Absolutely Nigh Invulnerable Character?

Ok, one of the member of Quirky Miniboss Squad is Nigh-Invulnerable, in every sense of word. He has this magic that prevents him from being killed in any way. He doesn't need oxygen, food, sunlight and can casually tank nukes. I'm planning to have him against The Lancer, who, at his ultimate Super Mode, can split continents. Btw, is it possible to punch something so hard that it flies in a speed of sound?

This is just something of a musing so don't take it seriosly. :D

edited 19th Feb '11 10:00:23 PM by dRoy

In real life, no.

In your proposed work, I'm surprised The Lancer doesn’t do it more often...

back to the subject of the titular character, I don't think being completely invulnerable is too much of a game breaker. He can still be knocked flying I’m assuming, and he can still be buried underneath tones of sand or whatever. Matter of fact, considering the other characters, you might even need to power him up a little, if they can go into super mode regulary.

edited 19th Feb '11 10:05:10 PM by doorhandle

About the lancer, he normally has a Super-Strength and a minor case of Made of Diamond. He can't use that Super Mode because even the level well beneath it, at least until the middle of the series, is a Superpowered Evil Side that can easily go into Omnicidal Maniac mode. So he usually just sticks with normal Super-Strength, even though it still allows him to throw cars around and run through walls.

You are very perceptive. You are right, he is, ironically enough, one of the weakest character in the series because except his power...he got nothing. Hell, one character defeated him just by handcuffing him.

edited 19th Feb '11 10:17:57 PM by dRoy

My heroine's mother is like this in her story: She's unkillable, unstoppable, and far more Bad Ass than all my other characters combined. Also, my Reaper zombies are sorta like this in that they don't eat, breath, sleep, die, and can wear bad clothes if they feel like it.

Whoa, sounds awesome. Does she play a key part in the plot?

She does and, surprisingly, it has nothing to do with saving her family. It's her painting business she is defending (it's a major player in the heroine's hometown market) and she protects it by tearing demons to shreds with her bare hands. I don't, however, have any Bad Ass catchphrases for her, though.

Oh, if there was any confusion, the heroine's mother is not in the same story as the Reaper zombies.

edited 19th Feb '11 11:55:47 PM by SandJosieph

Shame. The resultant battle would be interesting.

Incidentally, my series’ big bad has continent cracking strength along with his invulnerability and so is a lot more dangerous than the above villain...

Although he can still be easily delayed by simply knocking him away with a well placed ballistic missile, to the point of being So Last Season at one point, before pulling off the kid gloves.

Whoa. Sounds like Superman on crack. Heh, the Big Bad discovers him when he accidentally became excavated. Hilarity Ensues.

Indeed.

Although, Baron Shizenhaus only has his insane strength and even more insane invulnerability to his name. Well, and a cosmic empire, but those are his only real superpowers.

Heh, but those sounds more than enough. :D

Btw, aforementioned The Lancer would love to fight your Big Bad, if he were ever to meet him. XD

edited 20th Feb '11 3:22:31 AM by dRoy

Dropping him into a pit trap and dumping a whole lotta sand on top of it should be a decent way to manage him for a while.

To knock a guy flying at the speed of sound would take about 4 megajoules of energy, the equivalent of a small artillery piece (the main gun on an Abrams tank has a muzzle energy of about 12 MJ). Of course, as a matter of physics, the punch would have to be thrown at some multiple of the speed of sound. A super strong character doesn't necessarily have super fast twitch muscles at that order of magnitude.

Also, carbon-fibre bones (or whatever) are pretty much a Required Secondary Power.

Oooh, huh. That's actually a lot less energy than I thought. Another question: although it will probably depends on the structure, but how much energy would be needed to punch a guy and send him through a skyscraper?

Actually, until he was 15...he just have this Charles Atlas Superpower plus naturally higher bone and muscle mass, in addition to taking LEAST 13,000 calories a day (which include at least three gallons of milk). THEN he has this blessing of the God of War that gives him both additional Super-Strength and super endurance. In other words: lolwut.

Or you can just make him Bad Ass enough that all he needs is the super strength and let his Bad Assery make him invulnerable to everything else. That's what Trinity does. If someone is escaping with the secret formulas for a new line of paint her staff is working on, she'll punch through walls and doors to get to them. Oh, and she once tore the roof off of a car because someone was trying to steal money from her bank.

Well...making him just Badass wouldn't do it. Here's a confession: I like Stuff Blowing Up and MASSIVE PROPERTY DAMAGE, so I want to write scenes where he gets blasted by Wave-Motion Gun through buildings, punched by a hundreds feet tall (up yours, Square-Cube Law) golem, catch a anti-tank rifle round between his teeth, and something like that.

How to actually write that and make it work is a whole nother story I guess.

Totally invulnerable characters? May I introduce you to... why does Robert Kirkman not have a trope page..? Oh well. A character that Robert Kirkman has used numerous times as a guest star in his popular Invincible series and who has starred in... I think three mini-series thus far, Brit. Totally invulnerable... and that's it. Oh, and a would-like-to-be-Retired Badass, but thus far no luck on the 'retirement' end of things.

To clarify, 4 MJ is approximately the energy of a 90 kg person flying at 300 m/s. Whatever hit him would have to be more powerful unless there was 100% energy transfer. That also doesn't take wind resistance into account, which would be significant at the speed of sound.

I'm not sure of how to calculate the energy necessary to knock a guy through a sky scraper. There are military tables that you can find that will show how much concrete a cannon or c4 package can blast through, and that could be a starting point.

I ran a superhero RPG where one of the characters was basically invulnerable to everything, but was otherwise a talented normal. The villains would always get annoyed at him because he wouldn't lay down and die, or atleast fall unconscious, so they would hit him with more powerful attacks, but then switch to simply neutralizing him by dropping him in a sewer, burying him alive, or some other nasty fate.

It's funny reading this thread when, compared to most of these guys, my biggest villains are pretty weak.

I mean really, the first Big Bad is a necromancer and the epitome of an Omnicidal Maniac, but even his creepy Healing Factor doesn't work with certain weapons; his Dragon is a Complete Monster with unparalleled destructive skills and insanely good luck, but in spite of the hype in-world, he is really just the logical conclusion to the Badass Normal trope rather than anything spooky; and the rest of their little team, while for the most part a cavalcade of unspeakable horror, are on an individual level nothing close to godlike or invulnerable. The closest thing to that kind of might is the Maker of Masks, a powerful kumiho that wears its victims' skins, but even it is fairly low on the "epic destruction" totem pole, mostly just tearing up small villages and the like.

Which is not to say that I'm dissatisfied; you can do a lot with a little under the right circumstances.

edited 23rd Feb '11 12:47:23 PM by JHM

Wait, kumiho? Kumiho as in Nine tailed fox? Anyway, it doesn't really matter if your Big Bad is strong in a raw strength or not. It all comes down to relativity. BUT, at least in my opinion, all Big Bad, MUST BE, very cunning. If a story has to have a Big Bad, than that one must be a Magnificent Bastard at least Diabolical Mastermind.

Good point JHB, seeing as Weak but Skilled applies to most of my protagonists.

Matter of fact, mad scientists are considered the second most dangerous kind of super being in my universe, as they are pretty much memetic conducts and spawning grounds for super powered beings, weather they want to be or not.

Incidentally, The most dangerous one is the overlord, and that's because in addition to supreme cosmic power, they can generally forces other supers to work for them, including the aftermentioned mad scientists

Wow,your characters are basically like Gods. How are you going to keep them from being God Mode Sues?

If you are talking about my characters, then don't worry about that because villains are uber-powered as well. For example, the Big Bad's main ability is pretty much Awesomeness by Analysis on crack, The Dragon has flight, Wave-Motion Gun, plus Beam Spam. Dark Chick can manipulate time though not to a huge degree, and there are also an aforementioned Absolute Immortal and a flash stepping Robot Girl with BFG More Dakka.

Yeah...that's the kind of story I'm writing. Sounds crazy, no?

My character avoids becoming a God-Mode Sue because she already is one. And I'm not ashamed of that fact.

@d Roy: Read some Korean folklore sometime. Basically, a kumiho is what happens when you take the basic form and shapeshifting powers of the Japanese kitsune and strip out every last shred of sanity and amicability. They are incredibly violent, remarkably callous, and if I recall correctly quite narcissistic and irascible to boot. They also happen to eat people. For kicks.

The Maker of Masks is an example of when one of these is actually mentally unstable enough to frighten other members of its race. Seeing as this is essentially a species devoted to sadistic trickery and rampant murder, this is not easy.

But to speak of cunning, this is actually the aforementioned's greatest weakness: An inability to think far beyond an immediate goal unless it is directly related to that goal. The Big Bad uses this masterfully, being someone who, while slavishly devoted to his own goal, is quite capable of thinking beyond his own plans with great fluidity. Really, this is his entire modus operandi...

The Dragon is a different matter. Trying to analyse his motives could be harmful to most brains, and deeply uncomfortable to the rest.

edited 25th Feb '11 6:20:20 AM by JHM