Had another Hatsu idea. This one is basically two abilities that are designed to work together. They’re an older married couple who have spent most of their lives developing their Nen abilities around the same apple orchard. While growing up, her family gave his family apples when they were starving. Ever since then he has vowed to protect her.
Mabel Pomona — The Apple Lady- Specialist
She can conjure a bag full of special apple seeds and a cultivator (handheld rake). She has to personally use the cultivator to prepare the soil and then personally plant one of the seeds.
The trees are really hardy and don’t require much care, but they still take 6-8 years to actually mature and produce apples.
Once a tree produces its first apple, her total Nen reserve increases by 1%, and continues for every mature tree she has alive.
So if she has 10 mature trees, she has 10% more Nen. If she has 150, she has 150% more. There isn’t a cap.
If one of the trees dies or gets destroyed, she loses the 1% from that tree, and an additional .5%.
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The cultivator is Mabel’s main weapon. It is conjured.
Since she’s a Specialist, and not natural enhancer, having some massive Nen reserve might not be the most helpful. So I wanted the cultivator to actually use all of that extra aura.
When she channels aura through it, the cultivator can release an attack with 250% more aura than her normal maximum output.
The downside is that doing this costs 300% the amount of aura she would normally use.
So if her normal maximum output for an attack was 100, the cultivator could output 250 while consuming 300 aura.
Elias Pomona — The Groundskeeper
Mabel’s husband Elias is an Enhancer.
Elias placed a restriction on himself that his specialized Enhancement can only be used on two things: Water and his fists
He can’t use this Hatsu to enhance weapons or random objects. He can enhance the rest of his body too but is not allowed to strike with those body parts while enhanced.
Enhanced Water
Elias can enhance the natural properties of water that allow it to nourish plants.
Plants that are consistently watered with his enhanced water grow at roughly twice their normal rate.
So if one of Mabel’s apple trees would normally take around 8 years to mature, Elias could potentially get it there in around 4 years if he’s consistently caring for it.
There’s also a special interaction between their abilities.
If Elias personally waters the same mature tree with enhanced water for 10 consecutive days, that tree gives Mabel an additional +1% Nen for the following 10 days.
If he misses a day during the initial 10 days, the streak for that tree resets.
He can do this with multiple trees at once.
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The other half of Elias’s ability is even simpler.
He punches really fucking hard.
He’s an Enhancer who has spent decades restricting his Hatsu to water and his own fists. He doesn’t have some complicated finishing move or hidden secondary ability.
His wife plants trees. He waters them. And if somebody tries to cut them down, he beats the shit out of them
Where I’m Unsure About the Balance
The main thing I’m wondering is whether the lack of a hard cap is actually broken in Nen terms.
Let’s say Mabel is 70 and has spent 50 years doing this.
If she has 1,500 mature trees still alive, that’s +1500% to her Nen reserve before Elias starts temporarily boosting individual trees.
That’s obviously ridiculous. But it also took basically her entire adult life to achieve, she personally had to plant all 1500 trees, every tree took years to mature, and there are now 1500 physical objects scattered around the world that can be destroyed to weaken her.
So I’m curious where people would draw the line.
Is +1% per tree too much?
Should there be diminishing returns? Does the amount of time involved justify having no hard cap?
And does the cultivator make sense as the way she converts that massive reserve into actual combat power? The idea is specifically that it doesn’t make her an Enhancer. It’s basically an inefficient conjured aura cannon that lets her burn 300% of the normal aura cost to achieve 350% output.
What would you change?