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Skill Revisions (Standards Change)

I'll admit I didn't read every comment in here, so my bad for potential repetition.

I feel like the abstract existence part should just go on the abstract existence page since it's not limited to skill. Being the embody ment of anything does not mean that you will absolutely incorporate something that matches that from another verse. Exemple given before was death, though it applies to pretty much everything.

The rest of this shouldn't really be rules though, on my opinion.

For skill letting someone beat a X40 or however much stronger enemy... context can matter for it. Even now in MCU we have the profiles note that the Asgardian's blades can stab tier 6s and win, so if a simple to predict tier 6 character fought someone with such a blade they could win, and it is a feat of skill to win against someone who kills you with any attack whether it's blocked or not.

For speed its a lot more iffy, though you may argue something for analytical prediction there. If you know where an enemy is moving, and they are for some reason forced or dumb enough to move there regardless, you can prepare your weapon there to stab them when they pass there. But it would need a lot of justifying.

Supernatural abilities can have someone being "skilled" in them - being a skilled magician is possible - but arguing who is better is like comparing apples and oranges, since each verse makes up its mechanics for that.

For superpower through skill (potentially even something like Hamon being done through a specific breathing), it's a skill feat in-verse and may be used as an argument for an in-verse fight, but it is unquantifiable for battles with other verses.
 
Agnaa, honestly isn't that how things are usually supposed to work? If you're not certain on something, you call someone more experienced with that stuff.
 
Oftentimes people present themselves as experts when they aren't actually, and experts for really niche stuff like this can be hard to find. And people can avoid calling in people who will disagree with them so they can continue arguing without being called out on it.

If KnightOfSunlight came into a thread preaching point 5, how many people would know to contact {INSERT PERSON HERE} to rebuke it?
 
Ricsi-viragosi said:
If you know where an enemy is moving, and they are for some reason forced or dumb enough to move there regardless, you can prepare your weapon there to stab them when they pass there.
Click to expand...
At that point it's not a skill feat, just the enemy being dumb. Hard to call it skillful.
 
We can just choose several people on this thread that we trust on "what is and isn't skill".

And besides if KoS came into a thread preaching about point 5 how many ppl would know this thread even exists?
 
So if we are finished here and we already agree. Let us close this and keep this in mind as a thread if need be against repetitive arguments.

Let's get this over with, cus i want to do other stuff.
 
I do not really want a bunch of rules that will "encourage" people to stop looking at the character itself and instead go for the blog or whatever, even a list of recommendations may produce the same.

But people needs to be reasonable, for much powers that a character gains by simply being skilled, is not going to help it against other forms of combat (being so skilled that is has causality manipulation wouldn't grant any notable advantage against some with acrobatics); some so skilled in stealth to the point it can fade away and hide from the sight of several people (arguely related to speed) little will help against someone with AoE attacks, even without notable combat feats; and for much good the instinct of someone could be, it not going to help it against another one that can perform 10 actions in the time the character csb only perform one (its only possible to avoid way faster attacks by aim dodging).
 
Question, being skilled in magic is still skill, right? I mean, things like elemental magic, not "i am so skilled i create fire" but someone that is skilled in using fire, or flying sword, or whatever, Skill Hax (i am skilled so i cut fate) is by no way skill, but why does it seems people don't treat characters like Roy Mustang as skilled just because it is supernatural in nature?
 
That is the same thing as hax or other crazy abilities via skill, it isn’t really useable because it isn’t quantifiable in any way.
 
No what he's saying is. If you can use magic to bend water. If you can do really cool stuff with it, that's skill.

Example the avatars can bend the elements, that's not skill, the specific applications can be skill though. Not very quantifiable but skill none the less.
 
fandom_00potato said:
That is the same thing as hax or other crazy abilities via skill, it isn’t really useable because it isn’t quantifiable in any way.
Click to expand...
What? I am 100% sure that having the skill to control 50 flying swords with 100% accuracy in hitting your opponents' vital spots while also protecting yourself from any attacks, projectiles or melee, is a quantifiable skill feat, since it is much better than using one flying sword at CQC to have a bit of extra range than your opponent. It wouldn't be quantifiable if i said "he is so skilled his swords can fly", but being skilled in using your flying swords is quantifiable.
 
But using magic to hold one flying sword isn’t quantifiable in itself only with the context of that settings rules. So would 50 be? Just saying something is 50 times greater then x doesn’t mean much when x isn’t a knowable quantity.
 
@fandom_00potato Being able to accurately utilize weapons is a quantifiable skill feat, and doing such 50 times over would be.

The "holding a flying sword" part isn't the skill feat, it's having accuracy with your attacks while protecting yourself.
 
I have little to nothing to say as per the actual discussion here, seeing as the issue appears to be wrapping up and I don't have much reason to get involved aside from my own bias getting in the way of trying to be objective about the issue.

One (unimportant) notion I keep being confused by, however, is the supposed toxicity of skill debates. Am I just completely oblivious to the current state of the threads? Because I recall the skill discussions, or at least the most recent few that were even relevant, being perfectly reasonable and fun debates, albeit ones that never could come to a solid consensus because honestly, in my opinion, there isn't one. It just seems like there's a lot of hostility surrounding the concept of skill on this wiki, and it feels entirely arbitrary to me.

Do correct me if I'm wrong and explain to me what on earth I've been missing about these seemingly peaceful discussions of what I consider to be an interesting and benign topic.
 
Agnaa said:
@fandom_00potato Being able to accurately utilize weapons is a quantifiable skill feat, and doing such 50 times over would be.

The "holding a flying sword" part isn't the skill feat, it's having accuracy with your attacks while protecting yourself.
Click to expand...
With real weapons yes but how do you quantify controlling flying swords? That isn’t something we can pull from a consistent frame of reference for like with something such as just being good at traditional swordsmanship or martial arts.
 
@potato So you can't quantify skill with anything that isn't a real weapon, then? Do all sci-fi verses have their futuristic weapon feats discarded? How different from a real weapon does something have to be to have all of its feats disqualified?

I personally think you can do somewhat reasonable comparisons using explanations of how it functions in verse, and comparisons to real world actions.
 
If it is mechanically very close to something in the real world, yes. But controlling something via magic or some hyper advanced technology that we cannot really understand usually isn’t that.

A fancy sci-fi Gun probably still requires similar components to actual marksmanship some exceptions will need to be made if it is too exotic to quantify but usually it should be fine. Telekinetic flying swords, not so much. I fail to see how controlling swords with your mind is quantifiable.
 
fandom_00potato said:
With real weapons yes but how do you quantify controlling flying swords? That isn’t something we can pull from a consistent frame of reference for like with something such as just being good at traditional swordsmanship or martial arts.
Click to expand...
There is no way to compare it to real world martial arts, but that does not mean it isn't skill. Did you ever read a Xianxia novel? They make a clear difference bwteen someone that can throw a hundred swords using TK and someone that is a master in using a hundred sword in many different styles simultaneously, many of them also make it clear that the amount of mental capacity and awareness you need exceeds even normal sword styles.
 
Aiming and firing is still very easily quantifiable. If they swing with it, people swing swords. If they launch it at their enemies, throwing knives, guns, etc. all exist. Their accuracy with these things is comparable to real-world situations.

I think it'd only become unusable if the mechanics involve some sort of automatic aiming, which would take the skill away from the user.

As an aside, would you also discount skill feats done by aliens who have a sufficiently different physiology from humans? Since they could do things that humans can't.
 
But what is the point if the main mechanics are based on something very different from just throwing or shooting like magic? How does aiming with it work, how does controlling them work? That varies from person to person author to author, and therefore is unquantifiable.

About the Xianxa point. It doesn’t matter, that only applies to that authors work, it doesn’t make magic any more quantifiable. Even if it is skill, it isn’t quantifiable at all so how do you compare it to anything else?
 
Because they're still demonstrations of skill even if it's done with some level of unreality? If someone has a third arm and they only use that arm to battle, that is still a skill feat, because we know how to quantify fighting with one arm, even if it's supernatural in some way.

I don't think we should assume that aiming with flying swords is so incredibly different from aiming in any other way that it should be disqualified.

Even if controlling them works differently than controlling normal things, we're quantifying what's done with that control. I think a feat performed through body puppetry should scale to the puppeteer's skill.

If there are persons or authors who have these differ so extremely that they can't be considered skill feats, that should only affect that verse, and not just all verses by default.
 
With something like a third arm, the general mechanics and potential actions that can be achieved with that are the same as our two arms, so it would be the same.

But you cannot really quantify the actual control mechanisms, so how can you quantify any actions done with it. Controlling magic swords with your mind is very different from just throwing a knife, we cannot quantify how much control it needs or how they aim and fire with magic. If only half the equation is given you likely cannot quantify it. You can’t find 3X without X or the solution.
 
Do we need really to keep this? No one here is going to change their mind, Earl, Agnaa already agreed it is skill, Potato say it isn't, do we need votes for things like that?
 
I don't think you need to quantify the control mechanisms to quantify actions done with them.

If someone controls a sword with their feet, or stabs it through their arms and swings/controls it that way, or holds it in their mouth, can that be a quantified skill feat?

I also think you're getting a bit overly hung up on the quantifying. Even real life skill feats can be different level of difficulty among different people. There's no objective number like "Hitting a bullseye from 20 yards away if 4 skills, and being able to parry a joust is 5 skills." A lot of the time stuff is incomparable due to being more or less difficult to different people, so I think trying to get hard numbers like it seems you're doing would lead to a ludicrous system.
 
With that point, it is harder to say since it seems impossible but unlike magic is still based on actual physical actions. So probably quantifiable. Though quantifiable is probably the wrong word here, the point still stands.

If two people struggle with the same action differently then it would just show a difference in mastery with that same action. But with magic, we cannot say if the mechanics for that made up source is consistent across two different settings so it cannot really be compared.
 
I guess comparable is the right word. You can’t really compare two different takes on a fictional concept with that much precision. But you can for something such as Agnaa’s example a better comparison can be made.
 
fandom_00potato said:
But with magic, we cannot say if the mechanics for that made up source is consistent across two different settings so it cannot really be compared.
Click to expand...
What? Why are you talking about consistency across different settings? If in Verse X you need precision, awareness, etc to use a flying sword properly, it isn't skill to use 50 or more of them at the same time because in Verse Y flying swords insta target the opponents without need for it's owner input? Wtf?
 
When something such as this is entirely arbitrary and lacks any consistent basis, then it cannot be quantified at all. That is the whole argument. We’re you even paying attention.
 
fandom_00potato said:
With that point, it is harder to say since it seems impossible but unlike magic is still based on actual physical actions. So probably quantifiable. Though quantifiable is probably the wrong word here, the point still stands.

If two people struggle with the same action differently then it would just show a difference in mastery with that same action. But with magic, we cannot say if the mechanics for that made up source is consistent across two different settings so it cannot really be compared.
Click to expand...
I don't know why it'd have to be based on physical actions. Don't we allow skill feats for stuff like combat tactics, which are based on mental acuity rather than physical actions?

Magic can be compared by comparing it to real life, and then using that playing field as the basis for the comparison. That gets rid of any discrepancies in it.
 
So, I ran out of mb (actually still has no mb) so I was unable to keep track of this thread (or any other). Has people reached a conclusion here, or its all just back to status quo?
 
I think the only thing left to "do" is decide whether we keep the ones we agreed on as rules or just treat skill case by case (as i think we should).
 
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