The main issue I've always encountered with numbers is that Numbers People and Descriptions People (a.k.a. lack-of-numbers people) tend to fall into two different mindsets.

Numbers People tend to be rules sticklers, looking for strict math, science, and comparisons between characters - the dreaded "my 1500 newtons tops your 1200 newtons, so you lose" argument.  Note that only idiots actually [i]make[/i] that argument, but it's sort of endemic to the Numbers Person mindset - they're engineers doing head-math in their fights, looking for precision and quantification.  They get incredibly frustrated when nothing but qualitative comparisons are made, because those comparisons don't mean anything to them.  Obviously the [i]good[/i] math-heads can deal with some vagueness, especially given the million and one variables in any given fight.  They tend to be the more competitive/structured guys, because a numbers system lends itself well to organized competition.

Other guys, though?  They ain't here for numbers.  I'll admit - I am [i]not[/i] a numbers guy.  I hate assigning stats to my characters, even weird pseudo-IRL stats like deadlift weight, footspeed, maximum-force-exertable, shit like that.  To me, doing that sort of thing gets in the way of the Flow of Awesome.  I'm not ever going to do ranked fights here because I'm not [i]competing[/i] so much as running my own personal anime and substituting other players for episode bosses every now and then.  To me, certain things should be obvious - an oni is [i]GOING TO BE[/i] stronger than a human.  That's a given.  I don't need to measure the oni's physical strength and give a concrete statistic delineating the ceiling of the oni's strength to show that if he swings his kanabo and a human guy blocks with his sword, that block is gonna be [i]no bloody good[/i] without something else backing it.

If advantage/disadvantage isn't that obvious?  Then the circumstances of a particular fight/action should hold sway over and above numbers.  If the 1500n and 1200n guys above are locked hand-to-hand in a grapple, but the 1200n guy has better footing and a stronger grip...why should he lose that action just because the other guy has a theoretically higher maximum force limit than he does?  The 1200n guy has advantage in that action; the 1500n guy might be able to muscle out of it, but he's still going to come out of the encounter on the bottom end without some clever moves.

Fights are fluid, shifting things, not equations to be solved.  If you can tell who has advantage, who is at a disadvantage, and which characters have edges in which areas, that should be sufficient in my view.  If it's [i]not[/i] sufficient, then you sit down and hammer out what is.  If the other guy's a big enough douchehammer that you [i]can't[/i] hammer it out, then either you call a judge if one's available...or you just give it up as a bad job and put that guy on your No Punch List.

I've never [i]needed[/i] numbers to settle disputes with amicable players.  That doesn't mean numbers are bad - it just means that my own personal style of play and history is more conducive to descriptive, qualitative freeform than to quantitative structure.  Means I can put Darth and Melon on my No Punch List right off the bat, but they aren't bad guys - just bad fits for my Boss of the Week.  They'd get frustrated with me never giving them the hard, empirical data they're looking for, and I'd get frustrated with them not just [i]rolling with it[/i] and making judgment calls.

That's okay, though.  That's what LeeRoy's for, after all.  'Least until Cee's done twisting Virtuoso into a pretty golden bow to stick on top of the [i]Venture[/i].