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Undertale Soul Manipulation - Just or Unjust Removal?

Jinsye

She/Her
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This is in Q&A because I can't actually be bothered to make this a Content Revision thread and people want to downgrade the verse to 10-C anyways, but I was on Discord when Ultima brought up a point that the original thread didn't seem to address all too well.

I'm hoping for rebuttals to all these points since making any big changes sounds like a lot of work.

But let's get the small-fry points out of the way.

The DEF Stat
Here's our first issue, we treat the DEF stat as physical durability here. Why?
How odd. All of these are items that defend the physical body.
Is what the original post says, but look at the sets of armor in-game.
sXF1hR8.png

Why do we treat the Faded Ribbon, Manly Bandanna, Cloudy Glasses, and Heart Locket as physical defensive items when it makes much more sense to treat them more symbolically/spiritually? The same would apply to the Tutu despite the game saying it's 'protective', it's also implied to not really serve as actual armor. Thus them raising DEF would not be a contradiction to Soul Manipulation negating durability.

The only thing that could be treated as actual physical armor would be the Temmie Armor, which the thread so kindly points out to us. However, specifically speaking about the Temmie Armor when it's the only one that serves the point against soulhax negating durability and every other piece of armor doesn't is textbook cherry-picking.

The fact that the "armor" in the game is mostly shown to be symbolic, makes me believe that the DEF stat is more symbolic than physical. Unless someone wants to point otherwise.

Damaging the Body /=/ Damaging the SOUL
Here is the main point, the thread seems to say that damaging the body is equivalent to damaging the SOUL. Thus no durability negation. This is where I find it to be wrong, The SOUL is bound to the body, yes. But for humans (and boss monsters, to a lesser degree), it's directly shown that damaging the body doesn't harm the SOUL.

One of the most important piece of information, is that human SOULs can persist after the death of the body. This is why Asgore needs to gather 7 of them to shatter the barrier. Now, I must ask... if all monsters damage the SOUL as a natural effect of damaging the body, how would the SOUL persist after the body dies? The SOUL would take quite the beating and would most likely be destroyed along with the body if that was the case. The only way this would be the case is if the SOUL is independent from the body, in terms of damage.

This is also proof at the end of Toriel and Asgore's fight. You have to remember, Frisk has no magic and thus cannot attack SOULs. This has been stated explicitly during Napstablook and Mad Dummy's fight. If damaging the body naturally harmed the SOUL, then Toriel and Asgore's SOULs would not be able to persist after death due to the fact that their body has been turned to dust.

Now, I may have said that damaging the body does not naturally damage the SOUL, this doesn't mean that the opposite isn't true. Damaging the SOUL would very much hurt the body. The SOUL is the very culmination of your being, after all. A direct attack on it is bound to hurt and it reflects directly onto your body. This is why monsters could very much note that you are injured. This is why Sans dragging your SOUL around with TK also drags your body around, and why Undyne's green SOUL paralyzes you in place.


Conclusion
With the points in the previous thread, I don't really see how they're valid. This is basically just me looking for a counterargument here, however if this thread somehow results in dura neg being added back then I'd like to note that I do not believe it to be a one-shot like it was treated before. It's more akin to dealing damage regardless of durability.
 
I could repeat all the arguments from the first thread, which is very pointless, so rather, I’ll say this.

What evidence do we have that it DOES exist in the fullest, most haxxy form people want it as?

If we’re going to have Sans vs. Broly 2.0 I want a good reason for it and so far absolutely nobody has provided anything but speculation and assumptions.
 
If the soul is demonstratably not connected physical durability, then it withstanding attacks would be a form of resistance for the soul. Therefore characters who lack said resistance will be affected

Making it sound absurd does not help your case when at best we are only getting normal soul hax out of this
 
Yet we have only evidence that it does. Hell, even Ultima and Ed agreed there is connection to the physical body, they said so multiple times in Discord. All they differ on is the idea that attacks to the soul also damage the physical body via being connected, yet ignore the physical body’s durability, which is yet another assumption contradicted by the physicality of objects in Undertale and how literally every attack is, indeed, physical and how even monsters wear armor (which would be downright useless if what they said was true - as armor wouldn’t matter if the soul just gets stabbed).

There’s a giant stack of evidence supporting that you need to harm the physical body, and next to no evidence that you don’t. Furthermore, there’s no evidence that every monster has potentially one-shottable soulhax + very good resistance rather than just... very poor soulhax not capable of one-shotting and varying levels of minor resistance.
 
Undertale monsters attack the human soul, but humans attack physically, so armor do matter for them. Also iirc monster souls are more integrally connected to their body so the whole "soul damage is separate from bodily damage" could be a thing for humans but not monsters
 
So everyone who wears armor in Undertale is only for fighting humans despite how incredibly rare they are? That sounds pretty weird.

And given how gravity/telekinesis and Undyne’s spear shield works, obviously the soul icon is connected to the body as well.

So what’s more likely, that you’re being damaged by a spear stabbing you through your chest, or that the physical spear of physical magic is suddenly non-corporeal for the specific purpose of stabbing your soul, yet still damages your body as if it was stabbed without actually technically stabbing it?
 
I'm pretty sure the royal guard is meant to fight humans, especially considering that the monsters are very peaceful with their own kind

We're not really sure how the battle system of undertale translates to a fight. It could be the soul being pulled out during a fight, which seems to be how it works in deltarune
 
All they differ on is the idea that attacks to the soul also damage the physical body via being connected, yet ignore the physical body’s durability, which is yet another assumption contradicted by the physicality of objects in Undertale and how literally every attack is, indeed, physical and how even monsters wear armor
So everyone who wears armor in Undertale is only for fighting humans despite how incredibly rare they are? That sounds pretty weird.
Basically what Andy said above: You directly attack a monster's physical form because their nature is inherently magical and exists in unity with their SOUL (As opposed to humans, who are 100% physical beings whose SOUL persists after death and is mostly just a culmination of their essence, rather than their whole being), so there is really no difference for them, in that regard. Meanwhile, the actual target of most of the Soulhax in Undertale is Frisk: A human, so what we see happening to monsters doesn't apply to them.

So what’s more likely, that you’re being damaged by a spear stabbing you through your chest, or that the physical spear of physical magic is suddenly non-corporeal for the specific purpose of stabbing your soul, yet still damages your body as if it was stabbed without actually technically stabbing it?
I don't think arguing based on imagining the actual scenarios of fights is very fruitful when it comes to Undertale. Because unlike other RPG verses, the in-game interface is a thing which literally exists in-universe, and basically every character perceives and interacts with it at some point: What we see is not a stylistic representation of what is happening, it's what is literally happening.

Even then, the SOUL being connected to the body doesn't actually further your point. The body can still be affected because of the SOUL being targetted, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.
 
I just remembered, the whole reason humans attacked the monsters is because they feared their ability to hurt their soul, even though physically they were far superior. Actually I'm not sure if it was hurt or absorb but that should be another point for why it's dura neg
 
Monsters were feared specifically because of their potential to become unfathomably powerful by defeating a human and absorbing their SOUL, so, that's not a very relevant point.
 
It also match the fact that sentimental stuff already affect monsters in several ways.
 
Also to make the point more obvious than what it already is: Frisk can't touch ghost/souls as shown with Mad Dummy and Napstablook but magic does so every single second
 
Also, the temmie armor is made by a monster, who knows soul magic, and it heals your soul + increases it's invulnerability, so it isn't a argument for "defense is physical" if the armor is made with soul magic.
 
Should be noted monster's physical forms are extremely lacking, like they have so little physicalness that Alphys even comments on it, so you being able to hit their soul more is cause of that.

Humans souls need to be directly brought out of them for monsters to fight them, that's why monsters don't try to go for humans physical forms during battle cause they're far superior to monsters.
 
Undertale soul manipulation should be durability negation, as soul manipulation almost always is. Whether or not it one-shots a soul is a different discussion. The bottom line is that it bypasses the physical body, aka, their traditional durability.
 
If this is accepted, it shouldn't be added by way of we just claiming this happens, we should link a blog listing the reasons for it on an impartial, informative manner.
 
If this is accepted, it shouldn't be added by way of we just claiming this happens, we should link a blog listing the reasons for it on an impartial, informative manner.
I’m ngl, I disagree. The thread is discussing how the previous removal was unjust and is asking to add it back. If the removal was unjust, then there’s not any contrary-evidence- the entire game is literally based around using your SOUL to dodge, or your SOUL is taken away. It’s quite obvious should the previous arguments be ignored, and blatantly laid down in plain sight throughout the game.
 
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