Chakra is everywhere, an intangible force permeating the world. For the most part, ninja (and everyone else) ignore this. It’s like knowing that there’s oxygen all around: necessarily for life, but not particularly worthy of attention since it’s always there.
It does play an important roll for shinobi: they naturally respire chakra from the environment, just like they inhale and exhale air, but as chakra is omnipresent, it never matters.
It’s called ‘natural chakra’. Very rarely, some ninja manage to learn how to access it. The scarcity of this ability has a lot to do with the fact that in most situations, it’s impractical: accessing nature chakra requires one to be able to sit calmly and undisturbed for a significant amount of time, something which ninja rarely have the opportunity to do when under pressure.
Learning to access nature chakra is not something one simply does: it takes months of slowly learning to harmonize oneself with the world around them, gradually learning to deliberately calm the flow of chakra within their own body.
Similarly, someone who can use nature chakra does not progress in stages; it’s a natural growth, a process of inner learning.
However, that would be horribly difficult to represent with game mechanics, so natural chakra is conveniently broken down into three tiers! They are, in order: Enlightened, Adept, and Sage.
Within each tier, there are several abilities (which can be logged either under Other, or by creating a new ability breakdown for nature chakra). By each ability there is a listed XP cost, which you must pay to learn it. You can purchase any ability within a tier you have access to, so long as you meet its listed requirements.
The most basic ability someone seeking to harness natural chakra must master, this is precisely what it sounds like. You sit down, close your eyes, and become perfectly still, clearing your mind. Obviously, this is easier said than done. A novice will find themselves thinking about not thinking, then their nose will start to itch, they’ll get fidgety… and that is where most give up in frustration and go back to studying high-power ninjutsu.
When meditating you cannot talk, or even open your eyes to look around, though you do remain aware of your surroundings to the extent of what you can feel and hear.
Indeed, much of meditation is learning how to observe one’s surroundings impartially, without reacting. You cannot maintain any Upkeeps greater than 0 while meditating.
In battle, you may declare Meditate as an action. When meditating, you do nothing. Meditate as an action lasts until you declare that you Abort it; you do not need to declare how long you’ll be meditating when you begin.
There are two ways to end meditation: The first is with End Meditation, a Speed 5 action which cannot have its Speed reduced. The second is your meditation being disrupted. This occurs if you take any action other than End Meditation, if you are hit by any damaging attack, or if you are moved in any way. If this happens, you have a -5 penalty to Accuracy, Fatigue and all opposed d20 rolls, for the next 10 IC.
As you meditate your body relaxes and is refreshed, weariness ebbing away and pain fading. Every 10 IC you spend meditating, your Stamina penalty is reduced by 1.
By emptying your mind, you reach a state of total serenity. Your emotions fade away, letting you assess things calmly and rationally. With that tranquility comes inner balance, disturbances of the mind translating into disturbance of one’s chakra, and their absence doing the same. Every 10 IC you spend meditating, your Chakra Exhaustion penalty is reduced by 1
Requires: A Tranquil Body, A Tranquil Mind
When your mind and body are in harmony, each completely silent and at ease, your spirit becomes the same. Once you’ve been meditating for 20 IC, you may sacrifice a point of Willpower to lower your Fatigue level by 1. After doing so, you must wait at least 20 IC before using it again.
Requires: A Tranquil Soul
If you spend at least 100 IC meditating, the first time you fail a Chakra Exhaustion or Stamina roll in the next ten minutes you advance one less Fatigue category; your Stamina and Chakra Exhaustion penalties still reset to 0.
As one sinks into meditation, they become detached from their worldly senses and the accompanying distractions. Only by doing so can they notice the minute variations in the world’s own chakra, in all their subtle wonder.
While meditating, you can tell how many people are within X yards, where X is the number of IC you’ve spent meditating, up to a maximum of your CHA. This does not, however, allow you tell anything else about them, even their direction or distance.
Except in combat! In combat, this allows you to find hiding enemies. Every 5 IC you spend meditating while a hidden enemy is within your range, you may make a Chakra Control roll against their Stealth TN, with a +2 bonus for every 5 IC (total) you’ve been meditating. Requires: A Tranquil Soul
Requires: Path to Tranquility
Up until now, you’ve managed to ‘sort of’ meditate properly: you’re almost sitting still, you’re mostly not distracted. Becoming one with nature requires a higher level of discipline.
The phenomenon commonly described as being ‘one with nature’ is where a person is so still, so unresponsive, that the world’s ambient chakra can flow unhindered through their chakra coils, as if they were just another tree or current of wind.
As this takes place, nature chakra builds up within the shinobi’s chakra system. While there are dangers associated with it, they don’t manifest at this level. Every 2 IC you spend meditating, you get one nature chakra counter (NC). You may have a maximum of up to (RES+CHA)/4 nature chakra counters.
However: If your meditation is broken through any means other than an End Meditation action (or, once you have the ability, activating Sage Mode), you lose all your accumulated nature chakra counters.
Once a person stops meditating, this chakra is quickly cycled through their system and disposed of. You lose one NC every 5 IC when not meditating.
Nature is unyielding; it is powerful, and will crush any who think themselves its better. For every NC you currently have, your damage bonuses are increased by 0.1 with everything but weapons; with weapons, your damage bonus is increased by 0.1 for every 2 NC you currently have.
Nature is adaptable; it changes to meet the needs of its current situation, not because it yields, but because it will always be victorious under any circumstances. After seeing the result of a Chakra Exhaustion or Stamina roll, you may spend 3 NC to increase the result by 1; there is no limit on how many NC you may spend this way on a single roll.
Nature is furious; it destroys, it obliterates. It is the raging wildfire, the roar of thunder. You may spend NC to increase your damage bonus by a single attack, at the rate of 0.3 for every NC spent, or 0.1 for each NC spent with weapon attacks. You may increase your base damage bonus by up to 25% of its base value using Body of Fire.
Nature is patient; it grows slowly, knowing that there is no need to rush, that the destination is what matters, not the time taken to get there. When taking any action, you may spend up to 5 NC to improve the result of any Stamina or Chakra Exhaustion rolls it causes you to make. Every NC spent gives you +1 to that roll’s result.
Nature is gentle; it nourishes, it strengthens, and it protects. While flowing through your chakra coils it infuses every bit of your body, reinforcing your skin, bones, muscles, and nerves.
Every NC you currently have gives a Damage Reduction (DR) of 2.
Requires: A Dream of the World
Every person alters the flow of chakra around them in a unique, distinctive way; some people brighten the world merely by being there, while others darken, and still others are like deep pits from which no light can escape.
When you sense someone using A Dream of the World, you can identify their chakra in the future. Having met someone in the past doesn’t mean you can immediately identify their chakra.
Requires: One With Nature, Basic Training 5, Hold Back 5
Before, your meditation was almost childish: what you thought was perfection was in truth a tribute to its own flawed nature. What you thought was a deep understanding of the world was an immature attempt to define something which no words could hope to describe. What you thought was control of your own body was only ignorance of your own lack of discipline.
You’re not sure when you realized how wrong you’ve been– it was simply… apparent, one day, an epiphany. Understanding your flaws, you have not overcome them, but rather accepted them, absorbed them into yourself, and in doing so let them dissolve like shadows in the light.
All meditation effects take place twice as quickly: you gain 1 NC every 1 IC spent meditating, you may use Tranquil Soul every 10 IC, A Dream of the World’s radius increases by 2 yards every IC, and so forth.
Additionally, you can at this point talk to others without breaking your meditation.
Requires: Path to Inner Peace
The pinnacle of senjutsu–“sage techniques”–is, appropriately enough, referred to as “sage mode”. Activating sage mode requires flawless self-control.
Sage mode requires perfectly balancing sage chakra with one’s own “yin and “yang” chakra–two things that most ninja never even need to concern themselves with. By drawing in enough nature chakra and maintaining it in perfect harmony, a heightened state of superhuman performance, the eponymous sage mode, can be reached.
You may activate sage mode as a Speed 5 action once you have at least 50 NC stored, and only if you are Meditating. Doing so immediately ends your meditation, and you may not meditate again until Sage Mode has ended.
Sage Mode lasts until you run out of NC; however, while it is active you lose 2 NC every 5 IC (instead of 1). While in Sage Mode, your current NC (for the purpose of determining benefits from nature chakra’s passive effects, such as Body of Earth and Body of Metal) is always considered to be the amount you had when you entered Sage Mode.
For example, if you entered Sage Mode with 60 NC, and had spent 40 of them, you would still receive (60*2) 120 Damage Reduction from Body of Earth, until your Sage Mode expired.
While in Sage Mode, you have a +1 bonus to Stamina and Chakra Exhaustion rolls for every 10 NC you had when you activated Sage Mode. After seeing the result of an attack (whether it hits or not) or a defensive roll (successful or not), you may improve the result by up to 3 by spending NC, at the rate of 5 NC per +1.
When using Body of Fire in Sage Mode, every 1 NC spent increases your damage bonus by 0.5, or 0.2 for weapon attacks, to a maximum of 50% of your base damage bonus.
While in Sage Mode, your damage reduction from Body of Earth cannot be bypassed or reduced by effects which would normally do so. When an attack wounds you, you may spend nature chakra counters to lower its severity, at the rate of 5 NC per level: for example, for 15 NC you could negate a Severe wound entirely.
While in Sage Mode, you have a +1 bonus to Accuracy and dodge for every 20 NC you entered Sage Mode with. For every 10 NC, you have a +1 bonus to Athletics, Awareness, Chakra Control, and Resistance rolls.
Requires: A Dream of a Dream
When in Sage Mode, A Dream of the World and A Dream of a Dream are both automatically active at all times, with a radius of your Sage Mode NC (if you entered with 54 NC, 54 yards). As a Speed 5 action you may make a Chakra Control roll to locate all hidden enemies in range, with a +1 bonus for every 10 NC you have.
If you’ve previously located someone this way, during the current instance of Sage Mode, this bonus is raised to +1 for every 5 NC you have (in other words, it’s easier to find them after the first time, until your Sage Mode ends).