Commedia-verse Strategy Guide

How to be OP in the Divine Comedy-verse.

Local Scale Threat:

The Commedia isn't used very often in versus debates. Big shock, I know. Most vs debaters don't have the desire to sit through a several hundred year old epic poem for feats. But to me it's a shame because the verse has crazy abilities and makes for very interesting strategies.

Anyway this tier is the tier of the damned and the people in purgatorio. They're all shades meaning that astral attacks are needed to hurt them. In terms of stats they're roughly about wall level scaling from the sinners of the circle of greed having to push these human-sized boulders around by themselves (people in the Terrace of Pride in Purgatorio also have to carry massive boulders on their back up a mountain) as well as a bunch of other things that make it consistent like the people in Dis surviving the heat which was hotter then need be for any mortal craft, the people in violence surviving in a river of boiling blood, Geryon being this massive monster, and powerful winds in the circle of Lust that throw spirits around like mad. They're also subsonic scaling from Dante and Vergil who reached Earth's core from the surface in 24 hours, requiring an average speed of about 73.6 meters per second, not taking into account the fact that Dante stops to talk to every single casual acquaintance he half recognizes in the Inferno even when it's dangerous. It's also consistent with some of the sinners in the desert of the Blasphemers who were able to go to the horizon in the time it took Dante to say "amen". 

There are a few more offensive haxes here, most notably Geryon the giant monster has a poisonous scorpion tail and Medusa exists and can do her usual petrification thing. Their is also demons who can possess the bodies of sinners. But none of this is relevant compared to the main hax of this tier. 

They see the future and can read minds. All of them. They see the future without fail, and can read minds. The damned are limited by the fact that they can't see the present, but everyone else dead can see the future and present just fine. 

The best counter to this is acausality, which of course there is a lot of options for acausal characters at subsonic wall level.

In terms of weaknesses, the damned in particular suffer from not being particularly bright, after limbo that is, mostly due to the fact that their minds denigrated from being in Hell symbolic of the denigration of their humanity. Satan is portrayed not as come clever manipulator but as basically a beast intellect-wise so that should give a good reference point. 

High charisma and a manipulator or trickster build would probably do well. You'd think it wouldn't given they can read minds and see the future but it actually does work in verse for reasons unknown.

So who would be a good counter? My first pick would be

Contessa from Parahumans.

Contessa is probably somewhat in the right tier, due to the abundance of low level superhuman feats in that tier, and she has moved fast enough to block bullets before and easily taken out other parahumans. 

More notably is her ability which is one of the most broken things I've ever heard someone on her tier having, that being "Path to Victory". Path to Victory subconsciously guides Contessa and reality on a planetary scale towards taking the actions needed for her to win as a form of uber precognition. Basically Contessa has the chief ability that makes this tier so dangerous but always active without needing to consciously try. 

You could argue she wouldn't be able to hit the intangible shades but she is of the intelligence level where she can make tinker devices which from what I understand would be able too, so the point is kind of moot.

That said if you think that's too big a deal, even though path to victory arguably would still counter that I present my next counter

Cestis from DC Comics.

Cestis in her bound state was at least able to destroy a wall so she should at least be on par power wise. She's slower then the tier but it rather doesn't matter since she has high-godly regen and nothing the tier could do would remotely slow her down. the Jin En Mok can also attacks souls and minds meaning she could neg the intangibility of the tier and due to her nature as a being from a different creation, she actually has acausality meaning she would not be able to be predicted.

I guess you could consider Cestis cheating though since she is bound and not in her true form which would be too powerful so for my final pick I would suggest

Orpheus from Greek Mythology.

Orpheus is a good musician. A REALLY good musician. Orpheus is such a good musician that stones refused to hit him. Orpheus is such a good musician that his music summoned wind to push the Argo, requiring wall levels of force. Orpheus is such a good musician that he can control animals like the degraded minds of the damned. In fact he made Hades cry tears of lead, made the Furies, daimons of vengeance, cry and stand down, made the sirens kill themselves in jealousy. His charisma is so high he could waltz in and nobody would remotely even try to stop him. I know this because THAT BASICALLY ALREADY HAPPENED. When Orpheus tried to rescue Eurydice from the Underworld, his music was so good, that ALL the souls in the underworld were on his side. 

Orpheus music is so strong that the Fates will actually reweave their threads for him, making him not just acausal but able to manipulate fate and destiny itself. Seeing the future doesn't help when his music makes the future itself change. 

What I love about this is that Orpheus most famous adventure was an attempt to go into the Underworld, parallel to Dante's Inferno. 

City to Planetary Scale Threat:

The ascended people in Heaven are stated to be basically immune to anything in Hell because they completely transcend them. What does this include? This includes giants who are so big they are mistaken for towers whose mere strength shakes the ground with more force then any earthquake has ever shaken a tower. Satan is so big that Dante is closer to the size of one of these giants then they are to Satan's arm. Satan's wingbeats freeze all of lake cocytus, making ice so thick and tough that the giants can't escape for all eternity, and which not even a mountain falling at terminal velocity would crack the ice a little bit.

Satan is so durable that even after the fall, he got throw from Heaven to Hell in 20 seconds, sending all the landmass on one hemisphere of the Earth to rush away to the other side of the Earth, plunging into the center of the Earth, the crater being the entirety of the Inferno and the displaced Earth coming out the other side of the planet being the mountain Purgatory reaching up into Heaven. This feat depending on how you calc it is low planetary to possibly large planetary.

This is consistent with Beatrice shooting off more light then any star as well as making an entire celestial sphere, as in an entire ring far larger then the circumference of the Earth glow brightly.  Also in at least one translation an Angel entering Hell creates winds as intense as a continent of cold air and a continent of warm air colliding. 

Beatrice has also moved faster then lightning, and moved Dante from celestial sphere to celestial sphere so fast he didn't notice them moving (moving a planetary diameter in less then 0.25 seconds) and moving from a celestial sphere to a celestial sphere so fast it can't even be measured in time, let alone the fact that the Ascended can move around fine outside of spacetime, as the Angels show distributing God's love in the Empyrean like bees with honey. An angel also moves as light directly. Basically Lightspeed to FTL is pretty consistent.

They have most of the same powers here as the last tier, but on a greater scale. They also have super vision to the point that Beatrice from Heaven can see something at the bottom of the sea. They're also all super wise able to more perfectly understand the nature of God and reality. 

Less hax but still, they also generally all have light manipulation. Things glowing brightly is a common theme in Paradiso, and they can use this to create bright lights, to blind people and to make them go mad (or outright incinerate them). 

However most powerful is that the Angels are actus purus or pure actuality, pure being without any potential, making them conservatively conceptual entities and more likely absolute plane beings, only able to be harmed by manipulation of being itself or perhaps by void manipulation, the reducing them to nothing. That really constrains my options.

 So what weaknesses do they have? While countering them is hard due to having the same powerful haxes, they actually have more noticable weaknesses. All their powers are from God. The closer they get to God, the brighter and more beautiful Beatrice becomes symbolically. Therefore spatial manipulation, bringing them away from God would probably take away much of their powers. Likewise sealing or BFR could be used to remove their powers. Basically so long as you can control where they are, you can control how strong they are.

So who would be a good counter?

Well for a rather strange counter, you could use

Chowder from Chowder.

Chowder has a feat of creating his own paint world in a relatively short time frame which should put him roughly on par statwise with the verse. 

Chowder in particular is very talented at spacetime manipulation and can do so even on an absolute level such as rewinding and fastfowarding his own episode, flipping scenes etc.

Chowder can regenerate from being turned to dust, showing that incineration wouldn't effect him at all, and has even regenerated from losing his animation which is a level of destruction the verse has not shown.

Chowder is an absolute plane manipulation and he has rewritten the plot of his own show, suggesting he could rewrite and destroy the being of any actus purus he came across.

Also Chowder can sue absolute spatial manipulation to leave an episode of his show or to throw someone out of it, as he did to Truffles who was not in that episode. Using either this or using his infamous stomach to bfr them he would be able to remove their connection to God and weaken them drastically.

He can even avoid enhanced sight by turning invisible as he did to hide from Panini

Chowder is a very precise counter to the verse bizarrely, having pretty much exactly the combination of abilities that one would want to beat the verse, outside maybe for his level of intelligence since he's not as smart as the verse so long as he's not under the influence of brain grub.

For a character that's a bit more excessive you could use

 

Aleister Crowley from To Aru Majustu No Index

Aleister scales in power to Base Accelerator who could siphon off enough of the planet's power to change it's rotation and off of Coronzon who was fast enough to approach lightspeed putting him roughly in the right power range for the tier.

That said he's more versatile and haxed then they are due to the nature of his power. He is an acausal being meaning future sight is a comparable level supergenius entity.

Beyond that he's a god tier spatial manipulator, able to turn the inside of a building into a non-euclidian space, suggesting he could bfr the ascended beings from God's presence. He also has sealing abilities which would be really strong against them presumably.

Aleister also has the ability to manipulate primal archetypes and concepts which would possibly allow him to manipulate actus purus directly, possibly, bypassing their defense.

These are good counters for the lower estimate of this tier's power. For a counter to the higher estimate I think a great counter would be

Hades Izanami from BlazBlue.

Hades Izanami scales to higher FTL and Large Planet level scaling to Makoto Nanaya meaning statwise she'd be about right.

Hades Izanami is said to be death itself, meaning she would be conceptual and beyond the manipulation abilities of anyone on this tier. She also has mid-godly regen due to her void and death manipulation which would be impossible to get past anyway and her void manipulation is strong enough to affect being itself meaning she would be able to destroy even actus purus.

She has personally threatened to send Nine into "nothingness" and also has anti-immortality as she threatened Terumi. She also has an even stronger version of the verse's future sight as she was able to show alternate realities and was capable of predicting Ragna's plan flawlessly. She also has an even more powerful sight, since she was able to navigate the infinite boundary by herself.

Hades also has sealing abilities as she was able to seal Ragna inside Embryo. She's an acausal being that had her own time ended meaning that she wouldn't exist in their future visions. She is also flat out immune to basically anything in the verse.

Stellar to Universal Scale Threat:

This is basically the tier of God. Divine Comedy God is insanely powerful, creating the entire universe's matter-energy and concepts in a single instant, and existing as an absolute entity beyond all of it. He exists outside spacetime so speed isn't really relevant though the fastest objective feat would only be hundreds to thousands of times lightspeed.

It should be noted God's world in Commedia is actually a 4-dimensional space if you care about that kind of thing. God also has numerous feats of casually controlling all of creation, his presence creating all light, heat, movement, etc in the universe alone, he casually created Fortuna, the embodiment of luck etc. He also obviously scales to any ability shown by his creation.

In terms of weaknesses, God doesn't seem to really have any. This makes sense, as Commedia God is an older conception of an omnipotent being and while lacking feats that high is basically supposed to be unrivaled though as he exists as actus purus as well, pure actuality, it is possible void manipulation could destroy him. 

So who would be a good counter, well the first thought I had rather appropriately would be 

Amara, the Darkness from Supernatural.

Amara is supposedly the equal to her sibling God, who casually created the universe. Supernatural God actually has most of the feats of Commedia God, if slightly less casual yet God, Death and the Archangels could not kill Amara.

Amara also has absolute plane manipulation since she scales to God who controls the plot of the series meaning she could manipulate Commedia God, and she has void manipulation since she is the primordial nothingness and can casually convert existence to it. She's also acausal and outside spacetime so luck manipulation and future sight probably wouldn't work. As Commedia Paradiso is all about light, using the Darkness seems thematically appropriate. 

That said you could argue Commedia God's feats might be more higher plane in general then Supernatural God as well as more casual so this one is slightly iffier since Commedia God may just be able to raw overpower Amara though I doubt it. For a counter whose more versatile I would suggest

Altair from Re: creators.

Yes, leave it to me to suggest a magical girl to fight GOD. 

Altair is by end of series a conceptual universal entity, which doesn't sound like it would win since God can casually create those in Commedia. That said it shows she's in the same power bracket since she can also casually create and destroy universes. However she also has absolute plane manipulation, able to directly influence the plot such as erasing plot points she doesn't like or changing the flow of the plot. She also has powerful conceptual defense, and Commedia God has never shown absolute attack, only absolte being, this means she could do damage to him, while the reverse, if true, would be slower.

In addition Altair is just as versatile but her versatility is more hax. She has mid-godly regen, able to regenerate from nothingness, something Commedia God has never shown the ability to destroy past. She has power mimicry and duplicate, being able to duplicate not just Gigas Machina but also Rui's ability connected to it. This means she could duplicate herself to being far more then 3, which is the most Commedia God has ever shown (Trinity) and could duplicate his own powers.

She's also an acausal existence outside story, meaning God's powers would have difficulty affecting her. However her big trick of multiversal scale teleportation is what really seals this since she could teleport in and out of range with God while he would have trouble reacting to and hitting her. 

However there's one character whose even more versatile and haxed I think would work

Helios from Silverio Trinity.

Helios is powerful enough that he can casually destroy the universe and is much faster then his lower-dimensional self who moved at lightspeed.

Helios is a being that can defend on all planes up to conceptual and in all varieties, which would make him very hard for Commedia God to harm. Beyond that while both are hypothetical 4-d beings, Helios takes a lot more advantage of that, using higher dimensional physics manipulation as more of a weapon.

Helios can attack conceptually which would not be able to harm God, but would be able to destroy the rest of his reality. He's an acausal being that can exist outside spacetime. But why would he be so op?

Two abilities that linked at the anathema of Commedia God and make Helios the perfect counter. In the Divine Comedy everything is unified in God, God is the central unification point from which all concepts emanate like a much less horrific Yog-Sothoth. God's power is the basis of all underlying reality and it's order. Helios naturally has chaos manipulation, a power that would completely mess up the underlying order and would act as a complete not just power nullification to God's power, but act as a power that completely messes up whatever God would try to do to Helios.

Further, Helios has the ability to crush a power physically, to crush an ability an opponent has, as he did to Gilbert and Fafnir's Asterisms. Against most opponents his tier this is strong but not super op since they have many seperate powers. However Commedia God following the Medevil Christian Worldview where God's traits are not separate parts of him but all parts of a singular trait, the trait of perfect godhood. This means that a single blow from Helios to Commedia God would destroy literally every single power he has, since the underlying reality is that they are all one power.

And that's how to be OP in the Commedia-verse.