The game uses standard polyhedral dice from d4 to d12 and characters are defined by three Basic Qualities, a small number of Qualities, Weaknesses and Quirks, their numerical values for various Skills and, of course, an ever-growing list of Special Moves and eventually Super Moves. The main selling point of the game is that Special Moves are custom-made by picking Elements and Liabilities from a vast list of options, allowing for characters to feel more and more unique as they increase their Power Level and acquire more options and abilities.
This game contains examples of:
- Action Commands: The game encourages to give Special Moves a series of inputs with a complexity equal to that move's Level. This has no mechanical benefits but is very much in tone with the game's goal to emulate Fighting Games.
- Character Level: Called "Power Level" in this game and ranging from Power Level 1 to Power Level 8. The game also provides rules for Sub-Bosses and Bosses who have access to Power Level 9 and 10, with the option to add more points to Life Bar and Fighting Spirit to a Power Level 10 Fighter to create a familiar kind of Fighting Game bosses.
- Combos: The "Combo" Combat Skill. It determines how many hits you can string together and also serves as a limit to how many additional hits you can sneak in with Moves featuring the "Easy to Combo" Element.
- Counter-Attack: The "Tactics" Combat Skill. All Fighters can use Tactics to counter with a Basic Move and several Elements introduce additional ways of using Tactics to counter attacks.
- Cycle of Hurting: Zig-zagged. Getting stunned via being inflicted enough damage in a single turn can potentially set up a character to receive even more damage, but being hit in a stunned state cannot stun the defender again and their Stun Threshold is temporarily increased whenever they recover from being stunned. This is more exaggerated in situations with more than one combatant on each side as characters could pile up on an opponent to stun an opponent more often even as their Stun Threshold rises.
- Event-Driven Clock: There is a time limit for each fight, but time itself doesn't progress until all combatants have finished their actions, where a Time Roll is then performed to check how many units of time have passed before narrating the results of the turn. Combatants can spend Fighting Spirit to manipulate the result of the Time Roll, thus being able to influence how much or little time has passed.
- Experience Points: Called "Glory" in this game. Noteworthy in that certain actions like open displays of cowardice, being defeated in combat and getting stunned in combat can reduce Glory, potentially even reducing a character's Power Level if the loss of glory stacks up too much. Certain character options also further introduce methods of how to gain or lose Glory.
- Fixed-Floor Fighting: As expected from a Fighting Game TRPG, with 2nd Edition supporting both "Band Maps" for traditional 2D fighting à la Street Fighter and "Battle Grids" allowing lateral movement on a 5x5 square grid not unlike Tekken. Can be averted by establishing Environmental Hazards for a match, with creative use of Pits, Elevation Changes and Walls approximating a Platform Fighter.
- Glass Cannon: A character with Strength 2 and Stamina -1. This raises their base damage by two die steps, to a d8 when it is normally a d4. However, the negative Stamina allows opponents to increase all damage they deal by one die step.
- Stone Wall: The obvious inversion of a character with Stamina 2 and Strength -1, reducing all incoming damage by two die steps but dealing only d2 base damage.
- Grappling with Grappling Rules: Averted. "Throw" is a simple Element that is effectively a combination of smaller benefits and restrictions while "Sustained Hold" simply stops the defender from acting when being hit and deals additional damage if the attacker wins the Initiative roll on the next turn.
- Life Meter: Your health is called a "Life Bar" in reference to this.
- Mana Meter: In two flavors, Super Energy and Fighting Spirit. Super Energy works as expected, gradually building up a resource until there is enough to pay the cost for using a powerful Super Move. As of Fighting Spirit, depending on the setting and Director, it may represent various hard-to-define characteristics of a character, like willpower, that allows them to push their limits, or even represent the players themselves, tapping into their ability to focus and stay cool while playing a fictional video game featuring their characters during a tournament match. In all cases, spending Fighting Spirit allows to temporarily improve defenses and attacks or using bigger dice for Initiative and/or Control for a single turn.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Thugs in the Thug Thrashing combat sub-system. As part of having simplified attributes and mechanics, Thugs have a Life Save instead of a Life Bar and receiving damage forces the Thug to roll a 1d10. If the roll is equal to or less than said Life Save, they remain in combat no matter the amount of damage received. Up to ten thugs with identical stats can group up and only one thug gets removed per failed Life Save. To even the playing field, high Strength, moves with lots of damage and combos can inflict penalties on Life Save before rolling and combos can also force multiple thugs in a group to roll for the Life Save instead of inflicting a penalty.
- Scratch Damage: Averted. Successfully using the Defense Skill, which represents physically blocking an attack, negates damage just as well as Evasion and Tactics. Played straight when a Move has "Always Does Damage" and/or the Super Move-exclusive "Breakthrough".
- Second Hour Superpower: Fighters gain access to Super Energy and can build their first Super Move after reaching Power Level 3.
- Stance System: The "Multiple Styles" Quality can be purchased during character creation, effectively creating two exclusive lists of Special Moves and requiring the use of a specific move to switch between them. That Quality can be acquired multiple times, adding even more lists into the mix.
- Lesser versions featuring temporary stances or specific sequences of Special Moves are also available through Liabilities like "Move Sub-Set" and "Multi-Part Attack". Nothing stops players from combining these with Multiple Styles.
- Three-Stat System: The Basic Qualities are Strength, Speed and Stamina. Strength increases the base damage of all moves; Speed improves either the Initiative roll or the Control roll as chosen by the player and Stamina reduces all damage received by opponents. Characters assign one point to two Basic Qualities each, or two points into a single one at the cost of turning another Basic Quality into a -1. When putting two points into Speed, they can be put into only Initiative, only Control, or one point each can be put into both. Once Basic Qualities have been defined, they cannot be changed as they form a general archetype for the character.
- The "Round 2" supplement for 1st Edition introduced an optional rule to turn Ki into a Basic Quality instead of a Combat Skill. Since the core function of Ki is replacing Strength for calculating the damage of moves with the "Ranged" Element, building a melee-focused or ranged-focused character with that rule enabled will have predictable results.
