• This forum is strictly intended to be used by members of the VS Battles wiki. Please only register if you have an autoconfirmed account there, as otherwise your registration will be rejected. If you have already registered once, do not do so again, and contact Antvasima if you encounter any problems.

    For instructions regarding the exact procedure to sign up to this forum, please click here.
  • We need Patreon donations for this forum to have all of its running costs financially secured.

    Community members who help us out will receive badges that give them several different benefits, including the removal of all advertisements in this forum, but donations from non-members are also extremely appreciated.

    Please click here for further information, or here to directly visit our Patreon donations page.
  • Please click here for information about a large petition to help children in need.

New ability - Grappling/Tethering

Oleggator said:
And yet I've seen characters that get this ability simply because of being able to drive a car.
As well as tethering isn't just swinging with rope, especially when there are characters that can do numerous maneuvers with that ability.
Click to expand...
Look man idk how to tell you but driving a car and driving at a master level and a bike at that level ain't the same skill at all
Tethering it still at its core just swinging a rope, what comes falls under weapon mastery, acrobatics, martial arts and so on or just isn't worth listing to begin with
 
Tllmbrg said:
Look man idk how to tell you but driving a car and driving at a master level and a bike at that level ain't the same skill at all
Tethering it still at its core just swinging a rope, what comes falls under weapon mastery, acrobatics, martial arts and so on or just isn't worth listing to begin with
Click to expand...
As well as driving a car/bike at master level at it's core is just a way of transportation of yourself?
 
Antvasima said:
I agree with Impress. This is redundant, and it is better to expand the text in existing powers and abilities pages to mention it instead. My apologies.
Click to expand...
Anyway, about expanding the text of an existing powers and abilities page instead...
 
Ecstasy_Amphetamine said:
As for what I think about this, I think this means that we'll have to make pages for other similar techniques? We might as well add surfing as a skill, but this reminds me that I need to do something about the current P&A system that we have.

Imma wait for people to disagree with this, not because I'm going to join their side, but because I want to hear what other people say against the addition of this skill. I'm quite torn on adding this kind of ability.
Click to expand...
Surfing neatly fits into Vehicular Mastery, and it doesn't even count as a superhuman or fictional technology feat.

Tethering doesn't fit into Weapon Mastery, since it is often not used as a weapon but as a mobility option. Sometimes it can be used as a weapon, but often the tool can't be used as a weapon or the user lacks the weapon mastery to use it as such.
It doesn't fit into Thread Manipulation since tethering often makes use of chains and energy projections, and use of threads as a weapon is distinct in fiction.

The_Impress said:
I disagree with this, if we now start counting basic actions as "Powers and Abilities", it won't be long before we start listing shit like "Projectile Launching" and "Enhanced Jumping"

A line has to be drawn, and I draw the line at "Grappling/Tethering", this is too mundane to be worth listing.
Click to expand...
Don't see the strength in analogy or the slippery slope.
Projectile launching is universal for every projrectile-launching weapon. But just because someone is using the whip doesn't mean that the whip can be used for tethering, either due to limitations in the whip (which applies to real-life whips), or due to lack in skill. Sometimes the tool used for tethering isn't used as a weapon at all.
Enchanced Jumping is just Superhuman Physical Characteristics, and if it was a separate ability it would've gotten merged into it like with Superhuman Speed.
 
Antvasima said:
Anyway, about expanding the text of an existing powers and abilities page instead...
Click to expand...
That seems also like an option to me, if we're going expand P&A pages then characters can be simply separated into different abilities of that one skill, I think.

Though it's still preferable to me using one page, elemental manipulation exists for instance.
 
The_Impress said:
You know purposely dumbing down an ability only makes your argument look worse?

Vehicular Mastery isn't JUST driving a car, it's being able to maneuver a bajillion different things. Next.

Considering there are people that can talk you to suicide and in general Social Influencing is VERY important in non-standard matches for a variety of uses, it is a dumb point to bring up
Click to expand...
Again tho it should be mentioned as intelligence rather then a power

Tethering is no less a big deal because it implies a far greater manoeuvrability which can be important against larger opponents (kind of like why we have wall running as a power when that could easily just be superhuman statistics)

You’re also ignoring that we’re just as much an indexing site as a debating one, so something being useful in matchups isn’t the only reason

This would be us indexing that added agility
The_Impress said:
Awakened Power should be deleted tbh
Click to expand...
Many powers should be tbh
 
To be fair, many powers up to a certain level are kind of already part of another set of abilities. If I wanted to be strict about it, I'd say that a good part of characters who have things such as Instinctive Reactions, Damage Reduction and Pressure Points shouldn't have as martial artists in general should have such capabilities. Unless you go to the extremes fiction goes to, where some characters can fight with the complete absence of focus and automatically, they can roll with blows so well that they effectively disperse the energy completely and can strike people on a specific part of the neck so that they magically faint, those abilities all fall into the purview of martial arts.

I liked the idea of tethering because it would be applied to characters that can tether themselves to things using weapons and tools to an abnormal degree, being able to easily coil and uncoil said flexible weaponry (Indiana Jones), being able to actually swing it in very strange ways even with no initial momentum, thus allowing the character to both pull himself and his target at the same time (Kratos), being able to still maintain a hold when you just shouldn't be able to because the contact area is too small and you didn't really "pierce" the target (Yoshi), or even if you did pierce, the act of pulling should just have taken out the weapon (Scorpion), and I could give more examples. My point is that none of those cases involve skill (I mean, there is skill involved but no amount of skill allows you to do any of the three things I first mentioned, the last one is questionably skill-based) and are inherently impossible.

I can perfectly understand and won't push the topic further if this isn't to be allowed, but I ought to ask to reconsider this. Many abilities I genuinely consider redundant at the lower level because they are very basic and inherent to things such as martial arts are accepted as well, especially when the user manages to push them to fictional extremes, and this is another case of such.
 
I also support social influencing staying in the wiki.
 
Thank you for the evaluation. It seems like this has been rejected then.
 
to point out, if count Ant in disagreement, it would be 3-3 mods and neutral Saman. By votes for now it's tie.

(If count by every user btw it's 9-5 in favor of tethering being added, with Ecstasy and Saman as neutral)
 
By the way, I'm against having this added as a power as well out of the reasons above. Keep that sort of content in Notable Attacks/Techniques if anything.
 
Given that this is a wiki policy thread, only the staff have a final say regarding if it passes or not. My apologies.
 
Antvasima said:
Given that this is a wiki policy thread, only the staff have a final say regarding if it passes or not. My apologies.
Click to expand...
That's true, but for now it's fairly pretty much a tie (Armor, Kieran, Eliminator vs Impress, Promestein and I guess you Ant, plus Saman at neutral) so, I think debate is still free.
 
It would be fun to have it but I have to disagree as well, many of the non-superpowers Powers we already have are already pretty lame to be added on characters who definitely have them but don't excel at all. We can always just elaborate by writing a bit more.
 
Antvasima said:
Given that this is a wiki policy thread, only the staff have a final say regarding if it passes or not. My apologies.
Click to expand...
Then why isn’t this a staff thread

If you’re going to ignore the average user why allow them to make their point
 
It is a staff thread but idk if it was before. Given how easy it's for everyone to agree with new powers being added, all threads going over it should preferably be staff threads.
 
I don't think we need pages for every miniscule, easily-explained physical activity that pretty much anyone can do with proper equipment. That's my argument. There's nothing special about this - nothing worth explaining, nothing worth standardizing, nothing worth detailing. We don't need a page for it because the base information of this is that simple and easily conveyed.
 
Promestein said:
I don't think we need pages for every miniscule, easily-explained physical activity that pretty much anyone can do with proper equipment. That's my argument. There's nothing special about this - nothing worth explaining, nothing worth standardizing, nothing worth detailing. We don't need a page for it because the base information of this is that simple and easily conveyed.
Click to expand...
That I personally disagree with. As I stated in my earlier argument, many things we consider as "powers", on the lower levels indeed are possible and even expected from people with any sort of significant training in, say, martial arts. However, there is a point that with this kind of ability that it simply is impossible to do with real life.

Indiana Jones' whip-swinging, for example. It is possible, although extremely hard, for someone to strike a hookable surface just right enough that they can swing across a gap. What isn't possible, however, is for the whip to stay stuck there with sufficient strength to stay, but the person still being able to pull it away easily. Again, if it was a matter of strength, the whip would've be broken by this, and skill-wise it is impossible to unwrap a whip with nothing more than a tug, yet Jones does.

And that is a single example. Way too many things with abilities in that sense are impossible to do by sheer skill/strength/speed. Kratos can actively use the Blades of Chaos to both hook someone and reel them in and reel himself at the same time, without even having a way to impulse himself to the target. I've seen characters (I think Yoshi does that?) that can grab things even when only "grasping" them by very small areas, without pulling them off, wounding the person or really inconveniencing them.

I could go on, but again, that's just answering that one point. I'm fine with not adding this as it is, indeed, a very specific application of another skillset that could cover it, but the reasoning of anyone being able to do it not justifying its existence could be used to erase a lot of abilities on the wiki.
 
"I could go on, but again, that's just answering that one point. I'm fine with not adding this as it is, indeed, a very specific application of another skillset that could cover it, but the reasoning of anyone being able to do it not justifying its existence could be used to erase a lot of abilities on the wiki."

Yes. Basic physical accomplishments do not warrant ability pages as far as I'm concerned, and this applies to it. Sure, this isn't exactly possible in real life, but do we really need to detail this information because of that? It's such a common impossibility that occurs within fiction anyways. I really dislike the mindset that everything a character can do has to be broken down into easily digestible abilities with pages, as if to minimize the amount of thinking people need to do and the amount of reading a person has to do of a character's page.

Just detail a character's specifics on their own page, don't outsource it to a bunch of unnecessary ability pages. I hate that mindset.
 
That's fair.

I still don't think this is too much, we do allow things that are within the purview of other abilities as well. Instinctive Reactions for example is something a sufficiently combat-experienced/trained individual is expected to have. Pressure Points is an extremely common knowledge - even if only in practical terms - to anyone who has any significant amount of practice in CQC. To a small degree, people are trained in combat to have Analytical Prediction, in both experience and inference in boxing and swordsmanship. We still cover them because fiction extrapolate those to impossible degrees, and this is something that too can be extrapolated.

But, in any case, as this isn't something that important to apply, I'm fine with it being rejected.
 
This feels redundant weapon mastery and thread manipulation already covers stuff like this
 
I strongly agree with Promestein. Thank you for helping out.
 
ShadowWhoWalks proposed that we at least add on the Acrobatics page a section about characters being able to maneuver around using whips, lassos, ropes and things of that sense. I think it is more of a Weapon Mastery thing, but the idea is there. Any thoughts?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Shmooply
Properly adding Grappling Hooks/Tethers as an ability on the wiki
Replies
22
Views
1K
Shmooply
Shmooply
Antvasima
  • Locked
Slightly adjusting our rules for bolded "powers and abilities" links
Replies
32
Views
2K
Antvasima
Antvasima
Flashlight237
  • Locked
Ability Proposal: Concoction
Replies
14
Views
3K
Antvasima
Antvasima
ProudLearner
Can this ability be useful?
Replies
1
Views
352
Lloydblitzed
Lloydblitzed
Flashlight237
Changing the Color of the Sky?
Replies
7
Views
987
Flashlight237
Flashlight237
Back
Top