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Do electrical attacks ignore durability?

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Dargoo_Faust

Dargoo_Faust

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I feel like the Electricity Manipulation page is very lacking in explaining how electrical attacks can actually function, as normally, electricity passing through a character has the same results regardless of durability. It more has to do with how well your body can conduct electricity. For example, there should be no such thing as a character who can "tank lightning" unless they dispersed the entire bolt, as in Real Life realistic lighting actually doesn't kill as often as it leaves people alive.

However, electricity in real life has a variety of effects that go from affecting the mind, causing the heart to shut down through interfering with your body's natural electrical pulses, inducing paralysis in limbs, et cetera. It's standard durability negation, even some of the luckiest lightning/electricity survivors suffer from some of these or need months of re-hab.

So, if we prove that a character's electricity is realistic (I.E., Black Lightning (CW)) shouldn't we also include durability negation, or better yet, specify this on the electricity manipulation page so we don't need to edit a bunch of stuff that links to it?

Sources:


https://web.archive.org/web/20150503033705/http://www.cetri.org/mechanism

http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~phys13CH/electrical_safety.pdf

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080515113311.htm
 
I don't think we'd be able to grant something like outright durability negation without feats of the character using it like that, though effects like how it factors into the nervous system and stuff being considered seems ok.
 
It just seems weird that even if we can prove if a chararacter's electricity manipulation as "realistic", it still lacks like every other trait we see in electricity IRL.

Especially with stuff like summoning cloud-to-ground lightning.
 
Fiction is weird with electricity as it is weird with just about everything else.

Electricity would need the statements or feats of doing things like realistic electricity would do.
 
Exactly; we use stuff like having comparable energy/properties for lightning to prove speed in calcs, why should we omit other properties of realitistic lightning?
 
Cole MacGrath is the exception. Usually. Using electricity as a defibrillator, being able to cause seizures via manipulating bio-electricity in the brain, etc. His stuff tends to affect the body in ways the lightning reasonably should. If this gets applied then he should qualify for this.
 
Yes, in real life electricity could be considered durability negation since most effects occur in internal organs, between the possible damage that can produce is:

  • Internal explosion (in case of intenses currents, it increase the temperature of the blood and cause them to evaporate, so the vapor torn the muscle and skin in order to get out).
  • Paralysis/Damage to the nervous system (since a current of up to 120 mA pass through them any major current will cause paralysis).
  • Fibrillation (Generally happens with AC current).
  • Respiratory arrest.
 
DeathstroketheHedgehog said:
Mainly because in the case of fiction, we end up with a massive amount of people being 'resistant' to electricity as a result.
Click to expand...
Not really? If anything it just means the people are insanely lucky unless they had electricity passing through them for a massive amount of time, at which point you might as well call it a resistance.

Example: Character A gets hit with lightning and walks away. It's more reasonable to say Character A was just lucky that they didn't suffer adverse effects than it is that they can resist electricity.

And I'm only saying this should apply for 'realistic' electricity, like the stuff we prove for calcs, which already demonstrate other real-life properties of electricity.
 
I'm actually going to go against the grain a little bit and agree with this.

As weird as fiction is when it comes to lightning and electrical attacks in general, it's still oftentimes portrayed a lot more realistically in that people can't necessarily no-sell it just because they're capable of walling a ton of blunt force, and vice-versa.

As far as "resistance" goes, someone who got hurt by electricity obviously wouldn't have resistance to it just because they survived after, same as how someone who survived being set on fire wouldn't have resistance to fire based on that alone. Simple, really.
 
Exactly.

And people can walk away from lightning strikes with no adverse effects due to luck and situational stuff. It's just that electricity ca do this in large amounts.
 
Electrify is absolutely not durability negation. The reason it shuts down organs is because those organs are weak in proportion to the body. Electricity has energy and that energy is what allows damage to be done; if durability didn't matter you could kill a human with Christmas tree lights.

While electricity causes more side-effects with the energy it possesses than, say, blunt force, it still doesn't bypass durability.
 
No? It does that because it interferes with synapses in the brain/spinal cord, which causes organ failure or paralysis. Size can sort of play into it, but otherwise people wouldn't get off of that just because they can tank physical attacks.
 
Assaltwaffle said:
Electrify is absolutely not durability negation. The reason it shuts down organs is because those organs are weak in proportion to the body. Electricity has energy and that energy is what allows damage to be done; if durability didn't matter you could kill a human with Christmas tree lights.

While electricity causes more side-effects with the energy it possesses than, say, blunt force, it still doesn't bypass durability.
Click to expand...
Then explain how tasers work.
 
I'll link some sources to what I'm talking about above.

(EDIT) Posted them above. Having higher durability doesn't make you resistant to a current passsing through you and messing with your brain's electrical current.
 
Dargoo Faust said:
DeathstroketheHedgehog said:
Mainly because in the case of fiction, we end up with a massive amount of people being 'resistant' to electricity as a result.
Click to expand...
Not really? If anything it just means the people are insanely lucky unless they had electricity passing through them for a massive amount of time, at which point you might as well call it a resistance.
Example: Character A gets hit with lightning and walks away. It's more reasonable to say Character A was just lucky that they didn't suffer adverse effects than it is that they can resist electricity.

And I'm only saying this should apply for 'realistic' electricity, like the stuff we prove for calcs, which already demonstrate other real-life properties of electricity.
Click to expand...
I understand what you're trying to convey, but this happens a lot in fiction. Especially in cases like pokemon, for example, where electricity fighters are as common as grass in the plains.

Fictional characters would have an e x t r e m e amount of luck to survive it each time.
 
DeathstroketheHedgehog said:
I understand what you're trying to convey, but this happens a lot in fiction. Especially in cases like pokemon, for example, where electricity fighters are as common as grass in the plains.

Fictional characters would have an e x t r e m e amount of luck to survive it each time.
Click to expand...
Pokemon is a pretty poor example, as many electric-type moves have a chance of causing paralysis.

It doesn't usually happen more than once or twice in fiction, though.
 
If we decided it would somewhat negate durability then resistance to it actually matters, so in verses loaded with that sort of stuff they're likely to resist anyways. That being said, you should still need feats of being able to pull off that sort of stuff for durability negation to be a thing you get, as opposed to it being a default ability. If the ability is not portrayed to bypass durability in Canon, it should not here.
 
Imo is should be a default ability for people who already use realistic electricity. Otherwise we shouldn't do lightning calcs any more, as that's another example of assuming a trait of real life electricity due to it being consistent in other traits.

So, if you can justify the electricity being realitics with how it interacts with stuff or via statements, I don't see why it should act completely differently than how it does in real life.
 
Welp, christmas lights have a 2.5 Vac per bulb, so isn't going to do anything to no one. Meanwhile, tasers, despite reaching up to 20000 Vac (do not recall the max output), do not cause damage since the peak of current last just microseconds, after that is just small peaks of currents (see graphic).

TaserWaveform
 
Sorry to sound crass but even if it works on humans, do you really see someone who can tank the universe's destruction having his/her muscles being locked up from normal electricity? Because that's what's being suggested by saying it just ignores durability.
 
Assaltwaffle said:
Sorry to sound crass but even if it works on humans, do you really see someone who can tank the universe's destruction having his/her muscles being locked up from normal electricity? Because that's what's being suggested by saying it just ignores durability.
Click to expand...
Why wouldn't it affect that person, if they possess biology that could be disrupted by electricity? That's the question. It sounds ridiculous, but stuff like acid can also ignore durability, so it's a far cry from being ludicrous on this website.
 
In theory, just in theory, the attack affects the organs of the character, so its more like ignoring conventional durability by affecting directly into its internal organs than rather just ignoring durability; we do not have a ratio between external durability and internal durability so, not sure how that would play out.

Also, a universal character that is affected by, don't known, 50000 Vac its make its rating questionable.
 
Matthew Schroeder said:
Pichu vs Goku speed equalized when?
Yeah, I agree with Assalt, this is silly.
Click to expand...
Can you elaborate on why it's silly, instead of of just stating it's ridiculous? Also Pokemon already has paralysis moves, so that fight could already be valid, hilariously enough.

If the electricity is portrayed realistically, it should function realistically. It's pretty obvious when we shouldn't apply this and when it's out-of-place, but you're not telling me we can deduce speed from electrical attacks like lightning by saying they are 'realistic', and then ignoring all the other properties realistic electricity has.
 
@Dargoo

Acid can ignore durability??? How? Because it induces a chemical change rather than a physical one? In that case slap irgoring durability on fire as well.

In reality no one can possibly have the durability of fictional characters. Something about their physiology has to be different to allow them to survive this kind of stuff.
 
Electricity is none of that, however. It quite literally disrupts brain activity. It's like saying being superhumanly durable can allow you to survive having your brain lose function or having a heart attack, which is far more silly than what I'm suggesting.

Acid ignores durability far more often in fiction than fire, to address that complaint. Neither relate to electricity, however.

>Something about their physiology has to be different

What, they don't have brains or a heart that rely on electricity?
 
Really is that in fiction (in most of the cases), electricity attacks are considered common energy attacks, causing explosions and stuff, that we generally thread them no different than explosions or strikes (that normally I agree so).

However, the moment that in the verse they state a magnitude such this attack carries 100000 V of electricity real physics enter into play.
 
@Ant Then why do we deduce speed from how realistically electricity acts, and nothing else from real electricity? Apply the criteria we use for the lightning doging feats, and we cut out all of what you're talking about.

I especially agree with your second statement.
 
Personally, I'm pretty strict with lightning dodging feats, I wouldn't give that magnitude of speed unless the attack comes from a cloud or its stated, I may consider those that can control natural lightning but if there's no other feat of that magnitude in the verse then I would use it; but that is just me.
 
Exactly. Shouldn't natural lightning, cloud-to-ground, act in fiction like it does in real life?
 
Characters in higher tiers should have organs with durability comparable to but lower than their own tiers, otherwise their organs would not survive their very movements.

This seems like a similar case to how we don't consider relativistic speed as immediately granting characters the ability to cause widespread destruction with their movement, or why light speed doesn't give you High 3-A. While this would be how it works irl, it's almost never portrayed like this and as such we do not consider it the default assumption unless the material shows that that is how it works there. Just as fiction almost never correlates speed and AP, it almost never considers electrcal attacks of ignoring durability to the degree you propose, and as such we can't really assume that as the default.
 
I understand that, which is why I'm saying this should only apply to electricity that already fall under our strict criteria for "real lightning"/"real electricity", as opposed to every electrical blast we see in fiction.

In no way I think this should be the default, just for cases where the electricity already acts realistic in other ways, or just is natural like cloud-to-ground lightning.
 
I'd still say that even this "realistic electricity" would need to show feats of doing so. I was told before that I wasn't allowed to use he argument of ice users killing regenners because freezing ruptures cells because the character in question wasn't shown to do that, even if it would be the logical consequence of that happening to them. Why should electricity users be held to a different standard?
 
Welp, if the electric attack is stated to have a magnitude (volts, current or watts) it can already be considered real (unless there's too much contradictions like the electricity causing explosions and causing effects that do not fit with its magnitude); similar to temperature attacks, if stated to have certain temperature it will be considered to have any effect that it have in real life.
 
This all also assumes that the electricity could even get to the brain to disrupt electrical signals. Electricity can be dampened depending on the material, and for a body that is stronger than anything currently conceivable, what is the guarantee that the current will even get to the character's brain to do anything?
 
Strength of a material doesn't determine conductivity; it can travel through steel, lead, gold, much better than it does human flesh. Unless you're telling me the character is made of something other than flesh, it shouldn't conduct electricity and less well.
 
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