[quote=@MelonHead] Prep and charge seem interchangeable to me, if you spend more time preparing an attack it does more damage, pretty simple stuff. So if you want to fluff really powerful damaging spells for your character, make them require a certain amount of preps to activate, where-as someone like Fury can unleash his attacks interchangeably between very light blasts and very heavy ones, so his 'prep' is more akin to charging. They essentially mean and do the exact same thing, except preps to activate an ability are more specific and therefore suit abilities that are always the same. Personally I feel like if magic existed it wouldn't have some magical threshold (prep) at which point you activate the ability, but mechanical items (like the Clockwork Pistol in my case) do work under a specific prep limit. It can be 'overcharged' and if 'undercharged' it has a very visible effect. [/quote] The major, and only, really important differences between charges and preps is quite simple. Preps exist in the T1 rules, charges do not. Charges boost damage, preps [i]do not[/i]. Though they would naturally allow for more potent/stronger abilities to activate. Heck, there's nothing that says attacks get stronger with more preps(or that only an equal prep is even needed to block that attack!). Because, as far as T1 Eden era rules are concerned, there is nowhere that it states more preps mean a more powerful attack. Heck even I thought it did not too long ago. Until I started branching out to others sites and realized how morphed Arena style is here. For the most part it works, but you'll get laughed out if you try using charges elsewhere. On a unrelated note, odd you feel magic would not need preparation. The most popular form of magic settings, low magic (and even higher magic settings) often require long rituals and at the very least arcane incantations. Which is what I always felt the idea of preps originated from. It can easily translate to non-magic, as the language is loose enough that loading a shot into a chamber of a gun and knocking the hammer would technically count as a prep. Personally I always liked magic that required time and patience to use. Makes using it allot more risky from a story telling point of view. Otherwise it wouldn't be any different than elemental bending.