Chienese Elemental Powers + Sorcery = Win?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Leynok

I haven't got the book in question, so I can't say anything about using it as the book intended. When used as Sorcery though, they will be Alternate Abilities of Each other and thus you'll only have one or the other active at once... Unless you use those options to have multiple active at once, in which case, yeah there is no problem.

It's really contrary to the intent of the original system. The idea is that you pervade your body with the esoteric essence of Wood, or Metal, or Stone, and you gain the power to support heavy loads that's part of that essence. But pervading your body with two different essences at once? Especially when Earth creates Metal, Metal cuts Wood, and Wood covers Earth? I think at least you'd be asking for unpredictable interactions. But I might just say "Roll vs. Will or Meditation to interweave two of those, at -5 for Metal/Wood or Wood/Earth; on a normal failure you only get the dominant one, one a critical failure something goes wrong."

Of course, you're free to treat the elemental powers as a mere toolkit of spells that anyone can cast and combine. But the idea of CEP was that this kind of magic pervades and transforms the person of the mage; it's not meant to be just a neutral tool.