scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2sf58d.md

How could a transformation technique be abused?

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:

  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:

    Have you read [*Lighting Up The Dark*](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9311012/1/Lighting-Up-the-Dark)?
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      Yep.  Great story.
      

• u/None:

  [deleted]
  

• u/Salaris:

  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:

    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:

      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](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Chakra_Armour), 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](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Reverse_Summoning_Technique) is another one that could probably be utilized much more heavily than they do in canon.
      

      • u/clawclawbite:

        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/dwibby:

      > 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/dwibby:

  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](#s "having both the yang half of the Kurama sealed in him and being the reincarnation of Ōtsutsuki Asura, who inherited Hagoromo's yang chakra")).
  
  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:

    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](http://www.narutonine.com/NarutoEpisode45EnglishDubbed.html), 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/E-o_o-3:

  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/TimTravel:

  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.
  

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