Battle Art (XC1)

Battle Arts are the abilities that form characters' movesets in Xenoblade Chronicles. They are mostly offensive moves that deal more damage than s, but many are instead defensive or supportive in nature.

Each party member can learn up to 16 Battle Arts, of which 8 can be equipped at once. The player controls the lead character's arts, while the other two members act on their own based on factors such as their current health, whether they have aggro, and the player's last group command.

Enemies can have up to 8 of their own battle arts, which operate in much the same way.

Characteristics
Battle Arts have the following properties:
 * Power - Arts that deal damage or healing use a multiplier to determine how much they deal, based on the user's strength or ether stat.
 * Cooldown - Arts cannot be used repeatedly; there is a delay before an art can be used again.
 * Category - Arts fall into one of eight categories, denoted by the colour of their icon. Using arts of the same category in sequence during a will build a multiplier on the power of the next. Talent Arts can be used as wildcards.
 * Physical (red) - Arts primarily used to do physical damage.
 * Ether (purple) - Arts mostly based on dealing ether damage, or using ether to apply a status.
 * Break (pink) - Arts that can inflict.
 * Topple (green) - Arts that can inflict.
 * Daze (yellow) - Arts that can inflict.
 * Support (blue) - Arts that help the user and/or their allies.
 * Aura (orange) - Arts that grant the user an aura of continuous effect, which can only be applied one at a time.
 * Talent (black) - Arts that do something wholly unique to the character.
 * Range - Some arts only affect a single target, while others have an area of effect in the shape of a circle, cone, or line. Most arts are short-range, while some have longer ranges.
 * Status - Many arts apply a buff or debuff in addition to damage or healing. Some arts can apply two at once, while others require a condition to be met for one or the other.

Additional mechanics

 * Arts can be used to initiate a battle. This does not give the opportunity for battle start affinity, but makes it easier to score a precise hit without interference from auto-attacks or other party members.
 * Using ether arts attracts the ire of Nebulae and other enemies with the "ether" detection type.
 * Being d pauses the cooldown of arts for the duration of the daze.
 * If a character is using an art but gets interrupted by something else, the art's cooldown is still spent, even if the art has not yet hit or otherwise done anything. Possible interruptions include taking, being put to , or activating a.
 * Every art is accompanied by at least two unique voice lines to aid in informing the player when arts are being used by the AI teammates. They are often outprioritized by other voice lines.
 * It is possible to unequip arts without replacing them with another, so the character has less than the maximum 8 equipped. They must have at least 1 normal art equipped. Talent arts cannot be unequipped or otherwise disabled.

Upgrading arts
Battle Arts can be upgraded by spending AP (Art Points). Each art has its own AP requirements, which gradually increase as the art's level increases. Higher-levelled arts often gain higher power, stronger effects, longer effect duration, and reduced cooldown, the degree of which are all art-specific.

Arts can naturally only be raised to level 4. Shops sell intermediate art books that can be used to raise the max level of a particular art to 7, while certain enemies drop advanced art books in gold chests that can raise the max level of an art to the limit of 10. The Definitive Edition adds master art books, available from the after completing Future Connected, which can raise an art's max level to 12. It is possible to use a higher-level art book to skip needing a lower-level one.