#aura article

Canonically an advanced technique, which allows an adept to sense the presence and strength of other people's Auras. Fox Alistair perhaps finds it easier to practice this skill due to his psychic Semblance, but he is not alone.

Lie Ren felt the approach of a powerful and hostile warrior like Tyrian Callows before any of his physical senses would have alerted him. As for the King Taijitu, I think Ren detected it through the displacement of air, the whispering of the grass, and the vibrations through the ground... the creature was enormous, after all, and detecting the "nothingness" of the Grimm seems more a function of Fox's Semblance than his Aura-sense. But, it's unclear.

Ruby Rose claimed she could feel Penny's soul, which Penny doesn't question in the least.

I figure the easiest and most common application of this ability is self-awareness of your own Aura, so that you can properly gauge how much energy you're using, or losing, or still have left. Jaune Arc apparently needed to rely on his scroll to accurately measure such things, at least during his first semester at Beacon.

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Clearly the second-most common Aura skill, and just as useful for shovel-digging manual laborers as for sword-swinging warriors. In fact, laborers might be just as practiced at this skill as most warriors... it just wouldn't be obvious, since a laborer will usually fail to land any blows on a warrior who has spent years learning how to avoid getting hit. The one White Fang mook that managed to sock Ruby in the face, after she lost her weapon and fell a few hundred feet, definitely had some power in his punch.

Using Aura for super strength seems fully conscious. We have yet to see someone accidentally summon this strength and break anything or lift with too much power; not even Jaune Arc.

But putting too much power behind an attack that fails to hit can leave one over-extended or worse. Jaune Arc put everything he had into the thrust at Cinder to take advantage of her only moment of vulnerability, but because she managed to twitch out of the way rather than absorbing his momentum into her face, he went hurtling past her and fell to the ground.

Yet even putting as much power as possible into an attack or feat of strength doesn't seem particularly expensive in terms of Aura. Certainly nowhere near as expensive as taking damage with your Aura protection active. We've seen warriors low on Aura or outright Aura Broken still have enough Aura to leap about like fleas and swing giant swords like feathers.

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Not much is known about this skill. We do know that it normally isn't good enough to prevent scarring or replace lost limbs or organs, as Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Yang Xiao Long, James Ironwood, Mercury Black, Maria Calavera, Adam Taurus and Cinder Fall reveal. Nor does it seem capable of correcting congenital defects, assuming that is the cause of Neo Politan's muteness.

Hazel might be uniquely capable of using his Aura to heal away a hole through one of his lungs, though probably only because of the pain-killing Semblance which might also be how he regenerates his Aura so rapidly. One imagines that it is easier to concentrate when one doesn't feel any pain. Jaune Arc was able to help Weiss heal a hole through her liver, but he might not be as successful doing the same for himself.

Qrow Branwen might actually know a technique for using his Aura to quickly purge alcohol from his system, allowing him to earnestly drink himself dizzy in the Crowbar before fighting Winter Schnee with no apparent hindrance to his self-coordination. But if so, this is a deliberate skill that he can fail to employ when he has no idea he's in danger of being killed by a pack of Apathy, or when he sees no reason to end his pity-party on the Cotta-Arc doorstep.

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I don’t see it mattering very much. This isn’t Dragon Ball Z, no one has a scouter, and no one has bothered measuring “power levels” for comparisons between combatants. The characters are as strong as the plot needs them to be, and the plot will always adjust circumstances so that a character’s strength or weakness is always appropriately challenged. That’s how fiction works.

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Ruby Rose, age 15, with only one or two years of very dedicated combat schooling under her professional huntsman uncle, could annihilate a small army of Beowolves on her own and not even appear winded afterwards.

But how capable does anyone need to be to struggle with everything they have to defeat a single Beowolf?

Split the difference: Someone who could kill only half as many Beowolves as Ruby would still be amazingly badass. But how many people in Remnant are that capable?

How many Beowolves could the “average” combat school graduate fight before being overwhelmed? How many could one of Junior’s thugs defeat, or one of the White Fang’s grunts, or one of Atlas’ soldiers?

How many could Jaune Arc kill on his own before they wore him down? How many could Cardin Winchester?

Monty’s passions didn’t exactly lead CRWBY to devoting any real time to establishing the “basic” levels of competency in Remnant. Which is a real shame, as knowing more about what is considered "normal" would help us better appreciate what is considered "exceptional".

It would also help us appreciate what is considered “normal”, since even the most mediocre fighter on Remnant would be superhuman on Earth. The dudes that Yang punches across rooms would be nearly invincible to us.

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back to my RWBY Aura index

According to Lie Ren, “generating a defensive Aura” takes “intense concentration at first. But in time it will become second nature, allowing you to deflect attacks and gradually heal your wounds.”

This is how children normally learn the Aura Art of Damage Resistance on Remnant. Oscar Pine is learning at an accelerated pace as more of Ozpin’s procedural memories become his own. Pyrrha Nikos gave Jaune Arc an even faster head-start with an advanced teaching technique of last resort.

Everyone else must start with simply generating any protective Aura effect. Then they must struggle to keep that protection active until they no longer need to even think about turning it on and keeping it up.

Those who truly master the art of resisting damage with their Aura, however, should not only become much more effective at bracing themselves against blows they see coming, but also capable of mitigating damage that they didn’t see coming.

Hei “Junior” Xiong survived a punch to the face that sent him flying across a room to crash against a wall and shatter glass. His Aura wouldn’t be active at all; he didn’t expect the attack, and Yang had tricked him into thinking she wouldn’t give him any more trouble. Yet, he not only doesn’t die, when he regains consciousness, he appears hardly injured by these grievous impacts. With his Aura up and ready, he proves difficult for Yang to put down, even when she uses her Semblance to empower her blows. She actually needed two Super bursts against him!

Aside from that, perhaps one can also learn how to fully activate one’s Aura without other people noticing.

Roman Torchwick, ambushed by Blake and finding her gun at his head, started a dialogue with Blake to stall for time... likely activating his Aura slowly and discreetly so that she wouldn’t notice, until he was ready to shoot an explosive round beneath them both, which affected Blake more thoroughly since it caught her by surprise.

Sienna Khan, tricked into thinking Adam meant to imprison her with his guards, and lacking the skill to activate her Aura discretely, would have rightly feared that getting ready for a fight would only provoke one from the traitors. Always trying to avoid a battle she couldn’t win, she deliberately left herself defenseless, and the terrifying attack power of her best warrior proved too much for her to resist without any preparation.

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It’s unclear.

We know that Weiss Schnee suffered a scarring injury in her fight against the Armor Gigas Grimm, and despite that went on to use even more Aura on glyphs and especially Dust than she did before receiving that injury. She did not, however, take another hit. That one punch was the only blow the monster landed on her; for all we know, the next hit might very well have killed her instantly.

There was no visible Aura-breakage in the White Trailer. One could argue that the visual cue of Aura-breakage didn’t exist until Rooster Teeth introduced it in Volume 3… but we have also never explicitly seen a character fall to 0% Aura before Volume 3.

In Volume 1, we saw Jaune arc fall dangerously low on Aura in his fight with the Ursa Major, but “low” is not the same thing as “empty”. The Ursa’s last blow certainly would have broken his Aura, but it was definitely not broken before that point.

In Glynda’s dueling class, Cardin didn’t break Jaune’s Aura to win that fight, because Glynda called the match once Jaune fell below 20%. Likewise, we can assume that Glynda declared Pyrrha the victor by reducing Team CRDL to such levels in Volume 2.

In the Vytal Tournament, only one character on-screen was reduced to 0% Aura before Mercury: Weiss. However, her Aura was broken off-camera, as the shot turned away from the fire blast that she pushed Flynt into. Therefore, this isn’t a case of a visual effect being forgotten, but instead hidden for later when it would have more impact.

So, it’s unclear. Maybe Weiss’ Aura broke from that one punch, and the traces of Aura her soul regenerated afterwards were enough to fuel her Dust and Glyphs afterwards. Or maybe her Aura simply couldn’t spend itself fast enough to go empty before the Grimm’s armored fist broke her skin, leaving her with a bleeding wound and Aura left to burn.

Though it’s also worth noting that Yang could suffer a blow to the head bad enough to knock her unconscious but not so bad as to break her Aura, and afterwards she had enough Aura to survive the trainwreck, fight more Grimm, and punch cars hard enough to turn them into deadly missiles.

Adam could also stab Blake through the gut, and yet a minute later she could summon the best Shadow clone we’d seen up to that point.

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Some hunters learn how to weaponize their Auras beyond performing simple feats of super-strength or channeling their Aura through their weapons. Without using a Semblance, they project their Auras outward as a violent force.

Lie Ren injected his Aura directly into a Grimm with a bare-handed strike, creating a shockwave that caused the head of the King Taijitu to explode. Fox Alistair performed a more advanced version, whereby the shockwave hurled an Ursa Major away from him before it exploded, its own bones shredding the other Grimm around it.

Blake Belladonna and Qrow Brawnen hurl their Aura from their swords as forceful, slashing winds. These ranged attacks inflict impressive damage at range, and probably hit even harder up-close. Jaune Arc appears to be learning this technique. This may simply a projectile form of the technique used by Ren and Fox, but rarely used against opponents of the same caliber because of how easily another hunter could dodge it.

More uniquely, Yang Xiao Long can generate fiery, concussive explosions, apparently without using Dust.

Lie Ren and Ruby Rose have also impossibly treated their respective weapons as boomerangs at least once each, which may be related to the technique by which Ren very briefly manages to fly.

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