A Big Issue With Death Manipulation

[Hl3_or_bust]

The power to manipulate and induce death. In its most straightforward applications, this ability allows the user to instantly kill others by manipulating factors associated with death to make them die. The method varies, however; some users may halt vital biological processes or attack the soul directly. Others affect their target on a more abstract level, simply causing them to die for no discernible reason, though death manipulation comes in many other forms, with some functioning on a conceptual scale. Death manipulation is often associated with necromancy and has a wealth of deeper potential uses and utility in the hands of a skilled user, with many death manipulators having the tools to kill even immortals and those with potent regenerative abilities easily.

This is the current description of Death Manipulation. It seems fine, but people who read it carefully will notice something:

...The method varies, however; some users may halt vital biological processes or attack the soul directly. Others affect their target on a more abstract level, simply causing them to die for no discernible reason, though death manipulation comes in many other forms, with some functioning on a conceptual scale...

Neither of these manipulate death in any form or in any way. The former can be applied to just straight up shooting someone in the face and the latter

the latter is literally just soul damage.

Simply put, that part of the description needs to go.

A possible counter to this is the fact that it is called "the power to manipulate and induce death", which has a fairly simple counter: that gives literally everyone who can kill things death manipulation, which is definitely not the intention in regards to the ability.

 

[Wokistan]

Seems fine, just class those two as bio manip or soul manip respectively.

I do wonder what necrosis is classified as though. That's cell death but is generally thought of in a biological sense.

 

[LordGriffin1000]

I agree with the removal.

 

[Junkoposter]

dew it

 

[Qliphoth_Bacikal]

Agree with the removal.

 

[CrimsonStarFallen]

Seems fine, just class those two as bio manip or soul manip respectively.

I do wonder what necrosis is classified as though. That's cell death but is generally thought of in a biological sense.

Necrosis is already considered biological manip in a few pages, and i would agree.

 

[Ionliosite]

I agree with this.

 

[Antoniofer]

Death Manipulation is an effect based power, so is kind of ambiguos, as any power that induce death is technically DM (welp, actually Death Inducement). So stopping one heart, I dunce an internal explosion, directly disintegrate someone are technically Death Inducement (unless of course, the target could survive any of that), the true form of DM is basically a variation of Causality Manipulation, as for manipulating the cause of death.

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

No

That's literally just killing someone, which is very blatantly not the intended meaning of the ability

Death Manipulation is being able to go "poof, you're dead now" and have the target drop dead for no reason. No sudden heart failure, no disintegration, no necrosis, no nothing, just a total cessation of life for no reason whatsoever.

 

[Antoniofer]

I was talking in technical terms, as the page simply induce death, anything that induce death qualify as such. However, if it going to be rewritten to involve only causal, conceptual or esoteric (as death-force for example, but that was rejected time ago) based powers, then guess is fine, and I agree.

 

[DarkGrath]

It probably does need to be better defined. The idea of what counts as "Death Manipulation" versus simply killing someone seems pretty clear, yet at the same time, it's hard to put into words when you consider the impact that the method has on it. What "methods" of Death Manip should be considered Death Manip instead of just killing the opponent?

 

[Blackcurrant91]

Death manipulation should only count if you can manipulate the concept of death tbh but thats just me. Everything else can usually be described with another power.

 

[Abstractions]

Death Manipulation as a whole is incredibly nebulous, as things that result in death can be applied to it.

While I agree it should be better clarified, how do we do this without making it too specific? Think about the Death Note and how we currently give Light Yagami Death Manipulation based off of it, if we remove the current description, it simply becomes a mixture of Biological, Fate, Mind, and Disease Manipulation.

If extinguishing life-force instantly (thus instantly killing someone) applies to Life Manipulation, what exactly does Death Manipulation add to the table? Wouldn't both technically be doing the same thing?

I apologize if these questions seem irrelevant.

 

[Blackcurrant91]

Yeah where does 'having an ability that causes death' and 'death manipulation' start and end?

Maybe like Type 1 (Causes Death in an indirect way. Usually ignoring conventional durability. Can be a result of other abilities like Life Manipulation, Biological Manipulation, Fate Manipulation Etc)

Type 2 (Can Manipulate and induce the concept of death)

Or something like that.

 

[Antoniofer]

I believe that with Death Manipulation people expect stuff like the Death Note and Death (Final Destination), not only induce death but also how you die (may it sounds like Fate Manipulation, but as I said, the "true" form of DM is a variation of Causality Manipulation).

It may also be Concept Manipulation by manipulationg the the idea of death, inducing it in anything loosely definied as alive. Of perhaps performed by manipulating underworlder energies, such nether.

For example, isn't te Killing Curse more of a Soul Manipulation (Removal) rather than Death Manipulation? Inducing death is merely a secundary effect.

 

[TheUnshakableOne]

Question

Being able to insta kill an entire world's population is naturally > 1 person insta death

So would resistance be ranked the same

Character x resist death manipulation that can affect billions

Character Y resist death manipulation whose best feat is insta kill 1 person at a time

Character X's resistance should be > Y, right???

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

I personally believe that Death Manipulation is the ability to make someone or something drop dead with no mechanism or reason. There's no heart failure, no messing with fate, no nothing, just them dying for no reason when you want it.

@TheUpgrade

Death Manipulation potency isn't created using the sheer number of people it has killed

 

[Antoniofer]

Rating "hax potency" by range or aoe has always been arbitrary for me, but up to the users for that.

There's always a mechanism for powers, is just that the more ambiguosly the power the more nlf-ish is; like in a previous thread, where people evaluated a power that do not allow people for attacking the user unless the user attack first, with no further information, the ability can only be deemed as Causality Manipulation, but since it was found that the reason why the enemies wouldn't attack was cuz the user was imperceptible until perform an offensive action, it was no longer considered to be Causality manipulation.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

This isn't a matter of belief. The definitions of powers is directly decided here, so there is no objective truth to be interpreted.

That said, we should try to make abilities reflect what comes in mind when one thinks of that. Making the death note, death from final destination and a lot more things just not count as death manipulation will weird out a lot of newcomers.

A tl;Dr of how I prefer abilities is their effect to be the same, not their cause. Every verse has a mechanic of how powers work that can be explained on the profile, so how we call it is secondary to the description of that mechanic. (And for resistance stuff, we already have biological mind manip noping mind manip resistances due to being wholly different, it's not a problem.)

And I disagree with making abilities specific and outstanding, ability overlap is a common thing. Mind manip has all the subsections of stuff like madness, memory and emotion (which itself has stuff like willpower and fear manip for it). Mind Manipulation also includes changing someone's biological brain.

So as long as the effect of the power is "the enemy drops dead regardless of durability", a heart attack should qualify as much as an avada kedavra.

 

[The_Axiom_of_Virgo]

I personally believe that Death Manipulation is the ability to make someone or something drop dead with no mechanism or reason. There's no heart failure, no messing with fate, no nothing, just them dying for no reason when you want it.

So hypothetically if character A says "die" and character B dies instantly (let's say they explode) that's death manipulation?, assuming whenever Character A says "die" someone always dies.

 

[Antoniofer]

Knowning the nature of the power is generally important at the moment of determinate resistances, immunities and power-altering abilities, so if someone use magic based mind manipulation against someone with magic resistance, despite the target never resisting mind manipulation it can still resist the attack due reducing the effects of magic on itself.

You can say that Death Manipulation is making other dies regardless of the nature, but would it be different to One-Hit Kill ability? That one power that we erased to being fallacious/ambigus (don't remember the reason now).

 

[ShadowWhoWalks]

If we limit Death Manipulation to "enforce the concept of death", then we can just get rid of Death Manipulation all-together since it would just be a type of Conceptual Manipulation.

What traditionally comes to mind with Death Manipulation is a power that targets an individual and induces varying circumstances or events that will lead to the individual's death (usually seemingly coincidental/convenient heart attacks or accidents).

It is sufficient to simply list what "causes of death" the character is capable of inducing between parentheses in the power section, or in the techniques section. As mentioned, the Light Yagami page is a good example.

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

You can say that Death Manipulation is making other dies regardless of the nature, but would it be different to One-Hit Kill ability? That one power that we erased to being fallacious/ambigus (don't remember the reason now).

Well, a pretty big part of it was mainly that it is misused (see pokemon insta-ko hits that, iirc, are just really powerfull AP based attacks) and because it's death manip a lot of the time.

In the end tough, reality warping is certainly ambigous, and most powers have no set limits since that varies from verse to verse.

Weather the death note could kill someone with 3-A AP and high regen is very much up for debate, but some other characters like Yogiro could easily do that. Point is, the limits of a power are decided in-verse, not by our page for the general power.

 

[Antoniofer]

Don't think our powers set limits to how the powers of the verse wroks (although, I would argue that powers like Acausality and AE does this); at the end it depends of how we define it, if it goes like "it cause the target die instantly, then several abilities would apply and it wouldn't be more different than One-Hit Kill, and if we go for "manipulate the cause and effect of the death of other" then we'll need to change a few things, including removing the Killing Curse from the DM page.

The pkm powers were deemed OHK due being quite vague, or at least it was believed so, one power is BFR and another Absolute Zero, that's why is important to known the nature or cause of the power. But I agree that the range of applications of powers depends of the verse and we can't standarize it.