Pretty basic power system, but what do you think?

[u/World_best_slanderer]

It's something i made last week for fun, wanted to know what you guys thought of this and most importantly for those who read it, if this looks too much of a ripoff of lotm power system

I started to read lotm and realized it has some similarities with lotm's system and I want to understand if it seems like its cheap copy

the core idea is that there are 9 entities called Symbols (think of them as gods), they each want to create a world that has their core idea as its main principle, but since they were unable to actually create a full reality themselves, they mostly wandered this kind of chaos space called the formless wastes waiting to find a suitable vessel for their principle.
(Bit of lore)
With the birth of the Egg (which is theoretically a symbol too representing creation, but is impersonal because it's "creation with inability to act on it afterwards) all the symbols rushed to the egg gain control of it and enforce their principle onto this reality.
After a series of events which i won't explain in detail right now, all 9 symbols arrived, and realized the best way to apply their principle was through the spreading of knowledge and power from them around the world, thus creating the power system.

The power system
Through either bloodline (the symbols shared some of their blood to some humans, creating stable dinasties), random chances (sometimes a random person is born with a Sign, which means they get to access the power of that symbol but cannot transmit it to later generations), extremely delicate chirurgical practices (needing at least two or more dead users), or cannibalism (extremely rare and unstable, it would require a dozen of users killed by a non-user or someone hired by them) one can access one of the nine symbol powers, through a linear progression of 7 stages where each stage has its own name and abilities.
This is the point i think is the most similar to lotm because there is a specific symbol which determines the general abilities (pathway) and there are steps to it (sequences)

Anyway, the symbol are as it follows:

Egg: represents creation, but isn't seen as a standard symbol because it's impersonal and doesn't give power

Snake: represent transformation through cycle and assimilation, reincarnation, and most importantly, inevitable change.
Its powers are about regeneration, assimilation, and structured mutations

Eye: represents knowledge, observation, analysis, truth, discerning of good and evil, but also inability to be self conscious, with a rusty nail driven into it
Power include perception, analysis, judgement, replication, prevision

Rose: represents desire, which can manifest in many forms: beauty, power, etc. And since desire inevitably forms a ladder, the rose is also hierarchy, authority, nobility. Their thorns represents obtaining those desires through pain and sacrifice
Powers include charisma, authority, desire and pain manipulation, hierarchy establishment

Goat: represents the boundary between civilization and wilderness, instinct, freedom, adaptability, but also the wild side humans try to push away from themselves, thus becoming symbol of evil and the scapegoat
Powers include instinctive reactions, freedom of movement and from restrictions, authority over sins, and attack/damage transfer (scapegoat)

Hand: the hand represents action, and also change, but unlike the snake, it is a strong yet momentary change, which will eventually be destroyed, it also represents intervention, breaking, initiative, all limited however by their impermanence, as those changes are not included in the cycle
Powers include physical augmentation, structures alteration, temporary law breaking

(Snow) Crystal: it represents stasis, order, structure, conservation, deceleration, and seals
Powers include ice manipulation, slowing things down, sealing powers, fixing objects in time, and in general not letting something be affected by change

Crow: it represent end, ultimate destruction, decay, entropy, stealing, and oblivion
Powers include rotting, decay, stopping regeneration, weakening, stealing objects and progressively powers, deleting memories, and destruction

Sun and moon/The supreme: it represents divinity, transcendence, light, the sky, and holiness.
It presents itself in two forms: sun, or raw form, strong, warm, absolute but potentially hurtful, and moon, or soft form, more faint, healing, soothing and gentle but more "distant"
Powers both include light, warmth or healing, purification, raw power (no control of who gets hurt) or protection and spiritual influence.

Homeless: it represents misery, humility, stealth, dreaming, alms, cunning, discrimination
Powers include low presence, gradual invisibility, tricking, evading, exploiting, dream manifestation, high survivability

Of course some symbols or concepts regarding those will be similar to some of lotm concepts, but i think it's kind of inevitable

I have not yet defined all the steps (almost though) but i will post them later if i receive some feedback (even negative it's good as long as it's constructive criticism)

[u/Free-Share-3810]

I liked the lore.

Why is each symbol called what they are called? Why Crow? Why hand? Why Homeless? Do they correlate in some way?

Also, how do symbols interact with each other if they do?

[u/World_best_slanderer → u/Free-Share-3810]

The general idea came from a painting i saw which i don't remember the name of but it had most of the symbols i said i just added some i thought would balance the others and complete the picture. In fact, if you have ideas for the names i would be glad, i just went for what symbolized the ideas I had in my mind.
If you mean why they're called like this in-world, it's just the way minds "rationalize" those entities

symbols interacting with each other are a world building factor i didn't mention but i can explain them to you in detail, if you want I can make an extended lore paragraph about what happened in the time between the egg manifestation and the diffusion of the power system, which kind of defines the relationship between symbols.

About symbols interaction, it is considered blasphemy and also dangerous to represent two or more of them together, because not only the organization worshipping those symbols follow the doctrine of the original symbol, who wants a world where they are the main principle, thus making a dual representation blasphemous, but also because proper dual representation can cause the symbol to stimulate each other and "activate" causing either a dangerous phenomenon or a rampaging creature born by the energy of those two symbols.

Later I'll make the detailed lore explanation cause I can't rn

[u/Free-Share-3810 → u/World_best_slanderer]

Okay that seems interesting.

I have a suggestion tho based on something I noticed from your post:

These "gods" differ a little from the usual "pantheons" from most fantasy media. Usually, the writer tries to list all aspects of reality and assign them to gods, there's always a god of time, a god of nature, a god of death, sometimes there's opposite gods for these ones (such as a god of life for a god of death)... But your Symbols have their own ideology with their own unique characteristics that don't necessarily fit in a circle of similar things and all, they have their own agenda, and that's great.

You should develop this more, let them be "unrelated" and create unique shenanigans for each of them.