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Undertale Soul Manip and Resist + Sans' Attacks Intangibility

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Saikou_The_Lewd_King

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Two related topics that have been brought up quite often, so I'd like if they could be cleared up. Neither of them are outright changes yet, but more like clearing up and seeing if it's accepted.

The first is regarding how we deal with soul manip and the resistance to it in UT. As you might know, we currently give monsters Soul Manipulation based on the fact that they can directly attack the player's soul. This is not mere game mechanic either (like just being visually portrayed this way), since they can also directly affect the soul in a number of ways (including the soul "modes"). But this damage isn't static. Indeed, the stronger the monster is, the more they will deal damage to the soul. It increases alongside their AP, in fact.

This would imply that stronger monsters deal more damage to the soul, with some of them being even able to one-shot a soul with their regular attacks. This should be the case for anyone above 8-C (since 8-C is the "baseline" for soul durability), such as the dogs in Snowdin. Of course, Frisk doesn't get one-shot by the monsters, but that's due to their resistances increasing with their own strength. Frisk at the beginning of the game gets harmed by Froggit, but a level 19 Frisk would take a ridiculously small amount of damage from even mid-tier monsters.

Note that this logic of resistance to soul manip would also apply to monsters, since they use the same soul-damaging attacks on each other in regular fights. This is even more blatant than with humans since most of their body is their soul, unlike humans.

tl;dr the strength of a monster's soul manip increases with their AP and so does their resistance. The resistance would also apply to Frisk. This also means that Sans' attack can ignore the "durability" of souls to an extent, since he can still destroy Frisk and their soul quickly. If this assumption is truly accepted, all monster profiles would need to be fully updated to match this.


Now secondly, Sans' "intangibility". A lot of people seems to assume that Sans' attacks are intangible to a degree, since they ignore durability. While ignoring durability isn't enough, it does seem like Sans' attacks ARE intangible to a degree. Indeed, Sans's only way of dealing damage is having Frisk be either in contact with or literally inside his attacks.

One might assume that this is just game mechanic and that Sans simply bumps his attacks into Frisk, but that'd be incorrect, since many of his attacks actively deal with Frisk going through them, such as his "sea of bone" attack, his dunk or the concept of blue attacks in general. Blue attacks are intangible normally but can still deal damage if Frisk moves while they go through him. Sans' normal bones act the same except without the moving restriction. It would also be false, since Sans' damage is based on draining Frisk' health gradually, which wouldn't be possible if his attacks simply bumped into Frisk without going through them.

Now this would have two possible explanations. Either Sans' attacks are intangible and just deal constant damage to anything in them or Sans' way of ignoring durability actually actively digs into his opponent's body, making way for the attack. This seems highly unlikely to me, since this would imply Sans can just target anyone's organs and destroy them instantly, so I'd favor the former.

tl;dr imo yes, Sans' attacks are probably intangible and should be officialized as such.
 
@ Apatheticskell This appears to be a very specific CRT so let's try not to derail it. Also that's not glyph creation.

I'm inclined to agree, but I'm only moderatly knowledgablein UT.
 
I was actually thinking about adding the platforms thing to the thread, but it was already clustered as is so I preferred to just not do so.
 
I'm not sure if Sans' attacks are ignoring durability of souls or if they're just really quick.

While Frisk does relatively take less damage at higher levels, that's because of a higher health pool. I don't see how Sans only dealing one damage while other monsters deal more ever translates into durability negation.
 
Frisk still has higher defenses when on a higher level, so it's not just health pool.

Because if we assume Sans just hits really fast, then this would make Sans quite into Tier 7, if not Tier 2, which makes no sense. We can't take the game mechanics of Sans hitting really fast as the reason for ignoring durability because it simply does not work here.
 
No? I don't believe Frisk ever actually takes reduced damage from attacks, you just get a higher health pool. You get a higher def stat but it does literally nothing to reduce the damage you take.

I'm not sure what you mean with that second part, why would "Sans deals almost no damage but really quickly" translate into Tier 2? I also wasn't using that as the reason for ignoring durability, but an explanation of why Sans doesn't ignore durability with soul attacks.
 
I don't know where you got the idea that Defense doesn't do anything in-game because that's blatantly false.

Because that would mean Sans can hurt End of Game Frisk normally, who is well into Tier 7, if not Tier 2. Also like I said, Soul Manip resistance scales to AP and defense. Frisk would take as much damage from a monster's physical attack as they would from their soul-manip attack, which is not much. Sans can still do severe damage to the soul of someone who resists attacks to the soul.
 
I got that idea because I was under the impression that the combat system never took the defense value into account, so you'd only equip armor for their additional effects, but you're right, it seems like this is a misunderstanding or me misremembering.

A normal monster could still take End Game Frisk down eventually, albeit more slowly because of iframes, but that's probably just game mechanics.

All of this seems good then.
 
Sans damaging Frisk is obviously an outlier, you just don't admit it because you want to keep pitting the poor guy against 4-Bs and 6-Bs

Okay, so I don't really have a solid opinion on this. Saikou's argument for intangibility...I'm honestly kinda skeptical about but I'll see if he has a point or not.
 
The reason that I agree with them being intangible is that other attacks blatantly aren't.

When you fight, say, papyrus (since he is the most similiar), if you get hit the bone doen't keep going through you, but simply goes away.Same is true for every attack exept blu and orange magic, which are intangible and only damage if you are moving or not.
 
@Ricsi Is that right? If so I may see intangibilty being applied.
 
here at 28:20 he gets hit with a heart and it disapears At 41:10 he gets hit with the barking of greater dog and the ones that hit him also disapear.


here at 9:18 he gets hit with a bone and it disapears. Same at 10:55, 11:34, 12:38 and several others At 53:18 he gets hit with a tear and it disapears too.


Note that most physical tackles also don't disapear (flexing arms, froggit tackling you, etc.), but the same type of attack sans does has been shown to disapear, so I still support it.


(will be updating this post with other exemples I find)
 
Maybe I should just replay Undertale...nah that will take too long.
 
Well, if froggit tackling you keeps going through you after it hits you, would that grant him intangibility? Because, if not, I don't see why Sans' attacks should be either.
 
The reasons why sanses should beyond that were mentioned, and froggit doesn't desapear because he is physically attacking you. Any long range attack disapears, paps bones included.
 
Yeah, that's my point. Froggit doesn't disappear, just like the bones. They just travel through you. Either both are intangible or neither of them are.
 
Again, false equivalency. Froggit not disapearing can be atributed to multiple things, the main one being invincibility frames (while under it, the game stops registering that you are there at all, and everything passes through you), whuch are not present against sans unless you use specific equipment.
 
And again, why would we not compere the attacks to actual bones instead of someone physically tackling you.
 
Sans ignoring invincibility frames considered gameplay mechanics. Don't think that can be factored in here.
 
Why exactly? It's something that sheer AP has pummeled through (Asriel), can be increased with equipment, nullified by sans to an extent and the nullification can be overcome with the afromentioned equipment.
 
And again, that is not the only reason they have to be intangible, as mentioned above.
 
And even if we consider them game mechanics, then I say the frog doesn't actually go through you, it just tackles you.

Long ranged attacks stop dead in all cases but this and continous streams instead of a singular attack (asriels lasers for exemple)
 
There are other projectiles that don't disappear when they hit you, such as Asriel's fireballs.
 
The Wright Way said:
There are other projectiles that don't disappear when they hit you, such as Asriel's fireballs.
Yes. The infinitly more powerfull attacks that would have absolutly zero reason to be stopped by hitting something solid.
 
Yes. The infinitly more powerfull attacks that would have absolutly zero reason to be stopped by hitting something solid.

Despite hitting something that's also 2-C to 2-B in durability?
 
Ricsi-viragosi said:
Yes. Because he was frisk gets the rating for being fodderized.
>Being fodderized

>surviving a full force blast

Frisk is fodder in AP, not durability.
 
Apatheticskell said:
Can we add Glyph creation to Sans' page to we have seen him use it in platforming attacks.
That's just called Platform Creation, Glyph Creation is something entirely different.
 
Sans bones must be intangible only when using his blue Soul Magic whereas his regular bones usually bypasses Frisk's Durability (KARMA is what bypasses Frisk's invulnerability which most of you guys already know by now) by directly attacking their soul but doesn't go through it. That's a simple way to understand how Sans bone attacks works.
 
Magi Hussie said:
That's just called Platform Creation, Glyph Creation is something entirely different.
There is no Platform Creation page. Glyph Creation is what you would think of as Platform Creation.
 
I am wondering something, how do regular monster's attacks hit the soul? Do they just tunnel through Frisk's body, phase into it or do the monsters pull the soul out from the body like how it is shown in some of the fan animations?
 
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