Reserved Technique: Seismic Sense

[Yetsuna Yishnir]

Technique Name: Seismic Sense

Class: 3

Technique Type: Other

Usable By: Yetsuna

Technique Element: Earth

Technique Description and Effects:

Since first gaining her powers Yetsuna’s reiatsu has been closely linked to the element of earth, but after gaining her permanent release this link became almost unbreakable, and it taken a toll on her abilities. When a shinigami casts a kido they are converting their reiatsu into an element be it fire, lightning, etc, but because of the elemental ties of her reiatsu Yetsuna has lost this ability; her reiatsu actively fights converting into any element but earth. This has more or less cost her her ability to use kidos, and as a result she has been trying to develop her own techniques to take advantage of her natural skill set, and this one one of those techniques.

Because of her natural ties with the earth Yetsuna can channel her reiatsu into it and gain the ability of seismic sense: the ability to feel vibrations through the earth. Through those vibrations she can make a complete image of her surrounding in her mind, meaning that even if she lost her sight or was in total darkness she will be able to “see” anything and everything in contact with the earth. This technique is exceptionally useful to her when she finds some of her other abilities coming up sub par, such as her sight against a faster opponent, with this ability she may not be able to see them with her eyes, but their interactions with the earth and the vibrations it causes will make them far easier to track.

Overall the effectiveness of the technique is surprisingly high, allowing her to sense anyone or anything that is in contact with the ground, directly or indirectly, as long it is within her range. Directly refers to touching the ground itself, someone standing on a sidewalk, dirt, etc., while indirectly refers to that person not contacting the ground themselves, but they are on something in contact with the ground such as a tree or building. The range of this ability scales based on the amount of reiatsu expended at the time of casting, paying 250 reiatsu up front giving Yetsuna a range of 35 feet. She can increase this range by 10 feet for an extra 50 reiatsu, capping out at 75 feet, the same range as her release powers, extra range can be added retroactively, but reducing the range does not refund reiatsu. Additionally, along with the base cost, the technique comes with a upkeep cost of 50 reiatsu at the base level, increasing by 25 per 10 feet she adds to her range. If she increases the range of this technique the expended reiatsu counts as the upkeep cost for the post and the increased upkeep goes into effect the post after.


How to use technique:
Brief moment of focus along with expenditure of reaitsu.

Technique Drawbacks
By and large the most obvious drawback is the cost requiring an above average activation cost for its class as well as a continuous upkeep to go with it. Secondly it that while this technique at its highest level grants her an almost god-like natural awareness of her surrounding that information is only good if she can actually react to it, being able to track someone faster than you does you no good if you’re still too slow to react to anything they do. Additionally stealth makes getting detected more difficult, though not impossible. People experienced with stealth tend to be very lighted footed, meaning that they don’t give off the strong vibrations that others typically do, but even through this footprint is reduced it is not entirely gone, and if they move around enough in a short time frame she will be able to hone in on them, though this “scent” can be lost if she gets distracted.

Finally this technique in its entirely can be “dodged” by two methods. The first is just not contacting the ground or anything touching the ground, something that can be either really simple or really hard depending on the area. The other method is just remaining still, thus giving off extra vibrations for her to sense, though this isn’t entirely safe. Yetsuna causes her own vibrations that give her feed back of her surrounding even without an opponent moving, but by remaining still they become far more difficult to detect, but not impossible, for a cost of 100 reiatsu she can send out a shock wave through the ground that will give her a clear picture or her surroundings even if someone is remaining completely still. People with stealth can also be picked up some what simpler this way, but until she uses the bankai level of this ability they will still be more difficult to detect than a normal person.


Made By: Yetsuna Yishnir


Reserved?: Yes

[Yetsuna Yishnir]

Disclaimer: This technique was not inspired by Avatar, I have not seen the show, though I am somewhat familiar with its characters. The inspiration for this technique came from a D&D feat of the same name.

[Johnwaluigi]

Unfortunately, we don't allow non-Release Reserved techniques to augment the powers of your Release. Please remove all references to her Shikai/Bankai, and frame the technique in such a way that it doesn't draw directly on the power of her release. Sorry about that - I'll be happy to grade it once those changes are made.

[Yetsuna Yishnir]

Modifications made.

For what it's worth it wasn't that the technique drew on her Release powers, it was more that they were made more effective through its use. Yetsuna's earth reiatsu is linked fairly closer to her Zan so I figured it made sense to have the technique be more effective as she went up in release. I doubt this matters and/or means much, but I figured that I'd at least say just in case I'm wrong XD.

[Johnwaluigi]

That's alright - my understanding is that techniques should avoid being tied to releases, however.

Alright, this technique is an extremely powerful sensory technique - which I have a sneaking feeling may be used to compensate for lacking in sensory stats. As such, I'll be grading this with

My first problem is that you shouldn't be able to "get a perfect picture" of everything touching the ground (directly/indirectly). Instead, you should only be able to obtain their relative positions to you. I don't see how being able sense/create vibrations would be able to help you detect when someone is moving their upper body, for example. The costs seem fine to me, as do the ranges. My only other problem is that you've included an effect in the drawback - please move the "100 Reiatsu shockwave" part into the technique effects.

Actually, that whole part isn't a drawback at all - but a whole new aspect of the technique. You were originally sensing vibrations created by other things, but now you're creating vibrations - like echolocation. This should have been included in the technique effects, not as a passing mention in the drawbacks. But I feel it should be removed entirely. Those standing still should not be capable of being detected by the technique. Also, please refrain from including 'bonus effects' in drawbacks in any future custom techniques.

With those changes, I'd be happy to give this technique a 1/2.

[Yetsuna Yishnir]

This technique was developed to help augment her sensory stat not make up for it. Currently its sitting at around 100 and chances are there will be about another 50 added by the time she hits class 1. The main purpose is to help her combat the two archetypes shes weak against; stealth and speedsters, both of which generally require sense above the standard 150 to keep up with.

The theory behind how she is able to get such a clear visual of her surroundings is basically that the vibrations travel through the someone's body at a more or less fixed rate, and depending on the feedback time she generates an image of whats around her. Though, just as a point of reference were trying to apply laws of physics to magic. Both of those said, if I were to change the technique to be able to only get relative positions between herself and others this techniques becomes fairly terrible. If it was to be just relative positions I feel like this technique should have a fairly large slash in its cost or her ability to sense vibrations should become so sensitive that unless someone was standing still there would be no way to hide from this technique.

As for the ability for Yetsuna to generate her own vibrations that's actually something she's always doing, hence why she can "see" he surroundings, I added the 100 reiatsu shock wave as a balance to technique so it didn't just let her take a step and instantly know where someone was. I can move it up into the overall section but when it was added (as an after thought to the technique) it felt like it made more sense to have it paired with people trying to hide since that's really the only time that it would really ever come into effect.

Disclaimer: I know I have a bad tenancy to come off as standoff-ish in gradings and I don't mean to seem that way. Everything stated is just my point of view considering what I've been given and is meant with respect.

[Johnwaluigi]

That's exactly my point - you're looking for the advantages of high senses without any of the "overload" drawbacks. As such, I would feel that the scope of the sensory abilities granted by this technique should grant slightly more limited bonuses, if you get where I'm coming from.

Yes, I understand how echolocation works (and the principle is essentially the same for what you're describing here), but I'm still not of the opinion that the she should obtain such a clear picture from such vibrations - unless she had a high enough Senses/Instinct stat to be able to process all that information. This is why I would rather you specified whether she only analyses reflected shockwaves that she creates, or senses the vibrations others create. Also, while I do like the idea of consistent physics in techniques, this a site with a huge emphasis on PvP - so, I would argue that balance should also be taken into consideration, regardless of the physical workings of a technique.

The reason that I didn't appreciate the fact that the shockwave was placed in the drawback section is that I felt it redefined how the technique worked at the last second - before there was no reason for her to be able to detect stationary people/objects, and then you flipped that around in the last paragraph.

Alright, how I feel it should be balanced - the technique should be reduced in Class and cost, but could have its range remain the same (or even increase), but Yetsuna would only be able to feel vibrations through the earth, giving her a relative position of every moving object nearby. You could even still include the 100 Reiatsu "shockwave" that gives the position of all nearby things (including stationary ones) perfectly within that range for an instant, like a sort of "scan". If you don't like that balancing, feel free to suggest an alternative - but I'm afraid this technique just gives you far too much information in its current state.

[Yetsuna Yishnir]

Oh my mistake I wasn't aware something like this was really in the wheel house of someone with high senses. I figured tracking by sound was but not something literally like this XD I might just take it down then and either scrap the whole thing or use it as the final technique in her release since i need to replace one of them anyway. I haven't decided yet.