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Clarification of 'In Character' & 'Full Capacity'

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Originally posted by -Pr-
Characters, generally, don't self-sabotage to the point that it will cost them the match, nor will they accelerate to 100 in the over-the-top use of their powers, unless it's something you can prove is a habit of theirs.

So, what IS In Character?

It's something that should easily be boiled down to "How a character will react when put in to a specific circumstance" namely a VS battle. How do we know this, or rather, should we know this? Simple: You can name any one of a dozen, if not two-dozen people on this board that could walk in to the offices of Marvel or DC and, like many other comic fans, be seen as having encyclopedic knowledge of a character or a team. The assumption is that with that knowledge comes a level of understanding of said character. If you're reasonably intelligent, and I know a lot of the people on this board are (even if they pretend to be dense as **** sometimes), understanding a character in broad strokes is not that hard.

For example, I've read less than... I'd say easily less than a hundred Spider-Man comics, but if you asked me to describe his personality, I could draw on said comics even without having seen movies or cartoons or even that weird TV show from the 80s, and tell you that Spider-Man is, deep down, just a person trying to do the right thing. He's a genius but also a nerd. He loves his aunt, he loves (or did love) his wife Mary Jane, and he would feel deeply the loss of anyone he couldn't save. That's simple stuff.

Now, if we talk about powers... I know the base-level stuff. I know he can stick to walls. I know he can shoot webs from web shooters he made himself. I know he has a Spider-Sense that warns him of danger. I know he's strong, durable and fast. Strong enough that he has to pull his punches so that a bank-robber's heart doesn't explode. Fast enough that he's not likely to get hit by gunfire. I have read that he's the most agile person in Marvel, though I don't know if that's true or just was at one point. But he does a LOT of flippy shit in his comics. That said, there are probably a bunch of applications of his powers that I haven't the foggiest idea about.

So, with those two in mind, as limited as it might be, I come to the third part: How Spider-Man fights In Character. How do I get there? Simple. As much as I want to be able to say "You go by how the character behaves, not how you would in their place", you still have to fill in the gaps once you take things like PIS out. But, and this is the important part, you are SUPPLEMENTING them. You are NOT. REPLACING. Shit. What you would do with Spider-Man or any other character's powers is great and all, but it's what leads to powerset v powerset, and is for tourneys, NOT for the general board. This part of the point is incredibly important. You are still operating within the paramaters of what a character WOULD do, as opposed to what they CAN do.

Even from reading the comics I've read, which I've already admitted is not that many in comparison to some of the people on this board, I can still say several things with reasonable certainty when it comes to Spider-Man: His superior agility means most enemies will have a hard time hitting him unless they have some hard counter to it like superior speed. He likes to use his webs, which means that character that specialise in melee are going to have a hard time against him, and Spider-Man KNOWS THIS. Because HE KNOWS THIS, he is smart enough to use this to his advantage. This means that because HE knows he doesn't have to close to melee range, that he won't stupidly decide halfway through the fight to try outpunching someone that could out-punch him. Or to waste time on someone that can be wrapped up with one shot of his webs. He can still get close up and win fights, sure, but that's an option, not a necessity.

Obviously, if someone knows Spider-Man better than I do, I'm going to end up getting corrected in threads when it comes to facts about the character, his power levels or his villains if I say something wrong, but the basic idea is still there. I've seen Spider-Man use his webs enough, to be competent in their use, and to avoid attacks while concentrating on his own, to know that at the very least, it's common behaviour. There's a reason "Spider-Man webs up Character X" is a viable tactic on the forum.

"But Pr," you might ask "What if a character has a power that they use more sparingly?". Well, to that I would say:

-Is it a part of their powerset and has been used occasionally enough (ie, like, a dozen times, maybe) that they won't forget they can use it?
-Can they access this power/ability right now?
-Will not using it cost them the fight?

And that right there? That's arguably the most important question.

If the answer to all three of those is yes, then they're most likely going to use the power/ability. Either their opponent can stand up to it, or they can't.

Is that simple enough? I mean, what else do you really need to know?

For the last part of this point, I'm going to use a character I know a bit better: Wally West. Flash is notorious on the forum, and you could say some of it is earned. Most of it, however, is not the fault of the character. If you, as a poster, put The Flash against someone that does not have the means to hurt him, then that is on YOU. It's not The Flash's fault that he's not going to slow down or trip over a branch just to give a substantially slower character a chance against him. And no, no talking shit about the Rogues, btw; they're all designed from the ground up to fight The Flash. They're not ammo for your favourite street leveller to have a shot against him.

If you put Deathstroke up against Flash and try to argue using Identity Crisis as evidence, you deserve to get laughed out of the thread. Like a whole lot of Marvel and DC, you get a writer that writes interesting character studies, or great fights. You rarely get both, and that fight, as entertaining as it was, should have been over before Deathstroke was even able to exhale.

-Now, continuing to use the Flash, and to briefly talk about the Superman Vs Weapon H thread:

A character like the Flash is not going to get hit by someone substantially slower than him unless they have some counter to his powers. Simple as that. Wally West isn't Superman (and I'm going to get in to this in a later post). He can't afford to get hit more than once or twice before it starts to actually impact his ability to win the fight. And this, at the end of all of this ranting on the subject, is where I try to lay it out as best as I can:

The Flash/Relevant Character X will use, at a bare minimum, the least amount of speed/Relevant Power, that he is capable of using under average/normal circumstances, required to not lose the fight, or get so badly injured that it will most-likely cost him the fight. Every superhero or supervillain has a minimum amount of effort and competence that they will utilise going in to a fight. For villains that's usually a higher starting point because they like to not hold back, sure, but the heroes aren't going to be stupid either. They are not going to self-sabotage, and they will not let pride, ego or forgetting they have a way to win the fight to get in the way.

-If you put Flash up against someone that can't beat him without PIS, that's not his fault. That's yours.
-If you put Shadowcat up against someone that can't get around her intangibility without PIS, that's not her fault. That's yours.
-If you put someone up against Xavier that can't get past his telepathy to push him down the stairs, again, that's not his fault. That's yours.

This whole idea of putting lesser character up against ones they can't (and notice I said can't, not won't) beat just because you like them more? I doubt it's going to stop, but seriously, anyone who does it? You're not being clever. We all see what you're doing. You should stop. You'll be better off.

If you read this far, congrats. I really hope this, or at least part of this, has cleared things up for anyone who wasn't sure.

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Originally posted by Sin I AM
I think that in character and full capacity blurs the argument

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Originally posted by carver9
For example, even though The Flash doesn't clock each of his own opponents in the first millisecond in his own comic, it is assumed that is a viable tactic on this board since it is a proven fact that he possesses that level of speed.

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Originally posted by Sin I AM
I think that in character and full capacity blurs the argument

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Originally posted by carver9
Basically. One of them needs to go because you can easily mention in-character but then someone would just throw out "they get to fight to the best of their abilities". Crazy thing is, fighting to the best of their abilities only applies to certain characters on KMC. Imagine debating powerset with Silver Surfer.

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Originally posted by krisblaze
Kudos to Carter for repping Diana.

Nvr thought he would do it.

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Originally posted by Stoic
Thank you.

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Originally posted by Arabus
?
Superman is clearly looping back and flying at her in the panel before she grabs him. Again, Superman pulled a similar super-speed loop back in 'Superman 21' that Clark remembers when he encountered Matrix Supergirl. The difference this time is that Superman is on the receiving end of being tagged, and he says, "She's certainly strong, and fast!"




If Maxima didn't have the commensurate combat speed (perception speed and limb speed) to go with her travel speed in this instance, she would have just plowed into Superman.




The Wonder Woman that I think Maxima should be able to take out is the one that went up against Superman in 'Wonder Woman 219'. Max Lord tricked Superman into thinking that he was Doomsday. No sooner had Wonder Woman barely had the chance to block Superman's heat vision than Superman was flying away with her at speed with his hands at her throat. There's a sonic boom, and just as she watches the world recede behind them, she realizes that he's going to toss her into the sun.

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Originally posted by Sin I AM
I think that in character and full capacity blurs the argument

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Originally posted by -Pr-
...Yeah, I mean, beatboks and DS kinda hit the nail on the head. If further clarification is needed though, I'm willing to offer further explanation.

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Originally posted by ShadowFyre
What really amazes me if this was a ww vs. marvel thread people would be playing up her speed all day, but here it gets downplayed

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Originally posted by DarkSaint85
People? Only beatboks is?

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Originally posted by h1a8
I addressed that. That wasn't DD but a clone. You know it's trolling to ignore evidence right?

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Originally posted by carver9
I see some posts in here that I have to own, outright rip to shreds. Let's get these scans ready.

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Originally posted by h1a8


Zoom was moving, minimum, at near light speed when WW lassoed him. That shit was impressive as hell. Far more impressive than anything Maxima did.


WW has blocked light speed attacks multiple times.

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Originally posted by beatboks
Zoom moved a gew feet.
He did so to dodge the rock WW kicked.
She kicked that rock because she needed him to move to know his location.
She was blind and couldnt see him. And he wasnt moving for her to hear and had stopped talking.
He moved only as far as he needed to to DODGE the rock. If he'd moved more than there would have been more than those few images a half foot to foot apart.

Surely you didn't miss that obvious a plot point.
She also succeeded because he allowed it. We know this because the instant she took him back to Flash and Cheetah he was free from the lasso as soon as he wanted (which he could have done at any time.

Zoom's perceptions make an Amped Wally look slow to him. Any tagging of Zoom isn't a speed feat for the taggerits a CIS moment for Zoom, because if he was operating at the height of his powers he simply wouldn't get touched, EVER.

That's why when she tagged him people saying it's a Blitz is such a laugh if a man walking around with a blind man's cane suddenly lift his hand at me am I going to expect an attack and get my face or body out of the way no I'm going to think he's feeling around for a wall