Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-26173711-20190509052121/@comment-25396609-20190605161347

BlessedCrown wrote: -Name: Ink Fine, I'll play ball. Let's have a look at this mess.

First of all, you repeatedly contradict yourself. You say they cannot create ink in the limitations but tier 4 specifically states they can convert their aura into ink; not to mention the Semblance is essentially the world's most baffling way to commit suicide by.... turning your blood into ink. Something you claim it cannot do and then contradict twice in entirely different ways.

Second, while it's not outside the realm of possibility that an ink-creating Semblance could be used to make and control constructs, that capability is virtually useless when you account for the massive amounts of ink you'd need to be carrying around constantly for doing so to be practical; as well as how much aura it's going to take to animate those constructs. The reason you only see constructs on Summoning type Semblances is that they, by their nature, have various types of automatic controls in place so you do not have to constantly and actively instruct them; the ink on the other hand ONLY works with direct, manual control.

Next issue is that you seem to have 4 seperate attributes to this ability. It can create ink (unless it can't; make up your mind and freaking stick to it.), it can control ink (perfectly reasonable), it can be used to create constructs (bit sketch as explained above), and it can bring any existing ink-based drawing to life. Now if you want to be able to animate drawings, then you need specific limitaions; Requiring them to be fresh (the ink has not yet dried and/or set), as well as requiring them to be the user's own handywork would be good limits on that.

Also keep one more thing in mind; quantity is important, if you sketch some epic mural of a dragon or some shit and then animate it, it is not going to STAY the size of a building. It is going to either be completely flat, or shrink to a small fraction of its original size; simply because there is not enough material to create the full-size version.

Next up,I hate this idea of Semblances directly and -almost deliberately- harming the user just from basic use when we have yet to see any evidence that such a Semblance even can exist. Sure some Semblances have been known to cause harm to the user but that's a result of extreme overuse (Emerald has stated she lacks the skill needed to induce hallucinations in multiple targets at once, and Qrow's Semblance is a passive area of effect that he happens to be stuck in the middle of) but those are circumstantial, unavoidable consequences. The Semblance actively destroying the user's body is a different animal entirely.

Also, news flash, it would take maybe, like, a tiny fraction of your blood being turned into not blood to kill you outright; the stuff is pretty important, you're looking at massive organ damage (the kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, and brain in no particular order) in minutes, if not seconds, depending what kind of conversion rate is happening. Even if the organ damage doesn't get you you're going to become anemic rapidly and then begin to slowly die of oxygen deprivation and/or a heart attack when your heart and lungs can no longr supply sufficient oxygen to keep you alive.

When it comes to being poisoned, the lethal dose is usually a lot less than you probably think it is. A good example of this is that a fatal blood alcohol level is less than half a percent; and our bodies are actually capable of metabolizing alcohol.

When looking at ink the question needs to be asked of what type of ink it is. Many forms of ink are quite toxic when ingested, some contain heavy metals and other nasty things you really do not want inside your body. Of course even if it's not actively toxic of its own accord you're going to begin experiencing rapid organ failure. You did kinda account for this but you are vastly overestimating how much the character would be able to survive.

It's also totally nonsensical and, again, contradictory with the alleged limitation that they cannot create their own ink.

Take my own nearly identical but actually consistent Scribe semblance for example. It does two things and two things only: it turns aura into ink, and it lets the user control said ink. An extremely basic ability; weak even, practically useless.

It is the user's own intelligence, cunning, and dedication that allow it to be something greater; no bullshit limitations, no using it to artificially expand into the territory of entire other Semblances by ripping off Sai from Naruto..

He does the logical thing; combine his very basic ability with Dust, the same way anybody else can with their Semblance, and then use the precision control he has over the flow of the ink produced by his Semblance to manipulate said Dust in very very very specific ways.

In order to get an idea of the RIGHT way to handle an ink control Semblance, think of it like this.

You know those pens that melt filament and work like a hand-held 3D printer? Imagine that, using the ink manipulation to draw the outlines of 3 dimensional objects, then triggering the Dust you infused into the ink to fill in the blanks; build a framework to control the precise shape  the Dust forms into when activated. He uses it to create barriers, traps, hell even furniture sometimes if he's gonna be out in the wilderness for awhile. All while following the extremely basic tennets described in the Semblance.

Now I'm no stranger to finding ways to abuse Semblances but you need to actually think it through, figure out the logical way to do it rather than adding a new ability and cramming some dumb limitation on to compensate.

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Your issue, like many people, is that you do not seem to know what you want your Semblances to actually be. You pick something you like the sound of and then just start going "wouldn't it be neat if" and piling more and more stuff into them without any regard for keeping them sensible and balanced.