Good Ability Counters

 I do a thing where I create verse strategy guides, an attempt to counter a verse's fighters without going over the stats the verse has. I think doing thing stuff like this helps one to think of vs debating from new angles (as well as being a fun project.) I wanted to share what I think from doing it, are good counters to various types of abilities and strategies characters in fiction use.

I am going to be trying to limit myself best I can to ability that are not conceptually more impressive or hax than the abilities I'm trying to counter. You could obviously counter fire manipulation with conceptual manipulation to change how the concept of fire works, but it would be far simpler to counter with water manipulation. Imagine that vs debating was something like a game where you had a certain amounts of points to spend on abilities with more powerful and esoteric abilities costing more, this is moreso what are point-efficient ways to counter regularly appearing abilities. I'm also for a few of them say how to take advantage of some common weaknesses some characters and verses have.

High Power: This can be divided into two categories: high power for their tier, and a high power relative to other capabilities like speed. The former category are characters who scale far above the baseline for their tier to the point of being hard to match in power without just being in a higher tier, while the latter for a strategy guide for instance are characters with an oddly high power to speed ratio such as subsonic planetary meaning almost anyone you can use due to the speed limit will be dramatically less powerful. In both cases the question is how to defeat someone with more raw power.

Pretty much by definition hax abilities are the counter to a massive degree of power. Offensive abilities that ignore durability to compensate for lower attack potency, and defensive abilities that ignore raw power to compensate for lack of durability. The most elegant and efficient hax do both at once; in particular phasing is a fairly common hax that allows one to ignore opponents attack potency if speed is relative and can get around opponent's defenses via attacking their internal organs. Attack reflection also works similarly as a fairly common ability that compensates for both a weakness in raw offense or defense. Attack reflection is especially good against a verse of glass cannons as they won't be able to endure their own attacks, while Phasing is especially good against a verse of the opposite steel peashooters because even if timing is off, the character may be able to endure a blow or two, while still one-shotting. 

Low Power: If a character has relatively low level offense for their tier, for instance they are only baseline and only with their full effort, or scale to a feat on the lowest end of their tier, then one can exploit this via multiple layers of relatively mild defenses. Forcefields, lower level regeneration, enhanced endurance etc. will keep a character of relatively low offense from doing any serious damage unless they have a hax ability as they would find it relatively hard to overwhelm these defenses.

If a character has relatively low level defense for their tier, being a bit glass cannon-y for instance, or because their durability scales barely to a baseline feat, then the main concern becomes hitting them quicker even if damage is reduced, so characters having relatively large area of effect becomes strong even if the full force isn't being applied. Becoming a giant to hit with large fists or feet, elastisticity to extend one's arm over a long area, omnidirectional attacks such as an energy nova, or wind manipulation to create a localized cyclone...basically any power that covers a wide area as damage potency becomes less important.

High Speed: This likewise can be divided into two categories: high speed for one's tier, or an unusually high speed to power ratio such as FTL wall level. I find high speed to power ratio happens more often in long series with low tiers that scale to high tiers in speed but certainly not in power, while high power to speed happens more often in short series with some big impressive power feats but no notable speed feats. 

Speed is perhaps the single most important ability in the general course of vs debating being perhaps the deciding stat from the weakest of characters to near-ish to the top. Most haxes can get around power advantages, but still won't stop a speedblitz. The strongest defense against speedblitz are usually fairly broken powers in their own right such as passive hax that apply just from being in presence, or using time travel and acausality to engage the speedster in four-dimensional combat. A character with potent enough regen may be able to just recover from a blitz.

Trying to look for a less high-hax counter, something lower tiers might realistically have; passive damaging auras if potent enough should work. There are fiery characters whose mere presence burns and are extremely hot, or characters that are passively radioactive. High enough degrees, often supernatural degrees, of skill is often presented as allowing characters to avoid a blitz from a character in a far higher tier of power and speed, and if the speed difference isn't THAT massive, precognitive or mind-reading abilities can allow for compensation, though at a certain degree of difference, just knowing something will happen doesn't mean you can stop it. Likewise Invisible characters or characters with high enough stealth can rely on that somewhat to fight a speedster, so if the difference is massive enough the speedster may just check all possible areas for the stealthy character.

Low Speed: If a character is on the slower side for their tier, such as a massively hypersonic character having a feat of Mach 102 when heavily serious, then characters on the upper end of the tier such as one casually Mach 5000 despite same speed tier, will nonethless seem nigh-impossible to fight. Even a more modest difference such against a Mach 300 character can become extremely difficult if the character is very good at exploiting the speed gap with various mobility-enhancing abilities like enhanced agility, stealth, teleportation, or various forms of shapeshifting. 

High Range: Range is perhaps the most important stat in the history of real life's warfare, the ability to hit someone from a greater distance has been perhaps the definitng advantage in warfare. If the verse is full of sharpshooters or snipers, characters with an oddly high range, then obviously to nullify this advantage it becomes imperative to enter as close a range as possible. If strong enough space manipulation and time manipulation can counter, but for most tiers high range is certainly plausible but space-time manipulation outside maybe teleportation or portal creation aren't very realistic so what are more common low-tier powers that could counter a large range advantage.

In real life, range is generally nullified only by cover which grants two advantages; a layer of armoring, and stealth. For the first part things like heavy armoring or forcefield creation can allow for safe approach if strong enough, and if the forcefield can reflect attacks it makes troublesome for the sniper to even attack. In a more versatile-sense, anyone with stealth abilities could attempt to use this to approach. Obviously characters with supernatural stealth, but also things like darkness manipulation, fire manipulation to create smoke, strong enough plant manipulators to create plants to cover one's position and so forth. The character with high range may have ways to penetrate through stealth, such as extrasensory perception but if they have both it should be reasonable to have teleportation to counter.

Low Range: Obviously if an opposing character has very low range, then you'd want to keep them at distance as much as possible. Obviously range is helpful, but having super far range doesn't neccesarily punish low range anymore than a moderate range does. Instead it's better to have abilities that can keep them from advancing on position or nullify abilities that might stop far range; things like weather manipulation for instance to create a blinding snow and make the ground slippery and icy might make a skilled archer very strong against a melee-based opponent, moreso than having say the ability to shoot across a nation.

Another way to punish a verse or character having low range is to have a touch based hax, such as a poisonous or soul-stealing touch. Having to approach and get close essentially nullifies the weaknesses of some limited haxes like that.

High Skill: High skill refers generally to characters with a high degree of fighting skill. Against most realistic displays of high skill, the counter to this may be as simple as being a degree larger, stronger, and bulkier. Real life militaries often didn't train soldiers in martial arts, and instead focused on army formations, since one to one fights out of formation rarely occured, and in real life fighting skill doesn't generally compensation towards the advantages of mass, reach, strength or even moreso the advantage of being armed. Relative high power characters for their tier are generally a good counter to characters focused on relatively more realistic skill, especially if the character also has reach and mass. 

The supernatural degree of skill seen in fiction on the other sometimes depicts characters being able to fight characters in a wholly different tier from them through sheer skill, so to counter it requires more. Characters with enhanced skill are generally skilled, from training or experience, in fighting a certain type of set of abilities so outside context bodily structures or abilities may be outside what their skill may teach how to counter. While most of these supernaturally skilled characters can use their skill against the standard superstrong superfast flying brick, entities with bizarre biologies like goo monsters or machine-like creatures are plausibly outside their proficiency, unless it's shown it applies. Likewise because fighting skill is a manipulation of one's own body, forms of bodily control or telekinesis or even things like freezing the ground slippery or strong enough winds to throw them off balance may mess with their combat technique, if strong enough.

Low Skill: Some characters in fiction are god tiers of their verse or at least a section of it, with overwhelming power and hax, but are so relatively OP to their surroundings, they rarely fight and so have low skill or at least low skill for tier, relying on just overwhelming their enemies with raw power and hax. Obviously this would be a weakness for anyone fighting someone who can actually pose a fair fight, but what powers would specifically take advantage of the weakness? Fighting skill mostly teaches one how to manipulate one's own body and to manipulate the space one is in to concentrate forces or to manuever into a superior position. 

Therefore one who has average or less than average skill would struggle most logically against spacing type abilities or spatial abilities. Abilities that let you manipulate the distance and shape between oneself and an opponent would be very hard to counter without some degree of skill. So for instance, high agility to dodge, danmaku style attacks that make it very hard for your opponent to dodge, binding or manipulation of the environment to limit the options one's opponent has for manuvering. These are the types of things skill usually helps with but a character with little skill won't know what to do. Also in generally highly unpredictable abilities or abilities that force the opponent to think of many things at once like duplication, summoning, or shapeshifting will be harder for an opponent with little combat training and experience to figure out a counter too, even if they have hypothetically the ability.

High Intelligence: General Intelligence as opposed to fighting skill or tactical ability, is seen in two ways primarily in a vs context; scientific knowledge that is used to manipulate the surroundings or build helpful inventions and manipulator type social knowledge, sometimes referred to as a power with its own name like "social influencing" or "enhanced charisma. The former can be countered somewhat by having completely unscientifically based powers; such as mystical abilities, supernatura psychic powers, or toonforce based powers. This won't inherently stop the technology they might make but this can be countered by other powers; obviously toonforce, but various elemental forces tend to be bad for technology. Electromagnetism can shorten out technology like an EMP, water can short out many electronics, extreme temperatures can cause machines to break and so on. 

Against the other type, generally having a character with his wisdom or mind-reading can nullify the advantage by showing the true intentions of the manipulator. If it's words-based manipulation rather than say, supernatural beauty, ironically a counter may be an extremely low intelligence or just strange alien type intellect who may not be able to understand the manipulation. If it's a character with supernatural beauty and it's some form of disguise or illusion, various forms of extrasensory perception, especially with aura sensing against an evil illusionist can reveal their true self.

Low Intelligence: Characters with low intelligence, especially if paired with negative character traits like impulsitivity and naivety, are more prone to being manipulated so social influencing type abilities or other deceptive abilities like illusions, shapeshifting, or ventriloquism would be particularly strong. It also means they're less likely to figure out the potential weak points of a character, meaning if a character's strategy has a fairly noticable weak point, it's less of a point fighting against a relatively low intelligence verse.

High Stamina: Of all the "secondary" stats a character has, stamina usually seems to be the least relevant. A character with high stamina and no other defensive abilities or stamina-draining abilities has basically still about an even chance against an exact copy of herself or himself with average stamina. It's not something one theoretically needs to counter. It's sometimes associated with endurance which is a bit more relevant but stamina meaning the ability to act without getting tired, is only relevant in a long fight. Stamina is more of a "tie-breaker" ability that ends some fights that would otherwise go on forever. But assuming a fight goes on for that long, what's a similarly mundane ability that would counter enhanced stamina... energy-draining would for instance but that's a much more notable ability than enhanced stamina. Enhanced willpower would allow one to push past fatigue similarly to stamina, and enhanced skill would hypothetically allow one to compensate for one's weariness. 

Low Stamina: While high stamina isn't that notable, LOW stamina certainly is as it gives essentially a new win condition to the other side of just outlasting the timer. Abilities that waste time thus punish low stamina; things like illusions, regeneration, or summoning minions. Against an opponent with low stamina, even if the enemies are ones they can one-shot like a zombie hoard, it still eats up time and energy.

High Stealth: Sometimes considered a secondary stat, stealth capability add a differnet dimension to a fight, a battle of perception abilities vs stealth abilities. Stealth is nullified by various forms of extrasensory perception. Some characters can stealth past these, but for a character with signifigant extrasensory perception, they usually have it in multiple varities and it's highly unlikely a stealth character has feats to stealth around all these. Stealth can also be countered by massive enough area of effect that one is bound to hit the enemy, even if you don't know where they are. Also various forms of ecokinesis (nature manipulation) can be used reveal a stealthy foe. Footprints in snow or sand, splashes of water, the calls from animals with different senses to humans... Stealth is a very common strategy in nature and Nature has developed many counters to it. If it's a more mundane low tier stealth, generally a high degree of intelligence to ascertain best hiding places is a good counter in fiction, especially when mixed with good reaction time to react to a stealth character revealing their position.

Low Stealth: This is partly why stealth is often not considered a stat. Low stealth is essentially fighting normally, as most fighters don't use much stealth in their fighting. An average stealth is just fighting without attempting to be stealthy, although we can imagine a hypothetically lower than average stealth; characters with no stealth ability who are giant for instance and hard to miss, or have very flashy predictable powers that make it so one can easily predict their next move like a stereotypical video game boss. This could be seen as giving the opponent a limited mild precognitive ability, telling them exactly where the next attacks will land. To take best advantage of this, mobility based abilities like agility, grappling hooks, or teleportation will make one virtually untouchable without getting flat out blitzed. 

High Endurance: Endurance refers to the ability to fight the effects of pain and damage. Sometimes it's combined with stamina as something like "willpower", though at the supernatural ends the two clearly diverge into painless universal animacy or limitless energy. Sometimes considered a stat. Endurance isn't a hugely important ability usually, but is generally countered by having abilities that effect a larger proportion of the body. Against mundanely endurable characters, generally the key is to not try to pierce them with something like a blade, but to break their bones so they simply can't move more or do damage to a viral organ. For a character with a supernatural level of universal animacy like the Black Knight from Monty Python or a Zombie, once again it's about hitting whatever the weak point is, or destroying the body entirely so attacks that hit a wide proportion of the body like a spreading fire, energy bursts, a grenade etc. For supernatural metaphysical endurance like Vlad from Magicka where his accent retains animacy, it requires something like existence erasure.

Low Endurance: It's rare that a character in fiction will have powers but low endurance, although some will have more grounded normal endurance. In this case there are plenty of things that will cause enough pain to cause a human to pass out instantly and it's merely a matter of applying one. Some of the more common efficient ones is insect manipulation to control a swarm of poisonous bees or wasps, insects humans notoroiusly have a bad match up against, or fire/acid manipulation to create second to third degree burns. Obviously pain manipulation could do it, but these are more common abilities that could do it. 

After stats, there's different power sources.

Technology: As mentioned above, technopathy and various natural forces can make technology stop working. Technopathy can even get it to stop working.

Biological Modification: Characters with powers from weird bodily modifications are liable to be hit by purification to return them to their prior state. Powers controlled by the body can also be manipulated by bodily control, if strong enough such as manipulating the brain to turn the power off. 

Psychic Powers: Obviously specifically anti-psychic powers would be effective. Manipulation of your opponents mind would hypothetically work against psychic powers though if you can do that, you probably can just win regardless. Psychic powers are usually either telekinesis or telepathy and a good counter to both might be a hive mind type psychiology where there are way too many individual little brains and bodies to control in either way.

Magical Powers: Again, obviously anti-magic specifically works. Beyond that most mages require some combination of speaking words which can be nullified by silence inducement or just focusing on interrupting their invocation, making specific hand motions in which case binding or otherwise immobilizing world work, or using magical objects in which case things like telekinesis to disarm them would work.

Internal Energy Source: By this I mean a character who has some kind of energy within them and uses their own energy to do this. Strong enough energy draining will usually work, though these type of characters in particular tend to have high stamina. 

Extradimensional or Extraplanar Power Source: If the character has some kind of connection to another dimension or plane of reality that gives them power, that's rather hard to cut off. Sometimes if you BFR them to a new dimension they can't access their old powers, and there's a rather specific ability to seal or cut off these connections which obviously work.

Blessed: Powered by another entity, usually a much greater one. This is tricky as the entity is just maintaining their powers but I suppose if it's some kind of all-seeing godlike entity, having supernatural charisma means they might take away the opponent's abilities to preserve you. Obviously if you can kill or incapitate that entity it'd work but usually this entity is way more powerful than the one they granted powers too.

Empowerment: Empowerment refers to gaining strength from a state of being generally, such as being in nature, or being in love, or being focused. Obviously this varies but the counter is basically just whatever removes that condition from being there.

Toonforce: Toonforce is the ability to perform feats so long as it would be funny. The counter is to be completely unfunny to hurt, just use a character that is seemingly very cute, tragic, frail, or any combination as hurting them for most gag characters would not at all be funny. On the other hand if they're a toonforce from an edgy dark humor-type verse that probably won't work.

And the real big part of countering, countering individual abilities. There's many of these, so I'm just going to list general abilities or strategies to counter the ones that come to mind.

Fire Manipulation: Water Manipulation can obviously dowse fire. Strong enough air manipulation can derive it of oxygen. Any non-flammible material manipulation can also counter fire manipulation.

Water Manipulation: Freezing to turn it to ice. If they can control both then heat manipulation to evaporate. If they can control water in all forms it's a lot more powerful because you can't derive them of water without being made of a material that's doesn't have water in it. Electricity Manipulation can also be useful, especially if they themselves are made of water.

Air Manipulation: Depends how strong it is, but in general artifical beings like golems who don't need to breath and are made out of hard material can counter air manipulators. 

Earth Manipulation: Flight removes the biggest obvious threat. After that manipulation of any liquid which can be quickly introduced to the area can cause the earth used as a weapon to become less dense and more easily broken up. The exception is magma which is liquid stone.

Lightning Manipulation: Manipulation of things that are good insulators like sand, rubber, or just strong enough air manipulation can work if it's equally potent to the lightning manipulation. Manipulator of conducters like water or metal can sort of help by directing the current towards it and away from you.

Plant Manipulation: Fire Manipulation, pretty clearly. Fire is very good at burning up plants. Cold temperatures also kill plants so ice manipulation would work.

Animal Manipulation: Depends if the character is "commanding" the animals or if they're outright possessing/controlling them. If it's the former, fire manipulation will scare the animals away, as will sound manipulation to make big scary noises. If it's the later, mind manipulation could work since each of the animals will have the main enemy's brain inside them.

Ice Manipulation: Fire Manipulation, especially a passive fiery aura, or general hot aura since it will melt the ice. Sonic attacks also cause ice to shatter so that would work.

Sand Manipulation: Enough heat can melt sand into glass. Generally, but not always, mixing the sand with other elements makes it harder to manipulation for a sand manipulator in fiction, so introducing other elements like water can decreate the potency of the ability.

Nature Manipulation: General manipulation of nature, a good strategy I think would be having the ability to survive in space and long range so one can just keep up in the vacuum and attack from there. Almost nothing in nature can persist in the vacuum, and the few things that can (like the tardigrade) are not exactly efficient weapons.

Energy Projection: Sort of depends on how it's depicted, but generally things like attack reflection, energy negation obviously. Since they often rely on stamina to use the attack, distracting things like summoning minion hordes or using illusions can wear them down over time.

Energy-Draining: Outside of obviously outright resistance, a character with high stamina will whether this ability better.

Energy-Being: As in, an entity made of energy. Energy-Draining is basically just gradual existence erasure against them. Energy manipulators can also control their "body" in the way a matter manipulator can do so with their body.

Matter Manipulation: It's pretty difficult to counter the ability to control matter without limits not including resistance or just not being made of matter. Energy or light based attacks would be at least forms of attacks they couldn't instantly protect against. Similarly being made of energy or light can keep oneself from being controlled.

Soul Manipulation: You can just do a character without a soul, although it's pretty rare a character will be explictly acknowledged as such. 

Telekinesis: Pretty strong general power, I put it as my most underrated common power in vs because it can do a lot and doesn't have any really clearcut counters. Telekinetics sometimes rely on concentration so light or sound manipulation to create massive disorienting effects may work, or if they don't have telepathetic sensing, a stealth based strategy may be a good counter.

Telepathy/Mind Manipulation: You could pick a character with no mind, or alternatively a character with many minds. A hive mind type strategy or an inanimate force type strategy I feel like would work well.

Space Manipulation: Generally characters with many mobility based abilities will be able to better move around when space is distorting all around them. Homing attacks also seem generally helpful as manipulating the space between the two character won't keep them from hitting entirely.

Teleportation: Teleportation has two major varients: teleportation of just the self, or teleportation including others. Teleportation of self makes one impossible to really tie down, but a character with 360 degree vision and fast enough reactions can fight a teleporting enemy efficiently, and a very smart/skilled fighter can predict where they'd go. If the character can teleport others, it'd be pretty dangerous since they can teleport them in dangerous areas or outright BFR them. Best strategy I can think of without really strong powers is just creation of decoys via illusions, duplication, etc. 

Time Stop: Without resistance to time stop or really crazy abilities spacetime transcedence, time stop is a very difficult power to fight. Possibly a stealth strategy to avoid being seen while time is stopped, assuming it has a limit. If it's targeted time stop, like a time stopping projectile, attack reflection might work.

Illusions: Extrasensory perception can nullify illusions just by telling which is the right or wrong one.

Absorption: Usually requires being in melee range or at least somewhat close, in which case keeping distance would work with a high range strategy. Some characters very specifically have anti-absorption powers like they kill people from the inside if absorbed, but that's basically just resisting it.

Forcefields: To counter forcefields generally requires an ability that doesn't travel through the intermediate space to hit the person within, so something like hypnotic eyes should work. 

Petrification: This is specifically the petrifiying eyes trope. Powers that create reflective surfaces are probably key like water manipulation or glass manipulation so you can see their position without looking into their eyes and maybe turn their power onto themselves.

Danger Sense: Depends somewhat on how the power works, but using something that doesn't actually endanger the person such as trapping them or BFR-ing them might work, or creating many dangers at once could be disorienting so things like mass summoning or danmaku. 

Danmaku: Attack reflection can negate the number of attacks being used, and strong enough spatial manipulation can also make it so that the amount of attacks is somewhat irrelevant.

Summoning: If its summoning a large number of weak opponents, best counter is a spammable large area of effect ability, especially just a general energy aura that can overwhelm and defeat all of them at once. If it's more like summoning several powerful entities then for it mostly depends on what they're summoning, though things like teleportation and homing attacks can allow the user to attack the summoner regardless of if they're being protected.

I might do another part to this sometimes, focusing on more hax or obscure abilities. Just wanted to give some general thoughts.