User blog comment:Thesupremejoyner98/Grimm that can cut through aura/@comment-9090085-20150114094931/@comment-9090085-20150118211252

Well yeah, Bespecaled, that's how people die in RWBY. I kind of touched on it when I mentioned No Breaks: many WF Grunts were killed by the Grimm after being KO'd by team RWBY, and Neo wore down Yangs Aura with multiple strikes before depleting it with the throw and moving in to finish her off. I imagine something similar happened in Best Day Ever with Tukson(abet with a much shorter fight, and no-one saved him).

This is kind of my point: Aura does not make it so no-one can die, it just means you have to add an extra step to wound/kill after defeating someone. Yes, Aura does make the people of Remnant more reckless then those of our world, but that doesn't mean they rely on their Aura to protect them.

Take Yang for instance: We all know that the more she is hit, the stronger she gets. But how often have we seen her allow herself to be hit? Never; she dodges the claws of Ursai, and blocks the blades and kicks of the Malachite sisters. Whenever Yang is hit, it was when she was unable to dodge or block, or was attacked from an unexpected angle - not unlike someone without Aura. It's a similar deal with the WF Lieutenant: Although he has a very tough Aura, there are many instances where he dodges Weiss's attacks.

I can think of cynical reasons for why characters with Aura shields would avoid getting hit to the best of their ability: like their Aura will deplete if they keep getting hit; and getting hit makes it easier to be hit again. But a perhaps more practical reason is simply that getting hit hurts, even with shields. It effectively means that when we see someone "just get pushed back" in RWBY, we are in fact seeing someone fight through the pain to stay on their feet.

And of course, Aura shields can let you put people in situations where one without shields would die, no questions asked. You just need to alter the fight scene to take advantage of Aura instead of having it get in the way.

At the end of the day, Aura is just a tool for telling your story. A tool with pros and cons, for sure. But you can use a different tool to tell your story, too.

-sigh- I rambled again didn't I? Oh well, It's not like there was much I could leave out(else people would probably ask questions I could have already answered); and breaking it into several posts wouldn't do anything to shorten the length(and could result in people interrupting me while I spend an hour writing the next post).