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Hello all. I am back, as you can see, and I have good news!
After taking some time to put things together, bang a few rocks against each other, and change some things in my life, I am no longer burnt out on the topic of battleboarding. Hurray!
But, I did make a bit of a revision for the wiki while I was away. Simply put, how we consider skill is atrocious, and I decided to attempt to fix that.
I will state: This is not a wiki wide revision, this is much closer to a revision of considerations and standards in debate. At most, I would request a specific page denoting what should qualify as skill, but I can understand if this is not the highest priority. So, without further ado, let's begin:
1. Skill does not grant hax outside of a select few, and therefore hax that is attributed to skill cannot be used as a skill feat
After taking some time to put things together, bang a few rocks against each other, and change some things in my life, I am no longer burnt out on the topic of battleboarding. Hurray!
But, I did make a bit of a revision for the wiki while I was away. Simply put, how we consider skill is atrocious, and I decided to attempt to fix that.
I will state: This is not a wiki wide revision, this is much closer to a revision of considerations and standards in debate. At most, I would request a specific page denoting what should qualify as skill, but I can understand if this is not the highest priority. So, without further ado, let's begin:
1. Skill does not grant hax outside of a select few, and therefore hax that is attributed to skill cannot be used as a skill feat
- In the real world, martial skill can only sharpen the mind and body, not create reality bending effects. As we use the real world as a basis for our abilities section, we cannot in good faith say that “skill based” reality warping can be considered a skill feat. This is because there is no logical or established amount of skill that would be required to do that, both in the real world and in fiction. We cannot scale hardcore reality breaking hax such as Fate Manip, Probability Manip, etc to any form of skill because there is no established baseline level of skill to perform such an action.
Simply put, we cannot be certain what level of skill is needed to perform these hax, and thus they should be considered non-feats. There is no metric in which to judge them, meaning they are an arbitrary and worthless manner of measuring martial or combat prowess. This is compounded by the fact that these people, who are often forced into the highest echelons of skill, have showing of them being downright idiotic in actual combat, making mistakes in both martial fights and widescale battle that an amatuer fighter would effortlessly take advantage of.
Some might say that such a level is established in-verse, and that it would allow such a feat of hax to count as skill. I whole-heartedly, vehemently disagree. This, at most, would establish the skill needed to do so in that verse exclusively. - Changes made: Only a small list of hax will be considered a skill feat if attributed to skill without explicit proof and explanation. This list is as follows:
- Fully count: Analytical Prediction, Stealth Mastery, Peak Human Condition, Weapon Mastery, Martial Arts, Acrobatics, Information Analysis, Pressure Points, and Social Influencing, shall be considered as fully qualifiable for skill feat scaling
- Partial Credit: Durability Negation, Attack Reflection, “Natural” Corruption (via words), Enhanced Senses, and Animal Manipulation shall be considered for limited scaling if how they are used is comparable to the real world skills.
- Specifically, Enhanced Senses must be not supernaturally strong. Training your senses can make you more attuned and easily capable of detecting things, but not to the point of other animals. Durability Negation can be achieved minorly by targeting weak points, however this will not close a large gap, and would only really counter armor with said weak points.
- Instinctive Reaction is in an awkward space. While it is possible for master martial artists to enter a state of mind similar to IR, this is… not fully the case. IR predicates itself on not having to think to react to an attack or stimuli, whereas the oft brought up IRL Instinctive Reaction still requires one to think to use, it just becomes second nature. Debate is needed for this to qualify.
- Preparation is also in a strange space. It is truthful to say that anyone who knows and actively makes perfect preparations given limited knowledge on an opponent is a skilled tactician. However, this would not count towards martial skill. In fact, if a martial fighter spends large amounts of time actively studying and reading into someone else's skill and method of fighting, it is a very low level skill feat. Anyone can counter a fighter if they spend weeks developing the perfect way to counter them, but they will only be able to counter that specific fighter, or people who fight similarly enough to them that they can extrapolate.
- Things that do not count as skill feats: Any form of hax other than the ones listed above.
- Note: Usage of hax in a way that is skillful, such as Josuke’s usage of Crazy Diamond’s restorative abilities to attack Kira at range, or characters using their own abilities to counter someone in creative ways, should be considered a skill feat. However, using an ability to counter someone with large amounts of planning is preparation and should reduce how skilled the user is considered. Anyone can counter a single throw in Judo if they watch it be done a hundred times, but knowing the counters to all throws and being able to perfectly perform them without much warning is skill.
- I have absolutely no idea how this hasn’t been torn to shreds already, but the mindset is present in the community enough to bother me and others.
I will be perfectly transparent and blunt. The idea that someone can defeat a person who can oneshot and effortlessly blitz them, via skill? Absolutely, transparently wank.
In both real and fictional fights, people who are over 3x as strong as someone, at the same speed, can casually overpower them to an almost comical degree. On the other end of the spectrum, the high end for a human punch is 32 MPH. Reacting to a punch thrown at 96 MPH would be like trying to react to a car at full speed. You literally cannot react fast enough because your neurons do not fire fast enough, muscles do not contract fast enough, to be safe from the blow. The best you can do is predict them, and even that becomes too hard to do without seeing something like it coming. In the terms of a fight, this would mean the opponent would have to telegraph their move so much even the greatest novice could see what they were doing, and then not react to the person who is 3x slower than them when they do strike.- So, what does this mean? For starters, any skill feat that is predicated on fighting people faster and stronger than a character? Discounted. If the range is enough that it isn’t a one shot, or the character has regen, it can be considered an endurance feat for surviving such a tilted battle, but it does not increase their skill.
- Battling and army is an endurance feat more than it is a skill feat. While it is true that it requires skill to fight large groups of people, that skill is largely limited to preventing yourself from being surrounded or ambushed.
The only skill granted by a fight against a much larger group is the skill needed to prevent yourself from being surrounded, which would require constant awareness and analysis of the battle while you fight. If one is surrounded and manages to fight off the attackers successfully, that does not count as skill. Either the attackers are too idiotic to actually attack from multiple angles at the same or similar times, which reduces any skill that might be needed to fight them off, or the victim is somehow able to fight them off all at once, which is a speed feat and not a skill feat, as no manner of skill can allow you to block or parry three strikes from three different angles at once. Should one be surrounded by fighters who are equal to them and still manage to survive, this can be chalked up to Plot Induced Stupidity on the part of the attackers.
- At first, these two traits seem completely tied, and that having one would mean an abundance of the other. However, Knowledge is the trait of knowing (wow go figure) concepts and information via books, media, teaching, etc. Skill, on the other hand, is the ability to actually apply such knowledge in a real situation. In terms of a battle, knowledge is knowing a move, an ability, or an attack, and skill is the ability to use said attack, ability, or move to its maximum effectiveness given the situation at hand.
- For a real life example of this, a low-level judo practitioner might know just as many throws as a black belt, but the black belt will be able to perform said throws better, and will use said throws whenever it is the most effective.
Another example is the difference between an experienced fighter and a trained one. A fighter who relies on their experience will be more skilled than a trained one, assuming they have the same amount of training/experience, relatively. This is because a trained fighter might lack the needed skill to actually use their training properly, but an experienced fighter will not. This is also why sparring is a practice in martial arts, as it is a safe and controlled way to gain experience, and teaches a fighter how to react and actually use their training. - What does this mean for skill on this site?
- Firstly: any feat of knowledge, such as knowing your opponents next move by studying their previous ones, is not a skill feat if the fight is still a pitched battle. It is a preparation and knowledge feat, and an intelligence one, but it is not something that would be especially skillful to pull off with enough study and time spent preparing. If a fighter spends weeks preparing to fight someone by actively studying their moves and abilities, and developing counters to them, and yet still has to fight a pitched battle against said opponent, they are not skilled. A skilled person, given the same time, would not struggle in the fight, and would actively adapt to the opponent.
- For example, say someone is equal to a person in power and speed. Now, say that person studies the other rigorously, day and night, to prepare for an upcoming battle against them, and eventually learns how to perfectly counter their every move because they have learned the opponents patterns. What if that opponent changes patterns, adapts to their opponent, or learns of this and shifts strategy? If the studier is left fighting for their life because of this, they are not skilled, as they could not adapt to the change in dynamics. Skill is not about knowing how to fight your opponent in particular, it is about knowing how to adapt and fight any opponent that comes your way, based on your training and experience.
- Secondly: Feats of “knowing” martial arts are no longer to be counted as skill feats unless explicitly demonstrated.
- This means that any person who is stated to have “mastered every martial art” or people who “know every form of swordplay” are no longer able to use those as feats.
Not only is this explicitly impossible unless they are an unnatural prodigy and well into their sixties, it is also never, ever demonstrated within said series, and the person is often shown making mistakes such a master would never make in their life.- If you doubt the time needed to learn said, it takes about 10,000 hours to achieve what is called mastery of chess. Extrapolating to a normal martial art, and assuming one practices for 3 hours a day, that would mean it requires 9 years of training to fully master one. Assuming one only masters the major martial arts, that would require upwards of 60 years of training. For swordplay, this number is similar, but lower due to the limited number of actual sword martial arts.
- To quote Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
- This means that any person who is stated to have “mastered every martial art” or people who “know every form of swordplay” are no longer able to use those as feats.
- Firstly: any feat of knowledge, such as knowing your opponents next move by studying their previous ones, is not a skill feat if the fight is still a pitched battle. It is a preparation and knowledge feat, and an intelligence one, but it is not something that would be especially skillful to pull off with enough study and time spent preparing. If a fighter spends weeks preparing to fight someone by actively studying their moves and abilities, and developing counters to them, and yet still has to fight a pitched battle against said opponent, they are not skilled. A skilled person, given the same time, would not struggle in the fight, and would actively adapt to the opponent.
- I have no idea how this was even allowed to become an idea.
- This is going to be short, simple, and blunt: Any form of reality warping involves fundamentally breaking or bending the rules of the world to your liking. Resisting this means one can resist the world being changed according to another's will, or by a supernatural power that does the same. An ability, like skill, that works within the bounds of reality, will not work on them, as they can resist reality itself changing. The only exception to this would be resistance via nullification of power sources, but that is uncommon, and does not excuse the idea that hax via “skill” can surpass hax resistance via being from a different source. No, it cannot, because skill works within reality. Reality Warping and other hax often works via bending, distorting, or outright breaking reality’s rules. Therefore, it is infinitely more potent.
- This is actually an interesting thing. We don’t consider someone being the concept of war and battle a skill feat, but consider blocking AoE flames one, despite doing so with a sword being impossible? We ignore statements about how these individuals are automatically masters of any form of battle possible by virtue of their nature, but allow out of context statements with no proof or links to determine the placement of another?
- So why are we doing this, at all? Is it to give the lower tier people a chance? Because, that’s not exactly a most skilled thread, now is it? Do we allow this method of thinking because we don’t like the idea? Because they didn’t work hard to be skilled, so they clearly aren’t, yet we also allow prodigies onto the same thread with no questions asked. Fundamentally, ignoring feats and statements because it isn’t fair is antithetical to the way a match is determined, and it is hypocritical to allow supernatural prodigies who can master every form of swordplay by 16 whilst also ignoring beings who are by the consequence of their nature, able to master all forms of combat and warfare.
- Simply put, when one is the concept of war, combat, and/or battle, they should be above any other thing that can fight in martial prowess, simply because they would already know how that thing fights and be better than them by virtue of their nature.
