The (physical) Laws of Ishara?

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The (physical) Laws of Ishara?

Postby Aleph-Null » Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:12 am

so there are some questions I have had for some time but never asked.

Like how is dismemberment handled? This sounds silly at fist but what I was really wondering is within Ishara how hard is it to just cut someone in half? or take someones head off, or arms.

We all know that for the most part you can't cut your way out of a stomach from the inside but what about cutting in? similarly can you cut your way out of someone's throat?

Also there is a reference to someone bursting their way out of a stomach, (when the pred is to weak). How is this handled? Does the pred die (if Girl)? What kind of power discrepancy does there need to be?

Now I assume if a limb is severed it would self destruct, but what if a head is severed,(lets assume it is a Girl not a monster) does the body blow up?

Last and least. What is the definition of the word "Human" in Ishara? since "Girl" is a type is Human a sub-type the way Demigirls are?
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Re: The (physical) Laws of Ishara?

Postby Revx_Z » Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:04 am

My thoughts:
Cutting anything, whether into, out of, or in half, is rendered difficult by the fact that the target's spirit will try to heal the cut, so a weak cut will dissipate in a flash of light.
A strong cut (dealing more damage than the target has HP left) will result in the spirit fleeing and the body disintegrating if it's a monster, but I'm not sure what it would do to a girl.

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The energies of the body are innately tied to the energies of the soul, and thus it is very difficult to truly 'injure' a body that has a soul in it. The stroke of a sword may end in a flash of light but no injury. The reason for this is that the soul always preserves the body--it can phase out certain parts, restore others, and is essentially capable of keeping the body fully intact so long as it has the energy to do so. (This energy supply is analagous to a creature's "Hit Points.") The soul has a limited store of this energy, however, and when it runs out, it must exert itself much more than usual to restore the body--leaving it too distracted to do anything else, such as move. With an exceptionally strong soul, however, it takes a constant source of damage to overcome it's regenerative abilities. Generally, the only thing that can constantly damage a body are things like fire and acid, and some souls are strong enough to withstand such constant damage unless they are also having their energy drained by other means, such as by a digestive tract. Thus, with a strong enough soul-type, a creature can only be killed by being digested.
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Re: The (physical) Laws of Ishara?

Postby Duamutef » Thu Feb 14, 2008 4:50 pm

Yes, the spirit body repairs the physical body, and when it is no longer capable of doing so, the creature dies and their body self-destructs in the process. However, both of these abilities are inhibited by the presence of a digestive tract (since a digestive tract drains energy from the soul directly).

Basically, each creature's spirit body has a different regenerative capacity, both in how fast it can heal the body, how much energy it can store, and how quickly that energy is replenished. Even the slowest is capable of healing most damage instantly; however, as the spirit body's energy level goes down, the less priority it places on minor injuries.

If a creature has a great deal of energy, then anything from a papercut to a sledgehammer to the face will not leave any trace (aside from the energy that was lost). However, if a creature is running low, it will begin conserving energy and it will no longer heal certain injuries. The lower the energy reserves get, the more severe the injuries can become. At moderately low energy levels, a sword slash may leave a shallow cut even though the deeper damage was repaired. At very low levels, only the most critical damage is repaired. If the damage becomes so severe that the physical body can no longer survive and the spirit body does not have enough energy to protect or restore it, the energy flow reverses; the spirit body draws in all the energy of the physical body, causing it to essentially self-destruct before the spirit body moves on to find a new host (an egg or whatnot).

The spirit body has numerous means of preserving the physical body, so things you would think would be instantly fatal often aren't. For example, if you fired a railgun through someone's head, one of two things would happen; the body would phase the head so the projectile could pass through, or the head would be reconstructed after it's destruction (depending on the spirit body). Likewise, if you fired a city-levelling plasma cannon at a girl, her spirit body may teleport her out of the blast radius, meaning she would lose a lot of energy but would still be alive.

The means available and energy required to protect, repair or restore damage to the body varies from species to species, as do all of their regenerative capacities. Girls are almost impossible to "kill" with direct damage, whereas most species are very difficult. Removing a limb would be difficult, but not impossible; so long as the physical body could survive it, there is a chance the spirit body would not bail. Being decapitated, on the other hand, would almost certainly result in the self-destruction of the body, assuming the spirit body could not repair it.

At very low energy levels, spirit bodies go into a mode where they basically pour all available energies--physical, magical and spiritual--into turbocharging their protective abilities (putting their phase on a hair trigger) at the cost of leaving the creature completely unable to act or perform any other spirit body functions. How effective this is depends on the creature; the spirit body of a human is so efficient at this that it renders them nearly indestructible, whereas a monster can only hold out for a short while longer before they will die.

In any case, creatures cannot "die" in the traditional sense if they are being digested--the second the spirit body tries to start taking energy from the physical body, the stomach will intercept and absorb the energies the spirit body was trying to use to take it. Essentually, a spirit is stuck in it's physical body until it gets out of the stomach. (That's part of why a creature will remain aware of their body even after it is absorbed--they won't be able to get out until a substantial portion of their body has been excreted from the creature or all of the remaining energies that were connecting them are absorbed. It is usually the former.)

As far as how hard it is to kill what, it goes roughly like this:

Girls are just about impossible to kill by any means other than digestion because when they are in "fainted" mode, it takes next to no energy for them to phase and very little energy for them to repair wounds (but this is *only* while they are fainted).

Angels are the next most difficult to kill by virtue of the fact that their spirit bodies regenerate life energy the fastest. They are easy to knock out (i.e. to take down to a low energy level that their spirit goes into faint mode and shuts down their body) but once that happens their remaining spirit energy is very difficult to get rid of.

Demons are the next most difficult to kill, owing to the fact that they simply have stronger bodies and thus require fewer repairs. However, they faint at a lower energy level than humans or angels, so they are that much closer to death when they do go down, and their regenerative rate is comparatively low so you can kill them just by wailing on them for long enough or hitting them really hard when they're already low on energy. This is more true for Demonettes and less true for Succubi (who faint considerably sooner).

Fae races are next, being fairly fragile. They have just as much energy as the other races and regenerate it reasonably fast, but their bodies are much more easily damaged and thus they lose more energy per hit than other races. However, this only applies to the extent that having a fragile body matters--a faerie will lose the same amount of energy as a demon if the damage from the attack would be the same (i.e. if a sword slashed clean through their arm). So, ironically, they will survive powerful, unstoppable attacks more easily than demons. They have a fairly high fainting threshold, however, meaning that if a demon and a faerie are taking the same amount of damage, the faerie will faint first even though she has more energy left.

Last are monsters, who tend to die the most readily because they have a low regen rate, don't faint until they're almost dead, and have the lowest total capacity for spirit energy in general. Monsters can and do still faint, but a hard hit against a severely injured monster will often kill it rather than cause it to faint.

A creature's species is only the starting point, however. The spirit body's capacities and efficiency are easily increased with use and raw materials; i.e. the more a creature fights and the more a creature eats, the more damage they will become capable of taking and the less likely they are to die when they take serious hits. An experienced and powerful monster can become nearly as unkillable as a human, provided she lives long enough.

There is a flipside to this, though--willpower plays a part in how long the body will hold on before fainting, so it is actually possible for a creature to stay conscious longer than they should. If they hold on for long enough, they can keep fighting until they are so low on energy that any serious attack can kill them (unless they are nigh-unkillable when fainted, which any creature of this level of power probably would be. Even if they survived, though, they would be so low on energy compared to their fainting threshold that it might be days or even weeks before they woke up again).
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Re: The (physical) Laws of Ishara?

Postby Aleph-Null » Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:40 pm

So depending on the spirit body the shape of a weapon may cause more or less damage? For example if you used a thin blade and cut into someone's arm their spirit body could just regen, but if you used a very broad blade (like Cloud's weapon) with the same mass and cutting properties as the thin one it may force the spirit body to phase the arm out (due to risk of dismemberment) and thus use more energy if the spirit body is not as tunned for phasing as for flash regeneration?
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Re: The (physical) Laws of Ishara?

Postby Duamutef » Thu Mar 06, 2008 4:25 am

It depends on the species and the circumstances. Phasing can take either more or less energy depending on the circumstances. Repairing damage or teleporting are one-shot expenses, whereas phasing is a constant drain. Thus, something that would cause catastrophic damage but only lasts a split second would be cheaper to prevent with phasing, whereas something with a long attack time (such as a gigantic sword with a huge attack arc) may be cheaper just to repair.

Generally a more massive weapon will cause more damage, provided it is optimized properly. The spirit body can do things besides phase and repair--it can also stop things, teleport them, and other wackiness. It will almost always take the least expensive route.

For example, if you take a huge hammer and swing it full-bore at a girl's head, she'll probably phase. But if you swing the hammer slower, it may be easier to simply let the hammer knock her on her ass and then repair the bruising and whatever else it might have caused. If you score a direct hit with a Sharpened Buick (i.e. Cloud's sword) you are likely to cause multiple reactions; the body will take some damage to reduce how much it has to phase, allow itself to be knocked around a bit to reduce the amount of damage it has to soak, and phase to reduce the amount of damage it has to repair, as according to the specifics of the hit. Basically, it will optimize it's behavior to get the most survivability given what it has to work with.

Think "Soul Calibur." That's basically what combat in Ishara is like. A big blade will cause more damage, but not necessarily tons more. Phasing is cheaper than repairs unless it's for a long duration, but heavier weapons often call for long durations since they're in the body longer.

So the short answer (too late, I know) is that, yes, the shape and size of a weapon does influence the damage, as does the swing speed, attack angle, the spot that you hit (the body is on more of a hair-trigger for phasing in some areas than in others), and just about everything else.
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Postby Aleph-Null » Mon Mar 10, 2008 2:52 am

Think "Soul Calibur."


oh, so Ivy just rules ;-)
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Re:

Postby Duamutef » Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:12 pm

oh, so Ivy just rules


Well, her breast size would strongly imply that she has won quite a few battles...
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Re:

Postby Aleph-Null » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:19 pm

That and the fact that they keep growing between sequels.
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Re:

Postby Revx_Z » Fri Oct 31, 2008 12:32 pm

Bumping this thread for a few questions that have drifted into my head.

-If unhurt creatures give more energy when digested than wounded creatures (as stated in the section on Shior Tass), and since healing potions can fix a creature in minutes, can one get the effect of eating a large meal by cutting out the middlewoman and drinking enough healing potions? If so, can one feed Villagers lots of healing potions to activate their vestigial birth classes? If not, why not?

-Does aging have any detrimental effects in Ishara?

-Can one "charge up" by pre-emptively drinking healing potions and then doing something damaging like running over lava?
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Re:

Postby Duamutef » Thu Nov 06, 2008 11:46 pm

*cracks his knuckles and plunges into obsessive worldbuilder mode*

-If unhurt creatures give more energy when digested than wounded creatures (as stated in the section on Shior Tass), and since healing potions can fix a creature in minutes, can one get the effect of eating a large meal by cutting out the middlewoman and drinking enough healing potions? If so, can one feed Villagers lots of healing potions to activate their vestigial birth classes? If not, why not?


Healing potions can fix a creature anywhere from near-instantaneously to over the course of several hours or more, depending on what the healing potion actually is. There are a few main factors that determine what a healing potion will and will not do.

The first and most obvious is what's in it. Matter and magical/spiritual energy are linked concepts in Isharan physics, so any given liquid could contain a variety of spiritual energies.

The simplest form of insta-heal mana potion is just liquid infused with the energy type that the flowstar chakra uses. However, most natural reagents do not contain this energy, so you need a magic-user to create this kind of healing potion, and they need to use mana to do it, which essentially means you're not realizing much of a net gain. (You would most likely be converting other kinds of mana into flowstar mana, but you're never going to regenerate mana fast enough to feed yourself, because the faster your spiritual metabolism is, the faster you're going to burn through energy in the first place and the more spiritually-rich matter you'll need to eat.)

The second and more common alternative is to use plant matter. Plants have spirit bodies just as animals do, but plants tend to use fewer kinds. They tend to convert whatever's around into whatever kind they use and store it. This means making a simple healing potion is simply a matter of identifying a plant that uses energy that the spirit body can easily convert into the kinds it uses to protect and repair the body.

However, the range of energy types plants produce is fairly narrow. Animals, on the other hand, use a huge spectrum of energies. A spirit needs to be exceptionally good at energy conversion to make decent use of plant matter unless it's already very close to whatever it is they need.

Humans *can* live off of potions alone, but that's because they can live off of normal food. They are so good at energy conversion that they can take just about anything and turn it into whatever their spirit needs.

Theoretically, if you just pumped a villager full of powerful potions, you could empower them in all kinds of ways. The problem would be obtaining potions of sufficient power. Normal plant-based potions wouldn't work because the amount they get from those is usually based on their ability to absorb or convert the energy they contain. They would already need to be powerful to derive a greater-than-usual benefit. Extremely powerful potions could do it, but if you have the ability to make those in mass quantities, you've probably got enough power at your disposal that making villagers into real classes isn't that big of a deal.

The second factor with potions is whether the liquid is actually enchanted to do something in particular. This is entirely determined by the enchanter/alchemist in question.

The third is whether the magical energy being used in a potion already has some sort of imprint, structure, or magical function, such as when using honey, pre-enchanted reagents, and so forth. Knowing how to get these things to interact in any sort of useful way is both a science and an art, but it's the basis of most of the crazy shit Blast does.

A potion could be made specifically to bring out latent birth classes, but it would be a pretty freaking complex recipe or require a very insightful mage. (It would be considered void magic by most people, unless your method was just by turbocharging the person with energy.)

-Does aging have any detrimental effects in Ishara?


Unless you count the possibility of increasing in power and thus tending to increase in appetite, no. The spirit body can repair (and prevent) all of the normal effects of aging, and there are no natural sources of damage to the spirit, so it doesn't degrade over time.

-Can one "charge up" by pre-emptively drinking healing potions and then doing something damaging like running over lava?


Yes. The only time that wouldn't work is if you had healing potions that kicked in immediately via giving energy to your spirit body and your spirit body could not store any excess. Most potions are slower than that.

That isn't to say you could make yourself invincible--a spirit body that has to split it's attention between converting massive amounts of energy from potions and repairing catastrophic damage from taking a swim in a lava pond is likely to find itself overwhelmed very quickly. (assuming we're talking about a normal person.) If you're desperate, though, it's certainly something to try, and pre-juicing with healing potions would increase a person's longevity in combat.
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Re: The (physical) Laws of Ishara?

Postby morganz » Thu Apr 08, 2010 1:27 pm

Duamutef wrote:
Generally a more massive weapon will cause more damage, provided it is optimized properly. The spirit body can do things besides phase and repair--it can also stop things, teleport them, and other wackiness. It will almost always take the least expensive route.




Yes, I agree that a more massive weapon will cause more damage, and also the sharpness of the weapon really matters most.
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