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Hax Resistance Scaling Issues; X's Superior to Y & Gets Z Hax Resistance

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Sorry for having this thread suddenly posted in the staff forum of all places. Just to confirm, I was given permission by @Damage3245 to make this thread after speaking with him and some other staff members about the issue this thread will be addressing. Since it's a staff thread, I don't intend to participate much but mainly be the messenger. Anyway, getting the point of why this thread's made.

Note: Please keep this civil

Hax Resistance Scaling Issues

People, staff and non-staff alike, should know what this is about from the title. We need to have a discussion about how we hand out hax resistances to characters. And by "hand out", im speaking about when Character X is as strong or stronger than Character Y, and the former is given Z hax resistance that upscales from the latter's resistance simply because of said comparable strength. This treatment of scaling hax resistances gives on-going issues of how we are just shoehorning in resistances to characters when there's next to no viable reasoning for them to have said hax resistance in most cases. And this presents us with a glaring issue regarding how we treat and handle hax abilities here that should be scrutinized with more stringent standards.

That issue being the flawed handling of scaling hax resistances and how to differentiate cases of legitimate hax scaling. First, the former.

Flawed Resistance Scaling

What we shouldn't be doing is scaling hax resistances across characters just because said characters have comparable strength or tier sets between each other. Or at least not without well supported evidences to sustain the resistance scaling. No matter how much it "makes sense" on the surface. Two great offending examples of this, for both acceptable hax scaling and unacceptable hax scaling, are One Piece and of course, Dragon Ball.

In One Piece's case, we have examples in the form of their universal energy system, referred to as Haki, and one of their characters Doflamingo.

Good Hax Scaling: Haki​

In One Piece, Haki is known for blocking out another ability system that's completely independent to Haki, Devil Fruits. The verse contains feats, manga statements, & datebook statements of Haki being capable of blocking out Devil Fruits. And unlike other cases involving verse's energy systems, Haki doesn't have specific variations between it's users, except for the more advanced versions of course. Because of this, anyone and their mother that uses Haki resists those certain abilities, with higher level haki users having stronger resistances to those abilities.

Bad Hax Scaling: Doflamingo​

In contrast to the above case involving Haki, which is accepted here for One Piece, Doflamingo is involved in a case of hax resistance that isn't accepted here for One Piece. Doflamingo is a character in the series which has resistance to being frozen, and is capable of breaking out of ice. However, One Piece characters who are superior to Doflamingo aren't given resistance to ice manipulation or cold temperatures, showing that there's a line drawn to where we accept hax scaling and were we don't to keep statistics from getting inflated.

In the case of Dragon Ball, this is more common on the site that we all should know. Most of us anyway. Dragon Ball's probably the most common case of scaling hax resistances to characters across the board when overpowering them with their sheer power and then giving it to characters who are superior to the characters that overpowered the abilities. An acceptable case of us allowing the hax scaling is Existence Erasure resistance for characters resisting the Energy of Destruction from the GoD's, whose energy has existence erasure properties. In contrast, a common hax scaling scenario we don't accept is scaling Vegeta's Absolute Zero resistance to other characters, even Goku, despite the given characters having similar power sets to each other, all because of Vegeta resisting Absolute Zero with sheer power.

In any case, scaling hax resistance to characters, which is then upscaled for the stronger characters, is a gray area that isn't given much of a standard here to regulate. If it even has a standard for it in the first place. This thread is to address this particular issue with handing out hax resistances to characters who aren't given nearly enough evidence to have them and how we should solve this problem going forward.

Another issue involving hax here that I feel needs to be addressed too is the matter of how a hax is treated by us when faced with the user fighting a stronger character and failing.

Hax Failing Against Stronger Opponents

This issue isn't new to people here either. Character A fights Character B. Character A is stronger in power than Character B, the latter who uses hax abilities against the former. Character A overcomes the haxes for being superior to Character B, and is given a resistance to them based off of that superiority.

This is something that should be discussed as well for there being a lack of differentiating cases where hax being defeated is an actual hax resistance for the opponent and hax being overpowered is just the hax having the innate weakness of failing against stronger opponents. Some cases? The hax scaling is perfectly fine. Other cases? We just slap a resistance on the opponent who overpowered the hax in order to cover up the possibility of the hax just simply being not that good. And because of that, we should address it here and now along with the former issue.

TL;DR:


This thread is to address the issue of unsupervised hax resistance scaling and how to differentiate cases of proper and improper hax scaling.
 
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For your point of Stronger Opponents getting Hax Resistance, I would like to add something.

Why would we assume guilty until proven innocent in this scenario. Is A>B and B uses __ Hax against A, and that fails to affect A or is mostly nullified, it is reasonable to assume A __ Hax Resistance>B's __ Hax. In most cases, this should be perfectly fine. But I do agree, we do need greater measures to combat false scaling in those situation. There will be and most likely are some cases of people getting resistance to hax when said hax isn't potent or fails to a certain measure, which isn't the resistance of the defender, but the weakness of the attacker.

I do agree with the basis of this thread.
 
For your point of Stronger Opponents getting Hax Resistance, I would like to add something.

Why would we assume guilty until proven innocent in this scenario. Is A>B and B uses __ Hax against A, and that fails to affect A or is mostly nullified, it is reasonable to assume A __ Hax Resistance>B's __ Hax. In most cases, this should be perfectly fine. But I do agree, we do need greater measures to combat false scaling in those situation. There will be and most likely are some cases of people getting resistance to hax when said hax isn't potent or fails to a certain measure, which isn't the resistance of the defender, but the weakness of the attacker.

I do agree with the basis of this thread.
Just to comment on this, I am by no means saying the stronger character can never get a hax resistance just because their power flexed harder on the hax user for being stronger.

The point moreso was that we need to do a better job at differentiating the situations, as there are some situations where hax is indeed just not that good and fails to effect more powerful opponents. But despite the existence of such cases, we for the most part tend to try covering up the weakness by giving the other character the hax resistance.

From a general standpoint, this is not wrong at all, but how we manage it is a problem we need to solve.
 
Just to comment on this, I am by no means saying the stronger character can never get a hax resistance just because their power flexed harder on the hax user for being stronger.

The point moreso was that we need to do a better job at differentiating the situations, as there are some situations where hax is indeed just not that good and fails to effect more powerful opponents. But despite the existence of such cases, we for the most part tend to try covering up the weakness by giving the other character the hax resistance.

From a general standpoint, this is not wrong at all, but how we manage it is a problem we need to solve.
Yes, and I agreed with such. Now, to see how the rest of this thread goes.
 
So what does this say for situations where in order to beat someone in a fight or even be comparable to them, resistance is a requirement? Given that we know the skillsets of the characters in question.
Would resistance scaling via power be acceptable then? I believe it should.

Example: Character A has passive Death Manipulation with a range of tens of kilometers.
If character B is stated or heavily suggested to be above them in the verse's power system/scaling chain, then it should be assumed that the hax would not work as normal against them. Otherwise they couldn't win (This is unless they are shown to have a power that may counter the hax).

I agree with the premise of the thread. I just had this concern.
 
I agree with the idea (I think) you're trying to say but I disagree with all your examples.

In contrast to the above case involving Haki, which is accepted here for One Piece, Doflamingo is involved in a case of hax resistance that isn't accepted here for One Piece. Doflamingo is a character in the series which has resistance to being frozen, and is capable of breaking out of ice. However, One Piece characters who are superior to Doflamingo aren't given resistance to ice manipulation or cold temperatures, showing that there's a line drawn to where we accept hax scaling and were we don't to keep statistics from getting inflated.

Beaking out of ice isn't really cold resistance. I'm assuming they didn't stay encased long enough to get hurt by it, and the way it's described doesn't sound like the person themselves is being frozen. Breaking out is just a strength feat, and not really a great one because normal ice has a really low j/cc. As such, in this case stronger people should be assumed to be able to replicate that, because the feat is just something done via being strong. I agree with the spirit of this though.

In the case of Dragon Ball, this is more common on the site that we all should know. Most of us anyway. Dragon Ball's probably the most common case of scaling hax resistances to characters across the board when overpowering them with their sheer power and then giving it to characters who are superior to the characters that overpowered the abilities. An acceptable case of us allowing the hax scaling is Existence Erasure resistance for characters resisting the Energy of Destruction from the GoD's, whose energy has existence erasure properties. In contrast, a common hax scaling scenario we don't accept is scaling Vegeta's Absolute Zero resistance to other characters, even Goku, despite the given characters having similar power sets to each other, all because of Vegeta resisting Absolute Zero with sheer power.

Why is scaling EE resistance out okay? If it's made clear the EE doesn't neg dura then that isn't really anything.

Absolute zero resistance isn't even really hard to have because it's super hard to make shit stay absolute zero. However, heat is power and measurable, and dragon ball has all their energy stuff that lets them scale physicals and heat, so yeah someone who's stronger than vegeta should be able to do the same sort of heating stuff he can do unless their magic ki lasers are weirdly weak.

This issue isn't new to people here either. Character A fights Character B. Character A is stronger in power than Character B, the latter who uses hax abilities against the former. Character A overcomes the haxes for being superior to Character B, and is given a resistance to them based off of that superiority.

This is something that should be discussed as well for there being a lack of differentiating cases where hax being defeated is an actual hax resistance for the opponent and hax being overpowered is just the hax having the innate weakness of failing against stronger opponents. Some cases? The hax scaling is perfectly fine. Other cases? We just slap a resistance on the opponent who overpowered the hax in order to cover up the possibility of the hax just simply being not that good. And because of that, we should address it here and now along with the former issue.


I think this is too case specific to be here and something that you should argue in whichever way you can prove that suits you or whatever
 
Beaking out of ice isn't really cold resistance. I'm assuming they didn't stay encased long enough to get hurt by it, and the way it's described doesn't sound like the person themselves is being frozen. Breaking out is just a strength feat, and not really a great one because normal ice has a really low j/cc. As such, in this case stronger people should be assumed to be able to replicate that, because the feat is just something done via being strong. I agree with the spirit of this though.
The person in question (Doflamingo) tanked being frozen by someone who freezes people to the bone. He didn't get frozen and he broke out, while the last person we saw with that technique got his arm frozen to the bone and it fell off.
 
The person in question (Doflamingo) tanked being frozen by someone who freezes people to the bone. He didn't get frozen and he broke out, while the last person we saw with that technique got his arm frozen to the bone and it fell off.
Well that works for him then. Freezing stuff is still one of the few types you could really just say "better via power" though, since there's the whole counteract it by heat thing going on, but idk how one piece's magic ki whatever works.

Anyways on the topic of scaling resistances more directly, I'm generally not a big fan but I think where you can do it for more esoteric powers that can't just be overcome by being hotter is if you know what quality causes the resistance. If I was to know that all Knights in Destiny resist powers X Y and Z because they have W amount of sword logic, I'd think it's fine to say people with ≥W sword logic could inherit those. On the contrary, if I didn't have this sword logic thing and I just knew knights were resistant to stuff, I don't think it would be okay to scale it to stronger people just for being that way.
 
Scaling resistances between characters requires significant evidence or supporting statements to me.

If we had a statement along the lines of "All users of X ability are resistant to Y" or "All members of X group cannot be affected by Y" then reasonably you can scale users of certain abilities or individuals from certain groups to share the same resistances or immunities.

If you have a single individual display a feat of resistance, and other users of their abilities / members of their group/species are not stated or implied to share that same feat (regardless of power level) then it is way more questionable to scale the resistances.

Some characters resist things purely through strength, willpower, guts, etc. If we allowed arbitrary scaling of resistances without needing evidence then that opens up a slippery slope of saying "Well, this character has no special reason to be so resistant, so therefore everyone who is as strong or has as much willpower should get that same resistance by default."
 
I agree with the premise of the thread. Unless the resistance comes from a universal power system of sorts that the character being scaled possesses or something analogous to that, we really shouldn't scale resistances just because a character is stronger.
 
Honestly, I thought that we don't powerscale resistances was long since established.
I thought so too tbh.

In certain cases when there are explicit statements, I get it. But not if we have to speculate on them having it without supporting evidence.
 
I though we already refrain from scaling resistances. Only reason to do this is due how the power itself work (that relatively speaking, it could be considered a weakness).
 
Maybe it's just because I don't deal with Dragon Ball or One Piece, but I don't remember any instance of a character scaling to someone else's hax resistance. Though if the resistance explicitly comes from being a part of some group, possessing certain physiology or being protected by some form of special power then I think characters who are similar in that aspect can scale to the resistance
 
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I'm pretty much with DontTalkDT. I was under the assumption that we didn't do this, unless there's some additional reason for it, like shared physiology or something.
 
Yes, we don't scale resistances between characters unless there is explicit evidence of them getting resistance due to a power system or a reason such as being stronger than a specified threshold value or something. Emphasis on explicit. These reasons have to be directly made clear to us because we don't work based on implications alone.
 
What if there are consistent showings of a character physically overpowering hax, from multiple races?
If they are "physically" overpowering the hax than the hax just doesn't work against stronger people. I don't think there being multiple races overpowering it changes anything unless mor context is given.
 
Not really following. Would they get a resistance to it, because I'm of the belief they should.
If someone can physically overpower hax (beating hax via AP), then it's saying that the hax has a weakness to superior AP.

It's not saying the haxee (is haxee a good term? idk) would be resistant, it's saying the hax has a weakness, and the weakness is superior AP.
 
Since "more powerful" most of the time does not refer to AP, it depends of context. In Pathfinder for example, resistance technically depends of the amount of Hit Dice (that in refer to power in the sense of skill and overall abilities), so stronger people has more possibilities to resist (at least by sheer power, one may have bonuses depending of the type of creatures, stats and feats).
 
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By default being stronger doesn't grant greater resistance, no. You need to have some evidence. I'll keep my response short since it seems this thread is nearing the execution phase.
 
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