Editing Feng Shui (section)

==Archetypes & Schticks==
Character classes in Feng Shui are called '''types''' (or '''archetypes''' in Feng Shui 2) and represent cliche action movie characters, like the drifter in way over his head, the vengeful ghost, the kung-fu cop, and the junkyard rat who can fix anything. Feng Shui has a metric fuckton of types available thanks to the 90s supplement treadmill [[White Wolf]] made so much money on, and even Feng Shui 2 has 37 archetypes in the core rulebook. For the sake of keeping this article from taking over the wiki, we instead talk about the different types of schticks, which are the primary determinant of what your character can do and work well for dividing characters into broad categories.
*'''Gun schticks''' are for characters that are good with guns. Duh. These mostly consist of passive benefits for using guns, or active techniques for a quick boost, and are the simplest schticks in this way, since the only major downsides to guns are occasional supply issues outside the Present day juncture and the ruleset governing reloading, and/or dramatically throwing away empty guns to draw fresh ones.  "Guns" also covers bow-wielding characters, and using a bow has the benefit of less time spent reloading at a dramatically inconvenient moment.
*'''Fu schticks''' are for super kung fu powers with names like "Claw of the Dragon" and shit. No Kamehamehas, though, that's for Sorcery. You spend "fu points" derived from your Chi [[stat]] to activate your fu schticks and then you do crazy [[Fist of the North Star]] bullshit. Notably, many fu powers also work with melee weapons.  If you're playing a transformed animal, you get a bonus to use fu schticks that are named after what kind of animal you are.
*'''Transformed Animal schticks''' govern the supernatural powers wielded by intelligent animals that turned themselves human through spiritual refinement and their descendants. A whole assload of these things, separated into thematic buckets based on what animal you are; they tend to have more passive and out-of-combat benefits than fu schticks. Transformed dragons can learn any transformed animal schtick. Feng Shui 2 removed all the transformed animals except for transformed crabs and dragons, paring everyone else down to a bare-minimum stat block with access to the animal schticks that were left in for dragons to use.
*'''Magical schticks''' represent the Sorcery powers you know. Fireballs, divination, sensing chi flow, stuff like that. Magic is extra-dangerous for transformed animals, because exposure to certain types of magic makes them turn into animals again-- and they can't change back, so it's effectively instant death. (Feng Shui 2 turned this into a "three strikes" system that increasingly impacts the story until you get reverted for real.) The main drawbacks of Sorcery are that it gets modifiers based on the juncture you're in (unless you're in contemporary Hong Kong) and getting a Way-Awful Failure on a Sorcery check turns the spell back on you in gruesome fashion.
*'''Creature schticks''' represent the powers and traits of supernatural creatures from the ancient past. This can be anything from razor-sharp claws to shapeshifting to stealing peoples' chi by sticking quills in their testicles. Characters that can take these usually can't be healed by doctors from outside their native juncture because medicine from anywhere else can't handle their alien biology.
*'''Arcanowave schticks''' cover the ability to use arcanowave devices, living tools and weapons grown in labs by the Buro and infused with the souls of demons and other supernatural creatures from 69 AD. Doesn't sound bad? They all look like depictions of Chinese demons filtered through the mind of H.R. Giger. Oh, and they can mutate you if you use them for extended periods.  Characters with these schticks ''and'' Creature schticks are immune to mutation, but they can only be healed by doctors experienced in ''both'' medicine from ancient China and the dark future.
*'''Hardware schticks''' were cyborg stuff introduced in the ''Gorilla Warfare'' supplement for the Jammers.  Since they effectively and completely patch out many of the issues the arcanowave schticks had, and can be traded with them at a 1:1 rate at character creation, lots of people did it.
*'''Scroungetech schticks''' replace arcanowave devices in Feng Shui 2, and represent shit scavenged from the wreckage of the Future juncture. These don't mutate you, even if they're named after arcanowave devices from the first edition.
*'''Mutant schticks''' are unique to Feng Shui 2, and are basically magical schticks without the juncture modifiers, but with a random "miscast" table that you risk having to roll on every time you use a mutant power. They're only used by mutants from the Future juncture and tend to have pithy names like "How Magnets Work" and "Some Damn Thing With Playing Cards."