Rewording the Resistance page (Staff only)

[Eficiente]

Continuation of this thread.

I propose the following:

"Resistance is the ability to lessen/withstand the effectiveness of certain abilities/techniques/etc. through whatever means. The highest degree of resistance is outright Immunity, supposedly making the users of it unable to be affected by the things they are immune to.

Having a resistance to something doesn't guarantee being able to withstand it properly, if at all, this is because the resistance would need to be at a comparable or higher scale than the things being resisted (for example, having a suit with common cold resistance will not do anything when facing cold that can surrealistically freeze targets instantly). Being informative about the context of a resistance (and thus its scale) is extremely important, when no information about it is given the scale is logically assumed to be basic.

Qualify to have an Immunity is difficult. Merely being unaffected by abilities isn't enough without further context. Although a reliable statement affirming an immunity is sufficient evidence. Even then, it may just be a Resistance with a scale that is above basic.

A true Immunity can only truly happen if the character/thing completely lacks the target of the abilities/techniques/etc. being resisted, such as an Inorganic Being immune to Biological Manipulation. Note that while there are moments in fiction where an ability affects beings/things that they shouldn't, and in such cases we either assume the ability used has greater applications, or that it was due to PIS.

Resisting something specific may or may not mean also resisting things that are similar to it. Particularly, if a power is resisted sub-/lesser versions of it would be resisted as well (unless further context may contradict this). However, a same power may be generated by many diverse sources and resisting an ability done by one such source isn't the same as resisting the very the ability done by a different source (for example, this could be the case with Mind Manipulation done biologically and via magic. But in all cases it overall depends on the context).

While most of the time the resistances & immunities are present all the time for characters/things, there are cases where they need to be manually activated through something; when this happens, it should always be properly specified to avoid being misleading about it. Similarly, it should also be specified when resistances & immunities are only present in limited parts of a user's body.

Note: When a profile's Powers & Abilities indicates something on the lines of "As before but to a greater scale" this doesn't mean that their Resistance/s have a higher scale unless specifically indicated somewhere."

Also

• Remove that image of the page. It's unnecessary.
• Add an "Examples" section, it would actually be extremely helpful for others to point out characters or groups of characters in verses that can resist X things if we point out the scale of the things they withstand, thus showing the scale of their resistence.
• We should have "Immunity" also linking into the Resistance page, yes?
• Specific gimmicks with many powers that people has no reason to know should be specified in the pages of the powers themselves. 2 examples:
  • The powers that are a form of Mind Manip should specified that resisting other forms of Mind Manip is enough to resist others as well, without further context negating this idea for specific characters.
  • Many think that resisting Mind Manip can save you from Possession when that's not the case, so the Possession page should specify that and how the power can also be biological.

 

[LordGriffin1000]

I agree with this.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

As said other times, if your "soul manipulation" affects people without souls, then it's not really soul manipulation.

If you force the enemy to have a soul and then soulhax them, then it's a different story, but using soul manipulation on objects with no soul is just non-sensical.

 

[OppaiSenpai5]

Yes, a being without a soul is immune to soul manip, a being of pure energy in immune to biological manip and a being that transcends time is immune to time manip. If those things work on them it's either the case that one of the premises is wrong or it's simply PIS,

 

[Planck69]

Yes and yes to both Ricsi and Bomba. Being able to use a certain ability on someone that should logically be completely unaffected by that power doesn't mean it's somehow more impressive than normal, it's just a different power at that point. Or a straight up f*** you to logic and reason.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

The best example I can think of of the top of my head is Giygas' (or Bill too, now that I think about it) ability to drive inanimate objects mad, making them act animated and, well, mad.

He animated the objects with a crazy personality/drove them mad after animation, not madness haxed a mindless thing.

But, in cases like Sans killing Flowey (a soulless flower) with soul manipulating despite his attacks being shown to pass through material stuff and seemingly being intangible, it's just inconsistency. Either due to us misunderstanding the ability's mechanics or just the author forgetting. For Sans we assume his attacks harm the body too, regardless. For other cases, we just go with the next, most logical explanation or say it was an outlier and inconsistency.

 

[Antoniofer]

Also agree, is not possible to Soul hax the soullessness or Matter hax the non-corporeal ghost, is that happens most likely the ability is being misinterpreted and their current powers are more primal of what was originally thought (such having Essence Manipulation to affect the soullessness or Esoteric Matter Manipulation [such Ectoplasm] to affect the ghost).

The other options would be inconsistency of that the author have a bad writing moment. Of course is also possible to grants a soul or a body to these beings and then conventionally affect them with Soul and Matter Manipulation.

 

[Eficiente]

Ok then, any proposal to modify the OP so that it may indicate all that?

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

Something like this, I guess:

Resistance is the ability to lessen the effectivness of certain abilities/techniques/etc. to a certain potency.

All resistance is limited to some level and would not work against abilities more potent than they have been shown to work against, even if they are stated to be plain immunity (as that would be an No Limits Fallacy). Real world exemples to this would be certain animals being immune to many poisons, but none being truly immune to all poisons, due to both diversity and potency of possible poisons.

Immunity can only truly happen if the character completely lacks the target of the abilities/techniques/etc. being resisted, such as an inorganic being immune to biological manipulation, or a non-corporeal being immune matter manipulation. Note that while there are moments in fiction where an ability affects beings that they shouldn't, and in such cases we either assume the ability used has more applications are greater, that it was due to PIS, or that the ability was misinterpreted.

Can certainly use rewording, but most of the ideas in there.

 

[Eficiente]

Well, I'm not really satisfied with just most of the ideas being there. Certain users can be very stubborn about what they think and can disagree with basic notions of how we do things, and then call for more users with the same mentality to help them. Having to disagree with them can be an incredibly frustrating and lonely job from which more than one has decided to just give up.

I'm not trying to sound dramatic, this is real sh*t that has happened on the wiki.

 

[Planck69]

Huh. Well could you tell us what problems you have with the proposed changes? I think something can be worked out.

 

[Antoniofer]

Other thing that makes character to pass through one resistances/immunities is that they have specific abilities that allows them to do so. Of course, with our current rules that is relative, since we do not have immunity by itself here, one can say that the power of certain character is above the resistent threashold of the other one.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

Resistance Negation is a thing on the wiki, yes.

 

[Eficiente]

@Ricsi-viragosi That puts me in a bit of an awkward position considering you changed most of it without saying why but ok.

• Immunity is linked in the same page almost as often, so a brief destripcion of it should be in the first paragraph next to resistence.
• A resistance can help if it is just at a comparable scale than the abilities used on the target with it, the wording you used could make it seem like it has to be always better.
• "Level" is not how I would measure it as it makes it seem strict and linear, when resistences and the potency of abilities get measure by extremely diverse factors. I used more vague words like scale and potency. Or maybe I'm just wrong about all this notion, idk.
• The part saying "Being informative about the context of a resistance (and thus its scale) is extremely important, when no information about it is given the scale is logically assumed to be basic." that was removed I feel was necessary. The last part of it may be obvious but it is extremely common for users to claim that a character can resist something via just having a resistence to it, and for other users to not look that up by themselves and just believe that.
• A part saying what it takes to qualify to have an Immunity is likely needed as people can get way too generous when interpreting the feats they see...and not a lot of users really read the evidence presented in threads that aim add new powers.
• I feel even less strong about this one but pointing out that manual resistences need to be activated manually is likely needed as well.
• The Note at the end is definitely needed. Like 15 users or so think think that this guy's basic resistence to precog in base would be in the same scale as this guy's precog just because the former became stronger, and that's just one example.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

The wording is mia culpa, not really the best with the language. Leaving out the very big need for the scale of the resistance is also importnat, and that I simply forgot (more so assumed that people should knw that, but I have experienced that they don't a lot).

Manual resistances needing to be activated does seem like something very inane to point out since it's a weakness for the character, and I'm not sure it should be listed here that an active ability needs to be activated to work.

 

[Antoniofer]

By default resistances are passive, Resistance Augmentation is also possible, but it can be considered a "weakness" compared to standard resistance (something similar to durability and force-fields).

I do not consider possible to be resistent to Precognition in the conventional sense, in the same way is not possible to be resistent to Enhanced Senses, as its a information gathering-type power, and do not have a target by itself.

 

[Eficiente]

For the latter, I have seen people aiming to get away with it as the "manual" part of it was stuff very common to do for the characters with it.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

I do not consider possible to be resistent to Precognition in the conventional sense, in the same way is not possible to be resistent to Enhanced Senses, as its a information gathering-type power, and do not have a target by itself.

I don't agree with that, really. I know of characters (mostly Ergen) where certain people are stated to be more difficult to see the future of (it's like "swimming against the current" or something like that). There's definitly precedent where a character's future is hard to predict without them being an acausual of some kind.

 

[Antoniofer]

Yeah, aware of people being more difficult to see their future, but is not something that I'll consider as resistance. Is like saying people that do not have a particular smell are resistent to Enhanced Senses, and is more like is more difficult to sense; but I see why people call it resistance.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

I mean, their nature lessens someone elses ability. An ability is harder to use against them. That is resistance.

And that smell thing is completely different. Not having a smell means that the enhanced senses have nothing to sniff out. But characters do have a future, else they would be acausuals.

 

[Antoniofer]

Its all about mechanics, is to prevent stuff like "my Resistance Negation is stronger than you Resistance to Resistance Negation", someone with no notable scent (not necessary scentless) can't get its power negated unless someone some how infuse it with one. But now that I mention it, its the same case of the soullessness and the non-corporeal.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

That has zero to do with precognition tough.

Lacking scent and being difficult to predict through looking into the future are not the same.

 

[Eficiente]

By default resistances are passive

Going back a bit on this just to say that I disagree with it.

As for the precog thing, we do things like linking Weapon Mastery when pointing out Resistence to just weapons so idk what to make of any of that.

 

[Antoniofer]

Don't we consider resistances to be passive? Most of them don't require awareness to work (unless maybe those that depends of emotions, like Indomitable Will or Rage).

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

We don't assume anything on resistance besides them decreasing the effectivness of an ability.

 

[Antoniofer]

Oh, I see. Welp, I guess one needs to write if it requires an action and/or is always active, although I feel that several profiles don't do this.

 

[Planck69]

Oh, I see. Welp, I guess one needs to write if it requires an action and/or is always active, although I feel that several profiles don't do this.

Resistance is almost always portrayed as passive so I'm not sure if this necessary.

 

[Wokistan]

I think it makes more sense to just put in the weaknesses or explanations for a resistance when it isn't.

Also why can't you be resistant to info getting powers?

 

[Antoniofer]

That's what I initially though, but Ricsi told otherwise. By the way, Resistance is the ability to lessen the effectiveness of certain abilities/techniques/etc, this sounds like Power Drain/Erasure/Negation, it should go by the words of "reducing the effects of certain powers and/or negative conditions/factors on oneself, either temporary or indefinitely".

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

I did not tell otherwise. I simply said that we don't assume things on any ability beyond what they do. How they are activated, possible weaknesess, in-verse logic, etc.... we only assume what the ability has to be.

Fire manipulation will manipualte fire, mind manipulation will affect minds, and resistance will give resistance to abilities. Beyond that, whatever other quirks the ability has is to be further explored on the profile.

 

[Eficiente]

A Resistance isn't always to a power, it can be to many things.

"Reducing the effects of" too sounds like Power Drain/Erasure/Negation, "lessen" was not wrong depending on the interpretation. I'm going to change it for "lessen/withstand".

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

I don't think I agree with that, reducing the effect describes it just as well for me, since the same expression can be used for a coat lessening the effects of the biting cold outside.

But that is literal semantics we're arguing.

 

[Antoniofer]

That's why I suggested to put "negative conditions/factors", and "lessen the effectiveness" also works, but without the "on oneself" it sounds like it can apply to everyone, and not only the user.

 

[Eficiente]

I mean, one can resist positive conditions & factors too. Some parts have to be vague on purpose.

 

[Antoniofer]

Guess DnD and Anima comes to mind, guess you can cut the "negative" part of it and leaving it as "conditions/factors", or even more simple and be like "reducing effectiveness of powers on oneself".

 

[Eficiente]

Well, most of the time profiles will be resisting stuff in our list of power & abilities, and as it is the wording there is no wrong, so I think it wouldn't do anything.

 

[Eficiente]

Bump. I added this much:

"Resisting something specific may or may not mean also resisting things that are similar to it. Particularly, if a power is resisted sub-/lesser versions of it would be resisted as well (unless further context may contradict this). However, a same power may be generated by many diverse sources and resisting an ability done by one such source isn't the same as resisting the very the ability done by a different source (for example, this could be the case with Mind Manipulation done biologically and via magic. But in all cases it overall depends on the context)."

There is also the fact that we agreed upon "resisting one form of Mind Manip=resisting all forms of them", which I find way too specific to add in the Resistence page. Instead, the Mind Manipulation page (if not all the pages that are a form of it) should point this out. Really, there are a lot of specific gimmicks with many powers that people has no reason to know (as in normal people, not certain users). For example many think that resisting Mind Manip can save you from Possession when that's not the case, cases like this should be directly spesified in the pages of the powers.

 

[Eficiente]

Bump. This seems ready to be added, if not very close to it.

 

[Eficiente]

Bump.

 

[Eficiente]

Bump.