Art of Shadow Manipulation

[Peregine]

I think Imitation is pretty much sewn up

 

I agree with your Neckbind maths at Lv120, the damage is within acceptable limits. But at lower ranks and levels, not so much. 

 

Genin, Lv30: Deals 60 Base Damage, then 90 additional Choking damage per turn. Assuming two turns, that puts the total damage at 240 (180 of which is unmodified). 400% over the cap.

Chuunin, Lv60: Deals 120 Base Damage, then 180 additional Choking damage per turn. Assuming two turns, that puts the total damage at 480 (360 of which is unmodified). 400% over the cap.

Jonin, Lv90: Deals 180 Base Damage, then 270 additional Choking damage per turn. Assuming two turns, that puts the total damage at 720 (540 of which is unmodified). 200% over the cap.

Sennin, Lv120: Deals 240 Base Damage, then 360 additional Choking damage per turn. Assuming two turns, that puts the total damage at 960 (720 of which is unmodified). 

 

A third turn would blow these even further out of the water, but even without it that's way, way over the Gennin and Chuunin caps.

 

Assuming the same levels as before, cost would be as follows:

 

Genin: 50 + 4(30) = 170 Chakra

Chuunin: 50 + 4(60) = 290 Chakra

Jonin: 50 + 4(90) = 410 Chakra

Sennin: 50 + 4(120) = 530 Chakra

 

That's fine for a Skill-Locked Jonin and Sennin tech, but at Genin and Chuunin it's too heavy. Maybe tweaking the cost and additional choking damage might make it more even across the ranks? I'm running out of time to post so I haven't done the maths, but reducing it to 3x cost and 2x/2.5x extra choking damage maybe? 

[Kouta]

Well, see, there we enter the weirdness of status effect damage and the whole skill locked portion plus the fact that it has to be chained to a first jutsu. There's lots of considerations. Because if you use Choking for ten turns, then choke for one turns, does your jutsu actually deal 110 unmodified damage?

 

I'm mostly waiting for more opinions on damage balances, because skill locked, 2-chain jutsu, that inflicts a status and can be disrupted if they break out makes all of it a lot harder to balance.

[cntrstrk14]

I am back! And hopefully not going to have another 6 months pass between posts. Let's try and get this wrapped up.

 

Kagemane

• When I get around to writing "information to be shared at the start of the battle" ninja rank will be here. If it is changed by any other skills or w/e it would need to be noted at this sharing of this information. 

• I think you can drop the wording of "original ninja rank". Specifically because Death Bonuses have cleaned up their wording in this regard to only apply to specific things, none of which have to do with being hit with jutsu. Other abilities that mess with rank should follow this format and I don't think that Kagemane needs to dance around this as I cannot think of a single current skill that would mess with this.
• I think it was lost at some point, but this jutsu does need a Ninja Rank. Specifically, I believe the intention is for it always to be equal to the user's ninja rank? But this needs to be stated somewhere because there are effects that care about that. 

Kage Kubishibari

• I mostly agree with Peregine's points of it being too much. Assuming level 20 for a Genin this would be doing 40 damage + an extra 60 damage each turn from Choking (on top of normal Choking effects). The following google doc breaks down the total damage this is doing, not including the normal choking damage or the bonus to the E value. [Tools] Kage Kubishibari Math. Assuming it only lasts 1 turn, you still end up breaking the damage caps by a considerable amount even on the first turn. Genin is dealing 150 total at level 30 (CE range) with another 90 damage each turn it continues to hold. Let me know if I got the math incorrect.

[Kouta]

Kagemane: I had it's 'rank' effect in the skill portion, but I moved it from the skill portion into the jutsu itself for easy access, and because of changes to Neckbind. All other changes adopted.

 

Neckbind: After much mathing, I split Kage Kubishibari into three jutsu, because damnit it is not possible to balance in our current system. A Chunnin, Jounin, and Sennin counterpart, each with the Forced Evolving mechanic, now named Lesser Neckbind, Neckbind, and Greater Neckbind. Each counterpart is the same, just adjusting the variables. Each one immediately inflicts 3 turns of choking [and pays for it up front], and has the added effect of "For the next three turns, if you suffer choking damage then you increase the choking turn counter, and if you're under a Hijutsu Kagemane, your breakout rolls get harder." This is a cleaner, more guaranteed bonus, but I lessened the bonuses significantly to adjust for this. The bonus is still interruptible, as anything that stops or prevents the choke prevents all of the bonus damage.

 

Lesser Neckbind: Cost is [75 + 2x] Chakra, which in Chunnin will cap around 195 Chakra. It is below cost to balance how expensive Kagemane is at this rank, taking in mind you use them together. I almost didn't make this version because when coupled with kagemane, it is frightfully expensive and is likely to never get used as is, but I wanted the option because canonically, chunnin can perform this jutsu. Deals 1x damage, which is about 60 damage at the upper echelons, and increases the Choking turn counter by 1/15th of your level rounded down, which at level 60 is 4. Overall, this boosts your choking damage by 240 by the end of the jutsu and sets you up for a nasty choke chain combo, which totals at 300 Damage. I granted the jutsu's skill lock a rough 150 CP which translates to 225 damage if spent outright. I shot UNDER that a little, since that would allow me to crack up to 345 Damage. So this SHOULD now be within tolerable thresholds.

 

Neckbind: Cost is [75 + 3x] Chakra, which in Jounin will cap around 390 Chakra assuming level 105. Deals 2x damage, which is about 210 damage at the upper echelons, and increases the Choking turn counter by 1/12th of your level rounded down, which at level 105 is 8. Overall, this boosts your choking damage by 480 by the end of the jutsu and sets you up for a nasty choke chain combo, which totals at 690 Damage. I granted the jutsu's skill lock a rough 225 CP which translates to 337 damage if spent outright (bringing the cap to almost 700 exact). I dealt less direct damage, only dealing 210, so that you end at 690, which is just under this number. Let me know if I need to revisit.

 

Greater Neckbind: Cost is [75 + 4x] Chakra, which in Senin will cap around 555 Chakra assuming level 120. Deals 4x damage, which is about 480 damage at the upper echelons, and increases the Choking turn counter by 1/10th of your level rounded down, which at level 120 is 12. Overall, this boosts your choking damage by 720 by the end of the jutsu and sets you up for a nasty choke chain combo, which totals at 1200 Damage. I granted the jutsu's skill lock a rough 300 CP which translates to 450 damage if spent outright (bringing the cap to around 1150). I dealt 480 direct damage, so that you end at 1200, which is a little above this number. Let me know if I need to revisit.

 

The only elephant in the room now is that if you chain choking beyond these turns you benefit in huge, giant ways, but then, thats true of anyone who can chain choking for a significant number of turns.

Edited June 4, 2019 by Kouta

[cntrstrk14]

Okay, we're in the final stretch here. Got some clean up!

 

Kagemane

• Remove the "Damage: N/A". We've been updating the main site to just omit this tag when there is no damage.

• Instead of "[Hijutsu; Nara] jutsu the user knows have the [Sealless] tag while this jutsu is active." I would instead say "[Hijutsu; Nara] jutsu are Seal-less and do not require the use of the hands while this jutsu is active." This mimics the Seal-less skill wording rather than relying on the tag and players needing to go look that up if they are unfamiliar.
• I would like to do a minor tweak to the breakout roll. The values stay the same but I would like to make it "(1d100 - E + S)". This is functionally the same, however if an opponent messes up the math and does not know what E or S is it will be a lot easier to fix and won't require them to roll a brand new dice. For instance, they could mess up the math and roll 1d77 instead of 1d67. If they rolled a 76 on the first one and then rolled a 3 on the second one when they were forced to re-roll it would be a pretty bad experience.

• Other than these, I think this is ready for approval.

 

Kage Kubishibari no Jutsu

• I made a new chart in the google sheet, here it is: [Tools] Kage Kubishibari Math

• I THINK that the values for the damage are okay. They pay you off for the hurdles you need to jump through to make this technique land which is really cool, and if you managed to get 3-4 turns of this you're really "doing it" which is cool, but its also not a guaranteed thing. 

• The chaining of Choking I think is fine, there is a strategy there and I think it's fine given that this is skill locked. The opponent has a lot of ability to counteract that, especially if they are free of Kagemane. They just need to break the chain.

• At its worse, the damage gets to be 435 Chakra for 600-1680 damage, depending on the number of turns you get them. I think this is fine as it starts out actually a bit lower than a raw damage technique but then scales well. This fits within the cost reduction stuff for skill locked jutsu. It's dangerous, but a lot of stuff has to go right for the worst case scenarios.

• I am not super on board with the E value math. I think that increasing the E value is a nice add to this, but the numbers get too high. The problem is that the Breakout Roll and math is level agnostic, meaning that at level 30 and level 120 you will be playing with similar values since it is all based off dodge rolls with is a 1-100 range at all levels. This adding to the E based on your level adds a rather unstable effect in. If you look at the chart you can see that at the high end you are starting to add 30+ to the E value per turn. That is very much above the average that will be added to the S value per turn from your opponent, meaning that with this jutsu active you will almost always be making the Breakout Roll more difficult per turn, which is against the design. I would propose that you instead make this a static value per turn not based on the user's level (can increase with jutsu ranks), or reduce the bonus to be much smaller like 1/8x. Even +10 or +15 is a lot to add each turn.