Favorite Powers

[PlusSixPelican]

We're all nerds here, to some degree, so here's a fun question/discussion thing: What kinds of powers do you like in a story or character? I'm fond of flight, but not on every character in the series. (I'm looking at you, Legion of Super-Heroes...which I like anyways. xD)

[Fragenstein]

The strength/speed/invulnerability combo is always a fun party, plus it seems like a defining quality of superheroics. I do prefer it without flight, however. Lobo (on his good days), Doc Samson and Iron Munroe. Most version of the Hulk as well.

Yeah, not speed-force quick by any means, but faster and more agile than would be expected from a powerhouse.

Better than that, however, is an under-represented subtle use of cybernetics. I'm talking Midnighter with his fight computer and other augments. Android 18 with her upgaded organics and Kid Amazo working along almost the exact same lines.

The only thing that might be even better is technomagic. Dr. Doom, particularly in 2099. The What If storyline featuring Tony Stark: Sorcerer Supreme. Played out creatively, the mergings of technology and magic open some interesting options.


But what powers would you prefer, yourself, to have in the real world? I'm talking about no supervillains and no real drive to use those powers responsibly other than what you can live with, personally. For me...

Teleportation; because I hate traffic.

...or...

Superhuman Luck; because even though a life without struggle is supposed to turn hollow in time, I'm willing to give it a shot.

[Traab]

I like the flexible powers. The ones that can be used in a variety of often unexpected ways. Take magneto as an example. He can fly, put up protective barriers, do mind control, or even give you a stroke at will. Thats barely even touching the full list of stuff his "mastery of magnetism" grants him. Flight is cool and all, but if all you can do with it is fly, it gets boring.

[Eldan]

Caveat: the only American comic with Superheroes I've ever read is Watchman. Or rather, the only one I finished.

That said: I like stories about people with apparently minor powers who find creative uses for them.

[Raimun]

Telekinesis.

There's not much you can't do with sufficiently powerful telekinesis. It can be potentially used in offense, defense and utility, even flight is possible. That said, I'm always a bit disappointed when I'm playing a game where you can move very heavy objects but not yourself to simulate flight.

Basically, in the right environment (most likely tabletop RPGs) this one power offers extreme versatility and tactical options. The power really rewards creativity.

Edit: Other than that... I guess immortality? With really strong regeneration. Or Power Cosmic. Or reality warping. Still, the penultimate power is something I came up with myself: Invincibility. The power to never lose or fail but always win and succeed, whatever the contest or challenge.

So in the end I would settle for Invincibility or if I can have it, the more superior power.

[Kansaschaser]

Matter Creation. Because I like to be the guy with all the answers. There isn't any problem you can't solve with a little lateral thinking.

Need money? BAM!

Need food? BAM!

Need rare/expensive medicine? BAM!

Need a grenade? BAM!

Need a weapon? BAM!

Anything you can imagine you can create. In some comic books, the person with matter creation can create duplicates of themselves or other people. Some have even had the power to create mythical creatues (dragons) or objects (Ironman's Suite).

[Fragenstein]

Matter Creation. Because I like to be the guy with all the answers. There isn't any problem you can't solve with a little lateral thinking.


Is that really lateral thinking, though? If a guy asks for a grenade and is provided with a grenade, isn't that more literal/linear?

If a guy asks for a grenade and is provided with a baby chimp, then that's lateral thinking.

[Kansaschaser]

Is that really lateral thinking, though? If a guy asks for a grenade and is provided with a grenade, isn't that more literal/linear?

If a guy asks for a grenade and is provided with a baby chimp, then that's lateral thinking.

Okay, maybe not "lateral", but it is the best problem solver. Also, he's the guy that can fix all the crap other super heros break.

Civilian: "Thanks for saving me Superman, but you destroyed three office buildings and one parking structure in the process."

Superman: "Well, at least you are alive."

Me: "Don't worry Superman, I got this. Like a good neighbor, Statefarm is there...with a new parking structure and office buildings." BAM!

[Morbis Meh]

Telepathy... because I can control all of you mofos muahaha dance my little monkies dance!

[Anarion]

Time slowing/stopping. Especially useful if things that you directly interact with can be kept in your personal time (so you can take someone with you or use equipment normally). It's both a general problem solver and a great way to get extra time to get your work done. :smallbiggrin:

[Ravens_cry]

Flight at any degree of speed is always a very joyful power I thought, though watch for aeroplanes and wear a helmet. Bugs in mouth, not fun.
Shapeshifting has always been on my list, because I've always had a rather varied body image.
Immortality with all the required secondary powers fits my desire to see how humanity turns out. Combine the latter two and you likely can get away with being immortal without raising too many questions.

[Fragenstein]

Me: "Don't worry Superman, I got this. Like a good neighbor, Statefarm is there...with a new parking structure and office buildings." BAM!

That'd also be a nice one to have in real life. Screw working for a living. I'm now living on a yacht the size of Rhode Island, served by an army of artificial humanity. Half of which are wish-realized hentai characters.



Heheh. Actually, The Book of Ratings has a few things to say on powers:


Psychic Powers:
Telepathy
Being privy to every little thought of those around you seems like a great idea until you read a couple dozen online diaries. This is one power you'd want to be able to turn off, lest you be driven insane the first time you happened across a poetry reading. B

Telekinesis
I find the idea of lifting things without having to lift my ass off the futon very appealing, but I imagine that even such fantastic power would be no match for my incredible inertia. After all, chances are I'd have to furrow my brow and touch my temple to make it work, and that's a lot of effort when the empty Chinese food carton seems happy where it is. B+

Precognition
I'd like to be able to see what happens to other people with clarity, if for no other reason than to piss off James Randi, but I'm not sure I'd want to be able to see what will happen to me, because of that thing where you see you're going to be killed by a bear so you decide never to go to the woods or a zoo or any other place where bears congregate and then you die in a K-B Toys when an oversized plaster promotional Teddy bear falls on you and you feel really dumb. Because you could have gone to the zoo all that time. C

Postcognition
This is kind of a goofy power -- the ability to see what happened to an object or in a place in the past -- but I like it. You could find missing children, figure out where you put your keys, and tell people interesting things about their used furniture. The most important use, though, is figuring out who keeps taking the food from the fridge in the break room. At last, at long last, your Lean Pockets would be safe. B+

Empathy
Troi proved that empathy is perhaps the lamest psychic power of all, unless your great ambition in life is to listen to people complain about their failed relationships. In normal life, the ability to tell that the latte wrangler across the counter resents your indecision on flavored syrup is no help to either of you. D

Pyrokinesis
You can't go wrong with fire. The only problem with the power to make things ignite and/or explode is that there aren't enough chances to use it once the cigarette trick and the fireplace trick get old. You pretty much have to turn into an insane force of elemental destruction or you'll get really antsy. C



Superman's Powers:
Flight
This sounds like a really raccoon power to have. Aside from the pure
adrenaline rush, there's also the ability to get home from bars without catching a bus. My guess, however, is that the whole navigation thing would be a problem for me. I can never tell an aqueduct from the Astrodome when I'm in a plane -- once I'm high enough not to be taken out by telephone wires and overpasses, I'm going to lose track of where I am pretty quickly. Supes probably has some sort inherent Super-Nav system, but I'd have to carry around a GPS, making me a candidate for the Legion of Geeky Justice. B

Super Strength
I'd dig on super strength. It's handy for so many purposes, from serious task completion to showing the hell off. However, there's one thing that would give me serious pause about signing up for this: friends moving. If you've ever owned a pickup truck you know how it is to have random acquaintances suddenly claim "best buddy" status when they have to move. With super strength, I figure you can square that and add twelve. "Superman? It's Jimmy. Say, I'm moving this weekend and I was wondering if you could help. Hey, there's a six of Burgie in it for you!" C+

Heat Vision
Okay, in a bad-guy or welding context, this is really handy. But in real life, I don't know. I mean, there's not much you can do with heat vision that you can't accomplish with a microwave or a lighter and a gas-soaked rag. Sure, it'd make a nifty party trick, doing "Plastic Army Guy Death Scene Theatre," but in the long run I think it'd be much less useful than, say, being able to pack grocery bags really well. C-

X-Ray Vision
Okay, let's leave aside the question of what it would be like to have X-ray vision, and look at what it would be like to know someone with X-ray vision. Wouldn't that be eerie? "You have some spinach on your teeth. No, the back ones." If I were Lois Lane during that balcony scene, I'd be saying "Hey, **** you!" at several points during the conversation. But then I never ask people to tell me what color panties I'm wearing outside of strictly controlled psychological tests. C-

Invulnerability
Not much of a downside to this, as long as you're also invulnerable to things you might want to get a shot for. And your hair and fingernails aren't invulnerable. And you're not planning on getting into the piercing and tattooing scene. And your skin doesn't have the texture of cold bicycle tires as a result. But given these important caveats, being able to throw yourself at, in front of, or off of things without fear of consequences has many practical everyday uses. Hailing cabs, for instance. A

Super Breath
Yes, Superman has super breath. He can inhale and exhale large amounts of air without swelling up like Daffy Duck connected to a bicycle pump. We're dealing here with a man who can travel between the stars, who can change the course of mighty rivers, who can, in certain incarnations, reverse the flow of time itself. When does this guy encounter a problem that leaves him with no recourse but to breathe on it? At any rate, any potential uses are automatically offset by the fact that it's called "super breath." D



And Spider-man:
Web Shooters
Yay for the spider-webbing. I don't care if the web shooters are mechanical, biological, or made of actual live spiders wrapped around the wrist, it's the slinging and swinging that makes Spider-Man the superhero he is. Also, they pretty much nail him as a New York superhero, thanks to the abundance of tall buildings. If Spider-Man were based in, say, Durham, North Carolina, he'd be limited to fighting crime in about five blocks of the downtown area. A-

Spider-Strength
I'm not understanding this whole "proportional" thing anyway. There are genes and/or radioactive substances that can just bypass the whole square-cube law? Without even giving Pete an exoskeleton? Actually, I don't care. I'd no sooner apply science to a Marvel comic book than I'd start lecturing Charles Schultz's corpse on anatomy, but I love to invoke the square-cube law. C+

Spider-Speed
The proportional speed of a spider isn't really that impressive. Watching those buggers run, I'd guess about ten or fifteen scale miles per hour, tops. I guess Spidey uses his speed mostly to dodge attacks, and it's hard to say how well a spider would do getting out of the way of a little tiny miniature pumpkin bomb. There should be a villain who traps Spider-Man under a giant glass tumbler, sticks a giant issue of National Geographic underneath him, then puts him outside. That'd show him! C-

Spider-Sense
I wish I had Spider Sense. (The proportional sense of a spider!) I rarely get into fights, either with school bullies or world-conquering sociopaths, so it'd be limited to flashes of intuition like "don't order the lamb" or "you're holding that screwdriver in a really stupid manner," but TELL me that wouldn't be handy! I'd know when not to order the lamb! A

Wall-Crawling
You know what I love? In the comics or the extremely slow-paced comic strip, whenever Parker's in his civilian identity but needs to climb up a wall nonetheless, he takes his shoes off! That's attention to detail! Even if you've been bitten by an irradiated arachnid, you can't climb walls with your shoes on! Don't be silly! That's the sort of quality control that made Marvel a publishing giant except between the years 1993 and 2000. B

[Kansaschaser]

That'd also be a nice one to have in real life. Screw working for a living. I'm now living on a yacht the size of Rhode Island, served by an army of artificial humanity. Half of which are wish-realized hentai characters.

The main reason I think Matter Creation would be one of the best powers is because there are thousands of problems that can't be fixed with the powers that people normally pick.

Lets say you are in South Africa. Thousands of people are starving and malnurished. You can create food for them. They are also in desperate need of medical supplies. You can create that for them as well. How about housing? Yep, you got that covered. Clothing? Yep. Roads? Sure. Irigation? Absolutly.

These are the things that can't normally be fixed with other super powers. Plus, you would be the guy that would fix everything that other super heros and villians would break.

[Traab]

The main reason I think Matter Creation would be one of the best powers is because there are thousands of problems that can't be fixed with the powers that people normally pick.

Lets say you are in South Africa. Thousands of people are starving and malnurished. You can create food for them. They are also in desperate need of medical supplies. You can create that for them as well. How about housing? Yep, you got that covered. Clothing? Yep. Roads? Sure. Irigation? Absolutly.

These are the things that can't normally be fixed with other super powers. Plus, you would be the guy that would fix everything that other super heros and villians would break.


You would also find yourself murdered in fairly short order by the various corporations and dictator led nations that really dont want all this being done in their yard. Normally I would say you would be enslaved, but I bet they would understand after the first try that its really hard to capture a guy who can make anything with his mind without a chemical coma.

[Kansaschaser]

You would also find yourself murdered in fairly short order by the various corporations and dictator led nations that really dont want all this being done in their yard. Normally I would say you would be enslaved, but I bet they would understand after the first try that its really hard to capture a guy who can make anything with his mind without a chemical coma.

I'm not saying this power is perfect, that's why you would probably need some other super hero to keep you safe. I'd want Superman, Batman, or The Flash as my personal body guards.

[Yora]

I prefer the power of reason! Most protagonists and villains seem to lack it.

[Morbis Meh]

Telepathy
Being privy to every little thought of those around you seems like a great idea until you read a couple dozen online diaries. This is one power you'd want to be able to turn off, lest you be driven insane the first time you happened across a poetry reading. B


This is a rather close minded interpretation of telepathy, heck if it is anything like Professor X, you can use it to locate/control people or even change the person's memories if you wanted. With the ability to control people you basically can have every power period since you can control the other people with powers. Not to mention can get whatever you want with no penalty to you eg rob banks via controlling the manager/security guard (have them drop it off in a remote location then have some other stooge pick it up and drop it off where you want.

[Anarion]

This is a rather close minded interpretation of telepathy, heck if it is anything like Professor X, you can use it to locate/control people or even change the person's memories if you wanted. With the ability to control people you basically can have every power period since you can control the other people with powers. Not to mention can get whatever you want with no penalty to you eg rob banks via controlling the manager/security guard (have them drop it off in a remote location then have some other stooge pick it up and drop it off where you want.

This is great right up until you realize how mad everyone is going to be at your for mind-controlling them, meaning that you can never release your mind control if you want to live. Eventually you simply find yourself surrounded by your ever-growing legion of mind slaves, becoming progressively more lonely and aloof.

[Zevox]

I tend to like flexible powers that can be used creatively. Number one example being those of my favorite superheroes, the Green Lanterns. A ring that can create anything you can imagine, plus allows flight, breathing in a vacuum, super-speed to the point of FTL, and personal shielding? Sign me up!

Another good example would be Firestorm, who is capable of transmuting any inorganic matter into any other inorganic matter, as well as changing its shape if he wishes. Quite a lot you can do when you basically control anything that isn't alive to that degree. Also, flight, which is always nice.

I tend to be bored by more typical superpowers - super strength or endurance is just dull to me, even when the characters try to be creative in application of them.

Zevox

[Kitten Champion]

I prefer it when the super power is logically deconstructed and limited due to specific requirements. Sanderson's Mistborn -- particularly the Alloy of Law -- is a good example, Larry Correia's Grimnoir chronicles or the television show Alphas work as well.

I think a world of superpowers should more closely resemble a chess board, with seemingly weaker or overpowered abilities potentially being balanced through the creativity of the author.

[Anarion]

I prefer it when the super power is logically deconstructed and limited due to specific requirements. Sanderson's Mistborn -- particularly the Alloy of Law -- is a good example, Larry Correia's Grimnoir chronicles or the television show Alphas work as well.

I think a world of superpowers should more closely resemble a chess board, with seemingly weaker or overpowered abilities potentially being balanced through the creativity of the author.

I agree in general, but it does tend to be a bit forced when that one guy whose only power is talking to llamas or something gets his day in the sun.

[Kitten Champion]

I agree in general, but it does tend to be a bit forced when that one guy whose only power is talking to llamas or something gets his day in the sun.

True, that's why I like power/magic systems built from the ground up -- rather than forcing in new ideas into a crammed cosmos of same-ish superpowers like Marvel and DC. Now, even in such a system you'll have worthless abilities, a Aluminium misting in Mistborn does nothing magical at all for instance, but my point is being a Pewter Twinborn shouldn't make you almighty.

When you've got a system you can balance your setting -- with the powers of others, or techniques and technology developed for the muggles -- and creatively develop ideas how those supernatural abilities can influence the narrative.

[TheThan]

I like really interesting powers. A few examples:

super luck (http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Luck):
Good things happen to you. But this power cannot be one that allows you to be completely passive. You have to go out and do something for that luck to take effect. If you were allowed to be completely passive and good things just happened to you without any effort, then that’d be boring.


intangibility ( http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Intangibility):
This is the ability to pass through solid matter. Very cool, it means you can sneak around and get into all manner of places. It also makes you nearly invincible in combat. Fists, feet, bullets, cars (like nobody throws those around) all fly through you and leave you unscathed. Watch out for energy though.

Flash Precognition ( http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Flash_Precognition)
You don’t want long term future sight, as most people with that go insane. But the ability to see what happeneing is next is going to be awesome. Seriously, you can predict attacks your enemy’s going to make before they make it (think Sherlock Holms). Other uses is knowing what’s around that blind corner or where the enemies are in a room just before you enter it.

[tbok1992]

I think I'd like the Engineers powers from Tokyo Gore Police, basically to grow organic weapons if you have any of your body parts chopped off. Because I have a thing for very open-ended superpowers, and I have a thing for squicky, organic superoowers.

I think they did show that your normal parts do grow back, what with the engineers that survive after their first scene appearing to have returned to normal in the final scene.

Not only would it be a great party trick, since it also completely ignores the law of conservation of mass, you're essentially getting free meat, if you aren't too squicked out by eating yourself

Of course, I'd like the caveat that the parts are adaptive to the situation, IE when you cut off pieces of your back skin when you're in a rush to get to work, they turn into an organic jetpack, but when you cut them off when you need to leave, they become organic smokescreen dispensers. They'd be much more useful and fun that way.

And I'll cut it off there before I start getting into how useful (Albeit slightly squicky) this power would be in bed.

[Tvtyrant]

I like shape shifting myself. I always wanted to be able to become a giant flying jellyfish...

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm shocked noone's mentioned this yet.

Wizardry. I mean c'mon; morpheus, dr strange, zatana, etc. How awesome would it be to just tell physics to "shut up and sit down" by waving your hands and spouting some gibberish. Sure there's a learning curve and you've got to put some work into it, but power like that is well worth a little effort.

[Anarion]

I'm shocked noone's mentioned this yet.

Wizardry. I mean c'mon; morpheus, dr strange, zatana, etc. How awesome would it be to just tell physics to "shut up and sit down" by waving your hands and spouting some gibberish. Sure there's a learning curve and you've got to put some work into it, but power like that is well worth a little effort.

I like the powers, but they do tend to end up taking up your whole life, which is a bit of a minus. Though wizard powers are really cool and versatile.

One that I would find interesting is the power to be charismatic. To know just what to do and say to make people do what you want, but not with mind controlling them and you couldn't get them to do anything impossible or against their nature. You'd just know exactly what would motivate them and how to come across as likeable and believable.