Techniques

A perhaps largest and more important of the 'other functions' of the System, the techniques are System's way of assisting the System-enabled entities with performing supernatural feats, often on a daily basis. It has three main sub-branches, that are however similar enough to be described together.   Techniques are best described as 'active skills' from most RPG games. Spells like Fireball, Martial Arts like Dash, Recipes like crafting recipes in general (for alchemy, blacksmithing, leathercrafting and more) and so on.

To create such a technique one needs to perform it manually, and not once but multiple times, and with an intent to create a new technique out of it. Once it's reasonably trained, the System will recognize it and add it to the list of available techniques, that one can read from his Status Window.   Creation of techniques is severely dependent on your levels of appropriate skills. As a result, doing that while having a low character (and thus skill) level is generally considered pointless, as most of what you'll create will be, frankly, useless and weak. Weaker than you actually intended it to be.   Some speculate that the character skills level is, in a way, acting as a percentage for technique output. Meaning that the superficially identical technique made a by a swordfighter with level 50 in swordfighting will be only half as a good as the same technique made by a swordfighter with level 100. However with many factors coming into play, it's hard to convincingly quantify that.

It is possible to teach techniques to others. System allows to do that either through mentorship of someone having an appropriate skill, or through written down manuals, spellbooks and crafting recipes. However, this isn't an instanteous process, as the System merely helps in learning them.   You'll receive an appropriately named technique, but you'll need to manually replicate the attempt correctly a few times (with some degree of help from System) until you'll be able to use it with full assistance and have it properly mastered. However, once you do get there, the technique you'll receive will be basically indistinguishable from the original.   You can expect manuals for more powerful techniques to be very valuable and strictly guarded.   It's quite common for entire martial clans, magic schools etc. to form in the wake of a powerful enough practitioner that left behind a substantial number of such manuals describing powerful and useful techniques. If that happens, you can expect the manuals to be hidden in a highly secretive vault, with the students taught by the teachers, with the manuals being available only for the older and more trusted members (so that they can learn higher levels technique of their grop).   Most countries out there have at least a handful of commonly available, low-level techniques that are used by majority of the population. This includes, for example, basic combat arts that are taught to the local soldiers, as making those into an exclusive secret is pointless either way.

The techniques are roughly sorted by the System into ten tiers, denoted by a number of stars next to the technique in the Status Window, a fact that carries little mechanical significance aside from denoting the skill level you need to use them. One tier equals about twenty skill levels, meaning that swordfighting level 81-100 allows you to use techniques up to five star ones.   Those ten-tiered skill-level had some rather profound effects on many local cultures. For example, it's not uncommon for more eastern-oriented nations (especially those whose cultural origin dates back to the China of Old Earth) to form their martial artist's cultivation levels around ten distinct levels, each of them comparable to a single skill tier.   It's also not uncommon for many societies to grade - for example - mages of the local magical guild per the level of the most powerful techniques they know and can use proficiently. Status and skill level can be faked (as it cannot be showed to other people), but the spells you cast are impossible to be faked.