop access, tall enough to have firing advantage on nearby buildings while short enough to not be readily visible from the inner city walls. For better or worse, Hazō is not invited within.
The Gōketsu compound is no longer on fire. Everyone is housed, clothed, and fed – though the quality of the housing, clothing, and feeding may leave a fair bit to be desired. Therefore, the clan is now free to start building up what will be their permanent buildings.
Hidden Leaf's laborers, builders, architects, designers, sculptors, artists, and dozens of other groups are practically salivating at the knowledge that a full-size Clan Compound is being built – various guilds are vying for Hazō's signature as they see the chance to secure the largest contract they will see in their lifetimes.
Several plans have included that Hazō should Earthshape the new compound into place; however, no time has been allocated for this. If you want Hazō to Earthshape the Jiraiya gate statue, for example, you should explicitly vote in:
- Spend a day making the gate statue.
And expect this to actually take a day of narrative time. Also, know that this will likely invoke ire from laborers, sculptors, and the Merchant Council.
Likewise, if you would like Hazō to personally Earthshape high quality, spacious, aesthetically pleasing, highly-embellished housing for every family of the six-hundred-odd Gōketsu Clan, you should expect this project to take several months at the least. Remember, Earthshaping is slow, and it becomes slower with large scale and fineness of detail.
Additionally, it was unusual and will continue to be unusual for everything in the compound to be made of stone, rather than wood (which is, unsurprisingly, Leaf's primary building material and a foundation of its architectural styles).
There are a few categories we want you to vote on:
- Design. Valid choices here could be any way of designing the compound. Examples:
- Copy the Aburame compound.
- Hire a designer to blend the styles of the Yamanaka and Hyūga compounds.
- Delve into the Out for architectural ideas.
- Find the architect that built the Amori compound. Ask them to design yours, but in a completely new style.
- Ensure it looks aesthetically pleasing from above.
- Require them to collaborate with Kagome to maximize trap-setting potential.
- Hire a dozen architects, have them divide up the estate into parts and build whatever they like.
- Request that they try to merge styles at borders between sections.
- Require that major buildings be made primarily of stone.
- Construction. Valid choices here include any way of actually constructing the compound. Examples:
- Hire whichever construction crew has the lowest price.
- (if an architect is chosen) Let the architect select the construction team. Do some basic monitoring to ensure they're not handing out contracts to their siblings or overcharging & embezzling funds.
- Hire whichever construction crew has the highest price.
- Spare no expense in sourcing materials. Buy wood from the best lumber mills, source stone from the best quarries.
- Hazō personally Earthshapes the estate into shape.
- Hazō teaches Earthshaping to Reo, together they Earthshape the estate into place.
- Details. Valid choices here include any details at all that you would like to specify. Examples:
- Private monument to the clan's fallen in the heart of the compound.
- Leave room for pasture inside the compound walls.
- Keep some forest around for training purposes.
- Build a small shrine to Jashin in a distant, unoccupied corner of the estate.
- Build elaborate gardens with water features and fruit trees. Lots of them, every clan member should be able to enjoy beautiful spaces.
- Once construction has finished, Earthshape gold filament into the facades of important buildings, using shapes similar to sealwork.
- Emblazon the main building with the character for "Explosive" (爆).
- Unless you vote in a preference for the koi pond, by default it will be publicly visible in the ninja part of the estate.
Example plans:
[][Estate] The Bare Basics
- Design
- Stick with granite-box-chic. Make everything a granite cube, axis aligned to north-south and east-west lines.
- Construction
- Do it with MEW and MARI.
- One big boxy koi pond
- Details
- Include windows on particularly important buildings.
[][Estate] Talk of the town, and defensible
- Design
- Hire designers to create a heavily defensible yet stunningly beautiful layout
- Buildings are swoopy and elegant, multi-toned wood, gold inlay, marble, masterwork murals everywhere
- Construction
- Build mostly in stone and brick but use plenty of wood for the feel
- Use materials that are beautiful as well as sturdy
- Details
- Include windows on particularly important buildings.
- Everything is lavish and of the very highest quality
Please keep plans to 300 words or less.
- Location
- United States
SCREAMS EXCITEDLY
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Elemental Mastery Correction
After some QM-internal discussion, we've surfaced an issue in how we're modeling the Elemental Mastery nuke. As a result, we're convinced that the size of the nuke's hellstorm should be somewhat smaller. Still miles across, definitely a strategic weapon, but not quite as big.
This will not change the narrative scope of the nuke. It will remain a strategic weapon capable of swallowing cities as well as nearby farming villages, and it will remain highly lethal to ninja caught in range, though adequate preparations and a quick exfiltration will make it substantially more survivable.
As a result, the first, massive test (~20 miles across) was significantly larger than the followup tests that were done with Asuma. The second test, near ground level over the ocean, had a substantially smaller storm cloud. The third test, in the air, had a storm cloud that was slightly larger than the one from the second test, but still significantly smaller than the first. It also had a larger overall frozen area.
Determining the exact radius is not a QM priority since the narrative stakes are virtually identical regardless of whether it's 5 miles, 8 miles, 12 miles, etc. We will figure out the exact number if it becomes relevant. Also, chakra be weird yo and therefore details vary
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- She/Her/They/Them
And clouds and their charges and stuff... if anyone here knows the minutiae of meteorological science, well, Hazō doesn't.
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- Liverpool
Well, this at least serves to buff (I know) multi-element ninja, who has kinda been undertuned, which is nice. Better explains why dipping into an element just for one good attack jutsu or buff could be worth it.
Overall, I think this makes sense. The mental micromanaging of that many buffs and abilities gets pretty unrealistic pretty quickly, especially up past where we're at. Also means any competent enemy can't just one shot us from enemy, which I appreciate.
- Location
- USA
If you would need to learn how to use the bioseal or adapt to it, it would be active and require a buff. We're almost certainly not going to introduce more passive buffs precisely because it would reintroduce the complexity that we're trying to avoid.
We are revising some of your seals to act as debuffs mechanically. In the Hyena fight, the Banshee Fucker was modeled as a debuff and that went pretty smoothly.
Otherwise, yes. Combining different seals that give buffs (like Macerators and Rocket Boots, say) will require a stunt.
We're not going to be counting PCJ as a buff. Although it is very strong, it does not provide a bonus to any stat roll.