Invincibility and Other Insurmountable Stats
There are many abilities that some characters have that seem completely impossible to deal with. How do you hurt someone who is completely invincible? How do you kill someone who can revive from any level of destruction in seconds? How do you survive against somebody with infinite strength? If Smash Bracket was just a comparison between numbers to see which one was bigger, these kinds of abilities would likely guarantee a win on their own. But there is more to victory than having the highest number, and I will be outlining how Smash Bracket is interpreting fights when they involve some impossibly high numbers.
Putting Limits on the Limitless
Something important to note before we get into a more specific discussion is the general philosophy we have of trying to put a limit on everything we see. A character might be completely invincible in their story, but we have only ever seen them deal with threats in their own universe. This means that abilities with unique mechanics (such as magic) that they haven’t dealt with before could potentially bypass their durability. It also means that they aren’t guaranteed to be able to deal with anything stronger than the strongest thing that they’ve endured in their story. A character who is completely invincible, but only ever fights normal unarmed humans, hasn’t been portrayed as being able to handle power on the level of a nuke.
While there are some cases where we can’t apply limits (such as a character with an infinite value in a stat), we do try to use these limits as much as possible. So keep in mind that many characters who seem to be limitless may not be as impressive as you initially think.
Conditions for Victory
It’s also important to remember that death is not the only way for someone to lose in Smash Bracket. Incapacitation and pacification are also valid ways to eliminate an opponent. So even somebody who is completely invincible can be defeated. These victory conditions answer most of the questions I’ve heard about insurmountable stats on their own. And incapacitation encompasses anything that takes an opponent out of a fight, such as battlefield removal, knockouts, or making them completely harmless.
Examples
While the victory conditions and limits we apply should basically answer every question about these types of stats, I will still give some examples of how we’ll handle some common types of limitless feats. For all of the following examples, I am assuming that we’ve already examined the feats thoroughly and that they’ve held up to interpretation under our philosophy. I will be giving ways that each ability could be overcome rather than highlighting its strengths, since those strengths are apparent from the premise of the ability.
Complete Invincibility
Can be overcome by damage operating with strange mechanics (anything that doesn’t interact with traditional durability) or hax
Incapacitation and pacification are still an option
An opponent could still have higher stamina and thus outlast the invincible character
Extreme Regeneration
Incapacitation and pacification are still options
If regeneration takes too long, they will still be out of the fight and declared the loser (it’s hard to give an exact time frame on this, but anything longer than a minute or two is likely too long to matter)
Infinite Strength
Can still be outmaneuvered. Strength doesn’t matter if you can’t hit someone with it
Infinite Speed
This one is enough of a headache that I’m actually not sure how we’d treat it yet. We will have to examine it closer if we ever use anyone who meets our criteria for it. There’s a lot of really weird implications that come with infinite speed.
