Season 50, Week 3 - Whee Middle slapfights in Heavy. Also, dog vs. fridge OTP.

[Excal]

You needed AP to use the skill when it was equipped.

That said, this most excellent debate now means that I fully support the likes of WA2 and FF8 having single status immunity as well.  Seems far more fitting with the spirit of the universal exception than the sophistry being used against Vivi here.

[Yoshiken]

You needed AP to use the skill when it was equipped.

Those were the crystal things, IIRC. AP was just for learning the ability.

While I can't vote on the match (or any of these, for that matter >.<), it seems to me like FFIX abilities should be allowed on the same basis as equipment in other games. I know that changes for different people, but for me, it should be main-game only - treasures & bosses. And that includes the majority of FFIX status prevention-ability equips, methinks.

[superaielman]

You needed AP to use the skill when it was equipped.

That said, this most excellent debate now means that I fully support the likes of WA2 and FF8 having single status immunity as well.  Seems far more fitting with the spirit of the universal exception than the sophistry being used against Vivi here.

FF8 of course having no legal way to equip the status protection, making that entirely moot.

[Excal]

So dummy out everything attached to it.  It's not like the rest is hard coded in in our entirely theoretical arena.

[superaielman]

Yes, let's allow the skills that require spells that you can't even buy on a format that isn't legal (GFs) when there aren't even enough status defense GFs to go around in the DL in the first place.

[Meeplelard]

First off, just noting its senseless nitpicking bringing up that its not AP; I think everyone knew what the others meant.  That said, yes, FF9 required the cost when the item was equipped.

Also, regarding Kyrie...

No, it can hit NonUndead, actually.  BoF3 and BoF4 just have Holy resistance work weirdly, cause it effects Healing as well as Holy damage.

Typically, default Elemental resistance is 2, which is 100% damage, status rates are untouched, etc.  Its equivalent to being neutral.
In Holy's case? Its 5.  If you have less than 5, you heal less.  At a 1 in Holy, you heal nothing IIRC.  Kyrie works based on this value; at 5, you cannot be hit with it.  If you have 4, you CAN be hit with it, but the rate is atrocious, and so on and so forth.

Thing is, so very little actually has below a 5 in Holy, and isn't undead.  BoF4 did have an enemy, however that would lower your Holy Resistance, and then cast Kyrie on you I believe, and you wouldn't be "undead".

So yeah, Kyrie is actually Instant Death that is effected by Holy Resistance.  It has 100% failure if the person is at least Neutral, but gets linearly better as they lose resistance, and has a brutal rate against Undead (who effectively are just 2x Weak vs Holy anyway, just Holy Weakness doubles as "Healing hurts you")

BoF5's Kyrie works probably the same way, since it seems to run off a very similar system as BoF3/4, just there's no Healing Spells or Holy damage, so its the only way it works.

Note that BoF1 Zom series and BoF2 Angel do EXPLICITLY hit Undead enemies, cause enemies have actual species in that game classified as "Undead"

[SnowFire]

Off topic, but since it came up: Standard storebought equipment is legal in other games, even when it leads to functional cast-wide immunity to a status.  Junctions are equipment in FF8 (in really bad disguise), and forbidding the cast from junctioning a status resistance seems like arbitrarily hosing it to me.  Admittedly it does make explaining FF8 in the DL easy ("no junctions allowed!" to stop Doomtrain hype or whatever) but it's still not a good translation.

I definitely support status-blocking being allowed for FF9 as well.

[superaielman]

It's not an especially great translation, but other games (A lot of traditional SRPGs are bad about this) have similar problems. Allowing something that is horribly illegal by any other standard just because the cast has nothing is cherry picking at best.  FF8 is hosed, but so are a lot of other games. 

This isn't something that's close, the GFs aren't legal, the spells aren't storebought and there's nothing unique there.

[Meeplelard]

I suppose a fun mental exercise could be determining how much of an impact allowing Squall (or any other FF8 character) something like StDef-J and any basic Status Spell to be attached to that (so stuff like Silence, Blind, and Sleep would be OK, and maybe Pain since that wouldn't be dissimilar to cases where characters get multi Status Accessories, like FF6's Amulet for example) and seeing how many more matches they would win because of it.

I am not saying "hey, lets make it legal!" I'm just saying "Wonder how much an impact it'd actually make in the grand scheme of things."  Yes, it'd obviously help, but the question is how much?

How much it helps, admittedly, plays little to no impact on whether its legal, so regardless of outcome, my stance wouldn't change (which is "no" to it being legal), merely be something interesting to think about.

[SnowFire]

Well, for starters, Squall solidly beats Maragarete, like he actually did.  Which makes sense to me.  But yeah, Squall beats up a lot of Middle / Heavy status whores who don't have good damage with that.

super: I'm not saying "I pity FF8, let's throw it a bone"* (though...  I'm not averse to pity arguments), I'm applying a fairly standard sanity check.  For starters, some spells certainly are storebought (buy Eyedrops, refine to Blinds IIRC?  You can probably do the same with most non-Death statuses), but more generally storebought really means "easily available in bulk."  Which is certainly true of your status spells in FF8.  Secondly, regardless of the technical fact that you need to equip GFs to junction to your statistics...  this can obviously be just ignored in the DL, just like many universal skills are ignored from FF9.  The junctioning to statistics is blatantly what would be "equipment" in any other game, which no one seems to be denying to other casts.  In fact, I'd propose that people are sometimes too nice about equipment - obscure monster drops that radically affect a character's DL worth are meh.  Allowing FF8 its comparatively harmless status-blocking "equipment" seems to me exactly the same level as letting any series with storebought status blockers to block a status.

Mildly off topic but doesn't Mana Khemia require you to forge everything with monster-dropped items?  I haven't played the game, but I presume that people don't force the cast to use their initial equipment?  Heck, FF8 weapon upgrades generally require random crap lying around, and people let Squall have Lionheart.  The stuff to upgrade to that is more obscure than drawing 100 of whatever status spell you want.

*What I was saying before was the inverse- I think some people dislike FF8, and thus look for an excuse to hose it.  But..  that leads to a flame war, so on second thought I'll retract that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

If there are indeed not enough St-Def-J's for the entire cast, then it's illegal regardless, I'd say.

FF9 did indeed need (edit) stones to set skills, whether or not the equipment was currently on, unless I'm going crazy.

Gate is awesome and I am totally switching my vote on Hawkeye/Dorcas. I was too lazy to look at the match myself, but if Dorcas wins in a concrete way that doesn't rely on ethereal crits, he definitely deserves the match (since Dorcas' advantage in hit/evade offsets some of Hawkeye's crit advantage).

[OblivionKnight]

FF9 equipping skills was ability stones - learning them was AP, I thought.  They could be set with the stones even if you didn't have the ability "learned", as long as the equipment was equipped, IIRC.  It's been a while, but I could swear that's it.

[SnowFire]

Well, I personally would only require 3 of them since there's exactly one battle in the game where you can't junction swap around 3 sets (admittedly, the final one, though I suspect most people let the other three die for it), but there are 6 available for the completionists.  4 GFs have some form of Status Defense on them, and you can obtain 2 Status Guards in game (one from Tiamat, one from the annoying Shumi Village subquest) that will grant 4x Status Defenses to any GF.

If you played FF8 PC you can get an infinite number of them off the plentiful Ribbons the stupid ChocoWorld game hands you and refining them.

[Talaysen]

The whole "no DL-legal way to equip status resistance skills" thing is really weird.  I mean, accessories are illegal in the DL, but we allow status blocking ones.  Why can't we do the same thing with the status blocking skills?  It's essentially the same thing.

SnowFire: some Mana Khemia equipment can be forged from just storebought (or stuff forged from storebought, etc.) items.  However, those aren't the ones I used in the topic.  The whole discussion on that is kind of moot since everyone gets unique stuff at endgame anyways, so that's obviously legal, but I suppose you can argue against their alternate equips there.  I am personally lenient on IC stuff (and MK being a very IC heavy game it makes even more sense there) so I allow it, but I guess if you were in the "rar only storebought" camp, you may not.

[superaielman]

Accessories are legal, but accessories you can't get enough of or can't buy/find easily are not legal.  Lufia 2 has status blocking accessories that everyone can use, they're still not remotly DL legal. Just because it blocks status doesn't mean it should get super special treatment.

[Talaysen]

I wasn't even talking about hard to get stuff.  FF9 equipment that give status blocking skills are freaking storebought.  Same as the accessories we allow.

[superaielman]

Oh, different argument, thought you were talking about FF8.

[Excal]

Except that when we started, accessories weren't legal unless you started with them, Super.  But the accessory rule was adopted on a generally wide scale because people felt that banning them outright took away a part of the game, and over hyped the abilities of one status wonders.  Also, because it grossly inflated the casts which had non-accessory ways to block status.  After all, the Vigil Helm was such a huge issue at the time because it wasn't just status immune, it was also the best piece of armour for the head slot in the game, and it couldn't be banned without banning armour, which just got silly.

This question is simply the extension of that old position.  If you make an exception for equipment, then why not for skills?  Abilities tied to those skills aren't an issue because the allowance of the skills is already seen as an exception, and it's easy enough to pare away the functions that aren't related to the blocking of said skill.  After all, people already do this for accessories in games where the status blockers also give benefits, like the FFT Diamond Ring, or the FF6 White Cape.

The only difference here is that you can't just say it's exactly the same as armour or weapons in that you go out and buy it.  And, oddly enough, for some of these items, you do in fact just go out and buy them.  I recall the ability to buy some one status blockers in WA3 by the point where you wouldn't necessarily want to waste the space on them, FF9 sells most of the equipment that gives status blockers, and even then one piece can cover the whole party with ease, and even FF8 has been shown to be able to cover status resistance with storeboughts.

Finally, what is, and is not, legal, has always been open to personal interpretation.  The ones that feel the most like laws, as you put it, are only there because it's generally something on which the community as a whole agrees upon.  And they can change if enough people can be convinced that they should be.  Despite the long history, Status blocking skills not being DL-legal is very much not written in stone.

[superaielman]

Except that when we started, accessories weren't legal unless you started with them, Super.  But the accessory rule was adopted on a generally wide scale because people felt that banning them outright took away a part of the game, and over hyped the abilities of one status wonders.  Also, because it grossly inflated the casts which had non-accessory ways to block status.  After all, the Vigil Helm was such a huge issue at the time because it wasn't just status immune, it was also the best piece of armour for the head slot in the game, and it couldn't be banned without banning armour, which just got silly.

This question is simply the extension of that old position.  If you make an exception for equipment, then why not for skills?  Abilities tied to those skills aren't an issue because the allowance of the skills is already seen as an exception, and it's easy enough to pare away the functions that aren't related to the blocking of said skill.  After all, people already do this for accessories in games where the status blockers also give benefits, like the FFT Diamond Ring, or the FF6 White Cape.

The only difference here is that you can't just say it's exactly the same as armour or weapons in that you go out and buy it.  And, oddly enough, for some of these items, you do in fact just go out and buy them.  I recall the ability to buy some one status blockers in WA3 by the point where you wouldn't necessarily want to waste the space on them, FF9 sells most of the equipment that gives status blockers, and even then one piece can cover the whole party with ease, and even FF8 has been shown to be able to cover status resistance with storeboughts.

You're very neatly dancing around the point. The things allowed for status blocking are generally the same ones allowed for equips. I'm not arguing WA or FF9 here, I'm arguing FF8 and the specific case.  This isn't something like an accessory you can buy or equip or find easily, these require something that isn't legal to start with to just access the status blocking. Just because they can in theory block the status does not make the blocker legal. I'm not seeing anything besides some vague handwaving about junctions being equips and so forth.

The examples you give are making status blockers as legal as a sword or armor. Sure. But if for some wonky reason a game has no legal weapons (Koudelka), well, it doesn't. If accessories are on the same tier as it or worse, they aren't legal just because it helps block status.

Some entire casts can't legally block status because of not enough blockers or they aren't storebought or easily accessed. That does suck, but suddenly changing the rules for just one cast isn't the solution.  It isn't so much the question of skills, is the viablity of equipping and using them. FF8's GF system ensures that no one has a strong legal claim to anything, which leaves you with the cast as it is in the DL.

Finally, what is, and is not, legal, has always been open to personal interpretation.  The ones that feel the most like laws, as you put it, are only there because it's generally something on which the community as a whole agrees upon.  And they can change if enough people can be convinced that they should be.  Despite the long history, Status blocking skills not being DL-legal is very much not written in stone.

Sure. You also can be called out on it when someone things you're wrong.

[Dark Holy Elf]

An argument I've floated before and will again - the decision to allow statusblocking accessories, despite the fact that many of us ban other non-unique accessories, represented an exception. It was an exception, designed to curb the reign of one-status wonders over PCs. Exceptions should not be made lightly.

What you propose doing is making a new exception - to allow illegal skills to block status. (In the case of FF8/WA3, additionally, equipping illegal GFs/mediums to access the skill in the first place). There's no need for this exception; status whores are already adequately balanced. In many cases, they're now more likely to face immunity in the DL than in-game. (And then there's FF4, but I digress.)

[Excal]

Some entire casts can't legally block status because of not enough blockers or they aren't storebought or easily accessed. That does suck, but suddenly changing the rules for just one cast isn't the solution.  It isn't so much the question of skills, is the viablity of equipping and using them. FF8's GF system ensures that no one has a strong legal claim to anything, which leaves you with the cast as it is in the DL.

Except that no one has yet suggested anything that's hard to access.  Only that it goes through a different medium, and one which is easily accesable in game.  In fact, given the nature of the GF system, FF8 is far easier to accept this for than something like WA3 where you must disregard hard coded boosts and forced skillsets, while FF8 you can simply not equip anything except that which you are using.

Finally, what is, and is not, legal, has always been open to personal interpretation.  The ones that feel the most like laws, as you put it, are only there because it's generally something on which the community as a whole agrees upon.  And they can change if enough people can be convinced that they should be.  Despite the long history, Status blocking skills not being DL-legal is very much not written in stone.

Sure. You also can be called out on it when someone things you're wrong.

That goes both ways, Super.

An argument I've floated before and will again - the decision to allow statusblocking accessories, despite the fact that many of us ban other non-unique accessories, represented an exception. It was an exception, designed to curb the reign of one-status wonders over PCs. Exceptions should not be made lightly.

What you propose doing is making a new exception - to allow illegal skills to block status. (In the case of FF8/WA3, additionally, equipping illegal GFs/mediums to access the skill in the first place). There's no need for this exception; status whores are already adequately balanced. In many cases, they're now more likely to face immunity in the DL than in-game. (And then there's FF4, but I digress.)

I do not believe that this represents a new exception at all.  The purpose before was to allow statusblocking.  The limitation to accessories?  A compromise for it to be accepted.  Even now I don't think it's universal.  That said, dissallowing an accepted exception because of the means when the ends are the same strikes me more as viewing the letter of the law as more important than the spirit of that same law.  Or, more importantly, viewing the method as more important than the intent.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The intent is already accomplished. The intent was not to allow any cast that can guard against status in any way to guard status in the DL, it was to reign in status users by making an "almost legal" item (storebought accessories) legal for this specific case.

Sure, it was a compromise. Why then do we need to go further? Screw compromise, status is teh suxxorz, find as many ways to block it as possible? No thanks. The DL is harder on skills than equipment (we allow storebought armour more readilly than storebought spells or abilities), and I don't really see a need to change this.

Even the accessories aren't universally accepted, no (Shale and El Cid being two voters off the top of my head who don't allow them).

[Excal]

That was, and is, your intent.  It is not mine.  And, thank you for showing that the 'law' is only collective belief.  As far as this debate goes, I suspect we've reached the point where the only thing left is to agree to disagree.

[Dark Holy Elf]

thank you for showing that the 'law' is only collective belief

Well obviously.

I think I've made it quite clear on repeated occasions that I think everyone is welcome to take what beliefs they like, so long as they are logical and consistent.

However you appeared to be arguing against the logical consistency of others - "That said, dissallowing an accepted exception..." is clearly referring to the views of people beside yourself. It is that my argument is focussed on; I have merely demonstrated why my/our position on the matter is logically sound, which you questioned. I don't particularly intend to change your mind specifically.

[Excal]

Nah, that line was more a crack at Super and his DL Legal fiction.  Honestly, I'm more in this to make an argument, and see if it sticks.  And generally do my bit to promote a wide array of views on what is and is not allowed.