Skills are the primary way that players can progress their characters and unlock new abilities. You can purchase any skill you want so long as you meet the requirements. Purchasing a skill gives you access to ALL of its abilities at no extra cost. For example, if you purchased Awakened Ki, you would gain access to Flight, Blasts, and Beams.

There is no limit to how many skills you can obtain. The catch is that each skill you buy is more expensive than the last, so it is impractical to have everything. This scaling cost is the mechanism whereby progression becomes harder as you become stronger.

Skill Point Costs:
Racial: Your racial skill(s) are free and have no cost.
1st: Your first non-racial skill is also free.
2nd: 25xp
3rd: 50xp
4th: 75xp
5th: 100xp
6th: 125xp
And so on

Note: Costs do not reset for each skill tree.
Note: You may obtain up to one free skill point from an event. You may not change this skill in a respec but can obtain a different one in another event.

There is a special category of skills for skills further down in the trees. These are notated by the “Major Skill Point” requirement. These skills are major achievements, usually necessitating an Event Thread to achieve and have separate cost scaling. Players are not expected to achieve more than 1 of these, but those who put in the effort are able to achieve extreme levels of power.

Major Skill Point Costs:
1st: 250xp
2nd: 750xp
3rd: 1250xp
And so on

Most abilities have both an RP effect and a Battle effect. The RP effect describes what you are capable of outside of a combat environment. Battle effects are what you would reference if using your abilities in a hostile or nonconsensual manner towards other players.

Any abilities that deal with mind control, emotional manipulation, etc. must have some level of OOC consent from all parties involved when it comes to roleplay. In short, players should never feel forced to roleplay something they are uncomfortable with. This does not overcome the mechanical advantages of the abilities, however.

Examples:

• Instead of being forced to feel lust from a succubus’s spell, you may instead choose to experience fear.
• You’ve been Majin’d and don’t want to roleplay as a demon’s lackey. You can refuse to do so, while still being mechanically obligated to participate in battles.

Ki is a manifestation of raw energy that your body produces. Magical power, sometimes referred to as Aether, can originate from your own body, but it’s typically harnessed from another source. Whether this is narratively coming from magical artifacts, another realm, etc is up to you as a writer.

So what’s the difference, mechanically? Ki is more powerful and magic is more flexible. Ki is usually fairly straightforward in its applications – charge a powerful punch, shoot a beam of energy. With few exceptions, Ki fizzles out after it’s used and doesn’t have lasting environmental effects. Magic can cause damage but it can also do special things that can never be accomplished with Ki.

But which one is better? We do our best to make a balanced game. There are very strong skills in both trees. The Combat Tree in general will require more investment due to the variety of stats involved and for that reason its abilities are ‘better’ in terms of combat efficiency. Meanwhile the only stat that’s required for any Magic Skill is Meditation.

Your decision should be based on what kind of character YOU want to make and what your long term goals are. There are competitive elements to the game, but there’s nothing wrong with being inefficient or taking skills in every skill tree. Just aim to have fun! Also keep in mind that there are opportunities to redistribute your experience and skills if you end up regretting your decisions.