Schradinger

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It's not a matter of whether he'd pull the dagger back or not, it's a matter of once the foot hit it, he wouldn't have time. The pommel would be hitting his gut before he would be able to pull it away, reflex or not.

And it's all the other leg motions that would require perfect reactions and multitasking. Sliding, leaning, extending, and contracting perfectly to mitigate the damage caused. Crouching by itself wouldn't be enough to avoid the kick, and without all the other movements he made to adjust his weight (movements and calculations that he wouldn't have time to do) it would still hit with considerable force.

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In a realistic fight with superhuman elements, the only action Vos should have been able to make before the kick hit him was moving the dagger, and the only reason that would be possible is because it was already there. Even the crouching wouldn't have been possible before the kick hit him.

All of it would be possible in a perfect character fight, but only because in that kind of fight the characters would have the same level of awareness as the writers and be able to react and think and multitask instantly. In a realistic fight the characters don't have that level of reaction speed or thought processes or awareness, unless it's stated that those are their powers.

With regards to the air burst, if he waited that long the leg would have dropped too far for it to work.

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Vordak said
Sorry, but did you read my post? Specificaly, the part where Vos straightens his leg to push away from that? He can chose when to release the air burst, so this will play out in his favor either way.

Nope. I most certainly did not. I've been arguing points that I made up on the spot this entire time, just hoping that out of some miracle of blind luck, they'd be relevant to what you wrote. I make a point of not reading posts I'm supposed to respond to, as I feel that they impede my ability to write with clarity and accuracy.

Sarcasm aside, seriously dude? Do you honestly think I would I be debating its relevancy if I hadn't read it? I realize that it was a redundant question, but I really hate it when people try to insult my intelligence with crap like that. Of course I read your post. I read it and things didn't make sense, so I addressed those things here. In the future, I'd really appreciate it if you'd avoid condescending rhetorical questions and just use intelligent arguments like you usually do.

*long deep breath*

Sorry, but I had a long day at work and my shit tolerance meter hit full about five hours ago. If an argument I make isn't correct, then counter it with facts and intelligence, but please don't treat me like I'm some idiot amateur.

That said, everything you've written in your posts is technically correct and possible if your character has instant reaction time (as in, zero delay between thought and motion), as well as total body control (right down to individual muscle fibers), and no capacity for error with complete awareness of everything around him. The problem is, he doesn't, but since you do you tend to write him as though he does. Sev, for instance, would technically be able to adjust his kick mid-stride to account for your squatting motion and other movement, and even avoid the dagger, but fast as he is, he doesn't have perfect reactions. Neither does Vos, and you claim he's able to complete at least four linear actions in the time it takes Sev to complete one (a character much stronger and just as fast, if not faster).

So this is where I ask if you want to write a fight where our characters are at their absolute best no matter what or if you want to write a realistic fight with superhuman elements, because right now we're writing two completely different fights.

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In response to your P.S.: I know they do, but there would be too much mass and momentum stacked against him. If Vos and Sev were the same size and weight, slowing the blow enough to matter would be a feasible option given Vos' level of burst strength, as you call it, but with such a large discrepancy in mass and strength it wouldn't be enough to matter.

It's like that fight in Fearless between Jet Li and the american wrestler. None of his short punches did anything at all to the guy. He had to build more momentum and hit weak points in order to take him down.

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He was sideways the entire time?

So my misunderstandings about that aside, that means that even if the foot completely missed his stomach, Vos still smashed it back into the stomach when he hit the leg with the air burst (since it would knock Sev's leg to the left, and Vos is on the left side of that leg if the kick misses)

Either way you've got a lot of force to deal with.

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I'll just address the mind manipulation argument, since I can't say for sure how Max's shadow powers work and whether or not the force would break his arms.

Firstly, a strong will does not equal absence of doubt. It just means that a person is capable of resisting things like temptation, torture, and coercion to a very high degree. Confidence would be what makes a person more susceptible to the kind of manipulation you're talking about, but a strong will is not synonymous with confidence. Confidence can be a means by which a strong will is obtained, but so can many other things like family, love, an ideal, or a goal. A strong will is indicative of an ability to ignore or suppress influences that might interfere with whatever goal a person has set themselves at that point in time, so someone whose goal is to kill everyone in a given area would be less likely to ignore one of those people due to a mental suggestion than someone with the same level of willpower whose goal is to kill a specific person in that area who isn't the one they're being manipulated to ignore (if their sole goal is to kill the person trying to be ignored, that person would probably be screwed).

Secondly, the better a person knows themselves, the easier it would be for them to recognize thoughts that aren't their own. If I wrote a character that was extremely single-minded and who was very aware of his strengths and weaknesses, he'd instantly recognize and dismiss it as an outside influence if he suddenly had a thought that directed him away from his current goal. If, on the other hand, I wrote a character who was very capricious and whimsical, he wouldn't even realize anything was amiss until there was only him and the telepath left on the battlefield. And probably not even then.

In the end, it depends very heavily on the character the telepathy is being used on, as well as how the telepath uses their power. Without actually taking time to look into an opponent's mind to see how they think, the telepath could just as easily be blaring alarm bells as sneaking in surreptitiously. Like breaking into a bank with no prior planning versus getting all the alarm codes, floor plans, and camera locations first.

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Alright, now that I've had a chance to sit down and collect my thoughts, I do have a question.

How did Vos avoid all the damage from the kick? Sev has more than eighty pounds on the man, most of it muscle, and what little momentum he could muster in a two-inch stabbing motion wouldn't slow a full-force front-kick down very much at all. especially with such a large strength (and size) discrepancy between the opponents. Not to mention that Vos wouldn't know the armor could withstand his dagger, and was clearly expecting it to punch through. He'd have to be initiating the withdrawing motion before the dagger even hit the alloy in the boot in order to get it out from in front of his stomach in time (since he'd be pushing forward then have to switch to pulling back, while Sev's kick is just one massive forward chunk of momentum).

My point being that moving the dagger to stab his foot was the only counter you had time for. There's no room for anything else before the kick lands, not even pulling the dagger out of the way (even at the speeds Vos can move, since Sev can equal if not surpass those speeds.

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I'm sorry Teo, but you don't have super speed, and not only does lightning move extremely fast (too fast for a human to raise his arms to block it in time), but that was a charged attack. Even if you could get the gauntlets moved in time, they're made of metal and wouldn't actually do anything to impede the destructiveness of the attack.

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Just for future reference, Sev is actually a fair amount stronger than Vos (and probably faster too, though only marginally), both because he has substantially more muscle mass (and all of it just as toned as Vos'), and because he can push his muscles farther before they finally do fail.

I thought that would be worth mentioning since your post seemed to indicate that you thought they were equal in strength.

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Insanity doesn't grant any inherent resistance to telepathy.