Combat

[Grimm]

Combat

Though we try to maintain a mostly freeform environment on Dust Wars, it is necessary for us to have some guiding principles to combat. These fall into a couple categories and relate to a concept we’ve seen in RWBY canon a great deal. Here, we simplify a number of things down to a single stat: Aura.

Aura, put simply, is your aura pool. How much of an attack can you withstand and what sorts of attacks you can make also rely on your Aura. When you have Aura to spend, you can continue to do things, but let your aura run out, and you open yourself up to things that could permanently change your character, if not outright kill them. So, it is a note to take caution on how much Aura you have, since there are very few ways to recover it without rest.

Aura can be thought of as a scale of the innate ‘power’ of a person. The more they have to use, the more powerful they are. If you are looking to butt heads with someone who has twice your Aura, you are probably looking for trouble. Someone with 1.5-2x your Aura will give you a rather hard fight, but tactics might let you pull out a win. 1.3-1.5, A higher chance to win, and possibly winnable if you are cautious. Any less and you are basically on even footing. Bear this in mind if you decide someone needs a beating.

So, how much Aura do you have? The hard and fast minimum is your age times 10. Everyone in the world still does not have the luxury of complete security, and you will still see the more aristocratic types down in the trenches when things get tough. But, say you start going to the Academy at the ripe age of 16-17 for a bit more formal training and actively going out on Grimm hunts and patrols. At that point, you are looking at a base of 150 plus the number of years you have been a Huntsman times 15. We’ve got a couple lists below to help you crunch these numbers:

Civilian: [Age]*10
Huntsman: 150+[Age-15]*15
In General: 150+[Yrs as Huntsman]*15+[Yrs as Civilian]*10

As an example, if you were to have been a huntsman from the time you joined the academy until you were 24 (8 years) then moved to the city for the next 5 years, your Aura would be 150+[8]*15+[5]*10 = 320.

How do you use your Aura? The next 3 posts will talk about that, but in general you run into 3 main expenditures: Aura Abilities, Dust, and Semblances.

Note: If something gives a % of your Aura as a cost, it is that % rounded up. 1% of 310, for example, amounts to 4.

[Grimm]

Aura Abilities

This is where you will see the largest expenditures of Aura for most people. First and foremost, Aura artificially and passively enhances the blows one can deal and take. A strike or bullet from someone will deal up to 5% of their Aura as damage to their target. One can elect to use less, but since it is an innate force, one typically just lets their aura go. Likewise, the defensive component of this lets one withstand 2% of their AP in damage if they take a strike.

If we have two people with 300 Aura, and one swings to attack the other, their swing can deal up to 15 Aura in damage in a single swing with little effort. If the second person takes the blow, their aura passively resists the first 6 Aura of damage of the attack, meaning that they take 9 Aura damage in total. If they were to respond fast enough, they could parry with an attack of their own for no net effect.

Now, what if someone intentionally adds a little more “oomph” to their attack. In this scenario, they can willingly spend up to 5% of their Aura to add that much to the attack. So for 15 Aura, that first guy could now have a swing dealing 30 Aura in damage. Likewise, by consciously spending aura to project a sort of force field, shield, or some other effect, one can add 5% of their Aura to the amount passively blocked. There is a slight edge in doing this; after all, it is what Auras were initially used for in ages past. Any aura spent to actively block something is multiplied by 1.5 (rounding down). So for 15 Aura, the second person in the above scenario could block an additional 22 damage, and only take 30-[6+22] = 2 Aura in total.

Aura does have one notable ability that is not necessarily combat related, and that is Healing. In combat, Healing is moderately less effective. It is difficult for one to heal themselves, and they can only heal another person at a rate of 1% of the healer’s Aura per second after focusing on them uninterrupted for one minute. Out of combat however, healing’s effect doubles. Rather than 1% per second, someone can heal one of their friends for 2% of their own aura per second. Both scenarios require the user to expend 1% of their Aura per second, though the limitations on using Aura to heal another’s means that at most, healing using Aura can only restore a quarter of a patient’s total Aura.

[Grimm]

Dust

The fundamental unit of Dust is the “charge.” Each charge of dust is capable of producing some effect that would fit neatly in a 6’ diameter sphere. This may be spread out into a wall - such as with ice, or concentrated into a few points or a line - like with lightning. If a charge is used to make less than this amount, it is still fully expended. A charge of dust is not represented in the often-used red dust propellant in bullets, but what is in the bullet itself; similarly, it is not the swing of the sword, but the wind guiding its blade.

The size of a single charge of dust changes based on what state the dust is in. As a crystal, Dust is about the size of a small soda can, which has about 20 charges of material that all must be expended at once. Powdering this same crystal results in more charges by increasing the surface area of the crystal that can conduct Aura. Powdering a full crystal in this fashion yields about 100 charges of Powder. Clothing made of dust is a little more difficult to define, though it often takes a single charge of powder to make a square foot of fabric. Tattoos are a little more nebulous; some are denser in pigment and show up on the skin while others are diluted to be nearly invisible except when active. A square inch of dark pigmentation often holds one charge of Dust.

Dust was the defining point in which the war against Grimm took a turn for the better. A factor in this is that unlike one’s Aura, which gets better with age, Dust required very little training to use in its most raw form, and does not rely on the power of one’s Aura to determine the strength of its effect.

Each charge of dust requires 1% of the users Aura to be spent to activate it. After activating a type of Dust, each variety does a specific amount of damage, or produces a field of some sort or otherwise. Those that have durabilities have them detailed as well. Below is the hard and fast on what each type of dust is capable of doing with a single charge. This only details the potential, and not the aesthetics. An outward expanding ring of electricity versus a bolt may very well be made by the same number of charges.

How to read this:
Output - If you use this type of dust in a fashion to strike or attack with it alone, this number represents the raw amount of Aura damage the attack will deal. Ex. Throwing a shard of ice at someone or slashing with a sword made of Ice Dust.
Enhancement - Like the above, but rather than a simple attack, this is an addition to an attack. Ex. Coating an arrow with ice.
Durability - The amount of Aura damage a charge can withstand before breaking down. If an effect would persist, such as making a sword, the amount of damage the object needs to be dealt before it shatters or dissipates. Those elements with 0 durability cannot be forged into tangible objects. Ex. How much damage a wall or sword of ice needs to take before it breaks.

Wind:
Output - 7
Enhancement - 8
Durability - 0

Fire:
Output - 10
Enhancement - 5
Durability - 0

Earth:
Output - 2
Enhancement - 3
Durability - 10

Water:
Output - 5
Enhancement - 6
Durability - 4

Lightning:
Output - 9
Enhancement - 6
Durability - 0

Ice:
Output - 4
Enhancement - 4
Durability - 7

Steam:
Output - 8
Enhancement - 7
Durability - 0

Glass:
Output - 9
Enhancement - 5
Durability - 1

Gravity:
Output - 5
Enhancement - 10
Durability - 0

Some individuals End up dedicating their use of their Aura to working with Dust.Though they retain the passive enhancement to their attacks and defenses garnered from their aura, they lose the ability to actively enhance either aspect of their Aura, but can instead invest that into the effect of their Dust. Though not a rare trait, fluent use of Dust in such a fashion is at least uncommon in this world.

[Grimm]

Semblance

For some, semblances have some passive effect. For example, one might have perfect memory recall or the ability to perceive the emotions of others. For such people, you need not look here.

For all of you with more active abilities, be they further increasing your strength or speed, becoming a doppelganger, or some other ambient effect, looking here might be a good place to start to look for a reference on how powerful you can be with them. It is important to point out that these are guidelines and each semblance is judged on a case-by-case basis.

All semblances cost at least 5% of the user’s Aura to activate. This is without exception. Some may have a duration associated with them - a minute is a common measure, though some are more sudden and pronounced. After this duration, activation is again necessary.

For a scope on the power of a semblance, it would be a fair thing to look at other things that cost a percent of one’s Aura. If say, you had a semblance that turned you into a living ball of fire for a minute, you might look at the 1% cost to activate a charge of dust and say that in spending 5% of your Aura, you would effectively spend 5 charges and thus ‘enhance’ all of your attacks with 25 Aura of fire damage during the time the Semblance is active.

A sudden, instant burst of speed might be more your fashion. Spending 5% of your Aura on an attack effectively doubles the strength of the attack, so it stands to reason that spending the same could double your speed. If you wanted to go faster, you could change that speed into small bursts - rather than a duration of a minute, say you cut it down to 6 seconds of speed in the span of a minute. Now with the 10 fold reduction in time, you could probably go with a 20 fold increase in your speed.

Perhaps your aura hardens around you to form a sort of armour when you use your semblance. For that 5% expenditure of Aura, this could happen, and for the next minute, you would look at reducing all incoming damage by 5% of your Aura total on top of the passive 2% you already block.

If you wanted to imitate Pyrrha’s Polarity, you still have the 5% up front investment. We can liken her ability to move metal with something similar to Gravity and Lightning Dust. Averaging the offensive or the enhancement aspects of the two, we get about 8 Aura in ‘damage.’ Amping that up to a 5% cost, we’re looking at something more on the order of 40. Right now, this is just something that deals damage; we need something to make stuff move. Well, you can enhance your strength with Aura, so why not reduce the damage to something like 20 and invest the rest in enhancing your ‘strength’ some 1.5 times. If the normal person can lift about 100 lb, you can now move 150 lb of stuff. Combine the two parts, and you’ve got someone who can control 150 lb of metal with their mind, and if you’re struck by the full brunt of that, it deals 20 Aura of damage to you. Long process, and a little less effective than half a dozen giant gears, but it’s probably close enough for what anyone would likely want.

If you want any help with a semblance, just ring for a staff member, either in your application thread or in our chat box, and we will be more than willing to help.