From The Practice War Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

It might be ideal to either add a section for potentials that talks about their focus and what it means to them personally or to include this information under the personality segment because it is very central to who they are as a person and their personality. "As people, Potentials are defined by their Focus, and the nature of that trait is amplified by the way in which their power shines through it into reality."

Just pulling from a couple posts Snowfire describes mending early in quest

Mending would revolve around things that restore and fix, or potentially adding to the works of other Potentials to make things that can self-repair. You'd be one of the few people who can actually directly fix a Practiced object without rebuilding it from scratch as well, which is nothing to sneeze at.

As to offensive capabilities? You're going to be pretty limited in what you can make yourself, but because of your ability to repair a damaged piece of Practiced gear to most of full functionality on you own it's quite likely you'll end up close to the front line when the Shiplords arrive. The comment on limitation does hinge on my probably underestimating SV's curiosity however, so there's that.

Informational: Known Potential Mechanics

The act of Awakening catalyses the Focus of a newborn Potential, yes, but the core trait must be there to begin with.

One of the best examples of this is Amanda Hawk, from before her Awakening as she attempted to recover more than just family from the pain of the Week of Sorrows, to what that recovery became in the years and decades that followed her Awakening. Amanda is a Potential of Mending, someone who wishes to heal the world, and more than the world. When acting in line with those goals, what she can do is rarely limited. This explains her ability to heal herself when the Shiplord subnet almost killed her, and though some might not know it, Purify as well.

As the update with the same name puts quite clearly, in that moment, Amanda saw the ship before her as a cancer; the cure to which as far as she knew was excision and purification of the infected area so that nothing of that twisted life could grow there again. And so she wielded power fit to match that of Sol itself in an instant of perfect intent. To be fair, though, she was also being pushed by the web into which she’d sunk in the course of the battle, and which also gave her much of the power required to do what she did.

Here, however, comes a potential (hah) problem. The Focus is more than just how a Potential works their power, it is also a core trait of who they are; the core trait. Whilst exact definitions can lead to different manifestations of the same named Focus, it remains impossible to work beyond those limits barring a few key exceptions. To use the same example, Amanda is Mending. She is the idea of restoration and healing in the face of horror, and peace in the face of discord. Purify, whilst technically within the wider generalisation of Mending, was not within Amanda’s definition, and there is a reason that she has been conflicted about the idea of using such power again. Which leads us to how she, and others, can work beyond the limits of their Focus.

I don't have time to work farther than this, but I figured this was the place to leave a note