In light of recent events:
That isn't sarcastic. I read through the update, thought of your post, and I haven't been able to stop grinning.
Dragon Ball: After the End
In light of recent events:
That isn't sarcastic. I read through the update, thought of your post, and I haven't been able to stop grinning.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I'm pretty sure it would be mild bruising at worst, which the bean would immediately fix.
Vegeta did it with a sneak attack whilst our guard is down. We were holding off Berra with Dandeer so effectively that it was clear he couldn't touch us. Granted, Vegeta is faster than Berra was as a GO, but it's a pretty huge advantage. If all we need to do is hover near them and swing Dandeer around, I'm very confident we can manage that.
Maybe it'd be possible to counteract the downsides by using Senzu beans?
Like, put a Senzu bean in your mouth, shoot a healing beam at someone and then eat it immediately to restore our energy. Sure, it's not as effective as giving them a Senzu bean, but it doesn't give Yammar an opening to knock us out either.
Alternatively, we could just fight defensively in order to stall and call for help until we either get an army of Gokun sorcerers or either Jaffur or Berra get back up. I mean, we're the good guys here, and the advantage of that is that everyone's going to be on our side if they find out what's happening.
And what stops him from going after others?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The stuff about the Balors is annoying and distracting but this is a good idea even if it might not work. I think someone already asked Poptart about it, or I'd tag them and ask them myself.
Except it doesn't necessarily work that way.
Instant Transmission has an associated prep time requirement. The prep time requirement is extended if you have a power level disadvantage. Maybe you could play keep-away for a while, and maybe you couldn't. But betting everything on Instant Transmission being an automatic surefire 'killer app' for playing keepaway against a drastically more powerful opponent whose greatest strength is his ability to brutally murderize weaker opponents in rapid succession?
I don't recommend it.
We have so far had VERY bad luck with any assumption that one technique is strictly superior to another or no-sells another, aside from just plain having a lot more power than our opponent.
To be fair, our JoJo tactics were doing pretty well for a while. Things turned around when Vegeta shot us with his
I would very much like it if @PoptartProdigy would share what the rolls for this fight looked like afterwards, because it would be interesting and might help reduce the salt levels associated with how parts of it went badly.
Yammar has been described as a man who's spent the rest of his life regretting what he did to House Talt. Getting him to admit a mistake isn't impossible. Just maybe-too-difficult. But I'd rather try to get him to admit a mistake than try to defeat him by outnumbering him with weaker super-saiyans. Because the former has a sub-100% failure rate, while the latter has a 100% failure rate of getting everyone killed horribly.
Kakara can, hopefully, do Communications well enough to NOT back him into that corner. Hopefully. Though Yammar may have very high Communications-resistance, since we saw him roll a 146 on the die. Though bonuses may have been involved there (e.g. a 'combat trash-talking bonus').
Did Goku know ki healing?
Honestly, the biggest reason I think 'healing beam' might not be possible just by donating energy to an unconscious person is that the unconscious person might just not be able to make use of it. Frieza's race has weird biology. Frieza remaining conscious even as a bisected torso may have to do with their insane durability, just like his ability to survive without breathing and thus be able to survive blowing up Namek did.
So a saiyan hybrid could get their energy replenished that way, sure, but would it cure the organic damage caused by the beating they just received? Dunno.
It worked during the Sealing only because we dazzled Berra with a Solar Flare, faked him out on another occasion, then teleported hard to the exclusion of all other activities, and he still caught up with us very quickly.
I'm not sure it's actually improved, I think it may have been hard-set to Exceptional at quest start. Remember that Ki control, manipulation, and sensing is supposed to be Kakara's thing, in the same sense that fighting is Jaffur's thing. Kakara being Communication-specced is something that was decided on in character generation; Kakara being a ki prodigy is something that was pre-set.
I am NOT convinced that telepathic shouting will work as well against an opponent of equal power level. Especially one who may well have trained Telepathy to a higher level than ourselves, simply because, well, he has reason to do so and we have indications that he can use it on 'tightbeam mode' over ranges longer than 100 kilometers.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
You mean apart from the fact that they're unconscious and out of the fight? What stops him right now? I assume he's not cool with actually killing us, or Apra and Jaffur would be dead.
You know, if all we need are those crucial few seconds of uninterrupted bean time, it probably would work to force Yammar to confront the disparity in Vegetan sorcerer numbers. If we're standing over them and can't hold him off well enough to sneak them beans, it would probably give us enough of an opening, and it's not like we have any allies it would also incapacitate.
[ ] Plan Healing Beans and Sorcerer Screams
[ ] Eat a Senzu bean
-[ ] Telepathically shout at Yammar to block all incoming messages or possible Seer precog.
-[ ] IT to Dandeer from within the rubble, and use her as a shield/flail.
-[ ] Confront Yammar with what happened to the Vegetan sorcerers.
-[ ] While Yammar is at a disadvantage, Senzu Bean your comrades. Give Jaffur, who Yammar implied only lost due to numbers, priority.
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They're currently out of the fight and therefore irrelevant. We take a hostage, he can take multiple.
And you forget Berra.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
You don't seem to understand what we're doing with Dandeer. We're grabbing her and swinging her around so he can't fight us properly without splattering her, not threatening to kill her. If he did the same that'd be great - stand-offs favour us here, we have more allies to bean.
Why is Berra any more relevant than the others? If anything he's incapacitated even harder.
I straight-up don't believe he'd threaten to kill an SSJ.
We're using her as a human shield, I'm aware. That requires us to be actually willing to let her take a fatal hit, and that the opponemt isn't ruthless enough to cause major injuries to get us. Neither are assumptions I'm confortable with.
Berra is Kakara's father, vulnerable and someone Yammar has an incredibly bad relationship.
And I disagree. He can and will.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I would like to BEG people to construct some plans that don't involve the telepathic shout. It is NOT a free action, it takes time and concentration when we have very little of either to spare. If Yammar's attention might have strayed for a split second, we will regain his attention just before performing other complicated actions.
We have very little evidence that Yammar is actually getting Seer advice, other than "he no-sold our attacks," which can very easily be explained by his very very long experience (40-plus years of intense combat training to our, like, five). And his superior Style training in what appears to be a melee-focused style (possibly of his own creation).
We have reason to think he might NOT be getting Seer advice, namely that Seers with lower power levels shouldn't be able to give blow-by-blow advice in a super saiyan duel. The best Dandeer got from that was "close your eyes and raise a shield NOW," after which we deprived her of the advice.
Please. We know Poptart penalizes us for trying several things in rapid succession. Let's minimize the number of things we do in rapid succession so we at least have a prayer of outmaneuvering our opponent and accomplishing an objective before Yammar catches up.
If we can get this far without immediately losing the fight, THEN we can debate which of several widely disparate tactics.
My preferred plan here is a simple
@PoptartProdigy
[]Eat a senzu bean, then IT to Dandeer and grab her as a saiyan shield again.
Well, let's just say that all the confidence that attacking Vegeta with the Dandeer flail would be the One True Strategem would have been equally darkly comedic in retrospect.
It's like, NO strategy in a game like this is reliably going to be proof against the enemy rolling very well and your side rolling very poorly, unless it involves pure, overwhelming power. The one strategy we can legitimately feel foolish for not pursuing is Spirit Saiyan. Everything else? It all comes down to gambit versus gambit and skill against skill, and I very much do not believe there were any guaranteed roads to victory there.
We may also be able to bluff being willing to kill her (hell, Batman bluffs that to criminals all the time by dangling them off buildings), and hopefully exploit Yammar's debuffed Deceit.
We have very little evidence that Yammar is actually getting Seer advice, other than "he no-sold our attacks," which can very easily be explained by his very very long experience (40-plus years of intense combat training to our, like, five). And his superior Style training in what appears to be a melee-focused style (possibly of his own creation).
We have reason to think he might NOT be getting Seer advice, namely that Seers with lower power levels shouldn't be able to give blow-by-blow advice in a super saiyan duel. The best Dandeer got from that was "close your eyes and raise a shield NOW," after which we deprived her of the advice.
Please. We know Poptart penalizes us for trying several things in rapid succession. Let's minimize the number of things we do in rapid succession so we at least have a prayer of outmaneuvering our opponent and accomplishing an objective before Yammar catches up.
THIS.
If we can get this far without immediately losing the fight, THEN we can debate which of several widely disparate tactics.
My preferred plan here is a simple
@PoptartProdigy
[]Eat a senzu bean, then IT to Dandeer and grab her as a saiyan shield again.
I'd rather bet on Kakara's ki control and fine control telekinesis than on most of her other skills.
Sufficiently capable sorcerers can open temporary holes in the wards. We know this because one did exactly that to let the bulk of the saiyans' energy out of the Hall when we used the Spirit Bomb, which wound up providing us with the majority of our power.
See, the thing is, if we'd decided to pick a fight with Vegeta and he'd outmaneuvered us while commenting on how feeble our lack of Style training makes us, and gotten Dandeer off our hands and then fried us with a Big Bang or something and Apra had panicked the same way she did in our timeline enabling Yammar to defeat her et cetera...
Well, let's just say that all the confidence that attacking Vegeta with the Dandeer flail would be the One True Strategem would have been equally darkly comedic in retrospect.
It's like, NO strategy in a game like this is reliably going to be proof against the enemy rolling very well and your side rolling very poorly, unless it involves pure, overwhelming power. The one strategy we can legitimately feel foolish for not pursuing is Spirit Saiyan. Everything else? It all comes down to gambit versus gambit and skill against skill, and I very much do not believe there were any guaranteed roads to victory there.
If we can grab Dandeer we can at least complicate things enough to try something else. Maybe we won't close into close combat with Yammar at all, and the two of us will just talk for a while. Maybe we'll teleport away and Yammar will feel compelled to follow.
We may also be able to bluff being willing to kill her (hell, Batman bluffs that to criminals all the time by dangling them off buildings), and hopefully exploit Yammar's debuffed Deceit.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
We literally just did this with Berra, who is equally likely to hurt Dandeer if he could get away with it, given how she's betrayed him. Kakara wasn't worried then, and I'm not now, so I'm going to file this under your personal preferences. Which, fine, vote how you want, but it isn't based on any metric that's relevant to the deliberations for the rest of us.
No, he's not going to because of a) his religion and b) his duty.
I think I've made my points as far as anyone else reading this is concerned, so feel free to vote how you want - I'm not arguing with you any further unless something new comes up we disagree on.
It's not a matter of hatred or dislike. It's a matter of personality, and arguably morality. Berra doesn't want to hurt an "innocent" and is hesitant to attack a non-evil ally. Yammar, on the other, is far more ruthles and brutal.
Like, you seem to have it in your head I seem to be thinking Yammar would be happy for a chance to hurt Dandeer. I don't. I fully expect him to hate it, and go through anyway.
I don't remember reading, and can't find anything about you going into what you believe his motivations.
And regardless of how much those matter to him, right now he's Dandeers puppet. Dandeer > Faith & Duty. He won't break them if he doesn't have to, but if we force his hand, the bodies are going to pile up.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Okay, one last effort.
You appear to be holding two contradictory positions. One is that Dandeer has successfully whammied Yammar and Berra so hard that it overrides all other concerns, to the point where Yammar won't hesitate to murder other Super Saiyans despite what his religion and his duty tell him to do, rather than attempt other possibly less effective methods (like continuing to try and get past Dandeer to us.)
The other is that Yammar has enough latitude in carrying out Dandeer's will that he can potentially-fatally-injure her in order to take us down, where Berra had the same latitude to do the same but chose not to due to different personalities. This contradicts the first, where they have no latitude and must go against personal preferences and methodologies in order to save Dandeer in the most effective manner possible, regardless of established character.
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They're not contradictory. So long as Dandeer survives and can be healed, they've succeeded. Yammar is just far more ruthless then Berra, and will do so if it seems to be required. He'll go for other stuff, like grabbing the others around and hostage first, but he'll blow a hole in Dandeer if required. And that's assuming he isn't aware Kakara is bluffing, as she'd never allow Dandeer to actually die. It's a malus to deceit, not an auto-fail.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
But if Yammar is forced to take actions like killing hostages, why isn't Berra forced to shoot through Dandeer?
*bangs head against the desk* Because it's ultimately reliant on what the person would actually do, and how desperate they are.
Berra is far less ruthless, had a Super Saiyan ally that would be re-entering the fight soon, and Yammar was slowly winning against against Apra.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
But if it's reliant on what the person would actually do, Yammar wouldn't kill an SSJ! He'd keep trying to get past Dandeer without hurting her!
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
You're not wrong to point out that Berra hates Dandeer.
It occurs to me that given that Dandeer's mind control spells are built out of seals, "be magically sealed off from remembering any of the many many reasons you hate Dandeer" is almost CERTAINLY a major component of any of Dandeer's mind control spells. Any strategem that relies on Dandeer's protectors hating her will probably fail unless we can use epic persuasion to bypass the mind control.
Point: There is a fairly high likelihood that the mind control on Yammar personally includes an absolute prohibition on harming Dandeer, too. If I were in her shoes, the first element of any such mind control would be "don't hurt me." Because Yammar's speed and power are great enough that Dandeer would need to lay down that geas as the foundation for any and all others. A magical compulsion against hurting Dandeer would be vital if she was to have any prayer of laying down the rest of the spell, as we observed when Dandeer tried to do that to us.
Remember when we got Valentine's approval to train Jaron? And Dandeer tried to cast a spell on us and we speedblitzed her and grabbed her by the throat or something before she could? That was probably Dandeer trying to lay a mind-control compulsion on us. And if she'd laid down a "don't attack Dandeer directly" compulsion on us beforehand it would have worked.
Honestly, if I were Dandeer, I'd be far more likely to have my mind control include an absolute prohibition against hurting Dandeer. Not just a prohibition that's situational and entitles my mind-slaves to hurt Dandeer pursuant to some 'greater good' objective of, y'know, protecting Dandeer. Because that just sounds like the kind of thing that could backfire horribly, especially given the known vulnerability of Dandeer's mind-slaves to Deceit.
It'd be an awfully karmic death if her enemies succeeded in tricking her servants into killing her for her own good, wouldn't you say? Much easier and simpler to just install an absolute Seal on the concept of "hurting Dandeer" so that the idea becomes inconceivable.
Similar issue with Lailoken, who assumed that Berra and Vegeta would do nothing but mindlessly guard Dandeer, because obviously if that's not the case they'd be attacking Kakara right now, right?
Right, no, this isn't appropiate behaviour on my part. My sincere apologies for getting heated, I'll be taking a break from the thread for a bit.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I actually agree with you, Gore17, that Yammar's behavior is going to be on a sliding scale.
It's plausible that if we take Dandeer as a hostage he'll take hostages too. In that case, though, we fall back to "talking" as our strategy, and while that's not necessarily our best possible strategy it's far from the worst thing we could do.
It's conceivable that Yammar will be willing to seriously injure Dandeer to get her away from us. However, a blast powerful enough to kill or even disable a rival super-saiyan wouldn't just injure her, it'd kill her. So he won't be able to do it easily, casually, or from a long distance, and we probably buy ourselves at least a little time to come up with a new plan.
However, it's quite likely that Yammar is laboring under an absolute prohibition against harming Dandeer, not one that he can choose to ignore in a lesser way in order to achieve in a greater way.
I mean seriously, @Gore17 , if you were constructing a mind control spell, would you leave your subjects the ability to freely choose to harm you for the greater good, even if the greater good in question is you? I wouldn't, if I were the kind of person weaving mind control spells. You might well leave them enough free will to be proactive in your defense (e.g. Berra contemplating attacking the Senzus, Yammar actually attacking the Senzus). But to harm you personally?
I don't think so.
If this is the case, then he'll at least try to negotiate a way out of this. Especially since, given his Communication modifer of +46 or better, he's not actually a bad negotiator. Even so, we're at least more evenly matched against him in negotiation or stalling for time while we try some Oddball gimmick, than we are against him in battle.
It's plausible that if we take Dandeer as a hostage he'll take hostages too. In that case, though, we fall back to "talking" as our strategy, and while that's not necessarily our best possible strategy it's far from the worst thing we could do.
It's conceivable that Yammar will be willing to seriously injure Dandeer to get her away from us. However, a blast powerful enough to kill or even disable a rival super-saiyan wouldn't just injure her, it'd kill her. So he won't be able to do it easily, casually, or from a long distance, and we probably buy ourselves at least a little time to come up with a new plan.
However, it's quite likely that Yammar is laboring under an absolute prohibition against harming Dandeer, not one that he can choose to ignore in a lesser way in order to achieve in a greater way.
I mean seriously, @Gore17 , if you were constructing a mind control spell, would you leave your subjects the ability to freely choose to harm you for the greater good, even if the greater good in question is you? I wouldn't, if I were the kind of person weaving mind control spells. You might well leave them enough free will to be proactive in your defense (e.g. Berra contemplating attacking the Senzus, Yammar actually attacking the Senzus). But to harm you personally?
I don't think so.
If this is the case, then he'll at least try to negotiate a way out of this. Especially since, given his Communication modifer of +46 or better, he's not actually a bad negotiator. Even so, we're at least more evenly matched against him in negotiation or stalling for time while we try some Oddball gimmick, than we are against him in battle.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
If they're not obliged to go with the absolutely optimal path, no matter the cost, then they are explicitly allowed to take suboptimal actions. In which case, Yammar is allowed to keep trying to get past Dandeer himself instead of killing Berra. In which case he will do so, because everything he's built himself on- his religion and his duty - says that he shouldn't kill SSJs.
Either he's obliged to go against his core values to protect Dandeer or he isn't. I'm not sure why you can't seem to grasp this "simple concept".
EDIT:
Yeah okay, no worries.
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
If we try to go for Dandeer flail again, there is something else to consider that is probably more relevant than Yammar's personality: that when we did it with Berra he was a GO. That means he was slower and less agile and that his size made it harder for him to hit us and not Dandeer.
I am not saying it wouldn't be effective but Yammar should have an easier time than Berra working around it.
Edit: As for Yammat taking hostages, he is probably more willing to do so than Berra and also willing to call our bluff. And when we grabbed Dandeer, Berra's answer was to look at the Senzu but Kakara charged him before he did anything. So unless we charge at him flailing Dandeer to distract him he would likely take hostages and he knows that we know that he is more willing to use lethal force.
I am not saying it wouldn't be effective but Yammar should have an easier time than Berra working around it.
Edit: As for Yammat taking hostages, he is probably more willing to do so than Berra and also willing to call our bluff. And when we grabbed Dandeer, Berra's answer was to look at the Senzu but Kakara charged him before he did anything. So unless we charge at him flailing Dandeer to distract him he would likely take hostages and he knows that we know that he is more willing to use lethal force.
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The main advantage we have for going for a Dandeer-flail right now is that we're lying under a pile of rubble and Yammar can't see us IT (which is why I'm really hoping he does not have Seer support).
Kinruush
Who?
- Location
- USA
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I fully agree and mentioned it earlier in one of my long-ass rambles. Berra was much bigger, slower, clumsier, and utterly unequipped to do something like get around us and pull Dandeer out of our hands. Yammar may be able to do that.
This is true.
On the other hand, even if he takes hostages, the situation may well default to a conversation, especially if we can bluff Yammar into thinking we'll kill Dandeer. Which, given that he's almost certainly fighting with a Deceit malus, we may be able to do.
It may at least buy us a few seconds to do something.
The thing is, either the spell forces him to ignore his core values whenever protecting Dandeer is involved, or it permits him to protect Dandeer in a process compatible with his core values rather than trying risky gambits to "protect Dandeer" by severely injuring Dandeer.
Yammar's not reckless, just ruthless. If he can talk Kakara into releasing Dandeer (including by taking hostages on our own side) he may do that.