The DEFINITIVE Guide to Roleplaying in Battle

This is the definitive guide to properly roleplaying in battles on ADBZRPG5. This guide should serve as a reference for what you can and can't do in battle as a participant as well as what the battle refs' role should and should not be. It may look intimidatingly lengthy, tipping the scales at slightly over 4,000 words, but if you are interested in battling on the site and having fun rather than participating in shit-fests, then I would recommend at least reading this once over if not multiple times to internalize its teachings.

*Note: right click any links and open in new tab to view them.

God Moding

One of the major site rules is no god moding. But what really is god moding? God moding is when you write your character to be so tough or so powerful that nothing hurts them. You evade everything and things that do hit you don't harm you or get ignored. It is quite a subjective thing. Some people have different interpretations of what is acceptable and what is not. This is one reason why a referee is assigned to each battle.

The site has been built so that true god moding, in its purest form, is almost impossible. You have refs, you have stats, and your actions are limited. These all contribute to keeping a person from simply doing whatever they want.

However, just because you take a hit doesn't mean that you haven't god moded. It's how you translate that hit in your writing that counts. If the strongest member is 300,000 power level and the weakest is 3,000 power level, numbers wise the strongest is a hundred times more powerful. Does that mean they are completely invulnerable to the weaker person's attacks? Nope.

If a small child walks up and punches you in the stomach, it doesn't hurt that bad. You still feel the impact, though. If that same small child punches another small child, they will probably start crying because it truly hurt them. Power is relative, even in reality. You are much stronger than a little kid, but the impact was still there. It still hurt just a little bit, but your pain threshold (toughness) is much higher then when you were a small child.

The point is, show that it effected you somehow.



That is what you shouldn't be doing. You are showing that Krillin is weak and has no effect on you. That isn't true, he may not be as strong as you are but his punches still hurt.



See, in that example I did the same thing, except I showed the punches hurting Vegeta. They won't do a ton of damage because Krillin is a small fry. But, Vegeta felt them nonetheless. Yes he still acted like an asshole, but by showing that Krillin had an effect on him, Vegeta is not god moding. This is better roleplaying.

It's rare that the strongest member and the weakest members fight. Most of the time you fight people who are near your own strength. If you remember that all punches hurt, even those of someone who is a hundred times weaker than you, than you should never have any trouble with god moding.



Auto-Hitting

Another thing you should not be doing is called auto-hitting. An auto-hit is when you declare something happened, not your intentions to do something. If that is confusing, I'll show you an example.



That is an auto-hit. You are making it a foregone conclusion that the punch already hit Gohan in the face which doesn't give your opponent the opportunity to roleplay anything to the contrary. Here is what it should look like:



The minor difference in description means the world. The first one is stating that something happened. The second one is stating that Trunks was aiming to hit Gohan. Choose your verbs wisely, my young padawans.

What Do Stats Actually Do?

Your stats are scores not measurements.

Having 10,000 speed when your opponent has 5,000 speed doesn't mean you can move twice as fast as him. It is a relative score.

But, Brian Alex, it's a score? I don't understand!

I shall explain my padawan:

Think of it like a game of hockey. If you have three goals and your opponent has two goals, you win. The same thing applies here. If your speed is higher than your opponent, you have more initiative and are faster. But the actual difference in scoring doesn't matter so much as the victory itself. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many goals you score in a hockey game, a win is a win. If you win by six goals or if you win by one goal, you still only get one win added to your team's record. Think of it like that.

Speed determines whether dodging attacks is realistic or not. Even if someone is faster than you are, you'd still be able to dodge some of their attacks. But the speed differential will catch up with you sooner or later. I might be able to dodge Floyd Mayweather's first punch or two if I'm lucky, but he's faster than I am so eventually if I keep trying to dodge, I'm going to get caught and then the result will be even more devastating than if I had never tried to dodge at all. Check out this video of Anderson Silva's fight against Chris Weidman. Silva mocked Weidman by seemingly dodging all of his strikes with little effort. Then he got knocked the eff out. If he had just fought normally, and not tried to head dodge everything, Silva probably would have won. Instead, he lost embarrassingly.

The same can be said of strength. Having double your opponent's strength, doesn't make you twice as strong. Again, it's a score. Which one of you is stronger than the other?

A bit on other stats: stamina and vitality are stats that have caused some controversy in the past as there is no established formula for "calculating" their decrease. The outcomes are generalized. Just remember: the lower your stamina stat, the quicker it's going to run out as you use ki, thus weakening you as the battle draws on. The lower your vitality stat: the quicker it's going to drain as you get hit. Vitality is not your HP. These two stats are basically measures of how long you can last in a battle. If your stats are lower than your opponent's, and the battle is going long, the ref may end up having to step in with a god moding ruling if you keep fighting as if you are fresh. Think of it like a measurement of how many rounds you could go into a boxing match. Like the other stats, these are scores to be compared against your opponents. If yours is higher, you can last longer than your opponent. Your opponent might get 'gassed' after round 7, but your stamina is higher so you could last into round 9. That makes a difference when battles run long and people refuse to give up. Not only that, but the this time, the differential actually does matter. If I have 40,000 stamina, it's going to run out a lot slower than if I only had 4,000.

As a combatant know this: each hit you take is going to slightly lower your PL. Each ki attack you use is going to slightly lower your PL. The effect these have on your PL will be worse if these stats are lower than your opponent's and if these stats are low numbers. So they are just as important as other stats in the long run.

Toughness is pretty self explanatory (more about "damage reduction" is explained later).

What Are Technique Damage Ratings?

The techniques on the site have damaging ratings (DR) to help guide players into knowing what attacks are stronger compared with one another. Some refs and players have been attributing certain DR levels to a certain percent of damage being dealt. This is wrong. Damage ratings do not do a 'percent' of damage.. The only relevance that DR has in battle is comparing the DR of one attack to another. For example; Masenko has a DR of 7. Kamehameha has a DR of 5. This means that Masenko is a stronger attack than a Kamehameha (the trade off being that Kamehameha takes less ki, can be charged an additional action, and also has a larger tech tree of other attacks for no slots). Bakurikimaha, then has a DR of 6. So we know that out of these three techniques Kamehameha would be the weakest, Bakurikimaha the next strongest, and then Masenko the strongest. This is what DR means. It tells you how to roleplay taking each of these. If you are hit with a Masenko it's going to hurt you more than if you were hit with a Kamehameha. That's all DR is.

Physical attack combos also have an unstated DR. The base physical attack combo is roughly equivalent to that of a DR1 fundamental. As you build up physical combos with stuff like fighting style buffs or techniques like Hassuken, you could see DR2, DR3, or maybe even DR4 equivalent physical combos. There are many people on the site that never use physical attacks and have "ki builds." This is a mistake. Physical attacks always played a huge role in DBZ and they should do so on the RPG as well. Don't underestimate them. A good writer would use a combination of physical and ki attacks both.

The Role of Battle Refs



The role of a battle ref has long be misunderstood and misapplied on this site so this guide should clear it up. First and foremost, the battle ref is there to act as an objective third party observer to ensure that the site rules and the battle rules described above are followed. This is why it is critical to have a ref that all combatants can trust to be unbiased and fair. If they see someone god moding or auto-hitting, they are to step in and stop it. For example, if someone tries to simply dodge everything that would be an example of god moding. Ultimately the ref would have to step in and rule that this person is god moding and their latest dodge attempt failed. The ref's ruling is final.

There may also be circumstances where players will use techniques or abilities where dice must be rolled. The battle ref help can do this. Refs also determine who wins the RP Award. Each side can also specifically ask for one ruling per battle. Other than that, refs shouldn't be making too many rulings. If your ref is as active in the battle as you are, you're doing something wrong.

The battle ref is not there to give "damage reports." This has been done for YEARS here and it's not a thing. Oftentimes you see refs saying so-and-so is at a certain percent damage then after an arbitrary amount of hits, they are ruled to be at "100% damage" and lose. Wrong. You may have noticed that there is no formula for calculating damage anywhere on the site. That is because there is technically no damage. There is no HP stat. Battles are done primarily by roleplaying. Everything on the site is there to guide you and your opponent into what would make a realistic roleplay. The DR's of attacks has been explained above. You might also see things on the site that say "reduces damage by x%" or "increases damage by x%." Again, this is a GUIDE for combatants. If I am wearing Saiyan Armor W/ Shoulders and I take a punch to my gut, I know that it will hurt me less than if I were to take the same punch without the armor on and can tailor my roleplaying accordingly. I may even mention the armor cushioning the blow, for example. It reduced the "damage." But there no specific number involved. I didn't take 700 damage instead of taking 900 or something like that. There is no such calculation here.

The battle ref should also not be ruling battles as 'over.' This is for the battle participants to work out on their own. The goal of a battle should be for both sides to 1) have fun and 2) create a realistic, and fun to read roleplay for others to read and enjoy. It's NOT necessarily to win at all costs. Don't be Andrew Clark's father from The Breakfast Club. That's not fun for anybody. Yes, I understand the site can be competitive at times and battles can be competitive as well. However, if you find yourself sacrificing the integrity of the roleplay by trying to win no matter what, then at some point you're going to be violating the god moding or auto-hitting rules above. At that point, the ref will need to step in and say "alright man, it's over. You're just god moding now. You've lost."

But in general, the ref should take a laissez-faire approach and battle outcomes should be determined by the flow of the roleplay. There's no shame in losing a battle if that is what would make for the most interesting RP. Conceivably there may be times when nobody wants to give up. At that point, it'll be up to the ref to determine who had the strongest writing skills and end the fight in their favor.

More on Damage

People have a tendency to want to dodge or block literally everything that comes at them. They want to go as long as they can without being hit or hurt. This is not how DBZ works and you shouldn't worry about "taking damage." In fact, roleplaying the effects of being hit by your opponent can be one of the most rewarding parts of the battle and make reading the battle fun and exciting for others. Some people think that if you are hit with an advanced technique it inflicts a massive amount of damage no matter what. Not necessarily so. Important battles between somewhat evenly matched fighters in DBZ went on for entire episodes. Battles didn't consist of dodge after dodge or block after block until one person finally scored a hit and then that person won the battle in one blow. No, both battlers ended up taking dozens of devastating attacks and simply kept getting back up. By the end of the battle, both were battered and bruised.

Remember Goku vs Frieza? Frieza got hit with a full power Spirit Bomb and if that battle had taken place on this site, Goku would have been charging it for like 20 actions. They thought Frieza was dead they but were sorely mistaken. Frieza didn't die from it. Not even CLOSE; he was just getting warmed up! That video is nearly four hours long. That would be like a 400 post battle here!

I will say this time and time again; battles on this RPG are largely based on roleplaying. Stuff like character stats and technique damage ratings are there to give you a guideline on how to properly roleplay your next post based on what happened. Again, there is no mathematical formula for calculating damage. The only math you're really going to be doing in battles is calculating the % of ki you have used and adding up your word counts. That being said, I wanted to give a few rough guidelines on what will end fights and what won't.

Being hit with a charged up advanced technique will not end the fight unless your opponent has already been worn down for several posts worth of damage. I have mentioned elsewhere that people could conceivably take numerous advanced techniques from an opponent of similar power level without being defeated. This means that you can't rely on ki techniques alone to win you fights (especially with the new 2 advanced tech per post limit). You have to use physical attacks to wear down your opponents! Physical combos should be an integral part of any battle no matter how strong you are.

Here's another good video of Goku taking a completely undefended Dragon Dive (edit: video lost to the sands of time).

Keep in mind that damage is also situational. For example, if you land a successful physical attack combo on an opponent and then hit them with a ki attack, it's going to hurt more because they are already reeling from your physicals. Or if your opponent tries to dodge, and the dodge doesn't work, the attack they tried to dodge will hurt them even more than if they had just braced themselves and taken it, or blocked a portion of it. Think back to the Anderson Silva video from above. That punch wouldn't have KO'd him normally. Another potential situation would be hitting someone from behind by surprise. If they never saw an attack coming it would hurt more than say, attacking them head on.

The situational nature of attacks can also prompt a ref to make a god mode ruling if you do something ridiculous. For example if you are in the midst of an intense battle and someone watching from the sidelines were to suddenly jump in and attack you from behind, it would be very meta-game of you to just suddenly be aware of that and randomly defend against it. It's a cop-out to say "I sense him behind me" as there are many examples of the show of characters with the sense ability being surprised by an attack from the sidelines. Remember when Goku fought Captain Ginyu and suddenly Jeice fired a ki blast attack at him? Goku did manage to just barely avoid it --- and at the cost of completely giving himself up to Captain Ginyu's full nelson.

Although most of this section has been talking about advanced techniques, the same principles apply to finishers as well albeit to a lesser degree. Finishers are devastating attacks but being hit by one isn't always a death sentence. You can be hit with a finisher and get back up. That's not unheard of. As I mentioned above, Frieza took a Spirit Bomb and lived. Cell took a fully charged Final Flash from Vegeta and regenerated. There are countless examples from the show. Finishers do still have very high damage ratings though so if you do end up taking one, you should roleplay feeling its effects pretty heavily or realistically concede that you have lost.

Proper Dodging and Blocking



Simply "dodging" or "blocking" an attack is a legitimate form of defense but that doesn't mean it always works. For example, if you are dodging and blocking more than one attack per post, you are probably god-moding. Making it through an entire post without being hit once should be a rarity. Your goal isn't to try to avoid being hit at all costs. As mentioned above, that's not how DBZ battles EVER worked. Your goal when battling shouldn't even really to try to win (though a favorable outcome is always nice). Your goal when battling should be to try to work with your opponent to create a believable, realistic, and fun to read fight. You can survive almost anything if you roleplay being hit by it well enough.

You should be roleplaying taking damage and the effect it has on your body. Say that you are coughing up blood, or that the pain elicited an audible groan. That happened in DBZ all the time! This is good roleplaying and should be rewarded in the eyes of the ref when determining who gets the RP Award and whether or not someone is god moding or auto-hitting. If your roleplay works so well that readers and the ref can believe you survived it, then you did. Normally, it is up to you personally to say when you feel you have taken enough damage to be considered defeated. Not a "damage report." The ref should only ever rule someone defeated if a site technique specifically calls for it (such as rolling a death crit) or he feels you are god-moding to a degree that you're never going to let yourself lose and he has to step in and stop it to maintain the believability of the battle.

Weapons in DBZ?!

You should know that a weapon doesn't make the man. Weapons didn't play a big role in DBZ but clearly they do on this site. That being said, you're still attacking a DBZ warrior so if someone roleplays blocking your sword with their forearm or hand expect it to work unless you have some sort of legendary unique sword like the Z-Sword of the Masamune. Like most of what we've discussed, weapons are a tool to enhance your ability to roleplay in the battle and can provide other site benefits like stat enhancements or access to weapons techniques.

Other Guidelines to Remember

Battles must be at least 12 posts of 200 words each before concluding. Typically a battle should run anywhere between 6-8 posts per battle participant so expect a one on one to take anywhere from 12 to 16 posts with a two on two to take anywhere from 24 to 32 posts and so on. As you start getting well and above these estimated post counts, you should perhaps be thinking of ending your battle. Remember, your character gets more fatigued as the battle draws on. Roleplay that accordingly. To get full battle bonuses, each participant needs at least 4 posts in the battle.

Anything that effects bonuses such as PL, passives, prepared items, race, etc. should be listed in your first post and first post only.

Attacks or defenses not actually written out in your post don't happen even if listed as one of your actions.. I've seen people do this many times. They list an attack in their actions, but their post never mentions it. If your post never mentions it, it didn't happen. Don't metagame.

Examples of Good versus Bad Battle Posts

Here is an example of a good battle: www.tapatalk.com/groups/alexsdbzrpg5/fonos-l-vs-future-trunks-w-t40058.html

Notice the length of the battle was around 12 posts. Notice that the actions and notes sections of the posts were clean and short, not longer than the posts themselves. Also notice that despite having only 3-5 actions per post, the posts were quite lengthy. Thus, roleplay was relied on heavily when determining the efficacy of an action.

Now compare and contrast the posts found in that example battle with this one: forum.alexsdbzrpg.com/thread/13988/chilled-cauli-ref-walid

The amount of actions carried out in this post is frankly absurd. Nobody could reasonably respond to this in a roleplay that would be fun to read. Also notice how almost none of the actions are even actually roleplayed out. I do not see Chilled getting into a stance, for example. Do you see him tossing a grenade at any point? Where's the Zanzoken mentioned? How did he activate Reserves? None of these even actually happened. The attacks that are roleplayed, have little more than a line or two, and certainly wouldn't make sense in the context of the RP. Then when you look at the actions plus reveal his notes section under the "spoiler" tag, these are longer than his actual post is.

Which battle looks more fun to participate in? More fun to read?

Last Word

After reading this guide you should now be a master at battling on ADBZRPG5. If you remember nothing else, remember this: battles are supposed to be fun - not a chore. They are supposed to be about roleplaying, first and foremost. ADBZRPG5 is a very in-depth game with a lot of stats, numbers, items, and techniques. But everything on the site is here to serve as guides for you and other roleplayers to create a fun-to-read thread that everybody can enjoy. This game is about writing so go out there and write!