The Power System
-Summarized-
Ki, inner power kung fu.
Arete, mystic movement wierd fu.
Mana, external power elemental magic.
Wushu, combined Ki-Arete.
Jutsu, combined Mana-Ki.
Bardic, combined Mana-Arete.
You can be a Arete-Mana user without being Bardic, or whatever, Wushu Jutsu and Bardic are just specific intentional combinations, but you can just cherry pick and learn seperate Arete and Mana techniques.
Flash Stepping, is not a get out of jail free card, but is still important.
Death Limit, last chance style, when hit with an attack, you drop to 1 HP regardless of the damage instead of dying.
Ki - Arete - Mana
Ki
Ki is the manipulation of internal energy and life force. It is known for straightforward and powerful techniques, and the only way to negate them is typically to meet power with power, until the Ki user runs out of Ki. Even then, Ki users are known for rapid recovery, quickly able to heal both physical and spiritual wounds in both themselves and other. Ki users often use this regeneration, as well as their mastery of the body, to train their physical aspects to extreme heights. Still, pure Ki users can frequently have difficulty with the scale of Mana abilities or the trickiness of Arete abilities.
Advantages: No common "anti-ki" abilities or situation in which Ki cannot be used other than lack of Ki. Recovery speed. Physical boosts. Straightforward powers.
Weaknesses: General lack of tricky abilities compared to the other styles if a pure Ki user. Ki is more limited in amount between itself and Mana.
Arete
Arete is the manipulation of the fundamental rules of reality through precise skill. The most esoteric of powers are Arete based, with the most complicated even their users not understanding how or why they work. But they simply perform with inexplicable skill, and the universe answers. Arete powers frequently have strange limitations and set ups that must be completed, but in return provide bizarre and inscrutable rewards. A key Arete limitation is that they have a foundation in precise motion. To walk the space between the real and unreal, ones steps must be immaculate. If one's feet are bound or injured, one could not, as a Ki user does, simply attempt to power through. An Arete user in such a situation would not even be able to attempt the technique. While Arete powers lack the reliability and straightforward power of Ki or the scale and versatility of Mana, Arete has no resource to draw on. As long as you can move, you can use Arete.
Advantages: No resource management. Meta-effect abilities. Option to gain power via balancing restriction with powers. Exceptionally tricky powers.
Weaknesses: Lack of pure straightforward power or elemental versatilty. Requires precise movement to use.
Mana
Mana is the manipulation of the external energies and elements of the world through practiced knowledge. The elements are diverse and have very different properties, some being as general as "Earth" and some being as specific as "Iron". While each different element may have weaknesses or areas it doesn't cover, most mana users can either focus so much on that element that they can overcome its limitations, or pick up another element to cover their bases. Mana uses up an external resource, so the wielder is not drained by drawing upon it, but as the environment's mana gets used up, the wielder has to draw it from further away, slowing their casting, or move to another environment. Mana users stockpile some mana inside their body, clothes, enchanted items, or a nimbus around themselves, to always have quick casting available, but need to refresh this mana by drawing it from the environment. One effect of this is that they may imbue their body with properties of the element they draw upon most heavily.
Advantages: Wide scale attacks, elemental diversity, elemental body, ability to pull energy from the environment to recover.
Weaknesses: Lots of Mages in the same area can weaken the local mana. Anti-magic is a thing.
Wushu
Wushu is the most common combination of Ki and Arete, and it tends to result in a style that combines the strengths and weaknesses of the two styles, rather than attempting to cover the weaknesses with each others strengths. Wushu requires both incredibly precise motion as well as Ki, and frequently have strange limitations, and generally don’t have more impressive effects that overwhelming power. But in return, it provides power that is just stupidly strong. Many Ki users learn at least a few Wushu moves to gain “finishing moves”, as Wushu seems to be very easy for Ki users to learn. Some theorize this is because it leans a bit closer to the Ki side than the Arete side. Some use Wushu that are more esoteric though less powerful, and are theorized to lean more heavily on Arete principles, but it is still up for debate whether these will be called Wushu or deserve their own moniker.
Advantages: Easy for Ki users to learn, extremely powerful straightforward effects.
Disadvantages: See combined arete and ki disadvantages, other than “lack of pure straightforward power”.
Jutsu
Jutsu is the most common combination of Ki and Mana, combining their resource pools to create powerful and large scale effects. If you want to focus really hard, spend a bunch of energy, and cause a tsunami to rush forward with no other set up, Jutsu is your thing. Another noted strength of Jutsu is “summoning” type of moves, where you create an elemental body with mana, and then imbue it with temporary life via a circulation of ki.
Advantages: Combining the scale of Mana with the simplistic power of ki. Summoning techniques.
Weaknesses: Drawing from both pools of power can leave you exhausted and optionless very quickly after just a few big moves.
Bardic
Bardic is the most common combination of Arete and Mana, which exchanges the personal motion of Arete, for sound that reaches out to environment. Rather than Mana users, which typically gather mana close to themselves to cast faster, Bardic users are fine with casting slower spells to have an incredible reach and efficient effect. Bardic spells most often have a little bit of Arete esotery in them, more often drawing on things correlated with an element rather than just throwing a bunch of rock at an enemy, but they can still do that too.
Advantages: Enormous scale, anywhere the user's voice can reach, low energy drain.
Weaknesses: Slow casting, being unable to talk
Common techniques
Flash Step
A very common technique due to its versatility. There is almost nothing in this world that can hurt you if you aren’t there when it tries to hit you. And simultaneously, it’s very hard to hurt opponents that you can’t reach. Also, going from one place to another is nice. It’s also incredibly useful for fighting multiple opponents, because by simply flash stepping away from a fight with multiple opponents, each individual opponent has to flash step to keep up the pressure, meaning you get to drain each individual enemy’s resources. A single master attacked by a hundred students, can simply flash step away until they are exhausted or have to give up the chase. This fact is a heavy reason why there is so much emphasis in the world on one on one, or at least, a few on a few fights. Because of its extreme utility, each style of progression has mastered a variety of flash stepping techniques. That said, it does have its limitations, and intricacies depending on what type of flash step.
General Limitations:
You have to designate a “landing point” before executing the flash step. Because flash stepping isn’t instant, if your enemy predicts it, they can gain the upper hand.
There is both a wind up and cool down to flash stepping. Attempting to flash step with a blade against your neck will generally not work.
It’s exhausting. Even the resourceless Arete users can’t use it too many times in a row for the strain it puts directly on the body.
Limited range.
Arete flash stepping frequently allows you to pass through things, making it incredible at dodging ranged attacks and escaping AoE attacks, but also doesn't actually make you that much faster, meaning if the enemy predicts your landing spot, they can set up for you. This can also occasionally be an advantage, as some advanced Arete users can use that time to prepare techniques while they are safely phasing through reality or something. Of course, with Arete, you can never be 100% sure how it’ll work, and some Arete techniques turn these rules entirely on their head, though, of course, with their own counterbalances. As usual, it requires very precise footing, meaning it might not be usable on unsteady ground or if your opponent was in melee pressuring you.
Mana flash stepping frequently allows you to bring along rider effects, that powerfully change the environment around you. A basic and common example would be leaving behind a trail of scorching flames. They’re also frequently quite fast, rivalling or sometimes even exceeding Ki users, if they travel along a path the mana user has already “prepared” in advance. Air and Earth type mana users are renowned for how very easy it is to “prepare”, as their elements are already pretty much everywhere. Mana flash stepping has the big disadvantage however of the greatest launch time of any flash stepping technique, making it harder to dodge attacks with a Mana flash step, as the timing might require you to predict the attack in advance to have enough time to cast.
Ki flash stepping frequently is the easiest to use, with no frills. You move quickly, and with relatively little charge up or down time. A “advanced” technique that is still painfully simple is to siphon some of the momentum of one’s flash step into a superpowerful strike at the end of the flash step. And as simple as that is, it’s still a very effective technique. Ki flash stepping is often thought of as the most potent, or at least, easy for beginners to master, as the idea of moving one's body quickly is pretty core to Ki’s things they’re good at, that of physical enhancement. Many otherwise pure Arete or Mana users dip into Ki just for a basic level of physical enhancement and the flash step, as it’s easy, and it works, and you often don’t want to have to do a bunch of tough thinking while you’re panicking because a meteor is being aimed at you. That said, such vigorous burst of power is very heavy on the ki consumption, which hurts when you’ve already got the smallest resource pool.
Death Limits
It is almost impossible to accidentally kill a mature style user. Each style has techniques, that upon the verge of death, halts the oncoming death, though, usually, at some great opportunity cost. Such techniques are generally called Death Limits. Or, OOC wise, unless someone defeats you, and then decides to finish you off, you do not die. However, murder between the factions is extremely frowned upon, so don't do that unless you wish to make an enemy of everyone. That said, the extreme power of some more advanced techniques in this area means those who are absolutely determined to achieve victory, will fight beyond the safety belt of their Death Limit, tapping into the power released on the verge of defeat. To kill someone using their Death Limit offensively is regrettable to extinguish such a vibrant soul, but understandable.
Ki- Soul Renewal: The most basic of Ki style recovery methods involves a complete cycling of the user's ki, which purges violently out of their bodies, creating a neutral zone around their bodies, before returning to the user, staunching all wounds, but embedding itself so deeply that the Ki user can no longer tap into their power. More advanced techniques often, while still usually barring the Ki user their projection type abilities, enhance the user's physical status even further than the extreme heights Ki style is already known for.
Mana- Elemental Union: The most basic of mana style recovery methods involves turning one’s body into the mana of the type one is most comfortable with, generally freezing into pose as a “statue” of the element. More advanced techniques allow the user to continue casting, with extreme speed due to their connection to the element, but they lose the ability to use other elements than their primary, and each spell cast weakens their body as they are unable to separate their body from the environmental mana they manipulate to cast with normally.
Arete- Rejection of Entropy: The most basic of arete style recovery methods involves starting the day with a specific ritual, that, if within the next 24 hours they would be critically, freezes the user into a specific pose until that 24 hours is up, but prevents them from being wounded at all. More advanced techniques allow the user to only freeze parts of their body, usually a single arm. One noted feature of how that works, is if the user times it appropriately, they might be able to negate a critical wound, and then continue fighting with absolutely no downside unlike the other death limits. But without their death limit prepared (as it takes an impractical amount of time to perform the Rejection of Entropy ritual), the next critical wound may kill them if they get overconfident.
