Plot Power Tournament Season 6! Week 1 - Where the plot-hype matters!

[SnowFire]

Godlike:
Lugia (PKMN) vs. Johnny (SH3) - I haven't played Pokemon, and it doesn't matter.  Pokemon are weak to spunky young 10-16 year old kids, and Johnny is a detective.  He'd surely find a Pokeball and have a new pet here.  I'm not sure he even needs his funky Awakener form (though if that's needed to soften Lugia up for a capture, sure).
Dart (LoD) vs. Guv (DQ8) - Guv is 1/4 Dragon or whatever, so yeah, tough times for him.
Lucia (Lunar2) vs. Dante (SMTN) - Oh god Lucia DIE.  Lucia is weird since when I originally stuck her in Light (yes, that was me) it was with a big asterisk saying it wasn't Blue Spire /postgame Lucia.  Does she still have said asterisk?  Regardless, I'm going Dante here.  The Demifiend & friends beat up gods and stuff, and Lucia still has the brains of a 6-year old by falling for Zophar's most blatant traps.  Dante's got the intelligence edge here and can tank one shot of Lucia's magic at worst.
Aya Brea (Parasite Eve) vs. Ryu3 (BoF3) - Goooooo Aya, though it sounds like she's spoiled here.

Heavy:
Reis (FFT) vs. Argilla (DDS) - Reis is DRAGON, sure, but "Dragon who was having trouble with random Zodiac Stone thieves."  Argilla apparently has trouble actually finishing people off, but generally higher respect for her regardless.  A match fit for high Middle.
Hugo Hewitt (WA4) vs. Tear Grants (TotA) - Uh, Hugo isn't great in Godlike, but he is a ridiculous Heavy.  In the cutscenes, remember, Raquel and Jude manage to keep up with him.  Still, Tear never shows off any nuke-area abilities with her Seventh Fonist Artes, and that's what she needs.  Luke would win this one.
Edgar Roni Figaro (FF6) vs. Cecelia Lyn Adelhyde (WA1) - Edgar in Heavy?  Not really to me, he's basically Lucca level - good with machines, mild Esper hype.  Cecilia is, unfortunately, a total Mary Sue - spirits love her, golems follow her, she's a chosen one, etc.

Middle:
Dryst (Brig) vs. Umaro (FF6) - Didn't play Brig, but know enough that Brig commanders recruit monsters.  And in-game, Umaro is Mog's servant.  So, uh, yeah, Dryst has a new pet.
Deneb (OB) vs. Juan (S3) - Juan's plot power is BE SLEEPY.  He's comic relief fit for Light.
Elena (FF7) vs. Zelos (ToS) - Zelos is the Chosen of Tethe'alla.  Elena gets captured by Don Corneo.  Horrible slaughter.  (Also, Excal, Zelos's occasional incompetence is mostly an act.)  Yeah, Zelos is a High Heavy to me at least.
Seth (FE8) vs. Garet (GS) - Seth isn't bad, but yeah, Djinn (but no Tonic) hype.

Light:
Tia (Lufia2)  vs. Roger Bacon (SHs) - BACON IN LIGHT.  (Okay, yes, he does get kidnapped repeatedly, but he can also build spaceships and stuff.)
Leena (CC) vs. Margie Fatima (XG) - Hits with pan.
Alfred Schroedinger (WA3) vs. Lulu (S3) - Explode'd.
Poco (AtLC) vs. Lute (SaGa Frontier) - Uh, no vote due to not knowing Lute at all, but I will point out that while Poco might pale in comparison to Arc, theoretically all the king's soldiers got slaughtered by monsters.  But Poco is a chosen one so he survives and can even do damage to the bad guys that everyone else thought invulnerable.  No this doesn't make tons of sense, but theoretically he is a super badass, and it's just that the rest of your team is ridiculous super ultra badasses.

[Cmdr_King]

Well, since you took the time to write such lengthy comments...

On Lucia- meh to limiting a timeframe in general.  THAT said, I think people do carry on her plot power a bit.  While she certainly has a clear level of innate badassitude, as demonstrated by the Blue Spire events, she's hardly omnipotent goddess level.  Certainly not immortal or anything.  The effortlessness with which Zophar zapped her seems instructive there.  and, while I can't speak for others, I certainly wouldn't allot her her other cutscene powers; she's explicitly absorbing Althena's latent magic there, which kinda gets into "no" territory.  So... based on DMC Dante, I'd definitely vote against Lucia here.  But, for all I know he's a tool in Nocturne and lacks the savvy or the power to withstand her assaults long enough to win soooo no vote.  Pity.

On Hugo- Actually, Jude explicitly COULDN'T keep up with him; his time compression completely trumped Jude's super-speed.  Raquel blocked him, and eventually inspired Jude to figure out how to hit him, by anticipating his moves and blocking in the split-second between compressed and de-compressed time (the most logical conclusion here is that he can't affect other objects while in compressed time, based on this and how his fight functions in gameplay terms).  It's an interesting flaw in his skills, but hard to say how well it could be exploited for our purposes here.  Certainly anyone with precognition-type skills wins, and sufficently awesome raw destructive power probably just makes it irrelevant, but dunno that any in Heavy could really take advantage of that.

[SnowFire]

Re Hugo: Well, exactly, sufficient skill + smarts means you can at least hold Hugo off.  The thing that really tips Hugo for Godlike is the fact that it DID take the teamwork of all four to finish him off, but Jude & Raquel weren't really getting hit and forcing him to block and stuff.

For example, Citan would beat Hugo to me.  More plot hype as a swordsman than Raquel, would figure Hugo out and have him walk into a trap somehow.  Of course Citan is a bad example as he was a finalist with Ashley Winchester and is also Heavy / Godlike border as well.  Suiko5 Georg wins for similar reasons as Citan.  Cecilia...  stands a good shot next round, too, but I'd have ranked Cecilia in Godlike, so yeah.  Already said Luke would win here, and he's something of a Heavy - the inexperience and naivete makes him a meh Godlike, but Hugo gets beaten by comparatively inexperienced people too, so I wouldn't hold it against him.  Jade Curtiss beats him by being awesome.  KOTOR Jedi also beat him thanks to the precognition as you noted.  But yeah, most of these are high heavies who also spoil, as there are other high heavies who would just lose.  So yeah, Hugo should be Godlike to me, but he's close enough to the border to not be TOO stupid in Heavy.

Re Dante: Eh, I personally take voting rights in Plot Power fast and loose.  Save-the-princess hype for Mario is go from non-RPG versions of him for me at least, so I don't see anything wrong with voting on DMC Dante unless Djinn wants to set a specific asterisk next to a character.  In fact considering Nocturne's poor playership I imagine that he was stuck here mostly based off of his DMC exploits with Nocturne an excuse to make it RPGy.  (Also Dante is a tool in DMC but a stylish one who wins anyway so it doesn't matter.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

For Hugo, you need two things to beat him (emphasis on Jude and Raquel distinctly not beating him alone goes here, and both are badass Heavies at worst). One, being able to fight defensively, and to be damn good at it. His attacks are crazy  - they execute in real time, but since it takes him no time at all to set them up, they're still enough to cut down many capable fighters before they have a chance. Note that Hugo is utterly shocked when Raquel parries him; despite being a veteran warrior he has never faced someone this good (with possible exceptions such as some of his own Brionac comrades in training).

Then, of course, you need to be smart enough to anticipate and counter his game. Most high-end folks are decently so, but a few could run into problems here.

Is Luke shown as being an awesome defensive swordsmen? No. Hugo cuts him up before he can use his nebulous powers. Jade fairs even worse (fonic magic has clear casting times, goood luck responding to Hugo with that...), I'm not sure if that was a joke or not? Citan certainly has the brains, AND the swordsmanship (though I'm not sure I'd put him above Raquel in the latter)... so if he wins, he does it by doing some spoiling. Georg I'm less sold on. I can see it, but I think I'd vote the other way. Georg seems like he'd meet Raquel's fate, he just needs another level of cleverness or superpowers to keep up. Of course I'd also vote Hugo over Ashley but I know I'm in the minority in considering Ashley only a so-so Heavy. Cecilia... well, we'll see next round.

What sells me on Hugo in Godlike is that he beats a few of the Godlikes this week. Guv, Dart, and Lugia all seem like Hugo would have little problem with them (not defensive enough, not quick-witted enough, or both!).

[OblivionKnight]

Aya Brea (Parasite Eve) vs. Ryu3 (BoF3) - Aya.  Everyone has mitochondria, that I know of.

Ryu's both resistant to fire in the gameplay sense, he's one of the few characters who has actual control of his genes and what goes in them.  Aya and Eve aren't *that* hard to kill, you just have to get past the whole 'set you on fire' thing.

Ryu's resistant to fire towards his exterior.  I'm not sure an internal fire would be something he's resistant to.  And while he can control his genes, I'm certain external meddling isn't something he's resistant to (hell, he's show to have genetic "failure" types of dragons - no reason Aya can't modulate them to the point where he now has gills and dies)

[Meeplelard]

Can Aya actually set people on fire though?  I thought that was specifically Eve.  Aya's Genes were somewhat different, IIRC, in that cause she had part of Eve in her, she was resistant to those effects, therefor was pretty much immune to the worst that Eve could dish out, and Eve would have to resort to more direct methods.

Branching from that, even if Aya did have that power, I'm not sold that she can actually make use of it, at least not based off PE1, let alone control it, making it fairly useless in combat.  She never demonstrates that ability, from what I recall.

Also, its worth noting that of all of Ryu 3's Genes, his 2 NATURAL ones are Flame and Defender.  I'm pretty sure fire is the least of Ryu 3's issues as a result.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Jade fairs even worse (fonic magic has clear casting times, goood luck responding to Hugo with that...), I'm not sure if that was a joke or not?

Jade is definitely smart enough to figure out Hugo's game. And plotwise, he's considerably stronger than you'd expect a mage to be as a physical fighter.

But if you're going off of gameplay-based fonic artes casting times... his Mystic Arte activates near-instantly...

[SnowFire]

Dark Holy Elf: Despite just being Fon Slot Sealed, Jade nearly kills *Largo* outright with his spear.  Plot hype seems to indicate that Jade is pretty badass in general, and more generally Hugo is a gimmick enemy and characters like Jade are the ones who figure out gimmicks.

Also, I suppose my Raquel respect is less, which correspondingly makes my Hugo respect less.  If Raquel was just not caught off guard, disciplined, and brimming with determination, that makes Hugo less impressive, but fair point that he claims she's unusual.

Agree that Hugo beats the snot out of Dart.  He's kinda meh in Godlike due to the fact that he's a hot-tempered charge-in blindly easily tricked hero type rather than a cooler variety like Raquel.  Guv has an argument, though, in that he uses Call Team to surround Hugo just like in-game.  And Guv survives some near-death experiences as far as his excuse to even having the time to do that.  Unusual, since I normally would think that Call Team is nigh-useless in a Plot Power tournament - Guv summons monsters.  What do 98% of heroes do?  EFFORTLESSLY SLAY HORDES OF MONSTERS.  gj.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, I am not seeing Jade's spear-wielding skills save him here at all. Actually I don't really recall any combat-related hype for Jade past his early overlevelledness. When he breaks the fon slot seal later in the game he isn't exactly destroying worlds. And the fact that he gets hit with the fon slot seal at all seems to imply that he's not exactly in his element when it comes to defence (which you'd expect for a spear-wielding mage) soo yeah you can guess what I think happens here. Surprising Largo would mean more to me if (a) Largo wasn't hugely overconfident there (lol fon slot seal hit mage, he must suck) and (b) I didn't view Largo as a total scrub who could hang out in Middle. Legretta and Sync are the only God-Generals I respect at all, and even then they're not great. Earlygame PCs hang out with them way too well.

Good point on Guv. I dunno if that's enough for me... the "survives near death experiences" is a huge stretch (90% of plucky RPG heroes do, 5% more than the number of statistics made up on the spot), but the monsters are at least an amusing enough argument that I have to give props to that (completely agree on their effectiveness generally).

[Cmdr_King]

On Aya- if we suppose that her gameplay abilities are reflective of how her mitochondrial powers manifest in plot, she never displays the ability to control other people's the way Eve does, but has a great deal of control over her own (her skillset is healing, self-buffs, an energy attack, and uh basically going One-winged-angel).  So doubt "set people on fire" would be in there.
If we suppose that she COULD use any of Eve's abilities and simply chooses not to/doesn't know how through most of the game, it's worth remembering that the "set people on fire" attack isn't exactly instant death.  In the last chapter, when the Ultimate Being has the whole "set everything on fire" field effect going, remember the bit where Daniel jumps out of a helicopter to toss her the Aya-Cell bullets, catches on fire, then lands in the ocean?  It puts it out, he's pretty much okay at least by the epilogue (I forget if he's in the scene on the shore or not).  Anyway, point being that "argh I'm on fire" will kill you... eventually, so even supposing Ryu was on fire he's got time to squash Aya like a bug before actually burning to death.

[DjinnAndTonic]

This closes in a few hours. Reminder.

[Meeplelard]

Regarding Jade with spears and what not...

From what I recall of the scene, he didn't "nearly kill" Largo so much as a typical "argh! That hurt! I gotta bolt!" scenario.  Furthermore, I remember Largo basically was overconfident from the whole "You're useless without your Fonic Slots!" nonsense, and basically left himself wide open for Jade to just stab him right in a vital spot.  I don't recall the God Generals being particularly special in terms of plot power beyond the fact that they're all just very skilled warriors (Asch aside, due to having the whole Hypersonic Resonance Nonsense that Luke has), and Largo was certainly NOT one of the ones who was particularly exceptional (though he's much stronger than Dist, given Dist never fights directly, he just calls one of his millions of toys at you, but that's a given.)  "Very SKilled Warrior" doesn't go very far in Plot Power tourneys where most competitors fall under that, is the thing, so the Largo stab doesn't really equate to that much.

Furthermore, I don't remember them really mentioning much about Jade in the way of spear skills; it just seemed to be a weapon of choice.  Whenever they spoke of Jade's abilities, it always seemed to be speaking of him as a Fonist, and his great knowledge in the arts, hence why they used a Fonic Seal on him.  The Spear stab thing, again, felt more like it was just Largo getting overconfident that he neutered a lot of Jade's power, that he left himself wide open.

Branching from that...
Later in the game, probably right when Jade hits level 50 or so, but dunno the conditions, Jade will have a skit saying he finally got rid of the Fonic Slots.  IN this very same skit, he says something like "I never expected you guys would catch up to me so quickly too!"  or some such.  This suggests that Jade's abilities are not super human or anything.  He says "so quickly", which to me suggests that them becoming as strong as him was not an unreasonable thing to happen eventually, just the other characters progressed faster than he expected.

In terms of TotA's world, Jade's just a skilled Fonist.

[Bardiche]

Godlike:
Lucia (Lunar2) vs. Dante (SMTN) - I think? Lucia at the peak of her power near the end-game is supposed to unleash a spell that'll wipe the entire world dry of magic. Or something. Cause enormous devastation and ohfuck it, she's an actual Goddess.
Aya Brea (Parasite Eve) vs. Ryu3 (BoF3) - Destroys Goddesses.

Heavy:
Don't care!

Middle:
Deneb (OB) vs. Juan (S3) - Juan's too lazy to get up for this.
Elena (FF7) vs. Zelos (ToS) - Chosen One versus a Turk.
Seth (FE8) vs. Garet (GS) - Reknown General versus Rural Kid.

Light:
Tia (Lufia2)  vs. Roger Bacon (SHs) - Isn't a shopkeeper.
Leena (CC) vs. Margie Fatima (XG) - Holy Mother of Nissan, probably gets the entire country riled up.
Alfred Schroedinger (WA3) vs. Lulu (S3) - What's Lulu going to do, jump at him and die uselessly?