There really isn't any direct weakness to Edo Tensei in combat. The only weakness the jutsu has is the prep work, you need to kill someone or get the DNA of someone who has been killed, and get a living body to sacrifice to summon them back. Unless we want to make up things that don't exist canonically there really isn't a way to limit the jutsu. It seems there is already a limit on the zombies, no? 6 of them? And the 1:1 ratio makes it so you can only summon as many as people you are fighting.
Right there. I think that's a problem, don't you? I'm all for a balanced system in which strengths are coupled with appropriate weaknesses. Naruto was never written by Kishimoto to be RP'ed, thus the creation of these kinds of weaknessless techniques. The ONLY reason why Edo Tensei was stopped, was due to plot armor quite frankly. And honestly, nobody is ever going to allow their character to get trapped as did Kabuto. This is why we need to make weaknesses for jutsu even though that may mean we deviate from the canon. The prep-work is hardly a weakness at all. Again, it's another "fake weakness".
@ Kamui:This makes me wonder who else thinks I'm Purple lol. My suggestion to this is rather than altering the percentage of chakra summoning costs, to merely say that once an Edo Tensei is summoned,
the user permanently looses that percentage of charka for the duration the Edo is active. This completely cuts out the loophole of pre-summoning Edo Tensei outside of battle, have them chill (or never un-summon them again), then fight with them a few days later after the summoner is completely recovered. This also strikes out the loopholes of summoning then popping a chakra pill to be at 100% again, or having a zombie transfer chakra back to the user.
@Everyone:I'm okay with most of Pete's rules save for the "only one Edo may attack per post", which I agree with Rakudo about. That runs into the issue of what to do if you are able to summon 3 but yet only be allowed to attack/defend with one? Unless that rules changes to only attack with 1 Edo but the rest have to be defensive.
My suggestion~ (Slight edit from the rules just stated)
- Limit Edo Tensei to only 3 summonings per battle
- Only one Edo Summoning can be used per bijuu battle
- 15% of chakra should be the cost for each summoning and permanently lost for the duration that the Edo is active. So summoning the max of 3 zombies equals a loss of 45% of the summoner's total chakra pool. Only when an Edo is sealed or un-summoned is when the user can start recovering the lost 15% for
that summon.
- If an Edo summoning is sealed or captured, the user takes on 25% of the damage the Edo Tensei received.
- As long as Edo Tensei is being used, the user can only use defensive moves. And these defensive moves can't be used in the motions of an attack.
- Alts & NPCs are not allowed to become Edo Tensei. You also can't trade alts with a friend for Edo Tensei zombies. (If you can't trade sharingan eyes with friends anymore for the EMS you shouldn't be able to to trade Alts with friends to create mutual Edo Tensei.)