In this first episode of my new series, I’m starting a completely stand-alone, G.A.S-inspired Blueprint Ability System in Unreal Engine 5.4. I explain why I don’t like the “just add a couple booleans and checks” approach for sprint/jump/shoot-type actions—because as soon as you scale to 20–30 abilities it gets messy and monolithic fast. Instead, I’m building a framework where I can define when/where abilities can run using data, and let the system work out the rules: what’s blocked, what needs to cancel, and what tags/conditions need to be true. From there I lay down the foundation: folder structure, core data structs, and the philosophy of “abilities are just data.” The behavior itself lives in reusable Ability Behavior Objects (like a generic Play Montage behavior), while the data table decides which montage, tags, costs, cooldowns, and combo chains get used for each ability. I also set up the component architecture (Ability Manager + Attribute Manager + Gameplay Tag Manager) so any entity in the game can use the same system, and I start a Blueprint Function Library to fetch ability definitions by gameplay tag. The big takeaway: keep behaviors generic, keep ability specifics in data, and your system stays scalable.