Mechanics Explanation

This thread will provide all of the rules necessary to determine who should win a fight via mechanics and to help gauge your character's capabilities.

Rule Zero and Rule One
0. They are optional.
You should never be required to jump into a bizarre quasi RPG math systems design nonsense to want to write here. Ever. At any point. Mechanics should not be prescriptive, writing first, then mechanics later. The mechanics help us write within the same world, they help us frame our conflicts and make the progression of our characters meaningful.
1. Nothing is perfect
Not just to taste, of course, but that for example, a very good roleplaying system like Dungeons and Dragons has flaws! It had a fulltime team of at least three designers and twenty-five people helping and you can still take issue with a lot of the design choices. We have far less and a much broader directive and so there will be flaws and issues that must be addressed as we go understanding that this is a process and the rules are a living document that we will iterate and improve on. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, you are welcome to share them.

Be ready to move things around if you wanna engage in it, be ready for things to change. We'll be continually working to improve these for the people who find them most useful.

Overview
A character is made up of four things, mechanically. They have stats, they have skills, they have releases and they have techniques.

Stats
There are four stats that represent the shape of the character’s natural ability. Power. Control. Agility. Durability. Power represents the ability of the character to exert force into the world, how powerful their spells, swings and techniques are. Control represents the refinement of those efforts, how easily they can land those swings and spells to great effect. Agility represents the ability of the character to move, their speed but also their grace of movement and Durability represents the sturdiness of their form, how hard it is to land hits but also how much punishment they can take.

Reiatsu is the sum of these four stats.

Stat Cap
You may not have a stat in excess of 50% of your reiatsu rounded down, nor a stat less than 10% of your reiatsu rounded down.

If you have 109 reiatsu, you may not have a stat lower than 10, nor higher than 54.

Skills
Skills represent a character’s talents refined through hard work and experience. Every character has three Basic Skills which are coloured a bit by their race. They have a martial skill representing the skill with physical combat. A casting skill is unique by race and represents their ability to use their races form of magic and a movement skill which represents their ability to evade and traverse great distances.

They also have a Release skill that is unique to each race represents their talent with their respective release.

Each character also has a Custom Skill which can be created wholesale or picked from a list of ones available by race. These represent unique areas of expertise and can build on one of the basic skills or represent a wholly unique branch of ability.

Each skill is given a rating from None->Master based on the rank you have purchased.

None
Beginner
Basic
Apprentice
Journeyman
Master

Master is the only rank that cannot just be purchased with experience, it also requires a request to be approved.

Skills also grant Techniques. Basic Skills grant a technique upon gaining the rank of master. Custom Skills grant a lesser technique or improve a lesser technique to standard at every rank past Beginner. Your Release Skill does not grant techniques, but your Releases do, the skill ranks in the Release skill reduces the cost and increases the magnitude of these techniques.

Spellcasting
Spellcasting is unique in that, unlike the other skills it can function different race to race. A Shinigami’s kido allows for healing, binding, barriers and destructive spells whereas to balance, a Hollow’s cero grants the ability solely to destroy. The balance to this is that spellcasting skills that focus in a single area provided benefits that more broad ones do not.

The functions of spellcasting are as follows:

They can be used to attack, allowing them to be used for offensive actions.
They can be used to defend, allowing them to be used to block at -1 to the check.
They can be used to heal, allowing healing outside of fights and within it with techniques.
They can be used to grant techniques, this would be how acts of more complex binds and seals might take effect.

In the example of Kido. It can attack and defend, and it grants a technique at mastery. It also allows you to heal non-mechanically and bind flavoured as attacks and defend. As a trade-off, once you reach mastery you must specialize, only one of the actions, attack, defend or healing may attain mastery. The others remain at journeyman.

Cero on the other hand may be used solely to attack. It also grants a technique at apprentice, and another at mastery.

Ginto may be used to attack and defend. It also gains a technique at mastery.

Special humans, on the other hand, may use any of these three frameworks, or they may come up with their own under the guidance of staff. This option is also available to other races, if you wish to come up with a variant of your casting that initially focuses on a specific area, such as someone who wishes to excel in Bakudo as a Shinigami, forgoing being able to attack and heal, then there is a path to do so.

Releases
Releases are the defining abilities of your character. They are the Shinigami’s Bankai, the Arrancar’s Resurrecion. The Hollow’s unique form of evolution, the Quincy Schrift. The release of a character is the central expression of their power uniquely tied to their nature and progression.

Releases come in two stages and each is tied to a request made as a part of your character’s story. The first release is the initial stage of your character’s power, earned as they step on to the world’s stage. The second release is the character’s central power and is earned as they take the center of that stage.

What a release does mechanically is it provides a unique and potent technique. Your first release will grant a technique on par to the mastery of a Basic Skill whereas the second release rewards a set of potent techniques or one singular superior one. These releases are very individual to the character as is the way they work which is defined within the techniques they provide.

Techniques
Techniques are the unique expressions of your character’s skills and releases. They belong to you, others might have the same techniques but they are always yours to imagine and create. The battle system is very simple and straight forward, filled with rigid stat interactions and with a very limited scope for each of the skills and what they can do. Techniques break the system open and allow you to find mechanical interpretations to your characters imagined powers.

If you ever wanted to use your movement skill to attack, that’s a technique. If you want your attacks to poison an opponent and weaken them, that’s a technique. If you want to become stronger for a brief moment in a battle, that’s a technique!

Techniques are designed on a case by case basis but they are pulled from a shared library of both fully formed techniques.

They come in three levels of power, lesser, standard and superior. Lesser techniques are the kind granted by custom skills before they are refined. Standard are techniques granted by mastery of skills and by first release and superior techniques are gained through some second releases.

Combat
Combat is between two or more individuals. It works on a turn-based system, whoever initiates combat is typically the one to go first, however, whoever succeeds to a greater degree in a check of movement and agility should go first in the case where more formal turn order is desired.

On your turn, you must first respond to any actions directed towards you and resolve those. This does not take your action and is done reflexively. Then you may take one action. That action may be to utilize your martial or casting skill to attack an opponent. Or, you may utilize a technique.

If you choose to attack it is resolved by first determining the degree of incoming damage. First do a stat check for the attacker’s Power to the defender’s Durability. Then the defender must choose to do one of four things.

1. Nothing at all. Instantly the check is moved two steps in favour of the attacker.
   
2. Block utilizing the martial or casting skill and the lesser of power and control. The check will move one step in favour of the attacker.
   
3. Avoid utilizing the movement skill and agility.
   
4. Utilize a relevant technique.
   

From the resultant combined check, a wound is determined. If you receive a serious wound, you are unable to fight any further.

If they choose option two or three, you will then do a combined check, the attacker’s control stat and their attacking skill versus the defender’s chosen skill and stat. The result of this check is added to the initial check and the defender receives the appropriate wound.

In other words, it’s a two-step check. First the raw damage is determined should the attack land, then it is modified by the outcome of the defenders choice in how they defend themselves. An attack might do little damage but hit a vital area, suggesting low power but high control, or vice versa.

It’s worth noting also that one combat round is not a fixed amount of time it is a ‘beat’. It can represent a single decisive slash, a series of spells, a trading of blows, or any other number of sequences even if it is really only one technique.

Checks
Checks come in three forms. There are stat checks, skill checks and combined checks. Stat checks compare two stats, and based on the difference infers a bonus of a certain number referred to as tiers.

For example, when you attack an opponent you do a stat check of your power vs their durability to determine the basic level of damage. The scale of a state check is as follows:


0-14 = +0
15-44 = +1
45-64 = +2
65-79= +3
80+ = +4

So, if the attacker had 35 power and the target had 20 durability, that would be a difference of 15 resulting in +1 tier for you. If they had 70 durability and you had 20 power, that would be a difference of 50 resulting +2 for the defender.

Skill checks are comparatively simple. Skills have a built-in tier, so comparing them just refer the advantage to whoever has the superior ranked skill in the comparison. If a master is attacking a journeyman, that’s a one-tier advantage in favor of the attacker because master is one step higher than the journeyman.

A combined check is then a combination of both a stat and then a skill check where the resultant tiers are combined.

Wounds
Wounds represent the damage a character has taken during a battle. This damage can be literally wounded on their body, but it can also be abstract as the narrative demands. A wound can represent deep fatigue, it can represent wavering morale or even binds that immobilize them. When someone receives a serious wound or greater, they are unable to fight.

The wounds are the result of combat checks, the tier determined at the end represent the wound delivered. If the tier is an advantage to the defender, there is no wound. The attack either missed or failed to deal damage when it landed as appropriate to the fiction. Otherwise, consult the following chart:

+0 - Menial Wound
+1 - Minor Wound
+2 - Moderate Wound
+3 - Serious Wound
+4 - Severe Wound

So, if you attack someone, and they evade and you wind up with +1, the defender receives a minor wound.

Characters may only have a single wound of each type at a time, when they receive a second of the same type, that wound is erased and a more serious one is dealt. For example, if someone is dealt three minor wounds, they would first receive a minor wound. Then, they would erase that Minor wound and take a moderate wound. Then, they would receive a minor wound, resulting in them having a single minor and a single moderate wound. A fourth minor wound would then jump all the way to serious. Narratively, the wounds don't change, but these lesser wounds together represent a greater threat.

A good depiction of each level of the wound might be:

Menial - Represent small trivial wounds, simple scratches, a minor bit of fatigue, a slight distraction or being a little off balance.
Minor - Represent light wounds that don't necessarily require much attention, small cuts, distractions or being off-balance.
Moderate - Represent more significant and meaningful wounds, gashes, being utterly off-balance or distracted.
Serious - Represent the consequence of losing a battle, wounds that make it hard to stand or move. Anything that removes a character from combat and would require some time to full recover or significant talent to heal. Broken bones, nearly severed limbs, broken spirits.
Severe - Represent grave wounds, loss of limb, loss of mobility, utterly and totally defeated the character is unlikely able to function at all under their own power and would likely die if left on their own.

Stamina
Stamina is used when you activate releases and techniques, not all releases and techniques have a cost. You enter combat with full stamina, the max of which is determined by 1/10th your current reiatsu. If you have 100 reiatsu, you have 10 stamina. If you have 193 reiatsu, you have 19 stamina. If you have 159 reiatsu, you have 15 stamina. It rounds down.

Techniques
Techniques break the rules. They come in all shapes and sizes and are intended to be the mechanical expression of your character’s unique powers. They are rewarded by Releases, by mastery of basic skills and by progression in custom skills. All of their rules are printed right on them, and if the rules or a technique are in conflict, it’s the technique’s text that is taken.

A technique has a name, it might have a level of technique(lesser/standard/superior/special), it might have a stamina cost, it might have tags and then it has a body of text indicating the way it subverts the rules.

Universal Techniques
There are two universal techniques.

Desperate Effort - Special - 5 Stamina - None - Usable once per turn either during the action or a defensive response, provides +1 to a single checks outcome.

Wide Impact - Special - 1 Stamina - Offensive - Usable on an attack action, make it target as many opponents you wish, although at -1 to the resultant damage.

These techniques are available to all players representing inherent abilities or efforts one is capable of without expertise. They take no slot or investment, you can always use them.

Creating Techniques
Techniques can be pulled from the list. Certain racials have predefined techniques and when you raise your skill to that level you can pull the technique without needing approval. For example, Quincy has Ransōtengai, Hollow's have Regeneration. If you don’t wish to reinvent the skills techniques then you’re good to claim what’s there if you pick it as custom. There is a request to mechanize your releases, your masteries of basic skills and your custom skills. The process is better explained there.