Sephiroth vs a Space Marine (for starters)

[gooddragon1]

So, there's not that many vs threads and that makes me sad.

First question:
How would sephiroth (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sephiroth_%28Final_Fantasy_VII%29) fare vs a space marine (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Adeptus_Astartes) from the ultramarines.

Second question:
What would match sephiroth evenly that the space marines could throw at him (a captain)?

Conditions:
>To the death
>Start at 100 meters apart
>Infinite flat desert with impenetrable ground
>Retreat is a loss and both know it
>Sephiroth at max power

Yaay.

[GloatingSwine]

1. Which Sephiroth?

2. Is Matt Ward, fanboy in chief of the Ultrasmurfs and your spiritual liege, involved?


If it was pre-Nibelheim Sephiroth probably not. He looks hard by the standards of your party at that point in the game, but none of the things we see him do are really that impressive compared to what Space Marines are supposed to be capable of.

If it's post-Lifestream infused Jenova possessed physics-can-go-and-sit-in-a-corner Sephiroth then you wanna bring at least a squad of Grey Knights or a particularly fighty special character or something.

Of course, if the power of Ward is upon the Ultrasmurf then he will channel the power of the Emprah himself and strike down the witch with only his toe.

[Raimun]

Pre-Nibelheim Sephiroth slayed a huge dragon on his way to Nibelheim and didn't seem to think much of it. He's this guy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KxjGn30PDA). At this point you would need at least a space marine captain to challenge Sephiroth. This space marine captain would need more war gear than it is feasible to field in a 40k-tournament to make it a bit more fair. Still, Sephiroth vs. a primarch would be a more interesting match at this point.

Sephiroth at the present timeline of FF7 and onwards? I think even a primarch would be outmatched.

Of course, The Emperor would probably win against any version of Sephiroth.

[Reddish Mage]

I'm not that familiar with Warhammer, but between Final-Boss-Fully-Deified-Personas-of-Evil?

I think its going to be a toss up.

[Traab]

Its hard to judge, but if this is lifestream controlling sephiroth, it would take cleansing the planet to truly kill him. Or even managing to flat out blow up the world, as im not sure if the lifestream would just vanish if everything in the world died instantly, or if it would take awhile to run down. (or if he could use it to restart life on the planet after his opponent leaves) And considering his supernova skill, an ability that destroys multiple worlds on its way to hitting the sun and making it engulf everything nearby, you dont want to be facing him anywhere near a star he can blow up.

[The Glyphstone]

Its hard to judge, but if this is lifestream controlling sephiroth, it would take cleansing the planet to truly kill him. Or even managing to flat out blow up the world, as im not sure if the lifestream would just vanish if everything in the world died instantly, or if it would take awhile to run down. (or if he could use it to restart life on the planet after his opponent leaves) And considering his supernova skill, an ability that destroys multiple worlds on its way to hitting the sun and making it engulf everything nearby, you dont want to be facing him anywhere near a star he can blow up.

Isn't that also a skill that, when actually used, 'destroys' those planets while only inflicting 9999 damage to the heroes fighting him, not actually destroying the planet being fought on, and capable of being used multiple times, destroying the exact same set of planets each time? Being the final boss monster of a Final Fantasy Game makes him well beyond a grunt-level space marine, but taking cutscene attack animations literally might not be the way to go.

[Kitten Champion]

Hmm..

What's to stop Sephi from casting Frog? Not that a Froggy Space Marine doesn't sound terrifying or anything.

[Traab]

Isn't that also a skill that, when actually used, 'destroys' those planets while only inflicting 9999 damage to the heroes fighting him, not actually destroying the planet being fought on, and capable of being used multiple times, destroying the exact same set of planets each time? Being the final boss monster of a Final Fantasy Game makes him well beyond a grunt-level space marine, but taking cutscene attack animations literally might not be the way to go.

Actually, it seems to only move close enough to hit the players, not hit the planet itself. But yes, if the fight goes on long enough he will cast it a few times, causing 15/16ths of your hp in damage each time. The crunch is 15/16ths total hp damage, the fluff shows it obliterating the better part of the solar system (depending on how many planets are in its path to the sun) And that is a listed ability he has in the linked description.

[gooddragon1]

Lifestream jenova sephiroth (I thought max power would cover it, but just for clarification I guess). Since it seems that nothing short of the emprah will be a match, anything from wh40k is fair game instead (demons, eldar, ... squats *goes into hiding from games workshop assassins*)

[Cheesegear]

The Ultramarines Captain knows what his duty to the Emperor has to be, knows he can not win this fight, and instead calls in his Strike Cruiser to utilise its Bombardment Cannon (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Bombardment_Cannon). If the Captain has made the trip especially for this one assignment, and has the full backing of his Chapter, with forces to command befitting combating Sephiroth specifically, the Captain has contact with a Battle Barge. In which case, its Cyclonic Torpedo (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Cyclonic_Torpedo) time, and the Captain goes for mutually assured destruction, assuming Sephiroth can't survive an exploding planet and ensuing exposure to hard vacuum.

Still, this is another one of gooddragon's heavily stacked match-ups, designed to make Space Marines lose. So, whatever.

[Juntao112]

Doesn't it really depend on who the player character is?

[The Glyphstone]

Or which Black Library author is writing the story?

[Cheesegear]

Or which Black Library author is writing the story?

Pretty much. Most of Space Marines' encounters with Daemon Princes ends in Plot Armour, or calling in far bigger guns than can be man-portable. Sephiroth is a veritable Living God, only the Emperor himself punches on that scale.

EDIT: Titus is an Ultramarines' Captain, and he's a Blank. How does Sephiroth's magic work within the context of 40K?

[gooddragon1]

Still, this is another one of gooddragon's heavily stacked match-ups, designed to make Space Marines lose. So, whatever.

Do what now? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?237948-Space-Marines-vs-Predators-%28but-not-directly%29)

They're not actually in the wh40k universe. They're on a neutral plane of existence which allows them to use their abilities as normal. So a psyker could access the warp and sephy could access the lifestream and such.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Sephiroth is an entity somewhere between a Primarch/Prince and the Emperor/Chaos Gods. Why would a single space marine ever be fighting him? Honestly, people think that a group of World Eater marines wasn't really enough to kill Rogal Dorn, there's no way one could kill Sephiroth.

[gooddragon1]

Sephiroth is an entity somewhere between a Primarch/Prince and the Emperor/Chaos Gods. Why would a single space marine ever be fighting him? Honestly, people think that a group of World Eater marines wasn't really enough to kill Rogal Dorn, there's no way one could kill Sephiroth.

That's why I said as much as you need. 1000 chaos space marines? All the demon prince primarchs? Whatever can be justified anyways.

[Cheesegear]

They're on a neutral plane of existence which allows them to use their abilities as normal.

So how do you even measure that? In Final Fantasy, what does HP represent? If someone shoots Sephiroth, he takes x damage. That doesn't mean anything. You shoot a Space Marine, and several factors come into play; Where was the Marine hit? Solid shot, explosive or laser weapon? If you shoot a Space Marine in the head, he'll probably die. Space Marines are like zombies, they'll keep going until they're brain is dead. But, even so, at the end of the day Marines have limits.

Can Sephiroth survive being shot in head? How 'bout if he's shot twice? Sephiroth can dodge bullets, so that's a wash anyway. As I said, the only real option is Exterminatus using outside forces (which is the universal cop-out in Vs. Threads) and hoping that Sephiroth can't survive planet destruction and vaccuum. Except that Sephiroth doesn't obey anatomy rules, and goes off abstract Hit Points, how much damage does a planet explosion do? How much damage per second does vacuum do?

Unless someone wants to compare the RPG damage numbers of Boltguns, compared to Sephiroth's Hit Points. Then go for it. But I don't really care that much.

Is Meteor an actual 'meteor'? Can outside forces (there's that term) shoot it out of space? Or is Meteor simply magic, where magic has no limits and can do anything?

You've really explained yourself poorly on this one.

[SiuiS]

I once beat sephira the by literal accident. Match goes to space marines for not being chumps for the counter attack materia.

[Forum Explorer]

Sephiroth is an entity somewhere between a Primarch/Prince and the Emperor/Chaos Gods. Why would a single space marine ever be fighting him? Honestly, people think that a group of World Eater marines wasn't really enough to kill Rogal Dorn, there's no way one could kill Sephiroth.

I don't understand where this is coming from. Sephiroth doesn't do that much for feats, outside of that one ridiculous cutscene where he blows up half the solar system (and then proceeds to somehow do that same attack another 15 god damn times and you can't skip it! :smallfurious:)

But anyways, outside that? We see him dodging/deflecting bullets, killing a wild monster (who to be fair is kinda low level) in one hit, instant killing Areis, and flying around like a crazy man. Off screen he slaughters a bunch of soldiers and monsters. But then so does Cloud and Co, all the time.

He did summon meteor, but that was more a factor of the Black Materia then necessarily any strength on his part.

[SiuiS]

Sephiroth is child of Genova, perfected (becauE scientists always "perfect" genes somehow). Genova is cancer of the galaxy. Literally. She infects the life force of planets, travels along their soul avenues like lymphatic metastasis, and grows stronger.

Sephiroth's plan was "become supreme god" and it would have worked.

Sephiroth was beyond superhuman. Every single monster in the game? Made by shin-Ra, through a combination of Genova cells and life stream pollution. Think of them as mutants irradiated by the souls of the world. Sephiroth was the perfected version of all of that. Sephiroth was magnitudes beyond all of them. Sephiroth is what the planet itself, with some intelligence, birthed Weapons to deal with. Sephiroth was so far beyond the Weapons they couldn't touch him.

Canonically, Sephiroth is a universe level threat who is still a baby, trying to cast off his training wheels. But his threat level – universe, not galaxy, but universe, is legitimate. Cloud only beat him because cloud was Sephiroth. Remember, Sephiroth is perfected spiritual cancer. Any mortal given "Genova cells" is being given cancer. Their body is replaced by cancer. Sephiroth's body replaced cloud'd body. Cloud won by being as strong as the boss by accident. This does not diminish Sephiroth simply because he can punch himself!


Dying to a counter attack materia though? That diminishes him. Marines FTW!

[Cheesegear]

So, I've got nothing to do...Let's treat this like the game that it is.

A Godwyn Pattern Astartes Boltgun does 2d10+5 damage with the Tearing quality, equals an average 19 damage per shot, and we don't need Leaders here, so lets just go ahead and give every single Rank 1 Tactical Marine Bolter Mastery, so now they're dealing 21 damage per shot, on average.
With a clip holding 28 Bolt Shells, assuming each Marine carries 3 clips, one Marine can do an average of 1764 damage before he runs out of ammo. Assuming every single shot he makes, hits. But they wont. So, let's multiply by an average Rank 1 Marine's BS. Giving us 1764 x .41 = 723 damage, including misses.

Jenova SYNTHESIS
- Has a total of 78,000 Hit Points.
- 107 Rank 1 Tactical Marines with Bolter Mastery can bring down SYNTHESIS with 3 clips each. Since 107 is the size of a Battle Company (100 Marines, plus Captain, plus Chaplain, plus five Command Squad Marines). Seriously. 78,000/723. Do it yourself. I wish I made that up. Since it's a legit sized Battle Company, we can assume Heavy Weapons damage (of which there'll be 14) comes at the cost of SYNTHESIS making attacks and killing a Marine per turn. Of course, a Battle Company also trades Tactical Marines for Assault Marines. But I'm really not interested in adding up what each individual squad can do, when I've already got the perfect number of 107 which I didn't even make up. At some point Dreadnoughts will even do damage, but I really don't care. 107. I couldn't ask for a better number than that. We also even have to assume that one out of every ten Tactical Marines doesn't have Bolter Mastery and is a Sergeant with Tactical Expertise instead, and then there's Greandes, and-
- Look, idiot. Stop talking. Bottom line, SYNTHESIS is a Company-level threat.

It takes 23 Rounds to empty three clips. Let's say SYNTHESIS gets to instakill 23 Marines, or one a round. Giving us 84 Marines left at the end of the fight. Assuming she has 100% accuracy.

Bizarro Sephiroth
- Even with a Captain (Rank 5) and Chaplain (Rank 4) leading them, Marines're far below the level threshold, and we don't even know Yuffie or Vincent even are, let alone have them in our party. In fact, wasn't Vincent that shapeshifter we executed a while back? Point is, we get easy-mode Bizarro, and we certainly didn't use Knights of the Round on SYNTHESIS because what even is that?
- Easy-mode Bizarro has 60,000 Hit Points
- Requires 82 Marines of our 84 left to kill.

So...Whoever didn't die in the previous battle, goes on to fight Bizarro, and can win. So long as the Marines get three fresh clips each. Not really. Clips are free to Marines. They can have as many as they want. But three clips (one loaded and two reloads) seems arbitrary enough and at least moderately realistic.

Finally...

Safer Sephiroth
- We didn't cast Knights of the Round, we don't even know what that is. We have no characters at Level 99. That's not even possible given that each universe uses it's own arbitrary rules.
- We probably killed Bizarro's Head a bunch of times, but it's neglible. S.Sephiroth sits at 80,000 Hit Points.
- Takes 110 Marines, with three clips each.

A Space Marine 4th Company - that's the 'Fleet' Company - hits hard like a ton of bricks. Rather, it hits with the tonnage of 14 Drop Pods. Hits hard. Hits fast. SYNTHESIS goes down with ease. Hot with glory, the 4th pushes on to fight Bizarro without looking back, wins that too.

The 2nd Company with all the cool Marines in it, goes in for the boss kill. Bringing along the Captain of the 4th and a few of his mates to make up numbers, and get some info from the previous battles to help them move forwards.

All-in-all, Sephiroth is a two-Company level threat. He doesn't even rate higher that the Battle of Macragge or the Second Damnosian War.


No. Wait. **** all of that. I'm an idiot. If we're fielding Battle Companies. The Captains have Vortex Grenades. Instant win. Captain Sicarius is canonically shown to have used Vortex Grenades before during the Second Damnosian War, and he can use another one, now. Sicarius throws a Vortex Grenade at Sephiroth. Sephiroth is sucked into the Warp. End.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Does casually slicing up the Junon's Sister Ray cannon with a ranged sword swipe still count if it happened on a holodeck?

Because that happened in a cut scene in the Crisis Core prequel aka ostensibly before Sephiroth went nuts or anything else. Though I never played that one so I might not be up on all the details that cutscene is broadly consistent with Advent Children's fight and modus operandi of highly mobile demi-god anime heroes with lots of firepower.

Suggesting that even aside from the always troublesome question of game mechanics back applied to reality that Sephiroth is not something any run of the mill Space Marine can handle. Since he's not sort of guy who's not going to stand still enough to be worn down by bolter fire no matter how expertly fired or what not. And while sure power armor is basically immune to flashlights small arms, but its ranges from reasonable to a fancy t-shirt above that.

He more like from a 40k perspective a daemon of some grade or other (actually works well with his plan actually) and even Primarchs defeating those is supposed to be a notable feat. The sort of thing the real Imperium policy is to wear down with waves of disposable conscripts nameless heroes then glorify the guy lucky enough to eke out the victory after its softened up. Or just use the only way to be sure.

That said I know even nominally normal 40k psykers I know have sometimes pulled off pretty ridiculous stuff, so a Librarian might be a better match then say Papa Smurf presuming his power armor could buy him the moments needed to work up some sanctioned sorcery that removes the Sephiroth taint. Or whatever.

(Or we just let Matt Ward write the match-up... or use Kaldor Draigo. Wait, that's the same thing)

[Forum Explorer]

Sephiroth is child of Genova, perfected (becauE scientists always "perfect" genes somehow). Genova is cancer of the galaxy. Literally. She infects the life force of planets, travels along their soul avenues like lymphatic metastasis, and grows stronger.

Sephiroth's plan was "become supreme god" and it would have worked.

Sephiroth was beyond superhuman. Every single monster in the game? Made by shin-Ra, through a combination of Genova cells and life stream pollution. Think of them as mutants irradiated by the souls of the world. Sephiroth was the perfected version of all of that. Sephiroth was magnitudes beyond all of them. Sephiroth is what the planet itself, with some intelligence, birthed Weapons to deal with. Sephiroth was so far beyond the Weapons they couldn't touch him.

Canonically, Sephiroth is a universe level threat who is still a baby, trying to cast off his training wheels. But his threat level – universe, not galaxy, but universe, is legitimate. Cloud only beat him because cloud was Sephiroth. Remember, Sephiroth is perfected spiritual cancer. Any mortal given "Genova cells" is being given cancer. Their body is replaced by cancer. Sephiroth's body replaced cloud'd body. Cloud won by being as strong as the boss by accident. This does not diminish Sephiroth simply because he can punch himself!


Dying to a counter attack materia though? That diminishes him. Marines FTW!


Sure he has the potential to be a galaxy wide threat. But it's a potential unrealized. He was put down in his infancy and pretty much stopped. And he didn't just instantly infect the planet, it was a whole process that he was actually supported in because some scientist thought that sticking spirit cancer in people was a good idea. Which admittedly works pretty well for 40K

EDIT: @^ Does cutting up a hologram count?

Yeah, I'm not suggesting a run of the mill space marine would win. But I do think a Librarian would be a good match. Or better yet, a Librarian with a force weapon (to blow up Sepherioth's soul) and a squad of Terminators to soften him up.

[Cheesegear]

Yeah, I'm not suggesting a run of the mill space marine would win. But I do think a Librarian would be a good match. Or better yet, a Librarian with a force weapon (to blow up Sepherioth's soul) and a squad of Terminators to soften him up.

One. Vortex Grenade. One. Is all it takes. Space Marine Captains have those, and we have a canon example of an Ultramarines Captain using one no less. This Vs. Thread is over in the time it takes for one guy to throw a grenade. That's it.

[Tiki Snakes]

Narratively speaking, Sephiroth before lifestream is broadly comparable to a Space Marine. He's a veteran, so probably comparable to an experienced/veteran marine of some kind, but anything beyond that feels like a stretch. He's strong and tough, but dies because some random dropout managed to stab him in the back with a bit of sharp metal. A lot of metal, iirc, but that's all.

Of you're going to the point of named elite marines and unique characters, I suspect that's stretching things when you allow for the general stylistic leanings of the two source materials.

Lifestream Sephiroth is a pretty big deal, but his biggest thing is not his offensive power, it's his durability. It took basically direct psychic combat to destroy him enough to end his efforts in FF7, but his actual physical form is only involved in one fight in the game. His main edge is that he eventually comes back even from this, and will presumably be capable of doing so again.

I think he loses to named psykers or high ranking anonymous ones. There's no real directly comparable threat on FF7 and it's clear that angle is his existing weakness.

But let's face it, he survives any of that because he is part of the life stream of the planet and has material in the cells of the people alive on it. He's never going down for the count while that's true. Which is to say, until whoever is on the 40k side of the equation figures that out and calls in an exterminatus.

Lifestream Sephiroth is certainly comparable with some kind of Demon, but my instinct is that he never really rated comparison with any kind of really major demon or demon prince.

[GloatingSwine]

Sephiroth is child of Genova, perfected (becauE scientists always "perfect" genes somehow). Genova is cancer of the galaxy. Literally. She infects the life force of planets, travels along their soul avenues like lymphatic metastasis, and grows stronger.

Or, as it's known in the Imperium of Man, Tuesday.

[Anonymouswizard]

Or, as it's known in the Imperium of Man, Tuesday.

Tuesday? I see you have been reading the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer.

In reality that's close to Sunday for the Imperium of Man. You do not want to know what they have to deal with when it's not everyone's day off.

[Kitten Champion]

Dying to a counter attack materia though? That diminishes him. Marines FTW!

On the other hand, I can't respect anyone who doesn't have a kickass metal/choir fusion theme song accompanying him/her.

[Hiro Protagonest]

On the other hand, I can't respect anyone who doesn't have a kickass metal/choir fusion theme song accompanying him/her.

One-Winged Angel isn't metal.

Besides, if someone makes a theme for the Ultramarines, it should be metal/choir fusion. :smalltongue: In fact that's what a lot of Space Marine chapters should have, though not all (Salamanders should just be instrumental metal or rock).

[Flickerdart]

One. Vortex Grenade. One. Is all it takes. Space Marine Captains have those, and we have a canon example of an Ultramarines Captain using one no less. This Vs. Thread is over in the time it takes for one guy to throw a grenade. That's it.
Does a vortex grenade work if it's been cut in half before activating?

[Cheesegear]

On the other hand, I can't respect anyone who doesn't have a kickass metal/choir fusion theme song accompanying him/her.

Space Marines get orchestral pieces (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLBniQbi_OA) instead, because gothica.

[Kitten Champion]

One-Winged Angel isn't metal.


The metal version is metal!


Space Marines get orchestral pieces (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLBniQbi_OA) instead, because gothica.


That's alright, like the drums. Okay, I've re-evaluated you, Space Marines.

[Forum Explorer]

Does a vortex grenade work if it's been cut in half before activating?

Honestly that probably causes it to activate twice. Or creates a full on warp storm. They are not stable devices.

But the other thing? Sephiroth is not that fast.

[Cheesegear]

Does a vortex grenade work if it's been cut in half before activating?

As long as his brain is mostly intact and at least one working arm, he can throw. Yes, that is how resilient Space Marines actually are.

[Flickerdart]

But the other thing? Sephiroth is not that fast.
Not fast enough to cut a grenade out of the air? Zack is that fast, and Sephiroth is to Zack what a Space Marine is to a toddler.

[Traab]

Look guys, I realize the supernova is a silly thing, it makes no logical sense, considering it is a suicidal technique long term (that supernova sun isnt going to just vanish, and it got close enough to the planet to engulf sephiroth and brush against our heroes iirc) but no matter how silly, it is one of his cannon feats. He can call on a comet large enough to obliterate entire worlds without slowing down till it crashes into the sun and somehow forces it to go supernova. But even stupidly insane cinematics aside, the real problem with beating sephiroth is, to truly finish him, you have to obliterate the lifestream. Or else he will just come back. So you have to blow up the damn planet and scatter its ashes across the cosmos. You cant half ass it like draenor in world of warcraft, no, the pieces gotta be many, small, and flying in every direction except towards each other.

And to reply to the guy talking about how many marines to kill bizzaro sephiroth, keep in mind, he can heal himself. Alot. He also has aoe attacks. He can hit the entire party with a combo of poison and slow. That has to effect the overall outcome of the fight if the marines are all taking constant damage from poison and have been slowed down significantly. Oh, and he can cast heartless angel, that reduces everyone to 1 hp. So that poison is going to be fatal.

[Almarck]

Hm, that brings up a good point. How fast do people fight at in WH 40k?

While in the case of Space Marines, their combat speed is justified, they're built like tanks in terms of relative toughness, which doesn't do them many favors against super speed fighters. If we really want to measure speed feats, paritciularly swordspeed feats, we probably need to look at Eldar...

Actually, thinking on the vortex grenade, how does it interact with the Swarmlord's insane parrying skills? I heard they offered some sort of special saves against shooting. That might lend us credibility on whether or not that it works in the context of Vortex grenades.



I do agree that Sephiroth's abilities are compariable to a demon of some sort... just not sure what kind of demon or rank, though probably somewhere near or approaching Greater Demon status.


Edit: Honestly, I think that the IoM probably can treat Sephiroth as a Greater Demon in terms of erradication planning, considering the Warp fills many of the details of the lifestream and more. So, it comes down to a Company declaring and delivering an Exterminatus.

[Soras Teva Gee]

The metal version is metal!

The acapella version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s20588opz4) is even more metal.
That much beard can be nothing but metal.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Hm, that brings up a good point. How fast do people fight at in WH 40k?

While in the case of Space Marines, their combat speed is justified, they're built like tanks in terms of relative toughness, which doesn't do them many favors against super speed fighters. If we really want to measure speed feats, paritciularly swordspeed feats, we probably need to look at Eldar...

Space Marines have blindingly fast reactions compared to normal humans. Who knows what that means though.

[The Glyphstone]

I do agree that Sephiroth's abilities are compariable to a demon of some sort... just not sure what kind of demon or rank, though probably somewhere near or approaching Greater Demon status.


Edit: Honestly, I think that the IoM probably can treat Sephiroth as a Greater Demon in terms of erradication planning, considering the Warp fills many of the details of the lifestream and more. So, it comes down to a Company declaring and delivering an Exterminatus.

Not that that actually kills a demon, just banishes it back to the warp for however long. It takes some very specific psychic powers/rituals to permanently eradicate a demon.

[HamHam]

I think Sephiroth at Advent Children level is a more interesting match than "blow up suns" Sephiroth because the latter literally comes down to having to send a battle fleet against him. Which leaves him with super speed, cutting buildings in half with a single blow, high toughness etc.

[Cheesegear]

But even stupidly insane cinematics aside, the real problem with beating sephiroth is, to truly finish him, you have to obliterate the lifestream. Or else he will just come back.

That's why I endorse the Vortex Grenade. You don't kill him, you shunt him somewhere else. Either Sephiroth comes back in a thousand years and a day later, bigger, madder and more pissed off than ever having absorbed half of Chaos itself. Or something in the Empryean feeds off of Sephiroth's life force forever, while not actually killing him, which Chaos can also do, especially if your soul happens to burn as evarlasting as Sephiroth's supposedly does.

Vortex Grenade. Fixes everything.

[Forum Explorer]

Not fast enough to cut a grenade out of the air? Zack is that fast, and Sephiroth is to Zack what a Space Marine is to a toddler.

Oh, after it's been thrown? Then it just activates and he's obliterated. (Well sucked into the Warp.)


Look guys, I realize the supernova is a silly thing, it makes no logical sense, considering it is a suicidal technique long term (that supernova sun isnt going to just vanish, and it got close enough to the planet to engulf sephiroth and brush against our heroes iirc) but no matter how silly, it is one of his cannon feats. He can call on a comet large enough to obliterate entire worlds without slowing down till it crashes into the sun and somehow forces it to go supernova. But even stupidly insane cinematics aside, the real problem with beating sephiroth is, to truly finish him, you have to obliterate the lifestream. Or else he will just come back. So you have to blow up the damn planet and scatter its ashes across the cosmos. You cant half ass it like draenor in world of warcraft, no, the pieces gotta be many, small, and flying in every direction except towards each other.

And to reply to the guy talking about how many marines to kill bizzaro sephiroth, keep in mind, he can heal himself. Alot. He also has aoe attacks. He can hit the entire party with a combo of poison and slow. That has to effect the overall outcome of the fight if the marines are all taking constant damage from poison and have been slowed down significantly. Oh, and he can cast heartless angel, that reduces everyone to 1 hp. So that poison is going to be fatal.

Well that's the thing. It does make zero sense. I mean, I have no idea how to even judge that. I mean sure it obliterates planets and stuff, but he does it multiple times. Does it regenerate the planets or something? Then after all of that, and massive explosion, it will always fail to kill anyone. Who is usually a crew of relatively normal humans, plus Cloud. Seriously, how the frig do you quantify that attack?

Maybe like this?
http://flakypastry.runningwithpencils.com/comics/060317-1815-Falingard.jpg

As for lifesteam, well he isn't literally the lifestream but a parasite infesting it. And unlike FF7, 40K has soul targeting, and obliterating, attacks. Or soul trapping with the right artifact. So if they can get a force weapon to finish him off, they should be able to eradicate him from the lifestream altogether.



Hm, that brings up a good point. How fast do people fight at in WH 40k?

While in the case of Space Marines, their combat speed is justified, they're built like tanks in terms of relative toughness, which doesn't do them many favors against super speed fighters. If we really want to measure speed feats, paritciularly swordspeed feats, we probably need to look at Eldar...

Actually, thinking on the vortex grenade, how does it interact with the Swarmlord's insane parrying skills? I heard they offered some sort of special saves against shooting. That might lend us credibility on whether or not that it works in the context of Vortex grenades.



I do agree that Sephiroth's abilities are compariable to a demon of some sort... just not sure what kind of demon or rank, though probably somewhere near or approaching Greater Demon status.


Edit: Honestly, I think that the IoM probably can treat Sephiroth as a Greater Demon in terms of erradication planning, considering the Warp fills many of the details of the lifestream and more. So, it comes down to a Company declaring and delivering an Exterminatus.

Very fast. I believe Space Marines have quasi-deflected bullets with their blades (though that's usually a named character of some sort). Assassins can flat out dodge bullets at point blank range. And so on and so forth.


Nothing can block or deflect a vortex grenade. By the rules you get no save of any kind. Ever. No, not even then.


I'd look at a deamon of Slaanash. Besides the whole pretty boy thing, they are also the fastest of the deamons.

[Tiki Snakes]

I'd look at a deamon of Slaanash. Besides the whole pretty boy thing, they are also the fastest of the deamons.

No meaningful speed related feats in FF7 spring to mind. Complete lack of any apparent sexual drive, no comments made in-game about his pre-fall attractiveness.

...

Conversely, the entire game spans his convoluted master-plan to do whatever it was he was trying to do (become Jenova 2.0, destroy the world, whatever).
Uses misdirection and deceit pretty widely, down to having a secret true form and using dozens of puppets to perform his will.
Allied with/part of/freakish mad science son of Jenova, the squiggly mutating horror. Jenova cells initiate all manner of changes, from minor to severe.
Secret True Form has wings all over the place.

... Comes back in the spin off film with a facial expression that seems to scream as smugly as possible "...All according to keikaku!"

Nah, I'd go firmly with Tzeentch personally.

[Tengu_temp]

The real answer here is: Sephiroth wins effortlessly, but a horde of WH40K fanboys will come and argue to the opposite anyway.

Actually, that might've started happening already.


So, there's not that many vs threads and that makes me sad.


It made me happy. There's a reason this forum has strict requirements for vs threads, and outright banned them for a while.

[Drascin]

I would say the easiest thing to do for a comparison is just take the Kingdom Hearts version of Sephiroth. Being from an action game you can gauge things he can do a lot better than in "I blow up the entire solar system to deal a percentage of your life bar!" "Well I nuke the entire continent with a mecha dragon from space but it doesn't even muss a tree!" Final Fantasy VII. Granted, then you probably also should, for fairness, use actual game space marines instead of Black Library Wank Space Marines, at which point we're back to the Vortex Grenade as only real (and not assured at all) option, really, because nothing short of a squad of Terminators is going to have time to do much of anything before being cut to ribbons. Look at what a squad of genestealers can do to a tac marine squad and remember that Sephiroth is faster and probably gets more attacks and with higher strength and better modifiers because of that dumb sword of his.

[Hiro Protagonest]

The real answer here is: Sephiroth wins effortlessly, but a horde of WH40K fanboys will come and argue to the opposite anyway.

Careful you don't cut yourself on that edge.

[Tengu_temp]

Careful you don't cut yourself on that edge.

It's not edge, it's the truth. The final boss from a high-power story vs a single mook from a high-power story (WH40K has a WTFBBQ scale, but that doesn't mean individual combatants are WTFBBQ strong)? No contest. But there are certain WH40K fans for whom it's a matter of honor to make sure Warhammer wins every single vs thread, because apparently they won't be able to enjoy it otherwise. Because having higher power obviously translates to being better as a setting/game/story.

[Forum Explorer]

It's not edge, it's the truth. The final boss from a high-power story vs a single mook from a high-power story (WH40K has a WTFBBQ scale, but that doesn't mean individual combatants are WTFBBQ strong)? No contest. But there are certain WH40K fans for whom it's a matter of honor to make sure Warhammer wins every single vs thread, because apparently they won't be able to enjoy it otherwise. Because having higher power obviously translates to being better as a setting/game/story.

Read the OP more carefully. It's how many Space Marines (plus Special Characters are allowed) would be needed to take down Sephiroth.

[Tengu_temp]

Read the OP more carefully. It's how many Space Marines (plus Special Characters are allowed) would be needed to take down Sephiroth.

That's the second question. The first is just a standard vs thread.

[Forum Explorer]

That's the second question. The first is just a standard vs thread.

Okay, well Sephiroth wins that easily. Second question is actually kinda interesting.

[The Glyphstone]

It's not edge, it's the truth. The final boss from a high-power story vs a single mook from a high-power story (WH40K has a WTFBBQ scale, but that doesn't mean individual combatants are WTFBBQ strong)? No contest. But there are certain WH40K fans for whom it's a matter of honor to make sure Warhammer wins every single vs thread, because apparently they won't be able to enjoy it otherwise. Because having higher power obviously translates to being better as a setting/game/story.

You must have misread a good chunk of the thread, then, because it doesn't describe anyone's posts in this one. The only person who has argued a single Marine can defeat Sephiroth is Cheesegear, and that is specifically by using a extremely rare and hideously valuable piece of wargear that does all the work - a five year old child could defeat Sephiroth with a vortex grenade. The rest of the '40k wins' have been by large numbers of marines, or just blowing the planet up. It's fine to have an instinctive kneejerk against those certain fans, but make sure they actually exist within a thread/discussion before decrying them.

[Cheesegear]

The only person who has argued a single Marine can defeat Sephiroth is Cheesegear, and that is specifically by using a extremely rare and hideously valuable piece of wargear that does all the work - a five year old child could defeat Sephiroth with a vortex grenade.

To be fair, I also dealt hard numbers that said it takes two Companies - including Captains, not using Vortex Grenades - to beat Sephiroth.

Meteor, as shown, may explode a whole bunch of planets on its way, but when it lands on a planet, it doesn't destroy the planet that it lands on, and it doesn't even kill the person it hits. Regardless of catgirls that die, what we're shown is that Meteor is really, really weak attack, for all its cinematic brilliance.

[Starwulf]

To be fair, I also dealt hard numbers that said it takes two Companies - including Captains, not using Vortex Grenades - to beat Sephiroth.

Meteor, as shown, may explode a whole bunch of planets on its way, but when it lands on a planet, it doesn't destroy the planet that it lands on, and it doesn't even kill the person it hits. Regardless of catgirls that die, what we're shown is that Meteor is really, really weak attack, for all its cinematic brilliance.

I'm not sure how you can call it a "Weak" attack when it destroys multiple planets on it's way to it's target. Likely the only reason it doesn't destroy the planet or the target when it hits is BECAUSE of the planets it destroyed slowing it down/weakning it on the way there. So if Sephiroth wanted to, he could very well take out multiple planets worth of opposition in the 40kWH universe just by placing himself on one planet and then lining his attack up to take out X amount of planets(I Honestly can't remember how many it does destroy).

[Cheesegear]

So if Sephiroth wanted to, he could very well take out multiple planets worth of opposition

Not relevant. It's a Vs. Thread. Only thing that matters is whether or not you can take out your opponent.

[Starwulf]

Not relevant. It's a Vs. Thread. Only thing that matters is whether or not you can take out your opponent.

I wasn't arguing for it's potency against a single target, just taking contention with the idea that it's "Weak".

Heck, maybe he could summon it in such a way that it takes out a planet or two less, and it strikes with a bit more force, not destroying the planet he's on, but doubling or even tripling it's damage? Obviously that's not canon though and I know vs threads are only based on canon, not what "can be". So I'll just stick with my original point of "It's not weak, just not that great for single target destruction"

[Tiki Snakes]

Or maybe the attack which appears to destroy the sun and all the planets every time it's used by the magical abomination in a swirling sky vortex despite being far under ground, who you face off against one on one in an obvious psychic combat kind of scenario isn't actually a sequence of events to be taken literally as truth?

The whole thing makes a lot more sense when you stop thinking of it in those terms and realise the whole situation is astral as hell, symbolism and the clash of wills everywhere.

I mean, it's not like there's any trace of the attack having physically happened in the subsequent cutscene.

[Traab]

And what about the fact that he has a poison/slow all skill and a reduce everyone to a single hp skill? That combo basically says, "lol nope" to trying to zerg him down through numbers. As I said, even ignoring the (admittedly stupid) supernova skill, he has plenty other highly dangerous, highly damaging skills. In fact, doesnt bizzaro sephiroth heal himself every round? Yep, he auto heals each round for like, 6000 hp. At least till the core is destroyed. That is a pretty huge problem for your initial numbers imo.

[Dragonus45]

To be fair, I also dealt hard numbers that said it takes two Companies - including Captains, not using Vortex Grenades - to beat Sephiroth.

Meteor, as shown, may explode a whole bunch of planets on its way, but when it lands on a planet, it doesn't destroy the planet that it lands on, and it doesn't even kill the person it hits. Regardless of catgirls that die, what we're shown is that Meteor is really, really weak attack, for all its cinematic brilliance.

Looked over your math and I was wondering, why do you have Seph only getting one swing per round. I figure he deserves more than that, really it should add up to closer to three companies.

Also I think that Seph was toning down the Meteor Str as to not take out the spot he was standing on.


And what about the fact that he has a poison/slow all skill and a reduce everyone to a single hp skill? That combo basically says, "lol nope" to trying to zerg him down through numbers. As I said, even ignoring the (admittedly stupid) supernova skill, he has plenty other highly dangerous, highly damaging skills. In fact, doesnt bizzaro sephiroth heal himself every round? Yep, he auto heals each round for like, 6000 hp. At least till the core is destroyed. That is a pretty huge problem for your initial numbers imo.

Space Marines would probably have poison immunity in FF terms. Your right about the rest though.

Cheesgear, one final thought. Once someone throws a warp grenade, everyone loses.

[Almarck]

Hm, here's a question, while I think most of us can agree that fighting Sephiroth with just bolters and chainswords is probably not a smart idea, one of the big things is that, well, we really should account for the wide variety of Wargear available to Space Marines, especially things like Antidemon weapons and any armor the provides an "Invuln save". How do we compare that stuff?

As for numbers, Sephiroth might get healing abilities of some sort, but the problem with that comes from... how do we actually calculate that and put that into a perspective that can make sense outside of a Turn based strategy game. I mean, how "much" is 6,000 HP? And for that matter, how much damage does each marine do in proportion to that, factoring in things like heavy weapons or armor ignoring power weapons? I'm not saying he's weak, but, we do kinda have to take his feats in the videogames (outside of cutscenes) with a grain of salt.

Because, if we really did factor in base game mechanics, that spell he did that put Sora into 1 hit kill range does nothing to a Space Marine because they only have 1 wound anyways. Hehe. Additionally, consider that while Metoer was happening no one attempts to harm him while it travels all the way to through the Solar system, Knights of the Round takes forever, and so on and so forth.

Anyways, I do think that we'd be best off measuring his feats in Advent Children or Kingdom Hearts games because I feel we can actually quantify that. Once we start getting into his other forms, we start ending up into the problem of actually measuring things. I think base form, he's propably best compared to a Demon or Champion of Chaos, going up the ladder depending on what version we get him as.

Actually, about magic, would Sephiroth be forced to use melee and small scale magic only? Psykers in 40k can disrupt the psionic powers of others without penalty and I do feel Materia based magic is very close to 40K psionics, but I don't know if we should allow Disruption.

[Aotrs Commander]

Space Marines have blindingly fast reactions compared to normal humans. Who knows what that means though.

About 33%, if you look at the original source material data (the same as Elves/Eldar, incidently), as opposed to believe the Space Marine's own hype of latter years...

That's still quite a respectible lot, mind.

[Cheesegear]

How do we compare that stuff?
how do we actually calculate that and put that into a perspective that can make sense outside of a Turn based strategy game. I mean, how "much" is 6,000 HP? And for that matter, how much damage does each marine do in proportion to that, factoring in things like heavy weapons or armor ignoring power weapons?
Because, if we really did factor in base game mechanics, that spell he did that put Sora into 1 hit kill range does nothing to a Space Marine because they only have 1 wound anyways. Hehe.

The 40KRPG answers every single one of those questions, without bias.

A Rank 1 Marine has an average of 41 BS, with Bolter Mastery firing a Boltgun on Full-Auto gives him 71 BS. Fires four shots per round. You may as well call that percentile BS. Everyone else does.
Rolling <41 on a D100 (that makes it a percentile) = Four hits.
42-51 = three hits
52-61 = two hits
62-71 = one hit
I didn't factor this in to my initial numbers. I only counted below .41, and treated everything else as a miss. It was easier that way. Each hit deals an average of 21 damage with Bolter Mastery, per round. So, roughly a 40% chance to deal four hits, a 30% chance to deal...Less, and a 30% chance to miss completely with all four shots, not including 5% chance either side for a Crit or Jam.

However, now thinking about this way more than I need to, the average would be 51, so each Marine hits three times, dealing 63 damage per round on perfect averages.

However, I now realise that I didn't factor in Sephiroth's own Defense stats, which are at about 100 and 200. 100 Defense (on Synthesis and Safer) will deflect about 1/5 of damage, while Bizarro's 200 deflects about 2/5 of damage. That is, going off the wiki's claim that 255 Defense deflects 'about half' of damage.

A Power Sword has a Pen. Rating of 6. How does that effect Sephiroth? How do you convert Pen. Rating 6 into cleaving through Sephiroth's 'Defense'. You probably don't even bother as the two systems are incompatible.

Terminators have a Power Field of 35. That is, a 35% chance that any attack - no matter how strong - will simply bounce off.

An Average Space Marine has 21 Wounds, DR of 4, and Power Armour for 10. Every single one of Sephiroth's attacks deals over 35 damage, which means every single dude is getting one-shotted, every time.

EDIT: More thinking.

x8 Boltguns, hitting three times each = ((21 x 0.8) x 3) x 8 = 403 damage, vs. 100 Defense (Synthesis and Safer)
x1 Plasma Gun = 15 x 0.8 = 12
x1 Krak Missile = 30 x 0.8 = 24

One normal Tactical Squad deals 439 damage per turn. Since Pen Rating (Grenades, Plasma Guns and Krak Missiles) doesn't appear to mean anything, it's better to give everyone Boltguns. Since everyone has Boltguns now, it's actually 504 damage per round, per Tac. Squad. Multiplied by 10 squads, only does ~5000 damage per round. With Bizarro healing for 6000, you'll need a whole extra Company just to dealing the healing damage, and then some.

Mechanically, it's a very simple fight, if one is willing to delve through all the math. Just reach a point where the Space Marines' numbers are bigger than Sephiroth's numbers, and that's how many Marines it takes to beat Seph, anything less, and Seph wins.

Otherwise, you go into some BS, where Seph can't die while connected to the Lifestream. What is the Lifestream? 40K doesn't have one of those, so obviously doesn't have anything to combat it. Sephiroth at no point is classed as a D(a)emon, so 'Banishing' doesn't work either. The only thing that really works on a 1v1 Level, is a Vortex Grenade (remembering that a Space Marine doesn't care if he has to die to complete his mission), or, maybe a Force Weapon. But I don't know nearly enough about Lifestream mechanics (I've only played FF7 and ignored everything else), to know how a Force Weapon interacts with the Lifestream.

[Starwulf]

Assuming Gooddragon doesn't mind me throwing this out here, instead of Sephiroth in the equation, what about Kefka? I've always felt Kefka was a much more powerful villain(literally became a god and all that), and so much less emo-y as well. Also, not really one to throw his punches either like Sephiroth has done in the past(I mean, seriously, Sephy had multiple opportunities to wipe out the entire group in FFVII before the final battle, and he just toyed with them. Kefka literally reconfigured the entire world in an attempt to rid the world of his opposition, at the first opportunity that he could).

[Traab]

Assuming Gooddragon doesn't mind me throwing this out here, instead of Sephiroth in the equation, what about Kefka? I've always felt Kefka was a much more powerful villain(literally became a god and all that), and so much less emo-y as well. Also, not really one to throw his punches either like Sephiroth has done in the past(I mean, seriously, Sephy had multiple opportunities to wipe out the entire group in FFVII before the final battle, and he just toyed with them. Kefka literally reconfigured the entire world in an attempt to rid the world of his opposition, at the first opportunity that he could).

Didnt sephiroth need them, or at least cloud, alive, in order to complete his plan? Also, dont forget that kefka has absolutely zero effs to give when it comes to collateral. Dude poisoned all of doma castle to end the siege just because it was easier. As for rearranging the planet, I dont think he actually did that. When he pulled the three goddess statues out of alignment to steal their power, blowing up the world was a side effect I think. You might as well say that sephiroth sicced the Weapons on everyone when the reality is, the weapons waking up and attacking was the planet responding to what sephiroth did, not some intended plan.

[Starwulf]

Didnt sephiroth need them, or at least cloud, alive, in order to complete his plan? Also, dont forget that kefka has absolutely zero effs to give when it comes to collateral. Dude poisoned all of doma castle to end the siege just because it was easier. As for rearranging the planet, I dont think he actually did that. When he pulled the three goddess statues out of alignment to steal their power, blowing up the world was a side effect I think. You might as well say that sephiroth sicced the Weapons on everyone when the reality is, the weapons waking up and attacking was the planet responding to what sephiroth did, not some intended plan.

Hmm, yeah that is a good point, though I'm sure Kefka knew craziness was going to ensue when he moved the Goddess Statues, it's just like you said though, he doesn't give an eff about collateral as long as he achieves his objective. All the more reason I'd like to see how much it would take to take HIM out instead of Sephiroth. Seph was more of a...demi-god I think, or slightly under even, whereas Kefka was full-on God-mode.

Ya know, that's always bugged me(I'm so sorry gooddragon for derailing this thread) about FFVII. The weapons were released in order to combat Sephiroth, yet they never actually go after him. Instead, Cloud and his group have to fight them! Seems...kinda counterproductive to me, to fight the group that's trying to help the planet, instead of going after the bad guy like they were supposed to. Hmm...I wonder if there are any FFVII fanfics where the weapons go after him!

As far as Sephiroth needing Cloud and his group....I honestly couldn't tell you, I haven't played FFVII(it's actually one of my lesser played/favorite ff games, *GASP*) in like a decade n a half or so. I can barely remember anything about the game outside of very key points. Maybe I should find it and load it up!

[Traab]

Well I know sephiroth used cloud to grab the black materia he needed to summon meteor, but I think there was a bit more to it than that as well. As for the weapons, they basically wake up and attack all the threats to the world. Shinra is a MAJOR threat, as they are actively draining the world of the Lifestream, turning it into mako energy. You really only deal with one weapon directly, the others are optional. One attacks junon harbor as you are getting executed, it gets shot in the face with the junon cannon. Then just as midgard is about to shoot its super powered ultra mako gun at the north crater, a new weapon starts walking out of the ocean heading for town and you have to delay it. The emerald and ruby weapon just kinda hang out not bothering anybody unless you feel like picking a fight with them. (Well, the emerald weapon can be a prick, it randomly appears sometimes when you are underwater) I think sephiroth was hiding his presence from the weapons somehow, but I dont think that was even confirmed in game.

[Tiki Snakes]

The planet isn't meaningfully sentient and the weapons don't have a specific goal of stopping Sephiroth. The weapons also weren't created for this crisis, just released.

They are weapons the planet uses to protect itself when threatened. They do this by gathering life energy back to the planet, iirc. This is why they specifically go after the single biggest drains on mako energy as well, the mako cannons. Their only goal beyond that is to gather more energy back to the planet so that it can protect itself. They do this by freeing it up. Which is to say, killing a whole bunch of people.

You've got to remember, the planet doesn't really perceive Sephiroth as a threat because he's simply part of the lifestream. Shinra is the threat that awakens the weapons, not him. Sure, he also threatens the planet's continued exstence, but not in a way the planet can really detect or comprehend. And cloud only really gains importance from Sephiroth point of view later on, beyond the fact it was him who killed him first time round. He's otherwise just another potential puppet amongst many others. Because for most of the game, the real conflict is Sephiroth vs Shinra with Cloud and friends merely caught up in the middle and/or lagging a few steps behind.

It's only after Cloud has come to terms with the truth that he is mentally strong enough to stand on his own two feat and oppose Sephiroth meaningfully.

[Cheesegear]

Kefka is easy mode. He doesn't even heal.

Heartless Angel drops the party to 1HP. That's okay, Kefka is one-shotting Marines anyway.
Per previous posts, ((21 x .78) x 3) x 100 = 4914 vs. Kefka's Defense of 135. Let's make it 5000 damage per turn.

It takes six turns for one Company of Marines to get Kekfa below 32640, so, the Marines haven't even reloaded yet.

IIRC, every single one of Kefka's attacks are single target spells. Except Heartless Angel, which only happens once, anyway. So, Kefka gets to kill six dudes. Big whoop.

Second Phase, Kefka takes two turns to cast Forsaken dealing 220 damage to the entire party. One-shotting every single Marine in the fight, even Captains.

Essentially, Marines need to deal 32000 damage in two turns - or 16K, per turn - before everyone dies.

Let's do some math... And it takes six and a bit Companies to deal that much damage.

[Almarck]

I'm mostly basing the assumption the Seph is very similar to a demon because he functional does plenty of the things expected of one. The other part is the life stream is basically a collective unconscious or afterlife involving pretty much everyone who has lived and died. It functions very much like the warp from my perspective. Obviously can't be banished.

I actually also don't understand the bolt gun calculations, mostly because it doesn't seem like it makes sense that 8 marines do 410 damage together. Don't you fight lots of Shinra goons that individually do more damage than that? I know Shinra is pretty strong but still, their tech isn't that good. In short, I think using the video game sorting algorithm adds in some pretty big weirdness when comparing things from alternate universes and does in in sense invalidate the math.

Granted I do think Seph probably should be wiping out a few marines per turn like auto kill anything that doesn't have terminator armor several times over.

[Cheesegear]

I'm mostly basing the assumption the Seph is very similar to a demon because he functional does plenty of the things expected of one.

More than anything, Seph functions as a Perpetual, not a Daemon. Perpetuals are not Daemons.


The other part is the life stream is basically a collective unconscious or afterlife involving pretty much everyone who has lived and died. It functions very much like the warp from my perspective.

Then your perspective is wrong. Because gooddragon already stipulated that each 'verse functions seperately to its own rules. Ergo, the Lifestream is not the Empryean, they're two seperate things, as laid down by the Vs. Thread rules.


In short, I think using the video game sorting algorithm adds in some pretty big weirdness when comparing things from alternate universes and does in in sense invalidate the math.

Meteor can hit a planet. Nobody dies.


Granted I do think Seph probably should be wiping out a few marines per turn

By what metric? Advent Children? If you want to take narrative, non-mechanical feats into account, then the thread is over. A Captain with a Vortex Grenade wins. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions. Want to turn morals on? Fine. Do that.

What is your Duty? To serve The Emperor's Will.
What is The Emperor's Will? That we fight and die.
What is Death? It is our duty.
What is your Duty?
- Litany of the Space Marines

Recited before pretty much every battle. Indoctrinated into every single Space Marine there is, dying is A-OK. Drop Vortex Grenade at feet. Mutually assured destruction. Game over.

[SiuiS]

On the other hand, I can't respect anyone who doesn't have a kickass metal/choir fusion theme song accompanying him/her.

That was the problem! I was like "aww, yeah, finally got here after my months of careful grinding because my friend who was just as good at this stuff* back when the game first came out had trouble with him, time to listen to some bitchin' theme music! I've earned it" and that quickly became like "what, tifa, tifa no, no tifa, tifa, no, TIFA! *end credits*".

He didn't have a cool metal theme song choir thingy. He had like three strains and then the sound of fists destroying everything he ever worked for.

[Rakaydos]

Canonically, Sephiroth is a universe level threat who is still a baby, trying to cast off his training wheels. But his threat level – universe, not galaxy, but universe, is legitimate.


Or, as it's known in the Imperium of Man, Tuesday.



All-in-all, Sephiroth is a twothree-Company level threat. He doesn't even rate higher that the Battle of Macragge or the Second Damnosian War.

I find this progression perfectly logical.

[Starwulf]

Kefka is easy mode. He doesn't even heal.

Heartless Angel drops the party to 1HP. That's okay, Kefka is one-shotting Marines anyway.
Per previous posts, ((21 x .78) x 3) x 100 = 4914 vs. Kefka's Defense of 135. Let's make it 5000 damage per turn.

It takes six turns for one Company of Marines to get Kekfa below 32640, so, the Marines haven't even reloaded yet.

IIRC, every single one of Kefka's attacks are single target spells. Except Heartless Angel, which only happens once, anyway. So, Kefka gets to kill six dudes. Big whoop.

Second Phase, Kefka takes two turns to cast Forsaken dealing 220 damage to the entire party. One-shotting every single Marine in the fight, even Captains.

Essentially, Marines need to deal 32000 damage in two turns - or 16K, per turn - before everyone dies.

Let's do some math... And it takes six and a bit Companies to deal that much damage.

Interesting, so Kefka wipes out 3x as many Space Marine companies as Sephiroth! Figured he was significantly more powerful then Sephy was, didn't realize he was THAT much more powerful though. Math ftw!

[SiuiS]

As for lifesteam, well he isn't literally the lifestream but a parasite infesting it. And unlike FF7, 40K has soul targeting, and obliterating, attacks. Or soul trapping with the right artifact. So if they can get a force weapon to finish him off, they should be able to eradicate him from the lifestream altogether.


Cancer. cancer. The issue with him isn't the one dude, it's the cancerousness. He metastasizes into the reincarnation cycle. That's why he keeps coming back. As long as souls exist, and their... I don't know, localized energy of existence passes through the filters of the otherworld in a fashion sufficient to be viewed as "passing through the earth" with the earth being the world infected, then Sephiroth just sort of... Grows back. And not even that, there doesn't have to be only one of him.

He's a tumor with a compensation sword and mommy issues.



Very fast. I believe Space Marines have quasi-deflected bullets with their blades (though that's usually a named character of some sort). Assassins can flat out dodge bullets at point blank range. And so on and so forth.

That's also a FF thing. And dodging point blank bullets is easier than dodging distant ones. It's about removing yourself from firing zone while the enemy's body/finger/hammer is still moving.


No meaningful speed related feats in FF7 spring to mind. Complete lack of any apparent sexual drive, no comments made in-game about his pre-fall attractiveness.

He does a few Goku-style zanzoken moves.



Conversely, the entire game spans his convoluted master-plan to do whatever it was he was trying to do (become Jenova 2.0, destroy the world, whatever).
Uses misdirection and deceit pretty widely, down to having a secret true form and using dozens of puppets to perform his will.
Allied with/part of/freakish mad science son of Jenova, the squiggly mutating horror. Jenova cells initiate all manner of changes, from minor to severe.
Secret True Form has wings all over the place.

... Comes back in the spin off film with a facial expression that seems to scream as smugly as possible "...All according to keikaku!"

Nah, I'd go firmly with Tzeentch personally.

Heh.

The puppets were less master plan as we know it, and not awakening to the act that he had like, twenty fingers. And each finger was actually a clone body. Crazy is the buzzword here, not Xanatos~


Read the OP more carefully. It's how many Space Marines (plus Special Characters are allowed) would be needed to take down Sephiroth.

One! Give him counter attack materia.


For record though, Sephiroth does have feats of speed and strength. He uses iai-style chanbara attacks wherein there is no meaningful spatial motion; he goes from ready to hit you, maybe thirty meters away or more, to hitting you, without traveling the intervening distance in a way that can be interacted with other than preemptive guarding with a magic key. His sword strokes can fell several marines at once (in the deplete their HPs sense, of bisecting tanks. They're likely still alive, just lacking arms or anything below the nipples). He can cover areas with nuclear fire, or summon saint Elmo's fire which has the added benefit of being impervious to weapons fire.

It's all mostly trickery and jerk moves, but he's got it.

What do the marines have? Do thy have holes in their armor for jewels? An small yellow jewels? Perhaps counter attack materia? Because that would clinch this.

[Forum Explorer]

Cancer. cancer. The issue with him isn't the one dude, it's the cancerousness. He metastasizes into the reincarnation cycle. That's why he keeps coming back. As long as souls exist, and their... I don't know, localized energy of existence passes through the filters of the otherworld in a fashion sufficient to be viewed as "passing through the earth" with the earth being the world infected, then Sephiroth just sort of... Grows back. And not even that, there doesn't have to be only one of him.

He's a tumor with a compensation sword and mommy issues.



That's also a FF thing. And dodging point blank bullets is easier than dodging distant ones. It's about removing yourself from firing zone while the enemy's body/finger/hammer is still moving.




For record though, Sephiroth does have feats of speed and strength. He uses iai-style chanbara attacks wherein there is no meaningful spatial motion; he goes from ready to hit you, maybe thirty meters away or more, to hitting you, without traveling the intervening distance in a way that can be interacted with other than preemptive guarding with a magic key. His sword strokes can fell several marines at once (in the deplete their HPs sense, of bisecting tanks. They're likely still alive, just lacking arms or anything below the nipples). He can cover areas with nuclear fire, or summon saint Elmo's fire which has the added benefit of being impervious to weapons fire.

It's all mostly trickery and jerk moves, but he's got it.

What do the marines have? Do thy have holes in their armor for jewels? An small yellow jewels? Perhaps counter attack materia? Because that would clinch this.

Well it's hard to say what would happen exactly, but the point is that Force Weapons can break the reincarnation cycle when it kills a target by obliterating their soul. And due to psyker weirdness, that may be like shooting a laser into the lifestream to destroy the tumor that is Sephiroth. Or maybe not. But any psyker would be able to detect the lifestream, and likely Sephiroth inside it, and this being 40K, they'd likely treat it as a threat and seek to obliterate the whole thing either via massive planetary destruction or some massive psyker ritual to tear it apart.

The point is, that 40K is well equipped for soul shenanigan threats. And are fully willing to go so far beyond overkill to finish Sephie off that collateral damage is not a concern to them.


Sure. I'm just saying that's hardly rare in the 40K verse. And that high ranking space marines are on that level of speed and skill.


And Terminator armor is tougher then tank armor. He might be able to break through it, but at the same time it'd likely be able to withstand quite a few blade strokes. That combined with a high ranking Librarian (and maybe a Battle Captain to actually duel him along with a squad of Terminators) to help shield from the magic, and fight with their own psyker powers, seems to be enough to take him down.

[Friv]

Can Sephiroth survive being shot in head? How 'bout if he's shot twice?

Theoretically, yes. It's absurd, but yes. My reference is Advent Children, in which Cloud is shot in the head point-blank (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwB78V7DsEM&t=3m13s) by a modern gun and all that happens is his sunglasses break and he develops a little scratch.

As far as that planet-destroying spell, that is clearly not literally happening, as the planet is restored in time for the next spell to go off.

Generally speaking, I agree with the majority; a company of marines could take Sephiroth, but the first time they do it he'll come back a couple of years later. After two or three attempts, someone is going to realize he's infected the Planet and obliterate everything to stop him, unless he manages to be subtle enough to get off-planet first.

(I'm not so sure that psykers or soul-destroying weapons would do the trick in one go; at the end of FF7, Sephiroth was sufficiently obliterated that the Lifestream seemed safe; it wasn't until people started getting sick almost two years later that he began to reconstitute.)

[Traab]

You know, you mentioned getting off the planet and that made me wonder. Would sephiroth be able to draw on the power of multiple lifestreams if he keeps infecting new worlds? Would he say, drain the lifestream then move on?

[GloatingSwine]

You know, you mentioned getting off the planet and that made me wonder. Would sephiroth be able to draw on the power of multiple lifestreams if he keeps infecting new worlds? Would he say, drain the lifestream then move on?

That's basically what Jenova does, consumes the lifestream energy from a planet, uses it to launch to the next planet, repeats the process.

But, y'know, takes thousands of years to do it rather than a few days like a Tyranid hive fleet.

[gooddragon1]

That's basically what Jenova does, consumes the lifestream energy from a planet, uses it to launch to the next planet, repeats the process.

But, y'know, takes thousands of years to do it rather than a few days like a Tyranid hive fleet.

The crons are much better at the lifestream part actually. imo

[Cheesegear]

You know, you mentioned getting off the planet and that made me wonder. Would sephiroth be able to draw on the power of multiple lifestreams if he keeps infecting new worlds? Would he say, drain the lifestream then move on?

In 40K? No. Because 40K planets don't have lifestreams, unless we assume that they do. In which case, Seph is just a different kind of Tyranid, nothing the Imperium hasn't already dealt with. Except he's only one guy, instead of a Hive Fleet that attacks ten Systems at once, and there's no evidence to suggest that Seph can breathe in a vacuum. So, destroy the planet Seph is standing on (which the Imperium can and will do), let him float in space for a bit with no access to a lifestream, and watch him die.


The crons are much better at the lifestream part actually. imo

Necrons have nothing to do with anything remotely resembling a lifestream. A dead Necron is a dead Necron. The best Necrons can hope for, is that before their death, they can teleport back to their sarcophagus, which uses nanites to repair their metal bodies back from ruins in days. If there's no sarcophagus in range, teleport fails, and then they get killed by whatever is about to kill them. A dead Cylon Necron is dead. Necrons are immortal in the sense that they can potentially live forever, they are not immortal in the sense that they are invulnerable to death.

[Rakaydos]

In 40K? No. Because 40K planets don't have lifestreams, unless we assume that they do. In which case, Seph is just a different kind of Tyranid, nothing the Imperium hasn't already dealt with. Except he's only one guy, instead of a Hive Fleet that attacks ten Systems at once, and there's no evidence to suggest that Seph can breathe in a vacuum. So, destroy the planet Seph is standing on (which the Imperium can and will do), let him float in space for a bit with no access to a lifestream, and watch him die.

I would argue that, at least in full-god mode, breathing in space is implied by the whole "seek out new worlds to absorb."

[Cheesegear]

I would argue that, at least in full-god mode, breathing in space is implied by the whole "seek out new worlds to absorb."

So you go to 'capable of breathing in space', rather than 'needs a starship to move around'.

[The Glyphstone]

So you go to 'capable of breathing in space', rather than 'needs a starship to move around'.

If he can breath in space, he technically doesn't need a starship to move around. It'll just take a really really long time for him to get between solar systems.

[Cheesegear]

If he can breath in space, he technically doesn't need a starship to move around.

That's not what I meant.

If Sephiroth needs to 'seek out new worlds to absorb', my response is that he'll need a starship for that. My conclusion isn't Sephiroth can 'seek out new worlds' because he can breathe in space.

[Rakaydos]

That's not what I meant.

If Sephiroth needs to 'seek out new worlds to absorb', my response is that he'll need a starship for that. My conclusion isn't Sephiroth can 'seek out new worlds' because he can breathe in space.

I'd look to Jenova's origin story on that. Jenova (which is what Sepheroth is becoming) arrived from space in a big rock that crashed and made a big crator. This implies at least space-hibernation, to sleep through the long voyages between worlds, and possibly the ability to direct the rock through space the same way materia can summon meteors. Either way it's not something comparable to the ShinRA rocket, though of course 40k has a more flexibble definition of "starship", so it might qualify.

[Mato]

From a position of ignorance I say... Space Marines!

Sephiroth at full power appears not to care even if he loses (advent children), and that whole discussion on planet busting. Plus the OP said full power and he can use Materia so you have to count stuff like W-Summon Knights of the Round, Slash-All, Counter, Preemptive, Long Range, etc.

But the OP thought each one of the Marines stands a chance. So these guys must apparently fight against solar system busting immortal magic casting super sword wielding mega villains that always go first all the time right?

[The Glyphstone]

From a position of ignorance I say... Space Marines!

Sephiroth at full power appears not to care even if he loses (advent children), and that whole discussion on planet busting. Plus the OP said full power and he can use Materia so you have to count stuff like W-Summon Knights of the Round, Slash-All, Counter, Preemptive, Long Range, etc.

But the OP thought each one of the Marines stands a chance. So these guys must apparently fight against solar system busting immortal magic casting super sword wielding mega villains that always go first all the time right?

Quite frequently. They usually lose and die horribly, but that's what named heroes special characters are for.

[SiuiS]

Well it's hard to say what would happen exactly, but the point is that Force Weapons can break the reincarnation cycle when it kills a target by obliterating their soul. And due to psyker weirdness, that may be like shooting a laser into the lifestream to destroy the tumor that is Sephiroth. Or maybe not. But any psyker would be able to detect the lifestream, and likely Sephiroth inside it, and this being 40K, they'd likely treat it as a threat and seek to obliterate the whole thing either via massive planetary destruction or some massive psyker ritual to tear it apart.

Might not matter. That's why I'm stressing the cancer example; if a single cell survives he will reconstitute. Hell, of existing, living people who are aufficiently affected by the idea of him survive, he will reconstitute.

The incarnum of his soul (to steal the parlance for lack of better) is the source. It doesn't need to be a complete soul; if you blow his spectre away and the dust settles, the planet is infected. If you completely anihilate his soul but a planet is already affected, he's going to grow back. He's like Orks except you need to be able to scour entire planets on both the material and astral, not just the material.

God help us if he infects actual Orks.


You know, you mentioned getting off the planet and that made me wonder. Would sephiroth be able to draw on the power of multiple lifestreams if he keeps infecting new worlds? Would he say, drain the lifestream then move on?

Yes. That is his modus operandi. And it's even worse than that, because...


I'd look to Jenova's origin story on that. Jenova (which is what Sepheroth is becoming) arrived from space in a big rock that crashed and made a big crator. This implies at least space-hibernation, to sleep through the long voyages between worlds, and possibly the ability to direct the rock through space the same way materia can summon meteors. Either way it's not something comparable to the ShinRA rocket, though of course 40k has a more flexibble definition of "starship", so it might qualify.

Sephiroth is not becoming Jenova. Jenova is a primordial Sephiroth. Through science and dark arts, Jenova was perfected into Sephiroth.

Humans were given Jenova cells and exposed to life stream. In all but one single case, those cells completely replaced the tissues of the subjects. That one case wasn't even successful at avoiding this fate; he just absorbed the consciousness of a stronger version of these 'clones' instead of absorbing Sephiroth's consciousness. And even that was insufficient to prevent him from being a clone puppet.

An ancient, or whatever they are called – an immortal, mystical, star-faring people who could communicate with life itself in empathic form and nurse magic out of the void rather than requiring crystallized knowledge and power attached to their bodies – was then cross bred with a human and Jenova. And the resulting child was tinkered with to get the best combination of traits.

Sephiroth could himself physically travel to other worlds and infect them. Or he could do the damage to one world quickly, and force that planet out of or it, accelerate it usig magic, explode, and send those polluted chunks of planet into other planets, infecting them.

And this is ignoring the overarching angel symbolism, wherein the ancients and Jenova were as much spiritual forces which travelled in narrative time.




Which makes it really, really sad that he could be iced by a single marine, but there you have it.

[Mato]

Which makes it really, really sad that he could be iced by a single marine, but there you have it.Actually two different people have chimed in other wise and your post at no point presents any case for us to "have it".

One used the example of Cloud being pretty much immune to bullets, which kind of makes sense. Barret used a machine gun for a hand firing a dozen shots for each "attack" and even at maximum damage against a minimal HP Safer Sephiroth it still takes eight full turns for this very unique lv99 hero using legendary weapons and near mythic gear to kill him. On the other side of the coin, outside of some very special exceptions no Final Fantasy boss needs 8 turns to kill a hero (some can even can kill up to four heroes in one turn).

The other was someone's attempt to mash the damage figures in each game. There they present a typical "boltgun" user deals 16.8 damage per shot to Sephiroth. So they built a ten man squad, and called ten of those squads a company, and then started discussing how many companies it'd take. The answer: quite a few.

My own sarcastic remark observed the lack of quantification of "full power". Bizzaro and Safer were used, but the actual Sephiroth used in combat during the flashback is hard coded to always critically hit and never takes damage even if directly attacked which makes him the most powerful default incarnation presented over the course of the game. He can also use and equip Materia so what ones are allowed? Even better, FF7 has a Lucky 7s mechanic which can be used by the enemies so where exactly is the line drawn in the sand?

Maybe as a military entity the Space Marines can kill Sephiroth. But I don't think no one has ever said or even considered that one of them is sufficient.

[Kitten Champion]

Maybe as a military entity the Space Marines can kill Sephiroth. But I don't think no one has ever said or even considered that one of them is sufficient.

Cheesegear did, a ways back. Something about a Vortex Grenade.

[The Glyphstone]

And even that had nothing to do with the Marine and everything to do with the grenade.

[Angelalex242]

Well...even with such a grenade, how are they going to keep him dead?

"I will...never be a memory"

And 2 years later, he's blowing up Space Marines by the boatload again.

"He's coming back...the Nightmare..." </Kadaj>

In short, those poor Marines have to come after him every couple years, only to die by thousands and more...for a 2 year break.

It's almost like trying to send summoners after Sin. Ya might get him for a little while, but...

[SiuiS]

Actually two different people have chimed in other wise and your post at no point presents any case for us to "have it".

Not in this one.

Unlike space marines, however, Sephiroth can be defeated by accident.



My own sarcastic remark observed the lack of quantification of "full power". Bizzaro and Safer were used, but the actual Sephiroth used in combat during the flashback is hard coded to always critically hit and never takes damage even if directly attacked which makes him the most powerful default incarnation presented over the course of the game.

Not so. That's a matter of setting scale. It's clearly laid out that the flashback was a weaker, more mortal version from before he embraced his power. The hard coding exists to demonstrate his relative awesomeness.

Unless you want to insists that yuffie and Vincent don't exist because there wasn't enough space for them to exist in some cutscenes?



Even better, FF7 has a Lucky 7s mechanic which can be used by the enemies so where exactly is the line drawn in the sand?

Hahahahaha! For real?! That's amazing~

[Hiro Protagonest]

Well...even with such a grenade, how are they going to keep him dead?

"I will...never be a memory"

And 2 years later, he's blowing up Space Marines by the boatload again.

"He's coming back...the Nightmare..." </Kadaj>

In short, those poor Marines have to come after him every couple years, only to die by thousands and more...for a 2 year break.

It's almost like trying to send summoners after Sin. Ya might get him for a little while, but...

Ah, but that makes the grenade even MORE effective, because it DOESN'T kill him, it banishes him to the warp for a few millennia.

[The Glyphstone]

Pretty much. He'd be 100% alive, but trapped in the Warp amongst all manner of horrid beasties that could keep him occupied defending himself for a few thousand years, even if they couldn't actually destroy him (which isn't guaranteed, but this was specifically Sephiroth vs. Space Marines, not Sephiroth Versus Everything In Warhammer 40K).

[SiuiS]

Pretty much. He'd be 100% alive, but trapped in the Warp amongst all manner of horrid beasties that could keep him occupied defending himself for a few thousand years, even if they couldn't actually destroy him (which isn't guaranteed, but this was specifically Sephiroth vs. Space Marines, not Sephiroth Versus Everything In Warhammer 40K).

How do angels and fallen angels and nephilim interact with the warp?

[Aotrs Commander]

Pretty much. He'd be 100% alive, but trapped in the Warp amongst all manner of horrid beasties that could keep him occupied defending himself for a few thousand years, even if they couldn't actually destroy him (which isn't guaranteed, but this was specifically Sephiroth vs. Space Marines, not Sephiroth Versus Everything In Warhammer 40K).

Wouldn't that just mean he comes back out at higher level...?

[Drascin]

Wouldn't that just mean he comes back out at higher level...?

Yeah, but that's after ten thousand years and by that time it's a problem for a future hero (or a team of teenagers with attitude). Standard fantasy procedure, you know.

[Aotrs Commander]

Yeah, but that's after ten thousand years and by that time it's a problem for a future hero (or a team of teenagers with attitude). Standard fantasy procedure, you know.

I'd just like to go slightly off topic, and say, for the record, and say I hate particular narrative trope of "make it someone else's problem."

Especially when "someone else" happens to be some unsuspecting teenager umpteen years down the line, who isn't a volenteer and would rather not have to do, actually.

Double-especially since when it is a result of some sactomonius, arrogant, prideful little [excrement]-stain pretending to hold their moral high ground, who would rather leave the universe/galaxy/planet/whatever at risk and/or have people die than actually soil their own precious conscience by not permenantly dealing with something and getting blood on their hands, because they think themselves better than basically every law-enforcement officer or soldier who has had to do that in the line of their duties.



Actually, I kind of now want to see a world in which some idiot sealed away some great evil and said someone else would be destined to fix it umpteen decades/centuries/millenia down the line, only that race got wiped out in its entirity, and now the great evil has got out and there's no-one left to stop it. And the reaction on their ghost-faces when it pops into whatever afterlife realm they are in to eat them.

[Tiki Snakes]

There's an interesting story in that idea, somewhere. Hmm.

Oh, as for the previous point I wouldn't say it's strictly a case of sealing him away to be someone else's problem. The journey itself could obliterate him. If it didn't, then there are things in the warp that could eat Sephiroth for dinner without even realising he was there. He could be subsumed into larger eldritch forces, slain, enslaved, or simply fade away without the rest of the planet'a lifeforce cycle to sustain him. Over the aeons, even if he survives the warp itself, his spirit could lose that strength of will preventing him from simply becoming non-sentient energy, (as it's only by force of will that he prevents himself fully dissapating).

And if he gets through all of that, it won't be unchanged. He'd pretty much be a creature of the warp at that point, which means escaping it is no easy thing and at that point he's no greater threat than any of the other functionally infinite horrors that could be brought through be appropriate planet-side help.

It's worth remembering; Sephiroth was a super soldier who died to a normal human's surprise attack. He became a wibbly wobbly ghost monster capable of threatening the planet but failed, thanks mostly to the efforts of other baseline humans, albeit ones with decent equipment and training. As a global threat, he's valid. As an interplanetary threat, he's running at a batting average of what, none for two attempts at this point? He's verifiably less successful than Jenova who at a bare minimum wiped out one planet and managers score draw on her final.

On the scale of 40k threats, this makes him a poorly resourced faction and a relatively minor threat in the big picture scheme of things.

[Traab]

I'd just like to go slightly off topic, and say, for the record, and say I hate particular narrative trope of "make it someone else's problem."

Especially when "someone else" happens to be some unsuspecting teenager umpteen years down the line, who isn't a volenteer and would rather not have to do, actually.

Double-especially since when it is a result of some sactomonius, arrogant, prideful little [excrement]-stain pretending to hold their moral high ground, who would rather leave the universe/galaxy/planet/whatever at risk and/or have people die than actually soil their own precious conscience by not permenantly dealing with something and getting blood on their hands, because they think themselves better than basically every law-enforcement officer or soldier who has had to do that in the line of their duties.



Actually, I kind of now want to see a world in which some idiot sealed away some great evil and said someone else would be destined to fix it umpteen decades/centuries/millenia down the line, only that race got wiped out in its entirity, and now the great evil has got out and there's no-one left to stop it. And the reaction on their ghost-faces when it pops into whatever afterlife realm they are in to eat them.

Too be fair, most of those sealed away for someone else to deal with type stories involve an evil that CANT be killed for whatever reason. Its rare that they consciously choose not to kill it, but instead lock it away, and more often, "This method will bring us ten generations of peace and prosperity, we dont have any permanent options. Lets do it this way and leave enough info behind so next time they can do better."

In fact, the only example I can think of offhand would be the Elenium series by David Eddings. The Elder God Azash is sealed away into a statue by a large group of his fellow gods. Theoretically they could kill him, but they dont. Then hundreds of years later the hero shows up to handle things.

[Flickerdart]

If Sephiroth does fall into the Warp, how does he stack up against the various Chaos beings? Does he have a chance to emerge as a fifth Chaos God or at least ally himself with one of them?

[Traab]

If Sephiroth does fall into the Warp, how does he stack up against the various Chaos beings? Does he have a chance to emerge as a fifth Chaos God or at least ally himself with one of them?

I was actually wondering that myself. He was able to merge with the lifestream, could he merge with the warp and remain himself? Would he find himself quickly devoured by the chaos gods or their minions? Would the warp tear his essence apart? Would he be able to burrow in like a tick and grow more powerful until he gets noticed and destroyed?

[Tiki Snakes]

If Sephiroth does fall into the Warp, how does he stack up against the various Chaos beings? Does he have a chance to emerge as a fifth Chaos God or at least ally himself with one of them?

Sephiroth isn't even the most powerful thing on his own planet. He's not even the most powerful boss in the game, with one or two of the optional Weapon's being much tougher. And he gets his ass kicked by a plucky band of heroes in a fight essentially on his own terms. Three times in short succession.

The final fight being an apparent astral battle of wills with someone who lacked the mental fortitude to be recruited to be a super soldier a relatively short time ago and who was little more than a mind-slave only days earlier.

Sephiroth isn't the biggest fish in his own little pond. He is not a big fish in the wider ocean. Some of those entities and forces empowered by fundamental elements of reality, or the psychic footprints of the populations of worlds by the billion.

It would be an astonishing feat of survival if he didn't simply immediately become subsumed into Tzeentch, or enthralled as one of his creatures.

He really, really doesn't want to end up in there, though he's arrogant enough that he might not even realise until it's too late just how out classed he is in there.

[Wraith]

I was actually wondering that myself. He was able to merge with the lifestream, could he merge with the warp and remain himself? Would he find himself quickly devoured by the chaos gods or their minions? Would the warp tear his essence apart? Would he be able to burrow in like a tick and grow more powerful until he gets noticed and destroyed?

If Sephiroth achieved his goal of merging with the lifestream and becoming the undisputed supreme overlord of the planet..... He'd approximately be on par with a Daemon Prince.
Deep in the Eye of Terror, there are hundreds - thousands - of worlds ruled by the whim of a single elevated mortal, and all of them insignificant to the powers of the Gods.

A reasonable comparison, I think, would be a Chaos Space Marine (in the vague area of "post-human super soldier", which Sephiroth is), made into a Chaos Champion with the gifts and boons that brings (Sephiroth with materia and the awakening powers of Jenova) and finally elevated into Daemonhood. It's not perfect and the scales are kinda weird, but it's not bad as an example.

In the same vein, I have noticed that a few people have argued that one way to take him out is Exterminatus, to which I would say: go ahead, pour gasoline on a bonfire. :smalltongue:

The Imperium has various forms of Exterminatus, one of which involves guiding an asteroid to crash into a planet and thus cause an extinction level event.
Which, more or less, is the power of Meteor. Sephiroth would... well, probably not love it if the Imperium started to bombard the planet with cyclonic torpedoes, but since his own plan requires a mortal wound being dealt to the Planet in order to unleash the healing powers of the lifestream, an orbital bombardment that does anything less than reduce the planet to gravel in moments (canonically, it takes Imperial Fleets hours, if not days, to achieve significantly less damage than this) would be exactly what he needed to ascend to his most powerful form. Good job breaking it, heroes. :smallbiggrin:

[Forum Explorer]

If Sephiroth does fall into the Warp, how does he stack up against the various Chaos beings? Does he have a chance to emerge as a fifth Chaos God or at least ally himself with one of them?

Not a chance in hell (literally! :smalltongue:)

Only the most Mary Sue of Mary Sue characters can survive the warp. And that's survive. He still can't permanently escape it.

[Slayn82]

Barret and Cid fight well Sephirot with their universe tech - missiles, lasers and bullets. But everything they throw is pretty much underpowered by 40K standards. Barret's Limit Break Catastrophe is at best on par with a Melta Gun. Cid's Limit Break Highwind is a bunch of missiles, but even plain dynamite can hurt Sephiroth.

And Supernova is just a psychic attack, memories from Jenova projected on people's minds. If Ribbons can defend against it, then items from 40K verse who protect against psychic attacks probably can do it as well. And there are lots of them in 40K verse.

[The Glyphstone]

So yeah, Elevated Sephiroth, with some Warp tempering, would be roughly on par with a Daemon Prince, and be able to hold his own at that tier of power. That is pretty damn powerful, and does put him out of range of anything or anyone who isn't a named hero or brings an army with them. But it also puts in perspective as to why people like pitting X VS 40K so often, typically to the frustration of fans on both sides; it's just such an over-the-top stew of ridiculous power that the apocalyptic endgame scenario of Final Fantasy VII is quite literally just another day in 40K, with nothing notably exceptional about it in the long run.

[Angelalex242]

Well, gameplay mechanics is a poor judge of Sephiroth, really.

It would be better to judge him by Advent Children...except he's holding back so much his arrogance gets him killed again. He had the fight won, and let Cloud get back up cause he wasn't done messing with him yet.

...So, he basically lost Advent Children due to being a friggin MORON. And...no matter how powerful you are, power can't fix stupid.

Now, if Sephiroth actually USED his powers to the best of his ability and didn't mess around with the space marines, he might well be able to simply dodge a warp grenade, or slice it before it explodes, or knock it back with the flat of his blade, or any number of other things. As long as he can avoid being an arrogant moron, he may well beat any number of things.

[Traab]

Well, gameplay mechanics is a poor judge of Sephiroth, really.

It would be better to judge him by Advent Children...except he's holding back so much his arrogance gets him killed again. He had the fight won, and let Cloud get back up cause he wasn't done messing with him yet.

...So, he basically lost Advent Children due to being a friggin MORON. And...no matter how powerful you are, power can't fix stupid.

Now, if Sephiroth actually USED his powers to the best of his ability and didn't mess around with the space marines, he might well be able to simply dodge a warp grenade, or slice it before it explodes, or knock it back with the flat of his blade, or any number of other things. As long as he can avoid being an arrogant moron, he may well beat any number of things.

Yeah but too be honest, the "if he didnt fight like a MORON!" school of thought has a lot of people in its sights. There are just, SO MANY CHARACTERS that fight like idiots where we, as backseat drivers, can see a far more effective method they could use with just the abilities they display. Its especially prevalent among bad guys, because all powerful antagonists have to fight stupid or else they would WIN and that isnt something very popular in most media. In any rational world, most FF games would end with the bad guys being victorious. Mainly because there are like, a half dozen points where the big bad has the good guys in his sights and lets them live. "Oh hi! Thanks for solving the black materia temple puzzle for me." /STABSTABSTABSTAB!

[Slayn82]

Kefka at least has this at his favor. He's always trying his hardest to murder everyone, unless it's to allow sucess at another scheme, when he promptly tries to murder everyone. Also, he actally pulled off his plan and won. Lost later, but reached his goal first. And even when going down, under the combined assault of the heroes, he mocked them.

[Angelalex242]

Also...I will say that by word of Nomura, Sephiroth is in fact the biggest fish in FF7's pond. He could and would solo a WEAPON, even Omega Weapon, even Omega Weiss...if he had to and wasn't suffering from a case of the stupids at the time.

However, the most powerful villain in FF isn't Sephiroth. Nor is it Kefka.

Guys like Zeromus (what's a warp grenade going to do to him, exactly? He can be killed only by light, and warhammer 40k is fresh out of it...), Exdeath (He lives in the void anyway, a warp grenade would just send him home), Ultimecia (time manipulation) and Necron (end of the universe) are more dangerous.

But even beyond those guys is Caius Ballad (13-2). You thought Kefka won? He's got nothing on Caius as winning goes. 13-2 has 8 paradox endings+the real one and the player loses in every single one of them. And beyond that is mighty Bhunivelze, who can create planets anew if he must. Can't see into the hearts of humanity, nope, but creating any material thing? He's good.

But Caius destroyed the world of Nova Chrysalia so thoroughly that all Lightning can do is essentially show people to the lifeboats to get them off the sinking ship.

[Traab]

Kefka at least has this at his favor. He's always trying his hardest to murder everyone, unless it's to allow sucess at another scheme, when he promptly tries to murder everyone. Also, he actally pulled off his plan and won. Lost later, but reached his goal first. And even when going down, under the combined assault of the heroes, he mocked them.

True, but the problem there is, when it came time to kill them, he failed to do so. I forget exactly what took place on the floating continent. I know kefka moved the goddess statues to take their power, thus making the world go kablooey, but I cant recall if we fought kefka before he did it, or if we were too late to stop him. But yeah, sephiroth, total nimrod. Lets see, he hurls a chunk of jenova at us on the boat ride from junon harbor instead of just killing us. He did it again after he ganked aerith, I think he did it a third time when we headed to the north crater to stop him from summoning meteor. You would think after the first time a chunk of jenova failed to kill us he would have taken our group more seriously and just finished things.

[TheEmperor]

Of course, The Emperor would probably win against any version of Sephiroth.

Personal experiences of mine show that this is entirely true.
Even if Sephiroth had come out the victor, and spent a while racking up his power.

However, I really don't think you can simply say "a Space Marine"

Ultramarine, post Ward? Well that's a curbstomp.

Lamenter? Still a curbstomp, but in a different way.

Which chapter is he/it from?

[Starwulf]

Also...I will say that by word of Nomura, Sephiroth is in fact the biggest fish in FF7's pond. He could and would solo a WEAPON, even Omega Weapon, even Omega Weiss...if he had to and wasn't suffering from a case of the stupids at the time.

However, the most powerful villain in FF isn't Sephiroth. Nor is it Kefka.

Guys like Zeromus (what's a warp grenade going to do to him, exactly? He can be killed only by light, and warhammer 40k is fresh out of it...), Exdeath (He lives in the void anyway, a warp grenade would just send him home), Ultimecia (time manipulation) and Necron (end of the universe) are more dangerous.

But even beyond those guys is Caius Ballad (13-2). You thought Kefka won? He's got nothing on Caius as winning goes. 13-2 has 8 paradox endings+the real one and the player loses in every single one of them. And beyond that is mighty Bhunivelze, who can create planets anew if he must. Can't see into the hearts of humanity, nope, but creating any material thing? He's good.

But Caius destroyed the world of Nova Chrysalia so thoroughly that all Lightning can do is essentially show people to the lifeboats to get them off the sinking ship.

Not to mention if you consider the Dissidia games as canon, quite a few of the big name villains/heroes are still just pawns in some greater beings scheme, ie: Goddess of Light and Chaos himself. If you could break Chaos out of that entire cycle of life/rebirth with lots of fighting in-between for good(I honestly can't remember what happens at the end of Dissidia it's been a while), he could probably be at least a medium player I'd think in even WH40k, I'd think he'd fit right in there.

[Angelalex242]

Well, all Chaos is is a truckload of teen seeress girls who somehow melded into a monstrous mass of contradictions. So there ya go.

Anyways...the top villain, particularly in terms of success, is still Caius Ballad. Kefka, for all his rearranging of the world's face, still A:left it habitable and B:got himself killed.

Caius? He has it set up so anything you do (including kill him!) works to his advantage. And the apocalypse he visited on the world isn't fixable by anyone, hero or villain or like. All you can do is mulligan and start over.

Space Marines aren't to tough when you basically travel back in time and wipe their organization out before it ever existed...Warp Grenades? Caius went back in time and killed the guy who invented them as a baby. There goes that idea.

[SiuiS]

There's an interesting story in that idea, somewhere. Hmm.

Oh, as for the previous point I wouldn't say it's strictly a case of sealing him away to be someone else's problem. The journey itself could obliterate him. If it didn't, then there are things in the warp that could eat Sephiroth for dinner without even realising he was there. He could be subsumed into larger eldritch forces, slain, enslaved, or simply fade away without the rest of the planet'a lifeforce cycle to sustain him. Over the aeons, even if he survives the warp itself, his spirit could lose that strength of will preventing him from simply becoming non-sentient energy, (as it's only by force of will that he prevents himself fully dissapating).

And if he gets through all of that, it won't be unchanged. He'd pretty much be a creature of the warp at that point, which means escaping it is no easy thing and at that point he's no greater threat than any of the other functionally infinite horrors that could be brought through be appropriate planet-side help.

It's worth remembering; Sephiroth was a super soldier who died to a normal human's surprise attack. He became a wibbly wobbly ghost monster capable of threatening the planet but failed, thanks mostly to the efforts of other baseline humans, albeit ones with decent equipment and training. As a global threat, he's valid. As an interplanetary threat, he's running at a batting average of what, none for two attempts at this point? He's verifiably less successful than Jenova who at a bare minimum wiped out one planet and managers score draw on her final.

On the scale of 40k threats, this makes him a poorly resourced faction and a relatively minor threat in the big picture scheme of things.

Sephiroth isn't an issue for his own, individual self, though. Never really has been. Sephiroth is frightening because he is a concept made intelligent and malicious by human science. Sephiroth is the result of finding out planets as a Supernal concept can develop cancer and making Supernal planet cancer intelligent and forcing it into a living body.

He's like the Abyss (or perhaps this Void). He's not scary for any individual thing, so much as he is an unalterable change in how reality works, now.


If Sephiroth does fall into the Warp, how does he stack up against the various Chaos beings? Does he have a chance to emerge as a fifth Chaos God or at least ally himself with one of them?

Sephiroth is like good chew; he's ground to a pulp, they spit out his fluids, and Tzeentch gets cancer.

Sephiroth planet cancer.


Sephiroth isn't even the most powerful thing on his own planet. He's not even the most powerful boss in the game, with one or two of the optional Weapon's being much tougher. And he gets his ass kicked by a plucky band of heroes in a fight essentially on his own terms. Three times in short succession.

The final fight being an apparent astral battle of wills with someone who lacked the mental fortitude to be recruited to be a super soldier a relatively short time ago and who was little more than a mind-slave only days earlier.

Sephiroth isn't the biggest fish in his own little pond. He is not a big fish in the wider ocean. Some of those entities and forces empowered by fundamental elements of reality, or the psychic footprints of the populations of worlds by the billion.

It would be an astonishing feat of survival if he didn't simply immediately become subsumed into Tzeentch, or enthralled as one of his creatures.

He really, really doesn't want to end up in there, though he's arrogant enough that he might not even realise until it's too late just how out classed he is in there.

No, see, that's perfect. Because Sephiroth would be eaten. That's the best game plan! The best.

Jenovah is a universe level threat, albeit a really slow and lazy one. Sephiroth is distinct from jenovah in the same way Homo Sapiens Sapiens is distinct from a progenitor ape species. Sephiroth is intelligent, tool using jenovah. That's why whenever The jenovah cells manifest now, they manifest as Sephiroth. Jenovah was force-evolved. Whenever planet tumors arise, they will always be Sephiroth. Intelligent, brooding, overcompensating, iteratively more mythically powerful, and weirdly symbolic of angelic stuff for no reason. There will never be just a jenovah again. The Supernal concept of jenovah has been advanced such that Sephiroth is that thing now.

If he gets eaten, then suddenly this jump happens again. Anyone who would normally be susceptible to sephirotumors now grow spiritual Tzeentch tumors. Or if he dissipates into the void, entire segments of planets, souls, concepts, species, anyone emotionally susceptible to his particular form of emo wah wah, start also becoming of the void (and likely sucked into said void).

Sephiroth winning and staying discrete is the best option for is, really. Which is too bad because he's a pansy. A delicate flower. Easy to pluck. Just happens to cause allergies on seasonal cycle.



A reasonable comparison, I think, would be a Chaos Space Marine (in the vague area of "post-human super soldier", which Sephiroth is), made into a Chaos Champion with the gifts and boons that brings (Sephiroth with materia and the awakening powers of Jenova) and finally elevated into Daemonhood. It's not perfect and the scales are kinda weird, but it's not bad as an example.

Nah, Sephiroth wasn't an enhanced super soldier. Enhanced super soldiers were the embryo versions of Sephiroth tumors grown in lab trials. Sephiroth's power tier is oddly unrelated to his threat level. He's arbitrarily significant.


Really, the question is not "can Sephiroth be beaten". Of corse he can. He can be beaten by accident! Literal accident. The question is, how much of a hassle will his constant re-emergence be?

[Forum Explorer]

Sephiroth isn't an issue for his own, individual self, though. Never really has been. Sephiroth is frightening because he is a concept made intelligent and malicious by human science. Sephiroth is the result of finding out planets as a Supernal concept can develop cancer and making Supernal planet cancer intelligent and forcing it into a living body.

He's like the Abyss (or perhaps this Void). He's not scary for any individual thing, so much as he is an unalterable change in how reality works, now.



Sephiroth is like good chew; he's ground to a pulp, they spit out his fluids, and Tzeentch gets cancer.

Sephiroth planet cancer.



No, see, that's perfect. Because Sephiroth would be eaten. That's the best game plan! The best.

Jenovah is a universe level threat, albeit a really slow and lazy one. Sephiroth is distinct from jenovah in the same way Homo Sapiens Sapiens is distinct from a progenitor ape species. Sephiroth is intelligent, tool using jenovah. That's why whenever The jenovah cells manifest now, they manifest as Sephiroth. Jenovah was force-evolved. Whenever planet tumors arise, they will always be Sephiroth. Intelligent, brooding, overcompensating, iteratively more mythically powerful, and weirdly symbolic of angelic stuff for no reason. There will never be just a jenovah again. The Supernal concept of jenovah has been advanced such that Sephiroth is that thing now.

If he gets eaten, then suddenly this jump happens again. Anyone who would normally be susceptible to sephirotumors now grow spiritual Tzeentch tumors. Or if he dissipates into the void, entire segments of planets, souls, concepts, species, anyone emotionally susceptible to his particular form of emo wah wah, start also becoming of the void (and likely sucked into said void).

Sephiroth winning and staying discrete is the best option for is, really. Which is too bad because he's a pansy. A delicate flower. Easy to pluck. Just happens to cause allergies on seasonal cycle.



Nah, Sephiroth wasn't an enhanced super soldier. Enhanced super soldiers were the embryo versions of Sephiroth tumors grown in lab trials. Sephiroth's power tier is oddly unrelated to his threat level. He's arbitrarily significant.


Really, the question is not "can Sephiroth be beaten". Of corse he can. He can be beaten by accident! Literal accident. The question is, how much of a hassle will his constant re-emergence be?



You keep saying he is a spirit cancer like it's impressive. It really isn't. Not in the context of 40K anyways. In a world where all you have is basically physical attacks (and non mental/soul based magic?) yeah, you're basically invincible.

In 40K? Soul obliterating attacks are quite literally standard to nearly every single race. Only Tau don't have them as far as I know. Standard. Not, special characters or anything like that, but unnamed leader types or interesting wargear. And that's before you get into the actual fluff of how strong psykers are.

You can say he's too strong, except that even greater demons have been obliterated by these weapons when wielded by a strong enough psyker (or group). And Sephi is not on their level.

Also, saying that a demon that eats Sephi's soul will catch cancer is just silly. It's like saying you'll get cancer from eating a cow. It's not how cancer work, and it's not how digestive systems work.

[SiuiS]

You keep saying he is a spirit cancer like it's impressive. It really isn't. Not in the context of 40K anyways. In a world where all you have is basically physical attacks (and non mental/soul based magic?) yeah, you're basically invincible.

No, I'm saying it like it's pernicious, because that's the point. Every time I say "space cancer" and you a coff or roll your eyes? That's another time Sephiroth pops up, gets kicked to dust for a while, and mildly inconveniences someone.

Because he keeps doing it. Because space cancer.



In 40K? Soul obliterating attacks are quite literally standard to nearly every single race. Only Tau don't have them as far as I know. Standard. Not, special characters or anything like that, but unnamed leader types or interesting wargear. And that's before you get into the actual fluff of how strong psykers are.

Define obliterate and tell me why it matters? Sephiroth isn't one guy with one soul. He's a sickness that manifests through any tainted soul. Or any tainted planet. Or anything that comes in contact with a tainted soul or planet.

That's why I likened him to the Orks. Because you can burn him out of one planet (in theory, it's a magnitude of difficulty harder, and with more collateral), but that doesn't mean other spores won't pop up somewhere else seemingly at random.



You can say he's too strong

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Sephiroth?

Too strong?

PAAAAAhahahahahahahahahaha!



Also, saying that a demon that eats Sephi's soul will catch cancer is just silly. It's like saying you'll get cancer from eating a cow. It's not how cancer work, and it's not how digestive systems work.

That is how Sephiroth works. Because he is conceptual, spiritual corruption. You're thinking physical objects, discrete entities, logical causation. About the bad guy who represents symbolism for fallen angels who erupts from a world where people feel sad enough.

It's not that your 40K stuff isn't stronk, it's that your targeting sucks. "I will shoot his physical body and obliterate his soul" is not different than "I'm going to stab him a lot" because it doesn't address the problem. The Sephiroth body and even soul are symptoms of the Sephiroth issue.


Seriously. He's, quite literally, arbitrarily significant. Not because he deserves to be. But because they realized he was a money machine and kept slightly altering the franchise kingdom hearts style. Sephiroth will keep coming back. Forever. Can't really be undone or stopped.

What's important is whether or not anyone cares. Because of truly believe it would be "sir, planet zebes has developed a case of the Sephiroths." "Dammit. Send Jim, he's recovering from a bad flu, he could use the warm up." Or "sir, I think I have a Coughiroth." "Well damn. Okay, you're joining the next company we send to their deaths." "Thank you sir! All glory to the emperor sir!".

[Forum Explorer]

No, I'm saying it like it's pernicious, because that's the point. Every time I say "space cancer" and you a coff or roll your eyes? That's another time Sephiroth pops up, gets kicked to dust for a while, and mildly inconveniences someone.

Because he keeps doing it. Because space cancer.



Define obliterate and tell me why it matters? Sephiroth isn't one guy with one soul. He's a sickness that manifests through any tainted soul. Or any tainted planet. Or anything that comes in contact with a tainted soul or planet.

That's why I likened him to the Orks. Because you can burn him out of one planet (in theory, it's a magnitude of difficulty harder, and with more collateral), but that doesn't mean other spores won't pop up somewhere else seemingly at random.



Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Sephiroth?

Too strong?

PAAAAAhahahahahahahahahaha!



That is how Sephiroth works. Because he is conceptual, spiritual corruption. You're thinking physical objects, discrete entities, logical causation. About the bad guy who represents symbolism for fallen angels who erupts from a world where people feel sad enough.

It's not that your 40K stuff isn't stronk, it's that your targeting sucks. "I will shoot his physical body and obliterate his soul" is not different than "I'm going to stab him a lot" because it doesn't address the problem. The Sephiroth body and even soul are symptoms of the Sephiroth issue.


Seriously. He's, quite literally, arbitrarily significant. Not because he deserves to be. But because they realized he was a money machine and kept slightly altering the franchise kingdom hearts style. Sephiroth will keep coming back. Forever. Can't really be undone or stopped.

What's important is whether or not anyone cares. Because of truly believe it would be "sir, planet zebes has developed a case of the Sephiroths." "Dammit. Send Jim, he's recovering from a bad flu, he could use the warm up." Or "sir, I think I have a Coughiroth." "Well damn. Okay, you're joining the next company we send to their deaths." "Thank you sir! All glory to the emperor sir!".

Maybe you need to use a different metaphor, cause cancer is pretty easy to deal with when you aren't concerned with keeping the host body particularly intact.


To be completely and utterly reduced to nothing? Even if your body is restored, rebuilt, regenerated, or cloned, your mind and soul will not be inhabiting it. (Most of those options just gives you a living corpse. Cloning just gives you a new body with a new soul that isn't anything like the original really)

If Sephi's soul is in the body that's destroyed by a soul obliterating attack, then his soul will be obliterated as well. Or is it only a part of his soul? Because he still might be obliterated anyways (It's just not certain then), because psychic backwash is a thing in 40K (For example a primarch got killed so bad, that his Space Marine Legion still suffer psychic flashbacks to his death that drive them insane (occasionally) even after thousands of years and the fact that they are only tangentially related to him.)


Chaos (and it's gods/demons whatever) represent conceptual, spiritual corruption on a universal level. Sephi is merely on a global level. He really is almost exactly like a greater demon, just with a weird way of getting summoned back into existence.

[SiuiS]

Maybe you need to use a different metaphor, cause cancer is pretty easy to deal with when you aren't concerned with keeping the host body particularly intact.

Pretty sure the imperium of man wants to keep space intact.



Chaos (and it's gods/demons whatever) represent conceptual, spiritual corruption on a universal level. Sephi is merely on a global level. He really is almost exactly like a greater demon, just with a weird way of getting summoned back into existence.

Nuh-uh. Remember. Jenovah was a very slow, very stupid, very nonsentient "all existence could eventually fall to this" threat. Sephiroth is a better jenovah. He's just focused on getting this one planet because at first he needed to build the ship toget elsewhere (also bat poop insane) and then because he just wants to pee in cloud'd cheerioes (because batpoop insane).

He's honestly been written into havig this weird Lovecraftian threat level, terribly infectious, impossible(?(?!?!)) to get rid of, sinks in and slowly changes who and what you are... But instead of some soul sucking void he's athletes foot.

As inevitable as entropy. As annoying as your bedroom being 1/2° too hot or cold while you're sleeping. It's almost comical how weird he is in any other universe.

[Forum Explorer]

Pretty sure the imperium of man wants to keep space intact.



Nuh-uh. Remember. Jenovah was a very slow, very stupid, very nonsentient "all existence could eventually fall to this" threat. Sephiroth is a better jenovah. He's just focused on getting this one planet because at first he needed to build the ship toget elsewhere (also bat poop insane) and then because he just wants to pee in cloud'd cheerioes (because batpoop insane).

He's honestly been written into havig this weird Lovecraftian threat level, terribly infectious, impossible(?(?!?!)) to get rid of, sinks in and slowly changes who and what you are... But instead of some soul sucking void he's athletes foot.

As inevitable as entropy. As annoying as your bedroom being 1/2° too hot or cold while you're sleeping. It's almost comical how weird he is in any other universe.


They say that, but whenever it takes blowing up space to remove a threat they don't seem to hesitate much. :smallwink:


He is the equivalent to the inevitable losing your keys on the one day when you sleep in and you've got a meeting with your boss?

[Almarck]

The problem with comparing Jenovah to Warhammer 40k is that... she and everything related to her is literally done on a much bigger and rapid scale than ever accomplished or conceived of in a Final Fantasy game within Warhammer.

Yes, she is a blight upon life and infects any beings that she comes into contact with into being her thrall and Sephiroth took her and improved upon to her methods. But she is also the only such being within Final Fantasy VII that acts in accordance of that methology or scale. Also, doesn't her taint get purged in Advent Children?


In Warhammer 40k, such a thing is a daily occurrence in the Imperium if only because of the scaling being so absolutely stupendous that events that would be considered high points in other settings happen nonstop. Jenovah like corruption of... life is practically a passtime for Chaos.





... Also, about Entrophy and space cancer. What does that make Nurgle, Chaos God of all diseases, blights, and other nasties that eventually wear down on anything including just sheer entropy? He's the sort of guy who blesses his followers with bloated and rotten flesh and keeps them alive no matter how bad they get. I don't think it's possible for Jenovah to... corrupt anything related to him.

[SiuiS]

He is the equivalent to the inevitable losing your keys on the one day when you sleep in and you've got a meeting with your boss?

Or the fact that no matter how you try you'll never get that one tag on that one shirt not to poke you, even when you cut it out.


*


Nurgle is weird because whether nurgle gets infected by or nurgle over-archs sephiroth's modus operandi isn't really a meaningful distinction.

And I don't think he's been cleansed completely because his reoccurring in tangents is considered canonical. So manifesting as Cloud's insecurities or as some out of context orthogonal force in the battle of Light and Dark in the hearts of all creatures are things he can do because cool guy with long sword.

Let that sink in by the way. Because he's cool and has a long sword... He's been slowly given more and more portfolio space... But no power to back it up... So Sephiroth is a "threat" on the cosmic scale, but nobody cares. He is a principle of realty. But then, so is Godwin's Law.

It's absurd. It's a mockery of everything we think should be; that cosmic scale should be interesting and or impactful. Or at least not a visceral let down. The end doom of all space and time can be accidentally beaten by falling on it with a really, really hard elbow. Or by being struck by a vaguely acutely planed board of metal. Or a mystically charged toy key.

It's probably why WH40K keeps existing, to be honest. The end of the world keeps popping up and someone keeps accidentally stepping on it, sending it back undergo runs like some perverse groundhogs day ritual. All the grim dark stuff is there because everything else has run it's course but Sephiroth is so easy to accidentally beat that reality just can't die. The grim reaper keeps calling in sick!

[Almarck]

Siu, help me understand something because I am perplexed. You seem to keep making a case for feats Seph could accomplish because popularity prevents him from being pushed aside. I do not understand why you keep trying to bring in meta or potential happenings due to popularity or real world happenings.
Those things are so far out of control that discussing them in the context of a versus match is just doesn't work nor provide a clear winner. it is also very shaky logic to argue popularity equals feats because popularity wanes and rises with the times. Sure Seph seems all powerful now... but eventually people might find newer heroes and villains to talk about for all of time.

In short whatever feats he is capable of because popularity says he can are completely irrelevant to the discussion unless either someone can get evidence from game or physics calculations go back them up or if new material showcases him possessing new feats or abilities.

In short he's not an aspect of reality nor has he demonstrated any feats worthy of being deemed as such. The meteors make him powerful no doubt but he none of what he does puts him at cosmic scale. Even planetary scale is debatable as well.

[Angelalex242]

Sephiroth is typically multicontinent. And that's WITH power scaling...Nomura said he's the biggest fish in his pond, so he's multicontinent even assuming he's stronger, faster, and tougher then Omega Weiss, has more magic then Minerva, more deadly then any WEAPON. and so on. Power Scaling is what you have to judge Sephiroth on, really, since the dude keeps holding back in his fights on screen. We never, ever see Sephiroth fight to his full potential.

FF7 is actually a weak world that way.

By contrast, Kuja and Zidane are planet busters. So if Zidane, the happy go lucky thief...fought Sephiroth, the thief wins (assuming he trances.)

[SiuiS]

Siu, help me understand something because I am perplexed. You seem to keep making a case for feats Seph could accomplish because popularity prevents him from being pushed aside.

These are things he's capable of doing, in his universe. He just has a boring universe where it doesn't matter at all.

The reason why he is capable of doing them is his creator thinks he's cool or popular so he keeps getting more in-universe power without any contradictions to his weakness. But if the explanation of why isn't helpful, you can remove it. You are still left with "Sephiroth is arbitrarily significant".

I don't consider these things feats at all. They're just the logical fallout of his listed abilities and inherent capacity. I consider them un-feats, even, because he is simultaneously impossible to destroy and not worth caring about.

The threat of Sephiroth is if he spreads everything is Sephiroth. Not that he's a bad ass who can cut you.


Sephiroth is typically multicontinent. And that's WITH power scaling...Nomura said he's the biggest fish in his pond, so he's multicontinent even assuming he's stronger, faster, and tougher then Omega Weiss, has more magic then Minerva, more deadly then any WEAPON. and so on. Power Scaling is what you have to judge Sephiroth on, really, since the dude keeps holding back in his fights on screen. We never, ever see Sephiroth fight to his full potential.

FF7 is actually a weak world that way.

By contrast, Kuja and Zidane are planet busters. So if Zidane, the happy go lucky thief...fought Sephiroth, the thief wins (assuming he trances.)

Sephiroth's plan was "destroy planet, become a god (or demon Prince by 40k standards) and then travel the universe getting the whole thing pregnant with cancer". How is that "multi-continent?

[Mato]

Sephiroth isn't even the most powerful thing on his own planet. He's not even the most powerful boss in the game, with one or two of the optional Weapon's being much tougher. And he gets his ass kicked by a plucky band of heroes in a fight essentially on his own terms. Three times in short succession.
Well in the original release there was no Ruby or Emerald Weapon :smalltongue:

But even with the added weapons in the game it's still hard to quantify that statement. Bizarro and Safer, like most FF end game bosses, have a sliding scale on it's statistics meaning if you showed up like a typical player might (3 near-high level characters and a bunch of neglected ones) the stat generation done for them is minimum and is often is lower than the optional bosses allowing you to finish the game and be happy for doing it.

Optional bosses on the other hand trade out scalar out for strategic weaknesses. Like I'm sure your first thought was you have to solo Ruby Weapon, but once the claws pop out you can raise your other team members and beat on him for 25 rounds, and he isn't immune to stun so you can easily extend that until you run out of mp and since the claws deal gravity damage it's impossible for them to kill anyone turning much of the fight into "keep pressing X for win".

Emerald is designed to set up Lucky 7s by punishing you for using a lot of Materia. So if you made the newbie mistake of overloading your characters he seems strong, but really it's pretty easy to beat him too.


However, the most powerful villain in FF isn't Sephiroth. Nor is it Kefka.
It's the player!

It seems in every game there is a dozen ways to Tuesday to "break the game".

On the cancer idea, it's close but not quite it, but because it's "cancer" people want to refute it. I'd call it a spiritual and physical virus with it's own pathology. And so I present my own hypothesis.
The Jenova class virus is on a planetary scale of viruses and it uses both physical and spiritual vectors to spread. This specific planet-virus can spread planet to planet by physical transmission using multicelled creatures. Once the physical seed lands on a new planet it's dying cells allow it to begin to infect the region's "Lifestream".

The Lifestream (ls) is synonymously the spiritual order of the world and the localized environment's method of cycling souls (such as creation of new ones and death of the old) and has it's own defense systems. Once the LS is infected the virus proceeds to manifest physical and mental symptoms in the creatures born in the localized environment. A case study of Earth suggests the virus will subtle persuade the population into studying, developing, and using spiritual destroying devices. These "Mako" reactors weaken the LS's defenses against the Jenova virus.

From there the infection begins to alter new babies born and infecting already living hosts through psychical contact of already generated hosts. Those bodies serve to breed and regenerate lost Jenova cells repopulating the virus's physical presence. Once the number of cells is high enough the hosts begin to have an urge to meet each other allowing the disease process to rapidly speed up.

During this "Reunion" stage of the disease Jenova will attempt to rebuild it's method of reproduction. In the case study on Earth it appears the virus took on a newly acquired localized sentience that called it's self "Sephiroth". This Sephiroth set out to concentrate the viral cells by gathering and draining host bodies. The LS, a creature of it's own, has an evolved a secondary defense against Jenova-class viruses called "WEAPONS" that attempt to eradicate physical threats to it's spiritual well being.

However, should Jenova's influence exceed the LS's influence, these WEAPONS can be dominated and controlled by the virus. The last stand of defense is the multi-celled creatures created on the planet have to choose to interfere. Failing that the Jenova virus will consume the remainder of the planet's spiritual energy and launch it's biological-based seed to another planet for reproduction. However should the creatures succeed, the Jenova infection be forced to begin back towards it's later influencing stages.

Curing the Jenova infection is relatively hard. The LS is capable of retaliating if it recognizes the virus but by the typical point of recognition it is far to late to do so. In the case study of Earth it appears by induction an early reunion, before cell reproduction is too great to mange, it's possible to weaken the spiritual side of the Jenova virus allowing the LS to successfully retaliate against it. Therefor at this time treatment of infected planets has two treatments to handle modality.

If the planet show little to no signs and symptoms the LS should be strong enough to hold it in check. Like Varicella and Herpes protection against infectious spread and soothing treatment (prevent people from using spiritual-destroying weapons) during outbreaks is all that's needed.

If the LS's immune system is compromised direct intervention during the Reunion stage is necessary. Once performed, the doctor should induce a second reunion against the weakened disease similar to shocking a bad heart rhythm allowing the LS's immune system to reset it's self allowing for possible cure. The exact outcome has not yet been determined but studies are hopeful.

-That was longer than I thought I'd be. :(
I'm not a doctor and I know nothing about diseases other than it's never Lupis but I hope you enjoyed reading it. And if you didn't, here is a special tldr for you.
tl;dr: Sephiroth is an STD for planet/afterlifes.

[Angelalex242]

These are things he's capable of doing, in his universe. He just has a boring universe where it doesn't matter at all.

The reason why he is capable of doing them is his creator thinks he's cool or popular so he keeps getting more in-universe power without any contradictions to his weakness. But if the explanation of why isn't helpful, you can remove it. You are still left with "Sephiroth is arbitrarily significant".

I don't consider these things feats at all. They're just the logical fallout of his listed abilities and inherent capacity. I consider them un-feats, even, because he is simultaneously impossible to destroy and not worth caring about.

The threat of Sephiroth is if he spreads everything is Sephiroth. Not that he's a bad ass who can cut you.



Sephiroth's plan was "destroy planet, become a god (or demon Prince by 40k standards) and then travel the universe getting the whole thing pregnant with cancer". How is that "multi-continent?

Planning to do a thing is not in fact doing that thing. Yes, he'd be upgraded beyond multicontinent if he'd actually absorbed the lifestream. (He's greater then Omega WEAPON, created to do that very thing, so we know he CAN do such a thing.) However, he never in fact DID such a thing. He got stopped before his plan went through. As such, we cannot really use hypotheticals about what he wanted to do. We must take into account only what he has actually done...+power scaling cause Nomura said so. And that is why he's stuck at multicontinent.

Compare Kefka, who actually DID become god of magic. Compare Ultimecia, who actually did compress time (disc 4 ya know). Compare Kuja, who actually did nuke the planet and the crystal holding the world together. Even back in FF4, Zemus's thanatos gambit to become Zeromus still worked. Vayne Solidor still got rid of the Occuria, even if he died doing so. Barthandelus got his wish of dying, even if the rest of what he wanted didn't happen..on his watch. Summoning the Maker(Bhunivelze) turned out to be something Caius did.

Sephiroth is a guy who failed a little more thoroughly then the other villains, because he never actually did, even temporarily, what he set out to do. The only success he truly has under his belt is putting a hole in Aerith. Seymour and Shuyin are similar 'failure villains', as they too never accomplished, even temporarily, what they set out to do.

Contrast Caius Ballad, who wins 9 different ways, literally, and makes the PLAYER a complete and utter failure. Caius is the man of FF Villains to date.

[GloatingSwine]

Sephiroth's plan was "destroy planet, become a god (or demon Prince by 40k standards) and then travel the universe getting the whole thing pregnant with cancer". How is that "multi-continent?

His plan was to greatly speed up the process of absorbing the Planet's lifestream such that what usually sustains Jenova for millennia is fed in all at once granting him godlike power. There's no indication what he plans to do with it from then on*. Jenova drains one planet and moves on to the next because that's a sustainable long term survival strategy for an immortal being.


* This is rather a problem for Final Fantasy villains. They rarely have a plan beyond "attain godhood", there's nothing that really indicates what they want to do with it when they have it. I blame Garland, back in 1986 you didn't really need motivations.

[Angelalex242]

Well, yes. Kefka is the most potent example of 'well, I became a god, now what?'

Caius achieved his goal of destroying time and preventing Yuel from seeing further futures. His fate in Lightning Returns points out the downside of his success.

[SiuiS]

Planning to do a thing is not in fact doing that thing. Yes, he'd be upgraded beyond multicontinent if he'd actually absorbed the lifestream.
[/QUOTE]

Faulty logic. Sephiroth is better jenovah. Jenovah is an interplanetary, possibly intergalactic, and because of the spiritual angle, universal issue.

You are trying to say that because amy one patient can have cancer go into remission, cancer is not an aggressive or terminal illness. Sephiroth is both a singular entity and a species of himself. Sephiroth is jenovah, but better. Any discussion of Sephiroth that leaves that out is a flawed one.


His plan was to greatly speed up the process of absorbing the Planet's lifestream such that what usually sustains Jenova for millennia is fed in all at once granting him godlike power. There's no indication what he plans to do with it from then on*. Jenova drains one planet and moves on to the next because that's a sustainable long term survival strategy for an immortal being.

Sephiroth's goal was to do Jenovah stuff and also to hate the ancients? Jenovah's goal is "infect planets. Lots of planets. Hell, why stop there?". It is not a difficult extrapolation to say Sephiroth was going to take his infected planet husk and fly across the universe just like momma.

[Almarck]

Siuis while many of us can agree that Sephiroth is quite powerful the problem with your argument might be that you attribute him way too much favor in the context of how he and Jenovah would work in 40k.

Put another way. Jenovah being unstopable space cancer affords her no special powers or relevance meta and creator favoritism are irrelevant because unlike in her home universe she is no longer the only form of corruption around... if we're trying to figure out her relationship to Chaos.

[GloatingSwine]

Faulty logic. Sephiroth is better jenovah. Jenovah is an interplanetary, possibly intergalactic, and because of the spiritual angle, universal issue.

You are trying to say that because amy one patient can have cancer go into remission, cancer is not an aggressive or terminal illness. Sephiroth is both a singular entity and a species of himself. Sephiroth is jenovah, but better. Any discussion of Sephiroth that leaves that out is a flawed one.


Is Sephiroth better though?

He's faster, but that doesn't mean he's sustainable. Absorbing all the power of one planet's Lifestream in one go might leave him unable to safely travel to another, and then he's significantly worse than Jenova. Man vs Food is a challenge not a sustainable diet.

Jenova isn't really "cancer" on a galactic scale, she's a parasite which moves from one host to another rather than a thing which replicates inside a host. On a galactic scale Jenova is a mild inconvenience, a flea on a dog. Sure it might itch where she bites but that's all she is.

And on the scale of the disasters the 40K universe is continuously undergoing she's not even that. She's paperwork that the Inquisition* will get around to on a slow day, assuming something else unpleasant doesn't happen to the place in the several millennia it takes her to chow down.

And even Sephiroth's idea of rushing his food to get to the pudding might not help, because if the Inquisition thinks a planet is too compromised to be saved they will happily just exterminate everything, and something which didn't much like being chopped in the face with a big sword isn't going to have any more fun with a cyclonic torpedo.

And really, a being consuming the warp souls of a planet is more of an Inquisition thing, because that's, well, exactly the sort of thing that Chaos does all over the place all the time.

Y'see, you think that Jenova is special because what it does is unique in the world it comes from, but in 40k it's not, and the other things which do it do it on a far bigger scale. By 40k's lights, Sephiroth/Jenova is barely a Daemon Prince in terms of effect on the galaxy at large (Kyras in Dawn of War Retribution is attempting to sacrifice an entire multi-planet sector of space to ascend to Daemonhood, not one poxy planet with only one major city, some of those planets were giant cities). Except S/He's a Daemon Prince cut off from the Warp and still mortal if her body is destroyed (Sephiroth only "survived" in Advent Children because of the Jenova cell samples that Shinra still had), so a Daemon Prince without any of the actual advantages.

[Tiki Snakes]

Well in the original release there was no Ruby or Emerald Weapon :smalltongue:

But even with the added weapons in the game it's still hard to quantify that statement. Bizarro and Safer, like most FF end game bosses, have a sliding scale on it's statistics meaning if you showed up like a typical player might (3 near-high level characters and a bunch of neglected ones) the stat generation done for them is minimum and is often is lower than the optional bosses allowing you to finish the game and be happy for doing it.

Optional bosses on the other hand trade out scalar out for strategic weaknesses. Like I'm sure your first thought was you have to solo Ruby Weapon, but once the claws pop out you can raise your other team members and beat on him for 25 rounds, and he isn't immune to stun so you can easily extend that until you run out of mp and since the claws deal gravity damage it's impossible for them to kill anyone turning much of the fight into "keep pressing X for win".

Emerald is designed to set up Lucky 7s by punishing you for using a lot of Materia. So if you made the newbie mistake of overloading your characters he seems strong, but really it's pretty easy to beat him too.

Eh. The optional weapons require specific tactics and/or approaches to avoid being an overwhelmingly hard fight.
Sephiroth requires your attendance.

Frame it how you like, but for my money Sephiroth is just not the big fish. He's the largest existential threat, because he's the only faction crazy enough to try and destroy the planet, but Shinra do more wrong and inflict greater damage during the course of the game. And the Weapons come across to me as being clearly the bigger direct combat threat.

The thing that makes Sephiroth such an excellent villain and such a great character when compared to similar games is that he isn't the straight up obvious big fish. He's a big deal because of what he's trying to do, but he's also strangely pathetic. A super soldier and war hero gone mad from revelations he wasn't meant to know and which he never truly comes to term with, killed by a regular joe and refusing to give up existence and merge fully with the Lifestream. He's not the end boss because he's the toughest fight, he's the end boss because he's the craziest guy around with his finger on the trigger of Armageddon and more than that, because it's personal. Deeply personal. Both for the characters and the players. And then to top it all off, he loses his shot at revenge and insane ascension because he faces off against the guy who didn't have what it takes to even join the military unit created in Sephiroth's image and gets his astral-butt handed to him in a full blown metaphorical mudhole stomping. Left ragged, streaming tatters in the wind like what he really is. Little more than an angry, deluded ghost.

Trying to pass him off as something that he's not just lessens him as a character, to my mind.

[Angelalex242]

...for your money, perhaps, but you basically have to go against Word of Nomura to say so. Sephiroth, in storyline, is in fact the strongest being in his universe.

Of course, that's only in his universe...

[Tiki Snakes]

...for your money, perhaps, but you basically have to go against Word of Nomura to say so. Sephiroth, in storyline, is in fact the strongest being in his universe.

Of course, that's only in his universe...

I'll cheerfully do that, assuming that's even what he's actually said. I believe it's called "death of the author"? He can intend that to have been the impression given all he wants, but Sephiroth in the game doesn't cash that particular check and wouldn't necessarily have been improved by doing so.

[Angelalex242]

Ultimecia wishes she were vaguely as tough as Omega WEAPON, Necron is close but not quite Ozma, Kuja isn't anywhere NEAR Ozma, Seymour's got nothing on Yu Yevon, who has nothing on Dark Aeons, who has nothing on Penance. Shuyin's a pale shadow of Trema. Vayne Soldior cries himself to sleep at night thinking of Yiazmat. Barthandelus checks under his bed for Vercengtorix. and shivers in fear of the idea that his bed might be a Long Gui. Caius shivers in terror of the mighty Gilgamesh, and the arbiter of time Valfodr. And even mighty Bhunivelze+ would have a rough time with Aeronite and Ereshikgal.

What use, then, to pick on Sephiroth for not being, gameplay wise, as tough as WEAPONs? No Final Boss after him is as tough as their optional superboss, though Necron and Bhunivelze+ come closest.

[Mato]

Frame it how you like, but for my money Sephiroth is just not the big fish.

The thing that makes Sephiroth such an excellent villain and such a great character when compared to similar games is that he isn't the straight up obvious big fish.

Trying to pass him off as something that he's not just lessens him as a character, to my mind. Your second paragraph, as kept, is based on Sephiroth being a big fish. He's just not obvious about it. So which is it?

Actually no, never mind. Seeing how the game goes out of it's way to portray Sephiroth as a badass. I know you're a bit off there. Revenge? The guy impaling his boss in the cooperate headquarters was kind of this big deal in the story. Doesn't come to terms with being a test tube baby? The guy embraces Jenova as his mother, sets her free, seeks revenge on her killers, and attempt to finish the job she set out to do like a son taking over the family business. So I guess I'm sorry Final Fantasy VII lessens your fictional character for you?

But yes I was saying Sephiroth, depending on how you play, may or may not actually be the hardest boss in FF7. The Final Fantasy franchise went through a bout where their optionals are designed weaknesses and their end bosses hard scaling difficulties. FF8 was probably the worst one of them all, Omega is a pushover even if you didn't know his attack pattern.

[SiuiS]

Siuis while many of us can agree that Sephiroth is quite powerful the problem with your argument might be that you attribute him way too much favor in the context of how he and Jenovah would work in 40k.

Put another way. Jenovah being unstopable space cancer affords her no special powers or relevance meta and creator favoritism are irrelevant because unlike in her home universe she is no longer the only form of corruption around... if we're trying to figure out her relationship to Chaos.

Not at all. I attribute nothing to him but perniciousness and an indirect immortality.

Meta matters when they actually put information into media. I'm not talking tweets or word of god. His power spike and continued existence are what are on the table. The meta is simply why, because when you ask "how does this pathetic emo guy end up so eternal?" The answer is a shrug.


Is Sephiroth better though?

He's faster, but that doesn't mean he's sustainable. Absorbing all the power of one planet's Lifestream in one go might leave him unable to safely travel to another, and then he's significantly worse than Jenova. Man vs Food is a challenge not a sustainable diet.

Jenova isn't really "cancer" on a galactic scale, she's a parasite which moves from one host to another rather than a thing which replicates inside a host. On a galactic scale Jenova is a mild inconvenience, a flea on a dog. Sure it might itch where she bites but that's all she is.

For jenovah, yes. Sephiroth went from parasite to cancer. That's his deal. He infects planets, after lives, sad people, people who remember him, people who dream about him, people who have some of his life energy because afterlife or some of his physical matter because metabolism.

He's still a wuss. But that's good. No one ever brings a nuclear warhead to remove a tick. He goes down too easy for anyone to bother nuking him. Which means their methods won't affect his spread at all.


And on the scale of the disasters the 40K universe is continuously undergoing she's not even that.

I'm well aware baseline 40k marine is also around the level of Exalt solar with 40 XP. I'm not saying Sephiroth wind, after all. I'm saying you'll have to buy the really expensive detergent to wash the smell of him off your clothes, and in a few years you'll get tired of it coming back and throw away your washer and drier.


Your second paragraph, as kept, is based on Sephiroth being a big fish. He's just not obvious about it. So which is it?

This is flawed prescriptivist retconning.

Game theory: three way shoot out. One guy hits 1/3 of the time, other guy hits 2/3 of the time, last guy hits 99/100 of the time. You're the small fry. Who do you shoot?

Sephiroth isn't big fish. He's only fish not also fighting other big fish. That doesn't make him stronger. It just makes him more relevant to the narrative. Don't confuse the two.

[Flickerdart]

Game theory: three way shoot out. One guy hits 1/3 of the time, other guy hits 2/3 of the time, last guy hits 99/100 of the time. You're the small fry. Who do you shoot?
According to Alan Davies, yourself. :smallamused:

[GloatingSwine]

For jenovah, yes. Sephiroth went from parasite to cancer. That's his deal. He infects planets, after lives, sad people, people who remember him, people who dream about him, people who have some of his life energy because afterlife or some of his physical matter because metabolism.

Sephiroth only persisted because some of Jenova's cells were left over, and that was only because Shinra went around sticking them in people.

When the Jenova cells were destroyed, he was gone again.

[Angelalex242]

That's one idea. My idea is that Seph will be back the minute Square Enix thinks they can make more money off him.

[Tiki Snakes]

Your second paragraph, as kept, is based on Sephiroth being a big fish. He's just not obvious about it. So which is it?

Actually no, never mind. Seeing how the game goes out of it's way to portray Sephiroth as a badass. I know you're a bit off there. Revenge? The guy impaling his boss in the cooperate headquarters was kind of this big deal in the story. Doesn't come to terms with being a test tube baby? The guy embraces Jenova as his mother, sets her free, seeks revenge on her killers, and attempt to finish the job she set out to do like a son taking over the family business. So I guess I'm sorry Final Fantasy VII lessens your fictional character for you?

But yes I was saying Sephiroth, depending on how you play, may or may not actually be the hardest boss in FF7. The Final Fantasy franchise went through a bout where their optionals are designed weaknesses and their end bosses hard scaling difficulties. FF8 was probably the worst one of them all, Omega is a pushover even if you didn't know his attack pattern.

Hmm, nah. That's really not what I was saying. The thing about him not being the obvious big fish is in comparison to so many other FF villains, who as people have been saying, we are often left in no doubt as to their real ultimate power status. Some of them being, apparently, actually impossible to beat due to plot? They go out of their way to not only be the big fish, but also leave no-one in any doubt as to that fact. Whereas Sephiroth isn't even necessarily the obvious villain for a large portion of the game, (only really cementing that status with the death of aerith and the growing realisation that he's shooting for armegeddon. In comparison, Shinra's evils are pretty obvious and given that we ultimately stop Sephiroth, they have by the end done so much more damage what with the fact that not only have they been basically burning souls for energy, they're also directly responsible for both the re-emergence of Jenova and Sephiroth's whole thing.

And yes, Delusional. He ends the game still believing the first layer of lies. That Jenova is literally his mother, and not just the source of some alien cell samples injected whilst he was in-utero. He's no more the Son of Jenova than any other Soldier, but he still believes in the whole Jenova-was-this-Space-Lady thing.

Which, like his belief that he is in essentially superior to Cloud, are all elements that lead to his undoing. (In that case, specifically twice).

I'm not saying he isn't badass. He is. Very. And he's powerful, too. But except in those areas in which he's an idiot, he's also quite smart. And he's as much a threat because of that determination and cunning as his raw power.

[Coidzor]

So... Why do we think Sephiroth will spread to other planets without actually physically traveling to other planets the same way that Jenova had to?

I see an awful lot of insistence that this must be so without any actual evidence to support that it would be so.

Especially after getting blown up/chewed to pieces by rocket bullets.

[SiuiS]

Sephiroth only persisted because some of Jenova's cells were left over, and that was only because Shinra went around sticking them in people.

When the Jenova cells were destroyed, he was gone again.

And because sephiroth's spirit entered the life stream and began to assimilate parts of it.

And because Sephiroth exists as some weird lich-type thing whose existence is a function of Cloud's (and potentially everyone's) memory.


So... Why do we think Sephiroth will spread to other planets without actually physically traveling to other planets the same way that Jenova had to?

I see an awful lot of insistence that this must be so without any actual evidence to support that it would be so.

Especially after getting blown up/chewed to pieces by rocket bullets.

I don't. I think that being blown up will spread his cells in a dry direct, physical way. That blowing up a planet with him on it will do worse. And that a universe with a connected afterlife will likely be harder to scrub him out of than a contained planet spiritual ecosystem.

[Almarck]

Siuis even assuming you are correct about capable of doing all of that with out figuring out how he would act on a galactic scale, the fact of the matter is that in Warhammer 40k literally everything else in the world has more experience at corruption than him or his supposed mom. And that's without considering the vast power difference of warp godlike beings or considering how the tyranids would probably suffocate his essence to death if it came into contact with him.

I get your point that he's hard to kill but... Warhammer 40k is already overloaded with implacable space cancers that are so much faster at the whole conquering thing...

[SiuiS]

Siuis even assuming you are correct about capable of doing all of that with out figuring out how he would act on a galactic scale, the fact of the matter is that in Warhammer 40k literally everything else in the world has more experience at corruption than him or his supposed mom. And that's without considering the vast power difference of warp godlike beings or considering how the tyranids would probably suffocate his essence to death if it came into contact with him.

I get your point that he's hard to kill but... Warhammer 40k is already overloaded with implacable space cancers that are so much faster at the whole conquering thing...

And? That's all true but it doesn't intersect my point. I think you're arguing against what you feel I am trying to say, instead of what I'm saying.

[Almarck]

Perhaps I am clouded in my judgement, I will admit to having a hard time deciphering what you're actually trying to convince me of.

But I feel that you give the guy way too much credit or over estimate his capabilities. Taking over final Fantasy universe... maybe given enough time, but no, I don't think even in the beat case scenario he would fare well against greater daemons or princes.


Also you did end up remind me of something; the key point of the thread is to figure out what marines can beat the guy or how many it would take. I think we can all agree that any characters bellow weapon skill 5-6 will probably flat out die against Seph . With anyone without a name lasting less than 3 seconds before getting cut in half in a one on one duel. So maybe here's a question: which named characters would be able to hold their own.

Also how would Lucius the Eternal...work given his unique boon?

[Angelalex242]

There are FF Characters better suited to screw up the 40k universe then Sephiroth.

Several of them, really.

[Traab]

I think he is saying sephiroth is easy to beat in the 40k universe, but really tough to truly eradicate from existence. Like beheading a dandelion. Its easy to do, but you just spread out dozens of spores, meaning dandelions will grow back. It would likely take very specific and thorough actions to truly erase him from existence, and by the time they know enough to do so, he will have likely already spread at least once and be an annoyance that pops up from time to time and is promptly stomped flat.

[Mato]

Hmm, nah. That's really not what I was saying. The thing about him not being the obvious big fish is in comparison to so many other FF villains, who as people have been saying, we are often left in no doubt as to their real ultimate power status.:smallsigh:
Loved 7's hidden BBEG and twisting story I know fourteen other games you should play.


There are FF Characters better suited to screw up the 40k universe then Sephiroth.

Several of them, really.You know what sounds like a good thread?
Tidus vs Squall.

King of the numbers vs King of the omnistats.

[Tiki Snakes]

:smallsigh:
Loved 7's hidden BBEG and twisting story I know fourteen other games you should play.

The previous games I just can't really get into. Six, anyway. Love the art and the music, but I just can't grind through the gameplay. Tried a couple of times, but having missed it at the time I just can't get very far into it before losing interest. Eight was great for the first disc and kind of slowly went downhill from there till we got to the largely incomprehensible final disc. I made several attempts to get through 9, but on my furthest effort I believe I got to about the final disc or so and just...I couldn't go on. I just didn't care about any of the characters? The post PS1 era Final Fantasy games I had little interest in, shifts in the art-style kind of lost my interest and the gameplay certainly isn't a draw.

I did consider giving I think it was thirteen a go? As it finally appeared on the Xbox, but reports of the game structure (world only opens up on the final disc?) were quite off-putting and the art direction still isn't really what I'm looking for, I just kinda never bothered.

I can't say I've heard about or seen any Final Fantasy villains in the others that particularly interest me.

[Traab]

FF9 has the distinction of being only the second FF game I have actually beaten. The first being ff7. I have gotten to kefkas dungeon in 6 but never actually run it. Most of the rest I lost interest at various points. I hated 8 around the time I went into outer space and fought aliens on a spaceship. If I wanted to do that, I would be playing phantasy star games, not final fantasy. I hated FFx and x-2. Honestly, 6,7, and 9 are my favorites. I liked 4 (if thats the one with the dark knight/paladin) And disliked any with the job class systems. Tactics can diaf. Thats not final fantasy, thats ogre battle with a new name. Tactics is as much a final fantasy game as Final Fantasy The Spirits Within was a final fantasy movie. Ugh sorry, I went on several ff rants there.

[Mato]

If you like D&D consider giving the "old school" FF1/FF2 a go. Like if Valve made the original Final Fantasy game you'd get the save the princess Episode 1 that reveals there are three other continents and much larger destiny to fulfill. Episode 2 would have you run the arc of dealing with the four superbosses until the big reveal of yet another super villain. Then the class change would be DLC, and you'd never get to face Chaos in Episode 3...

FF2 is pretty much just a system improvement over the last. I'm not sure how the numbers break down after that, our 3 was their 6 or something like that. So FF6 mechpsion edition was ok. I liked 5 better but that was the start of the variable character concept with the class system, but the surprise in the game was also a twist on FF fans, you expected 4 crystals. What you didn't expect was technically three more worlds.

7 expanded on the custom characters and 8 went as generic as they could go before going full Tactics. 8's biggest problem was it is the easiest game every made and the emo protagonist was old news. 9 went full circle and returned to the strong class-based characters and Zidane is not really the kind of guy people can identify with, or put up with. A lot of the PS1 crowd that were never exposed to the original games probably couldn't stand the lack of free form their system generation had until then. 9 Also penalized you for missing certain actions at certain points making some things unobtainable on top of it being almost impossible to cap your characters so you had to choose between continuing progress or wipe all that effort to start again.

X went back to the generic set up, honestly it's a great game. Tidus as a clueless game star shoved into a new world was exactly who we were, through a little whiny pitched in his voice when he wasn't narrating. The shipping between Yuna and whatshername was so great you probably didn't notice Tidus could score affection points with rest of his party, Luna being the easiest, that altered some dialog and several scenes. Plot twists were fine and you get hints of some character to everyone but their main personalities are dialed up to 11, or 13.

11 was online, I skipped. And I just never picked up 12. I went the route of Tactics which were ok but almost too long. The Advanced one was like a worse version of Fire Emblem.

As far as the world opening up, you are used to the PS1 era. You never got an airship in those until you were near the end of the game. So "final disk" may sound like a lot, it may not actually be any later than the rest of the games.

[Traab]

What I disliked about x and x2 was the upgrade system, the way it held my hand like a baby for so long.

"Look! These enemies can fly! Therefore my ranged attack can hit them!"

That kind of thing is fine for the first few battles, but I really dont need that kind of info several hours of playtime into it. Also, the dress sphere thing. I mentioned I hated changeable job classes right? I loved FF6 because it had a lot of flexibility due to sheer number of characters and everyone had their role.

8 I disliked for a number of reasons, the outer space thing was kind of the last straw really. I didnt like the summons setup with clicking the button till i got carpal tunnel so it was effective, I didnt like how stuff leveled up with you, I rather enjoyed the games where getting to 99 was a good thing. Iirc, the weapon upgrading thing was annoying. I was used to going to the next town, buying the next upgrade and thats that. Not having to get specific item drops so I can synthesize my new weapon or whatever the deal was. its honestly been so long I dont recall. I also found the story to be a bit confusing, but thats probably because I was younger then and didnt finish the game to find the big reveal. Oh, and the magic system was annoying. Forget drawing, give me materia.

[SiuiS]

I think he is saying sephiroth is easy to beat in the 40k universe, but really tough to truly eradicate from existence. Like beheading a dandelion. Its easy to do, but you just spread out dozens of spores, meaning dandelions will grow back. It would likely take very specific and thorough actions to truly erase him from existence, and by the time they know enough to do so, he will have likely already spread at least once and be an annoyance that pops up from time to time and is promptly stomped flat.

Pretty much. The question being "how threatening is Sephiroth" can also be answered by "dandelion". He's everywhere! He's spreading! Every season, more and more Sephiroth erupt from the ground! From planets! From people! From gods!

And no one cares. Because these guys have real things to deal with. Sephiroth does his thing, but next to everyone else? He's a delicate weed with flower pretensions.

[Aotrs Commander]

Pretty much. The question being "how threatening is Sephiroth" can also be answered by "dandelion". He's everywhere! He's spreading! Every season, more and more Sephiroth erupt from the ground! From planets! From people! From gods!

And no one cares. Because these guys have real things to deal with. Sephiroth does his thing, but next to everyone else? He's a delicate weed with flower pretensions.

So, what you're saying is, then, Sephiroth is basically the Orks.

I would LOVE to be there to see his face if someone made that comparison in person, because his reaction should be priceless...!

[Traab]

So, what you're saying is, then, Sephiroth is basically the Orks.

I would LOVE to be there to see his face if someone made that comparison in person, because his reaction should be priceless...!

"Wait, what?! /deep sigh. Well, at least i will never be a memory." /is promptly weed whacked for the 8763578645th time.

[Angelalex242]

Well, Sephiroth also gets stronger each planet he absorbs the lifeforce from. It seems likely that the 40k universe wouldn't pay much attention to him until he's already absorbed a few, and by then, he'd be stronger then anything we see in game. He probably would have access to the warp after absorbing enough 40k planets, and get the advantages of a demon lord he's missing, etc.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, Sephiroth also gets stronger each planet he absorbs the lifeforce from. It seems likely that the 40k universe wouldn't pay much attention to him until he's already absorbed a few, and by then, he'd be stronger then anything we see in game. He probably would have access to the warp after absorbing enough 40k planets, and get the advantages of a demon lord he's missing, etc.

...why would he be ignored while he eats a planet? Anything that eats planets is a big deal in 40K, Sephiroth's problem is that he is a big fish in a little pond in 40K because he devours life, but in 40K you can flip over a rock and find half a dozen planet-scale apocalypses.

[Tiki Snakes]

...why would he be ignored while he eats a planet? Anything that eats planets is a big deal in 40K, Sephiroth's problem is that he is a big fish in a little pond in 40K because he devours life, but in 40K you can flip over a rock and find half a dozen planet-scale apocalypses.

Except that he has a bigger problem; He never even gets the chance to. We know this, because he fails at the first step, being put down and destroyed by the locals on his own planet. You require a pretty generous caveat and/or elseworlds scenario to even get him past step one.

And it's not like he spreads, not like the Orcs do. He's a ghost, held together by force of will. He is, simply put, a nebulous but essentially singular entity.

[Kitten Champion]

...why would he be ignored while he eats a planet? Anything that eats planets is a big deal in 40K, Sephiroth's problem is that he is a big fish in a little pond in 40K because he devours life, but in 40K you can flip over a rock and find half a dozen planet-scale apocalypses.

... but can any of those apocalyptic eldrich abominations turn people into frogs?

[Almarck]

... but can any of those apocalyptic eldrich abominations turn people into frogs?

Chaos definately can if it gets the whim. The dark eldar can do it doctor Moreau style.
The tyranids probably might splice your dna wifh a frog by random to see if if has value

and the orks can turn you into a squig with the right psyhic powers. Not quite frog but close

[Forrestfire]

All of them. The resulting frogs are probably either explosive, covered in spikes, filled with disease, or all of the above.

[The Glyphstone]

Now, if he can turn them into Catachan Barking Toads, he might have something there...

[Angelalex242]

Still, if he gets past step 1 even once, he does get infinitely more dangerous. Get past step 1 a second time, and it gets worse still.

Basically, he has infinite chances to get it right, and enough monkeys on enough typewriters will eventually type up Hamlet.

[Flickerdart]

Are they truly infinite chances though? If Sephiroth survives as long as the idea of him survives, all it would take is exterminating whatever army of marines went to put him down. The Imperium is good at dealing with that sort of thing.

[Almarck]

Hm, he's a question. If we can't destroy him, can we contain him? By this I mean, using any number of powers and technologies to keep him in permanent stasis.

Mind, I still think the guy probably would not fare well against most of the other "evil" (well, "eviler") forces in the universe. Mostly because I figure that once he's been back a few times, people will take notice and prepare accordingly. I orget, how many races destroy or feed off of souls in some manner? I'd certainly give the whole corrupting tlife thing to a Nurgle greater demon over Seph if they had to do a fight about that.

[Angelalex242]

Well, let's say there's a 1 percent chance of him successfully taking a planet.

1d100

After that, there's a 10 percent chance of him doing it again.

1d10

After that, a 25 percent chance.

1d4

After that, a 50 percent chance.

1d2

...and after that he's unstoppable.

[Coidzor]

Still, if he gets past step 1 even once, he does get infinitely more dangerous. Get past step 1 a second time, and it gets worse still.

Basically, he has infinite chances to get it right, and enough monkeys on enough typewriters will eventually type up Hamlet.

Is Sephiroth able to pretend to human long enough to make it offworld in the first place if he decides to be sneaky rather than just try to eat everything?

Less than infinite, really, if he's stuck on a planet there's a fair chance it gets Ork infested or Necrons show up OR...

And even if he gets aboard a starship that travels through the warp, well... Lose ships that do that all the time, after all, and then he's right where he'd be in the Vortex Grenade scenario.

[Angelalex242]

He is certainly ABLE to pretend to be human. After the first couple tries, he'd get the idea brute force won't work, and will proceed accordingly.

[Almarck]

You know, if having "infinite retries" makes him unstoppable, I'd hazard a guess and say Chaos would have taken over the Imperium by now.

I mean, to be fair, daemons don't die either, they just get banished back to the warp except in the extreme circumstances where they are forced to perish, this is especially true for Daemon Princes, the entities we're comparing Seph to in rough equivalences. My question is.... what makes him so capable as to actually be assured victory in the extreme "Hell is Everywhere" setting that is Warhammer 40k, while other entities with comparable abilities are not able to conquer the Imperium with as much ease as you make it out to be?

Is his "infinite retries" enough given that his opposition on every front (especially Tyranids, Chaos, Necrons) effectively has the same boon but en mass? And is he capable of managing a protracted multiworld campaign where both sides are taking worlds left and right?

[Flickerdart]

You know, if having "infinite retries" makes him unstoppable, I'd hazard a guess and say Chaos would have taken over the Imperium by now.
Chaos has infinite retries, but hasn't had infinite retries. Isn't the whole WH40K thing that the non-Chaos races are desperately struggling against the inexorable tide of corruption? I could be wrong, but it seems that Chaos is pretty much destined to win in the end.

[Angelalex242]

Chaos always wins in the end. Just ask Final Fantasy 13's cast.

(Which is why I think Caius Ballad is better suited for this match, considering he can control Chaos through Yeul.)

Anyways, the thing is, after enough retries...I gave him a 1 percent chance and a d100 roll...he eventually successfully drains a single planet of its life force, which is then destroyed. Nobody can use it after that.

He has a 10 percent chance to drain the next one, then a 25, then a 50, then...unstoppable, like I said earlier. By the time he hits 'unstoppable', they'll be treating him more like Galactus.

[GloatingSwine]

Chaos has infinite retries, but hasn't had infinite retries. Isn't the whole WH40K thing that the non-Chaos races are desperately struggling against the inexorable tide of corruption? I could be wrong, but it seems that Chaos is pretty much destined to win in the end.

Chaos is inherently self defeating.

Chaos is so inherently self defeating that its tendency to do so is sometimes regarded as a fifth Chaos god.

That doesn't mean that it couldn't topple the Imperium, just that it would eventually retreat to the warp to come back and do it again in another few thousand years when something had arisen in its place.

Y'see, the problem with people asserting that Sephiroth will "always" come back and so he'll eventually succeed at eating a planet's Lifestream is that, well, that still makes him a punk threat to 40k because every silly old Daemon Prince can do that and they don't even need to eat a planet for breakfast each time before becoming a threat.

(PS he also has to try the same planet every time, even if he actually manages to keep coming back)

[Angelalex242]

Sure, But Sephiroth's threat grows with each planet devoured, with no upper limit. So he'll eventually surpass the princes.

[Almarck]

I don't think the "no upperlimit" thing flies as a good reason for him beating or surpassing Daemon princes. Mostly, this comes down to the fact we've never seen him take over a world, let alone two. He got beat before this supposed crucial point, and we've never been able to see just how far he could go or grow to beyond it. As a result, any theory crafting about his capabilities or exponential growth is in the territory of non canon. We never seen a limit, simply because if it did exist, the guy was cut down before it got tested.


Also, Daemon princes also have the same benefit of growing more powerful with worlds taken. In fact, I think that's the rule for everyone in the entire history of forever. Conquering places typically has the effect of making the victor more powerful.

Also, thanks for reminding me why Chaos has four gods that hate each other. I can't believe I forgot that rule.

[GloatingSwine]

Sure, But Sephiroth's threat grows with each planet devoured, with no upper limit. So he'll eventually surpass the princes.

That assumes that he gets to devour a planet NB: In order to do this he needs to cause significant but nonfatal damage to it otherwise he can only consume at the old rate that Jenova did which did not allow ascension, and he was originally only able to do that with the external support of the Black Materia. So he needs to come up with some way to provoke damage slightly short of an Exterminatus without actually calling down Exterminatus and getting the planet blown up completely leaving no Lifestream for him to absorb.

Which actually likely means he's going to need outside help, probably from Tzeentch*.

And it also assumes that nobody notices it happening (PS this would look exactly like Chaos shenanigans and the Imperium is extremely paranoid about that sort of thing), and the whole business doesn't just get eaten by Tyranids or expunged of all life in the tiniest degree by Necrons or covered in Orks or anything else unspeakable.

And even if he did manage to absorb the lifestream/warp souls of a whole planet all in one go he's still only on the level of a thing which can be killed by weapons that aren't even particularly uncommon.

Also, his whole plan revolves around consuming the Lifestream, the thing which binds together life and through which dead souls travel.

Thing is, that's a thing in 40k.

It's called the Warp.

It eats back.

* Despite wearing only black leather and no shirts ever Sephiroth is presented as uninterested in physical sensation, so Slaanesh wouldn't be interested, and he acts through proxies and attacks indirectly so he's not a big enough fan of fightin' for Khorne, and he's far too ambitious for Nurgle (Jenova, patiently consuming one world after another, is prime Nurgle territory though).

[Angelalex242]

Sephiroth's lack of canonical success is why I'm tempted to remake this thread with Caius, who's far better suited for this.

[SiuiS]

So, what you're saying is, then, Sephiroth is basically the Orks.

I would LOVE to be there to see his face if someone made that comparison in person, because his reaction should be priceless...!

Yes. I've even made the comparison prior! But unlike orcs, he's not really impressive in the numbers available.

I would love to see what happens if he infected Orks though. Because I'm sure there's cross pollination.


"Wait, what?! /deep sigh. Well, at least i will never be a memory." /is promptly weed whacked for the 8763578645th time.

Man, not even. The groundskeeper accidentally steps on him while piloting his power armor towards the real weeds.


Well, Sephiroth also gets stronger each planet he absorbs the lifeforce from. It seems likely that the 40k universe wouldn't pay much attention to him until he's already absorbed a few, and by then, he'd be stronger then anything we see in game. He probably would have access to the warp after absorbing enough 40k planets, and get the advantages of a demon lord he's missing, etc.

The thing is, the power level of Sephiroth with a few planets under his belt, he's about as strong as every other threat that uses a singular individual to run manic over the worlds beneath them.


...why would he be ignored while he eats a planet? Anything that eats planets is a big deal in 40K, Sephiroth's problem is that he is a big fish in a little pond in 40K because he devours life, but in 40K you can flip over a rock and find half a dozen planet-scale apocalypses.

Heh.


Except that he has a bigger problem; He never even gets the chance to. We know this, because he fails at the first step, being put down and destroyed by the locals on his own planet. You require a pretty generous caveat and/or elseworlds scenario to even get him past step one.

And it's not like he spreads, not like the Orcs do. He's a ghost, held together by force of will. He is, simply put, a nebulous but essentially singular entity.

Yes and no. I mean, yes, Sephiroth is a single individual. But he's also a paragon of his own unique species. And every individual of that species is also Sephiroth, that individual. Much like jenovah, of whom you fight twelve times or somethig but they're all the same yet different jenovah.

Interesting actually. I think Sephiroth is a threat later on because Cloud is his primary anchor and Cloud is much stronger than Seph himself was (evidenced by cloud surviving and Kaballah reference not surviving).

[Angelalex242]

Well...

I'm also operating under the theory that Sephiroth with a sufficient number of planets under his belt becomes Galactus.

[Coidzor]

He is certainly ABLE to pretend to be human. After the first couple tries, he'd get the idea brute force won't work, and will proceed accordingly.

So now it's how many retries before he wises up vs. how many Sephiroths before the Imperium decides to destroy him utterly with soul-destroying weaponry or exterminatuses or what have you.

[Rakaydos]

Hmm... now that I think about it... if we're equating Lifestream with the Warp, what would a giant Mako reactor do?

[Coidzor]

Hmm... now that I think about it... if we're equating Lifestream with the Warp, what would a giant Mako reactor do?

It seems like the Necrons(or just the C'tan?) would be in favor of whatever it did. Although I don't know if they'd like it if it was someone *else* destroying the Warp that wasn't them.

[Dragonus45]

Chaos always wins in the end. Just ask Final Fantasy 13's cast.

(Which is why I think Caius Ballad is better suited for this match, considering he can control Chaos through Yeul.)

Anyways, the thing is, after enough retries...I gave him a 1 percent chance and a d100 roll...he eventually successfully drains a single planet of its life force, which is then destroyed. Nobody can use it after that.

He has a 10 percent chance to drain the next one, then a 25, then a 50, then...unstoppable, like I said earlier. By the time he hits 'unstoppable', they'll be treating him more like Galactus.

Can we all just stop talking about Caius, he is an awful villain in an awful game that was a sequel of an even worse game. His great plan only worked because he was up against some of the flattest and most incompetent protagonists in the final fantasy franchise. If you want to talk about a great villain who essentially won look a Kefka. He won, then got bored and really threw his final battle because he didn't want to bother with it all any more. He had plans with class and style and were as ruthless and murderous as they were practical and victorious and the only reason there was a world left standing at the end is because he wanted it around as his plaything, and above all his most important aspect is he wasn't an emo whiny baby about it. Now that is someone I could see Tzeentch asking out for dinner.

As for Sephiproth the problem is that he is just a prettier Tyranid with the benefit of an orcs life cycle but with the weakness that there is only one of him. Even if he does get one or two plants I would like to see him take on an entire chapter of space marines or a full battle fleet of Imperium Space vessels. Or any of the other things they do to respond to threats that are of a similar scale in power across their vast numbers.

[Angelalex242]

Caius permanently destroyed his world. So thoroughly Bhunivelze had to do a mulligan and start over with a brand new one.

Kefka did not. The World of Ruin was still habitable, and might even recover someday.

But there's no recovering a world where people can no longer be born, or grow old.

[Kitten Champion]

Can we all just stop talking about Caius, he is an awful villain in an awful game that was a sequel of an even worse game. His great plan only worked because he was up against some of the flattest and most incompetent protagonists in the final fantasy franchise.

Also, he totally can't turn people into frogs.

[Traab]

Hmm... now that I think about it... if we're equating Lifestream with the Warp, what would a giant Mako reactor do?

Oh man, now im imagining crystallized warp and wondering what sort of materia effects you could get from it. All I know is, im not using the summoning materia.

[Angelalex242]

More to the point...

The 40k universe has no answer I know of for 'no more births, no more aging.' It's only a matter of time till the Chaos wins.

[Dragonus45]

Caius permanently destroyed his world. So thoroughly Bhunivelze had to do a mulligan and start over with a brand new one.

Kefka did not. The World of Ruin was still habitable, and might even recover someday.

But there's no recovering a world where people can no longer be born, or grow old.

Cauis only did that because Noel is an Idiot, note the capitol I, and Serah was Stupid, and on the side the rest of the cast were combined rocking the IQ of a rock. He was up against the weakest and least capable, and least interesting, protagonists in the entire franchise. I never said the World of Ruin was uninhabitable or destroyed only that its survival had more do to with Kefka not wanting to destroy it than him not being able too, what good is becoming the God of Magic if there isn't anyone to acknowledged you and you can't smite people with the Light of Judgment if you have killed them all. When people refer to him having destroyed the world its more of a destroyed the world as we knew it sort of thing. It was not till he got bored and the players challenged his insanity he decided to try and destroy the world proper and even then he only loses because he was tired of existing. Heck his plan was to go so far as to destroy the concept of life itself, and he had the power to do it. When he died he took all of magic with him, because he really did become the God of Magic, not the self proclaimed one. That is an important thing to remember.

[Forum Explorer]

Hmm... now that I think about it... if we're equating Lifestream with the Warp, what would a giant Mako reactor do?

I imagine it'd be similar to the Warp Drives in the 40K space ships. So punch a hole into a warp, and bring whatever is around it into the warp.


More to the point...

The 40k universe has no answer I know of for 'no more births, no more aging.' It's only a matter of time till the Chaos wins.

How about clones? Pretty much every faction has that to some extent. Also I'm not sure how everyone essentially being sterile immortals is a problem. Or does that apply to literally everything, and not just everyone?

Also also, why are you talking about Caius anyways? All the games seem to be in pretty different universes, so the comparison is almost irrelevant to the current discussion.

[The Glyphstone]

Also, he totally can't turn people into frogs.

And even Sephiroth can't turn them into Catachan Barking Toads. Because in 40K, even the frogs get turned up to 11.

[Almarck]

For the unaware I think the best way to explain what Catachan Barking Toads would be to imagine if poison dart frogs produced high explosives instead of poison. I forget what the actual yield is but apparently it clears out miles of juggle when the frog detonates.

[Traab]

For the unaware I think the best way to explain what Catachan Barking Toads would be to imagine if poison dart frogs produced high explosives instead of poison. I forget what the actual yield is but apparently it clears out miles of juggle when the frog detonates.

So a standard day in australia then? Ok cool.

[The Glyphstone]

So a standard day in australia then? Ok cool.

Yeah, Australians would be right at home on Catachan. They might consider it a bit tame, actually.

But yeah:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Catachan_Barking_Toad

A frog with a hair-trigger temper and a defense mechanism that consists of killing itself and everything within a kilometer of ground zero, even through power armor.

[Coidzor]

More to the point...

The 40k universe has no answer I know of for 'no more births, no more aging.' It's only a matter of time till the Chaos wins.

Yeah, about that. You know where the Warp comes from (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Immaterium)? Exterminating all humans was believed at one time to be the solution to Chaos. (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Cabal)

So the destruction of all life is not a win for Chaos. Nor does killing and eating the Imperium if there's nothing that will grow back after they do so.

Of all the factions currently in WH40k, the ones who are currently winning are the Orks and Chaos, because they're the ones most profiting off of the status quo. Even if Failbaddon and his chaos space marine cronies feel bad about not winning. Their thirstiness is just as planned.

I think if anyone is going to be inconvenienced by this Caius fellow, it'll be the Orks and the Nids, since Orks reproduce as part of fighting and the Nids horrifically birth their forces as needed, IIRC, and also Genestealers only work by infiltrating human societies and boinking people to make horrible mutant-xenos babies.

The Necron will get along with him just fine, tho, and the Dark Eldar would appreciate it if the whole lack of aging thing means they are no longer in a rush to torture people to death to feed Slaanesh.


Oh man, now im imagining crystallized warp and wondering what sort of materia effects you could get from it. All I know is, im not using the summoning materia.

What, you don't want to summon Slaneesh's or Khorne's Knights of the Round Expletive? :smallamused:

[Angelalex242]

Well, the main thing Caius does, is that he makes the extinction of every species possible. There's a finite number of souls...and those souls are no longer being reborn. So it's possible to render everything extinct if you kill enough of them. And I mean every species...even those poor exploding toads will go extinct.

Thus it's possible to 'win the game' once he's on the field, since every race isn't being replaced when its members die. You can't even clone, because there's no way to get a soul in the clone. You can get a body that pumps blood, but there's no mind or spirit.

[Flickerdart]

You can get a body that pumps blood, but there's no mind or spirit.
I'm sure one of the races will figure out how to graft a robot brain in, the machines will inevitably revolt, and now you've got another faction wanting to kill everybody.

[Almarck]

How was Caius able to do that so to speak? My main question on that power is... how does that work on galactic scale and whether or not the area of effect is a thing?

I mean a power like that obviously is quite strong but we're assuming it goes off without a hitch and reaches every part of the galaxy as well as all possible subdimensions at the same time. I don't I don't doubt he can stop life but I doubt whether or not he can do it on the scale required.


The necrons would not be hindered in the least though.

[Angelalex242]

In the world he comes from, a singular entity (Etro) is solely responsible for making sure new life is born. Without a replacement for Etro of some kind, no new life of any sort can be born. Bhunivelze is creating a new world, and possibly even a new universe, but without an Etro or equivalent, such a universe would be stagnant due to no new life being born.

So...I'm pretty sure it's got sufficient AOE to hit universe wide, but I'm not sure they've got a 'well, we'll just replace Etro with this being.' Which is ultimately what Bhunivelze has to do. Replace her. Else, making a new world is pointless.

[Forum Explorer]

Well, the main thing Caius does, is that he makes the extinction of every species possible. There's a finite number of souls...and those souls are no longer being reborn. So it's possible to render everything extinct if you kill enough of them. And I mean every species...even those poor exploding toads will go extinct.

Thus it's possible to 'win the game' once he's on the field, since every race isn't being replaced when its members die. You can't even clone, because there's no way to get a soul in the clone. You can get a body that pumps blood, but there's no mind or spirit.

Hilariously, yes the Eldar have an answer for that, because they capture their souls when they die. They then can place their souls within machines for a sort of half life to fight with.


But going by your latest post, it wouldn't really work in 40K, because of different metaphysics. In 40K there isn't a single entity responsible for the creation of souls. In fact, I don't think there is an entity at all. Souls are just sort of a thing that happens.

[Almarck]

I agree. The plan seems to heavily revolve around how the cosmology is set up in order to work. In short I think he might be disqualified because he is without significantly altering the Warhammer cosmos unable to accomplish his plan.

Also, the plan would actually not work on the Eldar as they are already ageless and have methods and store their souls beyond death and implant them in machines as Exp says.

Necrons are also in a similar situation except they already imprisoned their souls millions of years ago in undying living metal. And they can endlessly rebuild themselves after being vaporized or reduced to a oddly of molten liquid.

[Angelalex242]

Well, presumably, in a duel between an FF character and 40k universe, enough of the FF Character's cosmology applies that their plan is valid. So even if the 40k universe doesn't normally have someone in charge of souls...now it does, and Caius killed that someone. Etro, unless a better name is found.

Otherwise...yeah, disqualified.

Now, granted, the races that weren't using (etro's) services anyway are fine, but other races aren't...and will eventually go extinct.

[Cheesegear]

Ultramarine, post Ward? Well that's a curbstomp.

lolwut. Post-Ward, as in after Ward, as in right now. You do realise that after Ward left, Marines were narratively de-powered back to their 4th Ed. state. Graham McNeill (author of said 4th Ed. Codex, if that matters) in one of his books, even used Captain Agemman as a mouthpiece to tear Ward a new one. Then, almost word-for-word (which I refuse to believe is a coincidence), Captain Titus in the Space Marine game says the same thing.

Anyway, I don't think you know what 'post' means.


It's called the Warp.
It eats back.

This, and exactly this. If you can somehow shunt Seph into the Warp - say I don't know, by using an unblockable Vortex Grenade - things will feed off of Seph's delicious eternal life force. The other thing, is that this example specifically already exists between Nurgle and Isha (and to a lesser extent, Curze and Vulkan). If someone physically can't even die, Chaos are going to have a field day - especially, as mentioned, Nurgle.

It's unclear how Perpetuals interact with the Warp, since their souls are bright and shiny and they can't die, too. But Perpetuals are a relatively new concept in 40K, and are specifically being written about in a time in 40K when the Warp wasn't really a thing to be worried about. But we'll find that out right at the end of the Horus Heresy when Horus murders Ollanius Pius, and how that works out for Ol'. However, Thawn has literally been swallowed by a Greater Daemon, and didn't even die.

That said, since Seph is not a Daemon, and is actually more like a Perpetual, 40K even has ways of dealing with those, too. You need a Perpetual to kill a Perpetual, and the last known one is the aforementioned Justicar Anval Thawn*. Give Thawn a Fulgarite, get him to stab Seph with it, and Presto!, Seph is no longer immortal, cut off from whatever Power is feeding him. Of course, in doing so, Thawn will lose his Perpetual-ness too. But I've already discussed previously that in 40K, mutually assured destruction counts as winning.

*However this may or may not have been retconned. It's unclear.

[Forum Explorer]

Well, presumably, in a duel between an FF character and 40k universe, enough of the FF Character's cosmology applies that their plan is valid. So even if the 40k universe doesn't normally have someone in charge of souls...now it does, and Caius killed that someone. Etro, unless a better name is found.

Otherwise...yeah, disqualified.

Now, granted, the races that weren't using (etro's) services anyway are fine, but other races aren't...and will eventually go extinct.

Why? That flat out contradicts a bunch of 40K cosmology. And we're not taking away any of his abilities in removing that feat from his list of abilities, just saying that he can't duplicate it in the 40K verse. Giving him that ability is blatantly favoring one side of the vs fight, to the degree of saying since psykers don't exist in FF, Caius has no anti-psyker defenses, so any librarian or inquisitor can instantly mind control him

[Angelalex242]

Well...without that trump card, Caius is mostly about being unkillable (like a perpetual, really) and time travel. Warp Grenade is a problem? Not anymore, he just went back in time and killed whoever invented them as a baby. Space Marines? He goes back in time and kills whoever invented them.

And he's got Yeul endlessly predicting the future to help him know what to alter when.

So yeah, time traveling perpetual, more or less. Interesting to note is that what he's powered by in his own universe is called the Chaos. His Chaos isn't anything like 40k's, but if they merge, weird things happen.

Psykers are just status effects, to an FF character. Any of them can wear a ribbon and stop that nonsense.

[Cheesegear]

Also, Kharn, Skarbrand and An'ggrath - the first is another known Perpetual, and the latter two are both immortal Daemons - would actually love another immortal champion to fight against. It would be fun for them. All three of them also don't give a damn about magic - or however materia powers work.

To the Imperium, Seph is another 'Sector-level' threat. Definitely problematic, but nothing that they haven't dealt with before.
To Chaos, Seph is just another shark. Little fish should look out. But an orca whale is going to mess him up real bad. The fact that Sephiroth is immortal, in the Warp, is more likely considered a postive for his opponents, not a negative.

[Forum Explorer]

Well...without that trump card, Caius is mostly about being unkillable (like a perpetual, really) and time travel. Warp Grenade is a problem? Not anymore, he just went back in time and killed whoever invented them as a baby. Space Marines? He goes back in time and kills whoever invented them.

And he's got Yeul endlessly predicting the future to help him know what to alter when.

So yeah, time traveling perpetual, more or less. Interesting to note is that what he's powered by in his own universe is called the Chaos. His Chaos isn't anything like 40k's, but if they merge, weird things happen.

Psykers are just status effects, to an FF character. Any of them can wear a ribbon and stop that nonsense.

40K is weird in that everything in current time is generally weaker then it was in the past.

Going back to stop space marines from existing? Welcome to a face to face battle against the Emperor at his very strongest.

But he could go back really really far and wipe out humanity altogether.

Wait, but it requires a second character to work? (Is Yeul a character? I never played either games so I don't know. ) If so, it doesn't work. The scenario is the villain by himself, not villain plus minions. Well, he could go back in time, presumably, he'd just have no idea what to change. And considering the Imperium doesn't know who did what, he'd basically be guessing. Unless he went back with the whole 'wipe out all humanity'.


But moving past the Imperium,

Time travel against...

The Eldar (both races): Doesn't work. The Eldar are basically weaker then they've ever been. As they were literally created, not evolved, you can't go back and kill them as proto-Eldar, without fighting someone much stronger then any current faction in 40K

The Tyranids: Doesn't work, because no one knows anything about their origins other then they are presumably extra-galactic.

The Tau: Totally works. They even have a distinct Uplifting event that can be interrupted.

The Necrons: Sorta same case with the Eldar, except there was a point of weakness that could be exploited when they were cancer ridden meatbags.

Chaos: Doesn't work, because once they exist, they've always existed forwards and backwards in time. No that doesn't make sense as it means they all predate their own creation, but they get to break logic because chaos.

Orks: Doesn't work, because their creators are rumored to be the same ones who created the Eldar. And from their creation they've more or less inhabited the same sort of power level. I guess they were at their weakest when the Eldar were at their strongest.

And I already covered the Imperium, so I think that's it.


Psykers tend to inflict death, and that's one status effect Ribbons don't cover. :smalltongue: Also villains don't get to use equipment. :smalltongue:

[Drascin]

So now it's how many retries before he wises up vs. how many Sephiroths before the Imperium decides to destroy him utterly with soul-destroying weaponry or exterminatuses or what have you.

I dunno. In that way, Sephiroth could be most readily compared to a certain 40K character, whose name I don't remember, that is super-immortal, because whoever kills him, no matter the distance, turns into him. Anyone know the name? Anyway, soul destruction weapons never worked on that guy.

[Lord Raziere]

Yes. I've even made the comparison prior! But unlike orcs, he's not really impressive in the numbers available.

I would love to see what happens if he infected Orks though. Because I'm sure there's cross pollination.



......either Sephiroth makes them all into beautiful green bishonen, intelligent with powerful magic at their fingertips, thus ruining their entire comic relief position in the setting.

or they turn him into a green bishonen with Ork abilities, while making him act more Orky, and he begins gathering WAAAAAGHs under him will exploiting the Ork's belief powers to their full potential.

possibly both.

either way, it doesn't bode well.

[Coidzor]

I'm sure one of the races will figure out how to graft a robot brain in, the machines will inevitably revolt, and now you've got another faction wanting to kill everybody.

I believe AI going mad and trying to kill everybody is what ended the Dark Age of Technology (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Iron_Men), IIRC.

Granted, robot brain in meat body already sorta describes Servitors (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Servitor).


Well, the main thing Caius does, is that he makes the extinction of every species possible. There's a finite number of souls...and those souls are no longer being reborn. So it's possible to render everything extinct if you kill enough of them. And I mean every species...even those poor exploding toads will go extinct.

Thus it's possible to 'win the game' once he's on the field, since every race isn't being replaced when its members die. You can't even clone, because there's no way to get a soul in the clone. You can get a body that pumps blood, but there's no mind or spirit.

You're assuming that there is a finite supply of souls in the WH40K universe.

Basically the only factions that would have a "win" ideologically/conceptually possible for them in WH40K without birth and mortality in the picture are the Necrons and the Imperium.


In the world he comes from, a singular entity (Etro) is solely responsible for making sure new life is born. Without a replacement for Etro of some kind, no new life of any sort can be born. Bhunivelze is creating a new world, and possibly even a new universe, but without an Etro or equivalent, such a universe would be stagnant due to no new life being born.

So...I'm pretty sure it's got sufficient AOE to hit universe wide, but I'm not sure they've got a 'well, we'll just replace Etro with this being.' Which is ultimately what Bhunivelze has to do. Replace her. Else, making a new world is pointless.

So what you're saying is that he can't actually replicate this shtick outside of his setting because it's dependent upon killing another entity outside of himself linked to his home setting that doesn't exist in WH40K. :smalltongue:

I guess that does explain why you thought a localized planetary event would matter in the grand scheme of things.

Doesn't really explain why you've kept talking it up as all that impressive of a feat, though, since it's just killing a single lovecraftian horror so that another lovecraftian horror has to replace it.

[Cheesegear]

Granted, robot brain in meat body already sorta describes Servitors (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Servitor).

Other way 'round. Servitors are meat brains inside robot bodies.
Robot brains are illegal in 40K.

[Flickerdart]

Robot brains are illegal in 40K.
Illegal in 40K or illegal in the Imperium? Because I don't think there's any universe-wide police force around.

[Almarck]

Even then I don't think the ban is consistently applied in the imperium. Look at machine spirits and the fact that a cult grafts mechanical brains into themselves.

[Angelalex242]

Yeul is indeed a separate character, but she's also his primary motivation. The whole reason he wanted to stop time in the first place is to keep Yeul's cycle from happening. It worked. There's no more future for her to see.

Basically, in his world, the souls of Yeul, endlessly reborn and endlessly dying at 15 or so (her seeress powers are a fatal curse, among other things), a single soul splintered into hundreds...is the 'Unseen Chaos' of their game. The Unseen Chaos will inevitably destroy every world it touches. Might take a few centuries, and it'll create several time paradoxes along the way, but it will destroy everything.

Etro is ultimately replaced by Caius and Yeul personally, as atonement for destroying the world. They take over Etro's job. The way he kills Etro is pretty specific too. As it turns out, he has Etro's heart beating in his own chest. It makes him immortal, gives him awesome powers...and gives him a way to destroy the world. Just has to trick one particular guy into stabbing him. Failing that, grabbing Noel's weapon and stabbing himself will do. He could've killed Etro's body as well, but Lightning was fighting a 500 year long battle against him in Valhalla to keep that from happening.

[Cheesegear]

Even then I don't think the ban is consistently applied in the imperium. Look at machine spirits and the fact that a cult grafts mechanical brains into themselves.

First, Machine Spirits are not real, at worst, it's a superstitious concept applied to the fact that half the time, the Imperium doesn't even know how its own technology works. You know how you start your car and the fuel light comes on? That's the car's 'machine spirit' wanting to be 'appeased' by you putting fuel in the car. Yep. That's how it works. If I don't hold the clutch down when I change gears, the 'Machine Spirit' growls at me and starts breaking the car. At best, a true Machine Spirit is a mechanical component that automates certain systems (such as in a Land Raider), but it does not think for itself, and only runs pre-programmed commands, such as auto-targeting and firing.
Basically, a Machine Spirit is not what you think it is.

Second, nobody grafts mechanical brains into themselves. If you're talking about the Mechanicus and Iron Hands, the brain is specifically the one thing they don't touch. Ever. Because AI. Is. Heresy. Everyone knows. And no-one is against the Inquisition on that issue. AI is how you get Men of Iron. And Men of Iron are Bad. Some people have been known to replace parts of their brain, sure - that's how we get Servitors. But never the whole thing, and the limitation on how much of your brain can be non-organic is supposedly really, really low, even then.

[The Glyphstone]

There is the Rite of Pure Thought, where the illogical and emotional right half of a senior Tech-Priest's brain is replaced with a computer cogitator. So they do mess with their brains sometimes, and the legal limit must be at least 50%.

And sometimes Machine Spirits are a thing - the Machine Spirit of a Land Raider, for instance, can run the tank even when its crew has been incapacitated (or even killed, in a few cases).
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Machine_spirit

The Legio Cybernetica is totally a thing. Diminished post-Heresy, but they're still around with their robots.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Legio_Cybernetica

Because 40K says nuts to your 'consistency' and 'continuity'. If you remember something different, those are clearly false memories that will be implanted by the Ordo Chronos.

[Cheesegear]

So they do mess with their brains sometimes, and the legal limit must be at least 50%.

I thought it was a lot lower. What do I know, right? :smallconfused:


On the other hand, sometimes Machine Spirits are a thing - the Machine Spirit of a Land Raider, for instance, can run the tank even when its crew has been incapacitated (or even killed, in a few cases).
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Machine_spirit

But a Machine Spirit is not AI.


And the Legio Cybernetica is totally a thing.

Also not AI. Robots, yes. But not AI.

[The Glyphstone]

But a Machine Spirit is not AI.



Also not AI. Robots, yes. But not AI.

True, but I wasn't disputing that. I was disputing the claim that there is no such thing as Machine spirits, just ignorant superstition like the 'check engine' light on your car. In 40K, it's quite possible/likely, especially in the more complicated machines, for there to actually be a Machine Spirit turning that light on. Especially in cases like the Land Raider as mentioned, which can totally run the entire tank on its own in the absence of crew members if it has to.



I thought it was a lot lower. What do I know, right?

Blame the Ordo Chronos, like I suggested. You're remembering a parallel timeline that won't exist soon.

[Cheesegear]

Now I realise that I said 'robot brains' didn't exist, they do. What I meant was AI, or 100% functional and reasoning mechanical brains. So, technically the Legio Cybernetica have 'robot brains', but they don't think for themselves, they still a Magi to control them, and they are, in fact, so powerful that the Mechanicus had to write the equivalent of the Codex Astartes to dictate how the Legio Cybernetica can be used and how many robots automata any one Magos is allowed to command.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, in 40K the difference is what we here call 'True' AI - an artificial mind with the ability to enhance and improve itself. Machine Spirits, Servitor brains, and Robot cortexes meet a lot of the criteria, but not that one, so by 40K standards they do not count as Abominable Intelligences.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Artificial_intelligence




but what does any of this have to do with Sephiroth? I'm not sure when the discussion got derailed, but this should probably belong in the Fluff thread unless we can tie it back into the versus (send robots to fight Sephiroth?).

[Flickerdart]

but what does any of this have to do with Sephiroth? I'm not sure when the discussion got derailed, but this should probably belong in the Fluff thread unless we can tie it back into the versus (send robots to fight Sephiroth?).
Someone proposed pre-murdering all new souls as a way of gradually defeating the universe since it would be impossible for mortal armies to replenish. I suggested cyborgs that are animated by a machine intelligence rather than a soul, which apparently leads to Chaos in 40K (because what doesn't?).

[Almarck]

We ended up discussing how Caius a different final fantasy villain would fare in Warhammer 40k given that he can stop the birth of new life (via plot events). Robots and artifical intelligences were brought up as a counter as they are without souls.


Also I have said it before and I'll say it again. Is fighting Lucius the Eternal a lose lose for Sephiroth given that guys unique power?

And how well would a fight between Seph and say one of the major blood angels like Mephiston work?

[Forum Explorer]

Also I have said it before and I'll say it again. Is fighting Lucius the Eternal a lose lose for Sephiroth given that guys unique power?

And how well would a fight between Seph and say one of the major blood angels like Mephiston work?

I'm pretty sure it's a lose for Sephiroth. But regarding your question of soul destruction weapons, vs him? I think the 'canon' is that he's either won when he fought them or didn't fight them at all. Cause there are plenty of creatures that can kill him and not trigger his special ability due to lacking basically all emotion.

That applies to other special characters with Eternal Warrior as well. By fluff they either win, or dodge/retreat at the last second to avoid the instant kill.


I think Mephiston would rip Seph a new one. Mephi is seriously OP, high level psyker with crazy close combat abilities. Almost exactly what we said was Seph's bane.

[Traab]

Personally, this is one of my favorite arguments ever. It is so damn organic. it has changed focus a couple dozen times. the original point of the topic was basically to discover how much dakka the warhammer universe needs to truly defeat sephiroth. I liked how that one poster broke it all down to numbers. Then we got side tracked briefly into how much of an idiot sephiroth is compared to other ff bad guys, then we argued over what it means to truly beat sephiroth as spores got mentioned, then things just go goofy.

[Almarck]

I actually diislike the stats arguement posted before. It failed to account for how sorting algorithms of leveling in rpgs work. For one doesnt 24 damage seem a little small given that midlevel mooks can do so much more damage just because they were fought in an area that was not the first level of ths game. End bosses and minions are strong arbitrarily and this does make comparing statistics sometimes nonsensical in other universes

sure I get that many might say space marines are not super op to crush everything and I agree. But 24 damage per marine is probably not a fair assessment considering Shinra mooks seem to use modern weapons and marinea use explosive munitions that can punch through powered armor as standard issue firearms.

mook and creatures later on down the line progressively did more damage despite using mostly the same weapons


I will concede normal marines flatot die though. Rule of importamce and all

[Angelalex242]

Well, there's two kinds of Sephiroth.

Canon Sephiroth, who's likely as not to get killed by his own stupidity...

And PC Sephiroth, which is how we the fanbase would use his powers and abilities if given the chance. PC Sephiroth is much more likely to get a planet destroyed then Canon Sephiroth.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, there's two kinds of Sephiroth.

Canon Sephiroth, who's likely as not to get killed by his own stupidity...

And PC Sephiroth, which is how we the fanbase would use his powers and abilities if given the chance. PC Sephiroth is much more likely to get a planet destroyed then Canon Sephiroth.

But that's not really Sephiroth anymore, it's an empty shell of powers and abilities used from a detached third-person perspective. If we strip the character of any actual character, it's not the same person anymore.

[Angelalex242]

But that's not really Sephiroth anymore, it's an empty shell of powers and abilities used from a detached third-person perspective. If we strip the character of any actual character, it's not the same person anymore.

In fairness, we don't know how much of Sephiroth's stupidity is Plot Induced Stupidity, and how much is Real Stupidity/Character Induced Stupidity.

Using his powers and abilities from the impartial, 3rd person perspective basically takes all PIS and CIS out of the equation. Might 40k beat him anyway? Very possibly, but they'd have a rougher time against 'smart Sephiroth'

[GloatingSwine]

As far as this thread has gone though "PC Sephiroth" is "Capabilities people have made up based on what they think would have happened if what actually happened hadn't happened".

Canon Sephiroth wasn't necessarily stupid, he managed to manipulate the only people on the entire planet who knew he was even vaguely a threat into doing the one specific thing which allowed him to become that threat which he couldn't have done himself, it's just that he was vulnerable to being chopped with swords, punched, and shot with machinegun arms no matter how many extraneous wings he sprouted.

[Angelalex242]

Well, yeah.

"What might've happened if Sephiroth had, ya know, finished Cloud off by impaling him in the brain instead of the shoulder, since he clearly had a free choice just then in Advent Children"

[Traab]

In fairness, we don't know how much of Sephiroth's stupidity is Plot Induced Stupidity, and how much is Real Stupidity/Character Induced Stupidity.

Using his powers and abilities from the impartial, 3rd person perspective basically takes all PIS and CIS out of the equation. Might 40k beat him anyway? Very possibly, but they'd have a rougher time against 'smart Sephiroth'

CIS is always PIS. The reason the big bad guy monologues for 5 minutes when the hero is at his mercy is because the plot demands he be stupid long enough to give the hero his opening. If the bad guy was never stupid, then chances are he would win. A good example is this scene from Willow here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbfAaq3Em2A) Skip ahead to 4:43 and watch. The evil queen has the fight won. Her powerful opponents are defeated. She just has to deal with this little peck holding the baby. In any rational universe, she would magically hurl a dagger into his face then pick the baby up off the floor and finish the job. Instead she wastes the next several minutes mocking him, telling him to cooperate, and in general NOT killing him off. Even when he shows he has a couple (albeit weak) tricks to use, she still refuses to just finish him, and it costs her the victory. Its a bit of PIS but her character has been known to act arrogantly, and with good reason, before. So its also how her character actually acts.

[Mato]

Well, yeah.

"What might've happened if Sephiroth had, ya know, finished Cloud off by impaling him in the brain instead of the shoulder, since he clearly had a free choice just then in Advent Children"You might just be pushing fridge logic and pushing blame on the victim.

Sephiroth had recently countered Cloud's best attack, the omnislash, before air stabbing Cloud a dozen times and then impaling the hero to make a point. According to the other characters, they were also no where near as strong as they once were either. But you can't have a bad ending so Cloud receives his next deus ex machina upgrade and pulls his near dead bloody corpse off the ground to use a super-enhanced version of his omnislash, happy ending!

Villains need a union.

[Angelalex242]

That's why I frequently support Caius.

Because in FF13-2, there IS no happy ending. The bad guy wins, flat out.

[Almarck]

Caius while he no doubt sounds powerful probably actually just be better off not messing with the Warhammer 40k timestream. I mean it. He either has to contend with beings even more powerful than the present day forces or deal with beings that more or less have the power to challenge him in his own turf. There might also be a universal law that makes altering events to suit his needs actually result in even worse situations if the experiences of what a certain Necron Cryptech are any proof. There's also the fact that... history is so epically long and detailed in Warhammer 40k that the re precautions of changing just one significant enough detail (such as space marines) , that it's really unpredictable what'd happen when you change things. If there's no space marines maybe the ad mech made men of iron 2.0 for example.

Also since I overshot it with Mephiston, how about Seph versus Kharn because I want to know if Meteor would work on the guy.

[Angelalex242]

What're you gonna do?

After all, how many villains from any game can truly say they handed the player a 'bad ending'...and hand them a worse one even if they do 100% completion.

[Tiki Snakes]

What're you gonna do?

After all, how many villains from any game can truly say they handed the player a 'bad ending'...and hand them a worse one even if they do 100% completion.

You keep saying that like it's somehow a good thing. A positive mark for the game or the character.

I kinda don't see it?

[Forum Explorer]

What're you gonna do?

After all, how many villains from any game can truly say they handed the player a 'bad ending'...and hand them a worse one even if they do 100% completion.

The point is that going back in time won't make many (or really any besides Tau) of the factions weaker. If Caius can win, he might as well do it in present time. If he can't win, then going back in time isn't going to help.

[Starwulf]

You keep saying that like it's somehow a good thing. A positive mark for the game or the character.

I kinda don't see it?

It is a good thing, a very good/positive thing. It gets BORING that the good guys always win, that the bad guy is always defeated, in movies, tv shows, and most often of all, in video games. The fact that a bad guy not only wins, but wins so well that NOTHING short of a complete and total reset of the world can erase what he did, is absolutely amazing. It actually makes me want to dig out my FFXIII and start playing it and then go get XIII-2 and Lightning returns, just so I can see this happening for myself.

I mean, I realize some people don't want the bad guy to win, but I'm not one of those people. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the bad guys to always win, but the whole idea that the bad guy always loses is just ridiculous and entirely preposterous.

[SiuiS]

It is a good thing, a very good/positive thing. It gets BORING that the good guys always win, that the bad guy is always defeated, in movies, tv shows, and most often of all, in video games. The fact that a bad guy not only wins, but wins so well that NOTHING short of a complete and total reset of the world can erase what he did, is absolutely amazing. It actually makes me want to dig out my FFXIII and start playing it and then go get XIII-2 and Lightning returns, just so I can see this happening for myself.

I mean, I realize some people don't want the bad guy to win, but I'm not one of those people. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the bad guys to always win, but the whole idea that the bad guy always loses is just ridiculous and entirely preposterous.

It's the same reason most PCs aren't dirt farmers. Because there are dirt farmers who become glorious heroes and there are dirt farmers who stay dirt farmers, and the second does not make for an enjoyable play experience.

While the bad guy being able to win – it not being a foregone, formulaic conclusion – is good in abstract, in concrete this sounds terrible. Ff XIII was already pushing it for pointlessness and bad writing. What I've heard of Caius doesn't help. Especially since he doesn't actually win, he loses to a deus ex machina – spanked by God who says 'quit it' and restarts it all.


......either Sephiroth makes them all into beautiful green bishonen, intelligent with powerful magic at their fingertips, thus ruining their entire comic relief position in the setting.

or they turn him into a green bishonen with Ork abilities, while making him act more Orky, and he begins gathering WAAAAAGHs under him will exploiting the Ork's belief powers to their full potential.

possibly both.

either way, it doesn't bode well.

Either way it sounds AMAZING.

I know what my next Orc character will be. In any system.

[Starwulf]

It's the same reason most PCs aren't dirt farmers. Because there are dirt farmers who become glorious heroes and there are dirt farmers who stay dirt farmers, and the second does not make for an enjoyable play experience.

While the bad guy being able to win – it not being a foregone, formulaic conclusion – is good in abstract, in concrete this sounds terrible. Ff XIII was already pushing it for pointlessness and bad writing. What I've heard of Caius doesn't help. Especially since he doesn't actually win, he loses to a deus ex machina – spanked by God who says 'quit it' and restarts it all.


Meh, as I said, it's probably not for everyone, but for me personally(and judging by his like of Caius, Angelalex) a villain winning does make for a good story and most certainly isn't bad writing at all. Different strokes for different folks and all that ^^

[Forum Explorer]

Meh, as I said, it's probably not for everyone, but for me personally(and judging by his like of Caius, Angelalex) a villain winning does make for a good story and most certainly isn't bad writing at all. Different strokes for different folks and all that ^^

It's hard to do in a satisfactory way in a video game. Well that's not true, if the PC is the villain, but assuming the PC is the hero, then it's really hard to do.

Because being forced to fail? It generally isn't fun. Being forced into anything isn't really that fun. But failure is the worst of all. It's always annoying when the game makes you fight an opponent, have you win, and then have the opponent you just beat win anyways. If you don't want the PC to win, just make it a literally impossible fight unless they broke the game. That's more fun and cool anyways and at least I get to feel like I got to try and win.

Anyways, back to the point. I think it can be done. But it's hard to do. The player generally wants to feel like the effort he put into the game mattered. He's not just watching a film, but is an active participant in the plot. Saying that effort didn't matter can be a real slap to the face. Particularly in a final fantasy game which has such a huge time investment to begin with.



But on a different note, Caius succeeding doesn't necessarily mean anything for the quality of the game (or even of his own quality as a character/power level).

[Coidzor]

It is a good thing, a very good/positive thing. It gets BORING that the good guys always win, that the bad guy is always defeated, in movies, tv shows, and most often of all, in video games. The fact that a bad guy not only wins, but wins so well that NOTHING short of a complete and total reset of the world can erase what he did, is absolutely amazing. It actually makes me want to dig out my FFXIII and start playing it and then go get XIII-2 and Lightning returns, just so I can see this happening for myself.

I mean, I realize some people don't want the bad guy to win, but I'm not one of those people. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the bad guys to always win, but the whole idea that the bad guy always loses is just ridiculous and entirely preposterous.

"Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed." - Neil Gaiman paraphrasing a G.K. Chesterton quote.

Looking around ourselves in real life with even a tiny awareness of the world around us shows us that, yes, bad guys win all the time in the real world.

[Starwulf]

"Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed." - Neil Gaiman paraphrasing a G.K. Chesterton quote.

Looking around ourselves in real life with even a tiny awareness of the world around us shows us that, yes, bad guys win all the time in the real world.

Yep, and sometimes(not always, but sometimes) I want that level of realism in my games :)

[Cheesegear]

but what does any of this have to do with Sephiroth?

But you're a mod. How do you not know that Vs. Threads aren't supposed to stay on topic? :smalltongue:


Also I have said it before and I'll say it again. Is fighting Lucius the Eternal a lose lose for Sephiroth given that guys unique power?

I don't think so. Once Lucius shunts out the dude's soul, doesn't Seph's soul just go straight back to the Lifestream to come back out again?
Also, if you don't brag about it, or take pleasure in the fact that you're the best, Lucius never comes out.

Pretty sure that Seph will need to gloat at some point.


And how well would a fight between Seph and say one of the major blood angels like Mephiston work?

Mephiston was a Mary Sue. A couple of years ago, he'd auto-win, every time. Due to a combination of Ward's love for him, and James Swallow being a terrible writer (at the time). The Ward Effect has since been removed from Mephiston, and James Swallow learned how to write, so Mephiston is no longer the auto-win Mary Sue that he used to be.

He's still supernaturally quick, and he still hits like a truck, and still carries a Force Weapon. A Force Weapon obliterates someone's soul, like, just gone. Do not pass Go! So Seph's super-soul still gets annihilated if he gets tagged by a Force Weapon, and Mephiston is actually quick and strong enough to pull it off.


I actually diislike the stats arguement posted before.

You don't have to like it. Because it's comparing apples to oranges. Check the OP. Each character abides by their own Verses' rules. That's what that is. Sephiroth has multiple thousands of hit points, and can be hit by Fire/Fira/Firaga a bunch of times before he goes out. What is 'Fire'? What is 'Fira'? What is 'Firaga'? 40K doesn't have those, how can we predict how much damage anything does to Seph if 40K has no equivalent abilities?

Guess what? 40K does have it's own rules, which are actually compatible with FF7's mechanics, where each 'Verse abides to its own rules, as per the parameters of the fight. That's how that works, whether you 'like it' or not. It is a metric by which I - me, that is - can conclusively determine how many Marines it takes to kill Seph, where each 'Verse uses it's own rules, without bias. Basically, it removes 'the fanboy factor' from the Vs. Thread.

Earlier in thread, it was stated to me that Seph gets shot in the face with a gun (an Autopistol in 40K, I guess), and barely takes a graze. Well, how does Seph fare against an AA12 shotgun shooting dum dum rounds (a basic approximation of a Boltgun)? Not a clue. Seph never gets shot with one of those, so how would we know? What we do know is that Space Marines live in 40K, where if you get shot in the head, you - usually - die (Space Marines wear helmets, fact). Seph can be shot in the face and not even die. How do you know that it doesn't take a few Companies of Marines to kill him? If he's resistant to handguns, why not larger shotguns and rifles, too? Does anyone have evidence of such a thing happening - because I don't.

What we do know, is that Seph can be taken down by a guy with a sword the size of a motorcycle. Superficially, 40K - and Marines especially - has those kinds of swords.
So, do we end the thread now, and say that Seph can be taken out by one Marine wielding a Relic Blade? Of course not, because that's not the way that the scenario is set up. Seph plays by his rules, and 40K plays by its rules per the thread. This is why I was hammering home the point that the Lifestream is not The Warp, regardless of how similar they are in exactly one aspect, because the Lifestream also doesn't even compare to all the other aspects of the Warp, that make the Warp...The Warp.


modern weapons and marinea use explosive munitions that can punch through powered armor as standard issue firearms.

Final Fantasy numbers are a joke. They're so high they may as well be meaningless. What does 25,000 HPs even mean?


Also since I overshot it with Mephiston, how about Seph versus Kharn because I want to know if Meteor would work on the guy.

We know that physical attacks, made using the Warp effect Blanks. In Meteor's example, Seph is basically telekining a rock into a planet (that doesn't even damage the planet it hits, by the way, that happens and is fact). If Seph is magically (for a given definition of 'magic' which equates to Psyking) constructing the Meteor out of nothing, then it doesn't work, Kharn pulls out his brass necklace and the Meteor bounces off the planet. If Seph is pulling the Meteor from elsewhere in the system, and is metaphysically pulling an actual rock out of the sky - Ebenezar McCoy style - then the Meteor will hit Kharn and not even kill him, because Meteor actually kind of sucks.

If each 'Verse is playing but its own rules - per the rules - then Materia/Magic is not Psyking, and Kharn's Collar of Khorne doesn't do anything anyway, and, at the end of the day, Kharn is a Perpetual and can't be killed, so it really doesn't matter. He's just going to come back for another go. Give him a Fulgarite and get him to stab Seph with it. Then they both die.

[Starwulf]

Final Fantasy numbers are a joke. They're so high they may as well be meaningless. What does 25,000 HPs even mean?


I'm not sure if you can call it a "Final Fantasy" thing, as a good deal of JRPGs deal with the same kind of #'s in terms of HP and damage being dealt. Some do manage to avoid this, but again, it's not an uncommon thing among JRPGs to have super high #'s.

[Mystic Muse]

It is a good thing, a very good/positive thing. It gets BORING that the good guys always win, that the bad guy is always defeated, in movies, tv shows, and most often of all, in video games. The fact that a bad guy not only wins, but wins so well that NOTHING short of a complete and total reset of the world can erase what he did, is absolutely amazing. It actually makes me want to dig out my FFXIII and start playing it and then go get XIII-2 and Lightning returns, just so I can see this happening for myself.

I mean, I realize some people don't want the bad guy to win, but I'm not one of those people. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the bad guys to always win, but the whole idea that the bad guy always loses is just ridiculous and entirely preposterous.

I'm okay with it if I know ahead of time. Otherwise, I play my video games as escapist fantasy and to win, because that pretty much doesn't happen in real life.

If it comes at me out of nowhere, I feel like I wasted my time, and unless there's something else, I'm liable to give the game as low of a review as possible, and not give that company any more of my money if I can help it.

Now, there's a difference for me between 'the bad guy wins' and 'the bad guy wins, no other options.' The first is a legitimate and often used trope in a variety of games, especially visual novels. The latter is often lazy storytelling. If I'm going to put the effort into a game, I want there to be SOME option that isn't "You lose, haha." unless that was advertised to me in advance.

Life already has the badguys win all the time. I don't need the badguys always winning in my escapism too. :smallannoyed:

In regards to the actual thread topic, I really don't think Sephiroph stands a chance here. Odds are, he gets a lot of gangirls like in real life, and just ends up fueling Slaanesh. Then the chaos gods end up influencing said fangirls into writing whatever form of fanfiction amuses them most. :smalltongue:

[Devonix]

Where did this idea that Sephiroth have some kind of Super soul come from? The guy is really a bit of a joke. Not particularly powerful for an FF Villain and doesn't even influence many of the events of the game he's even from.

You don't even confront or see anything done by the guy until the end of the game It's all just Hojo's clones. enacting Hojo's plan.

[Angelalex242]

Heh. 13-2 really kicks the player, though.

People see the first ending, and realize 'the bad guy won? I must need 100% completion to beat him.' And then you get 100% completion, and while leaning on the 4th wall, Caius calls the player a n00b for thinking that 100% completion would somehow make him lose.

Requiem of the Goddess DLC, however, tells you Lightning's going on what turns out to be a 500 year long snooze and will wake up in time for the sequel.

...In which Caius and Yeul replace Etro. It's now their job to keep people being born...and dying of old age. As punishments go...not really a punishment, since they're STILL Together just like they want to be, and Yeul still doesn't have to see visions like Caius didn't want her to.

So unless you consider 'you killed it, you bought it' to be a punishment, they basically pull a karma Houdini.