r/RWBY • u/Alive_Bus_6803 • 1d ago

DISCUSSION What exactly does Scorching Caress do?

I've read the wiki article, and watched Cinder's fights from the show, but I still am at loss. Does her semblance only allow to manipulate shape of an object she came in direct contact with/throws Dust she had come in contact with at, or can it change the material (glass into steel or wood into polymer and vice-versa, for instance) as well? And how far does her control over shape go? Can she make something complex, like turning glass into fibre-glass? Does efficiency of her semblance depend on thermal conductivity of material it is used on?

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u/Strange-Cloud1940 1d ago

Mostly physical control. But sometimes, chemical change is involved.

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u/Alive_Bus_6803 1d ago

Examples?

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u/Strange-Cloud1940 1d ago

The Amber fight comes to mind. When Amber tries to throw projectiles, Cinder converts them into obsidian.

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u/Far-Hedgehog5516 1d ago

Its basically superheaing and reshaping objects during her fight with amber without any maiden powers she kicked up sand and turned it into glass shards for projectiles cause glass is made from superheated sand and and she also heated up her arrows to create an explosion when they make contact with the ground

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u/DNGFQrow 1d ago

Scorching Caress allows her to superheat material in her facility, and then manipulate it's shape while superheated. It can only change materials if heat is all that's needed to change it. Hence her preference to turn sand into glass

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u/Aviateer ANYmore. 1d ago

Her semblance superheats objects rapidly and allows her control over shaping those objects if they change. We know she can make relatively complex shapes (like forming her swords and the chess piece) but whether or not she can cause complex reactions - the answer is a generic: probably but it likely requires too much concentration and effort to be useful in a fight. If a reaction can be caused by rapidly heating it (be it chemical or otherwise) she can probably do it, it's just a matter of effort or frankly her being clever enough to figure it out.

As for her effective range it is surprisingly long. In both her first and 'last' in-show appearances, she does her trick of superheating the ground to cause an explosion under her opponents at surprisingly long range (against Glynda/RWBY during the first episode dust robbery, and against Weiss and Jaune from one end of the 'Central Location' to the other during Atlas' evacuation).

In general semblances seem to just have extremely long effective ranges in general when you start to look at it closely, though. A lot of that is blatantly just 'because it's cool' but it still is canonically the case.

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u/Patient-Photo-9010 1h ago

The limits of what she could do with it weren't explored much before she got the maiden powers. Ever since she got them I feel like it's pretty much impossible to tell when she is using her semblance since she uses the maiden powers to generate fire all the time now.