Ootspunter Posted January 17, 2018 Posted January 17, 2018 (edited) Shadow Slinger | Kage no Toushu | 影の投手 It has long been a custom of the Nara clan deer herders to use the spoils of their cultivation to better allow them to complete their work. Just as the Kagemane was developed to help the deer herders farm antlers without disturbing their skittish brethren, bows constructed from the antlers were used as a tool to herd, capture, and protect. For decades, the Nara used their horn bows and shadow manipulation skills as separate but necessary tools in herding deer. Over time, a rare few of these bows, apparently made from the antlers of deer with highly potent chakra, exhibited an attraction to the Nara's shadows. Those who were particularly adept in shadow manipulation and who had a very keen chakra eventually developed techniques to take advantage of the special horn bows connection to the kagemane. The bows were used to direct shinobi's kage and the kage used to give power to the bow or to direct its projectiles. While some Nara shinobi had advocated for these antler bows usefulness as offensive weapons-especially supporters of the famous Nara Shikamaru- the clan elders decided to keep their existence hidden during times of war, for fear their enemies might steal them and learn the secrets of shadow manipulation. As strife increased and more clan members were forced to leave the life of herding to join the life of the shinobi, the majority of these bows were either destroyed or lost to time. But, one of these bows, which some say is the oldest and most connected to the shadows, remains. This powerful double bow, known througout Nara lore as The Shadow Slinger, was cradted from the matching antlers of three deer who are believed to have descended from the great Koudaikou himself. Legend has it that the bow's last owner was Cenarus whose skill with the weapon was part of what impressed Koudaikou enough to become a willing summon. Currently, the Shadow Slinger is hidden away somewhere in the Nara clan forest. While many have tried to locate and wield it, no one has proved the elusive bow's master. The bow's innate chakra appears to be highly discerning, as it has not allowed any shinobi's shadow to join with it in as long as anyone alive can remember. Type: Bow Size: Medium Level: -- Attributes: -- Special Abilities: Latent Shadow Integration | Senzaitekida Kage no Tougou Effect: Each time a Weapon Attack is made with this weapon, the user rolls one d12. The result determines which of the following occurs: 1-5: No additional effects occur 6-9: The user may pay an additional 35 Chakra when making this attack. If they do, an opponent hit by the first strike of the Weapon Attack will suffer the status effect "Slow" for one turn. 10-12: The user may pay an additional 40 Chakra when making this attack. If they do, an opponent hit by the first strike of the Weapon Attack will suffer the status effect "Exhausted" for one turn. Description: The Nara's close relation the the deer of their Deep Forest has led to a natural innate connection; shadows manipulated by Nara clan chakra gravitate towards the powerful properties of the deers' antlers. This can be taken advantage of by wrapping a thread of shadow along the bowstring and onto the arrow. This shadow thread is sent along the arrow's flight path. Once it strikes the enemy, the shadow spreads along their body and chakra points, causing them to be burdened with the user's Kage chakra. are the only ones that are not mutually exclusive to the need for empathy towards the other in his concept of the usual boundaries Cost: 200両 Marked by Shadows | Kage de Matowoshibotta Effect: Every time an opponent is hit with a successful Weapon Attack from this bow, the user gains one stack of "Shadow Marking". Twice per battle, as a Free Action in the Set-Up Phase, the user may sacrifice any number of "Shadow Marking" stacks to increase the chance to hit of any [Hijutsu; Nara] used in the main phase of that turn by (y/10)% per stack, where y = the level of this weapon. Description: Nara shinobi are known for their tactical minds and their use of deception. They have learned to take advantage of opponents' failures to attend to all aspects of the environment, no matter how small. In this case, the thread of shadow cast by an arrow in flight is used to connect the Nara user's shadow to their opponent, effectively setting up their infamous Kage no Jutsu. Cost: 400両 Cost: Approved at 1050両 (original approval price was lvl 1 and has attributes Ninjutsu Forged (300両) | Chakra Blade (50両) | Unique (50両) included) Edited October 6, 2018 by Ootspunter Stupid formatting
Ootspunter Posted January 17, 2018 Author Posted January 17, 2018 NOTES: Nara Clan ties and references are pending Kouta's approval. I've pm'd him on NA and on discord and he said he'd take a look, but I wanted to post it here in the meantime. The costs are pretty arbitrary guesses. I'm still getting accustomed to how things work! The Chakra Blade attribute description on the main site doesn't say it is restricted to blade-type weapons despite what the name suggests. So I just wanted to double check it could be added to a ranged only weapon like a bow. I believe adding ninjutsu forged to a ranged weapon should replace it's taijutsu mod with ninjutsu mod, but keep the accuracy mod half. I couldn't find any reference anywhere to something like this, so maybe it warrants a different description? Or maybe just a note on this items description? I'm wondering about anyone's thoughts on this.
Cellar Door Posted January 18, 2018 Posted January 18, 2018 Latent Shadow Integration: Firstly, your wording is all-kinds of crazy on this. We have certain terms that we use for things like Barriers and Shields. Barrier & Shield is the basic terminology for someone who is just referring to those specific defenses. "Construct" is a bit broader of an umbrella that refers to things like clones as well. Items are usually a whole different thing. The basic issue I'm seeing is that Barriers and Items function very differently. Most armors reduce damage in the form of a Defense Boost for the wearer. In which case they aren't directly reducing the damage of the attack and the effect wouldn't apply anyhow. (What I'm saying here is you should probably just cut the part about items. Not gonna get much mileage out of it.) My next question is when you hit a barrier or whatever and that damage pierces it, do any effects of the attack come along with it? Normally Barriers and Shields are best used when they can stall low-damage builds that rely on status effects, and if you can just trump a barrier existing to apply Bleeding debuffs and stuff then there'd be nothing stopping you from making a 10 damage Weapon Jutsu that also afflicts 300 Bleed Damage, and only deal half of that wimpy 5 damage, but threat for 300 Bleed on the opponent's next turn. Basically for this to be acceptable, it would have to be pure damage that comes through, and any effects beyond damage are stopped at the wall. After we get some of this hashed out we can talk more about the price. (Which is tremendously too low.)Marked By Shadows: A neat effect, bows on here often have similar things. This will probably also need to cost more, but I don't see anything directly wrong with the effect.
Ootspunter Posted January 20, 2018 Author Posted January 20, 2018 Thanks for the input Cellar! For latent shadow integration: I think perhaps you've stumbled into a greater issue with the Nara clan techniques. I took the wording for this ability almost verbatim from the Nara clan jutsu (still pending kouta's approval anyhow). They were approved on 2014 I think, and maybe they made more sense back then! I'm totally fine reworking this here, or perhaps even scrapping it altogether for now! My goal was to come up with an ability that highlights the bow's connection to the shadow, and there's probably another way to do so. Will work on it and post again with an update.
Cellar Door Posted January 20, 2018 Posted January 20, 2018 You're talking about Shadow Stitching, correct? I feel like that had some issues as well, during the approval process, but the big difference here is that that is a single jutsu with known and visible effects, while this is a weapon and it can be combined with any number of techniques that you make for it. So essentially, we know what Shadow Stitching does and will always do, but the bow affects any Weapon Jutsu used with it, so it could do a lot of unforeseen things and therein lies the problem.
Ootspunter Posted January 21, 2018 Author Posted January 21, 2018 Hmm, I see the issue there. Update: I have changed the special ability latent shadow integration to something entirely different. The goal was to make a simpler ability that bith fits with my character's playstyle and the RP goal I wanted for the weapon. We'll see about cost. Nothing else about the weapon was changed.
Kouta Posted January 27, 2018 Posted January 27, 2018 Description Wise, this has my blessing. That seems pretty fitting for a clan who does make everything out of their deer parts. Deer Bow? Check. Latent Shadow Integration: This fits flavorwise with the Nara. Just out of curiosity, why is this a d9 instead of a d10? It's odd because the rpg player in me wants a die that exists in real life, but it doesn't make any difference here. I'm just curious. Let's DO make a few small changes in wording though, just to make the ability more clearly defined: Just roll the specific chakra costs into the rolls themselves and remove the long OOC tag at the bottom. So just put... (5-7): The user may pay an additional 35 Chakra when making this Attack. If they do, an opponent hit by the first strike of this Attack will suffer "Slow" for 1 turn. It is IMPORTANT that we note the change in wording. Instead of just saying "when you make an attack" (meaning you don't have to hit them for the effect to happen) we've rolled a to-hit requirement into the wording by adding "an opponent hit by..." but we have ALSO specified that the slow only happens on the first strike, since weapons can have many strikes per turn. We have ALSO made the ability optional, so that you can't force yourself to run out of chakra, which in your version, would definitely happen. Do the same for 6-10. The wording will be pretty much identical. Marked By Shadows: Description wise, I'd love to see this ability be less about making them chakra-homing beacons, and more about using the fact that an arrowshaft casts a shadow, thin as it may be, which enemies often ignore. This can be used to create new and unexpected angles for the shadows to attack from. That would be very Nara (again, this is not a requirement, just a suggestion). Effect wise, similar to Latent Shadow, we can see a very easy slimming down of the effect by changing some of the wording. Like so: Every time an opponent is hit with a successful attack from this bow, the user gains one stack of "shadow marking". Twice per battle, as a Free Action in the Set-Up Phase, the user may sacrifice any number of "shadow marking" stacks in order to gain Y Accuracy per stack, where Y=The level of this weapon. Accuracy gained in this way lasts for 1 Turn, and is only applied when dealing with Attacks with the [Hijutsu; Nara] descriptor. It's your exact same effect, just cleaned up and made a little more official sounding. I did change the stack location to the user in this version, because its honestly easier to just keep a tally on your own posts, and the difference in how the effect works practically is minimal.
Ootspunter Posted January 27, 2018 Author Posted January 27, 2018 (edited) Kouta! Great to hear from you. Latent Shadow Integration: Never having RP'd in real life, I didn't even think about the fact that a d9 doesn't even exist. Well, actually now I've learned they exist (and are funny shaped!). I used a d9 because it made the probabilities of the ability very clean: 40% for one, 30% for two, and 20% for three. I'll convert it to use a d12 in order to keep things more authentic rpg. It ends up being practically the same probabilities (25, 33.3, 42.6 percent) anyways. I appreciate the help with making the wording more clear and consistent with NA verbiage. I'm still getting the hang of things, and the changes you made actually better reflect what I had imagined anyways. Marked by Shadows: Same deal as above here. Your suggestions really are just helping me learn better how to convert my own ideas into NA language and using NA rules. I also agree with your comment on the description, the idea that people not noticing the shadow cast by a projectile is being used as a tactical advantage is super Nara-like. I'll rework the description with that in mind. Edited January 27, 2018 by Ootspunter
Kouta Posted January 27, 2018 Posted January 27, 2018 You can also word the second attack as "...any number of "Shadow Marking" stacks to increase the chance to hit of any [Hijutsu; Nara] used in the main phase of that turn by (y/10)% per stack, where Y= the level of this weapon." which would give you the same effect since Accuracy/10 is your chance to hit bonus (100 Accuracy is +10% chance to hit, for example)
Ootspunter Posted January 27, 2018 Author Posted January 27, 2018 All suggestions/changes have been integrated and I noticed a couple typos that I fixed.
Ootspunter Posted February 7, 2018 Author Posted February 7, 2018 Edited level so I can actually buy it once it's made. Also, butsukatte imasu! (bumping)
PandaMattMatt Posted February 25, 2018 Posted February 25, 2018 This is kind of a cool weapon. I am terrible with pricing, so, forgive me if someone else sweeps in here and corrects me, however, the effects seem perfectly fine to me from a balance perspective. Approved.
PandaMattMatt Posted March 14, 2018 Posted March 14, 2018 I'm going to assume Koutas approval still stands.
Ootspunter Posted September 24, 2018 Author Posted September 24, 2018 (edited) Not sure why this was moved to dead, but I got it moved back to clean up the wording since 9.0.0 anyways. Changes: Wherever it said "Attacks", I changed it to say "Weapon Attacks" to reflect the new 9.0.0 verbaige. Level and Attributes now say "--" to reflect the new style. I marked what attributes were included in the original price approved by Tony (1050) at the bottom. I also cleaned up some formatting/design (no actual words were changed, just style crap like color and italics) No other content was changed and nothing that actually changes how anything worked was done. yay! Edited September 24, 2018 by Ootspunter
