Undertale's Soul Manip Resistance

[Agnaa]

I thought there was a discussion quite a while ago about this resistance getting removed, since it seems more like soul attacks just don't insta-kill in-verse, rather than seeming like every single character in the series (from fodder monsters to fodder humans) has soul manip resistance.

So, what was the deal with this?

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

The **** is that bullshit.

Sure fodders don't get resistance but soul manip scales with AP in-verse. Anything signifcantly stronger than fodder should be able to soul one-shot fodders and thus, should have resistance due to being able to take hits from comparable beings.

 

[Agnaa]

The fodders seem to have the resistance right now, aren't characters like Alphys, Sans, Froggit, and Monster Kid (Undertale) right at the bottom of the verse?

I agree with the stronger-than-fodders having soul manip resistance.

 

[Wokistan]

Well theres also the matter of how 0 humans died in a war with the monsters. It would seem odd to say that during a war nobody at least hit a human at some point, and it seems stranger to give abilities to entire species as opposed to saying "maybe this soul manip doesn't negate durability", especially when everyone is explicitly weak to them.

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

Hey Wok

Heeeey

Humans have resistance too

Also maybe the fodders scales to Snowdrake's mother, who is a much foddier fodder, but I'd agree with removing it from them.

 

[Wokistan]

Why would it be preferable to say an entire species resists a thing as opposed to saying the thing just doesn't negate durability though? Do we even have any indication it negates durability in the first place?

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

Because Frisk, a regular human, resists.

Because monsters, an entire species who are weaker than humans, resists.

 

[Agnaa]

Why would it be preferable to say an entire species resists a thing as opposed to saying the thing just doesn't negate durability though? Do we even have any indication it negates durability in the first place?

As far as I can tell, Saikou is saying "Removing resistance from the fodders is fine, but since soul attacks scale with strength, stronger monsters should still have the resistance due to being able to take hits from other monsters that would soul-one-shot weaker monsters", which is a take I'd agree with.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Sadistic_Sleuth]

Yeah, I agree with this. The the soul attacks seem to fodderish

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

It's absolutely a thing.

I think there was something about monsters' bodies tanking the hit instead of their soul, but regardless of that anybody with a DEF stat reduces the damage of damage to their soul. It is not the most effective resistance, but it's still there, just as fodder as it gets.

On another note tough, I seriously feel like monster's weakness to emotions is to downplayed. You can 100% one-shot them when they are sparing you, letting you one-shot Toriel, a boss monster equal to Asgore, even if unarmed and at 10-C (or should be at 10-C, since honestly when Frisk is at what tier is really arbitrary, and the only reason for the Tier 2 is hurting Omega Fliwey, whose only tier 2 feat is done in a manner that all of Frisk' keys can do. But UT is as fast with revision as Toby is with Deltarune).

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[Antvasima]

You can ask Saikou and Wokistan to comment here again if you wish.

 

[Agnaa]

I've asked them.

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

what are we being summoned for tho

 

[Agnaa]

Depending on your opinion, either I've disagreed with it, or Ricsi's disagreed with it.

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

Ricsi's post has like nothing to do with the subject except for the first few lines.

He doesn't even disagree with resistance from what I've seen.

 

[Agnaa]

He thinks that even the fodder monsters should get some resistance, when Woki and I were arguing that fodder monsters shouldn't have resistance (and that the fodder soul attacks shouldn't be assumed to be insta-kills).

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

I mean uhh

maybe

possibly

Personally I'd rather not as it kinda relies solely on the DEF stats to prove this.

 

[Agnaa]

I would have liked to say that, but I'm not sure exactly how we treat Undertale's stats, since apparently we consider them somewhat canon for some scaling.

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

Well yeah. We use the ATK stat specifically to scale to other ATK stats.

But DEF Is usually something else entirely and isn't considered for scaling. So idk.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

DEF is used for scaling durability. At least fir Jerry it is. And I don't think we should take one and ignore the other.

But unless we say no-one has soul manip then they would have some resistance regardless, just really weak. Anything that stop your soul from being destroyed counts as resistance.

 

[Agnaa]

Anything that stop your soul from being destroyed counts as resistance

Yeah but the point is we'd stop assuming that even the most fodder monsters would one-shot souls without their resistance, and instead assume that they'd require some hits to destroy normal souls without resistance.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

One-shotting souls is not needed to harm souls tough. An attack that takes a 100 hits to destroy your soul is still soul manipulation.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

It is still soul manipulation, but if it takes a hundred hits on even someone without resistance, they shouldn't get the resistance for taking those attacks.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

Except it takes more hits against them then it would against someone with no resistance.

If a normal person dies in, let's say 5 hits (an ATK of 4 isn't exactly impressive), and a monster takes 10 hits to kill, then they get resistance.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

And where exactly do we draw this source of reference to claim they take more than someone with none...?

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

The fact that they have higher defenses.

At most you can say Sans wouldn't get resistance, and at the very beginning of the game Frisk (but Friks openly gets stronger with DT so they would get resistance either way).

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

Then maybe should discuss about how the defenses are handled at all? Because from Saikou we can obviously see they are kinda in the air and weren't even used in general.

 

[Agnaa]

The fact that they have higher defenses.

At most you can say Sans wouldn't get resistance, and at the very beginning of the game Frisk (but Friks openly gets stronger with DT so they would get resistance either way).

We don't really get much of a reference for how much defense corresponds to how much soul manip resistance.

To play devil's advocate, perhaps a defense of 20 is the baseline level of no resistance, and every monster below that is weak to soul attacks.

We don't have anything indicating anything either way, so this seems like a really weak thing to base resistances off of.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

I don't see why we wouldn't base off baseline souls to... a baseline soul, Frisk at the beginning of game, no LV, no peculiar DT, and no equipment.

They are a child, sure, but their soul should be still a pretty good thing to base things off from. It's not like we assume intelligence and body strength scale to soul power.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

Then maybe should discuss about how the defenses are handled at all? Because from Saikou we can obviously see they are kinda in the air and weren't even used in general.

Since they are all in a single tier, I don't see why we wouldn't use that if we use ATK.

The two come hand in hand, and there are no contradictions for durability to scale to DEF as far as I know.

 

[Agnaa]

Aren't human souls meant to be more powerful than every monster soul combined? Why are you now assuming that Frisk's soul is weaker than every lone monster besides Sans?

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

This was the whole reason why monsters got the whole thing about their body tanking attacks for their soul, since Asgore took a hit from Undyine even when he had the whole not wanting to hurt her going on for him.

And I'm not sure Frisk's soul is superior in durability by default, since DT was the whole thing that mattered. But then I don't like scaling DT to dura, since ATK and DEF are unchanged and Omega Flowey is getting downgraded. But that's me.

 

[Agnaa]

This was the whole reason why monsters got the whole thing about their body tanking attacks for their soul, since Asgore took a hit from Undyine even when he had the whole not wanting to hurt her going on for him.

I don't understand this paragraph at all. I don't understand how it relates to my comment, and, this might just be me misremembering the game, but does not wanting to hurt someone reduce a monster's durability? Is that explanation ever given in the game? The only explanation like that I remember is that wanting to hurt monsters increases the damage dealt to them.

And I'm not sure Frisk's soul is superior in durability by default, since DT was the whole thing that mattered. But then I don't like scaling DT to dura, since ATK and DEF are unchanged and Omega Flowey is getting downgraded. But that's me.

Oh yeah, why would we even scale monsters to Frisk's stats when their stats don't really line up with what sorts of monsters they can handle, with their DT being the important factor.

Unless we want to say that the strongest monsters and the weakest monsters can all harm and take hits from each other, we'd have to disregard Frisk's stats.

 

[Antvasima]

So have you reached a conclusion here?