How would you personally rank the following attributes of a character in order to determine their overall formidability in terms of how they stand in the Versus Forum when debating against other characters? Which is the most important and least important?
-Non-combat feats
-Fights against other characters
-Narrative statements
-Character statements
-Writer intent/portrayal
Is there any "right" formula which can be applied across the board to all characters, or is it a case by case basis depending on the nature of the character(s) being discussed?
If there are any other aspects I glossed over or that you think should be taken into account, feel free to add them.
non-combat feats and opponents battles are more important when comparing and measuring up how a character stacks.
The others such as character portrayal aren't important because each gen. of writers either adds or take from a character like thor he was once tough but now his at savage hulk strength level and based on fights hulk shows to be the victor. Narrative statements are like jobbings they're used to build up a character. case in point sentry was said to be as strong as a billion exploding stars yet from battles it shows to be not true since he lost to weaker opponents like hulk. also character statements aren't good either when you factor in non-canoncal,inconsistancy and multiverse.
I'd move writer portrayal up to 3rd. I think it's silly when, often times, we ignore clear discrepancies in power levels of characters simply because of limited showings.
Because if you actually adhered to this hierarchy of importance, for example, Iron Man is >>> dozens of characters that the boards consider above him, because of his number of showings and occasional narrative hyperbole.
I've always used the formula in no particular order of feats/fights, power set and portrayal. For me they are of equal importance because when looked at separately they can each be abused to a degree. The other things such as character statements etc play a supplemental role to those.
Last edited by dmills on May 20th, 2012 at 08:11 PM
Combat vs established characters can be considered as weighty, but ONLY when its consistently combined with narrative/character statements and general writer intent/portrayal.
The only thing that matters in a VS forum is fights. All else is secondary.
Otherwise you have even herald level guys with non combat feats that would make them high abstract.
Examples :
Thor/Mjolnir absorbing a bomb that would have destroyed 1/5 of the universe. Thor/Dargo/Bill/Thunderstrike's Godblasts shoring up the fabric of the multiverse. Sersi shielding the Avengers from a universe wrecking effect. Etc....
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Fights in and of themselves are the cause of all kinds of whacky abc logic though. They have to be anchored by other measures such as portrayal. Thor >Surfer>Hulk>Thor.
Last edited by dmills on May 20th, 2012 at 09:33 PM
^This is flawed. Because this would imply that a hypothetical character where he's the only superhuman in his verse, could not be matched up with others. So long as you have feats to use, you can be compared to someone.
You know the ridiculous things we could say if we somehow reverted to saying fights themselves are all that matters, right?
Illustrating some issues with feats only reminds us that we have to temper our interpretations in all aspects.
1. Non-combat feats (most important as they allow us to judge a character against known values that remain consistent, for the most part, throughout stories, writers, and different fiction)
2. Fights against other characters (can be used for powerscaling)
3. Narrative statements (Can be fallible if contradicted by actual canon events, otherwise usually reliable)
4. Character statements (there is a further sub-hierarchy here, based on things like whether a character would have a reason to tell the truth, whether they would have the knowledge to know something or not, whether they could have been misinformed, etc. Generally I take statements from scientists or people with scientific knowledge who have done experiments or are reading their instruments as being pretty reliable, in absence of other factors, for example)
5. Writer intent/portrayal (completely subjective and should not be used, cannot even be determined most of the time)
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May 20th, 2012 05:46 PM
