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A problem with how we measure Mindhax and Soulhax Potency

Fo those who didn't comment on them yet, what do you think on DontTalkDT's text proposals work as a solution for the thread's topic?
 
I don't personally mind them, but I believe we had already assumed it sorta like that. Numbers are the main statistic because it is the most common and the easiest to grade, but other factors are taken into account.

@Antoniofer Because a technique being less effective because X and Y isn't the same as a person resisting better because of X and Y. How it is treated matters.

None of these things have fixed rules in fiction, and what gives resistance in one isn't necessarily gonna give it in another. Taking it like that, there's not even any fixed guidelines for what to treat like a technique with a weakness and what to treat as a person having resistance.
 
Exactly my point, the boundary between resistance and weakness is thin, so is important to known why a character did resist something or why an ability didn't work, its reason may qualify as resistance to one, but to others the ability that tried to affect it simply wasn't enough powerful.

@Elizhaa, I have no issue with that addition, as long people do not limit themself to qualify powers with only number of affected. Perhaps, any of my suggestion could help? Like beings that induce an emotional state due their nature (like being eldritch or alien).
 
Is not really that thin, at least not for me. Like I said, a technique being less effective due to X and Y and a character being less affected due to X and Y are not the same thing at all, even though the only difference (additional context notwithstanding) is perspective. How the series puts it.

Things resisting things because they are strong rather than they not working because they are strong makes sense to me. The potency of the ability is in no way implied to be lessened just because something "strong" resists it.

At least for me, a technique having weaknesses in most cases like this should have more proof rather than the character simply resisting. Also, again, this is a pretty big deal so this may need to be featured or admins/people be told, as this is the main standard used for almost all profiles and would affect a lot of things if it changes.
 
Antoniofer said:
@Elizhaa, I have no issue with that addition, as long people do not limit themself to qualify powers with only number of affected. Perhaps, any of my suggestion could help? Like beings that induce an emotional state due their nature (like being eldritch or alien).
I see; that works; since, there overall agreements on DT's text, I could make the changes later or tomorrrow.

Hmm, I am neutral on the last part; I feel like it is better to leave it on a case by case basis.
 
Sigurd Snake in The Eye said:
Typo in that page.
" Those who do not possess are soul are"
Oh, I guess it was an old typo from the Soul Manipulation page. I will fix it.

  • Edit: Done
 
I agree with Antonifer here.

More minds should just be range not potency unless its a case where they literally have a limit, example:

  • The most i can mind/soul hax is 1000 people.
vs

  • I mind/soul haxed the entire continent.
The 1st one is obviously a verse that considers quantity to be the deciding factor. Whereas the 2nd case is simply just range. He clearly doesn't nor did he ever care about how many people are in the continent he just mind haxed them all.

However i am unsure how we could compare the 2.
 
Like some people said above this should be case by case since some verse use quantity, or quality or range or some other mechanism the mind/soul hax is done or represented. The linear way its curently used "quantity" is limiting other verses as they may have resistance over resistance to mindhax which will result in just 10 people being affected while in a normal one with no resistance 100 people will be affected. Some verses can't show "quantity" since they lack the number of people that other verses may have.

This is a heavy case by case which I think should be resolved if each verse would have a mini-blog of how these two hax work on the Verse page or maybe add a Note that explain on the characters profile but the later will be more work while the first it will be easier.
 
Ok i understood the point of "case by case basis". Which is what my post above was trying to show.

What i didn't understand is how we can compare the 2.

Example:

If a character where quantity is treated as potency has resisted mind hax that worked on 1000 people. But there is a character who bypassed a level of resistance to mindhax, in a verse where quantity is not potency.

How would those 2 interact? As i am pretty sure there is no logical way out of a case like this.
 
I never agree with "case by case" sentiments on things (Which seem to be quite common these days).

It's like an excuse to further extend the discussion to a later time, just for it to come up later. On stuff like potency, we need a definitive measure. Like we have for everything else.
 
how do you even quantify the potency of mind/soul hax if not with numbers of affected + prior established resistance of those affected?

Haxxer 1 mind hax Dude A .But he fail to do the same to Dude B . Dude B have no prior feat of resisting mind hax.

What is the potency of Haxxer 1's mind hax then ?

Numbers of affected + feat of prior resistance of the affected, is the best way to quantify those haxxes.Otherwise there is no clear way to quantify it other than "well it's better than before" unless specifically stated in the verse that "their mind hax potency have increased ten fold!" or something
 
YungManzi said:
I never agree with "case by case" sentiments on things (Which seem to be quite common these days).
It's like an excuse to further extend the discussion to a later time, just for it to come up later. On stuff like potency, we need a definitive measure. Like we have for everything else.
That is something I definitly disagree with. Breaking in-verse logic just because it makes our fanon fights more difficult to make is not an option.
 
So what?

If the verse shows the number of people not mattering, then it doesn't matter.

I know of characters that can control a billion people as well as one, because the number doesn't matter. As simple as that.
 
YungManzi said:
I never agree with "case by case" sentiments on things (Which seem to be quite common these days).
It's like an excuse to further extend the discussion to a later time, just for it to come up later. On stuff like potency, we need a definitive measure. Like we have for everything else.
We do that cus it cannot be decided. Context matters a lot in what ends up being decided logically, that's why we say "case by case basis".
 
I've never actually agreed with skewing potency so heavily towards numbers.

Like, we barely even talk about the amount of control one has when judging potency.
 
Can someone give examples of verses not caring about numbers. I'm presuming it'd have to be explicitly stated or heavily implied? Or is it just inference based on there not being a statement of numbers=potency.
 
@Earl&Ricsi

I never said anything about "Breaking in-verse logic", I'm saying it would be better to take a definite stance rather than be wishy washy and inconsistent.

And that's just my opinion.
 
@ricsi

If he can control one person without prior resistance , then his potency would be a single person

If he can control billions at once , then he can either mind hax billion of people without resistance , or mind hax a single person and bypass a resistance of one billion .
 
EmperorRorepme said:
Can someone give examples of verses not caring about numbers. I'm presuming it'd have to be explicitly stated or heavily implied? Or is it just inference based on there not being a statement of numbers=potency.
Most cases where its just stated "i can mind hax the whole planet" and its just seemingly done causally, it obviously lacks a problem of "number of minds".

Although i may be wrong. I'd say even something like star wars doesn't put an emphasis on the mind considering i've never heard anything like numbers being important in Star Wars.
 
EmperorRorepme said:
Can someone give examples of verses not caring about numbers. I'm presuming it'd have to be explicitly stated or heavily implied? Or is it just inference based on there not being a statement of numbers=potency.
I can give you quick ones.

Genjutsu in Naruto, Mind Manipulation in Tsuki ga Michibiku, and as Antoniofer brought up. D&D and Anima.
 
Personally I don't like how controlling a lot people with 0 resistance is seen as more impressive than controlling people with resistance. I see the first as range and the latter as potency. Unless the mind hax of all those people can be "focused" to become more potent I guess and isn't just the same for everyone. Assuming the verse hasn't said "numbers = potency".
 
I can give you quick ones.

Genjutsu in Naruto, Mind Manipulation in Tsuki ga Michibiku, and as Antoniofer brought up. D&D and Anima.

The one that comes out to me here is Genjutsu which makes sense.
 
Firephoenixearl said:
Ok i understood the point of "case by case basis". Which is what my post above was trying to show.
What i didn't understand is how we can compare the 2.

Example:

If a character where quantity is treated as potency has resisted mind hax that worked on 1000 people. But there is a character who bypassed a level of resistance to mindhax, in a verse where quantity is not potency.

How would those 2 interact? As i am pretty sure there is no logical way out of a case like this.
Logically what is being said is correct but we run into ^^^ problem in terms of fighting.

If the verses use 2 completely different systems by which they measure mind/soul hax, how can we ever hope to recreate logically the interaction between the 2.

The best we can do is settle for a certain system and apply that to all verses. If we go by too many systems it just becomes impossible. This is not as easy of a problem as Power Null was, where interaction between the 2 systems was somewhat possible.
 
Choosing 2 just makes it impossible.

Right now that is what we're doing. Up to this point we've chosen numbers so it favours verses which rely more on range than on potency. So we have things like randomly standing there mindhaxing a planet being a god tier feat in terms of mind hax potency. Even though in context that is obviously not a focusing type of mind hax nor a type that would care if you increased the world's population by 10 or 100x.

No matter what we do 1 verse is going to get favoured, whereas if we leave no decisive system it will be impossible to compare as the example i gave you above.
 
I was going to suggest treating the two resistances separately, but then I realised that that might be stupid. It all kind of depends on the metaphysics of mindhax.
 
Naeblis495 said:
@ricsi
If he can control one person without prior resistance , then his potency would be a single person

If he can control billions at once , then he can either mind hax billion of people without resistance , or mind hax a single person and bypass a resistance of one billion .
Except it's made clear that the number is a non-factor in the verse, at all. The only thing that matters is getting to a person, then they get mindhaxed, and keep being actively mindhaxed together with all other characters.

It's one thing to try and apply a head canon when there is no deeper definition for mechanics, but when it's outright made clear that number of affected is a non-factor, forcing that on does not work.

Obviously the right thing to do is taking each verse by it's own logic, which then makes the verses impossible to compare when their mechanics completely contradict one another. And making every character with mind hax unable to fight is just insane.

That's kind of the limit of vs matches between fictional characters. Certain things can't be properly compared, and making a system where all fiction works is obviously impossible.

Feel free to decide whether number of people affected counts as range or potency. One will need to be decided, regardless of being fundamentally wrong.
 
Is it me or is affecting the souls and minds of a-lot of people is still a measure of potency. Even if the verse treats stronger mind/souls = harder to affect

Affecting more than one is still a better feat than affecting one. If the verse states it is not... It would be weird. The effort/expenditure of supernatural energy is there. Lifting 2 10 kg items is better than lifting one.

But it is pretty weird that strongers souls/minds get lumped together with regular souls/minds. For example A struggling to affect a few hundred enemies comparable to him/her in their verse, meanwhile B is setting off planetary AOE mindhax on regular human populations in their verse...

Potency should have never been by numbers
 
The God Of Procrastination said:
I was going to suggest treating the two resistances separately, but then I realised that that might be stupid. It all kind of depends on the metaphysics of mindhax.
That's not only as you said stupid because it would mean 2 verses that use 2 systems can mind hax each-other freely.

But it would be a flaw logically because it is not like they're doing the different things or achieving the same thing through different means like example Biological Mind Hax and Abstract Mind Hax. Which are effectively different. These 2 are exactly the same, just rely on different systems to measure potency.
 
Men, why people remain saying "biological mind"? That is not a thing. My old psychology teacher wouldn't be happy hearing this.
 
Antoniofer said:
Men, why people remain saying "biological mind"? That is not a thing. My old psychology teacher wouldn't be happy hearing this.
I think it's more "mind manipulation achieved through biological means" more than "manipulation of a biological mind"
 
Antoniofer said:
Men, why people remain saying "biological mind"? That is not a thing. My old psychology teacher wouldn't be happy hearing this.
You don't decide what the author believes

He could make biological souls and he wouldn't care
 
Welp, either way, the mind and the brain are different, but the minds have its origin in the brain (at least according to psychology), so altering the brain will alter the mind, but not the other way around; mind manipulation resistance/immunity wouldn't grant protection against brain/neural impulse manipulation.
 
Mind is literally the more abstract intepretation of the brain. It represents the ability for each human to think.

But anyway we are getting off topic.

We have to settle for a system here.
 
Mmm, I think I mistaken this thread by the other about equalizing (either way, it didn't sounds that much off topic).

As I say, any form for measuring the potency of hax outside of [insert verse explaination here] and bypassing the resistance of someone else is arbitrary, be the number of the affected or the range, or if it targets the consciousness or the subconsciousness.
 
There are 2 possible systems that we can choose from:

  • Mind/Soul hax are measured based on the amount of people they can affect.
  • Mind/Soul hax are measured by how many resistances they can bypass and amount of people affected is just range rather than potency.
So which one should we go for?
 
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