Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20141031002615/@comment-24891101-20141205062403

I disagree. Polarity, for instance, is pretty damned specific. There's really no any other way to control magnetism other than by creating and shaping fields, which is what Pyrrha and hundreds of other people around Remnant can do. Similarly, there are only so many way to have a Speed Semblance.

Unique is not meant to be taken literally; or, if you prefer, is not supposed to be describe the observable effects of Semblances. That said, those terms are indeed categories, but to say that every single person's Semblance is completely unique is silly. There aren't enough non-broken powers or variants for that to be the case. While Semblances may each be unique in theory, varying in very slight details, in practice, lots of people will share the exact same power, to observation. Everyone just does slightly different things with the same power, by virtue of having different experiences and preferences.

Essentially, lots of people will share a Semblance, but they do different things with it, and thus they develop differently. There is, however, no rule that this must be so. They are certainly not "completely" unique.