Kirigakure; Silent Killing Technique

[Cellar Door]

 

Muon Satsujin Jutsu | Silent Killing Technique | 無音殺人術
Description: Kirigakure no Sato is a village that is perpetually shrouded in a mist that ranges from light at the best of times to 'zero visibility' on a story night. Because of the inclement weather of their homeland, shinobi naturally developed a method of fighting competently in low visibility. To capitalize on fighting while unseen the Silent Killing style was born.

By making as little noise as possible while in conditions of low visibility, the mist-ninja came to be considered extremely deadly hunters and assassins, followed by an ominous shroud of chill mist. Since it was developed, many dark rumors have grown up around the Village of the Bloody Mist and the savage shinobi who stalk it. Chief among those rumors is the notion that any who fall victim to the silent killing meet their doom without realizing that they're dying. The Silent Killing Technique is fought almost exclusively with blades, exploiting weak-points in human anatomy and usually resulting in lots of blood.

 

 

• Silent Killing Style
Effect: Characters with this skill may perform Weapon Techniques with the ‘Muon Satsujin’ descriptor. Characters with this skill may accumulate ‘Murder Charges’. Anytime a character with this skill deals damage with a Weapon Attack they gain 1 ‘Murder Charge’ and anytime the Climate Effect ‘Mist’ is applied to the battlefield they gain 1 ‘Murder Charge’. Anytime the Climate Effect ‘Mist’ is removed from the battlefield characters with this skill lose 2 ‘Murder Charges’. ‘Murder Charges’ have the following effects:

 

⚔ When performing a Weapon Attack or Weapon Technique with the ‘Muon Satsujin’ descriptor, characters with this skill may pay 1 ‘Murder Charge’ to cause that attack to inflict 1 turn of the status effect ‘Bleeding; 40+20x’, with ‘x’ being equivalent to a value based on the character’s rank (i.e; Genin; 1, Chūnin; 2, etc). ‘Murder Charges’ may be spent in this way 1 time per attack.

 

⚔ The Accuracy reduction caused by the climate effect ‘Mist’ is increased by +5x%, with ‘x’ being equivalent to the number of ‘Murder Charges’ possessed by characters with this skill.

Description: The art of killing a foe without making a single sound is one of the most infamous traits of shinobi from the Village Hidden in the Mist. Hunter-Ninja of the Mist Village are trained extensively in this ability and combining it with the Hiding in Mist Technique to extremely deadly effect that only becomes more effective when used in a group. Those who practice Silent Killing make use of the dreaded reputation of the bloody mist village and their own ability to hide within the mist that they create to make it more oppressive for their enemies. It is widely believed that those who are killed by this style of combat die before realizing they are injured; generally in areas that cause their opponent to bleed out.
Requirements: Kirigakure No Jutsu
Cost: -2

 

---

 

• Silent Killing Mastery
Effect: Anytime a character with this skill spends a 'Murder Charge' when making an attack, any techniques or skills used in response to that attack have their Fail Chance increased by +5x%, with 'x' being equivalent to the character's rank in this skill.
Description: The Silent Killing style is well-known as one of the most deadly martial arts and is especially effective in the field of assassination. The truly masterful practitioners of the style utilize their own abilities and the mists they create to penetrate their opponent's defenses and strike them when they are most vulnerable.
Reguirements: Silent Killing Style
Ranks: 5
Cost: -1

 

• Silent Killing Squad Training
Effect: Anytime an ally performs the technique 'Kirigakure No Jutsu' characters with this skill are also treated as if they had performed that technique.
Description: In the Village Hidden in the Mist, combat is often conducted in large units. These teams are heavily trained to work in unison with each other so that they may easily coordinate their movements when fighting in low-visibility conditions. This training makes hunter-nin squads from Kirigakure especially deadly, and feared for their skill in many villages.
Reguirements: Chunin Rank, Silent Killing Style
Cost: -1

 

Edited April 28, 2017 by Cellar Door

[Cellar Door]

Designer's Notes: You know, I don't really have a whole lot to say about this one. It's all really quite straightforward. Since a Charge is worth 40CP, I mathed out the Bleed damage to be Genin; 60 (38 CP), Chunin; 80 (42 CP), Jonin; 100 (40 CP), and Sennin; 120 (48 CP).

And partially because it busts the value a smidge in some places, I upped the cost on the style to -2, and gave it an easy way to remove charges.

[Hardcore Skittlez]

The Accuracy reduction feels rather high, even considering that the user is affected too. Beyond that, I don't think that it really fits the idea of a fighting style-- being trained to fight in the mist doesn't make your mist better, right? I think charges reducing the effects of Mist on the user might be better?

 

IMO, I think maybe rather than a passive effect, it could have an active effect that let you spend charges to treat your Silent Killing techniques like a dynamic trap, which might better represent the flavor of popping out of the mist and murdering someone before they can react?

[Cellar Door]

Mechanically, mist is not a very good terrain effect. A 10% accuracy reduction isn't really impressive, so if I can take something that is central to theme of a combat style and make it more appealing, I'd rather do that than make other effects that dance around it. As far the reduction being high goes, I know for a fact that there are Fighting Styles that boost accuracy by 25% and are -1 styles.

In most cases this will amount to an additional 25% reduction with the caveat that the whole thing can be removed from the battlefield for 40 Chakra, and wipe away 2 Murder Charges in the process. In a team battle the Accuracy reduction can rise, but again, for that same 40 Chakra the player is removing 4+ Murder Chargers and much more of a reduction. I don't personally think this is too powerful at all, especially since a ninja who's prepared to fight against a terrain-based opponent would have the tools to resource fight the enemy (Since putting mist down will always be more expensive than removing a climate/terrain) into an advantageous situation. (There are also some other more obscure work-arounds that can be used to turn this effect from a detriment into an advantage.)

Flavorwise, it's only as perfect or imperfect as you have come to regard taijutsu. To get a number of charges that really make a difference, this character will have had to have already been attacking from the mist, and demoralizing their enemies. If a Taijutsu technique can get approved that is a roar that only has psychological effects, than I don't see a problem with a taijutsu style having psychological effects. (this does raise a problem with it also affecting the user. That part is imperfect.) Its important to me to keep the theme of the style revolving around mist-combat, and this is a way to give a bonus that has never been attempted before, and I think it helps add to the unique-ness of the fighting style. That Dynamic Trap idea pops up all over the place, and while I think it's a cool idea, I personally don't want to see it on everything, and the other issue is that I have no idea what would get diminishing returns from it. Just... every attack? That's not very good, if you spend a 40 CP token and that token is only worth 35 CP the next time, and so on and so forth. 

All that being said, I'm not against other possibilities. I just need mist to be involved, and need it to be a passive ability. I'm not paying 2 SP and losing 2 charges super easily for 2 paid effects. That'd be bad.

[wolfnin]

Silent Killing Style:

 

I'm going to agree with Skittz that the second effect feels out of place for the fighting style. That being said, I really do think it's cool that it revolves around having mist as an active terrain out and it should play around that theme (as you said).

 

Hmmm, perhaps if we did maybe an increase percentage to hit based on the number of charges held? Or perhaps chance of critically striking?  

 

 

Silent Killing Mastery

 

+25% feels a bit too high of a bonus for spending a single charge. Granted, you are spending -5sp to achieve that bonus, which is quite a bit. I think if we just dropped a rank and left it at +20% chance it'd be okay. 

 

Everything else looks good to me. 

 

 

[Cellar Door]

This style revolves around weapon attacks, and they have pretty low base damage in the grand scheme of things. You'll never have a higher base than 300 with a Large Weapon and 200 with a Medium Weapon. Naturally, critical hits aren't super appealing here, when the majority of your attacking is going to have a lower base damage than most jutsu, especially when you reach the end of the game.

Increasing Accuracy doesn't really make sense. Zabuza was actually fighting Kakashi with his eyes closed while using this fighting style because his eyes were more of a detriment to him open than they were closed. Beyond the flavor of it though, that idea is boring, and on a ton of styles. +5x% bonus to hit or whatever is a pretty common one, and doesn't have anything to do with whether or not Mist is on the battlefield.

That would essentially bring us back to my previous point where, I have a taijutsu style that's only synergy play with Mist is that you get 1 charge for putting it on the field, and the opponent takes away 2 charges for removing it and it's infinitely cheaper to remove it than to apply it. (That's still a counter-play in my current version, but what's the point of putting in a counter-play like this if the style is just going to be a boring, baseline style?)

---

As far as the Mastery goes, right now Vulnerable is analogous to a 100% RPJ fail chance. It costs 50 CP, no investment of SP, and can be used 3 times per battle. The only caveat here is that you have to hit the opponent first.

There's also this which is a 2 SP investment and can be a 45% chance to fail twice per battle or a 90% chance to fail once per battle. This has a battle limit, but not an expenditure of resources.

I'm not going to say that it's not strong to be able to spend a charge and get +25% chance to fail on response stuff, but this is a 5 SP investment, and as I stated previously charge control is almost more in the hands of the opponent than it is in the hands of the user, since removing mist is so costly to charge tempo.

This is only a 1 in 4 chance. It'll never be more than that, and the user has to be able to expend resources to make this happen. If there are no resources to expend, it won't work.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Cellar Door

[Peregine]

Considering that you can apply a one-turn Mist as a setup action at chuunin+, you can 100% guarantee yourself a charge every main phase regardless of anyone else's action. For that reason I'm against the skill as it is now.

What if instead it was a single-rank skill that increased fail chance by 5x% per charge held? Or 5+5x, if you're spending a charge to activate it. It would place more emphasis on getting/holding charges which is tricky with pure weapon attacks, but doable if weapon jutsu can build charges too.

Wording note; increasing the fail rate on 'Response Phase Actions' will have to be reworded, because a dodge is a response phase action.

[Cellar Door]

Setup Phase techniques require a cool-down period.

And fixed.

[Peregine]

Setup phase don't *need* cooldowns, at least not according to the main site. In fact, they're supposed to have a once-per-battle limit unless otherwise stated, but nobody really follows that rule so idk.

[Cellar Door]

If they have to have a once per battle rule too, then it's sort of the same point I was making with cool-downs.

[wolfnin]

Now-a-days, a lot of styles have techniques that will guarentee them at least a charge. In addition, the requirement to continually cast the climate 'mist' requires more chakra expenditure as well as you run the risk of it running out on yourself and losing charges through that. This also becomes a bit detrimental against another climate user (and now we get weather wars). I'm fine with the condition of gaining and losing charges. 

 

For silent killing, does it trigger when you use the first ability of the style?

[Cellar Door]

Mastery? Yes. It would.

[wolfnin]

So I gave this some thought and I'm pretty okay with this, this style does have a huge counterplay which struggles against other climate users and can easily be stopped. 

 

The only thing that I'm not quite sure is giving skills a fail chance, because from the way its worded it can give fail chances on skills that increase block range or reduce damage if hit. Which I don't think was intentional, correct? 

Edited November 10, 2016 by wolfnin

[Cellar Door]

Incorrect. Passive things are not activated, so they can't have a fail chance to be activated. I'd even argue that Triggered things don't count as being activated.

[Peregine]

Some skills are active, like Iron Will. Is the fail chance intended to affect those?

[Hardcore Skittlez]

Silent Killing Mastery seems really close to the lego-block skills that we've kind of tried to steer away from in the past. I think that you should take that effect and replace the Mist bonus with it in the core style- because it makes more sense there than... your fighting style making your mist better-- mist that is usually generated through a ninjutsu technique, you know?

[Cellar Door]

Pere; Yes, activated skills would be included in the fail chance here. 

Skittz; Techniques affecting techniques is the lego-blocking effects that we try and avoid. All skills that effect techniques are lego-blocky. That's how skills like that work, and tons of them exist as precedence. C'mon. Silverwind? Black Lightning? Anything that buffs burn damage? Anything that makes any technique better.


Anyway, the strength of casting Mist over and over to get charges is shaky at best. For 40 SP most players can use a jutsu that would grant them a charge of the style chosen and use it every turn. This one is debatable, since there are no rules in place that state definitively whether or not the first mist applied to the battlefield is removed or not. I personally, would assume that if a climate is on the field, and another one is used, the current one is removed. So casting Mist over and over would be a net loss. It'd look like;

Mist: +1
Mist 2 (-2 +1) +1
Mist 3 (-2 +1) +1

Now, I'm not 100% the authority on how it would work, but that's my estimation of it anyhow, since most status effects don't compound and instead replace the one with the lower duration. I would imagine it's the same way here. In which case, one goes away and another gets applied. So you'd never get more than 1 charge, and are more likely to lose 1.

[wolfnin]

Approved. 

 

I think these skills are fine, since there's a huge counter play that can easily be arranged with a minor climate erasing technique, also it's quite costly to 

 

As for the mist buffing ability, I does think it fits the fighting style. A fighter whom specializes in fighting in mist would make part it part of their fighting style to buff the mist that surrounds them. While it does feel a bit off, it's not that far-fetched for a fighting style. 

[Cellar Door]

Made a very small edit. The parenthesis around the numbers in the first effect actually made it do way more damage than I originally intended.

[Azure]

Considering everyone was already talking about how it was intended to work and that was cleared up,

 

Approved.