Syosetsuka ni Narou Discussion Thread

[XFire]

Originally Posted by bakato

I think the concept of a foreigner one-upping a native reeks of white man's burden. If you just want to see the japanese mc's hypocrisy pointed out then it'd be best to have another japanese character do it.

Uh, the japanese "uplifting" the natives of isekai is the "white mans burden" in that situation. Having a foreigner point that out hardly counts, which is what Garn seemed to be suggesting.

[Garn]

Or repatriated, if the character is still a native Japanese this would not contribute anything other than "commenting (tsukkomi)" but without any depth or repercussion and that the culture shock would be lost.
The point is to have someone stop the nonsense of the Japanese protagonist and the cliche of a medieval era super primitive used in all the novels, the best thing would be that this was pointed out by someone from the western part, part that is always shown as less than barbarians.
This while being a common Isekai and the protagonist would simply make the "zamaa" to the Japanese protagonist.

[DBAV]

^A lot of authors make their MC's social outcast in the Isekai, think about it they almost never interact with the people, while conveniently adapting Isekai morals they always keep that pretentious moral superiority made possible because of cheats, if they started with a more modest pack (skills,equipment etc...) I'm sure they'd kill trick and doubt people like other characters do.

[Garn]

^That is only a minor component compared to how always some Japanese component permeate easily (example: any otaku culture or food) and is glorified, while the Isekai version of the western medieval culture is very primitive, dumb and in need of a messiah.

Event:
The character who represents the typical protagonist (hetare/donkan) who always makes the heroine(s) wait, sees how the most assertive MC "collects" her (them) or the heroines themselves get tired of waiting

[wuhugm]

The Japanese need to be taught more freedom and democracy YIIIHAAW

Originally Posted by Eddio

Eddio literal wall of text

You are correct

Of course the story would be different if they figure out how to increase the power of guns using magic

-------------------------

Btw, why is FIREBALL the most common fire magic?
If you want to capitalize on the BURNING part, you'd want the magic to behave like a flamethrower
So like Dragon's Fire Breath, so maybe Fire Wave? Fire Stream?
Literally never heard of such magic
It's always Ball Ball Ball even for other elements
Super Compression of Air in Wind Ball should be Advanced Magic, but it's classified as elementary because it's still a fucking BALL
MY BALLS!!!!!!!!!!

[Garn]

^
That made me think
If it is only the element.
The fire is the weakest of the 4 common elements

-The fire ball is materialized by magic and needs this to extend the duration
I think the fire has less than half the weight of the air and its impact would not cause a reaction comparable to the other 3 since the mass is almost nil
Only fire cannot be normally compressed

-An air ball is simply compressed air with an instantaneous and destructive effect but with a need for magic to maintain it
An extended effect would need a constant flow but this air is denser from the start
It can be compressed and this compression far exceeds the others, molded and a normal cancellation would result in destruction
The air temperature increases this gap.

-The earth ball is pure mass and once materialized it does not need a constant consumption of magic beyond movement
Its nature is already compressed mass and with a damage capacity dependent on the mass and speed
The constant use of mana is only for the movement of the mass that by itself already does damage
The fire could not destroy something that has greater mass and that its thermal conductivity resists fire enough to extinguish it if it's not constant and with great temperature.
The earth temperature increases this gap.

-The water ball shares almost everything with that of the earth but with less mass and external resistance, iits compression is more elaborate
As with the earth the fire would need to have an effect instantly to be effective against water who already brings a moving mass and cannot be used as fuel
The water temperature increases this gap.

If magic can make a compressed fire, then the other elements would also be even more compressed.
If the fire explodes magically, then the other elements will explode magically.
If the nature of fire increases magically, then the nature of the other elements will increase magically.

All elements resist fire in one on one
Fire is considered plasma but it is not comparable to lightning or stars

[wuhugm]

^So scientific~

Air Ball = Rasengan
And Naruto World acknowledged that it's an advanced technique

Water Ball is understandable since floating droplets will merge into larger one

But Fire Ball is questionable
I mean if the development of civilization is natural
The first instance of fire power in history would be things like forest fire
If people try to imitate natural power into magic it should be Fire Wall or Fire Breath initially

But if the question do we need perfect magic sytem (hard system), I say no
Nasuverse where every family conceal their techniques is fun too

[Rasty]

If we are trying to devise a reason for fireballs being optimal I would suggest this: continuous mana output is hard and so is projecting magic too far from your body. This will lead to the need for "throwing" some condensed object. Some kind of deformed ball is actually pretty logical for a thing that you want to easily mold and throw, not even speaking about compression.

As for the firepower, of course if it is literally a puff of fire it has almost no damaging properties. For all we know it might be a highly heated compressed air or a ball of napalm (actually the fireballs are mostly behaving as a mix between the two).

As for XYBall being the basic technique, it might be something like basic techniques comprising of wrapping your mana around the thing with a string attached, let it compress a bit on it's own and then fling it with the string (while letting go).

[wuhugm]

^
Controlling mana as ball makes sense, but when it's already converted into elements, it kills their strong points instead

I read one where they use lightning ball lmao
It's faster when it's in bolt form dumbass

[dragon1412]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

^
Controlling mana as ball makes sense, but when it's already converted into elements, it kills their strong points instead

I read one where they use lightning ball lmao
It's faster when it's in bolt form dumbass

to be fair, ball lightning actually exist in reality as an phenomenon. though as weapon, the only thing that it superior to lightning bolt is the fact that it last a lot longer.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

^
Controlling mana as ball makes sense, but when it's already converted into elements, it kills their strong points instead

I read one where they use lightning ball lmao
It's faster when it's in bolt form dumbass

Uh, ball lightning would actually be significantly more dangerous than just a bolt of equal strength.

[wuhugm]

Are you guys crazy!?
The ball is travelling at the same speed as Fireball!

[XFire]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

Are you guys crazy!?
The ball is travelling at the same speed as Fireball!

That's why it's more dangerous. A bolt of lightning hitting you is actually not likely to be fatal despite being far hotter than normal fire because of how quickly it travels through you. The biggest danger is it doing something to your heart iirc.

Ball lightning has somewhat lesser heat but will pass through you much slower. It'd literally be getting hit with a ball of plasma, you'd be lucky if your bones were left over.

[wuhugm]

^You are insane, you know that?

This is Lightning Ball as in the lowest type of magic same as all other BALLS
It doesn't work the OP way you imagined

[bakato]

The advantage of bolt is its speed. Once it reaches sufficient strength, it's fatal. There's no point to extra power in ball form.

[Garn]

That depends, all lightning used as an attack should be life threatening but this never happens and less when the MC uses it.
Lightning magic is already considered superior magic, even at the beginner level as a ball, obviously bolt-shaped it would be greater
The magic of lightning is highly underrated, even only in the form of a ball it is already dangerous

It's a "lightning", a person with just sticking his finger in the socket already experiences a reaction that is not a joke,
it's stupid to put a lightning at the level of a stun gun which in prolonged use is deadly,
now put that into something that apart from being mostly charged it also carries plasma.

[Rasty]

It might simply be extremely hard to direct a real lightning bolt (by nature it tends to hit the nearest conducting thing... so you). A good story point would be, that all the ball magics are just concentrated elemental mana and the effects (like the fireball burning etc.) are just small amounts leaking and turning into magic effects. When the ball hits something all the trapped elemental mana gets released at once and wreaks havoc (fireballs exploding, lighting zapping you etc.).

[XFire]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

^You are insane, you know that?

This is Lightning Ball as in the lowest type of magic same as all other BALLS
It doesn't work the OP way you imagined

Weren't we talking about why things were "unrealistic"?

Ball lightning is super dangerous, so if they actually managed to make it then "realistically" it'd be more dangerous than a bolt.

Originally Posted by bakato

The advantage of bolt is its speed. Once it reaches sufficient strength, it's fatal. There's no point to extra power in ball form.

Except that a ball lightning could kill with significantly less energy because of the difference in the way they work.

[Rasty]

Speaking about problems of a lightning bolt, it takes about 30k Volts to make it through 1cm of air (unionized but that doesn't matter for the first one), meaning to get a bit decent range of 5m you would need 15MV. Just for comparison, the highest voltage used for long-distance energy transmission is 0.5MV. Now I doubt a kid that just started learning magic is able to achieve such insane voltages, I even less think such a novice is capable of not killing himself with it and even if such a genius existed... any other mage (or archer or even kid throwing stones) could just kite him with many times longer range, not even speaking about just sticking a sword into the ground in front of you making it much, much harder to actually hit you.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Heh, all this discussion kinda makes me want to say: Just ask D (from "kumo desu ga, nani ka") to hack reality and make all damage equivalent and all damage be "attribute damage". With her "System", even liquid poison is basically just water tagged with "poison damage" and real poisons are eliminated. Freaky stuff!

But yeah... all sorts of problems with damage equivalency. One option would be that the power could be scaled such that the damage output is similar for the same "level" but that'd mean the mana costs would be different instead. And indeed, if we're dealing with real actual fire, electricity etc rather than magic sfx that simply resembles them, then you'll have to deal with real physical effects too.

Random other thought 1: in worlds with levels etc why are older adventurers (like 50 years plus equivalent human) so very rare? If you've survived that long your level, stats and skills should be insane. Sure, they might be in semi-retirement or something but if everyone levels at the same rate (other things being equal) then those levelling for longer should have the advantage, but this almost never comes across.

Random other thought 2: why are adventurer guilds always so vanilla? Why not have guilds run by rival companies? Or a setting where the guild and adventurers used their combined combat ability to take over a country. Or even something like the guild takes in orphans and raises them to be adventurers instead of the church run orphanages (which are always poor since they have no way to raise money).