Apeironaxim
He/Him- 3,695
- 1,444
Old Number Man vs New Number Man
Misc
Subsonic Thinker Feats
Ok I want to address March. Currently she has Subsonic ratings for combat and reaction speed for minigun dodging and calculating in milliseconds respectively:. First let's address the milliseconds thing. The statement does not apply to March herself, as this chapter is from the perspective of two Shards, Victoria's and then March's. This is easy to see once you read through the chapter:
With that one out of the way we have the minigun feat. I will be debunking the use of the Subsonic end, and then even proposing an argument for why it should be considered to dismiss the feat entirely.
- General updating of justifications, scans, and References
- Removed the Notable Attacks and Techniques section, as the info it conveyed became redundant with the updated justifications and info that was being shared with the updated P&A and the Feats section I added
- Upgraded Stamina to Superhuman. He and his clones are just doing too many insane agility showings to not have Superhuman stamina
- Removing the Limited Bio manip. Currently it is due to scaling to Dripfeed, who can cause things like carbon dioxide bubbles and blood clots to form via his strikes with "very specific wavelengths", as a Thinker Teacher makes should be inferior to someone like Number Man. First of all this assumes a linear progression of power that just isnt really how the verse works, so Im not sold on that. Another thing is that the pool of Thinker powers Teacher can grant also include things that simply cannot be replicated via knowing numbers, such as the fact he can grant X-Ray and Infrared Vision. Number Man nor his clones directly fight with Dripfeed, and the only true comparison I know of said between Number Man and Teacher thralls is Number Man is considered as viable candidate to break Dragon's timelock encryption as a legion of Teacher thralls, but as is obvious that is related to hacking expertise and not combat. Number Man also has no showings quite on this level/as varied with people's internals, with the closest being that he was able to paralyze a man with a strike. This lack of feats for such varied bodily manipulation of his enemies, alongside the fact that we simply are not able to know if this power and its use of "very specific wavelengths" is one of the Thinker powers Number Man wouldnt be able to replicate with his own supernatural understanding of numbers, such as X-Ray vision, makes me believe that this should not be scaled to Number Man.
- Added Superhuman Precision for his multiple aiming/ricochet feats
- Added Damage Reduction for their spinning trick against Hoyden's explosion
- Added Acrobatics for his multiple obvious acrobatic feats
- Added Hacking for his statement for being able to work on Dragon's code
- Moved Sniper rifle to Optional Equipment, since he used it like one time
- Added attack speeds for his guns
- Expanded and reworked his Intelligence section, drawing a line between his own intelligence and that of his Shard's
Misc
- A new calc for Behemoth's India nuking was accepted, and as such his energy manipulation rating should be bumped up to 6-A
Subsonic Thinker Feats
Ok I want to address March. Currently she has Subsonic ratings for combat and reaction speed for minigun dodging and calculating in milliseconds respectively:. First let's address the milliseconds thing. The statement does not apply to March herself, as this chapter is from the perspective of two Shards, Victoria's and then March's. This is easy to see once you read through the chapter:
So yeah, this just doesn't apply onto March herself, as it's all Shard pov.
With that one out of the way we have the minigun feat. I will be debunking the use of the Subsonic end, and then even proposing an argument for why it should be considered to dismiss the feat entirely.
There are multiple reasons why I feel that the Subsonic end is not applicable. The calc does show the quote where she does some zigzagging and times stuff out for the minigun, but it neglects to show how March also wasnt perfectly dodging/quite fast enough in that proposed 0.015 second timeframe, still being hit multiple times in her arms:
The quote also makes mention of how March is moving into positions to make dedicated firing more difficult by putting herself in the path of Dragon's allies, even forcing the ship to stop and reorient. This is on top of Vista warping space in the area during the fight, likely making aiming even more difficult:
As a last point that's routed in less concrete quotes and moreso opinion, I also do feel that the Subsonic end is an outlier. Currently the calc has the Subsonic end at 88 m/s. Alexandria's main Subsonic feat comes from her moving as fast as a normal person runs at 1/10th her speed. According to our Calculations page, the high end of human running speed is 7.7 m/s. This means the highest we would rate that feat is 77 m/s. That is 10 m/s slower than March's supposed combat speed, the speed that you're supposed to be able to move at consistently in a fight. Keep in mind that before Alexandria enters the time-slow bubble, she is described by Taylor as "a blur", meaning the roughly 77 m/s she was moving at was more than enough to barely keep track of. And yet we have people able to react and perceive March just fine, definitely not as a blur, especially when Foil is able to directly combat her.
All this to say that I think the Subsonic end for March's calc both has some holes in it by the additional surrounding context of that chapter, and that even if taken at face value it's a hard outlier, especially with the story going to great lengths to portray regular humans and parahumans without physically augmenting powers as being within the bounds of irl humans. As such, the Subsonic rating should be dismissed.
A minor point to bring attention to is also the fact March has an unknown but small amount of time to figure stuff out and do some timing before the minigun begins firing, as when she has glanced back and begins moving, the minigun has not begun firing yet, only deployed.
The quote also makes mention of how March is moving into positions to make dedicated firing more difficult by putting herself in the path of Dragon's allies, even forcing the ship to stop and reorient. This is on top of Vista warping space in the area during the fight, likely making aiming even more difficult:
So we have Vista warping the space of the surrounding area, possibly making regular aiming more difficult, March already being in a position of friendly fire risk by the time the minigun spins up to begin firing, forcing the ship to reorient multiple times, and March not even being quite fast enough to avoid all the bullets from hitting her anyway.
As a last point that's routed in less concrete quotes and moreso opinion, I also do feel that the Subsonic end is an outlier. Currently the calc has the Subsonic end at 88 m/s. Alexandria's main Subsonic feat comes from her moving as fast as a normal person runs at 1/10th her speed. According to our Calculations page, the high end of human running speed is 7.7 m/s. This means the highest we would rate that feat is 77 m/s. That is 10 m/s slower than March's supposed combat speed, the speed that you're supposed to be able to move at consistently in a fight. Keep in mind that before Alexandria enters the time-slow bubble, she is described by Taylor as "a blur", meaning the roughly 77 m/s she was moving at was more than enough to barely keep track of. And yet we have people able to react and perceive March just fine, definitely not as a blur, especially when Foil is able to directly combat her.
All this to say that I think the Subsonic end for March's calc both has some holes in it by the additional surrounding context of that chapter, and that even if taken at face value it's a hard outlier, especially with the story going to great lengths to portray regular humans and parahumans without physically augmenting powers as being within the bounds of irl humans. As such, the Subsonic rating should be dismissed.
I think there's a case you could make to dismiss the feat, and even others like it, flat out with allowing no speed scaling, at the absolute best having a "possibly/likely higher" or "higher" rating.
So let's go back to one of the quotes
We even know Thinkers of this variation (March, Flechette, Number Man) get their info essentially instantly, which is part of what allows them to begin dodging and reacting in a space that would normally require faster reactions to accomplish, but is actually just the characters having the relevant info to perform their moves given to them as the thing is happening:
We actually even have another instance of a Thinker doing something that should normally grant a speed rating (and currently does on our profile of the character), but is attributed solely and explicitly to their power, and it happens to be March's rival, Flechette:
In addition there is the narrative point I addressed in the first Spoiler/Argument section, with the series making it extremely clear that if you do not have a power to enhance your actual physical abilities, you wont have super stats. These are normal humans within the bounds of normal human sense, the story is very clear on that. As such even allowing the Superhuman end of March's calculation to apply would likely be an outlier, considering the fact Flechette would directly scale, with I'm sure some fun ways to scale those two to a massive chunk of the cast being available.
This is why I believe that, per the insistence of the story itself and how it treats these powers, with the author backing it up, feats such as these should not scale to any speed rating, with at the absolute most replacing said Superhuman/Subsonic ratings with a "higher" or even "possibly/likely higher" rating instead.
Profiles Affected:
So let's go back to one of the quotes
So here, we can see there's notable emphasis on the fact she's able to evade the brunt of the gunfire via the calculations of her Shard, the giant alien supercomputer. The other emphasis we see is positioning, making it hard to fire on her without risking friendly fire. Nowhere here, nor before nor afterwards as far I am aware, is any mention made of March having any kind of speed above the human norm, to Superhuman levels. The intention seems to be that this was made possible, however baffling it sounds, purely by inhuman levels of calculations by her power and good positioning. The calc is firm in saying this shouldnt be possible no matter how good you are, and while this might be true most of the time, we also just dont have any visuals to see how these movements are happening. Couple that with the fact there's far more context to this scene than the calc would lead you to believe, as highlighted here and in the first Spoiler/Argument section, and there is a very real argument to say that yes, March was indeed able to dodge a fatal shooting by a minigun via really good calculations, no extra speed needed.
We even know Thinkers of this variation (March, Flechette, Number Man) get their info essentially instantly, which is part of what allows them to begin dodging and reacting in a space that would normally require faster reactions to accomplish, but is actually just the characters having the relevant info to perform their moves given to them as the thing is happening:
It's like a pseudo-reaction speed buff. Their actual speed is unchanged, but Number Man can immediately begin making moves because he has the velocity of something shoved into his head, and March/Flechette can do similar with their intuitive understanding of the angles and timing of things. Reacting faster than normal humans not because of an actual speed buff, but because their powers gives them all the info needed to begin reacting and maneuvering instantly.
We actually even have another instance of a Thinker doing something that should normally grant a speed rating (and currently does on our profile of the character), but is attributed solely and explicitly to their power, and it happens to be March's rival, Flechette:
Here we see that Wildbow himself, the author, attributes any higher aptitude for dodging attacks, and even the scene of her catching an arrow, which she didnt expect, out of the air, as fully being owed to the superhuman timing her Shard gives her. This is not too far-fetched, considering the first topic of this CRT, Number Man. The feats are there on the profile to see plainly, Number Man performing feats which should be impossible just because he is gifted with the knowledge/understanding of the numbers behind things.
In addition there is the narrative point I addressed in the first Spoiler/Argument section, with the series making it extremely clear that if you do not have a power to enhance your actual physical abilities, you wont have super stats. These are normal humans within the bounds of normal human sense, the story is very clear on that. As such even allowing the Superhuman end of March's calculation to apply would likely be an outlier, considering the fact Flechette would directly scale, with I'm sure some fun ways to scale those two to a massive chunk of the cast being available.
This is why I believe that, per the insistence of the story itself and how it treats these powers, with the author backing it up, feats such as these should not scale to any speed rating, with at the absolute most replacing said Superhuman/Subsonic ratings with a "higher" or even "possibly/likely higher" rating instead.
Profiles Affected:
- Number Man (Subsonic reaction speed removed)
- Flechette (Subsonic reaction speed removed)
- Contessa (Subsonic reaction speed removed for her human self)
- March (Subsonic combat speed removed)
- Armsmaster (Subsonic reaction speed via his precog tech removed)
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