IDK3465
He/Him- 216
- 74
Intro
It legitimately has pissed me off how little was done with Epithet Erased in the past four years despite an ENTIRE BOOK coming out over a year and a half ago. So, after waiting patiently for something to happen, I finally decided to do it myself.Initially, when I wanted to make this CRT, I only wanted to add all the new stuff from Prison of Plastic and maybe readjust some of the formatting and scaling. But as I started to work on this, the more I realized there was SO MUCH MORE missing from the profiles. So, I decided to bite the bullet, completely overhaul nearly everything in the verse, and set some new rules for handling it going forward.
By the way, enormous spoilers for PoP are below. If you haven’t read the book yet and want to get to it, do it now. If you’re a fan of the series but unsure if you want to read it, I’d recommend watching the book's first six chapters for free on Jello’s YouTube channel and then see how you feel. (That, and I just want more content for the series, BUY JELLO’S BOOK.)
(P.S. Sorry if this is hard to read; this is my first CRT of this scale, so please bear with me on this, thx.)
Anyway, let’s unpack this sh*t.
Jello’s Statement
Before we get into all the details, I need to acknowledge something important that I know will be brought up eventually, and it stems from this quote from Jello:
"Everything operates by like… JRPG video games rules in Epithet. You can get shot in the head and it just deals with some damage. It’s super hard to kill somebody."
What Jello’s trying to say here is those in EE can survive attacks from those far stronger than them due to simply taking whatever amount of damage, like a generic goon in a JRPG somehow surviving on one HP from the overpowered player character who’s 30 levels above them. In short, simply surviving an attack doesn't always say how durable that character is.
Using this, you can argue that nobody should scale to anyone. If everybody can survive stuff from those more significant than themselves, who’s to say if they can genuinely survive anything?
But I disagree.
The reason why Jello made this statement was in response to somebody asking about how Mera survived Giovanni’s critical. Mera is depicted as very fragile, so fragile she can’t get bumped without going to the hospital; this is an integral part of her character and the plot as a whole. But what’s also important is that she survives to continue in the series; that’s why Mera survived, not because she would generally be able to, but to serve the sake of the plot, basically, PIS.
Let’s compare that to the example I mentioned earlier; why did the goon not get visibly injured by the player? Because them being unable to attack or move after taking too much damage wouldn’t work for the gameplay, basically, game mechanics.
When you get down to it, these are the same things: the character is not durable enough to do this but does it anyway because reasons.
What I’m trying to say here is that the whole “it’s a JRPG, doesn’t count” argument is just an acknowledged form of PIS and game mechanics. It’s like how a character acknowledging a training montage doesn’t mean they can get significantly stronger in under a minute.
We shouldn’t take the statement to mean, “Anybody can survive anything, so nothing matters.” It’s all just context-dependent. Yes, we should still be careful with how we scale everyone. I’m not saying Mera has 9-B durability (of course not.) It’s just ridiculous to invalidate every single feat because “this other character survived an attack far stronger than themselves,” doing that is just unnecessary lowballing.
If this character survived a hit from and or defeated another, and it makes sense, they scale.
If this character survived something that doesn’t make sense, it’s what Jello talked about and just straight-up PIS/GM.
Besides, disqualifying a character’s feats because “in their universe, everyone can survive this. If they stepped out of it, they’d die.” is so dumb. If someone can take a bullet to the head no problem, they can take a bullet to the head no problem. And it's not like EE bullets are weaker. They can clearly break and affect things like in real life, and (while less feared) they are still weapons in the verse and are still considered dangerous. The whole thing about “minor impact damage” less has to do with guns being weak as it has to do with the durability of everyone in the verse.
People in Epithet Erased are just durable enough to take bullets, and that’s fine.
"Everything operates by like… JRPG video games rules in Epithet. You can get shot in the head and it just deals with some damage. It’s super hard to kill somebody."
What Jello’s trying to say here is those in EE can survive attacks from those far stronger than them due to simply taking whatever amount of damage, like a generic goon in a JRPG somehow surviving on one HP from the overpowered player character who’s 30 levels above them. In short, simply surviving an attack doesn't always say how durable that character is.
Using this, you can argue that nobody should scale to anyone. If everybody can survive stuff from those more significant than themselves, who’s to say if they can genuinely survive anything?
But I disagree.
The reason why Jello made this statement was in response to somebody asking about how Mera survived Giovanni’s critical. Mera is depicted as very fragile, so fragile she can’t get bumped without going to the hospital; this is an integral part of her character and the plot as a whole. But what’s also important is that she survives to continue in the series; that’s why Mera survived, not because she would generally be able to, but to serve the sake of the plot, basically, PIS.
Let’s compare that to the example I mentioned earlier; why did the goon not get visibly injured by the player? Because them being unable to attack or move after taking too much damage wouldn’t work for the gameplay, basically, game mechanics.
When you get down to it, these are the same things: the character is not durable enough to do this but does it anyway because reasons.
What I’m trying to say here is that the whole “it’s a JRPG, doesn’t count” argument is just an acknowledged form of PIS and game mechanics. It’s like how a character acknowledging a training montage doesn’t mean they can get significantly stronger in under a minute.
We shouldn’t take the statement to mean, “Anybody can survive anything, so nothing matters.” It’s all just context-dependent. Yes, we should still be careful with how we scale everyone. I’m not saying Mera has 9-B durability (of course not.) It’s just ridiculous to invalidate every single feat because “this other character survived an attack far stronger than themselves,” doing that is just unnecessary lowballing.
If this character survived a hit from and or defeated another, and it makes sense, they scale.
If this character survived something that doesn’t make sense, it’s what Jello talked about and just straight-up PIS/GM.
Besides, disqualifying a character’s feats because “in their universe, everyone can survive this. If they stepped out of it, they’d die.” is so dumb. If someone can take a bullet to the head no problem, they can take a bullet to the head no problem. And it's not like EE bullets are weaker. They can clearly break and affect things like in real life, and (while less feared) they are still weapons in the verse and are still considered dangerous. The whole thing about “minor impact damage” less has to do with guns being weak as it has to do with the durability of everyone in the verse.
People in Epithet Erased are just durable enough to take bullets, and that’s fine.
Star and Level Scaling
In EE, there’s an in-universe tiering and ranking system, or two, kinda?
Basically, everyone in Epithet has a level for each of their stats, the main three being Stamina (endurance, physical strength, durability.) Proficiency (powers, abilities, skill) and Creativity (variety, adaptability, intelligence.) Everyone is born with all their stats at level one. From there, they can train and learn to improve their stats and overall level.
Levels are split into three tiers from 1-100, ★ (Star / level 1-40), ⍟ (Orbit / level 41-80), & ✦ (Nova / level 81-100). For more convenience, these levels are represented by stars on a character’s card, with the different tiers matching up to 5 stars/tier; the more stars you have, the better in that statistic you are.
For example, a character has seven stars in stamina. This would put them at lower Orbit tier, two stars in, to be specific, which means that they are level 49-56 in Stamina.
Why do I bring this up? Because we need to ask, can we use this for scaling?
The answer is, sometimes…
We can’t always use it because if one character has a higher stat than another, we can’t always guarantee in which way they’re better than the other character. For example, take Percy, who is a trained and athletic police detective and can hold her own against several Bansai Blasters. Despite this, she has a stamina of 1. The reason for that is due to her incredibly low endurance. So clearly, an increase/decrease in stamina doesn't always equal an increase/decrease in strength.
Each stat has more to it than just “this character’s better than this other one.” several factors go into a character’s level that can’t always guarantee they’re better in that specific area.
You could have an infinite amount of power but are shit skill-wise, you could be incredibly weak but have the most powerful weapon, you could be a terrible fighter, but you can bluff and intimidate someone to the point it doesn’t matter, etc.
But just because it may not always be the case doesn't mean you can’t still use it for scaling. Take Howie Honeyglow, the only character as of writing with a completely maxed-out stamina of 15 stars. Jello has gone on to state that Howie is the strongest character physically in the series and has shown to be utterly superior to nearly every other character, with the possible exception of Zora, who could briefly overpower him.
It is clear that Howie’s strength greatly factors into his stamina, and as such, we can pretty much guarantee he’s stronger than any character with a lower stamina stat.
The point here is that if we know the difference between two characters’ stats is due to what we are trying to scale, then it can be used as a solid reasoning for scaling.
In most situations, however, what exactly factors into a character’s stats is unclear. In those scenarios, we should have the main tier be what they’d be through their own feats and an added “likely/possibly” rating for where they’d place with said stats until we better understand the character’s capabilities.
To summarize, the new rules for star/level/tier scaling are:
Basically, everyone in Epithet has a level for each of their stats, the main three being Stamina (endurance, physical strength, durability.) Proficiency (powers, abilities, skill) and Creativity (variety, adaptability, intelligence.) Everyone is born with all their stats at level one. From there, they can train and learn to improve their stats and overall level.
Levels are split into three tiers from 1-100, ★ (Star / level 1-40), ⍟ (Orbit / level 41-80), & ✦ (Nova / level 81-100). For more convenience, these levels are represented by stars on a character’s card, with the different tiers matching up to 5 stars/tier; the more stars you have, the better in that statistic you are.
For example, a character has seven stars in stamina. This would put them at lower Orbit tier, two stars in, to be specific, which means that they are level 49-56 in Stamina.
Why do I bring this up? Because we need to ask, can we use this for scaling?
The answer is, sometimes…
We can’t always use it because if one character has a higher stat than another, we can’t always guarantee in which way they’re better than the other character. For example, take Percy, who is a trained and athletic police detective and can hold her own against several Bansai Blasters. Despite this, she has a stamina of 1. The reason for that is due to her incredibly low endurance. So clearly, an increase/decrease in stamina doesn't always equal an increase/decrease in strength.
Each stat has more to it than just “this character’s better than this other one.” several factors go into a character’s level that can’t always guarantee they’re better in that specific area.
You could have an infinite amount of power but are shit skill-wise, you could be incredibly weak but have the most powerful weapon, you could be a terrible fighter, but you can bluff and intimidate someone to the point it doesn’t matter, etc.
But just because it may not always be the case doesn't mean you can’t still use it for scaling. Take Howie Honeyglow, the only character as of writing with a completely maxed-out stamina of 15 stars. Jello has gone on to state that Howie is the strongest character physically in the series and has shown to be utterly superior to nearly every other character, with the possible exception of Zora, who could briefly overpower him.
It is clear that Howie’s strength greatly factors into his stamina, and as such, we can pretty much guarantee he’s stronger than any character with a lower stamina stat.
The point here is that if we know the difference between two characters’ stats is due to what we are trying to scale, then it can be used as a solid reasoning for scaling.
In most situations, however, what exactly factors into a character’s stats is unclear. In those scenarios, we should have the main tier be what they’d be through their own feats and an added “likely/possibly” rating for where they’d place with said stats until we better understand the character’s capabilities.
To summarize, the new rules for star/level/tier scaling are:
- If two characters show specific reasoning for their difference in a statistic other than what’s trying to be scaled, they shouldn’t be assumed to be better or weaker in that category, and that statistic shouldn’t be used as justification for scaling. (ex, if a character is shown to have higher stamina than another due to endurance rather than AP, then don’t automatically scale AP to said character.)
- Two characters whose difference in a statistic is directly shown to be due to what we’re scaling would be allowed as solid reasoning. (ex, if a character has a higher stamina than another and is directly shown to be due to said character’s AP, they should scale in AP above the latter character.)
- Two characters whose difference in a statistic has unclear or unknown reasoning should be given one tier for where they’d place with their own feats and another “likely/possibly” rating for where they’d put with star/level/tier scaling. (ex, if a character has a higher stamina than another, but it’s unclear if that’s due to AP or not, the rules above apply to said character’s AP.)
Epithet Energy/Aura as an Energy System
On our site, we accept a form of scaling called an Energy System. An ES is essentially a way to scale based on an in-universe form of energy like mana, ki, or whatever.
For example, if a character used a spell to make a storm and it requires X amount of mana, then (assuming that it’s at least a Non-Physical Energy System) all spells and abilities that use more mana than it would be more powerful and can, therefore scale above the storm creation spell.
The reason why I’m talking about this is because I want to discuss how this applies to the Epithets and how that’ll affect scaling.
First, let’s see if they even qualify as an energy system before we figure out which type it is:
Throughout the series, it is clear that Epithets aren't just mere abstract words tied to people to represent their powers, but an actual real physical force that exists within all inscribed.
Inscribed have a certain amount of energy they can harness in the form of their abilities without tuckering out, with specific techniques often requiring more power than others to work. This is shown when Molly cannot nullify all of her friends' transmutations, only really being capable of doing two people at once. She also had to return to her bug form to have enough energy to protect everyone from Graham.
This force gives them all their abilities and can be controlled, harnessed, and grow in power by training it. This Epithet Aura/Energy is the power source for nearly all of what an inscribed can do.
This aligns with our energy system definition, as I stated earlier.
Now that we know Epithet energy is an energy system, which type is it?
Powers that scale to each other should
There’s also some evidence for a UES, but unlike the previous types, there are many more contradictions, such as how many people’s powers are strong but physically weak. As such, I’ll leave it at NPES for now, but if anyone has solid evidence for a full UES, I’d like to hear it, but please understand that it would lead to some significant wankiness.
For example, if a character used a spell to make a storm and it requires X amount of mana, then (assuming that it’s at least a Non-Physical Energy System) all spells and abilities that use more mana than it would be more powerful and can, therefore scale above the storm creation spell.
The reason why I’m talking about this is because I want to discuss how this applies to the Epithets and how that’ll affect scaling.
First, let’s see if they even qualify as an energy system before we figure out which type it is:
Throughout the series, it is clear that Epithets aren't just mere abstract words tied to people to represent their powers, but an actual real physical force that exists within all inscribed.
Inscribed have a certain amount of energy they can harness in the form of their abilities without tuckering out, with specific techniques often requiring more power than others to work. This is shown when Molly cannot nullify all of her friends' transmutations, only really being capable of doing two people at once. She also had to return to her bug form to have enough energy to protect everyone from Graham.
This force gives them all their abilities and can be controlled, harnessed, and grow in power by training it. This Epithet Aura/Energy is the power source for nearly all of what an inscribed can do.
This aligns with our energy system definition, as I stated earlier.
Now that we know Epithet energy is an energy system, which type is it?
Limited Energy System
The requirements of a LES are as follows:Powers that scale to each other should
- Draw from the same source of power (or can convert between the different kinds of power)
- Use up a similar amount of power to each other.
- Alternatively, it would also suffice to show that the user can invest similar amounts of power into any given technique, should they want to.
- As I mentioned, Epithet Aura/Energy is the power source for nearly everything an inscribed can do.
- All abilities come from what the inscribed interprets their epithet and how creative they can be with it, meaning all abilities they have are just different applications of the same underlying energy.
- Inscribed are stated to have their Epithet directly tied to their soul, further cementing that all these powers are connected
- Lorelai is stated to have created mini pocket realities and earthquakes in her sleep, both likely being around the same level of power (tier 8-7 or so), as well as implied to use up the same amount of energy to each other (very little of it, sure, but the point still stands).
- inscribed can control this energy in any way they want and how much energy gets applied to a given attack.
- Upon being confronted more directly, Sylvie chose to use more of his energy to summon Beefton.
- Both Ramsey and Percy could use far more power than the typical applications of their Epithets at will.
- Molly was directly stated to be able to channelher Epithet into different areas, making more focused areas stronger while less focused ones decrease in potency.
- Rick can switch on and off any of his friends’ powers so he pleases
- They can imbue objects with Epithet energy, such as the Arsene Amulet and Zora’s bullets.
- Those with large enough proficiency and control with their epithet can use their Epitome (the single strongest application of one’s Epithet) at will.
Non-Physical Energy System
The requirements of a NPES are as follows:- A character or the system they are using needs to fulfill all criteria for a Limited Energy System, but for all techniques.
- They have to demonstrate or have reliable statements that all their supernatural or otherwise non-physical powers scale to each other in Attack Potency. Hence, an increase in power / energy should correspond to a proportional increase in the potency of their powers and abilities.
- As I have mentioned, all of an inscribed’s powers come from how they interpret their Epithet and are, as such, just different applications of the same underlying energy. So, it should stand to reason all the previous rules mentioned apply to all Epithet abilities and users.
- The more energy something has, the more potent it is.
- Molly being able to lessen an ability requires less energy than completely nullifying one.
- The more Mera trains her Epithet, the more potent it gets (unfortunately, due to the way her powers work, it causes her to be weaker physically)
- Sylvie is visibly weakened upon losing his Epithet, while Mera can feel herself becoming stronger.
- The fewer friends and, therefore, power Rick has, the weaker he gets, and vice-versa.
- Duel Techs (moves that combine multiple Epithet powers) are shown to be more powerful than normal ones.
- Mera and Indus dealt more damage by combining their Epithets into the Scattergun technique.
- Molly, Giovanni, Rick, Trixie, and Pheonica were unable to take down Hydra Graham themselves, but after combining their power into one attack, they were able to fully destroy him.
- Inscribing an object requires a permanent loss in proficiency, implying that proficiency is somewhat tied to how much Epithet energy someone has. And because those with higher proficiency are shown to have more power and control over their epithet, that means the more energy someone has, the stronger their attacks are.
- This is supported by how Rick’s powers work; the more friends he has (i.e. Epithet energy he has access to), the higher his proficiency gets.
- This also implies Epithet energy is increased by training and skill, which is supported by the leveling system.
There’s also some evidence for a UES, but unlike the previous types, there are many more contradictions, such as how many people’s powers are strong but physically weak. As such, I’ll leave it at NPES for now, but if anyone has solid evidence for a full UES, I’d like to hear it, but please understand that it would lead to some significant wankiness.
Vote Tally
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Conclusion
I have a lot more I want to do with this verse, but I’ll leave it at this for now as this CRT’s getting pretty long. I plan next time to get into how the scaling will be handled and where everyone will be upgraded to (it’s honestly ridiculous how downplayed the verse is rn like there’s so much tier 9 stuff for everyone, yet none of it is listed in the profiles, wtf.)Anyway, that’s all for now,
but please, do yourself a favor and…
BUY JELLO’S BOOK. PRISON OF PLASTIC, AVAILABLE WITH AUDIOBOOK NOW EITHER ONLINE OR AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE
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