Doctor Manhattan's speed stat

[DontTalk]

Currently his speed stat is "Likely Massively FTL+ (Stated to have witnessed events so tiny and so fast they can hardly be said to have occurred at all)"

I am uncertain wether this is good reasoning.

For one thing the whole statement is a good bit ambitious about which degree of tiny and fast he actually talks about.


The possibly larger reason for me to doubt this though is that there is a huge step between being able to witness something and actually being able to react to it.

For examples you would be able to witness a camera flash, but are possibly not able to do any kind of action in the timeframe in with it occurs.


And even doing some action in the timeframe that happens in would only be reaction time.

From there to it actually being combat speed, like it is currently listed as, it is yet another huge step.

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

It do agree that this should only be for his reaction time not his combat speed.

This is hard to judge but it seems that the statement refers to sub atomic phenomenon so it should justify some kind of reactions though to an unknown degree.For example a muon has a mean life of 2.2*10^-6 seconds.

 

[DontTalk]

I am however already uncertain whether it really should even be reaction time.

As said being able to see something that happened in a very small instant doesn't mean you can take any action in that timeframe.


To give another example: The machines in cern can detect particles colliding close at the speed of light and the resulting particles that only exist for an extremely small amount of time. (So they can basically perceive those events)

But the computers that do that would probably be unable to actually execute any program in the timeframe those events happen.

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

They don't perceive the events they see the left overs and they try to calculate the trajectory of the particles, the kind of particles etc.

It's like me throwing a 100 different bottles on a wall and someone else trying to find which fragment belongs to each bottle.

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

Or to put it more correctly they calculate what happened by observing the results of the collisions (the detectors are specially made so that each kind of particle stops at a different layer of the machine leaving a trace of some kind, except neutrinos)

 

[DontTalk]

Don't they detect the photons the event resulted in as well? One could argue that partly qualifies as seeing it, but ok it was certainly not a good example. The camera flash one at the top was probably better.


Or to give one from another piece of fiction:

Index, from To Aru, can witness every single frame in a 60 fps game, but actually doing any defensive action in such a timeframe is beyond her capablities.

That is because seeing them is one thing and taking any action in that time another.


Even for an action performed through psychic abilities one would have to first witness the event, then understand what exactly happens, then decide which action to take based on that and then perform the mental process to activate the ability in the way one has decided to.

When it is just witnessing, the possibly far longer time for the latter three actions is not included, while for reaction time they would be.

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

Even if Manhattan can't take action he still has such perception so i think it should be included as reaction speed.Though it would remain as unknown.

The camera flash still lasts a few fractions of a second since regular humans can detect it.

 

[DontTalk]

Even if Manhattan can't take action he still has such Perception

The reactions page doesn't make it quite clear, but I think reaction time stats are supposed to be for situations where the character can actually do something.

Otherwise they would be mostly meaningless for battle.


The idea, in my opinion, is that a character with reaction time x can activate a shield or use telekinesis or something in order to fight. Different from other speed stats doing so just doesn't require any amount of physical movement of the character and hence can not be quantified in terms of speed.


So while I don't deny that he can percieve fast events, and mentioning that he can on his page is certainly not bad, I don't think that this would fulfill would should be viewed as reaction time for our purposes.


The point with the camera flash was that a human can see it, but not do anything in that time, not even think much. By the time a human does so the event is over (camera flashes can easily be as short is 1/1000 of a second btw.)

 

[Antvasima]

I am personally fine with listing his speed as Unknown instead.

 

[Ryukama]

Is there anyone Manhattan has bested in combat (such as Pandora) or someone who he should logically be comparable/superior to that his speed can be scaled towards?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Considering all the scientific terms used by Manhattan in the Watchman series, such as talks of quarks, gravitons, tachyons, and etc. And how his character is incredibly logical, scientific-minded and cold, I have no qualms in interpreting Manhattan as being literal when he said the statement. I.E, a MFTL+ ranking would make sense.

 

[Ryukama]

@Matt thanks for the input and that seems to make sense but do you know anyone Manhattan's speed can scale to?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

He seems to scale to the Multiversal-ish Pandora, and also killed the new God Metron off-screen.

I believe he will eventually depict powers to be ranked as Immeasurable, but as of now I think leaving him at MFTL+

 

[Ryukama]

Alright then.

 

[DontTalk]

@Matthew: I don't know if scaling justifies it, but for the statement I really don't think so.

Even taking into account scientific notions the statement is way to vague. This is less a notion about it being reliable, than what for manhattan qualifies as "hardly occured at all".

Especially MFTL+ combat speed makes no sense, given that it doesn't state anything about his own movement.

(Also any natural process would cap out at lightspeed, though for timeframe that looks different)


And as I discussed above witnessing fast events is one thing, actually reacting in that time is something entirely different.

That is even more the case for mahattan, who can see past, present and future at once, which basically means that he sees an unmoving version of any event either way.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Not really, because Tachyons exist in Watchmen, and FTL things also exist in DC Comics. You wanna know what is the tiniest event that can be said to occur? A beam of light crossing an atom. That happens over the course of 12 Attoseconds.

 

[DontTalk]

Which only answers my first point, which is still the smaller problem.


Also it still is a stretch from what was said.

It is basically like saying that if a scientifically knowledgeable character says something happened instantly, we should assume that the timeframe was smaller than a planck time.

You might say its fast, but just assigning some random short timeframe and saying "he must be refering to something at least this short" is a stretch.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

You could make him Immeasurable scaling from Pandora, since she isn't bound by single universes nor time and destroys multiverses.

But I'd rather wait for the next issue.

 

[DontTalk]

Do that when you think it is time for that. I don't know about the comics so I can not really evaluate it, but sounds like reasoning that can work.


Given the problems with the current reasoning, would it be fine to put him at

"Unknow (Stated to have witnessed events so tiny and so fast they can hardly be said to have occurred at all)"

or something similar, until you make a revision to that speed stat?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Sure, change it to Unknown.

 

[Antvasima]

I have modified his speed to Unknown, until we get further clarifications.