Post by Wolfe on Oct 14, 2019 16:17:25 GMT -5
This update is to clarify rules for an unintended practice that’s been going around which I personally have zero problem with in theory but want to set some guidelines for in execution in order to prevent a Penny incident in the Vytal Festival.
Aura’s mechanical purpose is to prevent injury to your character from combat. It is the reason why you can spar without breaking each other’s bones and ripping each other in half. It separates us from, say, the My Hero Academia fandom which glorifies self-harm in pursuit of training to an extent. RWBY doesn’t do that. In fact, injuries to other people in sparring sessions are basically unheard of. It just doesn’t happen, because the only way it normally happens is when people aren’t practiced with using aura. If your character is in Haven Academy, they can turn their aura off and on at will. Having a scar at any point in your life is a mark of shame because it means you failed in a fight so badly you were actually hurt, and hurt badly, by an enemy that got past your defenses.
This is still a thing. You can choose to take an attack with either your aura or your health. You cannot do partially health and partially aura. This behavior is to exploit a place where it was not specifically outlawed for mechanical benefit and it is now specifically outlawed. If you have E rank durability and the enemy has E rank damage, 33 percent aura damage is coming in on a direct and uncontested hit. You cannot take 20 to health and 13 to aura. You take 33 to health or 33 to aura. As always, flavor may differ from this slightly but mechanically there is no interplay between aura and health under any circumstances when taking a singular hit.
In sanctioned fights, the match is supposed to be stopped by the referee as soon as there is an aura break or a visible injury regardless of aura level. This will be enforced in class threads moving forward and 100% in the Vytal Festival. The Vytal Festival is aired internationally and can be compared to a UFC fight. Athletes who compete in a dangerous sport that involves combat, but every safety measure is taken to ensure that nobody dies and the chance for crippling injury is as low as possible. RWBYverse has something that UFC fighters don’t, though, and that is aura. Aura prevents your arm from being snapped and you from getting your brains scrambled in a concussion or your shin bone breaking in half. Not using this shield from injury that every character on this site has to make these injuries happen to your character unilaterally is a dick move.
Injures in RWBY do not occur when both parties have aura unless one side gets injured deliberately. To turn off aura in a sanctioned bout is playing a game of chicken with the other person that isn’t fair. Take my character, Colton. If anyone on the site right now decided to turn off their aura and took a direct hit from his Polarity boosted sword and he followed up instinctually with his dust enhancement, they would get bisected. They would get cut in half and die promptly. If you had 80% aura left and wrote that you got cut in half and died in your post in a not Death Enabled thread where we’re just sparring in Team Combat Class, that’s fucked up and a serious breach of roleplay conduct and OOC respect.
You don’t get to dump that emotional baggage on someone who isn’t expecting it, doesn’t want it, and doesn’t know it’s coming. It’s also against the rules to use that as a threat. Saying you won’t activate your aura OOC and then not doing so to force other people to lose a fight because they don’t want to kill your character is also not okay and will lead to staff intervention. If you want to write a story about your character breaking every bone in their body like Deku, that’s cool. It’s not going to be on the 4 Kingdoms broadcast of Vytal or any sanctioned match, though, because that’s unfair to everyone involved because that’s not the point of the Vytal Festival or for sparring matches more broadly. That is someone who wants body horror forcing that body horror on a setting that doesn’t have it number one and people who don’t expect it because it’s not a thing number two.
It is also important to note that aura stops your equipment from breaking when a force more powerful than the weapon attacks it. If you consciously decide to not use aura, weapons can absolutely break and that will one hundred percent be a thing moving forward in combat modded threads. The purpose of this update is to clarify that this behavior is not okay for sanctioned, refereed matches only.
If the stakes are life and death, risking life and limb is okay. Grimm don't care about blood, and if you feel like turning off your aura for an attack against one will help you survive overall -- do it. This doesn't effect fights with Grimm and doesn't effect fights outside of official, refereed fights. If the stakes are nothing, risking life and limb is a giant dick move both IC and OOC because nobody signed up for that OOC and that’s not the point of the Vytal Festival IC. Moving forward to clarify, I’m going to note the tiers of health to clearly demarcate what’s okay and what’s not.
67% to 100% Health – Superficial/equipment damage. This is where your armor might be torn open or your weapon damaged, and some shallower wounds might be inflicted. Fight stoppage may occur if the wound is to your neck or head, but otherwise will probably be allowed to continue. A bloody nose isn’t going to disqualify you. Bleeding out your head will because of the risk for brain injury.
34% to 66% Health – Moderate/crippling damage. Your armor is going to be made useless and any weapons used to protect you will break if the enemy is capable of breaking them. Major wounds can be inflicted in this stage, with enough blood loss to stop a refereed fight immediately and cause severe disadvantages in death enabled type fights. You might lose the use of an arm or something in this range, or just be constantly bleeding and need to staunch it somehow or continue to lose health every post. This is where bad things start to happen but you’re still able to fight.
1% to 33% Health – Life-threatening injury or death. This is where limbs come off and where you start to bleed out. Once you hit this stage, bad things are happening to you and you’re looking at bones breaking, limbs being removed, traumatic brain injury, etc. Even if you survive, you’re going to be useless in any subsequent fights because you’re just too fucked up if you take damage in this area. You need medical attention badly and this is where you’re at death’s door.
In terms of refereed fights: Equipment/Weapon damage is fine. Superficial injuries are fine. Anything beyond that is automatic fight stoppage. This introduces an element of strategy into PvP that I personally enjoy and wanted to incorporate. What’s not okay is anything past that, which is allowed and even encouraged in Death Enabled threads but not in random sparring thread and fights with no stakes. You are not allowed to kill or maim your character in order to OOC win a fight by traumatizing the shit out of someone against their will. The action will be retconned, and your character will be expelled for attempting to commit suicide in a sparring exercise in a psychotic break.
Aura’s mechanical purpose is to prevent injury to your character from combat. It is the reason why you can spar without breaking each other’s bones and ripping each other in half. It separates us from, say, the My Hero Academia fandom which glorifies self-harm in pursuit of training to an extent. RWBY doesn’t do that. In fact, injuries to other people in sparring sessions are basically unheard of. It just doesn’t happen, because the only way it normally happens is when people aren’t practiced with using aura. If your character is in Haven Academy, they can turn their aura off and on at will. Having a scar at any point in your life is a mark of shame because it means you failed in a fight so badly you were actually hurt, and hurt badly, by an enemy that got past your defenses.
This is still a thing. You can choose to take an attack with either your aura or your health. You cannot do partially health and partially aura. This behavior is to exploit a place where it was not specifically outlawed for mechanical benefit and it is now specifically outlawed. If you have E rank durability and the enemy has E rank damage, 33 percent aura damage is coming in on a direct and uncontested hit. You cannot take 20 to health and 13 to aura. You take 33 to health or 33 to aura. As always, flavor may differ from this slightly but mechanically there is no interplay between aura and health under any circumstances when taking a singular hit.
In sanctioned fights, the match is supposed to be stopped by the referee as soon as there is an aura break or a visible injury regardless of aura level. This will be enforced in class threads moving forward and 100% in the Vytal Festival. The Vytal Festival is aired internationally and can be compared to a UFC fight. Athletes who compete in a dangerous sport that involves combat, but every safety measure is taken to ensure that nobody dies and the chance for crippling injury is as low as possible. RWBYverse has something that UFC fighters don’t, though, and that is aura. Aura prevents your arm from being snapped and you from getting your brains scrambled in a concussion or your shin bone breaking in half. Not using this shield from injury that every character on this site has to make these injuries happen to your character unilaterally is a dick move.
Injures in RWBY do not occur when both parties have aura unless one side gets injured deliberately. To turn off aura in a sanctioned bout is playing a game of chicken with the other person that isn’t fair. Take my character, Colton. If anyone on the site right now decided to turn off their aura and took a direct hit from his Polarity boosted sword and he followed up instinctually with his dust enhancement, they would get bisected. They would get cut in half and die promptly. If you had 80% aura left and wrote that you got cut in half and died in your post in a not Death Enabled thread where we’re just sparring in Team Combat Class, that’s fucked up and a serious breach of roleplay conduct and OOC respect.
You don’t get to dump that emotional baggage on someone who isn’t expecting it, doesn’t want it, and doesn’t know it’s coming. It’s also against the rules to use that as a threat. Saying you won’t activate your aura OOC and then not doing so to force other people to lose a fight because they don’t want to kill your character is also not okay and will lead to staff intervention. If you want to write a story about your character breaking every bone in their body like Deku, that’s cool. It’s not going to be on the 4 Kingdoms broadcast of Vytal or any sanctioned match, though, because that’s unfair to everyone involved because that’s not the point of the Vytal Festival or for sparring matches more broadly. That is someone who wants body horror forcing that body horror on a setting that doesn’t have it number one and people who don’t expect it because it’s not a thing number two.
It is also important to note that aura stops your equipment from breaking when a force more powerful than the weapon attacks it. If you consciously decide to not use aura, weapons can absolutely break and that will one hundred percent be a thing moving forward in combat modded threads. The purpose of this update is to clarify that this behavior is not okay for sanctioned, refereed matches only.
If the stakes are life and death, risking life and limb is okay. Grimm don't care about blood, and if you feel like turning off your aura for an attack against one will help you survive overall -- do it. This doesn't effect fights with Grimm and doesn't effect fights outside of official, refereed fights. If the stakes are nothing, risking life and limb is a giant dick move both IC and OOC because nobody signed up for that OOC and that’s not the point of the Vytal Festival IC. Moving forward to clarify, I’m going to note the tiers of health to clearly demarcate what’s okay and what’s not.
67% to 100% Health – Superficial/equipment damage. This is where your armor might be torn open or your weapon damaged, and some shallower wounds might be inflicted. Fight stoppage may occur if the wound is to your neck or head, but otherwise will probably be allowed to continue. A bloody nose isn’t going to disqualify you. Bleeding out your head will because of the risk for brain injury.
34% to 66% Health – Moderate/crippling damage. Your armor is going to be made useless and any weapons used to protect you will break if the enemy is capable of breaking them. Major wounds can be inflicted in this stage, with enough blood loss to stop a refereed fight immediately and cause severe disadvantages in death enabled type fights. You might lose the use of an arm or something in this range, or just be constantly bleeding and need to staunch it somehow or continue to lose health every post. This is where bad things start to happen but you’re still able to fight.
1% to 33% Health – Life-threatening injury or death. This is where limbs come off and where you start to bleed out. Once you hit this stage, bad things are happening to you and you’re looking at bones breaking, limbs being removed, traumatic brain injury, etc. Even if you survive, you’re going to be useless in any subsequent fights because you’re just too fucked up if you take damage in this area. You need medical attention badly and this is where you’re at death’s door.
In terms of refereed fights: Equipment/Weapon damage is fine. Superficial injuries are fine. Anything beyond that is automatic fight stoppage. This introduces an element of strategy into PvP that I personally enjoy and wanted to incorporate. What’s not okay is anything past that, which is allowed and even encouraged in Death Enabled threads but not in random sparring thread and fights with no stakes. You are not allowed to kill or maim your character in order to OOC win a fight by traumatizing the shit out of someone against their will. The action will be retconned, and your character will be expelled for attempting to commit suicide in a sparring exercise in a psychotic break.