Powerscaling - Homestuck/MSPA

What's really helpful is that right before [S] Collide, Vriska discusses who's stronger than who and who should fight who. First is LE obviously (needs a ghost army just to slow him down). Then Jack English and Bec Noir (they need the most powerful god tiers like Jade, Dave, and Dirk to deal with them), and the Condesce is fought by John, Rose, and Roxy who are a little weaker. Then the weak god tiers like Jane and not-hoped-out Jake take on the Felt. This gives us a really good pecking order to go off of because it's at the very end of the comic.

Mayor solos

dadbert.. like what is lord english doing against his pies??? Hes def gokuversal

THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE:

Vriska Solos and it's not even close
Mayor Solos and it's not even close
Everyone Else

Earlier @Ferris mentioned how everyone can be "one shot by a fast dude with a sword", which raises a couple interesting questions.

1. Why can't the Striders do this (more broadly, why aren't sword/gun users the most deadly of the bunch)

2. Why do they upgrade their weapons at all

Question #2 is the more interesting of these, I feel, because it's also the one with the most inconsistent information on it.

Obviously every time a bladed weapon is used in "Huss mode", it works. Equius can shoot Gamzee, Roxy can stab the Condesce, and Jack can stab basically anything (even outside of this particular artstyle, Crowbar just shoots Jake in Collide).

At the same time, this seems kind of nonsensical as far as the plot goes? Like, if anyone could "just stab the Condesce", presumably they would do so, and the fight against her would last like, 5 seconds. There'd also presumably be no point in having upgraded weapons in the first place. What's the purpose of all the Bladekind weapons outside of the U!Katana and Caledfwlch if not the fact they "do more damage" against enemies who would "resist" damage from weaker blades? In the Epilogues, the gun Jade uses is described as firing "anomaly-powered bullets". Again, why did she craft this, save the fact that her regular bullets weren't cutting it (lol 🥁) against "high-level enemies"? Probably the most direct acknowledgement we get for this (unless there's something in the -sim games I haven't seen) is from the Skaianet files, wherein the Condesce notes Calamity's rifle "wounds her more than an ordinary rifle should" (implying a familiarity with rifles, being hit by them, and finding them insufficient).

Again, though, it certainly feels like you could just stab John if they didn't dodge lol. When Dirk shoots Jade with a tranquilizer dart, it seems like it's just "a tranq dart". In the published books, Hussie makes a joke about how Bro isn't "allowed" to hit Dave with his sword, because that would just end the fight instantly. So like, what gives lol. Do they become more susceptible to "real" damage when their vitality gel starts to run out? Do these gameplay abstractions only appear if they formally enter a "Strife" (and if so, why do they sometimes use these powers outside of such)?

As far as question #1 goes, I feel this mostly comes down to the fact that Dave and Dirk never really "feel" super fast when fighting other people. It's basically just Bro (and his speed is like, logistically impossible for reasons I don't feel like typing right now). Both of them are explicitly capable of flash stepping and other such anime moves, but it doesn't "come up" very often. I would just chalk this up to everyone being fast (Jade's reflexes are commented on in the Epilogues, and I think John is commented as having "windy reflexes" or something like that after he dodges Bec), but like... flash stepping seems "special", in the same way Equius' strength is "special".

Notably, the one exception to this is Gamzee, in pages 3738 to 3739. While flash stepping Cal around, Terezi says it must be enchanted with "puppet fastness". Obviously this is a joke about Terezi being blind to the fact it's Gamzee, to the point she'd attribute its movement to just "being a weird puppet", but with the hindsight of Dirk's soul being in it, English being repeatedly mentioned as "fast" in the Epilogues, and the fact that everyone who does flash step is someone who has Cal... I don't know. Could be?

Crazy how on Earth C Jade was objectively just the strongest around, but nobody really talked about it. Jade's powers are so broken and OP, it's genuinely funny, and they literally never bring it up or abuse the power in a silly way. What do you mean she can physically shrink planets or resize them to be bigger without breaking the confines of physics? I want a fic where Jade uses some of the planets are cueballs to play pool. Or they all go bowling and she's like "Don't worry guys I have an extra ball!" and it's one of their old planets from their previous session, perfectly bowling ball shaped.

She can perfectly shrink and move whatever she wants in space and has Dogtier Green Sun bullshit powers on top of that.

I also just find it funny that part of the excuse Jane gives for why the Trolls need to be controlled population wise is because they could outnumber humans and "take too many resources" away or whatever. Just ask Jade to make the planet bigger. It's really that simple. She could just make everything slightly bigger overtime thus solving whatever made up problem Jane had with the trolls. There'd always be enough land because Jade had the power to just MAKE more land by breaking the laws of physics with two fingers.

RE: Joshless i think question 2 is a dangerous line of thinking to go down in this particular thread because it basically cuts to the reason why powerscaling just cannot apply in any serious way to Homestuck LMFAO. I mean really it highlights the central flaw with powerscaling as a concept, but Homestuck is a potent example of how it applies precisely because part of its job as a story is deconstructing these notions we have in our heads about how stories should work.

cus the thing is that Homestuck has a pretty obvious system in place that determines which character wins in a fight; it's just that only part of this system is clearly defined and has a proper name. that clearly defined part is conditional immortality: once you strip away all the fancy worldbuilding jargon, the point of conditional immortality, really, is that once the characters reach a certain level, they can only die under circumstances that hold a certain dramatic weight. they're never going to be killed fighting an imp (even an imp who has the exact same powers as jack noir - everyone always forgets those guys were there!), because imps are neither nefarious villains or valiant heroes - there are no stakes in that fight, so it would be stupid to expect one of the story's main characters to go down that way. a bunch of other corollary rules spin pretty organically out of this; the heroes alchemise powerful weapons because you need them to beat beefier underlings, but a human opponent can still be hurt by a very basic sword because that's still quite dramatic.

the case for Roxy just stabbing the Condesce in the back is far less well-defined than the conditional immortality of the god tiers, but it still has a clear logic to it; the Condesce couldn't die unless it was dramatic, obviously, but she also has extra layers of magical (plot-)armour on top of that given to her by Lord English - so even though we're not explicitly told that an especially legendary weapon like the unbreakable katana is needed to kill her, it makes total dramatic sense that that's how it happens. the comic even has a name for her specific kind of immortality - it's conditional mortality, because she's not allowed to die until Lord English (read: the story) decides that he's done with her.

@JakeMorph, 2 things.

#1 I agree with you about the Jack-universe thing on page 1, I forgot to mention that lol.

#2 I never actually thought to connect conditional (im)mortality to the "durability" of the characters, though now that you mention this I do think this goes partway to explaining the discrepancy. I don't think it covers it all the way, but I do think it's helpful.

Namely, what form do these mortalities take? God tiers can clearly "die" from things that aren't narratively important (that's where the middle-of-the-road judgements come in), so although they might be fated to die in important circumstances, I'm not sure if that changes their physical toughness in any way. In general this might counter-intuitively imply that less important characters are significantly tougher, since there's no important way for them to die lying around.

Perhaps more relevant would just be the Condesce herself. When Vriska is planning around her in 7520, she doesn't seem to have anything to say about conditional mortality. Just to "keep hammering away at her until she's dead". If she knows about the mortality, this implies she thinks it could be circumvented by just "trying harder". If she doesn't, this raises another question. Did HIC die because her immortality was removed, or was her immortality removed because this is when she was fated to die?

Rewording, is it that English just happened to remove her immortality moments before the fight started, or was her immortality just that English set up the timeline such that she wouldn't die until X moment? Is Thor "immortal until Ragnarok" because he's tough or because he's going to die at Ragnarok and not anytime before then?

Beyond this, I also feel like Homestuck tends to avoid things happening "just because the plot demands as such". Just and Heroic deaths are clearly based on narrative, they basically don't even exist outside that framework (define "hero", lol). At the same time, the deaths are still based on actions in that narrative. However Cascade-y the events around them might be, a god tier won't die if you just shot them at random. They'd still have to like, be doing something. In this case, what's the "doing" that makes you "weak to knives and guns"?

Maybe it's bimodal? If you're at the threshold of a Just/Heroic death, then you can be killed by the blade. But you do have to be doing *gestures* "things" that would justify that in the first place. If Jack just randomly swung his sword at Dave, it'd just "decrease his vitality gel" or whatever. It's gotta be at the end of a fight, and it's gotta be cool (both conditions that'll likely mean his "health" is gone regardless). Maybe. Perchance.