58 KiB
How could a transformation technique be abused?
-
Author: u/Stop_Sign *
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2sf58d/how_could_a_transformation_technique_be_abused/
-
Score: 12
-
Created: 2015-01-14T17:42:01
Post:
I'm writing a fanfic for Naruto, and focusing on the spell they have "Henge", which lets you turn into someone or something at will. In the anime, the biggest uses were turning into other people to be falsely recognized, turning into a large shuriken to be thrown by his teammate to get speed over water he couldn't walk on, and turning a massive frog he was sitting on into a massive fox so that the creature had claws and could grapple better.
The rules I'm thinking of:
-
The more you were able to imagine the product, the closer you were to the results. It was never as good as real life; when you tried to henge into a sword, if you were a master blacksmith and could imagine all the folds and work and metals and shapes that went into the sword, you’d be an order of magnitude stronger and sharper than if you used henge into something “sword shaped and colored and sharp”.
-
Weight was also an issue, as the form you took ended up being an average of your own weight and what you wanted - the main reason ninja’s couldn’t henge into a bird and fly around. It was dependent on a few things, though, including how much chakra you wanted to spend on it.
-
The longer you spend pre-meditating the form you want, the closer you could get to the actual. Muscle density via becoming a Saiyan is definitely possible.
-
Henge’d electronics wouldn’t work
-
Parts couldn’t host chemical reactions, so fuel or explosions were a no-go
-
You couldn’t separate the parts, but having a clone turn into other parts would give you two to five extra parts to work with. Infinite kunai throwing is a no-go.
-
Magnets are fine
-
You can have the transformation face any direction you want when cast, but nothing can have velocity relative to other parts - you can't have a fist already flying at someone's face. The center of mass is still in the same spot.
-
The harder the object you were trying to turn into, the longer it took. A basic dodging form would be a hula hoop - if they aimed at your body, you could make the hole face their direction and evade everything.
Thoughts? Battle or daily life applications?
EDIT:
Apparently, at 6:00 in episode 45 link, he layered two henge with no further hand seals. So that's possible, too.
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+6] (2 hours later)
Why wouldn't henged electronics work? They aren't magical (or chakra-based), they're just physics. Maybe you would need someone to add a battery after you henged into a circuit board / light bulb / whatever, but it should still work. If the answer is "because you couldn't visualize it sufficiently", then sufficient study of appropriate textbooks and confining yourself to simple devices (e.g. a taser) should still work.
Note that when ninja Henge into a person (or when they clone themselves), they get the clothing and general non-chakra-based gear that that person has as well. You said that you can't separate the parts -- does that mean that a henged person can't take their gloves / hat / whatever off? If so, that's a pretty easy way to see through a Henge -- just make them take their gloves off. Can you Henge into someone but not copy their clothes? If so, I guess you could put on real clothes that were duplicates of their normal attire.
What happens to the person's momentum when they henge in your fic? Say I turn into a giant shuriken (thereby shedding most of my mass) and someone throws me. Halfway to my target, I turn back into myself. Do I slow down, or continue at the same speed? If I come back with the same speed, can I throw a regular shuriken from mid-air so that it flies faster than I would have been able to throw it on my own?
Oh, wait, let's crank it up a notch: say I make a clone and the clone Henges into a shuriken. I pick the shuriken up and then Henge into a shuriken myself. My friend throws me. In midair I turn back to a human and throw my clone-shuriken. In midair he turns back and throws a regular shuriken. How fast is the regular shuriken moving? Iterate this through as many levels as I can make clones and, if momentum is not conserved, I should be able to accelerate the final shuriken to bullet-like velocities.
For that matter, what happens with mass? Say that I weigh 99 kg (to keep the math easy) and I turn into a giant shuriken (mass of ~1kg, maybe?). You said that the actual mass of the Henged form is the average, so I should be a shuriken that weighs 50 kg. Could someone actually throw that? They do it without visible effort on the show, so it should be possible -- are all ninja enormously stronger than normals, can the Henge dump more mass than you're suggesting, am I able to accelerate myself, or is something else happening?
u/AmeteurOpinions [+4] Finally, everyone was working together. (3 hours later)
Have you read Lighting Up The Dark?
u/eaglejarl [+5] (5 hours later)
Yep. Great story.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (3 hours later)
I am going with "because you couldn't visualize it sufficiently", so yes simple devices still work. If you could create electronics vaguely, I would henge into myself wearing a "control nanites" hat and holding a "make nanites" device, make some real nanites, have them make a real hat, then rule the world with ease and be invincible. This is also the same thing I'd do with Green Lantern's ability, as he can make electronics vaguely (like a car and a helicopter).
The clothing is one of the stronger aspects of it. I think of it kind of like Mystique's power - she couldn't take off clothing either. However, henge'ing into yourself wearing skii's or with a surfboard or in a hazmat suit or with a parachute are all possible. Yes you can henge into someone without their clothes. You wouldn't copy hidden birthmarks or scars unless you've seen them on the actual person though.
Momentum is conserved, according to the shuriken thing (2:20+ here for reference). It's not definite in the anime, but it doesn't look like he continues on at the speed of the thrown Shuriken. He's able to throw a kunai back, too, which also implies momentum is conserved.
"Sasuke could tell instantly that the shuriken was me, so he pulled out his own ..." There's a weight difference somewhere in the middle, but it's not exactly average. It can also be changed depending on chakra use. Making something lighter or heaver is an earth jutsu (and it can be done to the extreme, including flying) so it's definitely possible. Naruto also henge'd into Akamaru to fool Kiba, but didn't move so he might've been unable to. Re-watching it, though, he layered two henge (6:00 at here) which I hadn't noticed before.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+3] (4 hours later)
How are you able to henge biological constructs(whatever the Fox has, that couldn't be gleaned from the frog or from the human) without being able to visualise the details? In this case would it not really be a fox- would it retain the reflexes of the frog while only bearing superficial material and proportional similarities to a Fox? For instance, neither humans nor frogs have good schematics for a fox nose, it's sense of smell would be no better than either, even if it had the nose, how would the frog brain understand its sensory input? The giant frog in question, was it smart enough to understand what was happening and facilitate the process? If not, how was it consenting(you'd mentioned offensive henging isn't possible)?
u/Stop_Sign [+3] (5 hours later)
Yes the frog was smart enough (37:30 onwards on this video is the moment in question) to accept it, and actually it seems like using henge on the other living thing caused both to be in the same body. The frog even said, "You shall act upon my will to do this transformation", implying it might be the frog's knowledge that made it work at all. The frog in fox form was able to use tails, the fox body, and use it well, too, to be able to move around like it did, so there's some instinctual knowledge that comes with the transformation.
If you don't specifically visualize it, the remaining parts are made up of generic chakra stuff. When you henge into someone else, you don't get what's in their pockets, but the lumps that the stuff makes would be there, made out of generic chakra stuff. So no the frog wouldn't have a fox's sense of smell, automatically. If they were trying for that, like to henge into a dog for better smell or a hawk for better long distance vision, it would work. You'd need to become the full animal to get all the instincts along with it to use the sensory information, so no chimaeras allowed.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+2] (15 hours later)
I don't think this is consistent. If you can spirit up a working hound form, where is the schematic coming from? Why then, could you not get a computer schematic from the same place? If it only requires the caster to say, lay hands on an object before they can mimic it (or laying hands on another henge user mimicking the object in question, presumably. I mean, you could write it out if you really wanted to, it's not perfectly in line with the spirit of the source material, but I'd say it's more in line with the spirit of nature. Balance things too hard and you'll need a Zion.) , then I suppose there's a realm of exploits that stem from mimicking very very expensive machinery. Though it seems like this might have limited combat applications due to the stipulated difficulty of replicating hard objects and projectile weapons?
It's possible this is underexplored territory, for we muggles. The history of technology has followed the constraints of mass-production, materials costs, and durability(you can reform an injured henge, right?). Take those concerns out of the equation and who knows what kind of technologies we might end up preferring.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+2] (15 hours later)
Watching that, it looks more like the fox schematic was coming from Naruto's curse, if that's what that plot element they mentioned is? Could it be that mind of the fox demon was being recalled and neither of them were really as much in control as they thought?
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (23 hours later)
Maybe, but in the manga, chapter 135 page 17 link it shows only 1 tail not 9, and Sasuke said "A fox" rather than "the kyuubi". As no mention of it actually being the Kyuubi was made in the anime, it probably only had the extra tails for embellishment.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+1] (4 hours later)
It's becoming clear there's going to need to be a bit of taking from the structure of the target for this to work with biological targets.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (5 hours later)
Cool, thanks for the examples. For future reference, you can link to a particular point in a YouTube video like this:
u/None [+2] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (an hour later)
It would hold but have mass, so the air that makes you would sink and start to spread around. The more it spread, the higher the Chakra cost until it would kill you from Chakra exhaustion if you held it too long. You would revert back to yourself in the center of the spread air
u/IWantUsToMerge [+2] (4 hours later)
Is there any reason you couldn't turn into a 50 kilogram pin and dive through whatever armor you pleased?
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (5 hours later)
Conservation of momentum means you can't throw, but if you're falling above them already...
The smallest thing anyone henge's into is a small dog, and he doesn't move at all while he is the dog (doesn't mean he can't, however, he's just playing injured). I'm going to say that the smaller something is, the more dense has to be in order to store the rest of your body. Denser chakra = much harder and costly to do. So no, it wouldn't be impossible, just impractical. If the enemy is skilled enough that you need to resort to such a chakra-intensive attack like that, they're probably skilled enough to dodge it.
u/Draconomial [+1] Sunshine Regiment (17 hours later)
There's a max cap too. The largest thing anyone in Naruto has ever henge'd into is the Nine Tailed Fox. Naruto and Gama Bunta transformed into something with an equivalent mass.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (3 hours later)
On further thought, this would also require a wind element affinity and be an elemental transformation, like how water users can turn into a puddle.
u/Kishoto [+1] (11 hours later)
I feel like that was a genjutsu of sorts. Or at least it shouldn't been. I can't imagine the Naruto world is so broken that two genin level mooks can transform into a liquid state. It was important enough to have an entire bloodline (the Hozuki clan) based around the same ability.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (11 hours later)
The Hozuki's ability is that they automatically become water. If someone hits them with a sword, the sword goes through water and comes out. They can also move around in water form and generally have an awesome degree of control. The puddle jutsu is all-or-nothing, so much shittier.
Also they were chunin
u/Kishoto [+1] (12 hours later)
They were chunin that couldn't 2v1 a fresh genin. Sure, he was well trained, and an Uchiha, but he was still a fresh genin. So while they were technically chunin, I wouldn't classify the DBs as chunin level.
u/Salaris [+2] Dominion Sorcerer (an hour later)
You mention turning a frog into a fox - that implies this can be done to people other than the caster.
What are the range limitations? Is there any sort of passive resistance to Henge in your fic?
If not, you could potentially use Henge offensively, and for example, turn an enemy into, say, jello. Or anything else you could easily scatter or destroy.
How do you survive turning yourself into something like a shuriken? Is your "real" body being held in an extra-dimensional space of some kind? If you're a shuriken, do you still have conscious thoughts? Can you deliberately force yourself to revert to your normal state at any time?
Could you transform parts of yourself into weaponry or armor without causing yourself trauma or discomfort? How about other forms, like turning parts of your body into energy (ala a logia user in One Piece, for example).
Can you use Henge to heal yourself or others by transforming injuries away?
Or, if you can't heal the body, how about transforming a target until they can get appropriate medical attention? Would their "normal" injuries still deteriorate while their body is transformed?
Can you henge a material into a material that has rare or unusual properties if you are sufficiently familiar with it? This could have huge economic ramifications if you could make it last long enough, or practical applications if you could, say, transform something into a chakra-blocking material.
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (3 hours later)
Chakra can't be forced on something with chakra offensively - people can't "heal" their insides to mush at the first touch or use kawarimi on someone who won't accept it. Henge would be the same.
Range limitations would be dependent on chakra cost, but when Naruto makes 1k clones the furthest ones are pretty far away. Since my character isn't a jinchuuriki, i'd say a 10 feet radius to cost-effectively change something.
Yes, you're real body is being held in an extra-dimensional space, but roughly attached to the object as well. The universe has storage scrolls for the easiest example of such a space existing, but there still needs to be a reason why you can't just henge into someone else to avoid all damage, so if someone punches you-shuriken enough to bend the metal, you might come out of the henge seriously bruised. Yes you still have conscious thoughts, as a common water jutsu is turning into a puddle and they can still think in that state. Yes you can revert at any time, within reason. You can't be put in a box and henge into something larger to automatically break the box for example.
Yes you can, and that's actually the largest strength I can think of. It's not perfect, though, due to visualization problems. You can turn yourself into metal (the flexible kind, like Dr. Doom) for extra resistance but it doesn't quite have the same hardness of metal. Seeing as how turning yourself into water is a water-specific jutsu you can't do if you don't have a water element, I'd say the same holds true for other types of energy. Lava element exists, but there are no light element users.
Temporarily heal, yes. It would be a constant chakra drain depending on the severity of injury, and you'd need to be medic-level to visualize a healed injury appropriately. Injuries wouldn't deteriorate like this.
Yes, but it's still a chakra construct, and still you. You'd have to be familiar with it at the molecular level for most things, too, which is why magnets would still be fine. A wall of graphene for ultimate defense is possible though. Radioactive material would have an enormous chakra cost due to rapidly sending off bits of you everywhere. The vagueness of henge doesn't cover "turn into something to block/absorb chakra" though.
u/Salaris [+2] Dominion Sorcerer (4 hours later)
Temporary healing seems like a pretty useful application, then.
In terms of the chakra blocking material, I was thinking something like the canon chakra armor, but potentially in other shapes and sizes.
If you're thinking about other types of things to optimize in the Naruto universe, I recommend considering summoning scrolls (like the ones used in the Chunin exams) as well. Reverse summoning is another one that could probably be utilized much more heavily than they do in canon.
u/clawclawbite [+3] (9 hours later)
Also, if you can do temporary healing, you may be able to do the reverse, and pre-stress your body to improve training. Who needs to strap on Rock Lee weights when you can just spend all of your off time pushing past fake weakness.
u/Salaris [+1] Dominion Sorcerer (a day later)
Great idea.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (5 hours later)
Hm Chakra armor seems really weird. I might just conveniently ignore it exists in my world.
There's lots of pseudo-teleport skills in the universe, and lots of ways to fast travel. Even Hiraishin I've seen described by a fic as a tag that gives you awareness of the area for you to use a jutsu similar to kawarimi on the air next to it. I probably won't have any contracts, though. If I want something to fight my main character's battles for it, more clones.
u/Salaris [+2] Dominion Sorcerer (5 hours later)
There's some optimization of Hiraishin in Vapors, if you haven't read that already.
Hiraishin is very rare, though, whereas the summoning contracts with animals appear to be comparatively common. And there's no real discussion about how hard it is to make the scrolls they used in the exams.
Anyway, I was thinking less in terms of fighting battles, and more in terms of escape methods. Need to rescue a captive? No problem, just use a scroll to summon them home.
u/dwibby [+2] (6 hours later)
Chakra can't be forced on something with chakra offensively
Well, it can, but it generally falls in the category of genjutsu when it does. Brute forcing someone else's chakra system does appear to be a cost-prohibitive attack, since it's relatively simple to reset your own chakra once you've noticed the attack. However, I suspect that Orochimaru and Kabuto both have used more than one medic technique on unwilling subjects.
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (7 hours later)
You can't be put in a box and henge into something larger to automatically break the box for example.
Does transforming into something larger exert any appreciable outward force? I mean, it has to be at least enough to displace the air in the volume the object comes to occupy, yes?
What if you took a piston that fits exactly into a tube, transformed it into a shorter piston with the same cross section, then allowed it to turn back? It wouldn't need to push against the sides of the container, just against a fluid filling the rest of the container so as to displace it through a turbine...
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (8 hours later)
I would say the way that would make sense and not power the turbine is that the air you're displacing also becomes part of your transformation, and gets released when the transformation finishes. This brings in questions of "what if the air isn't air" though, like transforming under water or in poison gas. Hmm.
You could just henge into a coiled spring and bounce against something if you wanted generation, though.
u/noggin-scratcher [+3] I am a happy tree (8 hours later)
I'm also wondering what happens with position. Like if you turned a heavy object at position (0,0) and turned it into a long thin object lying along a line to (0,10) then turned it back, would you be able to have it end up at (0,10) without expending the energy to actually physically move it?
If the same thing works vertically (or just up a slope) you'd have yet another route to free energy by repeatedly dropping heavy things through a turnstile attached to a dynamo, unless the gain in potential energy is balanced by costs to your own personal energy reserve (whatever fuels the ability).
I'm focussing on energy generation because it seems like the quickest way to demonstrably 'break the universe'... probably need to apply more creativity for combat uses. One comes to mind... place a pit of sand as a trap, activate the trap by transforming the grains of sand into much larger spheres, say the size of a basketball. They don't need to be heavy, just rigid enough to pack around a person and lock in place against each other, and against the sides of an enclosed space.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (9 hours later)
Yea that probably wouldn't be the best way to get infinite energy, as chakra cost is prohibitive for a lot of transformations.
It would be more like that the center of mass of the heavy object is 0,0, so when you henge into a long thin object it's still centered around 0,0. This makes turning into a circle in the right direction (like a hula hoop) good for dodging, but you can't travel that way.
You can henge into a pendulum with with all the weight raised on one end that swings to the other end and transform again, which would move you. It would definitely be slower and more intensive than running, though. You could also become a coiled spring to bounce in an unpredictable fashion or a sling shot (with the bullet attached to the sling because it can't separate) ready to fire. As long as no part has different velocity than the others, you can generate potential energy via the transformation.
u/dwibby [+2] (5 hours later)
I've been spending time thinking about the mechanics of the chakra system in general, so I have some thoughts that might help focus some of your musings.
Most of chakra manipulation seems to fall into three big types:
- shape manipulation (forming the chakra into specific forms, be it a something to let you walk on things you can't normally walk on, a sphere of chaotic energy or a giant honkin' dragon)
- nature manipulation (the five elemental, the physical yang and the spiritual yin energies, as well combinations thereof)
- jutsu types, such as taijutsu, ninjutsu and genjutsu, which seem to cover where the chakra manipulation is happening, either inside one's own body, in the world around someone, or within someone else's chakra system,l respectively
(I've been looking largely at the category of ninjutsu, and specifically the comparison of Wind Release: Rasengan (in canon, "shape and nature manipulation to the highest degree"), and Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique, and wondering why Naruto wasn't throwing out Air Dragon Bullets. The way I've made sense of the canon system is that Naruto is just doing what works, and not making much use of the skills that he learned but due to his proficiency in Rasengan, he could be throwing out flashy jutsu. If we assume canon!Naruto is basically always carrying an idiot ball the size of, oh say, Gamabunta, it'd covereth a multitude of sins.)
Hand Seals seem to be some sort of mnemonic device to aid in chakra manipulation, but aren't strictly required. They carry some of the difficulty that manually doing chakra manipulation requires, and the better someone is at the raw manipulation, the less seals are required.
I'd go so far as to say, that with enough chakra manipulation, just about anything is possible with chakra. The limits come from the processing power, raw chakra resources and the efficiency of the chakra manipulator in question. Henge seems to be ninjutsu (operating outside a body), with strong shape manipulation and yang-natured energy manipulation. Naruto is a powerhouse at henge because he's an absolute monster at ninjutsu shape manipulation of yang energy, which the shadow clone and Rasengan techniques also appear to be (probably owing to Ending Spoilers).
I'm not sure the extent to which henge actually changes the body, but it fails similarly to the shadow clone under stress, so it probably doesn't completely change the body the way that techniques like the Multi-size technique do. However, a specialized technique like Henge: Adamantine Staff, does seem to change and hold a body shape change, so it's probably a matter of how well the chakra is applied.
Something specific about the rules listed is becoming a magnet, which would likely fall under Magnet Release techniques, which are a combination of Wind and Earth natures (I don't really get that, but that's the canon explanation). I'm of the opinion that combination natures can be done with a significant amount of skill (as in the level of skill required for two A-rank shinobi pulling of a combination technique). In this model, kekkei genkai dealing with combination energy natures mean that the person in question has a combination nature affinity. Since manipulating chakra outside of one's affinity can be learned (Sarutobi Hiruzen could, and is part of the reason he was the "God of Shinobi"), I'm toying with the idea that someone who has access to multiple chakra natures, shadow clones and training in combination techniques could pull off "solo" combination nature techniques, but that should require a large investment of time and training, to explain why combination nature kekkei genkai are so prized/hated.
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (8 hours later)
Good call about the Magnet Release, but reading up on it it seems like it's just super strong and effectively the control of metal. There's a huge difference between that and becoming a magnet.
it fails similarly to the shadow clone under stress
How do you explain the scene from 6:00 onwards here, during his fight with Kiba? Naruto is under a layered henge, and his second doesn't break. The first breaking could even be excused by "he was out of chakra/fainted from the punch", as could Akamaru's actual reveal in the next forced-henge-removal. If one henge breaks per hit you could keep layering them of the same type. Does damage actually get done like that? I'd agree that it's a matter of chakra control and amount of chakra for the Adamantine Staff.
u/dwibby [+1] (8 hours later)
Yeah, but I imagine that if Magnet release was ever explored in canon, it would encompass magnetic effects. The name lends itself far too well to it.
I believe that it's mentioned that Naruto goes from the failing henge into the henge of Akamaru. Chaining henge, as opposed to layering it. Again, Naruto is a beast at henge once he learned how to wrestle his massive chakra.
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (8 hours later)
I guess I meant "control of magnetic forces it's akin to controlling metal", not only control of metal.
I have the relevant video and time linked in the post's edit, but the order is Naruto makes a seal -> looks like Kiba -> gets punched and knocked to the floor -> poof and Akamaru is lying there. He's on his back spread-eagle as Kiba when he transforms to Akamaru, and Kiba never looks away from him. So, he didn't have time to make a seal. He had to make the seal before, and he isn't good enough to do any jutsu seal-less (even his favorite), so that's probably not it. Is there something else that could have happened besides a layered henge?
u/dwibby [+2] (9 hours later)
Ah, I'm mostly coming at this from the manga side. At least in [this translation] ( http://www.mangapanda.com/93-82-5/naruto/chapter-77.html), Sakura is pretty clear that it was a quick transformation. It could be that he used the smoke of the dispelling henge to make seals, or this is one of his first seal-less henge. It could really go either way, as the surprising bit is going from one henge in to another while the first is forcibly dispelled.
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (9 hours later)
Oh, huh. Good to know, I wasn't checking parity of rules with the manga. A quick transformation would make it more like shadow clone's dispelling, which would probably make more sense than the anime's version.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (7 hours later)
Obviously, infinite clean energy, but that's true with nearly all fictional magic so it's hardly worth mentioning.
Weight was also an issue, as the form you took ended up being an average of your own weight and what you wanted - the main reason ninja’s couldn’t henge into a bird and fly around. It was dependent on a few things, though, including how much chakra you wanted to spend on it.
Bahahaha...You definitely want upper and lower limits to volume here! Can't have someone accidentally henging into a mega-dense dust spec...or a star, for that matter. Flying is easy, just become a really big winged thing - (but if electronics do not work neither should biology), or a large hot air balloon...
Under-explored applications in density play exist, I'm sure. You might get a bit of a headache if you think too hard about how exactly would work at the atomic/molecular level though. Even at the macro level though, you're gonna have to make some choices (would you rather conserve momentum, or conserve velocity? Either way, very hackable)
u/kaukamieli [+1] (7 hours later)
How would you make the "infinite clean energy" practical here with transformation magic?
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (8 hours later)
Almost all matter manipulation turns into infinite energy. In this case, we have to work around the lack of chemical/nuclear reactions, but it can still be done by purely mechanical means.
Crude example: you can make a really stiff spring. And then, you can magically keep growing and growing. Eventually, the spring will be compressed. For free. You are limited only by the spring and your patience.
Another crude example: Trivial to create vacuum chambers
Another crude example: Get on the other end of a big lever and start increasing your mass. Lift arbitrarily heavy objects.
I'm sure if you get enough engineers on it you can make these processes high-yield enough to be worth your time. It's just a matter of forcing stuff into high energy configurations, and there's no theoretical upper limit to how unstable things can get.
Magical systems typically violate conservation laws unless specifically designed to not do so.
u/kaukamieli [+1] (14 hours later)
But isn't the problem there that there are no perpetual motion machines? You need the magician to actually do the transform all the time. It's like making Superman be the transitional power source by having him rotate a crank 24/7?
u/Geminii27 [+1] (22 hours later)
Clones?
u/kaukamieli [+1] (22 hours later)
That's a different from transformation? Clones would help ofc, though you'd need to renew those too every now and then.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
It's another Naruto ninjutsu technique. Henge turns you into something, clone (of which there are many varieties) creates a duplicate of you. The clones can also use ninja magic, so they can henge as well.
u/Geminii27 [+1] (a day later)
Can they clone themselves too?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
I think so, but I'm not sure. Most of what I know about Naruto is from fanfic; I haven't read the manga and I only watched a few of the episodes--they were too short and slow-moving to hold my interest, and I got really tired of Naruto shouting "Believe it!" every three minutes.
Which doesn't mean there isn't some really excellent Naruto fanfic out there. It's a fantastic setting with lots of potential for awesome.
u/dwibby [+1] (2 days later)
they were too short and slow-moving to hold my interest, and I got really tired of Naruto shouting "Believe it!" every three minutes.
I much prefer the manga to either the dubbed anime (I can't get used to the English voice actors) or the subbed anime (no "Believe it", but still way too slow). Early on in the anime run, it caught up to the manga, and had to seriously pad time and even run filler (basically fanfiction by the animation studio) segments and episodes. I remember rereading the mangas from the beginning after switching from the subbed anime and being blown away by how quickly things moved.
u/dwibby [+1] (2 days later)
Yup, clones can create more clones (like Naruto did in chapter 561), but it's worthwhile to note the kind of cloning.
Clone is how bunshin (分身) was translated, but it means something closer to doppelganger or avatar and, in the series, clones are more like temporary extentions of oneself. In the case of the basic clone technique, this avatar is intangible and is really only useful for a visual distraction.
Clones using elemental energy (such as the water or earth clones) give solidity to the avatar and can actually be used to perform other techniques. They only have a fraction of the power and chakra of the original user, however, and seem to be remote controlled. Getting them too far away from the user causes them to dispel, and the user likely needs some method of knowing what they are doing to effectively use them. They are also simplistic copies and certain abilities can easily tell these clones apart from the real body.
Shadow clones (Naruto's speciality) are similar to the elemental clones in that they are corporeal. However, they are very similar to an actual body and hard to detect as clones, the user's chakra is evenly split between the clones they create, and they are able to take independent actions. Additionally, the technique was originally a scouting technique, and experiences gained by and chakra stored within the clone are returned to the original user when dispelled.
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (23 hours later)
Er...yes no maybe: it depends on how clever the engineers are. In this case there's no (from a theoretical physics standpoint) upper limit to how much energy you can get out of a single magical deviation from ordinary physics. If you know a certain magical object has to do a certain action (grow in size, change location, a certain chemical reaction, whatever) and it must complete that action no matter what else happens, you can set up machinery around that object to make that action as energetically unfavorable as possible. The magic rules do not care how energetically unfavorable the actions are, but from the physics end of things we're receiving massive amounts of energy. The limitations on how much magically-sourced energy can be extracted are all from an engineering standpoint.
So think "superman powers the entire continent for a day by rotating a crank once". (Super-strength is probably one of those cases where there is a theoretical upper limit of how much magically-sourced energy you can extract per unit time, so it's not the best example of this...but if we're talking about the same superman who can move entire planets, it might still work.)
u/kaukamieli [+1] (a day later)
superman powers the entire continent for a day by rotating a crank once
How feasible would it be to make machinery that could handle enough power for a continent in a couple of seconds? If we expand this thing to engineer lots of stuff to use the magic energy in ways we currently can't, isn't it pretty safe to say we might already have solved the energy thing anyway? I mean, if we suddenly have few extra tech levels, then it isn't just the single magical transformation that we abuse, is it?
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (a day later)
Fair point.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (8 hours later)
Right, the upper and lower limits are set by the person's chakra capacity. Lower limit would be super dense chakra requiring intense concentration and have steep costs. Upper limit would be spreading the chakra very thin to make up all the extra mass. Also, it's said a few times that if you try to do a jutsu you don't have the reserves for, you'll just die of immediate chakra exhaustion - it won't cancel halfway through. If you did try to become a star, nothing would happen and you'd fall over, dead.
Really big winged things actually do exist, and fly, in the series. They're pretty chakra intensive though. Definitely not a beginner move and only some are great for actual travelling.
A hot air balloon would be a chemical reaction. Temperature isn't something you can affect in the transformation, so you couldn't have the air already be hot and you'd need to install the flame (or use fire jutsu), making it either impractical or very chakra intensive.
Momentum is conserved, so if you're thrown as a 10 lb object and you dispel your henge into a 100 lb object, you'd be moving slower. This is shown in the anime, too, when he untransforms from a shuriken and can throw a kunai backwards (the throw would have gone nowhere if velocity was conserved).
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (9 hours later)
If momentum is conserved, you can become a very fast bullet by taking a leap forward and then dramatically reducing your mass.
Well, you don't have to be a fire powered air balloon. If you are less dense than the air you can float around. If you are slightly less dense than air you can fly without too much exertion. It is probably sufficient to simply be a balloon. But I get what you're saying, chakra constraints.
Temperature isn't something you can affect in the transformation
Sure you can! Just become an airtight container of liquid, and then increase/decrease the volume to influence the pressure. (Or, use friction, whatever. It's hard to feel out the constraints of this since you can apparently turn animals into animals, and you yourself are an animal, so...)
I wonder to what extent Chakra constraints care about conservation of energy...obviously they can't care completely but maybe, if you just ignore that mass is energy, Chakras care? Depending on how hard-fantasy you wanna go with this, we should probably figure out what exactly the Chakras care about.
(For example, imagine getting bigger or smaller inside a tight container. Would the Chakra care that you were inside the container and using the growth to force yourself out?/fighting against vacuum pressure?)
I think Chakra's definitely do care about the energy state your actual body is in, ignoring mass...that explains the lack of temperature and velocity malleability. Generalizing from that, you might say that you can't, for example, transform directly into a fully loaded spring.
But, could you for example stay at the same temperature, and keep growing, while immersed in an ice bath? (effectively you are introducing free heat). Do chakra's care about the overall energy of the universe after conveniently forgetting E=mc^2 ?
(See http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2sf58d/how_could_a_transformation_technique_be_abused/cnpdy0a for more ways conservation is violated, try to decide which ones are legit and which ones are somehow using an "equivalent" amount of chakra energy? I don't think there is any intuitive way to dis-allow the lever one, for example..)
u/TimTravel [+2] (a day later)
Henge yourself into "you holding a sword" to avoid needing a friend to use the weapon you make.
If it's something like a sword, then rehenging it after creating it the first time might be a good way around the rule that says you have to visualize it clearly. Vaguely imagine something, then imagine something a little more like the thing you want than the thing you have.
u/Jace_MacLeod [+1] (4 hours later)
Obvious, non-serious answer: Transform into someone slightly smarter than you. Repeat until victory is assured.
u/clawclawbite [+1] (5 hours later)
Transform into a alloy steel statue if you are about to be hit. Aerogel if you are falling. Jump on top of someone and turn into a neutronium ball and crush them.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (8 hours later)
This can all be done with earth spells anyways - covering yourself in rock and using extra chakra to strengthen it, and then making yourself heaver or lighter already exist. Still good ideas.
u/clawclawbite [+1] (8 hours later)
The interesting question here is chakra efficiency.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (8 hours later)
Yup, which is really left up to whatever the plot requires.
u/None [+1] (6 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (8 hours later)
Anti-henge measures could be as simple as a password or shared memory, no one would actually punch you to check.
You could get discounts (and Naruto could avoid hate), sure, but if you were caught dispelling then you'd have a serious hit to your reputation. Also, if you're someone else you might be in a situation you don't know how to react to and draw attention to yourself. For example, if you go as an attractive girl, and get hit on by a very persistent guy who you can't shake and insists on walking you home, you're left with the choice of leading him to your residence or revealing yourself as someone who likes to go cross-gender.
I never understood why it was considered Naruto's own jutsu?
Imo shinobi really don't think of jutsu outside of actual combat situations, or else there should be a better reason why shadow clones isn't taught to everyone who has chakra and is used for paperwork all the time, or a summons who is given the roll of messenger between the 5 nations and a given all the prestige they want for being such peacekeepers, or why every building isn't just a sculpted earth element jutsu because it would take a few minutes to set a building up. So yea, literally no one has ever thought of turning into a hot girl you made up for perverted reasons.
Clones as items would be straight up stealing, which would pretty much never be worth it when you're in a ninja village with the hokage having a magic orb that can look anywhere in the village at any time without you knowing, or an activated Byakugan watching you from behind the building. If you're ninja enough to use henge to do that, you probably have other ways to get money easier. The method could be used to take objects from civilians easier though.
u/Geminii27 [+1] (22 hours later)
It could even be used in a non-stealing manner: make clones, have the clones do work and bring the money they make back to you. You don't need to house them or (presumably) feed them, they disappear before they run into issues of hygiene or worn clothing, if they are ever injured they can be replaced, and they have no need to spend any of the money they make.
If you can generate ten clones, you can have ten incomes - even if they're just grunt labor. But you can also have a service company with up to ten 'staff' available at any time - and when they're not booked, they simply vanish (and of course you don't have to pay them). If you're all ninjas too, that's a team of up to ten people (assuming you don't personally participate) who could be bodyguards, injury-proof stunt doubles, X-treme sports video makers, infiltrators... or background actors, buskers, musicians, furniture movers, cleaners etc. Sufficiently physically fit ninjas could be an entire swimsuit calendar plus the camera team.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (a day later)
Slight initial cost, more expensive upkeep for henge.
Neat trick. Playing with expectations is definitely a smart trick.
u/dwibby [+1] (2 days later)
Hmm, since these are militaries in almost constant conflict, I could see most ninja using a standard "non-descript ninja" transformation. If everyone on the field appears to be the exact same mid-level jonin from no village, identifying friend or foe gets a pretty significant difficulty spike, as does being able to intelligently commit forces to appropriate battles.
u/Shadawn [+1] (2 days later)
Henge is horrible game-breaking technique in Naruto. If there was anyone smart in Naruto (and, by WoG, there are plenty of smart people there, and they are getting paid for optimizing killing techniques), world (and series) would be looking much more different. There are several reasons why.
Henge into a boulder would be go-to defensive technique. Mby some super steel alloy or something on higher level, but anyway, this would be used everywhere. In melee, vs offensive jutsus, everywhere.
Henge some parts of your body/clothes preemptively of midfight would be go-to melee technique. If henging stronger body doesn't work (why it doesn't if henging into somebody else does?), you henge armor, steel skin, cutting surfaces on hands, steel bones, anything. If you need knowledge to henge stronger body, i can imagine villages dissecting talented people and making ninja study this data (gives more sense to hunter-nin, btw). You can also henge your hand into sword midswing.
Btw, if human henge is allowed, you can temporary fix wounds/fatigue with this - just henge into your own perfectly healthy body. Or into that tensai's perfectly healthy body, if that's allowed.
With Naruto's wildlife, getting a flight with henge shouldn't be a problem even with your "weight averaging" - just find a bird with human weight. Ninja army flying as a thousand giant eagles make a cool scene, tho.
Actually, henging into a giant tiger in melee might be a good idea. If he's iron-plated, all the better. Tigers tend to be better than humans in close ranges, and what about tiger-specific martial arts?
And what about Eliezer's Transmutation trick, aka "troll headburst?" You could easily do the same with henge.
I think that's enough reasons to either write Henge-based ninja world (with eagle-henge for travel, tiger-henge for melee and alot of other cool things), or make Henge some kind of illusion technique with hard limits suited only for infiltrations and such.
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (2 days later)
I agree it's super broken. To discuss your points in the context of the Naruto world:
The closer you can imagine something, the better the henge is to it. Also, taking damage in the henge is never established as to what happens. The frog can grapple as a fox, so it's not one-hit-dispelled like shadow clones. If you turn into a boulder and they smash the boulder (Tsunade's strength technique), what happens? I'm going to say "henge dispelled and a serious chakra spike drain on you for causing lots of stress" which can be however much the plot requires. Dragging rock onto yourself and hardening it into your own chakra-lladen armor is a very common earth technique, too, which would produce the same result as imperfect-imagining of a steel alloy, but with the henge having a huge chakra cost if it breaks while the rocks would just fall off you.
Yes, this would all work, and is super broken. I'll try balancing this with "chakra cost" and "lack of imagination makes it inferior to the real thing". For example, if you henge into Goku, you might only get 5-10x speed/strength/toughness from the Saiyan muscles rather than 1000x, and the cost would mean you couldn't hold it for more than a minute. Wins fights but not battles. Also, if you can do a seal-less henge (gonna say takes a year of practice for one form), you can henge into yourself with your limbs in a different position. Throw a punch, have them raise a block, henge yourself into a position ready for a kick. You can't have velocity you didn't have, so no already-fast-moving-leg jutsu, but it still cuts down a lot on time-to-next-hit.
Yup, this is something I'm definitely having. Requires medical knowledge to patch up wounds to the point of feeling no pain/consequences while henge'd, and at that point is like a fast heal but temporary and with a drain to it. If you lose a lung and are a noob and henge into a healed self, you would still have a lot of problems breathing for example.
Yea, they could. I'm thinking that the biggest reason they don't is cost. Such a henge would be useless in battle as you lose all stealth and fast maneuverability so you'd suck as a henge'd eagle warrior. To travel it would be useless too since the upkeep cost would get you more exhausted than just simply running would, and it would be a chakra exhaustion instead of physical exhaustion, which is harder to deal with and recuperate from. Short bursts of speed and climbing mountains and whatnot aren't done because they simply don't think of it - long ago someone decided battle and long term travel potential of being a giant eagle were pointless so they stopped teaching it at all and no one questioned it.
A smaller target with more muscles would be preferable, to avoid the AoE jutsu. Closer to human form = less chakra expenditure, too. Would you really get a benefit from being a tiger and losing the ability to make more handseals? A gorilla though, which the extra flexibility, arm length, and muscles, might be worth it. Or mythical creatures like Machamp.
You could easily do this trick, and I will be having it.
u/Shadawn [+1] (3 days later)
Not every ninja have a technique to destroy boulder. Certainly only a few genins have one. On the contrary, Henging into the boulder is fast and easy. Thus, everyone should be learning and using this on every opportunity.
What exactly does "lack of imagination" mean? How much time do you need to study perfect athlete's body (does he needs to be dissected and preserved? Can you study this from books?) to get it working at least at 80%? If it's a year or something, it would be worth, otherwise too much of a hassle. Combat Stance Henge doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. Henging some iron spikes while blocking strike or charge, however...
Actually, unless Henge is heavily optimized on micro-level to only change what's need to be changed, Henging yourself with broken lung into your healthy body without extensive knowledge will give you no troubles breathing. Instead, you'll get super-weak version of yourself (like in previous section, but you're that downgraded Goku).
This actually makes sense. If Henge into moving form is a hassle, Eagle Henge isn't practical. Especially if you need alot of specific eagle knowledge to even make one who can fly.
Ninja fights are often 1vs1, and several weight category up (with all corresponding power-ups) could make alot of difference. Look at modern boxing, it's very hard to defeat someone heavier than you even if you're skilled. And i think you're underestimating how scary are martial arts optimized for tigers. Also, many taijutsu-specialists don't use more ninjutsu after getting into close-combat. And if you're strong and fast enough, enemy won't have time for hand seals,
Explosive Moskito Henge, heh.
Actually, another important thing - what happens to your conscience and senses while you're Henged? If your brainware continues to run on some "soulware", how does it controls your new body? How does it wire to that body sense and motor controls? Do you get grayscale vision if you morph into a cat? Do you get in trouble trying to move on 4 legs? What happens to the existing brain, panicking inside a skull while your "soulware" overtakes it? On the other hand, if you lose your conscience while Henged, it could actually be a limiting factor to this technique. Perhaps morphing into moskito makes you a moskito, and it won't fly into your enemy mouth because moskitos don't do that. Same with tigers and eagles. But in this case, you can Henge into someone/something smarter than you and make it desing something even smarter. FOOM?
u/gregx1000 [+1] (3 days later)
Would it be plausible to pull a Two-Year-Emperor and trick a foe into
polymorphinghenging something into, say, antimatter?
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (3 days later)
No, much like henge'ing into the sun, it would use up all your chakra and you'd die and nothing would happen.
And tricking them into killing themselves this way wouldn't work either, because you'd have to explain antimatter enough to make it potent to kill them, and then they'd know that it is impossible and that you were trying to kill them. If you explained it halfway they might just turn into a black sphere of chakra stuff with no special properties.
u/CapnJones [+1] (7 days later)
There appears to be a fundamental problem with your physics. The quantum physics that make something a solid or a gas are the same rules that allow electron conduction. "Electronics don't work" is something that you're imposing for your own plot, but you need to decide the physics of transformation and ask what the consequences are rather than start in the middle.
I might recommend asking "what would the world look like if all the atoms during a transformation were held stationary relative to the other transformed atoms?" or "what if a ninja transformed herself into a single electron?" and proceed from there. Good luck! :-)
u/Stop_Sign [+1] (7 days later)
Electronics work just fine, but transforming into them would requires years of practice to form the mental image. Most transformations don't require that much - even a person is only the outside image, something you can picture in detail. A circuit board is extremely difficult, though, but doable if you know it well enough. A full computer? No way. So it's not entirely "electronics don't work" such as it is "things that require every part to be transformed successfully require you to think about each part that's supposed to work". It'd be easy to be a vague circuit board, but one that's connected properly is very difficult.
what would the world look like if all the atoms during a transformation were held stationary relative to the other transformed atoms?
I don't know what you mean by this.
what if a ninja transformed herself into a single electron?
They can't, because there's a "more mana required" penalty for something extremely different in mass - either compressing the chakra that contains the storage for your actual body or expanding it to massive degrees require more chakra control or reserves than any ninja have. The smallest that they could get down to might be a baseball sized object (or a small dagger), because that's what makes sense, but this rule is never mentioned in the anime itself.
u/CapnJones [+1] (13 days later)
I could certainly have worded all of that better. What I'm trying to convey is mapping atoms to atoms is tough from a physics perspective and leaves all kinds of room for workarounds. Are ninjas able to transform themselves into elementary particles while also changing the mass of the particle? My earlier queston was trying to get at the idea of a more massive electron. Along the same lines, it could be possible to form yourself into an equivalent amount of neutron star matter. Are ninjas allowed to visualize electrons collapsed into the nucleus of the atom? I think the crux of your idea might hinge on the physics of the ninja-to-atom mapping. What lets a ninja go on thinking human thoughts? Why should a perfectly good universe respect one ninja's conception of a circuit board but not another ninja's less-well-pictured version?