This thread deals with all rules on how to conduct fights, how to treat and compair stats, and what they mean. Please note that although this is a stat-based system, it actually has more free-form elements then stat based. Really, the stats only serve to know how much your character can dish out and how much it can take before having to quit. In effect, it only serves to be a powerful anti-god-modding tool as well as something we can use to reward talented RPers. Also note that while stats do have role-playing applications, they are vague enough to were they won't interfere with your plans.

What Stats Represent

Before you understand combat, it is imparetive you at least know what stats are.

The following is a list of each stat. Under the name, there will be a short description of the stat. Below that will be the "mechanical application" which is how the stat will effect your character mechanically. Below that is "roleplaying application." Note that the description and role-playing application catagories are really flavor text, and are merely guidelines. That final catagory is an extremely vague one, and is only meant to be a "guideline." If anything, the stats should not define your character, your character should define your stats.

- Strength
Description: Strength, simply put, is how strong your character is. It determins how much physical force your character can exert, and how good they are at physical activities.
Mechanical Application: Strength mostly applies to your damage output. Your melee strikes are directly related to strength. In the case of weapons, your strength score determins what you can wield effectively. Strength even helpes ranged specialists by letting them throw heavier (and more damaging) weapons.
Role-Playing Application: You're strong, and possibly athletic. Honestly, this stat only has role-playing applications when you directly compare strength scores, and even then, it should only be taken lightly.

- Agility
Description: Agility measures your character's speed and reflexes. Your faster, and nimbler. This is a stat more commonly found to be high in athletic characters.
Mechanical Application: Agility relates to how well you wield a weapon. Many weapons have a minimum agility requirement. It is possible (and advised) that you are aware of agility in relation to your opponent's accuracy (for ranged or melee attacks) or agility (if it's higher then accuracy, in melee) for perposes of dodging attacks. However, there are far too many outside influences to tie it down to any formula. Also, our lack of a mechanic for determining if somethign hit or not is actually a strong suit of the site, meaning that it's actually based on trust and what would be more fun then what would otherwise be complex mechanical formula and dice.
Roleplaying Application: Characters with higher agility tend to be quicker, and react to things faster. Characters with higher agility tend to dodge slightly more then characters with low agility.

- Endurance
Description: Endurance is a measure of your character's ability to fight or perform other strenuous activity for extended periods of time. While strength measures how well you can perform a physical task, endurance measures your ability to do that task more reliably, and for longer periods of time.
Mechanical Application: Each point in endurance increases your HP by 15.
Role-Playing Application: Endurance should be used as a guidline to your character's pain tolorence and how well they stand against forces stronger then themselves. How well your character fights against the odds, how well they can take damage, and possibly even bravery are all good reasons to have high endurance.

- Intelligence
Description: Intelligence, despite it's name, does not effect your character's IQ. It instead denotes how well they mold chakra. While a person's stamina and amount of chakra never truely changes, how well they mold that chakra and how little chakra is needed for jutsu can be, and this is reflected in an increase to your "Chakra" stat.
Mechanical Application: Each point in intelligence increases your chakra by 15.
Role-Playing Application: High intelligence is commonly given to intuitive and adaptable characters, or ones that are good at chakra control. Again, while a high IQ is most definately a basis for raising your intelligence, a person with low IQ can raise it to. Intuition and adaptability are more commonly found in average or even stupid people then smart people.

- Accuracy
Description: Accuracy is a measure of skill more then a measure of physical ability. It determins how well a character can used weapons in ranged combat, how often and how well their jutsu hit, and how well they can hit critical points on the human body.
Mechanical Application: Every two points of agility adds one to the damage ranged weapons inflict. As stated above, you should be aware of your opponent's accuracy when dodging something, but there is no set formula. You can treat it pretty much like a free-form RPG.
Role-Playing Application: Accuracy is a measure of skill and devotion. Like the mechanical application would suggest, it is something more commonly found in ranged specialists.

- HP
Description: HP stands for Health Points and measures your character's current physical condition.
Mechanical Application: When HP reaches 0 you have reached your limit. You are to remove yourself from any combat or risk death. The battle is over, you lost. Also, like all implied stat, you can not raise HP directly. Instead, you raise a core stat (in this case endurance) which effects this stat. Also note, HP is never an excuse to keep fighting. If you've been beheaded, you're dead, even if you have HP left.
Role-Playing Application: HP is a good meter to guage your character's current condition.

- Chakra
Description: Chakra is the energy in all cells. It's actually a mixture of physical energy and spiritual energy. This is the energy ninjas use to perform jutsu.
Mechanical Application: Chakra is paid to perform jutsu. If your chakra is reduced to 0 or lower, your character is immediately knocked out.
Role-Playing Application: Really, chakra is only useful for determining if you can or can not perform a jutsu.

Compairing Stats

Now that you know what these stats mean, there comes the enevitable question, "If I have 1 strength and my opponent has 2 strength, is he or she twice as strong as me?" The answer to that question is no. The stats are only to be used as guidelines in most cases. A decent way to compair is as follows:

If the stats are the same, then the contenders are evenly matched.

If the stats differ only by 1-3 points, then the actual difference between them is marginal.

If the stats differ only by 4-8 points, then the actual difference between them is noticable. The ther person who has more stats has a descernable advantage.

If the stats differ by more then 9 points, then the difference is blatenly apparent. The person with the lower stat has no way of keeping up.

Damage

The general point of gaining stat points is to either increase the amount of damage or to resist damage. The following are suggestions for damage. Keep in mind this damage is not set in stone. If your head is split open you won’t be getting up any time soon, for instance.

Punches and kicks do damage equal to your strength.

Weapons do damage based on what is listed in the [link=p218.ezboard.com/fkamiganigogyounarutorpgfrm7.showMessage?topicID=29.topic newwindow]weapon list[/link]. If something is not listed in that list, then you may either apply for it in the special permission forum (a normally easy task) or find something that's approxomitely the same thing.

Jutsu do damage as listed in each individual jutsu.

A general rule of the thumb for falling damage is 5 for evert 10ft fallen, or 10 for every 10ft fallen if you fall on something particularly dangerous, such as jagged rocks. If you land on a weapon, then you also take the appropriate amount of weapon damage.

Battle System

A battle is played out fairly simply. Someone posts what their character does, and then someone else posts what their character does. This goes back and forth until they come to some conclusion. The actual battles, in this reguard, are free-form. People who are used to free-form RPs should have no trouble here.

There are generally three ways you can "win" or at least stop a fight. The most obvious way is to reduce your opponent's HP to 0. There are many ways to accomplish that, from merely hitting your opponent to using jutsu to using natural hazards, the sheer number of ways is endless. Another way to end the battle is to somehow incompasitate your opponent. The final way is to simply reach a statis quo were you no longer have or want to fight. There may be ways to end a fight other then what's been detailed here, but these are the most common.

While fighting, there is some common curtosy you show your opponent. The first, and most important of these is that you don't God-Mod. God-Modding is detailed in the general rules thread.

Another curtosy is posting everything your character does. You can not have it "turn out" that the person your opponent has been fighting is a bunshin, for instance. This includes the plans and thoughts of your character. Having your character charge at someone, and then when they use a defensive move you'll "turn out" to be expecting it and acting perfectly is not allowed unless you say your expecting it in your post, even if only vaguely or briefly.

It is advised that in your first post, or at least somewere in the thread, you posts the stats of your character. This allows for easy refference, and generally makes things go smoother and quicker. Posting your stats once per page is optimal.

Under you post, you should include how much damage you intend to do, and from what sources. For instence, you could have something like this:





QUOTE

4 Kunai- 5 Damage (Each)
Punch- 3 Damage
Fire Element; Mythical Pheonix Fire Skill- 15


Doing this will put everything in perspective for you opponent, and will actually let him or her better micro-manage what is and is not dodged, so complete avoidences can be reduced.

At the very bottem of any post in which you use a jutsu, you should include a copy of that jutsu. This is simply for easy refference.

Finnally, try and stick to only one jutsu per post. This is more of a generalization, but really you can't perform too many actions without dictating how your opponent will act. Some obvious instences were this rule wouldn't apply is in jutsu that are obviously meant to be used together (such as the multi-size skill and the meat-bullet tank skill), or in instences were a post covers a drastically longer time span then usual. Another instence where its generally OK to use more then one jutsu per post is some taijutsu techniques, but even then you should stick to one or two per post.

Communicating with the Staff and other Members

First off at the end of every post that requires battle it is advised that you place your current Health and Chakra as well as the description of any jutsus you used during that battle.

If you feel that a member is abusing any rights given to him or her, or is God-Modding feel free to talk to the staff. We will review the thread and will give an unbiased opinion. If you feel a staff member is abusing his or her power, or that you or someone else has been incorrectly judged feel free to “appeal” the case to another staff member, preferably one of a higher rank. Feel free to PM every other staff member if you see fit, this will not be counted as spam or harassment unless you PM every staff member repeatedly.

Using Jutsu in Battle

The following is a short tutorial for using jutsu in battle. IT is not required reading, especially for those who are familier to naruto RPGs, but it may help newer members.

Using a jutsu in battle is just like performing any other action. You merely describe your character using the jutsu. However, there are several guidelines to using them. First, there is a one jutsu per post rule. Second, you should not copy and paste the description of the jutsu into your post and try to pawn it off as being your work. Finally, at the bottom of your post, in addition to posting your current HP and Chakra, you must post the jutsu as it is listed in your application. Note that the person(s) you are RPing with shouldn't have to look at that jutsu and should be able to get everything they need from your actual post. The only reason we force people to post the jutsu at the bottom of their post is so that the person you are RPing with can get details such as the amount of damage the jutsu inflicts.

Here are some ways not to use jutsu in battle:





QUOTE

Dan ducked under the kunai that was aimed for his head and knew that another one would follow. If he wanted any chance to win this battle he would have to seize control and go on the offensive. To accomplish that, he would need a distraction.

After some quick thinking he put his hands together and performed the seals to Bunshin no Jutsu, A basic technique which creates false clones of the user. The clones are used as a diversion while the user attacks. The clones are incapable of attacking and disappear if directly hit.

After having both himself and his newly created clone dodge the latest kunai attack by rolling in separate directions, Dan charged at Shiro from the right while his newly created clone charged from the left.






QUOTE

B. Dan ducked under the kunai that was aimed for his head and knew that another one would follow. If he wanted any chance to win this battle he would have to seize control and go on the offensive. To accomplish that, he would need a distraction.

After some quick thinking he put his hands together and performed the seals to Bunshin no Jutsu. After having both himself and his newly created clones dodge the latest kunai attack by rolling in separate directions, Dan and his clones charged at Shiro from separate directions.






QUOTE

C. Dan ducked under the kunai that was aimed for his head and knew that another one would follow. If he wanted any chance to win this battle he would have to seize control and go on the offensive. To accomplish that, he would need a distraction.

After some quick thinking he decided that Bunshin no Jutsu would serve this purpose nicely. Dan quickly performed the technique and created three clones. Two of them dodged the second kunai by rolling to the left while Dan and another bunshin dodged by rolling to the right. All four Dans quickly fanned out and charged at Shiro, hoping that this distraction would give him the time he needed to bring this battle into close range.


Now, what was wrong with these posts? Well, Post A. simply Copied and Pasted the technique into the actual post. This not only added a needless amount of length to the post and generally looks sloppy, but makes the post hard to follow.

Post B suffered from a lack of detail. How many Bunshins did Dan create? Who attacked from where? What "directions" are the clones attacking from?

Post C is actually fairly decent, but it is missing one key thing, hand-seals. It is a fairly common mistake to forget them and merely say that you are performing the technique. It is generally best to at least make some reference to performing the hand-seals for Nin, Gen, and Medical Jutsu. You don't need to say what hand-seals you performed or how long it took, as that would be an unrealistic requirement.

Now, let us look at an acceptable post that centers on the use of a technique:





QUOTE

Dan ducked under the kunai that was aimed for his head and knew that another one would follow. If he wanted any chance to win this battle he would have to seize control and go on the offensive. To accomplish that, he would need a distraction.

After some quick thinking he put his hands together and performed the seals to Bunshin no Jutsu and created three clones. Two of them dodged the second kunai by rolling to the left while Dan and another bunshin dodged by rolling to the right. All four Dans quickly fanned out before charging at Shiro full force, hoping this would give him the time he needed to bring the battle into close range.


Note that that example post is just that, an example. There are many ways to RP and many people have their own style. We not only accept that but encourage people to be original.