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Old 2008-03-31, 21:54   Link #1112
arkhangelsk
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Shadell- I think what you don't understand is that you don't have to lower a spells ability to deal damage to non living targets to make it entirely non-leathal. In fact, a spell is implied to still hit a mage at full power, it's not that it's controlled, it is that living beings naturally generate some sort of feild that absorbs most of that type of damage, resulting more in exaustion than physical damage.
I can actually buy the part about living beings being somewhat more resistant to magical attacks. It introduces some un-mentioned elements, but it is convenient for explaining such things as Ep10 of the original series or Ep25 of StrikerS.

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Nanoha is noted in StrikerS to be an expert in creating powerful 'non-leathal training' attacks. This implies that energy spells have 2 forms, leathal, and non-leathal, both deal the same sort of damage to physical objects, however, living beings counter that energy seemingly with their life forces or natural spiritual power (not to be confused with their linker cores, which spiritual energy is used to draw energy from). Basically, when not running into spiritual power, the damage is physical, destroying physical objects, when running into spiritual energy, the power is expended destroying/disrupting that spiritual energy before dealing physical damage.
This theory seems to say that physical damage is inevitable even with a theoretically perfect "non-lethal" round unless the target has enough spirit to block off the attack. However, Reinforce's SB seemed to have washed past entire blocks of perfectly unalive buildings without harming them. As did Hayate's Diabolic Emission.

Further, the inevitability of physical destruction also makes a hash of the supposed advantage of magic, which is that it can attack targets without damaging them or the surroundings. If this theory is correct, one can kiss the italicized part goodbye.

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Spells that operate within AMF require a whole new level of control and power, either pumping extra power and focusing a lot of extra control into the spell to counter the magic disruption/dissipation effect of AMF or they need a barrier surrounding the spell which negates AMF.
Agreed.

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Nanoha's sheer power and controll allows her to launch a DB level 3 and a SB and fly at high speeds in a AMF area. This is the magical equivalent of a person performing an olympic level gymnastics set perfectly, getting all 10's from the judges, during an earthquake, with shiftin hurricane force winds, under 4 times earth's normal gravity. At least that is how it is portrayed in the series by comparing Nanoha's ability to other mages, expecially the more general standard ones.
Umm ... let's not exaggerate the AMF too much. Initially, the AMF was portrayed as effective, but near the end, even the Forwards seem to move through it just fine.

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Vice's sniping attack never did physical damage directly to the girl's eye. Or at least the damage it delt was very little. The problem was more likely an intense energy drain and stunning effect to the tissues around the eye and a limited blinding effect due the light generation of magical energy bolts one of which probably penetrated into the eye, it probably took a while for her spiritual aura to correct it's flows and restore proper energy to the cells in and around the eye and to recover from the blinding light effect of light being generated from within the light recepting cells.
Her eye is recovering extremely slowly (apparently not at all) for such a theory, even granting that spiritual energy has anything to do with the electrochemical nervous system. So if "spiritual energy" has anything to do with this, it sounds like it was totally blocked, and/or the flash from the magiexplosion permanently overloaded the nervous system, rendering it useless. Further, it does not jive with the explanation given in the DVD booklet which made it clear some real damage occurred.

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The thing about Nanoha's attacks is that she has attacks which have penetrating power for physical damage exceeding the strongest artillery shells or armor piersing rockets or missiles, and they look about as impressive as a Kamehameha or Spirit Bomb in animation, if not more so, even if their actual destructive power is lower.
Thus their actual power is lower. This sounds repetitive but it has to be said that you must evaluate from actual damage, not how impressive the flashies look.

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Nanoha's fights with Fate in the first series she was dealing much more leathal damage, but it was mostly blocked, as seen by the injuries Fate sustains. She isn't implied to have learned non-leathal spells until at least StrikerS, besides sealing attacks which don't actually deal real damage to physical objects either.
Actually, the first clear mention of "non-lethal" rounds is in the novel, in the timeline of the original series.
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