Ninjas - Recruitment (Training Started)

[LAYF]

Kai:

► Show Spoiler

"Thanks..." Kai said.. a bit surprised, he actually thought that Sai-san had kept any leftover money for himself.. according to all he had learned about the dis-honesty of ninjas... ah.. well... of-cause... the one who had thought him that had lied to him for 14 years while planning his death.. so....

"Hmm... body guard you say...? Hmm... I'd prefer not to be on the surprised end again, If you understand.. but... well... thanks... I'll give it thought before putting it to the side...
Thanks again... I guess i could newer have hoped to be stabbed in a better time and way hu?
You know what... I think I'll keep to this village for some time, train myself back up while finding some work... so.. am I wrong by assuming that I'll see you again?..."

Kai, drinks some more of his Tea... while giving thought to possible work he could do...
If the conversation ends, He'll thank Haruto for his hospitality.. then had him over most of his money, but keeping enough to get by on food for at least a week..
"Haruto-san, I know you have already done a lot for me, but.. do you think that that payment will be enough for me to stay with you for some time.. at least till i find a place and work to pay for it?.. I'll off-cause start looking right away.."
Weather Haruto accepts or not does not change what Kai does next... He'll use the next week to look for work in the village, place the order on his swords at the smith, and, when they are done he will start training with them...
He'll look for work that involves hard physical labor, Bamboo cutting, harvesting, smith work, fishing or any other demanding work, and while asking the masters of whatever work, He'll help them out, instead of wasting there time with idle talk...
If he can live with Haruto, he'll also help the man out whenever he is home, each evening and morning will be dedicated to training of muscle, mind and balance....

[LooksAndSmiles]

Time is up.

I'm sorry asks, but since you didn't edited your previous posts I can't take your application.

After re-reading your backstories (which didn't change much since last read, noone felt like ninja-editing ), and of course rolling some dice, the following 5 players will enter (in no particular order:)


- Beni (WearsHats)
- Sakura (nikohl)
- Mutzu (kida)
- Rae (Wolfie)
- Mesa (BadgeAddict)


I'm sorry for the others, because I enjoyed thoroughly your backgrounds, and I'm sure they are fun to play with.

For those who didn't get in:
- Feel free to stay around in the hopes of someone falling out or the group suddenly growing for whatever reason. You take priority to occupy slots.
- If you feel like RPing your character, we can do it in the setting; You might even influence the actual events in the game indirectly.
- Of course if you hold this all bullsh*t then feel free to ragequit and may you have better luck in the next game!

For those who got in:
- Please be patient as I'm writing up the character creation sheet. I intend to create an Almanac later on that has all the info (like the minesweepers) for further use, until then please bear with the posts and Q&A here.
- The starting information you will have to know will be in my next post.

---

RPing from my side is on hold until I finish with the set up. This probably means we can get back to it tomorrow earliest, if someone wishes to continue.

[thinkslogically]

Congratulations to those who got in, I'll be reading this one with interest Enjoy!

[LooksAndSmiles]

Characters

Your basic character looks like the following:

HP: 5
POW: 1
DEF: 0
AGI: 2
Stealth: 0
Nimble: 3 / 1 / 1
(KI: 0)
Mastery Points: 1

The Stats above mean:

HP: The hitpoints you have. Reduce it to 0, and you die
POW: The physical power you have. The higher the value, the more damage you can deal, and more power-based challenges you can surpass.
DEF: Your physical defense value. It helps reducing the damage taken.
AGI: Your agility. The higher the value, the more likely you will hit the enemy, and probably you will gain initiative.
Stealth: Stealth helps you in staying unnoticed, and is used at stealth checks. The higher the value, the better you are at hiding.
Nimble: The movement rate of your character. The first value is your walking / running speed: 3 units on a screen, if there is an enemy that you know about. If there are no enemies in the room or you don't know about them, then you can move any amount of tiles, but then you will be prone to sneak attacks! The middle number is your jumping distance, "1" means you can safely jump over 1 unit gap if the other side is at same height. The last number is your climbing distance. 1 means you can safely climb up 1 unit of height. Of course, falling down can be of multiple units of height in one turn, it can bad for health, though.
KI: KI is the inner force of everyone, but only those in trained in harassing it can call its powers. KI enables some special actions, and generally works like "mana" in the more known games.
Mastery Points: see far below.

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Now that you know what basic stats you have, let's create a character! You have the name, the color, and the background already.

The next step is choosing a Weapon affinity. Ninjas of course are multitalents and can wield any weapon, provided that they have the physical strength to do it and it is not a special weapon that requires learning.

Weapon Affinity will give you one random ability which you can use with the specific weapon you have. The more trained you are with your weapon, the more abilites you will unlock. (Again, you can use other weapons too, you just can't trigger your abilities with them)

The following affinities you can choose from, each has at least 1 respective weapon:

- Sword Affinity (e.g.: katana)
- Dagger Affinity (e.g.: dagger, sai)
- Sickle Affinity (e.g.: kama )
- Chain Affinity (e.g.: chain of thousand powers)
- Stick Affinity (e.g.: nun-chucks (!), long stick )
- Ranged Affinity (e.g.: bow, shuriken)
- Long Weapon Affinity (anything two handed, e.g.: naginata)
- Unarmed Affinity (Duh. This includes kicks and punches, grappling, gagging, disarm, pinching-techniques, etc.)

Specific abilities are given out randomly, and I'd like to be them surprise, without having to describe them a priori. Think of them as special moves you learned on your journey, or a master taught it to you when he saw your talent.

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One more thing to pimp your character! Just like everyone has an affinity, they can also immerse themselves in the different Masteries. You only get 1 mastery point at the beginning, which you can spend in one mastery family. Mastery points will be rewarded, mostly. Since being a master of something requires time and dedication, you can only learn from a new family if you have spent at least 3 points in the current one. A mastery once learned cannot be unlearned. You may spend multiple points on the same mastery to make it even better. After a while the cost of it will increase, though!

Mastery of the Body
- Endurance: +1HP permanently, +20% chance to resist posion
- Strength: +1 POW permanently
- Agility: +1 AGI permanently
- Nimbleness: +1 permanently to one of the three kinds of nimbleness (combat move, jump, climb), reducing damage/fatigue from failed attempts and mishappens (i.e. after falling)
- Swimming: +1 turn of being able to stay underwater, reducing hiding in water stealth penalty, +1 swimming/diving range

Mastery of the Shinobi
- Hiding Mastery: +1 to Stealth
- Eagle Eyes: +1 to find hidden enemies / traps in stealth checks
- Poison Mastery: Ability to make basic posions, +5% resistence
- Trap Mastery: Ability to create or disable basic traps
- Explosives Mastery: Ability to create basic bombs (for example for distraction, even if it deals no damage)

Mastery of the Martial Arts
- Ambidextrosity: Both hands count as "main hands"
- Multitalent: Affinity towards a second weapon
- Insight: chance to learn more devastating abilities for the weapon, required to unlock special weapons
- Battle Hardened: Ignore first successful attempt of stun / knock back / disarm, and similar.
- Combat Readiness: Turns an ability (weapon affinity related) into a minor action, instead of it being a major action.

KI Mastery (Abilities that use KI instead of a cooldown)
- Regenerative KI: health restoration, curing sicknesses (self and party)
- Ferocious KI: increase damage dealt with melee weapons (self)
- Swift KI: increase AGI, damage dealt with ranged weapons (self)
- Vigilant KI: increase chances at discovering enemies and traps (self)
- Shadow KI: temporarily helps in hiding (stealth checks), shadow abilities (self)
- Boundless KI Mastery: Ability to pass a KI benefit to an ally. Requires at least 4 points spent in KI masteries.

[LooksAndSmiles]

Placeholder to describe the battle system and stealth checks.

Also basic weapons, equipment and inventory. Will be done tomorrow, I'm too sleepy now. :/

EDIT: Nevermind. It will be done when it becomes relevant. Sorry!

[WearsHats]

I made it? That's unexpected. And cool. Thank you, impartial dice. I'll do my best to give it due participation.

Beni will start out with Dagger proficiency (he is, after all, working on knife skills) and Agility. (Being ambidextrous is tempting, but I don't want to become Belkar...)

[kida]

Mutzu is a former soldier and as such he is proficient in the ways of the sword. He is always combat ready.

[nikohl]

Sakura is tough and strong from years of pretending to be a male and having to try extra hard to keep up with the other boys. Despite Mastery of the Shinobi being really cool, she has definitely got Mastery of The Body, with a focus on POW+1 (though I like move speed) and Unarmed Affinity.

[BadgeAddict]

Mesa is a blank slate, having never received any kind of formal training of any kind, His master (Kit Sune) having lost her previous apprentice to a misfortune, has taught Mesa the mastery of stealth and weapons that best attack from the shadows.

Mastery of the Shinobi - Hiding Mastery: +1 to Stealth
- Chain Affinity (e.g.: Chain weapon)

(Do i have to pick which weapon specifically? or do i get both a bow and shuriken?

[Wolfie]

Rae has the stick affinity due to her secret training, and she is working towards being a master of martial arts, as she's learned how to balance and move on swaying tree limbs whilst going through the movements of her father's dance.

[ThroughTheWell]

Beni will start out with Dagger proficiency (he is, after all, working on knife skills) and Agility. (Being ambidextrous is tempting, but I don't want to become Belkar...)

But if you were ambidextrous, whirling your 2 daggers, your name of Beni would be so close to propeller Beanie that no one would think of Belkar.

[WearsHats]

Why didn't I think of that? That's brilliant!

... Probably because I'm still distracted by the silly teppenyaki joke.

[Wolfie]

@Looks: I'm going to change my character's color, since it is really close to nikohl's Sakura's color.

It's going to be this purple color #800080

[LooksAndSmiles]

@Badge:
I'll write up a longer list of equipment soon-ish (although I'm debating myself whether to spoil them or not), but here is a short answer:

Ranged weapons have basically more subtypes (bows, shuriken, throwing daggers and needles). Having an affinity towards "ranged" means you can obtain an ability for any of them (Same goes for other affinites, although they aren't that much different from each other). Most "basic" abilities work for every of one of them (it will be described in the ability), the more advanced ones will take the benefit of the individual weapon types, but those are further away.

You will only have 1 starter weapon (of your choice), and I will be granting an ability for that. Throughout your journey you will likely collect more weapons, so you will be learn new techniques for those, too. All I can say now is that abilities will be logical: I won't give you a throwing dagger ability if you have only ever used bows, so no worries.

@Wolfie:
- That purple is a nice choice!
- I couldn't decipher the following:

and she is working towards being a master of martial arts, as she's learned how to balance and move on swaying tree limbs whilst going through the movements of her father's dance

Does this mean you will be choosing later something from the Martial Art Masteries (underlined)? Or it was just a statement to her deciation towards sticks? (nun-chucks, short staff, long staff)

[Wolfie]

@Wolfie:
- That purple is a nice choice!
- I couldn't decipher the following:

and she is working towards being a master of martial arts, as she's learned how to balance and move on swaying tree limbs whilst going through the movements of her father's dance

Does this mean you will be choosing later something from the Martial Art Masteries (underlined)? Or it was just a statement to her deciation towards sticks? (nun-chucks, short staff, long staff)

I meant that I hadn't chosen which part of the Master of Martial Arts mastery I wanted to "buy"... but I'd like Ambidextrosity please.

[BadgeAddict]

Question: Would those dagger like things that are on the end of 5-20 foot chains be considered a Ranged weapon or a chain weapon.

Better Question: Would it be possible that special weapons exist which would essentially combine two weapon affinities. An example would be the above weapon, because although it has a chain, it is also a ranged weapon.

I only ask, because depending on what exactly you mean by Chain weapon, I may change my choice of weaponry.

[nikohl]

I'm pretty sure anything on a chain would fall under the category of chain weapon. Most chain weapons have reach, but they're not ranged... in the sense that you don't throw/shoot them at someone.

[BadgeAddict]

I'm pretty sure anything on a chain would fall under the category of chain weapon. Most chain weapons have reach, but they're not ranged... in the sense that you don't throw/shoot them at someone.

and technically I would agree with that, except nun-chucks have a chain and are not in the chain category, this is why i have asked, I am patient, I will wait on an answer.

[LooksAndSmiles]

Since everyone has posted I'll begin on the training round (to get the hang of the game first.). I think I'll update my other games first, so in case you are sitting on needles already, get some pillow !

@Wolfie:
Ah, ok. Note that you don't have to spend that mastery point already, I posted the list for the players to see what will make their character stronger and unique-ish. (And to know what to expect when they spend that mastery point.)

@Badge:

To answer those questions in no particular order:

- Although nun-chucks indeed have a small piece of chain in the middle, they are considered stick (staff might be a better word) weapons in this game for mainly two reasons:
1) If you want to learn to use that weapon, you will be likely told by your teacher to consider it first as a rigid stick and disregard its "flopping" quality. Of course that flopping will be of good use later on, but it's easier to handle as a stick.
2) In this game, chain weapons have a longer reach and a greater flexibility than stick weapons, and the provided abilities will rely on this nature a lot. For example you can tie someone to a tree with a chain of thousand power, it would be quite impossible with nun-chucks.

- Those dagger-like things on chain (I assume you are asking about the kyoketsu-shoge) are considered chain weapons. However, those are special weapons, and you don't get to play with them this early in the game.

- Answer to the "better question": yes, special weapons can benefit from underlying weapon types, meaning that if you have a suitable ability that works for a basic weapon, it will likely work for a special weapon too. That particular weapon above, however, is a mix of dagger and chain, and is not a ranged subtype.

- More info related to "ranged" versus "chain", to make the difference more clear:
Ranged weapons use projectiles, their main damage comes from these projectiles. These will move independently from the player as soon as they are thrown/shot/blown. The range depends on the strength of the player (you can stretch a bow further if you have bigger arms, for example), and these things can be used in straight lines, without caring much about the surroundings. The projectiles are recollectible afterwards, except if they get damaged (like arrows getting destroyed on a hard impact).
Chain weapons use their "edges" or the chain itself, the main damage comes from the edges, or the ability of the chain. Chain weapons cannot move independently from the players, which can be a hinderance or an advanatge too (for example you can use chain weapons like ropes, depending on their type). The range of a chain weapon is fixed: it has as big a reach as its chain lasts. It cannot be arbitrarily grown, you need a smith to add more chain to it. Also, you have to be vary when you are using a chain, it can get stuck on things between you and the target: this will be likely a hinderance unless your aim is to abuse the ricochet and chaos this will cause.

[BadgeAddict]

Okay, thank you, I suppose I will stick with Ranged, and at some point take Multitalent which from my understanding when reading is the only way that someone can gain an extra weapon affinity.

[LooksAndSmiles]

Okay, thank you, I suppose I will stick with Ranged, and at some point take Multitalent which from my understanding when reading is the only way that someone can gain an extra weapon affinity.

And "Insight", if you aim for the special weapons, such as the weapon in your example. Although that one allows special weapons that are "descendants" of the basic weapons, and ranged doesn't really have further special weapons as it has it's own subtypes already.

[BadgeAddict]

Ahh, F it all then, I'll take Chain as my weapon

[LAYF]

-SNIP- Since everyone has posted I'll begin on the training round (to get the hang of the game first.) -SNIP-

Hehe.. I look forward to see this

[LooksAndSmiles]

Training has begun! Visit the link to start.

If anyone wishes to continue or start roleplaying, please state so (and I'll whip up the replies tomorrow).

Writing text is easier than drawing.

[nikohl]

I'm interested in carrying on roleplaying if you still have time & want to