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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
Chūnin have primary skills around 40
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eaglejarl said:
I unfairly slandered Paper in my earlier Discord statement when I said that I wrote in that update that Daizen was "a newly-frocked chūnin" but @Paperclipped pumped him up when he did the rolls for me. Apparently I got this exactly backwards; he nerfed Daizen from what I had originally sketched out. I apologize for my cheese brain.
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eaglejarl said:
It should be noted that Daizen was likely a reasonable(ish?) representation of a new(ish) chūnin with a good build.
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eaglejarl said:
I should note that Daizen is a reasonable but not optimized build for what a new 75%er chūnin would look like. I threw his sheet together in about ten minutes, gave him some reasonably synergistic jutsu, and called it a day.
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eaglejarl said:
Daizen, not-quite-as-talented-as-Hazō-but-older, newly-frocked chūnin and ninja cultist of Jashin:

Alertness: 45
Athletics: 45
Taijutsu: 30
Deceit: 10 (He's a cultist, and not too bright; Hazō will almost certainly win Roki)
Lightning Element: Storm Wisps: 52
Lighting Element: Lightning Aura: 39
Lightning Element: Storm Bolt: 50
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Daizen had two fifties, two mid-forties, and a thirty nine for his main combat stats….
 
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I agree with some of this, but there are serious counterpoints to consider.

eaglejarl said:
- You can use it on someone else's turn, or when surprised, in order to protect yourself and up to one teammate. Generates a barrier strong enough that someone a full tier higher than you is going to have trouble punching through it quickly. This means you get to have all the time you want to cast your buffs, or you can use Hiding Like a Mole to escape the combat entirely.
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In order for someone "a full tier higher than you" to actually have trouble punching through the barrier, you need to have made GC one of your primary skills. Not only that, but if your opponent actually beats your GC roll, you are now out a standard action next round and still get to take the full attack they throw out at you without the benefit of substitution. Very solidly falls within the "Good as your capstone, unusable otherwise" when fighting opponents of your own rank (much less a tier above you).
eaglejarl said:
- While inside the Geode, all of your Earth Element techniques are cast with a bonus of 2 x Effect, so you can sit behind your big comfy shield and throw ranged earth attacks around all day long.
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This is true, but doesn't help Hazo as he doesn't really have any ranged attack jutsu and leveling them now will mean having to bring them near the top of his pyramid in order to compete with our opponents' athletics.
eaglejarl said:
- Alternatively, you can attack with Geode Coffin. It attacks at (Level + 2 x Effect) and can be cast at Effect 1-AB, so if you have it at level 40 (AB 5) and you max it out then it attacks at level 50 before other bonuses. It will cause damage like any other attack jutsu, and it's Weapon:2 meaning that it causes an additional 2 damage above what the roll would do. This alone makes it better than most attack jutsu. Additionally, if you land a particularly strong hit then it will either kill the target or capture them, your choice.
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Level 50 is not going to hit most chunin, much less jonin and s-rankers. We also have no other real buffs for earth jutsu. The latter is maybe something we can figure out over time, though I find it extremely unlikely considering we have had no hint of any jutsu buffs. The former falls into the same "Good as capstone, useless otherwise" issue.
eaglejarl said:
- If you successfully capture someone, on the following round you can implode the coffin, making an attack against 1/3 of the captive's Athletics. This is a one-hit kill against almost anyone.
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To successfully capture someone, you have to effectively take them out. Is this really a benefit?
eaglejarl said:
- Alternatively, you can use it as a ranged protection jutsu, allowing you to shield an ally from across the battlefield. This is as simple as making an attack roll against your ally and they choose not to dodge.
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This is true, but you usually will not have a standard available except for in the first round of combat before your turn. Usefull for helping someone survive an ambush, but you still need to out-roll your opponent which is the same issue I listed before.
eaglejarl said:
- After using it, either for attack or defense against a single target, you can cause it to explode on the following round. This is an AOE attack against the entire zone, and it re-uses the original roll so any FP or other bonuses that applied to that roll are applied to this new roll.
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This is good, but it's not really what we requested with the jutsu. There was more interest in defense rather than a situational AoE.
 
charlesrwest said:
So... Could the chakra conductive material used for 3d sealing be used for weapons (ES density enhancement, etc) similar to chakra metal?
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I, for one, am certainly happy to make Kei some razor-sharp, hyper-dense, and chakra-conducive obsidian shurikens.

Fortunately, these are small enough to be shaped by hand and can be made wayyy faster, especially if we find a single block of obsidian to infuse at once.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Others have asked if it's possible we could create substrate without reaching BoC 30 through means of Earthshaping. I have an adjacent-yet-distinct question: it was noted when we first learned Earthshaping that it is more difficult to use Earthshaping on a material that's already been Earthshaped. If we use Bones of Creation to create our substrate, is there a penalty to our Earthshaping roll for producing the rune blank?
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ponwog90 No, the two techniques cannot be combined. If you want substrate then you pick BOC or ES and go.

_The_Bomb said:
Daizen had two fifties, two mid-forties, and a thirty nine for his main combat stats….
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For god's sake, Bomb. Don't cut out the context, which is the part where I said In general. Don't piss around with one counterexample when I'm talking general principles.

_The_Bomb said:
Almighty and Merciful QuestMasters,
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

It has come to my attention that Reflexive Supplementals, when used before your initiative in Round 1 are essentially free in that you go back to having two supplementals once your turn in the initiative begins.
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That's news to me. Where does that come from?
 
eaglejarl said:
For god's sake, Bomb. Don't cut out the context, which is the part where I said In general. Don't piss around with one counterexample when I'm talking general principles.
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Hey! I added several quotes from you about how Daizen is a reasonable example of what a new chūnin should look like.

If Daizen really was just a weird outlier I wouldn't have brought him up. My understanding is that he is, by repeated word of god, supposed to be indicative of what chūnin should like.

EDIT: From speaking with some people in DMs, it seems like mobile users cannot see the four quotes that were in the spoiler and instead only saw the line of text I added at the bottom.
eaglejarl said:
That's news to me. Where does that come from?
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Was news to me too! But the information came from this discussion on discord, and I was encouraged to ask about it in thread.
 
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DanZapman said:
Yeah? Jonin are 60ish. We've never had reason to think that people jump direct from chunin-threshold stats to jonin-threshold stats.
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Not to mention, it's been explicitly stated within the narrative that the first year of joninhood (when people would be in that grey area) is a meatgrinder that most newly-promoted jonin die to.

That's why our plan was to hide Akane's real combat stats so she would remain a chunnin for longer, giving her time to flesh out her stats and round out her build.
 
eaglejarl said:
Lightning jutsu that attempt to pass will heal the barrier instead of breaking it. Therefore:
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If Mari dropped seals that produced chakra lightning which radiated outwards/through the barrier, would this continuously heal the barrier?

Additionally, in canon, it's mentioned that Fire beats wind, and that Wind can therefore buff Fire. Is this true in MfD? Either in that certain techniques can buff others (logically increased airflow would buff some Fire techniques) or in general (there's a buff cycle which revolves the opposite direction of the rock-paper-scissors interactions)?

My expectation is that some techniques can buff others, possibly gated by a stunt.
 
DanZapman said:
I suspect the general interacts-with-jutsu stuff has been specifying "jutsu" to avoid this sort of setup.
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Seals which produce jutsu are far and few between. There are few sealmasters who research entirely new seals in the world - I suspect most research is modification of existing tech, not the whole cloth creation of a new technique.

'offensive Lightning seal which qualifies as a Lightning jutsu for the purposes of interactions' seems like it would be a reasonable spec for a new seal. I'm not suggesting we do it, but it seems quite plausible. Even just 'Lightning seal which charges that one barrier'.
 
eaglejarl said:
ponwog90 No, the two techniques cannot be combined. If you want substrate then you pick BOC or ES and go.
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What about using BoC 30 to create substrate and then using ES 50 to shape it into a rune blank. Or ES 50 to shape a blank and then BoC 30 to add channels (and do nothing else) at the end?

If we use BoC to make substrate are we unable to use our much higher-leveled Earthshaping ninjutsu for our roll to create the blank?
 
eaglejarl said:
ponwog90 No, the two techniques cannot be combined. If you want substrate then you pick BOC or ES and go.
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To be clear, are you saying:
  • "If you want to produce substrate, you must only use one of the two jutsu and not both in tandem"
  • "If you want to make a rune, you must only use one of the two jutsu and not both in tandem. If you want to use your Earthshaping stat to make runes you cannot use substrate produced by Bones of Creation."
The former is very reasonable and more or less how I expected the questions other people were asking to resolve. The latter is extremely punishing and I can't really understand how it's supposed to narratively work other than "anything produced by Bones of Creation is just fundamentally hostile to the Earthshaping jutsu" or somesuch.

The specific use case I am thinking of is "Hazou buys BoC 30 and uses it to produce substrate. Then he takes the substrate and uses Earthshaping to turn it into a rune blank." Is this allowed? Does he take a penalty to his Earthshaping from the substrate having been formed by Bones of Creation?

My expectation is that substrate creation was designed to be a separate action from rune-making because the chakra cost of 2 chakra/min (for producing substrate) over the course of a 12-hour rune blank creation session would cost a total of 1440 chakra, far more than anyone could hope to supply without a Wakahisa on standby. Rather, it seems to me like the process of creating a rune blank is intended to be split into two sessions, one where the substrate is created (taking little enough time that it can be feasibly achieved, maybe only a couple hours depending on the size of the batch produced) and one where the substrate is shaped into a rune blank (not incurring the 2 chakra/min penalty and thus somewhat feasible to run over 12 hours).

If the intended outcome here is that we need to produce rune blanks in one go from scratch, paying over 1000 chakra per rune and also completely cutting Earthshaping out of the lithosealing process, I would like that to be clear so that I can calibrate my expectations around it. It'd absolutely suck watching one of our top stats become dead weight, so I want to be very sure about whether this is happening or not.
 
@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @Paperclipped

If you create raw, uninfused substrate with GoC, can you then use Earthshaping to shaped/calligraphy'd/change it into the shape if the rune you want to infuse?

Or can raw, uninfused lithosealing substrate only be shaped by the very same jutsu that created it.

CCnJ: our current Lithosealing-Calligraphy ability is level 50. If we raise GoC to 30, will we be forced to use GoC as a lithosealing-callig on the runic substrate that GoC creates?

Edit: ninja'd
 
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eaglejarl said:
That's news to me. Where does that come from?
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So the quandary we were discussing is that, if Hazou uses up his Turn 1 action imperfectly blocking with Geode Coffin and the enemy gets inside the coffin, Hazou just gets splatted on Turn 2 because he has nowhere to dodge. Having used up his Turn 1 Standard would mean that he can't HLaM and escape the coffin until his Turn 2, and by that point the enemy will have gotten off their own Turn 2 fully unopposed. This sounds, on the face of it, really bad defensively: if we lose the defensive roll, the turn order works out such that we kinda just die.

But the question of reflexive actions comes into play then. To my understanding, if you want to use a reflexive on Turn X you must have finished Turn X without spending those actions. That is, if Hazou wants to Substitute off-turn he can't have ended his turn using up all of his supplementals: he has to have left at least one slot free for his off-turn substitution. And then, when Hazou reaches Turn X+1, his actions all replenish.

A cursory reading of the rules does not suggest there's any particular exception to this on the first turn of battle, where if you want to Substitute before your first turn happens you're now borrowing against your future turn's action economy. I can't recall if it's come up in any of the written combats either, but there I could easily have just forgotten. If this rule still holds true here, Hazou substituting on the first turn of battle before his Turn 1 could be described as him using his unused Turn 0 supplemental action to cast a reflexive supplemental.

If this also works for a reflexive Standard, Geode Coffin's defensive application becomes a lot more solid. An enemy attacks Hazou before his Turn 1, causing Hazou to reflexively cast Geode Coffin on himself. It's an imperfect defense and the enemy ninja gets in the coffin with Hazou. Hazou's Turn 1 comes up and he uses a Standard to HLaM and escape the coffin, not getting meat-pasted by the enemy.


Of course, things aren't the worst if it doesn't work this way, if casting Geode Coffin doesn't stop Hazou from having a Turn 1 Standard. Hazou could explode the coffin outwards (if his allies aren't in the same zone) and try to flee or otherwise let his allies help him avoid getting meat-pasted. That's a pretty bad situation to be in from simply not fully blocking the enemy's alpha strike, but it's not necessarily a meat paste moment. It's just, you know, worse than trying to dodge normally, since now you're down a lot of chakra and your Turn 1 Standard.

I think it is honestly a pretty important use case to consider here. "The enemy is faster than you and attacks on Turn 1 with bignumber, hoping to hurt you enough that you can't fight back" is one of the most common combat strategies and that makes it feel really important whether using Geode Coffin to block that is a solid strategic decision that lets you put the Geode Coffin walls between you and your foe (whether it's you on the inside and them on the outside, or them on the inside and you on the outside after HLaM) or an awful strategic decision that wastes most of your Turn 1 resources in return for basically nothing. Especially of note is that this Turn 1 alpha strike is exactly where an enemy ninja would be most likely to out-bignumber Geode Coffin even by a little and thus win the rights to get inside it, so it's especially relevant whether imperfectly blocking with it (i.e. reducing the damage down to only a couple shifts) is a near-perfect defense or basically suicide. I legitimately expect this problem to come up in actual use in the field.
 
_The_Bomb said:
Hey! I added several quotes from you about how Daizen is a reasonable example of what a new chūnin should look like.
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Yeah, taking this into account I have to agree that it's a reasonable question (specifically, the 'newly-frocked' bit, although I have to note that he's also described as 'new(ish)'). Should we add any qualifiers to "Daizen is reasonable for a new chunin" like "Daizen is somewhat abnormal for being a cultist of the murder god" or should we understand that in practice ninja organizations tend to be stricter with promotions than the bare minimum?
 
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Well, forget the crazy combos of Strength of the Storm running at the same time as Pangolin Earth Armor or Stone Storm Barrier, I've found a nice synergy with just regular ol' Earth Element!

Here's a mock-fight with our current stat line with the addition of Geode Coffin and Stone Storm Barrier both at level 30.

Round 1
Enemy 1
Turn 1 Standard: Taijutsu attack on—

Reflexive Interrupt!

Hazō
Turn 0 Standard: Geode Coffin 30

Enemy 1
— on Hazō

Enemy 1 bonks into the reflexively created Geode Coffin! Enemy 1 does not penetrate its Durability 6.

Enemy 1
Turn 1 Supplemental: [bank]
Turn 1 Supplemental: [bank]

Hazō
Turn 1 Standard: Stone Storm Barrier 30 + 10 (Earth Apprentice) + 12 (Geode Coffin) + 6 (Chakra Boost) + 0 = SSB 58
Turn 1 Supplemental: [lights joint]
Turn 1 Supplemental: [smokes joint]

Round 2
Enemy 1
Turn 2 Standard: Taijutsu Attack on Coffin
Turn 2 Supplemental: [bank]
Turn 2 Supplemental: [bank]

Enemy 1 fails to penetrate the Durability 6 Geode Coffin!

Hazō
Free Action: Explode Geode Coffin 30 + 10 (Earth Apprentice) + 12 (2*AB) + 7 (Chakra Boost) + 0 = GC 59

Enemy 1 takes X stress!

Hazō
Turn 2 Standard: Taijutsu 43 + 7 (RB) + 6 (Macerators) + 7 (Chakra Boost) + 0 = 63

Enemy 1 takes Y stress!

Hazō
Turn 2 Supplemental: [bank]
Turn 2 Supplemental: [bank]

Enemy 1 takes Z stress from SSB 58 autoattack!

Round 3
Hazō notices that Enemy 1 is actually a corpse! Who knows how many attacks ago that happened?
This still doesn't beat the utter bullshit that is Storm Wisp, Lightning Aura, and Strength of the Storm. Such a ridiculous combo on so many fronts. When we go to the gold mine we should set some aside so we can offer Daizen his body weight in Ryō (or just solid gold ingots) for his ninjutsu, assuming we can't just yoink it with our religious authority!

Imagine if anytime someone attacked Yuno from within her zone she was able to give a MW counter attack with a massive boost from SotS, and then the enemy facing an autoattack from Lightning Aura and then quite a few more autoattacks from all the Storm Wisps floating around her, which are themselves boosted from Lightning Aura and anything else she might have gotten hit with.
 
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