Swords and Sandals Discussion Thread

[EliminatorVenom]

GLADIATOOOOOOOR

Welcome to the thread to the bestest game series ever made. Swords and Sandals is a game series about people bonking each other very hard with swords, axes, bows, guns (!), violins (!!) and even flatulence (!!!) in order to decapitate them. It is ridiculous and often easy to break game, but any fans wouldn't have it any other way. It is beautiful.

This thread will be used to discuss lore, feats and whatever is needed to make profiles and revisions for this universe!

 

[EliminatorVenom]

I'll already start this by commenting I've been uploaded about 1/3 of the feats. It seems that most characters will be Small Building level, with the weakest being Wall-ish and the strongest... I don't know how to quantify-

Maybe calcs can be done, and they can be very easily be lowballed to Building level, but I believe they are way above. High-level characters are described as wiping out entire armies and batallions of futuristic tanks with ease and alone, and they can summon rather large meteors.

Speed-wise, even the weakest characters should be Subsonic-ish, if not Supersonic, as any character can block, dodge and react to bullets from pistols, sound waves from shouts, slingshot shots, arrows from bows and bolts from crossbows, and at higher levels, anyone can react to bullets from assault rifles, whip strikes and from exponentially quicker things, and I remember some Hypersonic-ish feats.

And the characters are stupidly haxxed in the weirdest ways possible.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

I've compiled all the feats! All there is to it now is to organise it all, and I'll start to make profile drafts...

 

[Shmooply]

BASED BASED BASED BASED BASED BASED BAS

 

[Nierre]

OOOHHH I LOVED THIS GAMEEE

it's been years since I last played since I lost all of data on my old laptop but im so glad im not the only one who remembers this game

 

[EliminatorVenom]

I've finished organizing them!

The timeline is this: Pirates > I > II > Crusaders > III > V. While I've played IV the most, it is the oddball of the timeline, as it certainly happened there and it appears to have happened in any moment of time of III to V, and I haven't checked out Champion Run or Mini-Fighters yet. Medieval and Spartacus seem to be mostly standalone games. The names of the protagonists, as per the Tome of Lore, are: Gladiator (SaS 1), Nameless (SaS 2) and the Starbound Gladiator (SaS 3). The protagonist of IV doesn't have feats, I think, and neither V's or Medieval have received official nicknames.

I've covered SaS I, II and II redux, III (partially, I still need to re-scan the spells, which have the best hax descriptions of the whole series, it's actually insane), V and Crusader, and the official tome of lore as well. I still need to play and properly account for stuff of the Crusader redux, IV, some tidbits of III, Medieval, Spartacus, Mini-Fighters, Champion Run and Pirates.

So, the most significant feats thus far:

• Pretty much even the lowest-level characters can take off limbs and heads with a single strike, and literally punch people in two and their hearts out. Even the lowest-level characters can react to slingshot shots and sound-based taunts at near point-blank range, and with just a few levels, they are expected to be able to react to gunfire, sound waves, arrows and bolts, again, all at extremely close range. With a few level ups, gladiators are fully expected to shake the ground by leaping, reduce people to ashes with spells or freeze them into solid blocks of ice, split even heavily armored people apart with a single punch, and more.
• At a pretty high level, the Nameless can cast and tank the spell Molten Death, which summons meteors from the sky, something that's confirmed by the spell's description, and it's also shown on the first scan that he can keep up with people who cast cloud-to-ground lightning. [Swords and Sandals II]
• Dragons can spit meteors capable of killing several soldiers in a single impact each. [Swords and Sandals: Crusader]
• Even the weakest spells, cast by a very BoG Starbound Gladiador, can reduce someone to ashes. This extends to stone golems and floralisks, basically living trees. Other spells have similar yields, with random gladiators showing they can freeze people into ice sculptures and disintegrate them. [Swords and Sandals III]
• Bluescreen Death has cannons whose power exceed that of over a hundred futuristic tanks. [Swords and Sandals III]
• Bargle is stated as transcending time and space. This is most likely exaggeration, a hax ability or something in context, but still noteworthy. [Swords and Sandals V]
• SaSV!Gladiator breaks a big boulder with a single strike. [Swords and Sandals V]
• SaSV!Gladiator tanks a bomb explosion capable of breaking the same boulder as the previous feat. [Swords and Sandals V]
• The Scarab Tank is used as a living battering ram against fortresses. [Swords and Sandals V]
• It is implied that SaSV!Gladiator can dodge magical attacks. This is sadly going to be taken as aimdodging as it is the only instance of that happening and being even possible, the games otherwise make it mechanically impossible to avoid magical attacks. If, somehow, consistent, the characters' speed can be easily bumped to the MHS range. [Swords and Sandals V]
• The breaking of the last seal that held Antares shakes an immense tower. [Swords and Sandals V]
• Antares' power can burn the entirety of Suul's Gateway, a very large city, and transform the skies. [Swords and Sandals V]
• HeChaos summons terrible thunderstorms that cover the entirety of Eddengarth's fields, wiping out whole skeletal regions, although each spell cost him his sanity. [Tome of Lore]
• Despite also dedicating a large amount of energy to keeping up his immense army, Antares was able to conjure an immense dark cloud to cover his entire army, to shield them from the sun, although the effort did leave him exhausted. [Tome of Lore]
• The battle between the Dusk Harlequin and the Grail Knight shook the lands, and a cabal of lichs, at Antares' command, summons a stormcloud that covers most of the battlefield. [Tome of Lore]
• Bargle, Sagan and Gantuulga, together, concoct a spell that changes the weather itself and makes the sun burn hotter on the battlefield, dissolving Antares' dark cloud. Antares summons Molten Death, raining meteors over King Lionel's position. [Tome of Lore]

 

[EliminatorVenom]

Good news, apparently the magical dodging is legit! SaS 2 Redux has the player (and really, all characters) as being able to dodge magical attacks such as lightning blasts! Their speed can probably be scaled from that.

 

[Gilad_Hyperstar]

Following this. I would love to see this verse on the wiki

Though we likely need to compile some feats into blogs or something and make scaling for them. We do know each Arena Champion is stronger than the previous one, and since Swords and Sandals 1 to 3 at least puts a level cap to them, this might help with scaling

 

[EliminatorVenom]

I have compiled all feats from SaS I, II, III, V and the Tome of Lore, I just need to translate the thread as I posted it in a private blog, in portuguese.

The scaling is actually a bit complicated, and harder than that. Bargle, for example, is absolutely one of the top-tiers of the universe, only Antares at the peak of his power could really match him, and all instances he was fought as an Arena Champion and was defeated was because he let himself be defeated, and there are other Arena Champions that, in lore, are tougher than some that are ranked above them, for whatever reason. This is particularly glaring the higher you go on the chain, as many characters are very close to each other in power.

The scaling is (very roughly) as follows:

• The Gods, with Suul and the Malevolence ranking as the top gods. Not much to say, they are the sole reason characters like Sandalphon and Antares have the power that they have, and the larger plot for most of SaS is to prevent the Malevolence manifesting into the world, as nothing could stop it.
• The Automatons as a society, post-EoG Starbound Gladiator (SaS III protagonist) and peak Bargle rank similarly, as they can wield weapons "capable of making the god envious", and to them, even someone like Antares and the entire plot of SaS are very small, minor things in the whole scheme of the universe.
• Antares at his peak, Bargle at his most consistent, King Lionel, Bad Ending SaS V protagonist are all here, with the Nameless (SaS II protagonist). Antares and Bargle simply stomp everyone else in the universe, and both have multiple feats that upscale them massively from everyone else. King Lionel is only here because he is the only one that, during the Crusades, could keep up with Antares in direct combat. The Nameless should be here, but as a weaker one, as he could only beat Antares with Bargle and Sandalphon's help, but he's regardless considered as being similarly powerful, being a worthy foe of Antares and considered one of the very few that could really keep up with him.
• Extraordinarily powerful champions should fall here, such as Sandalphon, Zeerzabahl, HeChaos, Sir Belgrave, the other colossi from the Crusades. The Starbound Gladiator, SaS V protagonist and the Gladiator (SaS I protagonist) all should fall here as well, probably as the strongest ones of this tier, although the Gladiator would be the weakest of the three protagonists. Antares at his third weakest point (SaS III) would be here too, as one of the most powerful.
• Particularly powerful champions would fall here, with most of SaS' historical figures too being here. People such as Arglaxx, Bors, Baron Wolfgang, Antares at his second weakest (During SaS: Pirates)...

From there on, most characters are roughly the same, with some above, some below, but all around the same tier

 

[Shmooply]

I'm actually surprised we don't have profiles of this verse on the wiki, I'll try if I can help in any way.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

I'm actually surprised we don't have profiles of this verse on the wiki, I'll try if I can help in any way.

I'm surprised too. I'll try to make a profile for Antares first, as I see him as the most emblematic character of the series, really. Once I do the draft, I'll link it here.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

This is a very rough draft of Antares (check the bottom of the page). I very much will change the tiering as it is only a placeholder, and I still need to take the scans of SaS III spells, which will be absolutely essential to give a good explanation to the resistances. The P&A section just needs a bit more organization, but it is the only thing that's done.

The references are messed up but that's because there's already a profile there using them, which makes the references behave strangely.

 

[Shmooply]

Whew, I didn't know that some S&S characters were haxxed, good draft.
Speaking of strong characters, if nobody called dibs on him yet, I'll make a draft for the protag of the 2nd game.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

Thanks!

It's actually insane how haxed they are. SAS III spells have insane levels of Fire, Ice, Poison, Electricity and Death Manipulation from the descriptions. All gladiators, even the weakest ones, can kill people by taunting. SAS V enemies also provide a lot of scaling to some Soul and heat-based stuff. In fact, just by looking again at Antares' page I realise I missed out a lot of abilities: NPI (Any character can hit explicitly intangible ghosts), a higher degree of Social Influencing (Taunting partly works through social influencing, and as a high-level character, he ought to have massive charisma), Death, Acid and Poison Manipulation (All part of the spell line present in SaS series) and resistance to 'em. He should also have Healing, Forcefields and some other abilities by other spells in-game, and he very likely has Unholy Manipulation, as any evil characters, at least those of SaS 3, can channel the power of their alignment to inflict direct damage to enemies and to heal.

Okay! I was going to work on him after Antares, but that's good as it frees up some time to work on the verse page and some other stuff.

Personally, I see that the most urgent matter is to tier the feats I posted here. All others are really simple Wall to Small Building level stuff.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

In fact, let me make a list of powers that pretty much everyone should have:

• Superhuman Physical Characteristics: Self-explanatory. As I remarked multiple times, everyone can punch people apart, take hearts and limbs out with their bare hands, break armors with sheer strength, dodge arrows, sound waves and bullets.
• Martial Arts: Not to a high level, but everyone is competent in using their fists to fight and can effectively grapple and shove people.
• Weapon Mastery: All Gladiators can use any non-artifact weapon shown in the series with no problem, that include but are not limited to, swords, daggers, axes, maces, hammers, clubs, polearms, guns, bows, crossbows, thrown weaponry, musical instruments, futuristic guns, explosives, whips, knuckledusters, and many others.
• Acrobatics: Limited to more higher-leveled characters, but characters with high agility can leap INCREDIBLY far.
• Social Influencing: Gladiators can influence entire crowds with their charisma, and taunts work partially by social influencing.
• Durability Negation: Critical hits in general ignore armor. Grievous hits have a chance of instantly decapitating the foe. The alignment abilities of SaS III all ignore armor.
• Non-Physical Interaction: Everyone can hit ghosts and explicitly intangible beings.
• Sound Manipulation: Gladiators can kill people by taunting in all games. This involves screaming, clapping, dancing or farting. They can also use musical instruments to cause very damaging, directed sound waves.
• Mind Manipulation: Through taunting, gladiators can make people abnormally mad or afraid for a few moments.
• Holy or Unholy Manipulation: According to Swords and Sandals III, anyone that tends to an alignment, something that is pretty much unavoidable, can channel their alignment to inflict damage or heal, although to be fair, only proportionally small amounts. It takes someone extraordinarily good or evil for this to be really relevant.
• Healing: SaS III alignment power, 'nuff said.
• Statistics Amplification: Everyone in SaS II and V can use the Windmill Attack, which needs to be charged for three turns, but if it hits, it hits extremely hard, more than double the normal damage. Besides, in SaS III and V, repeatedly hitting an enemy makes you enter in Battle Lust, which increases the chance of hitting any attack to 100%.
• Resistances: Somewhat limited, it very much depends on the character's level. But as long as they have the health and armor to tank it, characters take normal damage from spells. Said spells cover surprisingly high levels of Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison, Acid, Death and Soul Manipulation. They should also get resistance to Sound and Social Influencing.
• And, lastly, a significant amount of gladiators should have Magic and spells. Not all of them, enough to not justify putting in all historical figures and champions you see, but a significant amount know spells. They cover an extremely wide range of abilities, longer than this list alone.

So yeah-

 

[MistaClean]

Oh man! Can't wait for the profiles!

 

[EliminatorVenom]

Oh man! Can't wait for the profiles!

I'll just get the SAS 3 spell scans, and see if there's anything calcable to be put on the Calculations Request thread, and after that, it's just waiting for someone to do calcs.

I already have the draft for Antares and it's usually easy to make profiles for characters, Antares and the protagonists are the hardest ones.

 

[MistaClean]

I'll proably start looking for stuff from the third game, since that one was the one I played the most.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

The third game has the craziest feats, I think. Only the Tome of Lore has crazier stuff.

I'll start to write a respect thread for SAS and link it here once it's done. I'll already say that, from the third game, we have Bluescreen Death, who has the power of an entire army within himself and is considered more powerful than hundreds of futuristic battle tanks, and even all the stuff he faces in the tournament is still very small and minor in the grand scheme of things, with there existing galactic gladiators that face things on the level of gods. The Automatons also have crazy FTL technology, with SAS 3 showing being so fast that stars zip by the windows like a blur. The spells also have insane levels of Death, Acid, Poison, Fire, Ice, Lightning and Soul Manipulation.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

Okay, I uploaded most of the spells, and here's the haxxed stuff:

• Fireball is a spell that summons a white-hot fireball. Impressive as it is a 2nd level spell, easily accesible for even low-leved gladiators. This makes said fireballs between 2400°F to 2700°F, or about 1315.5°C to 1482.2°C.
• Incinerate, the 4th level fire spell, turns the very air an opponent breathes into fire.
• Electric Blast, the 3rd level lightning spell, projects a high-voltage electrical discharge.
• Lightning Bolt, the 4th level lightning spell, summons a natural lightning bolt.
• Electrical Storm, the 6th level lightning spell, summons a very violent lightning storm around the caster.
• Freezing Heart, the 5th level frost spell, makes the very air the opponent breathes freezing cold.
• Winter's Core, the 6th level frost spell, summons a cold from the darkest and deepest of caves to seep into an opponent.
• All necromancy spells up to the 3th level manipulate emotions to inflict damage, causing despair, sorrow and mourning.
• The 4th level necromancy spell, Spectre of Death, makes the spectre of death touch the opponent's soul, damaging it.
• The 5th level spell, Eternal Damnation, condemns the opponent's soul to the darkest pits.
• Poison spells in general are acidic and, well poisonous. Particularly remarkable are Venom Blast, the 3rd level spell, that eats the opponent's skin with its poisons, and Thousand Cobras, the 5th level spell, that has the poison of a thousand cobras.

All of that, naturally, only do normal damage that can be easily resisted with enough health and armor. Also, of note is that necromancy and poison spells only go up to 5th level, although their spells in general are slightly stronger, with their 5th level spells being comparable to 6th level spells of fire, frost and lightning.

The other spells that I haven't linked here are mostly about Healing, Forcefields, Statistic Amplification/Reduction, minor Probability Manipulation (Of the RPG variety of lowering and increasing hit chance), limited Matter Manipulation (very limited, the person can repair armors), and, more notable, Negation of other spells.

 

[Shmooply]

Time to suddenly revive this thread.
All five of the classic Swords & Sandals games are being sold on Steam for, like, only 10 bucks. Pretty neat.

 

[EliminatorVenom]

NECROMANCY MAGIC.

Resurrecting this as I intend to get back at working on this!

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

NECROMANCY MAGIC.

Resurrecting this as I intend to get back at working on this!

YAYYYY I think I had an unfinished gladiator profile I’ll have to pull up sometime

Or just completely remake it lol

 

[Nierre]

NECROMANCY MAGIC.

Resurrecting this as I intend to get back at working on this!

YOOO MY GOAT

WELCOME BACK

 

[EliminatorVenom]

The main thing about SAS profiles and what I had difficulty with last time is how to properly tier the characters, as most feats are really hard to put any numbers into.

We can be very sure that even random humans and the absolute weakest people in the world are at least 9-C, if not 9-B as they can tear off limbs, survive weapon blows (from weapons as powerful as firearms and heavy melee weapons) and do things such as slashing people in half and tearing off hearts. As for speed, travel speed is pretty much as a normal human, but they are Superhuman, if not Subsonic for sure, as even the weakest people can react to point-blank slingshot shots and even shots from shortbows. LS is at least Athletic Human, as they can easily wrestle and knock down even people made of stone.

Even low-level gladiators are very safely at least 9-A as they are orders of magnitudes stronger than said random people, and they can reduce people (and by people, there are wooden and stone golems!) to ashes with fire spells, completely freeze others, use natural lightning, lop off limbs and OHKO fully armored people, knock incredibly heavy people several meters in the air, quake the ground when they leap, among other such feats. They should also be Supersonic, as they can reliably react to electric blasts, point-blank assault rifle fire and sonic attacks like taunts and bardic music. LS is already bonkers as even random soldiers can do things such as fighting with gorillas and elephants and send them flying, and low-level gladiators scale fully beyond them.

It becomes way harder to properly quantify the greater stuff, though, even of the mid-tiers. They get a lot stronger, and the feats themselves imply far greater levels of power - the feats for mid-tiers are relatively few. They are explicitly way beyond the low-tiers, and there's some scaling to people who can obliterate boulders with a single strike, wrestling with beings that weigh several tons. Speed is clearly way beyond Supersonic too, but by how much is hard to measure. Plenty of feats about dodging electrical blasts, but with no details.

It gets slightly easier, although still difficult, to determine the power level of high-level gladiators. Creating storms that can cover entire battlefields, being more powerful than an entire army of futuristic beings' technological devices (said beings that treated any lower gladiators as a joke), setting fire to cities, sinking several ships at sea, darkening the skies by battle and generally interfer in weather and wipe out armies with sheer individual power, overpowering beings that weigh more than 200 tons, fully dodging and reacting to lightning bolts and meteors that rain from the sky.

Things get rather straightforward at the level of godlike beings, though.

I need to play SaS Immortals before judging, and finish uploading the feats from the official lore site!

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

If you ever need calcs! Just give me a call! I’m happy to scale any of your findings!!!

I actually have some calcs laying around that places even a low tier gladiator at building level for vaporizing a golem (I think I even got it to building+ for using the max value for the golem’s mass) also even summoning meteors!! In the City Block range!!

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

right here for reference :3

by the way! I'm curious on any thematic S&S matches. the only thing I've thought of is the Gladiator vs the guy from Gorn kinda boils down to slightly silly heralds with a passion for fighting as gladiators slowly rising up. also, both are indie

 

[EliminatorVenom]

right here for reference :3

Wow, that's cool! So we do have some solid numbers to put into the characters!

by the way! I'm curious on any thematic S&S matches. the only thing I've thought of is the Gladiator vs the guy from Gorn kinda boils down to slightly silly heralds with a passion for fighting as gladiators slowly rising up. also, both are indie

It's very tricky to think about that. At the lowest level it'll be easy to find matches, 9-A to 8-C are very wide tiers that has a lot of representation across media, but 8-B and 8-A are quite few. We might be able to have some matches with some SF characters. At 8-A we'll have, interestingly, matches against the god-tiers of Mortal Kombat.

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

It's very tricky to think about that. At the lowest level it'll be easy to find matches, 9-A to 8-C are very wide tiers that has a lot of representation across media, but 8-B and 8-A are quite few. We might be able to have some matches with some SF characters. At 8-A we'll have, interestingly, matches against the god-tiers of Mortal Kombat.

ouuu that would go hard! Kahn vs Antares sounds like a matchup that would go hard :3

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

I need to play SaS Immortals before judging, and finish uploading the feats from the official lore site!

sorry if I'm multi-posting a bit too much! Could you send that site over? I'd love to read the lore to make more connections with themes!!!

 

[EliminatorVenom]

ouuu that would go hard! Kahn vs Antares sounds like a matchup that would go hard :3

As much as I love the ideal, Antares would unironically stomp Shao Kahn. Antares is far stronger and way more haxxed. Which is a funny think to consider.

sorry if I'm multi-posting a bit too much! Could you send that site over? I'd love to read the lore to make more connections with themes!!!

No worries! Here's the link!

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

As much as I love the ideal, Antares would unironically stomp Shao Kahn. Antares is far stronger and way more haxxed. Which is a funny think to consider.

that is neat! but I am curious on why you have him scaled to town level! or at the very least according to your blog post about antares! there is no doubt that Antares would scale to the highest feats of his verse! and I was able to read that apparently, characters have caused earthquakes! which depending on the size could equate to that level!

also another thing is for the formatting of a gladiator profile! The Player character from each game of the series! just one profile for each of the games right?

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

• Antares' power can burn the entirety of Suul's Gateway, a very large city, and transform the skies. [Swords and Sandals V]
• HeChaos summons terrible thunderstorms that cover the entirety of Eddengarth's fields, wiping out whole skeletal regions, although each spell cost him his sanity. [Tome of Lore]
• Despite also dedicating a large amount of energy to keeping up his immense army, Antares was able to conjure an immense dark cloud to cover his entire army, to shield them from the sun, although the effort did leave him exhausted. [Tome of Lore]
• The battle between the Dusk Harlequin and the Grail Knight shook the lands, and a cabal of lichs, at Antares' command, summons a stormcloud that covers most of the battlefield. [Tome of Lore]
• Bargle, Sagan and Gantuulga, together, concoct a spell that changes the weather itself and makes the sun burn hotter on the battlefield, dissolving Antares' dark cloud. Antares summons Molten Death, raining meteors over King Lionel's position. [Tome of Lore]

would anyone happen to have scans of maps for this series? and additionally, any possible measurements that can be pulled from said maps? or perhaps areas of cities/continents/Landmarks mentioned?

 

[EliminatorVenom]

that is neat! but I am curious on why you have him scaled to town level! or at the very least according to your blog post about antares! there is no doubt that Antares would scale to the highest feats of his verse! and I was able to read that apparently, characters have caused earthquakes! which depending on the size could equate to that level!

It's a draft from a loooong time ago. Guessing by looking at the feats, I suppose I scaled him to people who could cause storms and earthquakes capable of knocking people to the ground over entire battlefields, which should be a Class 4 to 5 quake. I do think it is a bit shifty, so I oughta revise it sometime soon.

also another thing is for the formatting of a gladiator profile! The Player character from each game of the series! just one profile for each of the games right?

Yeah, each character from each game is different, and each one has different power levels, and the Tone of Lore has a different name for each one of them.

Without counting the non-canon series (Medieval and Spartacus), the strongest to 2athe weakest characters are: Post-Endgame SaS 3 > SaS 2 > SaS 3 > SaS 5 > SaS 1.

Post-Endgame SaS 3 scales to dangers that are far greater than Antares ever was (which I hope to get more info about once I finish up Immortals), SaS 2 fully scales to Antares at his second greatest peak of power (just below the Crusades), SaS 3 scales to a weaker Antares that was still stronger than most of the verse, SaS 5 scales beyond HeChaos and Belgrave by the endgame, and SaS 1 scales to HeChaos.

would anyone happen to have scans of maps for this series? and additionally, any possible measurements that can be pulled from said maps? or perhaps areas of cities/continents/Landmarks mentioned?

I'd need to check it once I get back home i a few days, but I don't believethere are any specific measurements, sadly enough.

 

[CuteAnimeNekoGirl99]

oh! For a generic thunderstorm that would be city-level! to support this Antares was able to burn a larger one and while that's likely above city and I'd bet it'd even hit Mountain Level!

I wonder if I could find any scans of Suul's and possibly calc the energy to destroy it at the bare minimum with an explosion formula!