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Ability Mixing

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"Talisman math: levitation plus speed equals flight."
— Jade, Jackie Chan Adventures, "Demon World: Part 2"

Ability Mixing is when a character can combine two or more spells/weapons/whatever and create a new attack with the attributes of all of them. May appear alongside Combo Platter Powers and/or some form of copy ability, or Item Crafting when combining weapons or items to get all of their abilities in one, or in settings with multiple magic systems.

An example would be a magic using person with a fireball spell and an ice spell. With ability mixing, he'd be able to create a new spell, such as a fire ball that spreads ice.

Supertrope to Yin-Yang Bomb, when you mix two abilities that are diametric opposites, and subtrope of Meta Power.

Compare:

  • Bifurcated Weapon or Mix-and-Match Weapon for when you can combine two weapons together for a new style/powerup change.
  • Combination Attack where you combine attacks from two (or more) separate people; here, one does it by oneself.
  • Combo for a sequence of attacks which flow into each other and leave the opponent unable to respond.
  • Elemental Fusion for combining different Elemental Powers to make a new one.
  • Elemental Punch and Spell Blade for striking with both physical and magical power at the same time.
  • Fusion Dance and Hybrid Power for combining two (or more) people at once (one's directly, the other's through breeding), usually with all of their abilities.
  • The Red Mage, people who are proficient in two or more multiple magic systems at once. They may or may not be able to mix their magic systems.
  • Set Bonus for how equipping some set of equipment gives you special effects.
  • Shooting At Your Own Projectiles for fusing projectile attacks together or using one to alter the properties of another.

Contrast Mutually Exclusive Magic. See also All Your Powers Combined. Technician/Performer Team-Up can be seen as a more mundane version of this.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Avesta of Black and White: The Star Spirit's Divine Blessings is something that characters in the setting can call upon to receive various buffs and boons depending on which blessing was invoked. Those of higher rank who carry more charges of these blessings are able to use several at once and are able to combine them to create brand new effects. For instance, Magsarion is able to combine 1 offensive blessing with 3 healing ones to create an effect that causes the enemies self recovery abilities to go into overdrive, causing what would normally heal wounds to turn into the formation of malformed tumors that then break down into dust.
  • Black Clover: Rades eventually learns how to create zombies stitched together from multiple dead bodies. Due to how his resurrection magic works, this type of zombie has affinities for every magic type of its constituent bodies, and thus they're able to cast multiple-element spells that would normally be very difficult or impossible for a normal person to perform.

  • In Dragon Ball Z:
  • Dragon Ball Super: Goku learns to combine the Kaio-ken with his Super Saiyan Blue form.
  • Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai:
  • Fairy Tail: Rufus Lore's Memory Make Magic allows him to take multiple different magic spells he's memorized and combine them into new spells, even if the spells are from wholly different magic types. For instance, he combines Olga's Lightning God Slayer Magic with Gray's Ice Make Magic to create the "Sword of Frozen Black Lightning".
  • Fate/Zero: Kiritsugu Emiya possesses a magic called Innate Time Control, which allows him to alter his body's speed as much as he needs to. However it's initially Awesome, but Impractical because using it damages his body. He eventually gets around this by using Avalon to become Nigh-Invulnerable.
  • In Hunter × Hunter:
    • Most of the advanced techniques of Nen manipulation consist of using multiple basic techniques at the same time. A technique for focusing 100% of the user's aura into one part of the body, for instance, is described as a combination of the techniques for releasing, shaping and suppressing aura.
    • Chrollo is a straighter example, particularly later in the series. His main ability, Skill Hunter, allows him to steal powers and place them into a book. Once stolen, he can use them as he pleases. During his duel with Hisoka, Chrollo uses Gallery Fake, which creates nonliving clones of whatever or whomever he touches, and combines it with Order Stamp, which brings movement to inanimate objects that follow the user's commands. When this proves insufficient to deal with Hisoka, Chrollo then adds Sun and Moon: Paired Destruction, which marks things as bombs. Together, these three powers allow Chrollo to generate an endless horde of explosive zombies that chase after Hisoka wherever he goes. This is what ultimately overwhelms Hisoka and kills him.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
    • In Stardust Crusaders, Joseph Joestar can use his Stand Hermit Purple to extend the reach of his hamon. In the final fight against DIO, he wraps his body in the hamon-coated vines to keep the vampire from immediately killing him, though DIO found a way through by throwing a knife at his throat in stop-time.
    • In Diamond is Unbreakable, once he gets his hand on Stray Cat, Yoshikage Kira can charge Stray Cat's air bubble with Killer Queen's explosives, turning them into exploding air-bubbles he fires at his enemies.
    • In Steel Ball Run, Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli use the Spin in sync with their Stands to boost their overall damage. For Johnny, he uses Tusk to fire his fingernails, which become deadly bullets from his Spin's rotation energy.
  • In Kill la Kill, during her battle with Junketsu Ryuko, Satsuki combines Senketsu Senjin and Senketsu Shippu to try and turn the battle in her favor. Later Ryuko and Satsuki combine the forms against their mother, Ragyo.
  • Metroid: Samus and Joey: Golon, one of a group of villains who stole Samus Aran's weapons, wields both the Morph Ball and Screw Attack, which he combines to transform himself into a deadly rolling sphere.
  • Naruto has this as a core concept in several parts of the story.
    • Beyond the standard five types of elemental jutsu, a number of Secret Arts exist for combining two elements together to create a more powerful one - most of these are Kekkei Genkai note  (abilities unique to a specific bloodline). For example Haku's unique Ice style is the result of Wind and Water.
    • The Tsuchikage practice the unique and incredibly powerful "Particle Style" - a combination of three elements (earth, wind and fire) referred to as a "Kekkei Tōta" note .
    • The Rasengan technique (a spinning, handheld Energy Ball) gets a few cases of this:
      • Initially, Naruto has trouble with the process of simultaneously spinning his chakra and holding it together, comparing it to "looking left and right at the same time". He gets around this through his mastery of the Shadow Clone technique - first he creates a copy of himself, then one of them holds the Rasengan while the other adds spin. As he improves in skill over the course of the series, he eventually stops needing this crutch.
      • The fourth Hokage intended for the Rasengan to be beefed up by adding one's Chakra element to it but died before he could. Naruto later is able to combine his wind element with it, creating the Rasenshuriken.
      • Still later, Naruto learns that the Rasengan was designed as an imitation of the Energy Ball fired by Tailed Beasts (using spinning to keep it stable) - when Naruto struggles to master the actual Tailed Beast Ball, he adds spinning to create a hybrid "Tailed Beast Rasengan" technique.
    • The Sage Chakra is created by mixing the physical and spiritual energy one has on their own, with the natural energy of the atmosphere. The resulting chakra is stronger than normal chakra and it can empower the user's strength and durability, as well as letting them manipulate natural energy as an offensive aura and empowering the jutsu performed with the chakra.
    • Later on, Naruto manages to combine the Sage Mode (the state where you're full of sage chakra) with his Kyuubi chakra/transformation for an even greater boost in power.
  • In Negima! Magister Negi Magi this is one of the abilities granted by Magia Erebea. Among other things, Negi uses it to combine Thousand Thunderbolts (an extremely powerful lightning spell used for wiping out armies) and Lightning Javelin (a spell which shoots spears of condensed lightning with high penetration power) to create the original spell Thunder God Titanslayer Lance, which concentrates the power of Thousand Thunderbolts against a single target. The true power of Magia Erebea, however, is to perform ability mixing with yourself as one of the abilities, causing your body to become imbued with the properties of spells.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • During the Sinnoh arc, Dawn came up with a contest strategy using Buneary's Ice Beam and Buizel's Aqua Jet, called "Ice Aqua Jet". When Ash became Buizel's trainer, he adopted this custom move as part of his unique battle strategy set for the season.
    • "Volt Tail", a move used by Pikachu, was the combination of a Volt Tackle ending with an Iron Tail.
    • "Flaming Seismic Toss" is a move used by Charizard, in which he used both Seismic Toss and Fire Spin at once.

    Comic Books 

    Fan Fiction 
  • All For Luz: There's a page for this section here.
  • Child of the Storm:
    • Maddie demonstrates the ability to merge her vast Psychic Powers with lightning to create an immensely powerful merged attack.
    • Harry, who she's fighting at the time, is one of the only psychics even in the same weight-class as her, and has a distinct talent for Mega Manning, jauntily thanks her for the idea and copies it... with fire.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami uses a Portal Network and a storage ability that's both not made to work with it and holding a frozen enemy to disintegrate the frozen enemy:
    if Taleth, [...] left the effective range of her Keeper powers, he would by necessity be shunted out of the transport. The fastest way for this to happen would be for Ami to activate the portal and move through. She picked a random, deserted destination and did so rather gleefully. The feeling in the back of her mind that she associated with her Keeper powers hiccupped, alerting her that something unfortunate had just happened.
    She flew back through the portal and saw that Taleth and his icy prison had reappeared, smeared out over an area of roughly ten square metres.
  • I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Become the Ultimate Defensive Hero: Kaede's quirk allows her to combine two quirks she has obtained into a new ability. Although this comes at the expense of losing the quirks following the combination.
  • In Hero Academia D×D, once Izuku gets both One For All and the Boosted Gear, and gets more familiar with both of them, he starts to combine their powers in interesting ways, like using the Boosts from the Boosted Gear to reinforce his bones so he can use more of One For All's power safely, or using One For All to empower his Dragon Shot attacks.
    • Momo also gets in on this, using her Fallen Angel Shock and Awe abilities on iron sand made by her Quirk to control it via electromagnetism.
  • Inheritance (Worm): The Butcher collective quickly discovers that Taylor's bug control power synergizes very well with many of their own abilities. Pyro's teleport is normally line-of-sight, but Taylor can instead teleport to the location of a bug. Stratego's planning power thrives on the real-time map of her surroundings provided by bug proprioception, not to mention infinite multitasking. And, of course, her ability to push emotions into her bugs means that she can selectively mute the voices so they don't manage to drive her insane.
  • Kwami Magi Homura Magica:
    • A Magical Girl who wears a Miraculous and activates it has access to the powers of both. Homura makes frequent use of the Miraculous she stole from Felix, Gabriel, and Adrien in tandem with her own powers during her fights with Adrien and Marinette.
    • Both Homura and Marinette Unify multiple Miraculouses, using their powers in tandem during their fight.
  • In One for All and Eight for the Ninth, One For All reaches its Singularity point several months earlier than in canon; it turns out to be because it holds another sub-Quirk within itself, called Bonding, which eventually allows Izuku to share abilities with his eight romantic partners, as well as modifying their own Quirks based on those of the vestiges of the previous users of One For All (through whom the Bonds are formed and maintained).

    Literature 
  • Cinnamon Bun: Chapter 38: "Port Royal" explains skill merging when Broccoli can merge her new Cute skill and Friendmaking into Seduction. She doesn't go for it.
    Merging skills will reset merged skill to the lowest rank. All skill and general points will be refunded. You may pick which slot the new skill will occupy as long as there is an available slot and the new skill matches class requirements.
  • Dragaera: Vlad Taltos dabbles in combining Eastern magic with Dragaeran sorcery and psionics. He once invokes a Sympathetic Magic principle of witchcraft to let a Psychic trace someone's mind through an object they used to own; later, he kludges all three disciplines together to eavesdrop on Telepathy, a feat previously thought to be impossible.
  • I Left the A-Rank Party: Yoke's ultimate spell inflicts all negative status effects, normally individual spells, on a single target.
  • I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: The looming "Psychic Hazard" of books 7-8 is initially explained as an organisation of downtrodden psychics somehow giving all humans the ability to read minds with no way to turn it off. In fact, Muggles gaining Psychic Powers is impossible - the Hazard is actually created when their leader Yang (who can normally only link minds within line of sight) gets his hands on a tool that can duplicate powers. He uses it to copy another member's clairvoyance abilities, thereby expanding his own powers to global range.
  • Log Horizon: "Adventurers" were originally autonomous Golems created by the land of Theldessia, designed to kill monsters and absorb their dangerous energies safely. However, the "intelligence" behind Adventurers is actually provided by Elder Tale, an Earth MMORPG set in a Theldessia-like world. When the minds of Elder Tale players are suddenly transported into Adventurer bodies, they're initially limited to using their abilities in the same rigid ways as the game, but in time can invent "Overskills" that create entirely new effects:
    • Adventurers normally cannot create food except through a videogame-style Item Crafting system - this food appears instantly and looks delicious, but is really just a tasteless mass of Pure Energy. Nyanta's "Home Cooking" Overskill consists of activating the Cooking skill while preparing food as he would on Earth, allowing him to create consumable items that have flavour and calories.
    • Some players with martial arts training have learned to take manual control of the motions in their attack skills, making them less predictable and allowing them to chain together attacks more easily.
    • Nureha's "Overlay" combines a roleplay-oriented skill from her Foxtail race (the ability to hide their Little Bit Beastly traits) with persuasion-based abilities from her Courtesan subclass, allowing her to transform into other people.
    • Shiroe's "Contract Art Ceremony" combines the mana redistribution abilities of his Enchanter class with the Scribe subclass's ability to create magic scrolls, inventing a Magically-Binding Contract that can transform Theldessian humans into Adventurers.
    • Akatsuki's "Shadow Lurk" combines three different movement, stealth and distraction skills in order to perform a Doppelgänger Attack.
  • Saintess Summons Skeletons: Skill fusion tickets are rare System rewards that allow someone to combine two skills into one, freeing up a skill slot and potentially creating more than the sum of the parts if the skills have good synergy together. There's also a safeguard ensuring that the ticket won't be consumed if no good combination exists. Sofia fuses her [Armor of Bones] and [Holy Wings of undeath] to create [Exalted Exoskeleton], resulting in her wings gaining the regenerative abilities of her armour, the armour gaining the holy light aura of her wings, and the whole assembly being more easily reshaped and manipulated, among other benefits.
  • Brandon Sanderson is known for creating rigid and consistent magic systems, then combining them to create new effects. Some prominent examples in The Cosmere include:
    • The main two systems in the Mistborn are allomancy, in which certain metals are ingested to gain special abilities, and Feruchemy, in which abstract traits like health or age are stored into metals to be used later. Someone with both abilities can burn a metal in which they've stored a trait to gain back ten times what they put in, overriding the normal Allomantic effect of the metal. This can be repeated, putting that tenfold amount back into another piece of metal and burning that to gain a hundred times the original investment, and so on, allowing potentially infinite gains as long as they have metal to burn. One character does this to remain ageless for a thousand years, though it's later revealed that this was an extremely inefficient way of gaining immortality. Another uses it to gain a massive Healing Factor.
    • In The Stormlight Archive, there are ten "surges" that each relate to some law of nature. There are also ten classes of Surgebinders, each having control over two of the surges. For instance, the Windrunners control gravitation and adhesion, allowing them to change the gravity of specific objects, and to make them stick together. While each surge works more or less the same for the two orders that posses, each order also has a unique surge that is the result of combining the two surges that only that order possesses both of. For example, both Windrunners and Bondsmiths can join objects together with the Surge of Adhesion, but Bondsmiths can extend this ability to forge oaths, joining people together.
    • When Nightblood, a magic sword originally from Warbreaker that sucks out the user's Breath to function, shows up in a later Stormlight Archive book, it is revealed that it can run just as easily on Stormlight. By Word of God any form of Investiture will work, such as Feruchemical storages.
  • In Magik Online users of the titular platform have the ability to combine two spells of different colors together to make a stronger, but more specialized spell at the cost of its two component spells. Examples include Glass Field, Lightbringer, Mad World, Killer Sense, and Bullseye.
  • Cradle Series: Lindon combines three separate Awesome, but Impractical abilities to produce a very powerful combo.
    • First, he splits his core in two. Normally, this would be highly impractical, since it means he has to build up both his cores separately, but it does allow him to use two separate kinds of madra.
    • Second, one of his cores is aligned with pure madra, the kind everyone is born with. Pure madra is excellent at disrupting other forms of madra, but can't be used for anything else, which is why just about everyone aligns their madra to a Path as soon as possible.
    • Third, he then aligns his other core to the Blackflame Path. This path is incredibly powerful, but channeling blackflame madra damages its user's body and mind. Lindon, however, can switch to his pure core and channel pure madra to cleanse his madra channels, allowing him to avoid the deleterious side effects of the Blackflame path.
  • Witch King: Kai the demon acquires Expositor magic through Ghost Memories. It's normally fueled by torture and Human Sacrifice, but with Kai's demonic Healing Factor and power over Life Energy, he can use himself as a nigh-inexhaustible power source, avoiding its corrupting effects.
  • The Perfect Run: Comes in two flavors.
    • First and most common, if someone takes two elixirs, the powers fight over their body. This results in the Genome and their powers both mutating uncontrollably until eventually they settle into some sort of equilibrium. For example, someone with an Orange power that lets her transform into gas at will takes a Red elixir that lets her send out shockwaves of vibrational energy, and the result is that she is permanently transformed into a gas that is constantly vibrating on a microscopic level so she destroys anything she touches. These people are called Psychos, as the fighting powers drive them insane, and they have to drink more elixirs to survive (though they don't gain more powers).
    • Second, some extremely rare people can take two elixirs without becoming Psychos. In this case, the abilities don't mix, they operate side-by-side independently. This means that Psychos have a higher chance of developing world-ending abilities, but two-powered people can still have incredible synergy between their powers.

    Live-Action TV 

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Ars Magica:
    • The Order of Odin worked its magic through highly specific but long-lasting magic runes, in contrast with the Order of Hermes' more versatile but shorter-lasting magic. A mage can learn to get the best of both worlds by casting Hermetic spells that use Odin's runes as an "anchor".
    • The House Merinita mystery cult can learn the lore of faerie magic, which enables them to create loopholes in the laws of Hermetic Magic with fae trickery and fairy-tale logic.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The adventure S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. The artifact Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn has seven gem lenses, and each lens has a specific magical effect when put individually into the Lanthorn.
      • If all seven lenses are put in one slot, the Lanthorn can send out a Prismatic Spray spell with multiple deadly effects.
      • Putting all seven lenses into the Lanthorn's four slots in a specific order creates a Prismatic Sphere spell with multiple powerful defensive layers.
    • Editions 3.0 and 3.5:
      • The Eldritch Theurge Prestige Class allows a multiclassed warlock/wizard to combine their Eldritch Blasts with their spells, either using the former as a delivery mechanism for the latter, or treating their spells as eldritch blasts for the purposes of abilities which change their energy type (such as using the Hellrime Blast technique to cast spells that freeze things). Another class, Eldritch Disciple, functions similarly for warlock/clerics.
      • "Psi-spell" feats, published in Dragon Magazine #313, allow a character to expend both power points and a spell slot at the same time in order to imbue one of their psionic powers with the properties of a spell they can cast or vice versa. E.g. a character who can use both the spell summon monster (calls an extradimensional creature, chosen from a short list) and its psionic equivalent astral construct (creates a customisable Tulpa, taking generic base stats and adding extras like wings or energy attacks) can learn the "Dual-Plane Summons" feat, allowing them to summon creatures that have astral construct add-ons.
  • In Ironclaw 2E's "Book of Jade" supplement advanced Taoist spells involve combining two basic spells.

    Toys 

    Video Games 
  • In 30XX, Nina's Power Fusion lets her combine two powers together to create one that has properties of both. Combining the Aiming Gear (can shoot in eight directions) with the Crystal Wave (freezes enemies on contact) creates a freezing gear that can be aimed in eight directions.
  • The Binding of Isaac: Apollyon holds the item called Void. Upon first use, it sucks up all active items in the room; every other time it's used, it also releases the effects of all absorbed items at once.
  • BlazBlue: Central Fiction: This is part of Nine's unique mechanic. Her normal attacks (A, B and C, which have her use water, wind and fire respectively) will make her create up to three "elemental ribbons" behind her: A is blue, B is green, and C is red. Then, when you press the D button (the Drive button for other characters), she'll perform a magic spell that uses the combination of ribbons of specific colors. For example, three red ribbons creates a big fire blast, while one blue ribbon plus one red ribbon conjures an electric sphere, and two green + one blue ribbon produces a sphere of dark energy that explodes in a plus shape.
  • Copy Kitty: Boki's main power is to copy weapons from enemies she destroys, but the ability to mix them is what allows you the strongest weapons and largest explosions.
  • In the finale of Dengeki Stryker's Sky route, Yamato combines the powers of the Stryker Drives in new ways to create incredibly powerful attacks. This includes striking himself with Shinden's lightning in order to power up Shusui to enormous size, and stabbing multiple Drives directly into his arm as a form of Explosive Overclocking.
  • Combat magic in Divinity: Original Sin is all about creative combinations of various elemental effects, from combining Rain and a cold spell to produce ice for enemies to slip and fall on, to igniting a poison pool left by a Trick Arrow with a fireball to set enemies on fire.
  • Divinity: Original Sin II builds on this by having combo skills, which are created by taking a skill scroll one of from the 4 elemental masteries (Areotheurge, Geomancy, Pyrokinetic and Hydrosophist) a skill scroll from one of the non-elemental masteries (Huntsman, Necromancer, Polymorph, Scoundrel, Summoning and Warfare), and fusing them via Item Crafting.
  • Dragon Age:
  • Final Fantasy XV: Noctis can combine the magical energies of Fire, Ice, Lightning to create powerful spells that, if the balance between the energies is equal, have the effects of both or all energies together.
  • Get Amped: One of the equippable "accessories" is a set of five Magic Staffs, each having different elemental powers. Many of its skills consist of casting from two staffs at once to create unique effects; i.e. using the wind and ice staffs together creates a blizzard, while the fire staff's pillar move can be continued with either using the wind staff (which blows the pillar, causing a larger fire blast) or the earth staff (launching a super hot rock that then falls down).
  • Golden Sun: For the most part, Djinn-based classes produce best results if they're all the same element, or two of the character's base element and the rest of one other element. There are some multi-elemental classes, but they require a specific number of djinn to work correctly, otherwise the character becomes a Master of None whose spells and stats change with every summon. The exception are the item-based classes, which require several of every non-base element djinn to advance in the class.
  • In Gunstar Heroes, the player can combine two of the four different weapon types (Force, Lightning, Homing, and Flame) with each other to create new weapons. Lightning and Fire, for example, together create a short-range beam that functions like a Laser Blade, while Force and Force produces a powerful machine gun with larger bullets than one Force weapon alone.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: The battle system uses cards to perform certain attacks. You can put 2-3 certain cards into "Sleights", and when you activate it, you'll perform a special, usually powerful, attack, such as combining 3 weapon cards with the sum card number 24-26 to perform the Strike Raid attack or using 3 Thunder cards together to perform the Thundaga spell.
  • Kirby:
    • Bizarrely, the ability "Mix" has been there since Kirby's Adventure, but it worked like an ability roulette instead of the trope proper. It only started actually mixing abilities in certain games in the series, as detailed below.
    • Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: The 7 abilities in the game (Fire, Ice, Spark, Needle, Cutter, Bomb and Stone) can be combined with one another, or even with itself, to create an unique and powerful ability. E.g Bomb + Stone gives Kirby the ability to throw powerful dynamites, and Ice + Ice turns Kirby into a human snowball that rolls over enemies.
    • Kirby: Squeak Squad: If you find the upgrade scroll for the abilities Bomb and Sword, you're able to mix them with Fire, Ice or Spark (just the last two for Bomb) to create sword or bomb with elemental properties.
    • Kirby Star Allies: Most physical abilities (e.g. Sword, Hammer, Ninja) can be combined with elemental abilities (e.g. Wing, Fire, Ice, Plasma) to form an ability taking on one of five elemental attributes: Blizzard, Bluster, Sizzle, Splash and Zap. The same logic applies to a select few Dream Friends as well.
  • In a secret in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, equipping the Bow and Bomb and pressing both buttons at the same time will result in Link shooting a "Bomb Arrow". The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess not only allowed for a similar combo, but instructed the player to do so in order to get past obstacles.
  • Mega Man Battle Network: The "Program Advance" is a mechanic where you take 3-5 certain Battle Chips together, insert it into the "launch" slot in a fixed order, and then they automatically combine into a single, powerful attack when you enter the battle phase. For example, combining 3 Spreader chips together creates the Hyper Burst PA (a stronger, multi-hit variant of Spreader) whereas putting 2 Geddon-3 chips and Anubis together nets the Poison Pharaoh PA (a statue placed on the enemy side that poisons the whole field).
  • Mega Man Star Force:
    • In the second game, there are 3 kinds of Super Mode: Zerker, Saurian and Ninja. You normally only get one, but linking with another Star Force player as "brothers" would let you acquire another and mix them, letting you make Zerker Saurian, Zerker Ninja or Ninja Saurian, which mixes their elemental power and attributes. It's also possible to mix all three, forming the Tribe King form.
    • The third game introduces "Galaxy Advance", similar to the Program Advance from the previous series, where you select 3 certain Battle Cards to create a special card that deals high damage and powerful effects. For instance, combining Sword, Wide Sword and Long Sword cards results in Giant Axe (a powerful swing that covers 3x2 panels in front of Mega Man and breaks enemies' guards) while Mad Fire 1 + 2 + 3 cards produces Taurus Fire GA (summons Taurus Fire, who proceeds to cover the enemy's area in flames).
  • Metroid:
    • In Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Samus can learn Charge Combos, special attacks which combine the Charge Beam and Missile upgrades to create an effect based on her current beam. One such example is pressing the missile button while Samus has a fully charged Power Beam, expending her charge and 5 missiles to fire a Super Missile. Doing the same with the Wave Beam produces the Wavebuster, a continuous stream of lightning which expends missiles every second.
    • Super Metroid:
      • The game features a hidden Spiritual Predecessor to Charge Combos: if the player equips the Charge Beam and one other beam upgrade, sets Power Bombs as their secondary weapon, then holds the fire button, they will combine into a Special Attack with effects ranging from Beam Spam to an Orbiting Particle Shield.
      • The Crystal Flash technique. If Samus is critically injured but has at least 10 Missiles, 10 Super Missiles and 11 Power Bombs, the player can hold Down + Aim Up + Aim Down + Fire to convert a Power Bomb into an "energy cocoon" which converts ammo into health.
    • In Super Metroid and Metroid: Other M, once Samus has the Charge Beam and Morph Ball Bomb upgrades, entering Morph Ball mode with a fully charged beam will cause her to disperse the energy by laying five bombs at once (which, unusually, do not float in midair like normal).
    • In Metroid: Zero Mission, once Samus has both the Speed Booster and the ability to jump in Morph Ball mode (granted by the High Jump item), she unlocks the ability to perform the Shinespark technique as a Morph Ball, which is required for 100% Completion.
    • In Metroid: Samus Returns (where the Speed Booster does not appear), the "Spider Boost" can be performed by using the Spider Ball and Power Bomb in conjunction, launching Samus in the direction she's facing at high speed. This functions much the same way as the "Ballspark" from Zero Mission.
  • Nobody Saves the World: Nobody eventually unlocks the ability to use one Form's skills as another; for example, using the Rat's Dark-elemental and Poisoning Gnaw move with Ranger's passive skill Poison Tipped to increase the speed of poison build-up.
  • The main character in Persona 3 has a number of Fusion Spells, which combine the powers of two equipped Personas to create spells that are significantly more powerful than regular spells of the same level.
  • Can be done in Suikoden II when a character's magical ability is advanced enough and the character has two compatible runes. For example, being equipped with a Fire/Rage Rune and a Lightning/Thunder Rune allows the character to cast the Blazing Camp spell. Also, the Water/Flowing and Wind/Cyclone Runes can be used together to cast the Water Dragon spell.
  • Terraria: The Tinker's Workshop is a crafting station added in version 1.1 that allows you to craft various accessories together, combining their effects into one slot.
    • The Neptune's Shell and the Werewolf Charm can be combined as part of a recipe, so the resulting Moon Shell gives the power to become a Werewolf at night and a Merfolk when submerged. Not played straight though, as if submerged at night you only turn into a Merfolk, not a mer-wolf.
    • The Sun and Moon stone accessories normally only gift you with stat boosts only during the day or night respectively, but when fused together, the resulting Celestial Charm provides the boost all the time. Combine this charm with the aforementioned Moon Shell and get all their component accessories's buffs at once in a single slot with the Celestial Shell.
    • Most of the X in a Bottle accessories can be combined with Shiny Red Balloons to make the X In A Balloon items, which can then be fused together into a Bundle of Balloons that gives you three additional midair jumps.
    • Hermes Boots can be combined with the Rocket Boots so you can run fast and fly. Combining the resulting Spectre Boots with the Aglet and the Anklet of Winds tacks on even more base movement speed, and then combining it with the Ice Skates adds mobility on ice to the resulting Frostspark Boots.
    • Water Walking Boots can be fireproofed with an Obsidian Skull and a Lava Charm. The resulting Lava Waders lets walk on Lava as well as Water, and grants temporary protection from lava damage.
    • The Diving Helmet and Flippers can be combined into Diving Gear. This can be fused with the Jellyfish Necklace to get light while diving deep into dark waters, and then you can add the Ice Skates to this to also add mobility bonuses while on ice.
    • Taken ridiculously far with the Ankh Shield which is technically combination of eleven different accessories. It grants immunity to 9 debuffs (Weak, Broken Armor, Poisoned, Bleeding, Slow, Confused, Silenced, Cursed, and Darkness) as well as to knockback and fire blocks. You can't get more compact than that.
    • The PDA, added in 1.3, is made from four accessories each made from three other accessories (similar to the Ankh Shield above). When held in your inventory it outputs a ridiculous amount of information like the time, the weather, fishing information, the rarest ore or treasure near you and how many times you've killed a certain enemy. Then you can combine the PDA with a Magic Mirror to create the Cell Phone which both displays info and lets you teleport to your bedside. 1.4.4 let you combine the Cell Phone with the Magic Conch and Demon Conch to create the Shellphone, which has all the abilities of the Cell Phone and can also teleport you to the ocean, hell, or your original spawn.
  • Tyranny not only has a variety of Combination Attacks between the Fatebinder and your companions, but also has an intricate system of customizable spells made up of various runes you collect over the course of the game. Each spell begins with an elemental Core (all four classical elements, along with gravity, entropy, illusion, healing, and more), an Expression which determines the basic shape of the spell (touch, projectile, cones, bursts, and various other AOEs), and finally various Accent runes which modify the power, duration, and size of the spell, along with other effects like adding bouncing projectiles, combining fire and ice, and so on. It's quite extensive, although given the branching nature of the game, it's also very possible you won't find or be able to buy the runes you want in a given playthrough.
  • Warcraft III: The Pandaren Brewmaster has two spells explicitly meant to work with each other: Drunken Haze debuffs the enemy with booze, while Breath of Fire does damage in a cone. If used in that order, the fire does extra damage.

    Visual Novels 
  • Fate/stay night:
    • Shirou, in the Unlimited Blade Works path, begins combining his Reinforcement and Projection magic in battle. This allows him to create a sword with Projection and then analyze it and strengthen it for battle as well as wield it with no problems.
    • Archer primarily works by combining his Tracing (creating a replica of a Noble Phantasm out of nothing with almost all of its properties, at the cost of its raw power) with deliberate use of "Broken Phantasm" (overloading an NP with magical power to increase its potential power, at the cost of it breaking), creating a supply of powerful exploding "arrows", each with the power equivalent of the real Noble Phantasms. His trump card is to combine Broken Phantasm with his secret ability Unlimited Blade Works to create tons of said "arrows" to attack his enemies.
  • Rimuru of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is capable of using his Degenerate skill to combine his other skills into new ones. He combines his skill to manipulate water and fire together to make a Molecular Manipulation skill.

    Web Comics 
  • In Autumn Bay, a unique information-gathering ritual is cobbled together by blending the magic of an innately gifted sorcerer, a classically trained bibliomancer, and a "moon-Wicca-Earth-mother" witch.
  • Casters in Erfworld can form a Mental Fusion called a Caster Link. While linking users of the same magical discipline lets them take that discipline's powers to the max, joining different disciplines lets them create entirely new effects, like synthesizing Necromancy and Dishing Out Dirt to reawaken an extinct volcano.
  • In The Order of the Stick, the ritual that affects the Snarl and its extradimensional prison requires an arcane and divine mage working together. An arch-wizard and druid created the ritual to seal the gates to its prison; the high priest of the goblin god is working with a Lich sorcerer on a ritual to relocate those gates with said god's guidance.
  • unOrdinary: John can combine the abilities he's copied, such as mixing Blyke's "Energy Beam" with Isen's "Hunter" to create homing energy beams that cannot be dodged.

    Western Animation 

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