At What Point is a Feat too Survivable by Regular Humans to Actually Count?

[IDK3465]

Hello everyone,

Recently, I made this calc for a character tanking a relatively high fall and, initially, it was accepted by Flashlight237 and nobody seemed to have any issue with it. But, soon afterwards, Agnaa brought up how regular people have consistently survived falls of a similar height in real life, with Bambu agreeing.

While we still haven’t decided on wether or not that calc is acceptable yet, Agnaa’s comments have made me question where exactly we should draw the line between what regular humans can and can’t do. Like, if regular people have been shown to get lucky and survive 9-C or rarely even 9-B falls, who’s to say that any fall truely represents a character’s durability? Or what about the many times regular people have shown to survive explosives, or lightning strikes, or car crashes, or nukes, or anything for that matter?

I should probably note that I personally don’t feel like we should discredit any of these kinds of feats just because regular people sometimes survive them. Applying the same amount of scrutiny that real life gets to something entirely fictional is ridiculous. I mainly created this thread to see how others feel about this issue and how we should handle this kinda situation in the future.

Think of this less as a question thread and more so a discussion of what our standards should be for regular humans in relation to (what should be) peak or superhuman feats.

(PS, I’m currently almost on a flight as of writing, so I won’t be able to reply for like 5 hrs, sorry )

 

[Chariot190]

The lower you go in feats, the more you need to take into account actual irl mechanics. Like ok they fell, what did they fall into? Did it disperse their energy? On what part of themselves did they fall onto? Such as legs? Back? etc. Like falling leg first can serve to take some of the energy, and slow the rest of your body's fall even if negligibly, might shatter your legs but at least your head isnt ******.
Or even just that, a 10-B surviving a 9-C fall, but are they fine? Torn muscles? Broken bones?

And even things like area on impact.

Lower 9-B and below be like that, tbh you could be hyper anal and calc at this extra facets, but you could prob just skip it and use common sense.
For example, Zelda in new game falls like 25m 5 seconds into the game, and doenst even flinch and just keeps running, not even one frame of pause. That's a fall someone irl could survive, under the right conditions, but she didn't even flinch and fell leg first so, yeah in that case I'd say scale her to the energy directly. Or like, Batman falling off a skyscraper, it kinda ****** him up but he got up, would we scale him to that? Probably not, it hurt, he took damage, it's something an irl dude can live, and he even exploited those mechanics to make sure he'd be able to walk off focusing on where he landed, how he landed, etc.

 

[IDK3465]

Bump

 

[Deadguy999]

It is “regular human” not some random lucky dude

 

[Deadguy999]

That’s why this wiki has “Peak Human” tier

 

[IDK3465]

It is “regular human” not some random lucky dude

What exactly do you mean by "it" here? I and everyone else on the site know that there ARE things humans can regularly do and tank; it's just a matter of what things actually correspond to regular humans and aren't just luck or softening the potential damage.
Can you give some examples of feats that you think are or aren't viable?

 

[SheevShezarrine]

Chariot's right on the money, as far as I understand it

 

[IDK3465]

Bump

 

[IDK3465]

Bump (btw Chariot, I 100% agree, it’s just that I know that there’s probably some other opinions out there that I’d like to hear)

 

[IDK3465]

Bump

 

[H3110l12345I20]

Hello everyone,

Recently, I made this calc for a character tanking a relatively high fall and, initially, it was accepted by Flashlight237 and nobody seemed to have any issue with it. But, soon afterwards, Agnaa brought up how regular people have consistently survived falls of a similar height in real life, with Bambu agreeing.

While we still haven’t decided on wether or not that calc is acceptable yet, Agnaa’s comments have made me question where exactly we should draw the line between what regular humans can and can’t do. Like, if regular people have been shown to get lucky and survive 9-C or rarely even 9-B falls, who’s to say that any fall truely represents a character’s durability? Or what about the many times regular people have shown to survive explosives, or lightning strikes, or car crashes, or nukes, or anything for that matter?

I should probably note that I personally don’t feel like we should discredit any of these kinds of feats just because regular people sometimes survive them. Applying the same amount of scrutiny that real life gets to something entirely fictional is ridiculous. I mainly created this thread to see how others feel about this issue and how we should handle this kinda situation in the future.

Think of this less as a question thread and more so a discussion of what our standards should be for regular humans in relation to (what should be) peak or superhuman feats.

(PS, I’m currently almost on a flight as of writing, so I won’t be able to reply for like 5 hrs, sorry )

Chariot does make good points about IRL physics; it depends on where you're landing on and what body part you land on with. And there's technically no minimum height you can tank due to this.

The girl effectively landed within metal on her side, and the metal is the one doing the tanking.

Going by the definition of durability, humans don't scale to durability if their legs are snapped. Humans can tank their own jumping heights of up to 50 cm. But as little as 3 m of a height can fracture your spine. That's the best general answer I could give you.
----
Judging by Agnaa and Bambu's posts on the calc, I can see where they're coming from. For average humans in fiction, it makes sense for them to be treated realistically if they generally have feats anyone could do or withstand. Though...

1: If we're going to use IRL logic for humans, why are we applying these standards to a 12 year old? They're not going to be within the range of an average adult's weight and would proportionally have a less average durability threshold to bypass, albeit vague. If a child does human level feats, do we just... disgard them?

• 1.1: If she's like, 12 years old, shouldn't we lower the bar to bypassing what a normal, average, 12 year old could withstand?

2: Agnaa's argument of surviving 2 story falls depends on the context. Can reg. people still walk like nothing happened after falling onto a hard surface? If they even no-selled landing on a hard surface at all? I'm speaking from the heart of what durability really means here. If these reg. people are along the lines of having their legs shattered or have pain too unbearable to shrug off, what's the point in his argument?

 

[Flashlight237]

1: If we're going to use IRL logic for humans, why are we applying these standards to a 12 year old? They're not going to be within the range of an average adult's weight and would proportionally have a less average durability threshold to bypass, albeit vague. If a child does human level feats, do we just... disgard them?

• 1.1: If she's like, 12 years old, shouldn't we lower the bar to bypassing what a normal, average, 12 year old could withstand?

I once read that children's bones are stronger than adult bones, but I think that's just the Mandela effect taking place.

 

[IDK3465]

I once read that children's bones are stronger than adult bones, but I think that's just the Mandela effect taking place.

Apparently, from what I can find, while adult bones are more brittle and easy to snap, child bones are actually more flexible due to them still growing out, allowing them to more easily come back from typically dangerous stuff.

...But, then again, another reason why children can come back from falls easier than adults is due to their lighter mass. Also, just because her bones won't break doesn't mean her other, more delicate tissue would typically be fine, and she still probably would still have her bones bent somewhat afterward, which is detrimental in its own right.

 

[H3110l12345I20]

y if their legs are snapped.

Corrected a miss wording here.

 

[IDK3465]

I think it might be better to just move the discussion on Molly’s feat to this thread, I mainly intended this one to talk about the limits of human dura and survivability more broadly rather than just my own calc.