Freezing Calcs, and Why they Make No Sense

[Antvasima]

Agreed.

 

[Jaakubb]

The thing is though, it's been explained that you can't just counteract heat with energy and as a result slow down the particles. If you could, that would be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics because you would be reversing entropy. The boulder example doesn't really hold any water when you consider this. Bending energy is a much more consistent explanation than counteracting thermal energy with your own energy because it doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamics.

 

[Jaakubb]

How do we scale characters based on bending energy? Doesn't bending still require the character to produce a large amount of energy? As I said earlier, simply dispersing a large amount of already available thermal energy that the character did not produce into the environment very spread out should be environmental destruction at best.

 

[Antoniofer]

Technically bend any kind of energy is not generate energy, thus not AP, one do not need to generate energy to control it, as manipulation it is generally limited by range, mass, accuracy, etc.

 

[Andytrenom]

I think he means energy for bending things, not literally bending energy as if an Avatar technique

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

MLP characters are Star level via moving the sun without taking it apart. Creation feats in general don't really follow the laws of thermodynamics and those who do it are inherently above the laws of thermodynamics.

And actually, characters from Avatar do scale use energy bending to scale to Attack Potency looking at Korra's profile.

 

[Agnaa]

The thing is though, it's been explained that you can't just counteract heat with energy and as a result slow down the particles. If you could, that would be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics because you would be reversing entropy.

How would this violate the second law of thermodynamics? Entropy gets reduced in the particles you're slowing down, but increases for the being slowing the particles down since their more useful forms of energy are turned into less useful forms.

 

[Jaakubb]

How would this violate the second law of thermodynamics? Entropy gets reduced in the particles you're slowing down, but increases for the being slowing the particles down since their more useful forms of energy are turned into less useful forms.

This is not a normal situation where heat is transferred through conduction, convection, etc. If so, you're right. However, donttalk suggested that you can directly counteract heat with some kind of energy (excluding the possibility of negative energy which we don't know exists)similarly to stopping a boulder, which would reduce entropy universally. However, the ONLY way of decreasing heat is to transfer it to another place, and ive explained earlier why that wouldn't scale

 

[Jaakubb]

And actually, characters from Avatar do scale use energy bending to scale to Attack Potency looking at Korra's profile.

I don't like the term "bending" as its kind of vague. Do you mean harnessing energy? The only reason why korra scales to her bending energy is because she can use it in an offensive manner. Characters who perform cooling feats can't.

 

[Jaakubb]

Creation feats in general don't really follow the laws of thermodynamics and those who do it are inherently above the laws of thermal-dynamics.

We can't just ignore the laws to thermofreakingdynamics just because it is broken sometimes during an event that has absolutely no scientific basis. Cooling feats are at least somewhat based on science so we have to use scientific principles when discussing them

 

[Agnaa]

This is not a normal situation where heat is transferred through conduction, convection, etc. If so, you're right. However, donttalk suggested that you can directly counteract heat with some kind of energy (excluding the possibility of negative energy which we don't know exists)similarly to stopping a boulder, which would reduce entropy universally. However, the ONLY way of decreasing heat is to transfer it to another place, and ive explained earlier why that wouldn't scale

You can stop it as you would a boulder, but there's no reason for that to reverse entropy, as it won't reduce entropy universally. Entropy would be reduced in the particles but go to the person stopping them.

Right now I'm only challenging your claim that it violates the second law of thermodynamics.

 

[Jaakubb]

Describe the process in which you stop heat as you would a boulder. I don't want to misunderstand your argument.

 

[Agnaa]

By decelerating the movement of the particles, presumably.

 

[Jaakubb]

Why would the thermal energy go to the one who stops it? In the case of the boulder, mechanical energy is transformed into thermal energy, and since this is an inverse, wouldn't thermal energy be converted into mechanical energy without entropy being added somewhere else to compensate for it? You can only decrease thermal energy by absorbing it, not directly counteracting it (unless you somehow get a hold of negative energy, but assuming that characters use negative eneergy is such a flagrant violation of occams razor).

 

[Agnaa]

You can only decrease thermal energy by absorbing it, not directly counteracting it

Oh, my misunderstanding. Then we shouldn't accept freezing calcs for AP.

But even though I agree with you, I'd still like to respond to this one point as if I still disagreed:

In the case of the boulder, mechanical energy is transformed into thermal energy, and since this is an inverse, wouldn't thermal energy be converted into mechanical energy without entropy being added somewhere else to compensate for it?

No, presumably mechanical energy would be used to reduce thermal energy in the object, while having more thermal energy created in the thing slowing it down as a byproduct. Something like Maxwell's Demon and its resolution, but with the demon poking the particles in precise ways at precise times, rather than the demon opening/closing a gate at precise times.

 

[Jaakubb]

No, presumably mechanical energy would be used to reduce thermal energy in the object, while having more thermal energy created in the thing slowing it down as a byproduct. Something like Maxwell's Demon and its resolution, but with the demon poking the particles in precise ways at precise times, rather than the demon opening/closing a gate at precise times.

Isn't that basically just conduction or convection because that's when two objects in contact with each other have thermal energy transferred between them?

 

[Jaakubb]

Yeah I'm pretty sure the process you described is basically just conduction (which requires no outside energy source as it happens naturally/automatically).

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Absorbing energy is still harnessing energy, and actually. That's false, plenty of characters who perform freezing feats actually can also take that same amount of energy they absorb and use it for an attack. Once again, this discussion still getting more circular and circular. And besides, we once again simply can't just ignore freezing feats. The alternate to rejecting to calculations as Attack Potency feats would be to assume every single Ice Manipulation character has massive amounts of power nullification. energy absorption. Which would assume the character has some broken/unbalanced hax abilities that would just seem weird. Plus it would be hard to tell if we're downplaying or overplaying them in that regard.

It's best to still go with what we have been going with as far as freezing feats are concerned. Absorbing massive amounts of thermal energy in an instant would still be attack potency. And for something like freezing a sun, if one were to assume that we could do that by pooring enough liquid nitrogen all at once; which would be literally insane amounts of it. That transferring process would also have to be feat; a KE one and probably different.

But still, pretty sure a powerful blast that absorbs the entire thermal energy of a lake, ocean, planet, or star is 100% applicable for attack potency.

 

[Agnaa]

Absorbing energy isn't harnessing energy unless explicitly stated. Absorbing a 5-B character isn't a 5-B feat until it's stated they can actually output that energy afterwards.

Characters who freeze stuff then use that energy for other feats would obviously still keep that tier, I'm pretty sure that's how Dargoo would treat it anyway.

Why is ice manip power nullification? And ice manip being energy absorption seems okay since we'd just be labeling it that way, it'd still function as it does in-verse.

But still, pretty sure a powerful blast that absorbs the entire thermal energy of a lake, ocean, planet, or star is 100% applicable for attack potency.

This thread isn't so much about "Absorbing the energy of a lake, leaving it frozen, then using that energy in another attack" feats, it's about feats where objects are just frozen.

 

[Jaakubb]

I think Agnaa is right. If someone can harness energy but has not been shown to be able to produce the energy, tank the energy, or even use it in an offensive manner, it can't scale. It's likely that they just spread the thermal energy so far apart into the environment that it barely affects anything (and as Agnaa explained earlier, it would be valid if they were to for example, focus all of it into an attack like a beam or something)

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

As I said, we simply cannot ignore freezing feats for other reasons. We shouldn't consider it power nullification or energy absorption unless there's proof, we should still continue what we're doing. Global cooling feats are still comparable to global warming feats. And it's common knowledge that a heat attack and a cold attack of equal power still cancels each other out. And the same Cold feats still can be used.

 

[Jaakubb]

We shouldn't consider it power nullification or energy absorption unless there's proof, we should still continue what we're doing.

The current explanation that we use for cooling feats makes assumptions already anyways, and actually makes even more assumptions than the proposed explanations.

 

[Jaakubb]

Global cooling feats are still comparable to global warming feats. And it's common knowledge that a heat attack and a cold attack of equal power still cancels each other out.

Regarding the first statement, isn't that circular reasoning? That is what we are trying to argue in this thread in the first place. And for the second one, could you name an example? There's many types of "heat attacks" and "cold attacks" so that statement is kind of vague.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

The problem is, countless times. Freezing abilities have been used as attacks. Weiss Schnee uses them all the time. And so does Glacius. Everyone in Killer Instinct is 6-C scaling from his very feat. There not really assumptions but more like more obscure in depth science. Also, we shouldn't get too imbalanced. It's fine to use some aspects of science, but not flat assume every fictional story has to make scientific sense. And even abilities that break certain laws of thermodynamics shouldn't automatically invalidate calculations if it still follows some others.

 

[Agnaa]

No-one suggested that we should consider it power nullification or energy absorption without proof.

Absorbing something isn't comparable enough to dispersing something to count as an AP feat. Absorbing a 6-C energy blast isn't 6-C, even though launching a 6-C energy blast is.

Maybe those examples are legit, maybe they aren't, but as Dargoo said we should assume verses follow science until proven otherwise, rather than assuming they break science automatically.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Pretty sure the existence of magic or Ki automatically proves that it does not take place in the real world. And an example is Twinrova, both of her halves have their fire and ice magic equally capable of canceling each other out.

Also, characters can technically become 6-C even if temporarily just by absorbing a 6-C blast.

 

[Agnaa]

There's no reason behind throwing out all physics just because a verse has magic or Ki. There's even less reason to pick and choose which bits of physics to throw out in a verse like that when the existence of magic/Ki has no relation to the physics that's being thrown out.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

There's even less reason to pick and choose which bits of physics to throw out in a verse like that when the existence of magic/Ki has no relation to the physics that's being thrown out.

This, a hundred times.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

We ignore the difference between Destructive Capacity and Attack Potency yes, and even basic stuff such as flying without wings, propellers, or rockets breaks the laws of physics. Yes, KE calculations are still valid, and same with Thermal energy, but cooling feats are no different than heating feats. Stopping a large KE objects dead in its tracks is still KE.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

but cooling feats are no different than heating feats. Stopping a large KE objects dead in its tracks is still KE.

That comparison is whack.

When you stop an object in motion, you're meeting it with force that meets or exceeds its own. Newton's laws and all that. You're always going to need to "put out" force to stop the object from moving otherwise it will keep on moving given that we aren't considering friction.

Cooling something is a proper inverse to heating something. Energy is moving from the object due to entropy, while an object that is being heated has energy moving into it due to entropy. Energy is still being moved in both cases, but in the former case energy is not being put into the object through heat, it's being removed.

In the case of stopping an object, you need to put in an equal force to counter the momentum it already has. Barring friction/gravity, you will always need to put in energy to do this. This isn't the case for freezing; you don't need to add heat for heat to move from one location to another.

That's not even going into the fact that heat and force are two fundamentally different things but I'm sure I've explained that well enough previously.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I'm already well aware of heat/force difference. But we already went in detail on why should should try to avoid over complicating the system. Yes, there are some details to consider, but we shouldn't just automatically throw them out. At least as far as higher up characters are concerned. Energy is still energy whether kinetic or thermal, whether positive or negative.

Also, there's still other details to consider. How does the thermal energy get removed and where does it go? If it hasn't gotten hotter anywhere at all when a character just makes an ice berg out of thin air; and if anything, everywhere just got colder in an instant. Sometimes, fiction kind of makes it obvious that they're literally deleting thermal energy. When it comes to producing super-cooled plasma lasers, how is the plasma laser even formed in the first place? Why would it soar at massive speeds, and why is it such a powerful ice attack even against those who can naturally survive in climates that are super close to Absolute Zero or have planet level durability? Or freeze the entire surface of a star?

Also, I'm pretty sure there's plenty of other examples and details spoken by other staff members and calc group members. DontTalk is pretty much tired and is going to be inactive till Friday. Bambu also feels like this thread was already clarified but turning redundant. And even Antvasima feels like this thread should be closed.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Yes, there are some details to consider, but we shouldn't just automatically throw them out. At least as far as higher up characters are concerned. Energy is still energy whether kinetic or thermal, whether positive or negative.

Like I've said before, it's less of an issue for higher-up characters because their feats nearly always involve some massive heat and force value. Which give them heat-resistance/production so abundantly high it would require other ridiculous heat feats to counter it.

"Energy is still energy", but we're not really talking about "just energy", are we? We're talking about heat and force, which describe transfers of energy. Any feat we calc is a transfer of energy. And heat and force do it in different ways. Them both being energy doesn't change that, as seen IRL and in the numerous verses that choose not to give the middle finger to physics in such an oddly specific way.

Sometimes, fiction kind of makes it obvious that they're literally deleting thermal energy. When it comes to producing super-cooled plasma lasers, how is the plasma laser even formed in the first place? Why would it soar at massive speeds, and why is it such a powerful ice attack even against those who can naturally survive in climates that are super close to Absolute Zero or have planet level durability? Or freeze the entire surface of a star?

If they're just "deleting thermal energy", why are we assuming that it's being moved in a natural sense for the sake of calculations when we use heat capacity? Like, an object's heat capacity wouldn't even matter if you could just Ctrl + Paste/Delete a temperature value.

It's an issue we create when we try to judge these feats like they're scientifically accurate. If we're assuming the object is losing/gaining heat in a way that involves the laws of thermodynamics to slap that ever-so-needed joules value on it, you kind of need to assume it's being moved somewhere for the math to apply in the first place.

We can't be internally consistent if we cherrypick constants while ignoring the broad fundamental laws that create those constants.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Pretty sure if energy creation/destruction was a thing, it would still be the calculated energy that was created/deleted. However, even the energy being moved would still have to be an Attack Potency feat. Energy is mass too I should point out. It still requires just as much power to remove thermal energy as it would to give thermal energy; it's still transferring energy but just in the opposite direction.

 

[Andytrenom]

Here's my whole issue, tanking blunt trauma and keeping heat within your system are not the same thing and according to real world laws, one won't be proof of the other

Now when the concept isn't supported by physics it has to be supported by being a normal occurence in fiction wouldn't it? Except even from that perspective you often have characters freezing away characters who could tank equivalent levels of physical impact, possibly shattering their parts in the process, freezing dura and impact dura being conflated may be a common thing in fiction but it mostly certainly isn't ubiquitous and so we shouldn't try to assume physics will be ignored by default

With heat and impact dura I feel less certain about the topic but I would default to following physics here as well for the sake of consistency

 

[Firephoenixearl]

If i haven't had my say yet, i wholeheartedly agree with Dargoo and Andy here. It doesn't make sense for freezing and punches to be treated the same way.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

You do realize Andy was basically agreeing with DontTalk and against what Dargoo was generally saying. But simply acknowledged certain points.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

Also after reading DontTalk, he makes perfect sense up until the last point.

"There are many types of dura, so we can't apply all types of durabilty instead giving them all at once"

Resistance is there for a reason. A character who can't get freezed just gets "resistance to freezing/very low temperatures" rather than durabiliy. We may not have a system designed for this, but we do have a system focused on "resisting the effects of something". So when we can apply them like that and when we "do" apply them like that (many characters have "resistance to extreme temperatures" in their profiles, and it's not just added to their durability), why do we have to consciously go against logic/physics for the sake of simplicity if we have a way to make things just as simple but more logical?

 

[Antvasima]

I agree with Medeus. For the sake of practical convenience we should continue to be able to calculate freezing feats as equivalent to heating feats, or any such characters, as well as those scaled from them, would automatically get unknown statistics and be treated as having hax and specific power nullification instead, which isn't practical at all.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

I am neutral on calcing them. I am more focused on "Durability =/= Heat/Cold Resistance" part.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Except even from that perspective you often have characters freezing away characters who could tank equivalent levels of physical impact, possibly shattering their parts in the process, freezing dura and impact dura being conflated may be a common thing in fiction but it mostly certainly isn't ubiquitous and so we shouldn't try to assume physics will be ignored by default

See, eventually this argument boils down to "I think fiction follows this and that trends and our system should reflect that", which can't be demonstrably proven and is for practical purposes an opinion. You opinionate that fiction often treats "tanking freezing" as something similar to "tanking blunt force", and I'll opinionate that we only really see that in RPG Video Games where game mechanics has the game classify "freezing/ice" as a class of damage.

I really can't think of verses outside of that video game genre that treat heat/freezing as blunt force, the closest you'll probably get is an attack that has both heat and force, not heat as force, if that makes sense.

I think many people opinionate that "heat is blunt force in fiction" not because it's actually prevelent in fiction, but more because by precedence it's something we've just done for so long that it feels right to do it that way.

To clarify some stuff, though: I'm not against calcing the feats, and I'm not against listing them on the profiles, I'm against the conflation of heat and blunt force for no reason other than convinience.