RENDER UNTO CAESAR

Caesar Clown

Stats
Weight - 95
Walk Speed - 0.90
Run Speed - 2
Air Speed - 1.30
Fall Speed - 0.90

Caesar is a bit of an oddball stat-wise. His model is very tall, with his horns just barely scraping through a Battlefield Platform while he's idling. He's also decently wide, having a bit of a hunched stance that makes him as wide as Bowser. Despite being this large, he's remarkably light, having low-middleweight weight, and a slower fall speed than even Jigglypuff. This is because Caesar spends his entire time while partially in his gaseous form, making him far lighter than any physical being in the game. This gas also makes him one of the fastest in the air, faster than even Yoshi. His run speed is good as well, as he never actually has to touch the ground (Though obviously traps like banana peels and pitfalls will still affect him), but his walk is just average. His jumps are decent as well, with his second one being especially good, with the animation having him shoot a plume of gas to launch himself upwards.

Gas-Gas Specials
Neutral Special - Land of Nothing
Caesar holds his hand out, and then clenches it into a fist. This causes a circular area in front of him to suddenly turn inverted. This animation is very fast start-up wise but has some bad endlag as Caesar pauses for a moment after the circular area is transformed. The area is also created roughly half a Battlefield Platform in front of Caesar, and takes up 1.5 Battlefield Platforms width wise, and 1.3 Ganondorfs height wise. This means that every character but Giga Bowser can fit into the area. This is how it looks when created on the ground, and its only a full circle when created in the air. So, what exactly has Caesar done here?

With his gas-based abilities, Caesar has completely removed the oxygen from that area! Obviously, this means trouble for anyone who enters the area. When an opponent enters the area, they will take a consistent 1% damage every half second for the next 3 seconds. Once those three seconds pass, they will enter a stun state that behaves like Snake's CQC throw, completely with an overly long opening animation of the opponent keeling over. Don't worry, they aren't dead like they probably should be. Like I said, this stun acts exactly like it does on Snake, so once that time has passed, the opponent will return to normal and be able to exit the Land of Nothing. They will now be immune to its effects until they exit the area again, preventing any cheesing. These effects make this a fairly potent edge guarding technique.

There are a few drawbacks to this, however. For one, Caesar can only have one of these out at a time. Attempting to make a new one will cause the previous Land of Nothing to vanish as soon as the new one appears. It takes a lot of work to remove air from an open area. This also does mean that Land of Nothings can last indefinitely, but Caesar will still need to be smart when he's planning on placing one.

The second downside relates to Caesar himself. A number of Caesar's attacks involve using fire, and fire cannot exist without oxygen. As such, all of Caesar's fire attacks, which also happen to be some of his more damaging attacks. This is definitely a bit of a downside and does prevent Caesar from getting some especially high damaging attacks off while the opponents are at a disadvantage, but there is still a lot he can do to circumvent this downside. Overall, the Land of Nothing is a very useful tool for putting foes at disadvantages, and for stalling for some of Caesar's more set-up intensive plays.

Side Special - Smiley! Here Boy!
Caesar holds his hand out again, this time pointing forwards. He then points downwards quickly, which causes a large blob of sludge to erupt from the ground. This blob is purple in color and has glowing yellow eyes. Its roughly half the size of Caesar height wise, and half a Battlefield Platform wide. This is Smiley, or rather, a piece of Smiley, who was Caesar's pet giant blob that ate a Devil Fruit, turning it into a salamander. There's no salamander in these blobs, though, just... blobs. Smiley will pop up roughly a Battlefield Platform away from Caesar.

Anyway, this eruption acts as a hitbox, dealing 5% and pop-up knockback as Smiley pops out of the ground. This isn't that powerful but helps keep opponents from the weak blobs. The hitbox also doesn't last that long, since it isn't really the major part of the move. The actual major part of this move is what Smiley does after its summoned, which is... still not that much, unfortunately. After its summoned, Smiley will act as a constant hitbox for as long as its on stage, dealing 4% damage and radial knockback to anyone who touches it. Smiley will also shuffle around the stage, moving at one of the slowest speeds in the game. It would take a full minute for a Smiley blob to reach the mid point of Battlefield. They tend to chase after opponents, but not very well.

Smiley also only has 10% HP, and has no priority, meaning that attacks from opponents will hit without hurting them. So far, Smiley doesn't seem like a particularly effective minion, does he? Well, here's the big twist: You can have more than one! Caesar can summon up to 4 Smiley blobs on stage at the same time, which helps for positioning and keep away. Using the attack again with 4 Smileys on stage will cause the first one to vanish, and a new one to replace it. This does make Smiley a lot more usable, but there's still a bit more to him than it looks like. If more than one Smiley is on stage, they will tend to start moving towards each other rather than towards opponents. Wonder what they're up to...

If two Smiley blobs touch each other, they will fuse together into a larger blob! The size increase is noticeable but not immediately major, boosting Smiley to around just above Caesar's midsection, while gaining only a slight amount of width. And yes, the other two Smileys can combine with the combined one. The maximum size, when all four are combined, makes Smiley slightly taller than Caesar, and 1.5 Battlefield Platforms wide. To make up for this massive obstacle in the stage, a maximum sized Smiley will not be able to move but can still cause damage. There are other perks here, like an increase in health, totaling 40% at max, and a boost in damage, 8% on contact now, though still with weak knockback. Two Smileys combined together will have 20% HP and 6% contact damage, while three combined Smileys will have 30% HP and deal 7%.

On another note, Smiley can survive in the Land of Nothing areas, since he doesn’t really need oxygen, being a blob and everything. Finally, when attempting to summon another Smiley while all four Smileys are combined together, one of the combined Smileys will be deleted in order to make room for the new one, removing it from the combination. This can be useful in some cases. Smiley is useful for a lot of things, but like a lot of Caesar's set, will require a lot of experimentation to figure out what’s best to use him for. We'll be bringing up good ol' Smiley quite a few times before this is over, trust me,

Up Special - Feeling Gassy
Using his Gas-Gas Fruit, Caesar will suddenly transform into an entire cloud of white gas! This is similar to the pluming effect seen on his lower body, except now it becomes the entirety of Caesar himself. The starting animation is relatively quick, and gives Caesar a slight boost in the air, pushing him up about half a Kirby in height. This acts as a pretty basic recovery, granting Caesar free flight for the move’s duration. While he’s transformed into a cloud of gas, Caesar is completely invincible to everything but the Gust Bellows, since he is just a cloud at this point. This also means that he doesn’t entirely have a model or hitbox to go off of, with the gas mostly acting as a controllable cursor to show where Caesar will appear next.

This doesn’t mean that it can’t interact with things. Caesar can’t go through solid platforms and will deal a rather pitiful 1% damage if he crosses over an opponent in this state. Actually, he deals 1% damage every half-second he hovers over the opponent while in his gaseous state. Thankfully, Caesar will only remain in this state for 3.5 seconds before he goes back to normal. Can’t conduct experiments without hands!  The endlag is much worse than the start-up lag, but still doesn’t range into the outright bad.

This does mostly act as a very good recovery for Caesar the Clown, with the invincibility definitely being a perk. Unfortunately, Caesar has a bit of cooldown time before he can use the attack again. After transforming back to, uh, “normal”, Caesar will have to wait 5 seconds before he can use the move again. Caesar has good recovery even without this, but it can become a major pain to deal with in the late game, as Caesar’s light weight make him easy to push around. Also, Caesar will want to watch where he places his Lands of Nothing, since the move will instantly cancel out when he enters it. The type of gas he turns into needs oxygen, you see. That’s probably scientifically accurate.

So, while this does mostly act as a very good recovery, like Smiley, we will definitely be coming back to this move a few more times over the set.

Down Special - Sugar High
 Caesar pulls out a very large stereotypical piece of candy, with the two bits coming off of it, and then throws it forwards as a sort of projectile. The candy can come in red, blue, yellow, and green colors, chosen entirely at random, but this means nothing and is just a detail. The throw has a bit of start-up lag, but is otherwise only slightly slower than most other projectiles. Anyway, when thrown, it becomes a projectile as mentioned before, but its surprisingly large, around the size of a barrel when rolling on its side. Instead of rolling, however, the candy will bounce off the ground approximately three times before finally stopping for good. It will follow the physics engine for the three bounces but will always stop the fourth time it touches the ground, giving it no real set distance.

As a projectile, the candy will deal 4% damage on contact with an opponent and deal weak flinching knockback. This is, well, kind of terrible even for a projectile, but as mentioned before, the candy will stop on the ground. This means that it will in fact stay on the stage as an item, lasting for as long as an item usually does. Caesar can only have one of the candies on the stage at a time, which is something we’ll get to in a bit. With it on stage, there are multiple things that Caesar can do with it, and even some things that HE can’t do. We’ll start simply, as Caesar can pick the candy back up to use as a projectile again.

Following up from that, what does the candy do if the opponent picks it up? Answer, they WON’T pick it up! Instead they will eat the incredibly enticing sweets, and then gain the power of a Super Mushroom, suddenly turning giant sized! Well that’s kind of terrible for Caesar, huh? Except, in exchange for this, eating the candy will also cause the opponent to take 30% damage on the spot. These are the same candies that Caesar was developing for Big Mom, meant to make the eater turn giant, but ended up with a side effect that it shaves off an unhealthy amount of your lifespan.

A hefty exchange for something that can be used to turn a fight around. Of course, opponents can always just stay away from it, they don’t have to eat it. Well, that presents another problem, as these candies also happen to be combined with a bit of Caesar’s own “special ingredients” as it were. By using the input again while a candy is on stage, Caesar will pull out a castanet and do a goofy pose, holding it above his head and clacking it. This makes the candy explode! That’s right, Caesar filled the candies with a bit of combustible gas.

The explosion is rather large, 2/3rds the size of a Bob-Omb explosion and deals 15% damage with knockback that can KO at 140%. The entire action is very fast, as the candy will explode the moment Caesar clacks the castanet. So yes, this leaves the opponent in a pretty strange position, either having to eat the candy and take a massive amount of damage, or let it linger and hope that Caesar doesn’t decide to set it off. It’s a perfect trap! Also, this is an explosion hitbox, which means something that we’ll get to later, since this is already pretty complicated.

Not done yet, there’s some other interactions. First, for the explosion itself, its hitbox won’t activate while inside a Land of Nothing. This applies to every explosive hitbox in the game. This doesn’t mean that the explosion will be negated if it goes off while NEXT to a Land of Nothing, but the sections that cross over into it will have their hitboxes negated and functionally erased. Bad placement of Lands of Nothing and candy bombs can very easily lead to opponents risking smaller amounts of damage to get out of the explosion’s range. The second interaction is with the Up Special. If Caesar passes over the candy while in his gas form, he will pick it up, instantly transferring it to being held by him once he returns to normal. Still a very simple interaction, but useful.

Last, but definitely not least, is the big interaction. Time to bring Smiley back into the picture! If the candy manages to hit a Smiley blob, it will instantly puff it up to the next size phase, regardless of how many other blobs are on the stage. Smiley doesn’t have to put up with the damage because blobs have no sense of life or death. This means that you can have one fully sized Smiley on stage, and three smaller ones, or a variety of other combinations. There are a few limitations and downsides to this, the main one being that you can only have one of each size class, barring the base form, on stage at a time. Another downside is that the blobs will retain whatever stamina they had before the upgrade, meaning that a base blob that’s upgraded to max size will still only have 10% HP. Damage is not affected by this. The final downside is that the blob AI won’t change, and smaller blobs will still continuously chase after larger ones so that they can fuse.

There’s some AI changes regarding this, smaller blobs won’t go after a full-sized Smiley, instead focusing either on opponents or larger ones if any are on stage. These blobs are still treated as distinct entities, so attempting to create a new blob will probably end up erasing the Smiley you just fed a bunch of candy. Such is the cost of experimentation.

The candies are a fun, varied trap/projectile that can have multiple applications, especially as we get further into the set. Keep in mind that the exploding candies count as a fire/explosion hitbox, this will be important soon.

Gas-Gas Standards
Jab - Gastanets
Caesar pulls out two sets of castanets, and then clacks forwards and towards the ground with one, creating a small explosion in front of him, and then repeats with a second explosion. He then finishes up this combo by clacking both of them directly in front of him, creating a bigger explosion. This works by having Caesar put gas inside his castanets, and when opened having them explode due to exposure to the oxygen. This is only a three-hit combo, and is relatively slow, but it has some power behind it, the first two hits dealing 3% each, and the final one dealing 6%, totalling to 9%. The knockback isn’t spectacular but is better than most jabs in the game in this regard.

The string focuses on distended explosive hitboxes, as you might expect. They aren’t far away to be considered really far ranged attacks, though, reaching maybe 1/4th of a battlefield Platform away from Caesar. The hitbox on the first two is small, exploding directly above the ground in circular areas. The circular areas aren’t large but aren’t small either, making them easy to hit with. The final hitbox is the size of Samus’ Morph Ball bomb’s explosions, and is activated slightly above the ground, right in front of Caesar, as mentioned. This has as much reach as the first two hits, as it spawns slightly further back, but its size makes it consistent in reach.

While it might seem a bit unorthodox for a Jab combo, this still gets the job done well enough, with very good damage output and knockback to them. The only downside is its slower speed compared to most other jabs, but that isn’t much of a cost to pay. But that isn’t all there is to this move. Remember how I was making a bunch of references to all those explosive hitboxes? Wanna know what I meant by them?

While there isn’t much to go over right now in regard to the many interactions that Caesar’s explosive/fire-based hitboxes have, the major one we can talk about involves Smiley once more. If a Smiley is hit by an explosive/fire hitbox, they will catch on fire and writhe in pain for a few seconds before suddenly exploding! This doesn’t just apply to Caesar’s hitboxes, but other ones like Mario’s fireballs and standard Bob-Ombs count as well. The explosions depend on the size of the current Smiley, being at their smallest will cause an explosion roughly the size of a 1.5x enlarged Morph Ball explosion, with the largest size bordering on being just as large as a normal Bob-Omb explosion. The other two phases have different sizes as well, though its just in-between sizes.

Damage output for this is powerful, 15% at the smallest, 40% at the largest! The knockback is special as well, KOing at 200% at base size, and 100% at max size. This can come in a lot of use regarding sizing up Smileys with your candies, meaning you won’t have to spend as much time trying to build up a large one… but unnaturally grown Smileys will only output 2/3rds of the real damage and knockback.  There’s also the fact that quickly grown Smileys have very low HP, making them easy to take out before they even explode.

Speaking of, these explosions still deal damage to Caesar, unlike most other explosions in his arsenal. This in turns brings us back to the animations before the Smileys explode. The time it takes for a Smiley to explode is affected by the size, 1 second at the smallest, 1.5 at phase 2, 2 at phase 3, and 2.5 at the final phase. This can give Caesar enough time to escape an explosion, but the Smileys remain vulnerable during this period and can have the explosion cancelled by an opponent killing them. This is especially bad for candy-grown Smileys.

On the candy for a moment, its explosion can still detonate Smileys, and is one of Caesar’s better long-range option, but actually not his best. It requires timing, as the candies need to be detonated manually, and Smileys will eat them if they get too close. In regard to the Jab, its one of Caesar’s worst melee exploding options. As previously mentioned, the Gastanets are slow, and the explosions can still hurt Caesar if he hangs around too long.

Forward Tilt - Anybody Got A Match?
Caesar pulls out a lit match, and then tosses it forwards in a very exaggerated motion, swinging his arm upwards fast enough that it becomes a blur. This is actually part of the attack’s hitbox, a rather quick swing that has very little reach, hitting only directly in front of Caesar. This part of the move also only deals 2% damage, and has some pretty terrible knockback, only really counting as a flinch. It isn’t safe on hit, but we’ll get back to that in a moment. Once this part of the attack ends, the match will indeed be flung forward, turning into an even weaker projectile that deals 1% damage and somehow even less knockback. It will fly at a shallow arc, barely reaching 1.5 Battlefield Platforms forward. Once it hits the ground, the match will stay there until another match is thrown. Again, back to that in a moment.

This isn’t the only part of the attack, or else this would be useless. In a function similar to Link’s FSmash combo, inputting the button again will cause Caesar to raise his other hand and shoot out a cloud of white gas from it. The cloud will hit the match, igniting it and causing a large explosion in front of Caesar. This is more oval shaped than other hitboxes and has better reach that his Jab’s final hit. This explosion will also deal 10% damage, and knockback that can kill at 160%. This is how the first hit gets over its un-safe properties, as it can directly combo into this… but they don’t HAVE to combo into each other.

Caesar can shoot the gas cloud out at any point during the end lag of the first part, which is decently long. This lets Caesar fire the cloud out WITHOUT it hitting the match. In turn, Caesar doesn’t have to use the second input, and can just throw the match. As you might imagine, some fun can be had with this. On their own, both the match and the cloud have different properties. The match, as mentioned, will lay on the ground, but will still deal 1% damage (without flinching) to the opponent if they walk over it. The cloud, however, is oval shaped and relatively small. It will fly forward at a very slow pace for the next five seconds and has the exact same properties as Caesar’s Up Special damage wise. Obviously, Caesar can’t use it to recover… well, we’ll get back to that too. Only one cloud can be on stage at a time, much like the match.

So, there’s a bit here to cover, so we’ll go over the easiest one, the match itself. It’s a fire hitbox, meaning that it can detonate Smileys and various other things that we haven’t gotten to. With Smileys, this is Caesar’s best way to detonate them. By simply moving over it, or having it thrown at them, the Smileys will be triggered to detonate, allowing Caesar to stay as far away as he possibly can. There’s no manual detonation either, so this is overall the best way to explode Smiley while not getting blown up yourself.

The gas cloud, however, is completely different. Aside from its similarities to the Up Special on its hitbox, it has a few other things. Like you might expect with how it interacts with the match naturally, its highly flammable and can be exploded by fire/explosive hitboxes. It will even explode if it passes over a dormant match. More controlled explosions are always nice either way. The cloud has a third property as well. Its similarity to the Up Special isn’t coincidental, as swooping over the cloud while Caesar is a cloud will allow him to “eat” it and regain a second to his total time in the form. As mentioned, there can only be one cloud at a time, so this isn’t possible to cheese.

Using the move again will simply cause the previous match and cloud to be deleted, preventing Caesar from ever being able to not use it.


Up Tilt -

Down Tilt - Blue Sword Sweep

Dash Attack -


Gas-Gas Smashes
Forward Smash - Gastille

Down Smash - Gas Cloud

Up Smash -


Gas-Gas Aerials
Neutral Air -

Forward Air -

Up Air -

Back Air -

Down Air - Knock Out


Gas-Gas Grab Game
Grab & Pummel

Forward Throw - What's This Button Do?

Up Throw -

Back Throw -

Down Throw - Out of Breath