Okay, so I was reading about Jaune Arc's Semblance on the RWBY wikia, which is apparently just to amplify the natural effectiveness of aura, I read some posts in a discussion about it that Semblances are unique and thus no one has the same one. Here, I'd like to post my rebuttal.
Firstly, I want to bring up that Semblances are like people in the sense that they're all different but most are not that different. I don't even have to make up hypothetical examples of this because some are present and in obvious places within the show itself. The best example I can call attention to is Yang and Nora. Although some minor specifics are distinct in these cases, both possess an ability to augment their physical strength after being exposed to some external source that would damage almost anyone else and rapidly drains like a power meter in a fighting game when the exposure is gone. Both are even associated, albeit in opposite ways to some kind of plasma, amazingly. Though Nora's is specific to electricity and just makes her physically stronger, while Yang's makes her stronger in response to, if I had to guess based on context clues, blunt force trauma, and is represented by a fire aura that's centered mostly on her hair, the general idea is the same.
Another example is Blake Belladonna and Sun Wukong. Both are capable of generating doppelgangers of themselves that have a physical presence and are generally very easy to destroy without proper certain conditions being met. Again, there are differences. Sun can make more than one and his don't seem to have any resemblance to him outside of their glowing outline, while Blake can only make one and is identical to her visually. Sun also seems to be able to reinforce his with a meditative focus stance, and though we have no proof that Blake can or can't do the same, we never see her attempt to do so because her doppelgangers are summoned only ever for the purposes of dodging. However, if you take away the differences in how each respective fighter uses their semblance, these are very similar.
In both of these scenarios, what's the main difference between these powers? I'll give you a moment to guess what it is.
You ready? The difference is conditions and restrictions. Yang and Nora are different in terms of the conditions necessary to activate their abilities but the abilities themselves are identical apart from that. Blake and Sun on the other hand have different conditions that have to be met, with Sun having to take a specific pose and Blake seeming to have to change locations upon activation and the limitations are also different but other than that, these are pretty similar.
Of course the sheer number of potential semblances we've seen means that there are a vast array of abilities that can be pulled from. Ren is the only one who can suppress emotions so far, Qrow is the only one whose ability is either luck based or constant, Hazel seems to be the only one who can shut off his pain receptors, and Ruby's the only one who's ability is, as far as I know, jet propulsion.
However, that brings me to my second counter argument, the sheer number of people means that there's a finite amount of potential abilities that you can have. Though the World of Remnant seems to have fewer humans than our world does, even if there are only 10,000 humans on the planet, can you honestly see yourself imagining 10,000 completely unique abilities? Some systems might allow for that. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has enough diversity to allow powers like deconstruct-reconstruct, time stopping, ultimate destruction, and psychokinesis that you can believe there's a lot of potential there. One Piece has one Devil Fruit for every single species, material, and occurrence in the world, so even if you can't think of all of them, I could still believe there would be 10,000 unique devil fruits. Even Nen in Hunter X Hunter only has six categories but possibilities for powers are endless because of the combinations of categories you can put together.
However, RWBY doesn't seem to have that much potential. I'm not saying it doesn't but let me elaborate. While it's not entirely necessary that we know how aura works in RWBY, if we want to say every semblance could be unique, not that they are because they aren't, at least not much but that they could be we need to know the mechanics of the system to see if the rules allow for that kind of diversity. The problem is that the rules we have don't allow for much.
So I'm going to paraphrase some of how it was described but I'm going to try to quote Ren as well as I can so you understand what the problem is. Semblance is debated to be either something you're born with or something that isn't chosen until you awaken your aura. Some say it's directly correlated to your personality, some say it's opposite, some see no connection at all.
The problem with this description, is that it's incredibly vague. Firstly, Ren's entire sentence on correlations amounts to nothing since nobody can even decide whether there is a correlation or what the correlation might be, which suggests that the power itself is entirely random. It's also not clear on how you even get a Semblance since, apart from the idea that it's set in stone once your aura is awakened, it just seems to go hand in hand with the idea that it's random. In this way, it's like RNG in computer programming.
RNG, or Random Number Generation, is simply a computer's ability to be given a range of values and select one at random, in theory. In practice however, if you just tell the code to run a random number generator from start to end with just a single line of code, and run the program repeatedly you'll notice that the sequence of numbers it generates is exactly the same every time.
This is because RNG isn't truly random. It's decided by something called a seed, which is basically just a location in a data set that determines the order of the sequence. Game Engines and other software get around this by changing the seed at set intervals. For example, Unreal Engine 4 has a seed assigned to a random variable but you can choose for the seed to change every time an instance of the variable is made, so that every time you spawn an enemy or character with that variable, it changes the seed and in so doing changes the sequence of behaviors based on the sequence of numbers. Likewise, I have a random number generator on my phone that seems to change the seed every time I open the program so the first number I get is rarely ever the same.
In this way, if we look at each individual person as having a unique seed and that generating a random sequence that decides the power depending on where in the sequence the aura was awakened on, that still poses the problem of criteria.
Since many powers don't seem to have a lot of variation in any way other than what restrictions are placed on it, if there aren't exact parameters we can use to determine what a power might be, then what's actually going on may in fact just be a case of procedural generation, which will have everything turn out samey after a while because there are limits on what the RNG is actually capable of.
Once again, there's a precedent for this in the series, and similarities aren't even restricted to these characters. Ruby and Mercury seem to have somewhat similar semblances in the sense that both are effectively just jets. Blake and Sun have similar Semblances, Yang and Nora have similar Semblances, Ren and Hazel's Semblances are loosely connected, and the characters who have unique Semblances are only unique because so few have actually been seen in the series.
In reality, there are a lot of characters who have Semblances that either haven't been shown or haven't really been explained. Taiyang, Professor Port, Tyrian, Dr. Oobleck and many characters from Volumes 1-4 have not shown their Semblances at all, Fox and Yatsuhashi both seem to have some kind of impact based Semblance that is never explained, Neo's is clearly something related to Distortions but we're not sure what it is or what limits it has, Ozpin and Salem may not even have Semblances due to their raw magical power, and though Glynda and Cinder both have a lot of raw power, it's unknown how much of that power is Semblance and how much of it is something else. Cinder has Maiden powers which are obviously on or off based on the eye effect but both display abilities that could be their Semblance or could be Dust in either the tool they wield or the clothes they wear.
The reason this bothers me is because too many people in too many fandoms take what characters say both completely as gospel and far too literally. For me, what a character says only matters as much as what they and their series demonstrates how true it is. Not only that but sometimes what a character says is not entirely what it means at face value.
When Pyrrha said every Semblance is different, she didn't mean completely unique, she just meant that your Semblance won't be exactly the same as someone else's and that by itself does not preclude similarity. When Deidara in Naruto said Sasori was probably better than him, he didn't mean more powerful, he just meant more skilled. When Piccolo said Raditz was faster than light, that was obviously a hyperbole to demonstrate how serious their situation was, he didn't actually mean that Raditz was as fast as light.
So when a character says something, don't just accept it as law or gospel. Look at what they're saying in context to derive the proper meaning from it. Have a wonderful evening.
Addendum: Okay, so apparently Mercury hasn't had a Semblance since the point prior to the series where his father took it and then subsequently died. So Mercury's jet propulsion are what I suspected and is just ammunition from dust fired through the guns in his mechanical legs. And also, Adam's semblance has been revealed to be an absorption of kinetic energy through his sword to then be unleashed as an attack, which further proves the point of this post I guess.
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