Durability Questions

[Celestial_Pegasus]

How exactly do we go about quantifying durability? Now i have seen others say that assuming that just because a character can destroy a building for instance doesn't mean they have building level durability, now while i agree with this to some exent as i think that it should be taken on a case by case basis, i think if a character can destroy a building it usually turns out that they can have building level durability however if we are dealing with a magical verse for instance it is not uncommon for characters to have magic that is far above what they can tank. If a character can punch and destroy a wall, it stands to reason they have wall level durability or else their body wouldn't be able to withstand the damage.

Glass canons aren't the prevalent characters in fiction so i think it's a bit erroneous for us to go with the assumption that everyone in fiction is a glass canon instead of assuming that characters should usually have comparable durability to match their ap. Sometimes we don't have enough info on a character, we can know all their abilities and know that the character destroyed a city in the past but they haven't fought anyone in the series yet so they haven't tanked attacks comparable to their durability yet, however it would usually turn out to be the case that they can indeed tank such attacks, should we just go with the assumption that everyone in fiction is a glass canon and say they haven't tanked an attack on their level and put their durability at "Unknow" until they have fought someone comparable to them or should we go with the assumption that it would likely be the case that characters will have comparable durability to match their ap, although as i already said it's not always the case, and go with for instance "Room level", or should we go with Likely Room level or Unknow, likely Room level or Unknow, possibly Room level.

Also what exactly counts as surviving an attack? I have noticed it is common for characters who can regenerate to have durability for tanking attacks from other characters yet the reason they tanked said attack is obviously because they can regenerate. If a character can regenerate from fatal injuries and for example a city level character attacks them and they survive, and the character who can regenerate has shown previously that they themselves can also destroy a city, if the character who can regenerate survived the attack but had serious injuries which they regenerated from afterwards, did they tank that attack because of their Regenerationn or because of their durability, or both? If they survived that attack i think it's obvious you have to have a certain level of durability in order to survive an attack, if say your Regenerationn doesn't for example allow you to come back from being vaporized, but what exactly is that durability, how strong does an attack have to be so you would have to have comparable durability to tank it, for example would a wall level character who can regen from being blown to pieces be able tank a city block level attack?


If a character tanks an attack and has no injuries clearly that person has comparable durability to be able to tank that attack, but what if they got injured from that attack? If there are 2 people who tanked the same attack and one tanks it without any injuries, while the other got some superficial injuries, it would seem that the first one has higher durability but if again a character "survives" an attack but only barely survives, as have some serious injuries does that person still have comparable durability to that attack? Can a high end wall level character survive a low end room level attack but with serious injuries?

Also it is said that cutting requires less energy so cutting attacks of a lower level can hurt characters with higher durability, how exactly would this work in the case characters like this one, the character has special hairs that disperses force and scatters mana so it can tank up to town level attacks, however it can get pierced by fodder, now fodder in this verse are clearly superhuman, if i had to guess i would put these fodder at wall level, it tanked numerous attacks from these fodder and kept moving, and then in another instance, took a building level piercing attack to it's face and still kept moving, does the character have wall level or building level durability to piercing attacks? Does it's enormous size allow for it to take a lot of attacks and still keep attacking even though it's skin was pierced numerous times and another character literally stabbed his sword into it and ran from one side of it's body to the other? Is it just durable or is it that it has good endurance for taking attacks and keep moving as if the the attacks don't affect it even though it was clearly hurt from the attacks as it was bleeding?

 

[The_Everlasting]

Could you uh... cut this down? It's way too much to read.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

I am sorry, was just that there was a lot i wanted to say, i will see if i can cut it down a bit.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, if a character has a physically oriented attack potency, they must logically have comparable durability, or their bodies would be destroyed every time they hit anything.

 

[Reppuzan]

1) The reason why we have a lot of characters with AP = Durability is the fact that they fight in close combat or have some other form of recoil. Due to Newton's Third Law, every action must have an opposite and equal reaction. As a result, those characters must have a durability equal to their AP to avoid self-destructing whenever they hit something.

2) I'm not sure how to answer this one, given that characters like Ba have survived blows from powerful villains solely because of his Regenerationn.

3) It depends on the context really. Barely surviving a Multi-Universe level attack will make you At least Universe level+ since it's physically impossible to withstand it otherwise, but it's hard to quantify surviving something based on the degree of one's injuries. Withstanding an RPG with only cuts and bruises will easily qualify for Wall level, but losing an arm might not.

 

[RadicalMrR]

Ok straight up I read like 40% of that but i'll try to give some input.

1)So uh, if a character can say destroy a building with raw strength we assume they have durability to match unless, they take heavy damage from there own attacks or something implies otherwise. If they do the feat through say hax, unless they can make some sort of forcefield or shield with hax then they will not have matching durability. If its a way to vague like "he destroyed a city" we just put possibly for AP and Dura until proven otherwise.

2)So for regenerators we rate their durability for how much they can take without the regen being necessary , look at the Dura for Ba and Deadpool, we rate their durability based on regen,but if you want to put the rating without the regen you can, say they took a 8-C attack and the regen only healed some scratches then they have at least 8-C durability but if they toke a 7-A attack and got completely evaporated we would rate them Mountain level durability only if they regenerated from that.

3)I got no clue.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

Doesn't deadpool have a rating of city level for surviving a nuke? I don't think that rating is correct as Regenerationn has nothing to do with how much you can tank, i mean if you can regen clearly you can take higher attacks but it's not cause you're that durable it's cause you will regenerate regardless of how much damage you take unless the damage exceeds what you can regenerate from. If i can regen from being a pile of blood and i have only shown building level feats but i survive a city level attack doesn't mean i have city level durability.

How exactly do we determine if they are that durable or if it's cause of regen is the question, even with a regular character if they survive an attack but have broken ribs and are bleeding do they have comparable durability to the attack they survived? Well clearly they aren't dead so they should have comparable durability but can a lower tiered character also survive a higher tiered attack but with serious injuries? And this gets complicated with regen, how do we differenciate the difference between whether they are on an even tier or a lower one when they survived an attack?

 

[Antoniofer]

Didn't read the text wall but I'll comment based in what the other said:

1) With bawlers and martial artist, AP = Durability could work, but beware, that is the durability in the hand, arm, of the limb of attack, character hasn't necesary the same durability in all the other part of the body, in fact, martial artist increase the density/hardness of their bones, so the durability would only works with their bones, they still being made of flesh (if we're talking about humans). Futhermore, being able to destroy building and any other thing wouldn't make, in most of case, resistent to heat, electricity or ice, principal problem with converting anything to energy, every feat becomes some kind of explosion.

2) Regenerators could be tricky, they could have human level durability and still survive to building level attacks via regen; as long they can regen at certain level without decrease of stamina, they durability is almost irrelevant.

3) Don't known about this one, actually, I don't care much about characters above Low 2-C.

 

[EnderShadowr215]

This is a case by case basis after all and it does involve demonstrating feats that involve only durability or with regen, or with haxs involved. They also could negate attacks and/or reflect them back, but that wouldn't scale to durability depending on how it works.

 

[RadicalMrR]

@CP Thats a good point he should have higher Dura because there needed at least a drop of blood for him to regenerate but its one of those things that would be calc staking to find out.

Because first we would need to calc the explosion then calc the Dura needed for his blood to survive that explosion.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

@Radical This is kind of what i am getting at, i haven't seen the feat in question about deadpool but from what you said, i assume he wasn't reduced to a pile a blood, so yea did he survive that but he was, i assume severely injured.

If a regular character does the same thing, how do we differentiate the difference between surviving an attack and taking little to no damage and surviving an attack and taking serious damage, clearly one is superior than the other, but does that mean that the one who took serious damage has durability on a lower tier than the other, and to what extent is the question.

 

[VenomElite]

Attack Potency and Durability are roughly equal in most cases. If a character has shown to be able to blow up an island, and they were on said island, then if they didn't have island level durability, they would be injured by their own attack, but in most cases, they are shown to outright survive it.

Other characters however, have been shown to have greater durability than their attack potency. Such a character can only have country level attack potency, but continent level durability due to withstanding attacks from a continent level opponent. Attack Potency also translates to Striking Strength in most cases.

Finally there are glass canons which are less common. Those that have lower durability than their attack potency.

Quantifying durability is not difficult, as long as we do not confuse durability with a certain definition of endurance.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

@Venom Nice to see you active, i agree with what you and what others have said so far, if a character can punch and destroy something, in other words if they fight physically then they would have to have comparable durability.

And in most cases ap and durability would be equal as if they say blow up a city and survive their own attack then they have city level durability.

Cases of characters with durability higher than their ap, and durability less than their ap do exist, however it's not as prevalent as ap=durability.

 

[Man_from_Shadow]

1. If we know for certain character has certain AP, we should put "likely" for their durability because they should be able to tank it.

2. We should put either:"Durability is X" and have under abillities Regenerationn or put:"Can regenerate from Y attacks."

3. The problem here is rating system itself. If we have character who has survived 6 KT of tnt attack, we put his durability at town level and then whenever characters hurts him, we scale him to town level when they didn't 1 shot him or anything. The best thing here is to see how much damage was inflicted.

4. The reason for this is because swords and knife have far smaller surface so with same force they create far more pressure than fist for example. Current system is okay.

 

[CinCameron20]

@Celestial - much like what is said in the post, there are cases that prove that a character has durability at least comparable to their attack power.

When it comes to physical strength, this is the most commonly used argument. If you can punch a brick wall and shatter it while your arm is mostly fine, it should already qualify for Wall level AP and Wall level Durability, as the character's fist could withstand the recoil of their attack.

Much like you said, if there is an explosion triggered by said character, unless they are actually present and can withstand the impact of their own explosion (whether being in side of it, or in close proximity), it should say something about their durability being at the very least comparable.

If we take a character like Midoriya from My Hero Academia, he is capable of applying Large Building level attacks, and despite his own body suffering from those level of attacks, he has the physical capacity to withstand them to an extent, which supports his durability being of the same tier, despite it permanently scarring one of his arms.

Characters who are brawlers tend to have their AP and Durability on the same level, for such reasons. Their durability might even be slightly higher.

AP might actually scale to durability in some cases (like Luffy, who can hurt characters that can bypass his durability).

 

[Drellix]

Physical striking attacks will count with durability. Take Midora from Boku no Hero Academia. In the beginning, because he couldn't control the power to levels his body could withstand, he continuously hurt his body.

Now if you were to use an attack with magic, it wouldn't transfer to durability because they are not physically touching anything. Depends on the spell sometimes.

 

[DontTalk]

If a character has shown to be able to blow up an island, and they were on said island, then if they didn't have island level durability, they would be injured by their own attack, but in most cases, they are shown to outright survive it.

I feel like being outright shown to have survived the force of the attack is relevant in such cases though. Reason is that a character has control over its own attacks. As such a character can for example make it so that the energy of the explosion didn't go to the place where it is standing, but flows around him / only radiates outward from the place where the character is standing.
So it is not that impossible to do such an attack without tanking it.

While AP = dura is common, the "null hypothesis" for stats is always that the character is as weak as one can not disprove him to be.

I agree with what some others wrote that for physical attacks AP scales to dura and that Regenerationn should usually not be considered as durability.

 

[VenomElite]

@DontTalk, agreed. Good to have your input friend. As I always say, each case should be considered individually since fictional series tend to vary on how they portray such concepts. A character could be holding back, or going full power when it comes to physical attacks, and that attack potency for let's say, energy blasts would be a different story.

Let's take Goku for one. A Super Kamehameha from SS Goku has been stated to be able to have the power to destroy the planet and it is obvious that Goku can be harmed by his own attack, hence why he dodged Cell's usage of said attack during the Cell Games. That doesn't mean Goku has lower durability than attack potency however, it means his durability (in terms of endurance a.k.a how much damage he can take before death) is roughly equal to his full attack potency. A full powered Super Kamehameha would likely kill Goku, but again, it all depends on which definition of durability we are aiming for. Be it the amount of damage required to hurt a character or the amount of damage required to kill a character.

You can break a glass bottle by throwing it on the ground. Or you can crack the bottle and thus weaken it, and then shatter it easily because it is now more fragile. My point is, that it depends on the definition the author is using. Hopefully I worded this correctly.

 

[EsotericDichotomy]

I've been told by several folks that it would be too difficult and needlessly exhausting to implement, but as a nice thought experiment/concept, I think we could split durability into

Tankable Durability and Survivable Durability.

TD would be a character's ability to no sell an attack, to even damage them at all your attack would have to be this strong.

SD would be a character's total durability, the highest amount of damage they can take without dying.

Regenerationn shouldn't be included in durability but must be taken case by case, since some characters can survive things solely because their regen acts so quickly.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

@Man from Shadow

1.As you said I think it is reasonable to say that if a character has a certain AP but their durability hasn't been tested for some reason like not having fought anyone comparable to them yet however they have been shown to be able to blow a building they should likely have building level durability as their durabiliy being higher or lower is less likely than it being equal to their AP

2. I am iffy on Regenerationn, it has nothing to do with durability if i can regen from a puddle of blood it doesn't matter if my durability is only city level i can still take island level attacks unless those attacks can vaporize me, though the question becomes can an island level attack vaporize a city level character, and at what point is that kind of regen not enough as the difference in durability and AP becomes so wide that the attacks will vaporize the character who can regen?.

3. Indeed the problem seems to be the tiering system, there is nothing we can do except rating the characters by how much damage is inflicted.

4. I didn't know that was the explanation, i think it should be noted somewhere. To what extent can cutting attacks hurt higher tiered characters though, is again another question, i might be looking too deep into this.

 

[Man_from_Shadow]

@Celestial Pegasus

2. We should point it out to show what is character capable to regenerate from. If we have something to quantify, we should post it, if we don't, just leave durability.

4. It is basic physics really.

 

[Bratramo]

1) The reason why we have a lot of characters with AP = Durability is the fact that they fight in close combat or have some other form of recoil. Due to Newton's Third Law, every action must have an opposite and equal reaction. As a result, those characters must have a durability equal to their AP to avoid self-destructing whenever they hit something.

Except fiction doesn't often follow real life logic

 

[DontTalk]

though the question becomes can an island level attack vaporize a city level character, and at what point is that kind of regen not enough as the difference in durability and AP becomes so wide that the attacks will vaporize the character who can regen?.

That is impossible to say in fiction. A city level punch would in reality already split atoms, but you can not apply that to fiction. In fiction such things are simply different. You can see that in basically any sufficiently strong series. If attacks behaved like they should and such strong punches would automatically begin splitting atoms, then every punch would also result in an explosion with gigantic amounts of heat that wipes out wide areas of land.

We practically know that in basically all fiction characters can punch that strong without those effects when fighting each other in close combat.

Hence for fictional purposes it is better to say that an attack only vaporizes or destroys atoms, if it demonstrated doing so (or if it was reliably stated to do so).

To 4: Usually just as high as its AP was shown, since its AP of sword users usually is using the sword. For cases of having an AP measured with a punch and then asking how much they could do with a sword, it is more difficult. Generally such things should be ignored. As Antoniofer mentioned the weakness of measureing durability only in terms of energy is that every kind of attack in a sense becomes an explosion. It is a necessary simplification though. To be completly accurate in regards to science you would need a great amount of completly different kinds of durability and for most characters you couldn't figure out what durability they would have for most kinds, since way more specific details would have to be known to quantify them.

For the task of analysing fiction it is just way to complicated and the amount of people who actually have the expertise to properly do that would also be way too small.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

@DonTalk I agree with what you said, thanks for the explanation.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I do not think that we should list durability per Regenerationn, just the regular durability, along with the proven extent of the ability to heal damage.

I also agree with DontTalk regarding cutting attacks and that we cannot make the system too complicated.

 

[Joseph619]

Well, I do not think that we should list durability per Regenerationn, just the regular durability, along with the proven extent of the ability to heal damage.
I also agree with DontTalk regarding cutting attacks and that we cannot make the system too complicated.

A character with high regen can instantly regenerate from any attack below planetbusting. How do we know what his durability is if there's no other character to scale from?

 

[Antvasima]

The durability can usually be scaled from the physical attack potency.

 

[Man_from_Shadow]

@Antvasima

We already do that for some characters.

 

[Omni-everything]

well durabilty is equal to your strength

 

[Antvasima]

@Man from Shadow I adjusted the two profile pages.

 

[VenomElite]

Please don't post something irrelevant on the topic for the Questions and Answers board. Thanks.