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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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MadScientist said:
@eaglejarl do we have contingent substitution?
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Nope.

I suggested it. Campaigned for it, even. Why? Because I am a generous, kindly, giving soul who wants to make life as easy as possible for the protagonists so that they can rapidly acquire the world-shattering power that is their right.

Sadly, the other GMs are wicked, evil, scrooge-like, miserly[1]​ people who shot down my brilliant and generous suggestion that we should give the PC a "haha, immune to first attack!" ability.


[1] It's possible that a more accurate description would be "sensible" and/or "forethoughtful". I'll stick with my version, though, because it makes me look better.
 
I like Twofold's additions, especially regarding clones. They seem like good things to include given that contingent substitution isn't a thing. We should use clones.

Velorien will use whatever plan has the most votes in 9 hours. After my vote, it's now a three-way tie between Madscientist's plan, Madscientist's plan + Twofold's additions, and approach stealthily. If you are reading this before the voting deadline, I strongly encourage voting for either Madscientist's plan or Madscientist's plan + Twofold's additions, because otherwise there's a decent chance we wind up just approaching stealthily without any plan. The primary difference is that one uses clones to approach and the other doesn't (for those who haven't kept up with the thread).

I'd add criticism about how this is why we should refrain from voting until the end, but I'm pretty sure all the people who are going to read this post already know that :)


[X] Plan Madscientist + Twofold's Additions
 
Now that that is looking settled, time to talk Taijutsu!

We are fairly good now at generic Taijutsu, but are about to hit the point where we need to buy up Dex to get better. While we will want more Dex, before we invest into it, or spend too much on generic, we should figure out if we want to find or specialize with a different style, ideally one that is powerful, versatile, and works well with our bloodline.

If we keep up with generic Taij, we may want to develop Iron Nerve Maneuvers or something similar as a special skill (based on all of the 'if we do it perfect, we can do it like this options), or let it be an outgrowth of a high skill rating.

Stealth and tactical movement are both Dx/Wits (and awareness is Wits/sta/res), so if we can find a style like that, it would be investment efficient.

I expect Strong Fist (Gai and Lee) is a very Str/Sta intense style due to all the conditioning they do.

Also, if we are not going for a Ninjutsu build, we don't need hand seals as often, and we could look into melee weapon styles. We actually could do the hard to coordinate double weapons techniques well with our bloodline (double sword and double sai would both be technique heavy) due to be able to get motions down, and not have to fumble with coordination.
 
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Voting is now over.

The winner, to everyone's surprise, is Plan Madscientist + Twofold's Additions, with 8 votes.

@Twofold, thanks for the link. Much appreciated.
 
ClawClawBite said:
Now that that is looking settled, time to talk Taijutsu!

We are fairly good now at generic Taijutsu, but are about to hit the point where we need to buy up Dex to get better. While we will want more Dex, before we invest into it, or spend too much on generic, we should figure out if we want to find or specialize with a different style, ideally one that is powerful, versatile, and works well with our bloodline.

If we keep up with generic Taij, we may want to develop Iron Nerve Maneuvers or something similar as a special skill (based on all of the 'if we do it perfect, we can do it like this options), or let it be an outgrowth of a high skill rating.

Stealth and tactical movement are both Dx/Wits (and awareness is Wits/sta/res), so if we can find a style like that, it would be investment efficient.

I expect Strong Fist (Gai and Lee) is a very Str/Sta intense style due to all the conditioning they do.

Also, if we are not going for a Ninjutsu build, we don't need hand seals as often, and we could look into melee weapon styles. We actually could do the hard to coordinate double weapons techniques well with our bloodline (double sword and double sai would both be technique heavy) due to be able to get motions down, and not have to fumble with coordination.
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I'd much rather invest in indirect combat skills since we've got our generic Taijutsu at it's current max (adding another point to it doesn't help us without raising Dex) rather than develop a new combat style. There's a lot of problems which can't be solved by just punching/stabbing them. I recommend we level deception skills or stealth. Once those are at a decent level, then we can talk about if it's better to level a new combat style or just general taijutsu to advance our agenda.

Both deception and stealth give us good versatility on infiltration missions, which we will want to do if we want to have an idea what's happening in the world at large. Deception allows us to compliment Noburi's diplomacy by adding infiltration possibilities and shady dealings. Basically we talk to guards and get us in, Noburi convinces people to do whatever it is we want (that's mutually beneficial), we talk to people when we just need to pull the wool over their eyes. Stealth lets us into places which are guarded, but we will likely be on our own, and groups are safer. That said, stealth can also be used to extract us from an active battlefield, so it's helpful in surviving direct combat. Deception could be weaponized as well, but would require knowing enough about who we were fighting, and honestly works better with Genjutsu, which we don't know. So I suspect Stealth will help more in combat while affording some benefits in non-war missions, and Deception will provide good group possibilities in infiltration.

Basically, we're pretty good at stabbing stuff, Noburi's got a fairly useful Ninjutsu, and Keiko's great at throwing weapons. This gives us good raw combat potential as a team, and our high taijutsu gives us good personal survivability. Now that we're at some level of competency in basic combat, we should work on leveling other skills, not becoming a super specialist in physical combat. Also I'm pretty sure we'd need to find someone to train us in whatever style we wanted to learn, or have a LOT of free time to develop our own style.
 
I think leveling stealth is the top priority since it contributes most to cheating combat to our favor, something we want most. High stealth against low-awareness/distracted ninjas gives us a fuckton of extra die to win, even if the enemy nin has better stats than us. Once we get a burrowing technique (since we're Earth Element) we can bypass a fuckton of standard defenses to infiltrate, assassinate, and steal priority documents/ninjas.

Awareness, as usual, should always be the secondary priority.
 
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest | Page 63
This post really should be threadmarked or a mirror put into the OP.

Anyway, we have 14XP from the steelback encounter and that is enough to max Stealth straight out (5XP+6XP=11XP), with 3XP left. Chances are we'll get at least some experience from whatever next encounter we're running into so we should discuss if it's worth getting a point or two in awareness, or raising deception and/or minor skills significantly higher.
 
Well you've got a day or so to kick about and do whatever before Velorien soars in with an update. If you want you could use it to vote for a Priority for your team mates to spend time and XP learning. You'd basically be setting the general direction of their growth, though not the specifics until the next time you decide to change it. Though they'll only react so far as it reasonable for a team mate to their team mate (and maybe a little further since we're nice), for example Keiko isn't picking up social given her current character. So, if you've got an awesome synergy plan that requires Noburi or Keiko to know some move in particular, best vote for it. They'll set to as soon as they have the downtime.

For example you'd be voting for something like

[ ] Noburi, Priority
-[ ] Focus on Bloodline, Water Clone and Awareness.

(First three skills that came to mind)
 
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Radvic said:
I recommend we level deception [...] Now that we're at some level of competency in basic combat, we should work on leveling other skills, not becoming a super specialist in physical combat.
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Blessings upon your house to the seventh generation! May the Invisible Nonexistent Sky Daddy shower wealth upon you!

For the love of Dawkins, I was about to start handing out green jumpsuits and forcibly changing your character's name to Punchy McPuncherson.

faflec said:
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest | Page 63
This post really should be threadmarked or a mirror put into the OP.
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Why? The character sheets are already in post #2.
 
eaglejarl said:
For the love of Dawkins, I was about to start handing out green jumpsuits and forcibly changing your character's name to Punchy McPuncherson.
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Velorien said:
Shhh, you fool! They're not supposed to know what awaits them should they successfully defect to Leaf!
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[X] Allocate all future skills to boosting Str/Dex/End and Taijutsu, because Green is our color, Spandex is our fabric, and Uchinuku Kanpeki is our True Name.
- [X] Don't forget to invest 1-2 points in Genjutsu for Eye/Teeth Sparkles
 
I wonder if we can make a flashbang genjutsu like what Shi does in canon. Sudden alternation between blinding light and absolute darkness, alongside really loud noise.
 
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