Is the King of the Dead stuff still in place? I thought he’d been changed back, but I’m not up to date.
Is the King of the Dead stuff still in place? I thought he’d been changed back, but I’m not up to date.
Point: The comparison with Captain America was explicitly about their stats without their gear, so only the King of the Dead boost would be relevant to that point. Where did that put him anyways, sans gear, as someone who isn't particularly familiar with BP's current portrayal?
Even from Some of the earliest handbook criteria TChalla was intended to be a little above Cap as you can see when you read the bio’s here, taken from the same source:
It’s just that now they’re making it clear that TChalla under his new link with the Wakandan god Bast, TChalla is low superhuman. Where he ranks, I would say probably about 4 tons or so. He was seen KOing a Rhino with one punch recently, but it’s not clear if it was an amped punch with his suit, or just a regular punch, because his suit had the familiar purple hew that shows up when he uses it.
But he was also stated in the 2019 Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda run as having the strength of at least twenty men. And he snapped the spine of a 1 and a half ton Rhino, many years ago, there’s also the scan of him tackling a five ton Rhino years ago. So I think they’re just trying to make it clear that he’s closer to that than peak human.
OK, so if he’s explicitly superhuman now, then… well, then he is.
However, I will note the following:
1. We don’t use OHOTMU or any other ‘official’ guide as evidence, because a) we want a demonstrable measure, so instead use high-end feats consistent with the character’s overall presentation (in this case since becoming King of the Dead, by the sounds of it), and b) they tend to be veeeeeerrry flaky on power levels (including things like Hulk, as a Class 100, being able to lift 100 tonnes, instead of the hundreds of thousands - and sometimes millions and billions - of tonnes they can actually demonstrably lift.
2. Even in the copy of OHOTMU you referenced, you do realise the only discernible difference between the two in terms of described stats is that BP could run marginally faster, right? Same strength, agility etc? In Rumbles combat terms, that’d be a meaningless difference, even if we accepted guidebooks as evidence.
3. If he is indeed now in the region of Class 4, he would certainly beat Cap comfortably. But him sending Namor (a card-holding member of the Class 100 club) flying like that with such low-level strength is so massively beyond his capabilities that we would just ignore that as an impossible outlier we refer to as SMvFL (Spider-Man vs Firelord). For reference, there’s a scan somewhere of She-Hulk, at the time around a Class 80, punching a legit Class 100 (Silver Surfer) and it being completely no-sold. Completely.
Last edited by Beadle; 08-03-2021 at 11:37 AM.
That official handbook was just used as a barometer to show how they were marginally different even before what has happened recently. And if you want to talk outliers, Panther has even more “outliers” than what I’ve referenced. TChalla never fights without his suit anyway, which puts him comfortably above Cap in offense and defense, so I’m not sure why base stats matter much?
Furthermore you have to read more carefully, it says that Cap has no superhuman powers, it doesn’t go as far as to say that about Panther. It says he is nearly superhuman.
Last edited by Vanguard; 08-03-2021 at 12:08 PM.
Read the rules, thems will help, lol.
Yeah, but if you... man, we're getting into weird analogy territory, like if you disintegrated Superman's arms he wouldn't be able to go "fool! Little did you know that my arms and I are one and can be remade from me!" and will his arms back into being from pure nothingness. - Pendaran
Arx Inosaan
Nearly superhuman is… not superhuman. It’s a bit like Miracle Max’s ‘mostly dead’ speech. So it’s just under superhuman but at the peak of human level in comic books. Or Comic Book Peak Human. CBPH. Or ‘Cap-level’.
I mean it’s kind of irrelevant now if he’s bypassed that with the King of the Dead stuff, but pedantry is kind of endemic here and we celebrate it.
Yeah, the pinnacle of humanity and nearly super human are synonymous. If you want to get technical, being at the pinnacle of humanity is technically better because it applies you can't be any better without being super human, while the Panther write up only literally means he approaches that point. Nearly means "close, but not quite there."
I can’t believe we’re still talking about this. But it also says TChalla is faster and that while Caps endurance is greater than an Olympic athlete, TChalla’s is twice that of an Olympic athlete, so it’s pretty obvious what they’re trying to imply. And getting back to comic feats which are what matter most here, this is one of two times TChalla has decked Namor. He did it more recently here, but was using his suit combined with strength to do so.
What other strength feats does he have in his suit?
If you’re saying he’s Class 4 without the suit and able to smack a Class 100 brick around when wearing the suit, what other feats does he have to support the Namor-slapping? Because that still seems way outside his wheelhouse, but if he’s got other feats that would put him in the Class 80+ territory (the territory where Namor might actually start to feel his hits)? But if there aren’t any, it’s still SMvFL, while still acknowledging that he’s nevertheless genuinely superhuman now.
PS. ‘What they’re trying to imply’ is that the two handbook entries were probably just written by different people… another reason we don’t use them. Consistency, or lack thereof. It’s just phrasing. Three times greater than an Olympic athlete would also be ‘greater than an Olympic athlete’, so it’s entirely possible on those descriptions that Cap’s endurance is more than BP’s. It’s too vague to tell either way. On historic feats, old school BP has always been considered in the same ballpark as Cap and Bats based on feats. That’s no slight against him - it’s pretty rarefied air. It’s a good place to be.
He can amp his strikes with his suit. Just like he can amplify the damage output of his daggers. It’s kind of inconclusive as to what class his punches are when he amps them combined with his low superhuman strength. I just think it’s an idea of he can make heavy-hitters feel his strength.
He’s one of those characters that fights to the level of his competition. He also one shotted Black Swan who is at least class 20.
Last edited by Vanguard; 08-04-2021 at 09:34 AM.
If Black Swan is (at least) Class 20, that’s kind of in the realms of the doable, context depending. I would have no problem saying that Peter Parker could feel the hits of Hank McCoy, and that Hank could even KO him with the right circumstances.
But Class 20 to Class 100 is a hell of a leap. As a point of comparison, Peter very much feels getting hit by a car. If he gets hit by a truck, it really friggin’ messes him up. Class 100 characters, by contrast, trade punches for extended periods with guys that shatter mountains with their hits. It’s a different ballgame is what I’m saying.
So the consistent upper level of this punch-amping is really what I’m trying to gauge.