Baxter (SSB18)

**Baxter** (バクスター, *Baxter*) is a playable character in Super Smash Bros. OC 2018. He is the fifth 3rd-party character to be in the game, only behind Mega Man X, Pac-Man, Ryu, and Dante.

## Attributes

Like from his home series, Baxter is a **Stage Control** and **Combo** type of character who puts pressure into his opponents. He has average walking speed, dashing speed, and has a fast falling speed tied with Mega Man X's. As a Middleweight character, he is a character who is hard to KO.

Baxter possesses a unique mechanic no other character has: Fire. Aesthetically, fire appears as red, concentrated energy and affects every single move Baxter performs. Mechanically, fire is a damage multiplier, starting at 0.66x when Baxter is at 0% and capping at 1.7x when Baxter has taken at least 190%. The multipliers also get multiplied whenever Baxter has a stock lead or not, effectively increasing or decreasing Baxter's fire presence. When Baxter is 2 stocks or more ahead, fire is affected by a 0.6333x multiplier, when at 1 stock ahead it is affected by 0.8x, when at 1 stock behind it is affected by 1.3333x, and when at 2 stocks or more behind it is affected by 2x. This means that, even though most of Baxter's moves have high knockback scaling, his power is extremely low with low fire, and insufficient to KO until well beyond 150%. However, with high fire, Baxter's moves have incredible power, with many of them easily surpassing every other character's at max fire, including Donkey Kong's and Iron Man's. In addition, the rage mechanic further boosts the knockback of Baxter's attacks, which complements his already high power.

Aside from that, Baxter shines in combos and stage control. His combos consists with down throw or forward throw, and followed up with a Neutral or Up Air. If Up aerial is used after down throw, forward aerial is another good option to use and can finish it with a fully charged Fireball. Baxter has yet one of the most meteor smashes in the game having a total of 5 meteor smashes with down tilt, down smash, back aerial, down aerial and Fire Dash.

Baxter is also the only character who has a smash attack that makes him move forward (Side Smash).

Baxter's special moveset is very unique too as Fireball is a chargeable move that can be used for later use at the time. It's highly suggested that one must charge it all the way up in a combo attack. Fire Dash is one of his recovery moves as a horizontal momentum. It also can meteor smash opponents off the stage while they were airborn. Fire Launch is one of his best recoveries in the game in the game having amazing vertical and horizontal movement. Finally he can increase his attacks and his fire mechanic with Fire Charge.

Baxter is a character who realizes on stage control and combo, which he can be seen as a very well done character to play as.

Despite Baxter's strengths, he does have some flaws: With his Stage-Control and Mobility, fast characters like Sonic and Pikachu can give him a difficult time. Another problem lies in him is his predictable approach. His low speed and ending lag limit on his approach. Fire Launch can be gimped by certain edgeguarders (Like Spider-Man). Finally, Baxter has problems with characters who can combo him easily and reflect his fully charged Fireball with characters who have a reflector.

Overall, Baxter's strengths outshines his weaknesses, His combo game is strong and as a Stage-Control character, he can defeat opponents easier than anyone else in the roster can.

## Moveset

### Taunts

* Up: Pounds his fist twice as flames appear at the end of his last pound saying "Let's Go!"
* Side: Points his fist out saying "Show me your best!"
* Down: Spins around once and strikes his best pose.

### Idle poses

* Sways his bangs to the side.
* Sways his head from left to right.

### Victory poses

* Throws two fireballs, dusts his hands and holds out two fireballs saying "Victory is here!"
* Punches twice and strikes a pose saying "Flames are my thing!"
* Does a short hop and lands in a superhero landing looking up.