Hi all, I'm a newbie to this so please forgive any stupid questions. Okay, first of all, what is the difference between recovering ki, and accumulating it?

Also, i just can't quite grasp how to calculate the ki cost for Techniques. Even on the pre-made ones, i don't get how the Excisum Aeris tech costs 4 agility ki, 4 dex ki and 2 power ki. So some help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

the difference between accumulating and recovering is simple. accumulating ki is what you do during a turn to gather up energy to use a ki technique, (think Kamehameha from Dragonball) while recovering ki is gaining back the points used on abilities and techniques, usually 1 point in each stat per hour.

as for calculating ki costs while creating a technique, first off you have primary ability cost and secondary ability cost. you can only have 1 primary ability cost, anything else added is secondary. now depending on which ki ability you add to the technique, you will have a main stat for it, and 4 optional stats. basically what you do is you can reduce the main stat cost to place it in a different stat, with an additional cost.

e.g. say you take Attack ability and Augmented Damage. you say you place Attack ability as your primary, making Augmented damage secondary automatically. lets start simple. lets pretend we want +75 attack and + 75 damage. you see the +75 attack has a primary score of 8 ki with it's main stat Dexterity. if you don't like the fact that it costs 8 dexterity ki, you can reduce the cost of the main stat to place it into, say, agility. now agility has a cost modifier of +2. what this means is that, once you move points into this stat, no matter how many, you will add +2 to the cost at the end. lets try moving 3 points from dexterity into agility. it goes (8 - 3 = 5) so you get a Dexterity cost of 5, and place the removed ki into agility (3 +2 = 5) giving a final result of 5 agility.

now lets move on to the augmented damage. remember that this one is a secondary, so you take the cost of 9 ki. this one's main stat is Strength. now i'm sure you agree with me that 9 ki cost is alot for such a simple technique. let's reduce this one also, but this time, we will split it between 2 optional stats. lets bring down the cost by 4 this time. (9 - 4 = 5) final strength ki cost is 5. now you split the removed cost as you wish. lets keep it simple and say we will split it 2 and 2. we will place these in Willpower and Constitution. so (2+1=3) 3 willpower ki cost, and (2 + 1) 3 Constitution ki cost.

finally we total all the costs and technique abilities like this, and make sure you give it a nice name.

Crushing slash

+75 attack ability

+75 Damage Augmentation

Ki costs

5 Dex, 5 Agi, 5 Str, 3 Wil, 3 Con.

now for that pre-made technique he made the long-distance attack the main ability, costing 4 power ki, and initiative being second has 4 agility cost. he took 2 ki cost from power(long-distance attack) and put it into dexterity(cost +2)

if i missed anything, let me know. have fun

A good way of thinking about it is a bank metaphor. You have so much money in the bank (which is to say, Ki in reserve), but you can't spend it until you've withdrawn it and have it as cash in hand. Thus, you have to accumulate the Ki to use it. Once spent, it's gone, and you have to replenish it. Ki Abilities (not Techniques), like Ki Healing and Recovery, can pull directly from the bank (in the same way that summoners don't need to accumulate Zeon).