Board 8 > King of Fighters 2020 (NOT MERCS) Finals ~ Mid: The Terrarian vs He-Man

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to blah

The game is simple. The two* listed characters are placed in an (imaginary) location with a variety of (imaginary) environments, kind of like a picture in a child's schoolbook that describes different types of geological features. Within a ten mile radius, there is an (imaginary) urban downtown, exurbs, plains, snow-clad mountains at the edge, dry plains, etc. Fighters start wherever is most appropriate for them, but feel increasingly compelled to seek out their opponent and fight. Strong-willed fighters can try to hold out in their chosen environment for longer... eventually, all will succumb and actively search for the other to battle.

To participate, just vote in bold for whichever character you believe will win. Giving reasoning is optional, but please be polite and read what others have said and carefully make your decision. I'll ping the nominators (they can opt out) to give arguments if they wish.

Results/Discussion: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78971300

TODAY'S PARTICIPANTS:
The Terrarian (Terraria)
https://imgur.com/YXkXvS6

vs

He-Man (Masters of the Universe)


@Kamekguy

FIGHT


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What kind of range does He-Man have that Terrarian can't just dodge or cellphone warp away from? Even if He-Man started throwing mountains around he could just nope out of there.

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He-Man has "the sword can deflect energy and also guns are very real in He-Man and also very stupid and explodey".

Additionally, He-Man's tanked magic from Skeletor, Evil Lyn, and a full-power Count Merzo simultaneously, pinning him against Castle Greyskull for a solid minute with sustained magic laser beams. All of these three scale to each other pretty evenly, even if the magic is kind of just "do whatever it needs to and sometimes it's just lasers". Skeletor's been shown to use it to group soul rob before, as well as restrain & entrap a falcon roughly the size of a fighter jet, so that's cool, presumably strong.

Frankly, I just see He-Man swatting away enough projectile spam to kill Mr. Terraria before he gets Adam'd back to the point where he can reasonably be gibbed. Or just, like, make a tornado with his sword that makes the projectiles go everywhere, and then you have a tornado filled with death just drifting around. (Note: Tornado is based on him spinning his sword fast enough that it reversed an already-existing tornado. If this is separate from tornado creation, that is fine).

Otherwise he's got bolas sometimes I guess, for range? I dunno, I would assume it sucks getting hit by bolas. I got hit by a yo-yo once and it sucked.

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I feel like this is going to be a long-range fight for the most part, so even if most of Terraria man's barrage gets hit back at him (can He-Man reflect magic or just Superman tank it?) he has the reflexes to avoid most if not all of it pretty easily.

"Tornado of flying death" sounds like a good reason for Terrarian to get out of dodge and regroup, and also a badass kung-fu move. I don't see him being thrown off much by He-Man's tornadoes though, the guy's dealt with actual sharknadoes and not been all that bothered.

https://youtu.be/qhYoSbZreXs?t=36

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He-Man can basically Link Vs Ganondorf ping-pong stuff back if he hits it with the Power Sword. It's the preferred way of avoiding damage, since he can just keep charging forward and it doesn't take away from his Greyskull Battery Source.

The one thing that might be an issue is He-Man just... throwing a rock.

https://www.he-man.org/assets/images/collect_toy/vintage_10_content_262_full.jpg

Here he is throwing a magic rock to save a city hundreds of miles away at "twenty-two miles per second". That... is presumably very, very fast. If he knows it's a ranged battle, throwing a rock might be... very lethal.

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Oy, didn't sign up to do math here, lol

That's pretty ridiculous, still only around a third as fast as the lightning Terrarian can dodge though. Even if you handwave it as weird magic lightning that's slower somehow, it'd have to be much slower for him to have trouble dodging He-Man's rock throwing.

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the "lightning" in terraria moves slower than some enemy arrows please don't use that as a speed feat. it's magic that looks like lightning, nothing more

he wouldn't be able to dodge a shot from a musket from 20 feet away

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It's slowed down for the player's benefit, so they can actually see it and react to it. Almost every work of fiction does this

if Terrarian's lightning dodging feat doesn't count then, for instance, Aang's doesn't either because it's not even close to the speed of actual lightning

it's silly to bring this up in the final match of the tournament when it's already been accepted as an argument multiple times for multiple characters, including some of Terrarian's other fights.

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Shonen_Bat posted...

It's slowed down for the player's benefit, so they can actually see it and react to it. Almost every work of fiction does this

if Terrarian's lightning dodging feat doesn't count then, for instance, Aang's doesn't either because it's not even close to the speed of actual lightning

In the show, there's always a big show of people building electricity that gives them time to get into position and prepare. This line of reasoning doesn't really make sense when the spectral dragon or fireballs in the same fight are moving as fast or faster than the lightning. You can argue that everything is slowed down a bit, but that's a huge decrease. I strongly didn't get the impression that the lightning was supposed to be moving like lightning while playing the game, and this specifically seems like a very bad feat to cite

I'm pretty sure I talked about this in an earlier match too, or at least I meant to if I didn't. In the Aang match, you didn't push this angle, just brought it up then said ~"Even if he can't actually dodge lightning, he's still fast and wouldn't get hit", which is fine

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it doesn't make sense for Mario to be faster than cannon fire, or shots from Mega Man and Samus to be slow enough to follow, or Link (before Breath of the Wild) to be able to dodge enemy arrows, etc etc, either

it's a way harder sell to try and say that every video game speed feat involving bullets/lasers/lightning etc is invalid than to accept that they're just slowed down for the benefit of the player

NFUN posted...

I'm pretty sure I talked about this in an earlier match too, or at least I meant to if I didn't. In the Aang match, you didn't push this angle, just brought it up then said ~"Even if he can't actually dodge lightning, he's still fast and wouldn't get hit", which is fine

I don't think this ever did come up, if I remember right the argument was "Aang is catching the lightning rather than dodging it, so it's probably a slower feat" which is a different story than what's going on here

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This is a pretty tricky match

So the main question is, can the Terrarian get the sword of Grayskull away from He-Man? Which is an open question. This might, legitimately, be the very first match where the Player's terrain manipping skills matter. The way I see this going is that there's a brief skirmish, the Player gets kinda wrecked, flees, and decides 'ok yeah I can't brute force this, need to construct An Arena'. Cue the classic Terraria preparation, ransacking of the countryside to get materials, and creation of an insanely elaborate deathtrap or ten to stack the deck in their favor. The Player has a lot of weird tech in an arena fight -- we're talking about reality breaking teleportation gimmicks (Hoiks), walls that vomit lava when destroyed, possibly monster spawning items and enough creativity to construct traps that basically simulate computer behavior in their complexity. Would He-Man lose to someone who's got all the elaborate deathtraps of your average cartoon villain, but none of the stupidity?

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would he-man sit there for hours and let this happen?

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endgame Terraria terraforming/building is really fast, an experienced player could get this done in around 10-15 minutes I'm guessing

I don't know how big the arena is but it's probably big enough that He-Man is going to have to spend a decent amount of time searching

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NFUN posted...

would he-man sit there for hours and let this happen?

Bat beat me there, but yes, terraria players are absurdly good at terraforming. Consider that the Player can build the arena underground and seal the pathway they went in through too, for example -- it's gonna be hard for him to find the Player.

EDIT: This isn't out of character to be clear. You have to journey through the world to the center of the earth just to hit the nominal midpoint of your journey, and one of the items required to finish the game is a mining pickax of sufficient power. I feel it's a very relevant thing to take into account.

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Arena's a few hundred square miles but I got the impression that He-man was pretty fast. I feel like an underground arena would just end with both characters getting gibbed to hell, and I'd give He-man the advantage in raw tankiness

EDIT: I have 500 hours in Terraria, Kanz

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Terrarian could always warp himself back to the surface if things started falling apart underground

hell, he could probably build an arena with the sole purpose of collapsing it on He-Man and then just leave before he gets caught up in it

this is a pretty big reason why I feel like Terrarian eventually wins this, he has basically infinite ways to fuck with his opponent, and He-Man doesn't really have a way to lock him down in one place so he can get away with it every time

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He-Man once dug to the center of the earth using only a stalactite and rotating his body really fast. Big collapse isn't really gonna bother him.

Separating him from the Power Sword's an interesting play. Would Terrarian have any way of scouting it out other than just a natural desire to disarm? He-Man can stay He-Manned without it for a bit, but is obviously more vulnerable when separated; the main focus he has from there is obviously 'get sword back'.

My question is more, "are Terraria players expected to beat bosses the first time they encounter them?" I have 30 minutes of Terraria experience, and just know from games of its ilk that you usually are able to dodge absolutely everything in front of you after learning patterns properly. Normally I wouldn't factor this in for a character, but as the Terrarian's personality/baseline seems to be "someone who's really good at Terraria" rather than, say, assuming Mario survives the events of Super Mario Odyssey without dying because he's Mario and he gets to the end of his story, I'm inclined to lean into player tendencies and wonder if it's a common occurrence to die to big bosses that reflect your stuff/have really fast attacks with minor tells.

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Terraria players are not expected to beat most bosses their first time but I don't really think canonizing his deaths is really appropriate either. It's not like there's any lore reason or anything that he can come back to life

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That's fair, I'm just trying to find a balance between "newbie player" and "perfectly predicted and knew everything with absolutely perfect reaction time". Because then we have guys like Crash Bandicoot reacting to lightning and lasers by the same token, and that makes me very uncomfortable.

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I think the balance point is "really good if not exceptionally superhuman reflexes" and "doesn't make the same mistake twice". There aren't many attacks that'll just wreck you and are unrecoverable from (at least none that I can think of that don't have a very obvious tell ahead of time), so this seems like a fair impression

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tas bandicoot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nleygezvFGU

HE-MAN

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I'm leaning Terrarian because I think he's just too fast and resourceful for HE-MAN! to decisively defeat. Even if HE-MAN! hypothetically ended up wrecking the entire arena in the process of fighting him he could just scavenge resources from the rubble and keep doing his thing. It seems way more likely to me that HE-MAN! loses his sword somehow or runs out of HE-MAN! power before he's able to win.

I'm not 100% ready to vote yet, this is an interesting matchup. But if I had to pick someone right now I know who it'd be.

HE-MAN! Okay I'm done.

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How does Terrarian handle a He-Man punch? Because I am honestly wondering if he can survive a one-two punch. He-Man can tell when his connection to Greyskull is weakening or he's about to turn into Adam, which he'd recognize as "yeah I will die" in this situation. In that case, I would easily see He-Man doing some kind of desperation tactic to prevent his loss. This is a (he) man who pushed the moon out of orbit to change the tides, then once what he needed to do was done, pushed it back into place. A (he) man who went into another dimension, threw the entirety of Castle Greyskull through a white hole, then tossed a grappling hook onto it so fast that he let it drag him through the white hole back to his dimension. Were he in danger, I would fully expect him to similarly catapult himself forward in some absurd way to ensure he'd make the most of his limited time.

He-Man's arch enemy is a schemer with instant teleportation who makes stupid death traps and weird deceptions. Adapting to weird stuff and finding ways to counter it is what he does.I just think his base is a lot higher than Terrarian, even if his longevity is not.

I lean He-Man since Terrarian's opening will set the pace. If he chooses an option that He-Man can redirect or easily leads into a punch, he loses then and there. If he chooses something that lets him regroup and plan and build like mad, we have a very interesting scenario. I just don't see one where He-Man definitively loses compared to the few scenarios I could imagine Terrarian definitively losing. If he can take a significant amount of punishment to make mistakes with and not just presumably avoid it, then Terraria man is in much better shape.

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Doubt Terrarian would take a He-Man punch well, but he handles it by not putting himself in a place where he'll get hit by one. Range is the go-to for most big Terraria fights, and even if his attacks get sent back he's fast enough that he won't get hit by enough of them to matter before he realizes it's a losing fight and bails.

He-Man might have experience with death traps, but nothing like the sometimes reality breaking traps Terrarian could throw at him, some of which were brought up here already. I could easily see He-Man getting caught off guard by something that frankly doesn't make any kind of sense and losing the power sword because of it.

Terrarian's reflexes are probably good enough to react to a rushdown from He-Man? I think that's how the discussion on his speed went anyways, not that I really want that can of worms to be opened up again.

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https://youtu.be/D0Ubeyp2Kz4

Depending on your tolerance for schlock, there's a full episode where He-Man goes inside of a dying neutron star while he doesn't have the Power Sword. The sword, for the entire episode, tries to get back to him (not sure if guided by the Sorceress or of its own will, but there ya go). In it, he has Battle Cat jump through lightning (?), his powers work in reverse (???), and it ends with the aforementioned "throw the castle out of a dying star, through another dimension, grapple onto it, and then land back home". Also he reverses a tornado's rotation and then throws it into space. Because that's how that works.

It looks positively mundane, but all that to say "nonsensical traps sans Power Sword" is a thing He-Man's done before. Obviously Terrarian's traps are more lethal (I guess? I kinda forgot he literally goes into a collapsing star and they just never mention it again) and I can buy them knocking him out, but He-Man is consistently great at just reversing what's thrown at him with pure bravado and reflex. Especially since his rushdown is "most of your rushdown deflected at you, but also He-Man is running at you and maybe throwing stuff".

Also doing the math on the 22 miles per second thing, muzzle velocity of the fastest firearm I found to be at 2800 MPH. So He-Man throwing a rock about the size of his fist would be roughly 28.2 times faster than the fastest bullet. Not close to lightning, but it's fast and I felt like comparing.

Thank you, by the by. It's stupidly fun remembering all this dumb He-Man junk.

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lol, that's pretty great

Unless there are more times where the sword makes its way back to him I can't buy that just being a power it has. He loses the sword a looot so it seems weird that it wouldn't try returning to him more often if it could.

I don't think lethality is a factor for the traps here, He-Man is way too goofy and durable to just up and die to one, though something like a hoik would throw him for a loop for a bit. His real worry is getting incapacitated or separated from the sword, which Terrarian would likely just see as a fancy boss drop to steal the first safe chance he gets.

It might take a while for Terrarian to come up with traps that would be more than a slight bother to He-Man, but it's not like he doesn't have the time. He'd basically be Skeletor getting away at the end of every episode except actually smart, leagues faster and impossibly resourceful.

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Eh, Skeletor has instantaneous teleportation as well. He just uses a stupid flying bike because you can't sell teleportation to kids.

I think I'm still ending up He-Man, just because Terrarian just has to screw up or get overconfident in a trap once before He-Man throws it (potentially back) at him. I do agree, with absolutely optimal play, he can wear He-Man down, and that the Power Sword being seen as a loot drop is actually probably incredibly viable.I just don't think that he's gonna see the ridiculousness of He-Man coming every single time. Like, the man punched fire and won. Totally understand any Terrarian votes, this is a toughie. I honestly think the biggest weakness of Terrarian is that he can't shit talk He-Man. The dude is a sucker for getting verbally goaded.

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So I think the Terrarian can absolutely trap He Man for days. There's a serious mobility and options advantage there. I can see plans, backup plans, counterplans, tricks and traps that prolong this battle for hours, possibly for days.

The problem is...I can't see a way the Terrarian wins. The firepower just isn't there. He-Man was mistiered and should've been in high tier. The power differential is too great to overcome. It's a testament to how complete an arsenal they have that we can even be having this conversation instead of slam-dunk voting He-Man without thinking. I think their run ends here. It really was a good one, though -- there wasn't a single matchup that wasn't at least a little debatable and interesting, with every facet of the character being utilized. This was one of the best entrants in the contest, no doubt, and if He-Man had not fallen into mid, I have no doubts the Terrarian would've won the tier. Well done!

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If it were anyone else I'd buy that he would eventually make a mistake and get taken down for it, but his character here is essentially 'optimal Terraria player' so him losing to personal error doesn't feel very likely. I could maybe see He-Man catching him off guard by basically just being He-Man, but at the same time there's a lot of over the top weirdness in Terraria. Dude's seen it all, and then beaten it up for cool looking swords. As nonsensical as He-Man is I feel like a lot of what he could do wouldn't be so far out of the ordinary for an endgame Terraria character that he couldn't adapt.

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Do we have any idea how much He-Man is able to do before he ends up un-He-Manning himself? It's hard to imagine this being a battle that goes on for days with He-Man pulling off more and more over the top attacks to try and put his opponent down, without him ever having to change back to Prince Adam.

And if Terrarian ever does manage to get the sword away from He-Man then his He-Man time just got a lot shorter.

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whats going on? he-man

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To be fair, I see He-Man as 'High Tier Gatekeeper' rather than 'pure High Tier'. He is stronger than some of the guys we have in High (Bigby specifically comes to mind), but there are a bunch of people who I could see him losing to in mid - guy would probably outright forfeit to Maxwell, guys like Razputin and Luke could pretty easily take advantage of the Adam side of things, Aang's "actively remove the energy from your body" is a pretty strong counter, and the Rick/Elizabeth/Giorno threepack in general is really weird for him to overcome. No one here could straight overpower him, but I think he got really good bracket placement against guys who would straight-up fight him, the most cartoon villain of cartoon villains in mid, a city, and then this to actually test him.

Insofar as He-Man's limits... "as convenient as it would be for him to revert, but not actually lose". If I'm recalling right, most of Adam's depowering is around Snake Mountain, where the magic of Greyskull is weakened by the influence of Skeletor/Serpos (I could be wrong, I am going off memory and it is scary for me to go over every He-Man episode again to figure out which ones he depowers in). It's a lot more "cutting him off from/interfering with the power of the source", which disarming does succeed in doing... but it's "the secrets of the universe" he's infused with and is treated as a kind of cosmic force. Kinda hard to proper quantify that.

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It is funny because I could see Kenshiro beating him

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Pirateking2000 posted...

It is funny because I could see Kenshiro beating him

Kenshiro should also not have been in low tier!

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Terrarian
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bump

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He-Man

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