Royal Rumble! (Modern anime high-school super-powers? Oh my!)

[RoflsMazoy]

Oh man, you guys are way too good for me. I've got some more places to be this morning but I'll be back in about 3 hour or so?

[6slyboy6]

@RoflsMazoy dandy thing milord!

[KillamriX88]

SIR, YES SIR!

[OwO]

I'm pretty sure you cannot make a punch more powerful by changing the gravity tho. Increasing gravity would just make you lose the energy that you gained from lower gravity. Other than that, I can't wait to fight him

@6slyboy6

Axe kicks, however, fucking hurt.

My idea is that it makes his fist much heavier. If that doesn't make sense, lets just say that he turns gravity sideways 😂😂😂

@Bartimaeus

It doesn't exactly work like that. The mass and speed of the fist remains the same, meaning the hit is the same strength. The only difference is now, you have to either add more STRENGTH upwards to keep the punch straight or just let it go down.

But at the end of the day, it's a god damn anime fighting RP and it's going to have people slicing bullets in half with swords and people running on walls and shit. Realism don't really matter.

^{And if you want, I can rip into the powers at maximum realism to say everything that don't do the real life.}

[Bartimaeus]

Lmao, true true. But just for the sake of being an argumentive ass, when I say his fist will get much heavier, it will happen just before impact. Say a couple centimeters or so. Wouldn't need to keep the punch straight, as it would basically already be making contact.

Edit: but anyways, it isnt really relevant, as you said xD

[KillamriX88]

But at that point it would be too late for the acceleration of gravity to matter all that much? And if he makes it heavy enough to matter, then at that point he'd probably throw himself horribly off balance...

Force = mass times acceleration (with acceleration being mps squared).

Gravity does not increase mass. Gravity CAN increase acceleration, which admittedly is the bigger part of the equation, but you need time for that to build up. There are ways to make it work, just requires some thought. Definitely won't work well with regular punches though.

A flying hammerfist however......

[Bartimaeus]

Maybe I described it incorrectly, or got confused xDD
He can control the weight of his own fist(and by extent speed). Maybe increasing the gravity at the end of the punch does nothing, but increasing the speed first will. Haha didn't really attempt to keep it realistic in my original post, as it is anime-based.
Also, he wouldn't be throwing boxing punches or hay-makers with this technique, as he uses Wing-Chun, essentially all his punches will be One-Inch Punches, so he wouldn't really throw himself off balance. :P

[KillamriX88]

We've reached the extent of my knowledge of physics so I'mma tap out now. I still feel like that makes no sense, but there's no real life examples of increasing gravity either, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Bartimaeus]

It may make no sense, but its Anime so meh

[6slyboy6]

@Bartimaeus He increases SPEED by lowering WEIGHT. As such the FORCE applied stays the same, so does the MASS of his hand. So when you increase gravity again, your FORCE will stay the same, expect this time you'll have more WEIGHT but lose a lot of SPEED to increased gravity. MASS and FORCE stay the same.

If you wanted to dou and uppuercut or strike from above, then gravity would matter, since there would be no horizontal bleed.

Simply lowering friction would make for a stronger punch. Boom, that easy.

[Gentlemanvaultboy]

I think applying gravity to limb to hit harder makes anime sense.

[Bartimaeus]

Lowering air friction? xD

[KillamriX88]

@Bartimaeus He increases SPEED by lowering WEIGHT. As such the FORCE applied stays the same, so does the MASS of his hand. So when you increase gravity again, your FORCE will stay the same, expect this time you'll have more WEIGHT but lose a lot of SPEED to increased gravity. MASS and FORCE stay the same.

If you wanted to dou and uppuercut or strike from above, then gravity would matter, since there would be no horizontal bleed.

Simply lowering friction would make for a stronger punch. Boom, that easy.

@6slyboy6

Thank you, that's what we needed to hear XD

And air friction = wind resistance. Not much affect on a fist, but it's still there.

[Bartimaeus]

im not very good at physics in case you haven't noticed lmao <.<

[jynmi88]

@Bartimaeus

Maybe I described it incorrectly, or got confused xDD
He can control the weight of his own fist(and by extent speed). Maybe increasing the gravity at the end of the punch does nothing, but increasing the speed first will. Haha didn't really attempt to keep it realistic in my original post, as it is anime-based.
Also, he wouldn't be throwing boxing punches or hay-makers with this technique, as he uses Wing-Chun, essentially all his punches will be One-Inch Punches, so he wouldn't really throw himself off balance. :P

@Bartimaeus

Wouldn't manipulating inertia have close to the effect your looking for?

[KillamriX88]

Please no more physics... and inertia is simply something being at a state of rest. You break inertia to start moving. So... I guess if he lowered inertia... but then... *head explodes*

Now look what you've done

Edit: Remembered semi-incorrectly. Inertia is super basically resistance to movement.

[Bartimaeus]

sounds like it, but so far my thoughts on physics have been wrong lmao

[OwO]

Edit: Remembered semi-incorrectly. Inertia is super basically resistance to movement.

@KillamriX88

I thought Inertia was a cool dude who likes Siege.

---

@Bartimaeus Alright, since I spent some time thinking about it, I'm actually going to critique the powers using my massive brain juice. It stems deeply from my hatred of lame-ass anime fights.

Beware! Rant!

The first problem that I personally see is the sheer range of abilities. Everyone else has a rather specific power. Ice, fire, not-dying, light, summoning, shadows, etc.

Samoth's abilities don't exactly do the dew here.

Rather than having a cohesive power with clear strengths and weaknesses, Samoth has a bunch of scattered powers all relating to a vague concept.

Quick list:
He can control gravity.
He's a master martial artist.
He reads The Art of War every day
He can communicate (and manipulate) with only a range limit.
Psychic blade, which honestly, is an ability by itself.
Telekinesis
ESP
Psychic constructs

There isn't much cohesion between any of this.

Why have gravity at all when you have telekinesis? Gravity doesn't even fit the mind theme - gravity is a fundamental force and _by itself_ is cool enough to warrant an entire core power dedicated to it with a bunch of sub-abilities supporting it.

Additionally, he doesn't really seem to have a weakness. I'm not talking about adding little weaknesses that nobody cares about, I'm talking about his inabilities. Usually, you can get a read on powers by thinking about what powers don't do. For example, Bak the weaponry girl.

Bak is entirely physical with a huge emphasis on ranged combat. Let's say, just as an example, a character could make a magical shield that reflects projectiles. Bak is at a huge disadvantage.

However, this is a good thing. Not every fight needs to be a fair and balanced duel where both parties can win. Sometimes, you just have to get shit on because it's a bad match-up. That's fine. Losing is fine. But what's more important that losing is learning to fight at a disadvantage. Bak could shed as much as she can to become highly agile. She can fire rockets at close range, trying to use the fact that she's covered in metal to survive. She can push her limits, and in effect, be forced to fight as an entirely different person.

If Ria fights Alto, there is no possible way for Ria to win. Ria relies on her eyesight to fight. Because Alto is a walking flashbang, Ria can only not be blinded if she doesn't look at him, making her powers useless. That's just how it goes sometimes. Ria, however, has an advantage against punch-mages. She can follow their moves enough to beat them.

Combat is always entertaining when a party is at a small disadvantage. You get to see an underdog come up and do their best. If the underdog wins, you can feel like they _truly_ deserved it. If they lose, you can see that they tried their best but still couldn't win.

Samoth's coverage is too high. He's able to: change gravity, use telekinetic attacks, have one-way-combat-communication, be a master martial artist, manipulate minds, basically have Ultra-Instinct, the ability to create psychic barriers, and he even sips some brain juice in his free time.

There's no way to fight against him, resulting in an empty stat-block that only exists to be a power gate: you must be this strong to win.

If you get close, he pummels with with martial arts. If you get far, he tosses shit at you and blasts you with brain beams. If you manage to try to overwhelm him, he still is aware about everything because of ESP. The only way to beat him is by being stronger, which makes for lame shounen combat all about yelling and friendship powers.

It's better to have a single open power, such as object creation, rather than a bunch of related powers that do specifically one thing.

As the great Kanye West says:

Everything I'm not, made me everything I am.

^{also everything relating to mind manipulation is absolutely horrible}

[jynmi88]

@KillamriX88

Please no more physics... and inertia is simply something being at a state of rest. You break inertia to start moving. So... I guess if he lowered inertia... but then... *head explodes*

Now look what you've done

Edit: Remembered semi-incorrectly. Inertia is super basically resistance to movement.

@KillamriX88

Or stopping. Basically, it is what keeps something doing what it's doing, at least physically

[KillamriX88]

OK, since Burger opened the can of worms that I was trying to side-step so that I could throw our glorious leader into the fire, I will give my opinion on what you could do with Samoth.

Go back to his original incarnation and basically make him a paladin (ala dragon age) who resists magical abilities and fights back with the physical. His core being magic cancellation, and then his abilities all have to do with surviving magic, growing stronger from it, or just naturally being a beast physically. There, it's all thematic and focused, and better yet still stems from one of your ideas.

Would he still be incredibly strong? Yes, but now he has a specific role that can be worked around to still stand a chance against, and he'd be great for the "Worf Effect," basically if it was ever necessary for the plot, he could lose to prove just how scarily strong some other antagonist is.