Homebrew RPG - Thoughts on Dragon Ball

Ok so in my pursuit to build a game system I've hit upon a quandary while watching Dragon Ball Super.  In the anime and manga it never explicitly states what training offers, physical strengths, and in general what how the whole Ki thing works, not to mention what exactly occurs when a character transforms - is it just a boost in ki, or is there more going on there?

I'll give an example of where my thoughts are taking me here.

Attributes (the core of what makes up a character) - These are set scores that I'm thinking won't increase often.  Now in the show character's with large muscles aren't shown as being slowed or inhibited by their body mass...so no reason to correct this in a tabletop RPG.

Stats (The derived factor from Attributes) - Here is where the attributes factor into the things the character can do.  Now the question here is whether these can be improved individually on their own, or if you need to buy traits to improve these.

Skills - So far I'm happy with what I want to do here.

Traits - The idea behind a trait is that it offers some sort of bonus or benefit to what the character can do.  For example there's Improved Strength which increases aspects of how the Strength Stat is figured.  But along these lines I could just simplistically offer this to be done with Stat increases.  Others may allow the character to use weapons proficiently, or offset penalties for range.

Powers - Ok so here is the kicker.  Now I laid out my initial thoughts of having 3 separate means of having powers: ki, magic, psychic.  Now Magic and Psionics are fairly easy to figure out.  However its Ki that is difficult to figure and have it feel like it is apart of that world.

Now ki is not something characters seem to always have in supply.  Initially they need to draw it out or "power up".  From there it's used to enhance themselves physically, create energy blasts, fly, and so forth.  Eventually as things progress the characters can fly without needing to draw out their ki.  Then there is the matter of Godly Ki.

Scrapping the original thought I had on this I figured I would source this out to those who read and follow my blog and get some thoughts on this.

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Gathering Ki:  Characters have 3 options on how they may gather ki to use.

1. Use Melee attacks to build up ki.  When characters make melee attacks they build up X amount of ki with each hit.
2. Limited Draw:  Here the character uses an action to draw out a limited amount of ki adding to what they may generate with melee attacks.
3. Power Up (Max Draw):  Here time is taken to draw out the maximum amount of ki you can in one go, leaving yourself open for attack as you concentrate on drawing out as much ki as you can.

A character has 0 ki when they are out of combat typically (unless they possess some special trait that allows for this to be ignored).  Once enough ki is generated the character can start using various techniques which will use their ki.  Characters will have a "max" ki level.  This is a number of ki points that they physically stand to have at one point.  Exceeding this Max is possible but the person who does so will typically suffer penalties for going beyond the amount of power that they can typically handle.  An exception is the character is using a technique with the "charge" option.

The other way of raising one's max level of ki is via transformations.  There's two forms of transformation that I'm thinking of based upon what has been shown in the anime/manga.  First there are the traditional Super Saiyan forms; then there is the compressed forms used by Frieza which work in reverse, where the characters normal form is suppressed with multiple transformation levels due to the amount of power that is there being more than what the character can normally handle (but how to go about dealing with that).


Some of you may be asking, but what about Battle Power/Power Levels?  Power Levels are abstract means of determining one's strength in relation to another.  For example if one has a Power Level of 10,000 then a person who has a Power Level of 5,000 should stand no chance against them.  Now I will have options on figuring a character's Power Level, but it likely won't figure quite the same as that in DBZ.



With all that said, does anyone have any thoughts they may want to share?  I'm open to advise and suggestions.