Type 2 Immortality is almost impossible to prove.

[FinePoint]

Spoiler: Context & Examples

I was debating whether surviving for about a day without skin and your face caved in was Type 2 Immortality in this thread.
The character in question eventually heals, but it takes a long time, and he's alive like that for a while. Supporting evidence was a character of the same species coming back to finish a fight despite being disemboweled and impaled earlier.

I thought that it probably fits the bill, especially since it specifically mentions that it can have varying effectiveness and exceptions, weak points like the head, or even just if the wounds are particularly extreme. Here is the current definition:

2: Resilient Immortality: Characters with this degree of immortality can indefinitely survive injuries that would otherwise be lethal to a normal person, without needing to heal. This type of immortality can have different levels of effectiveness and can be bypassed, for example, by causing extremely severe wounds or the complete destruction of the body or specific parts of it, such as the head, etc.

@Abstractions argued that this doesn't qualify, since the definition requires them to be able to survive indefinitely without healing.

To which I didn't have a counter since I can't prove that given he happens to heal.
Even if he definitely could survive indefinitely, I could never prove it because eventually he would heal just because that's something his body does.
And then I started to extrapolate, and realized even if I wasn't right about this particular case the wording definitely has a glaring flaw regardless:

If a character literally survives as a severed head for sixteen years, but slowly gains back part of their neck, and will some day grow back their body too, then you can't prove they'd survive like that "indefinitely".

Moving away from regen: If a character never heals, but can survive any bodily injury, but also ages and will eventually die from old age then you can't prove they'd survive like that "indefinitely."

Even: if a character never heals, but can survive any bodily injury, but we haven't seen their entire timeline from start to end, we can't technically prove they'd survive "indefinitely."

By using a word as absolute as "indefinitely", it's literally impossible to prove without a direct statement of almost the same wording.

TL;DR: Type 2 Immortality using the word "indefinitely" makes it impossible to actually prove without a direct statement matching almost the same wording.

So, I propose we choose words that are less extreme but still capture the idea. I'm open to change (or rejection) as always, but here is my initial proposal:

Characters with this degree of immortality can survive injuries that would otherwise be lethal to a normal person, without needing to heal, for a very long time.

Edit: Go to this thread instead.

 

[CreamyZoup]

I agree with this

 

[DontTalkDT]

For a very long time is vague as to what that time is and, for a character that does eventually die, it is not immortality.
And aging as a cause of death is actually excluded for any character that gets immortality, as they may not die from natural causes.

In principle we can also ask: "How do we know that a Type 3 Immortality character doesn't die from late stage complications after healing or due to some unknown resource being used up?" Answer is that we have little reason to assume that unless it's shown.

By the same token, I would argue that it shouldn't be that type 2 immortality covers only a long timespan. Instead, it should be that if an unaging character got their lethal injuries, all the effects that could reasonably worsen the condition further have played out (e.g. their amount of blood has gotten as low as it will from that injury) and it still seems like the injury doesn't bother them, then we should probably just take that as sufficient evidence that it will not start to bother them later either (unless shown, of course).

 

[FinePoint]

By the same token, I would argue that it shouldn't be that type 2 immortality covers only a long timespan. Instead, it should be that if an unaging character got their lethal injuries, all the effects that could reasonably worsen the condition further have played out (e.g. their amount of blood has gotten as low as it will from that injury) and it still seems like the injury doesn't bother them, then we should probably just take that as sufficient evidence that it will not start to bother them later either (unless shown, of course).

Well I suppose a note like this would be acceptable to me too.

It just feels to me that the current way it is written doesn't allow for assumptions like that.

But also it feels cognitively dissonant that if someone gets decapitated and is like "don't worry, I can survive as a severed head for at least fifty years" that we'd attribute that to what- a stamina feat?

 

[FinePoint]

For a very long time is vague as to what that time is and, for a character that does eventually die, it is not immortality.
And aging as a cause of death is actually excluded for any character that gets immortality, as they may not die from natural causes.

In principle we can also ask: "How do we know that a Type 3 Immortality character doesn't die from late stage complications after healing or due to some unknown resource being used up?" Answer is that we have little reason to assume that unless it's shown.

By the same token, I would argue that it shouldn't be that type 2 immortality covers only a long timespan. Instead, it should be that if an unaging character got their lethal injuries, all the effects that could reasonably worsen the condition further have played out (e.g. their amount of blood has gotten as low as it will from that injury) and it still seems like the injury doesn't bother them, then we should probably just take that as sufficient evidence that it will not start to bother them later either (unless shown, of course).

I've been workshopping a potential new ability called Resilient Physiology which may bridge the gap between the high standards of Immortality Type 2 and the nonsensical attribution of merely having high stamina. Would love your input on it.

Characters with Resilient Physiology possess bodies which can survive normally fatal damage for far longer than a typical human, without outside intervention.

For example, if a character survives for days without skin, whereas a typical person would die within just a few hours.

This is distinct from but may be connected to high stamina, which can allow characters to temporarily ignore their injuries to continue fighting, or Immortality (Type 2) which requires for their survival to be indefinite, even without healing.

Note that to qualify for this ability, their injuries must actually persist for far longer than is typically survivable, meaning not immediately regenerated.

 

[FinePoint]

Actually, I'm just going to close this thread. My new proposal hinges on the existing wording anyway.
This can be discussed in its more popular sibling instead.