[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by tbone

For me, what's missing most is the answer to this question: What well-known fictional characters/abilities are imbuements trying to address? Are there some good examples of "Imbuements are perfect for modeling X", where X is a movie character, a comic book superpower, a D&D ability, etc.?

I think specific examples from fiction/gaming would really bring imbuements to life for muddled minds like mine.

I'm not sure I can think of any characters who use all imbuements, but that's because they're designed to model a pretty wide variety of effects. Some specific examples, though:

• For movies/TV, you've got Wanted, which involves the protagonist being trained in secret assassin techniques that let him do things like curve bullets' paths in flight, or Naruto, which includes characters with the ability channel "chakra", the supernatural power source, into weapons to give them special properties.
• In comics, you've got characters like Gambit, who can "charge up" practically any object with energy to make it explosive when thrown, or any number of manga characters who can do things with swords that no realistic person has any hope of accomplishing - Kenshin Himura, who can casually cut through stone objects with his sword, is a good example.
• In RPGs, this sort of thing is actually quite common. One example that springs immediately to mind is the D&D Monk class, who can, at a certain level, treat their unarmed attacks as if they were magic weapons that can overcome the resistance of various creatures that can't be harmed by mundane weapons.
• Video games also provide quite a lot of examples. A lot of the "ki attacks" in games like Street Fighter are quite nicely modelled as imbuements.