Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1.40.59.59-20160717064827/@comment-31098022-20171015225704

ChishioKunrin wrote: Yeah, Yang's is tricky since it's half passive half active, but I guess, for her, the downside is that, if she runs out of Aura, even though she can still use the energy, she has to be careful not to take any hits while she does so because those hits will injure or kill her instead of giving her more energy.

Yeah. Yang's semblance isn't exactly either. She can't activate it if she hasn't taken any damage. Maybe it's something more along the lines of a conditional semblance where it can only be activated after her aura has dipped to a certain point.

From what we've seen there are 2 or possibly 3 types of Semblances. Active like Ruby and most of the cast. Passive like Qrow. And possibly a third being conditional like maybe Nora. It really depends on how her semblance works since it seems similar to Yang's but I think she's immune to electricity so it's a more specialized type of Yang's semblance.

I would think that active semblances from what we've seen from the cast are the most common and are the general rule while the other two are exceptions as they are very specialized or can't be turned off. After all it wouldn't make sense to make some semblances objectively better than the others.