Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-14610890-20140105053250/@comment-82.12.156.248-20140109042357

Brandon Storm9 wrote: How about we focus on semblance then? Just to name a few ideas we already know there are semblances for: Speed, Glyphs (magic shields), Fire, Clones and Magnetism. Coming up with ideas for those should keep the forum alive for a while. We haven't seen them yet but you can bet the obvious semblances will either make an appearance during the Vytal Festival or will at least be a safe bet for existing: Ice, Electricity, Strength, likely something to do with the Earth. All go-to favourites. Wouldn't be surprised to see a teleportation or mind-reading semblance as well. The latter likely on a bad guy. As for innovative semblances:

Someone with the ability to re-direct pain would be interesting, the person wouldn't be able to do any harm to the other person per se and they would still die from the wounds themselves, BUT they could make it so that the pain they'd feel would instead be felt by someone else. It would be interesting to see on a major antagonist, especially if it was Yang who was attacking and Ruby being the one who was feeling the pain. To quite literally feel the pain of dying at the hands of Yang, and to quite literally inflict such pain on Ruby would not only be heartbreaking to see but also an interesting mechanic for the fight where Yang is trying to defeat/kill the guy whilst causing as little pain as possible.

A wolf-like Faunus with the abiility to for incredibly short amounts of time transform part of his body further into a wolf allowing him to, for instance, attack using a wolf-like slash attack, but couldn't maintain the wolf arm afterward, could be interesting. It would also introduce another badass faunus to either tease tension between Blake and Sun or,more interestingly, to have Weiss fall for (since everyone is so insistant on EVERYONE getting with one another). Weiss has definately been more accepting of the faunus, would be interesting to see her like one in that way, she'd probably go into denial, her family's reaction could also be quite entertaining to watch.

Some less over the top ones:

Being able to temporality control someone's action after touching them could lead to a few interesting storylines, possibly having someone in the academy jealous of RWBY and JNPR's closeness could set out to ruin their frienships (manipulating Ruby into kissing Jaune when Pyrrha can see it, having Blake do something to shatter what little trust Weiss has left in her, making Ren spill to Nora just how goddamn annoying he must find her). And would also be intriguing in battle (Having Weiss have to fend of a brainwashed Blake without hurting her whilst also fighting said person for example).

It would be nice if Velvet was capable of communicating with nature, it would suit her faunus heritage and I also think it would suit her personality since she has nothing else to communicate with (discriminated by humans [Blake at least has RWBY and JNPR] whilst likely not fitting with the petty criminal faunus archtype we've seen [there's got to be a lot more that are on Sun's path] and fearing the White Fang [self-explanatory]). Doesn't mean she can do anything with them accept maybe work with animals to fight the Creatures of Grimm or ask trees we're Roman Torchwood ran off too but it would still be interesting none-the-less, maybe if we get to see a Grimm/Beacon war we could see the academy being overrun only for a pack of wolves and/or some birds of pray come and help even the odds.

A more intriguing one to me: Having the ability to amplify another person's aura or semblance. Perhaps allowing even quicker healing/more powerful attacks or allowing Pyrrha to control heavier magnetic objects or improving Blake's shadow clones (possibly allowing them to attack or at least be used offensively (possibly as a weapon a la Noob Saibot in the most recent Mortal Kombat game)..