Superpowers - and their Downsides

[Xanyo]

Everybody daydreams of having a superpower; however, many superpowers have serious downsides. Note that the downsides assume that you have no other powers, unless otherwise noted.

Superspeed
You move super fast, going from 0 to Mach 1 in 2 seconds! And now the G-forces just killed you!
There're many things wrong with this one. Aside from G-forces, you got air resistance flaying you and burning you to a crisp, gravity not being as fast as you, accidentally jumping while at escape velocity, not necessarily having super-reflexes, etc. Plus, that supersonic punch? It runs into Newton's Third Law - every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You punch super hard, and break your hand and arm, and dislocate your shoulder.

Stopping Time
You have all of the problems of superspeed and more. For instance: the light is not moving. In order to see properly you would have to be able to move at the speed of light(effectively) straight ahead, and even then it'll probably be blurry. So you're blind. And deaf. And you can't breath in the same place twice or you'll get a lungful of carbon dioxide. This can still be useful though, if only to get a moment to rest.
I'd still want this if we can evade the matters of acceleration and air friction.
Super Strength
Here we run into Newton's Third Law once more, assuming we don't also have super durability. Oh, and, you said you wanted to pick up that tank by it's rocket launcher? It bends. Yo may be able to manage the weight, but the tank can't. Oh, wait. You can't either. You may have uber muscles, but your bones are still just as brittle as before. You pick up something heavy and break a few bones. Oh, and here's something that also applies to super speed: energy. You may have the capabilities to do amazing things, but you're gonna have to be eating practically 24/7 to keep it up. Hulk's super jump? Hope you can handle the fall. By the way, don't even try stopping a train.

Flight
This is a great power - but only if you keep it slow and low. If you go to fast, you run into some of the superspeed problems. If you go too high, the air gets thin. i'd still love to have this power though, if only to take the strain off my legs. Oh, and you might need a cantrip to get the bugs out of your teeth. Not sure if that works for ducks.

Wolverine Speed Healing
Super healing! Too bad it doesn't come with pain resistance!
And remember, you can't heal from dying, so if your head gets obliterated, tough luck. Probably.
Immortality
As above, except you can be dismembered, decapitated, flayed and boiled alive and you'll still be alive to feel it! Though after the decapitation you might only feel the pain in your head area. On the plus side, even if you're completely obliterated save for a small part of you, you might be able to grow something back. And you'll heal from otherwise mortal wounds.

Invincibility
There's actually not much wrong with this. Though, if you end up trapped under three thousand tons of rocks, don't come crying to me. And you still aren't stopping any trains. Have fun getting injections, and look out for disease.

Laser Vision
This one is too easy. Even if you don't burn your eyes out, you'll still go blind.

Frost Breath
Goodbye summer breeze, hello frozen lungs.

Teleportation
You better hope you know exactly where you're going or you'll find yourself stuck in stone, melded with it.

Incorporeality
Congratulations! You just denied yourself all five senses, and the Earth just zoomed past you at around 70,000 mph(108,000 km/h). You no longer consist of matter, and thus lose all ability to interact with the physical world.

Omniscience
Does this come with the mental capability to handle it? You see an infinite number of possibilities, all centered around your actions. Ever had a migraine? This'll be much, much worse. Even without the downsides, I don't see much fun in knowing everything. The access to the sum of all knowledge of living sentient beings, on the other hand... might still not be fun. Plus, there's some things you might not want to know.

Feel free to point out the downsides of other powers!

[Lentrax]

Incorporeality
Congratulations! You just denied yourself all five senses, and the Earth just zoomed past you at around 70,000 mph(108,000 km/h).


Not really.

You brought Newton into it, so you should have considered his other laws. Like the first. Because you are on the Earth when you become incorporeal, you have the same relative speed as the Earth. Just because you are sitting still, doesn't mean you have no velocity. It depends on the frame of reference. An observer sitting in space at 0 mph, would see any person on Earth moving past at that 70000 mph.

If your incorporeality caused you to lose all your inertia, then yeah, kiss the earth goodbye. Otherwise, you keep going with the rest of us.

Actually, because of centrifugal forces, you would keep moving in the same direction you were when the rotation of the Earth stopped mattering to you. So depending on how long you were incorporeal, you would just have to deal with a fall of some kind, or digging your way out of the crust. Or finding a way to survive the temperatures of the mantle and core, depending on which relative direction (edit: and speed) you were going when you became incorporeal.

And for that matter, your matter would still be affected by gravity, so I don't really see anyone going anywhere because of this power.

[Xanyo]

Not really.

You brought Newton into it, so you should have considered his other laws. Like the first. Because you are on the Earth when you become incorporeal, you have the same relative speed as the Earth. Just because you are sitting still, doesn't mean you have no velocity. It depends on the frame of reference. An observer sitting in space at 0 mph, would see any person on Earth moving past at that 70000 mph.

If your incorporeality caused you to lose all your inertia, then yeah, kiss the earth goodbye. Otherwise, you keep going with the rest of us.

Actually, because of centrifugal forces, you would keep moving in the same direction you were when the rotation of the Earth stopped mattering to you. So depending on how long you were incorporeal, you would just have to deal with a fall of some kind, or digging your way out of the crust. Or finding a way to survive the temperatures of the mantle and core, depending on which relative direction (edit: and speed) you were going when you became incorporeal.

And for that matter, your matter would still be affected by gravity, so I don't really see anyone going anywhere because of this power.

Incorporeality is defined as "not having matter", and thus no mass, so gravity has no effect. Good point on the velocity, but you are on a tangent course to the Earth's orbit - the Earth takes a turn, and you don't as you are not affected by the Sun's gravity. Come to think of it, Incorporeality also denies you the ability to breath.
These logical debates are fun.

[Peelee]

Everybody daydreams of having a superpower; however, many superpowers have serious downsides. Note that the downsides assume that you have no other powers, unless otherwise noted.

[Snip]

Wolverine Speed Healing
Super healing! Too bad it doesn't come with pain resistance!
And remember, you can't heal from dying, so if your head gets obliterated, tough luck. Probably.

So wait, we assume the super power has no other powers..... and then the downsides of fast healing is that it has no other powers?

I'm calling shenanigans on that. It does what it says on the tin, and your only complaints are that it doesn't do what it's already not supposed to do.

[golentan]

Incorporeality is defined as "not having matter", and thus no mass, so gravity has no effect. Good point on the velocity, but you are on a tangent course to the Earth's orbit - the Earth takes a turn, and you don't as you are not affected by the Sun's gravity. Come to think of it, Incorporeality also denies you the ability to breath.
These logical debates are fun.

Depends. Incorporeality might just mean you don't interact with objects via normal force. We have an example of something that does that in real world physics: Dark Matter, which ONLY interacts via gravitational pull. In which case, you should still be subject to the forces which keep earth in its orbit. Breathing is a potential problem, but presumably you can bring things which are inside you (or we're going to get into some major issues with defining "you" surrounding your microbiome, nutrients, and non-living components like blood plasma), so you might be able to get away with a throat mounted emergency oxygen tank if you practice suppressing your gag reflex sword swallowing style. Now you just have to make sure you don't fall into the earth's crust before phasing back in, or have the patience and densitometer required to know when you've come out the other side (no friction presumably, so if your oxygen tank has the time to wait it out you'll come out the other side, and back to your starting point presumably). I'd advise coming at problems from above (10 foot drop from one floor to another) or with a starting upward velocity, and phasing out in bursts of one or two seconds at most where you know where you know roughly where you're going to arrive, and carrying a jetpack and emergency parachute to get some extra altitude when phasing back in in the event of disaster assuming you can bring objects that are in skin contact with you at time of phase.

[Xanyo]

So wait, we assume the super power has no other powers..... and then the downsides of fast healing is that it has no other powers?

I'm calling shenanigans on that. It does what it says on the tin, and your only complaints are that it doesn't do what it's already not supposed to do.
Point taken, but I've got another thing. If we assume that all areas of the body heal at the same speed, an object that is embedded in you(e.g. a bullet) will not be pushed out, and surgeons probably won't be able to get it out. Also, the point of fast healing is to recover from any injury, correct? Too bad you won't recover from a very poisonous bite. Repairing your body doesn't help much when, say, your veins are clotted up.



On incorporeality, if you have no physical substance, you have no mass, and thus gravity has no pull on you. And if somehow you are, I hope you can survive at the center of the planet.

[golentan]

I think you're being very selective about how these things work in ways that you don't fully understand.

There are some downsides you haven't explored (Invincibility means no injections, no injections means you better hope you never develop an internal medicine illness like Diabetes), and some where you're overblowing the dangers by applying only conditions which make it seem more dangerous than it is.

[INoKnowNames]

I think the point of the thread can be summarized in a single weblink. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers)

[Razade]

I think the point of the thread can be summarized in a single weblink. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers)

Or one particular part of one particular themesong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ugebzq3juE).

[golentan]

On incorporeality, if you have no physical substance, you have no mass, and thus gravity has no pull on you. And if somehow you are, I hope you can survive at the center of the planet.

Literally the first half of my post was addressing this: There is an example of a type of exotic matter which interacts by gravity, and if you're not interacting with normal matter there is no friction which would prevent you from returning to your starting point given time and a mechanism to permit you to wait it out, which should take... ~1600 seconds to reach the far side of the earth unless I did something wrong, ~3200 seconds to come back around to your exact starting point, and you'll reach a maximum velocity of just under 8000 m/s as you pass near the core (without touching it because you're incorporeal, near because you're gonna be in a highly elliptical orbit actually, but IIRC without adding velocity to start I think you're gonna touch back at home base). So then you just need to keep yourself in air for a little under an hour and avoid hypothermia: the former requires a rebreather with a half-liter pressurized gas supply (undoubtedly uncomfortable to fit if it has to be internal, but doable for the determined would be superhero), and the latter is probably okay for an hour (the human body puts out about 1.3 x10^10th ergs (1300 joules) per second in radiation according to a physics blog which looked at this, your resting metabolism generates around 100 joules per second, average weight is around 64 kg... total heat loss if you wait the full period is about 14 degrees C, so you definitely need some insulation but that could be done with a wetsuit equivalent.

I.E. Dangerous, but not "hurl yourself into space without a suit" dangerous, or "let's go swimming in molten lava" dangerous. Get a sufficiently accurate time piece, a bit of preventive gear, and this becomes a surprisingly cool engineering problem!

[Xanyo]

Literally the first half of my post was addressing this: There is an example of a type of exotic matter which interacts by gravity, and if you're not interacting with normal matter there is no friction which would prevent you from returning to your starting point given time and a mechanism to permit you to wait it out, which should take... ~1600 seconds to reach the far side of the earth unless I did something wrong, ~3200 seconds to come back around to your exact starting point, and you'll reach a maximum velocity of just under 8000 m/s as you pass near the core (without touching it because you're incorporeal, near because you're gonna be in a highly elliptical orbit actually, but IIRC without adding velocity to start I think you're gonna touch back at home base). So then you just need to keep yourself in air for a little under an hour and avoid hypothermia: the former requires a rebreather with a half-liter pressurized gas supply (undoubtedly uncomfortable to fit if it has to be internal, but doable for the determined would be superhero), and the latter is probably okay for an hour (the human body puts out about 1.3 x10^10th ergs (1300 joules) per second in radiation according to a physics blog which looked at this, your resting metabolism generates around 100 joules per second, average weight is around 64 kg... total heat loss if you wait the full period is about 14 degrees C, so you definitely need some insulation but that could be done with a wetsuit equivalent.

I.E. Dangerous, but not "hurl yourself into space without a suit" dangerous, or "let's go swimming in molten lava" dangerous. Get a sufficiently accurate time piece, a bit of preventive gear, and this becomes a surprisingly cool engineering problem!

When incorporeal, you have no matter, and thus no mass. To calculate the pull of gravity, you multiply the two masses and then divide by the distance. Let's assume the distance is 1. So we have([5.972 × 10^24 kg]*0 kg)/1.
This equals zero. There is no pull. No force is being exerted. Gravity cannot affect you. We are not putting you on a parallel plane of existence. We are entirely removing your ability to interact with the physical world by making you not consist of matter.


golentan, the entire purpose of this thread is to find the situations and variables that make a stand alone power really terrible. So yes, I am showing things in a rather biased light.

[golentan]

Again: DARK MATTER. Why do you keep ignoring the example of dark matter as something which both has mass and does not interact with other forms of mass by contact, AKA normal force.

And there's a big difference between pointing out required secondary powers and going "You have this and this and therefore suck" for some things but not others. You're putting too much assumption into selective application of physics, biology and other things which are at least as ridiculous as any secondary power.

[Lentrax]

I reject your reality and substitute my own?

[Murk]

Teleportation
You better hope you know exactly where you're going or you'll find yourself stuck in stone, melded with it.


This one really depends on the type of teleportation (especially the "melded with it" part). If you do not displace the atoms that are already present when you move somewhere, sure, you might find yourself melded with stone. But you would also find yourself melded with air, otherwise (which would probably lead to some kind of explosion too?). Being melded with stone isn't that much worse than being melded with air.
But then again, I'd assume most teleportation powers would somehow displace the matter that is already present. This would lead to mild shock waves (depending on the speed of the teleportation). You could get stuck in something, but eh, you'd just teleport out right away.
To keep things as easy as possible, I'd say the best teleportation powers swap matter - you end up where the stone/air/water/whatever was and the stone/air/water/whatever ends up where you was.

[Misery Esquire]

To keep things as easy as possible, I'd say the best teleportation powers swap matter - you end up where the stone/air/water/whatever was and the stone/air/water/whatever ends up where you was.

...So as you teleport about the Earth you're (when you miss aim) leaving behind statues of you looking; confused, screaming, screaming again, tired, exasperated, bored, and REALLY SCREAMING BECAUSE THAT WAS LAVA?

:smalltongue:

[Xanyo]

...So as you teleport about the Earth you're (when you miss aim) leaving behind statues of you looking; confused, screaming, screaming again, tired, exasperated, bored, and REALLY SCREAMING BECAUSE THAT WAS LAVA?

:smalltongue:

I love this. There's statues of you all over, made of various materials and showing various panicky expressions. :smalltongue:

[Cespenar]

Another side effect of Wolverine-speed Healing I always wondered:

Those calories has to come from somewhere. So probably you're eating 10-20 times more than a normal human, possibly even more after a tough battle.

[Armok]

Another side effect of Wolverine-speed Healing I always wondered:

Those calories has to come from somewhere. So probably you're eating 10-20 times more than a normal human, possibly even more after a tough battle.

That was always one of my favorite things about The Flash. Especially shown during Wally West's stuff, the guy's constantly eating to replenish his carbs. If you go for healing or super speed, you better triple your food budget!

And dear lord, let's not bring caffeine into the mix...

[Chen]

Another side effect of Wolverine-speed Healing I always wondered:

Those calories has to come from somewhere. So probably you're eating 10-20 times more than a normal human, possibly even more after a tough battle.

Really though practically no superpower works if you consider the thermodynamics behind it. You need to get energy input from somewhere. Even Superman who gets his energy from the sun doesn't work because the sun doesn't provide nearly enough energy per unit time to the earth for him to do what he does.

[Gnomvid]

That was always one of my favorite things about The Flash. Especially shown during Wally West's stuff, the guy's constantly eating to replenish his carbs. If you go for healing or super speed, you better triple your food budget!

And dear lord, let's not bring caffeine into the mix...

This on the other hand would bring up the need of a second super power to go with your super healing or super speed, namely super metabolism or you simply cannot keep up no matter what you may try, as your stomach simply cannot process the food quick enough and thus you would die as your body would not be able to absorb the energy needed to keep up with the energy expenditure, not to mention where do you put all the waste products? unless your super metabolism somehow manages to process what ever you ingest into particles your body can absorb and not produce waste, so you might need a third super power teleportation to go with it so you can teleport the waste products as and when needed so you don't have to do your super healing/speed together with constant eating while sitting on the bog.

[Flickerdart]

Stopping Time
You have all of the problems of superspeed and more. For instance: the light is not moving. In order to see properly you would have to be able to move at the speed of light(effectively) straight ahead, and even then it'll probably be blurry. So you're blind. And deaf. And you can't breath in the same place twice or you'll get a lungful of carbon dioxide. This can still be useful though, if only to get a moment to rest.

*record scratch* Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation. Well...



Wolverine Speed Healing
Super healing! Too bad it doesn't come with pain resistance!

Logan doesn't have pain resistance either.




Omniscience
Does this come with the mental capability to handle it? You see an infinite number of possibilities, all centered around your actions. Ever had a migraine? This'll be much, much worse. Even without the downsides, I don't see much fun in knowing everything. The access to the sum of all knowledge of living sentient beings, on the other hand... might still not be fun. Plus, there's some things you might not want to know.


Nah, bro. Knowledge doesn't work that way. Just because you know a bunch of stuff doesn't mean it surfaces in your mind without you thinking about it.

[Xanyo]

Nah, bro. Knowledge doesn't work that way. Just because you know a bunch of stuff doesn't mean it surfaces in your mind without you thinking about it.
Don't think about pink elephants. What did you just think about? Pink elephants. It's hard to keep from thinking about something.

[golentan]

Don't think about pink elephants. What did you just think about? Pink elephants. It's hard to keep from thinking about something.

Your brain has about 7 registers for working memory and consideration. Do you know what happens if you think about something else you know while all of them are full? Correct, you stop thinking about one of the 7 things you were thinking about, and start thinking about the new thing.

[JeenLeen]

In some fantasy book series I read (forget the title... but it was about the Chosen of the Earth saving the nation while fighting the Chosen of Fire and against some bug-like xenomorph thingies... Better than it sounds by that description) folk could get investments by 'stealing' things like strength, metabolism, intellect, etc. from others.

You could get the need for a secondary power if you dipped in one without getting the other lest you be a 'warrior of unfortunate proportions'. I forget how some of it worked. One thing I was remember was that super metabolism (which, there, basically equated to super-speed) meant your aging also increased.

[Xanyo]

Your brain has about 7 registers for working memory and consideration. Do you know what happens if you think about something else you know while all of them are full? Correct, you stop thinking about one of the 7 things you were thinking about, and start thinking about the new thing.
Someone says something. It reminds you of the thing you didn't want to think about. You think about it.

[golentan]

Someone says something. It reminds you of the thing you didn't want to think about. You think about it.

"Oh, no, it's just like life has always been for me. What a horrible ironic fate, to be subject to the same horrible stuff that everyone has to deal with to some extent, except now I can use my bountiful mystic knowledge to advance human knowledge and technology."

[Flickerdart]

Don't think about pink elephants. What did you just think about? Pink elephants. It's hard to keep from thinking about something.

Thinking about something does not necessarily tap into your knowledge of the thing. Just because I am thinking of a pink elephant does not mean I am thinking of every little detail of the elephant's trunk, ears, legs, hide, and so forth, or every fact I know about elephants or the color pink. And I know many facts about these things.

[Red Fel]

On the omniscience point, Jim Butcher actually comes up with a pretty clever and comprehensible version of this in his Dresden Files books, called "Intellectus." It's the trait of profoundly powerful supernatural beings (and potentially those which share a connection with said beings) to simply know things. That is, when you want to know something, you just do, provided you know what it is you're looking for. It's not that the information is always there; it just surfaces as soon as it is required. Almost like having a question answered before you ask it.

In one instance, Dresden - who is connected with the intelligent spirit of an island, and thus has access to its Intellectus with respect to the island. As he runs along the beach and through the wooded areas, he instinctively knows the location of every root, every rock, everything that could trip him up, because he needs to know it at that moment.
Also, Cracked After Hours did a video on this precise topic (why having a super power would suck if you only had the one power and no attendant powers), which I will not link because reasons. But you can look it up. It addresses most of these points.

[Temotei]

I never think of pink elephants when people ask me to think about them. I think of normal elephants, and then I go, wait, that's not right. Then I apply pink paint in my head. I think the process changed because so many people asked me to think of pink elephants.

[Xanyo]

I never think of pink elephants when people ask me to think about them. I think of normal elephants, and then I go, wait, that's not right. Then I apply pink paint in my head. I think the process changed because so many people asked me to think of pink elephants.

OK, don't think about neon green earthworms. Does that bypass your thought process?

[DataNinja]

OK, don't think about neon green earthworms. Does that bypass your thought process?

All that makes me think of are Gummi worms. :smalltongue:

[golentan]

OK, don't think about neon green earthworms. Does that bypass your thought process?

In what way is that relevant to the fact your brain does have filters to prevent breakdown.

As an example: Ever have a beloved pet die? If so, I bet you just thought about them, and it was probably mildly painful if you're like me at all. I bet you have years of memories, which you can call up if you think about it. Probably reams of technical information on the care and maintenance of your pet, if you think about it in that way. The stories probably spin off and encompass your friends, and your family, and other tales from your social network, if you choose to frame it like that. The technical data spins off into your knowledge of how to eat right, how to structure your day around meals, what medicines you gave your pet when they got sick, what medicines you take for when you're sick, high school biology stuff (organs, cells, hormones). Times you may have been hospitalized, other stories, maybe involving friends and family, which lead back into other technical information (the book your father recommended, the class you took where you met your best friend, the training video for the job where you met your significant other). Whatever it is, I don't know your story, you've got whole worlds up in your head, and you can spin off down constantly spiraling paths through your memory if you want, but I bet you can pull up something. Maybe the first time you heard that stupid, stupid cliche "don't think about pink elephants?"

Has your head exploded? Has the total technical knowledge you have accumulated brought you to your knees? Has the remembered pain of lost loved things crippled you?

No? You're still here, with us and at least capable of a mask of sanity?

Let me guess, your brain picked through things one at a time, chose whether to pick up an individual thread or not, and when you had too many memories going at once you found some of them dropping off your consciousness, and the pain of knowing was not as severe as the moment you were in the moment?

Congratulations, you have confirmed the existence of the human working memory buffer, which can hold roughly 5 to 9 concepts. Even those exceedingly rare, one in a billion souls with a true "photographic memory" think about things 5-to-9 concepts at a time, and don't find their consciousness broken by the existence of 5 to 90 years of brushing their teeth or the complete text of every book they've read lodged in their memory.

[Xanyo]

Ways knowing too much can be bad: 1)If you're a germaphobe. 2)If you had some delusions you liked having(e.g. you thought Y was going well, but it's actually falling to pieces) 3)If you're a germaphobe. 4)If you like knowing everything(I don't want to know the future, or even all of the present. It's not very fun) 5)If you're a germaphobe

Sidenote: Of the 5-9 memory slots in my head, at any given time, at least 3 of them are occupied by D&D.

[Razade]

If you knew everything you wouldn't be a germaphobe because you'd know how to cure yourself of that phobia.

[Bohandas]

Stopping Time
You have all of the problems of superspeed and more. For instance: the light is not moving. In order to see properly you would have to be able to move at the speed of light(effectively) straight ahead, and even then it'll probably be blurry. So you're blind. And deaf. And you can't breath in the same place twice or you'll get a lungful of carbon dioxide. This can still be useful though, if only to get a moment to rest.
I'd still want this if we can evade the matters of acceleration and air friction


This was actually covered in the Discworld novel The Thief of Time. The time monks could manipulate time to make time stand still for them (or nearly so) but only a few could do much with it as they were hemmed in by air resistance, their surroundings were effectively much colder, and the fact that they were moving faster than most objects can deform meant that walking on a field of grass was like walking on metal spikes

[Flickerdart]

If you knew everything you wouldn't be a germaphobe because you'd know how to cure yourself of that phobia.

You'd also know that there are germs inside you and all over your skin and even eyeballs but it hasn't exactly impacted you in any negative way.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Weather Manipulation.

Stop the rain and make a nice sunny day for your picnic.

Cause a tsunami the other side of the globe.

[Flickerdart]

Weather Manipulation.

Stop the rain and make a nice sunny day for your picnic.

Cause a tsunami the other side of the globe.

I'm reasonably certain that's not really how it works, and if it did, then your power would be making tsunamis and the weather part would be a small perk for the antipode of your wrath.

[Celestia]

Wolverine Speed Healing
Super healing! Too bad it doesn't come with pain resistance!
And remember, you can't heal from dying, so if your head gets obliterated, tough luck. Probably.

Point taken, but I've got another thing. If we assume that all areas of the body heal at the same speed, an object that is embedded in you(e.g. a bullet) will not be pushed out, and surgeons probably won't be able to get it out. Also, the point of fast healing is to recover from any injury, correct? Too bad you won't recover from a very poisonous bite. Repairing your body doesn't help much when, say, your veins are clotted up.
I'm calling serious shenanigans here. You're implying that super healing is awful because it doesn't heal certain things? Newsflash: normal healing doesn't heal those things, either. You're not losing anything by acquiring super healing. It's not like you suddenly become vulnerable to that venom. It would have killed you, anyways. That's not a downside. You're literally saying that super healing is bad because it doesn't do enough. You're turning down a $2 million a year job because it doesn't pay $2.5 million a year.

Also, that whole bullet thing? That's not an issue. In virtually all cases of gun related injury, the bullet is not removed from the body because it is rarely ever necessary. In fact, trying to remove the bullet will almost certainly cause unnecessary damage and will only make things worse. That's how President Garfield died.

[Xanyo]

The point of this thread isn't to say why you would be worse off with some power. The point is that there are downsides to powers, and I want to point them out. Some powers would still be awesome.
I would love to stop time, even if it made me blind and deaf.

[Frozen_Feet]

Lacking required secondary superpowers isn't the same as a superpower having downsides. For example, your healing factor not coming with pain resistance is not a downside, it's just normal. An actual downside would be logical follow-up, such as inability to get lasting tattoos or other body modifications.

However, in addition to downsides, some people plain don't get that some things they expect a superpower to grant them are complete non-sequiturs. In effect, people mistake the superpower for a completely different one.

Omniscience is frequent victim of this. People mistake it for "bullsh*tting your way to victory", which it is not. Razade was guilty of this when he assumed omniscience would allow a person to cure their phobia.

Not so. Omniscience follows from omnipotence, but the reverse is not true. Knowing all there is to know does not in itself entail any ability to do something about it. To use an analogy, imagine having full knowledge of Free Cell. You always know if a game is winnable and the fastest way to win it. However, this does not mean you can win each and every game, because some Free Cell games are literally unwinnable.

Similarly, the germaphobe could be so badly crippled by the knowledge of the germs all around that their insanity makes them too dysfunctional to utilize their great knowledge for anything. Or they might be stuck with the absolute knowledge that there is no cure save a bullet to the head.

The same, of course, applies to all knowledge-based and sense-based superpowers. Just because you see something coming doesn't always mean you can move out of the way.

Immortality is another big victim. People frequently assume it grants you a lot of secondary superpowers which have nill to do with being hard to kill or eternally young. For example, a lot of people assume that they would, without fail, master every skill there is to learn. They have the time, right? But just having time does not give you the motivation and other traits required to effectively learn. Living long in itself does not make you wiser, it doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't give you infinite memory. It doesn't prevent older skills from rusting or being forgotten as you try for new ones. If you were a nitwit when you became immortal, chances are you will remain a nitwit for all eternity.

Another assumption wannabe immortals make is that no matter how horrible a situation they land in, they will always get out. This is pure wishful thinking. It is entirely possible to get buried so deep underground that human race will go extinct before anyone thinks to dig you out. You will only be freed when a natural catastrophe destroys the Earth... at which point you will be floating in vacuum or trapped inside a sun, still without any agency to control your fate. "Immortality" is not "I will win eventually". It's possible to be immortal and still be trapped in an unwinnable scenario.

Related to above, neither does immortality logically entail great mental fortitude. So if you end up in such scenario, chances are you will be wishing you could die.

Wishes granted by supernatural beings suffers too, but in a slightly different way. Namely, people mistake wishing for "fix society" button or "create infinite material good" button due to failure to consider what the existence of the supernatural being means. For example, if an angel stops to give you a wish, you might want to reconsider your cheap materialist ways before wishing for ten billion dollars. Just sayin'.

Other spiritual powers, notably Necromancy, fall victim to this too. Question: do your awesome magick powers involve doing irreparable damage to someone's soul, or taint the world with metaphysical essence of evil? Then no, you cannot use your undead servants to replace electricity, or whatever other silly crap you thought of. And don't give me that "for the greater good" or "maximizing human happiness" crap. Utilitarianism and other naive consequentalist ethics were defenestrated the moment genuine spirits made an appearance.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Necromancy is actually just talking to dead people.

[Bohandas]

Omniscience follows from omnipotence

Not necessarily. They could be technically omnipotent but too incompetent to use it effectively, including usage to increase intelligence.

[Bohandas]

Immortality is another big victim. People frequently assume it grants you a lot of secondary superpowers which have nill to do with being hard to kill or eternally young. For example, a lot of people assume that they would, without fail, master every skill there is to learn. They have the time, right? But just having time does not give you the motivation and other traits required to effectively learn. Living long in itself does not make you wiser, it doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't give you infinite memory. It doesn't prevent older skills from rusting or being forgotten as you try for new ones. If you were a nitwit when you became immortal, chances are you will remain a nitwit for all eternity.

Another assumption wannabe immortals make is that no matter how horrible a situation they land in, they will always get out. This is pure wishful thinking. It is entirely possible to get buried so deep underground that human race will go extinct before anyone thinks to dig you out. You will only be freed when a natural catastrophe destroys the Earth... at which point you will be floating in vacuum or trapped inside a sun, still without any agency to control your fate. "Immortality" is not "I will win eventually". It's possible to be immortal and still be trapped in an unwinnable scenario.

Related to above, neither does immortality logically entail great mental fortitude. So if you end up in such scenario, chances are you will be wishing you could die.


Gulliver's Travels had the "struldbrugs", who were immortal but were still subject to aging and thus spent the greater part of eternity enfeebled, senile, and in a semi-vegetative state

[Frozen_Feet]

Necromancy is actually just talking to dead people.

... no.

Even discounting all the additional baggage the word has accumulated in later years, the point of necromancy is not talking to dead people, it's that they can talk to you. And this immediately raises a heap of questions: if they're dead, how are they doing this? If their body is destroyed or absent, what are you even communicating with? Is it their soul? If so, where was that soul before you began the talk and how did it get here? What did you do to create this situation where a person normally incapable of communication is now communicating with you?

So on and so forth. It doesn't take a whole lot for the implications to become very ugly. "Just" has no place in this discussion.


Not necessarily. They could be technically omnipotent but too incompetent to use it effectively, including usage to increase intelligence.
The ability to do everything possible necessarily entails knowledge of how to do everything possible. For an omnipotent being, the level of incompetence you describe here would require willfull stupidity.

It'd be like a pyrokinetic who only shoots fire at things that won't burn. "Can set things on fire" still logically follows from "can control flame", even if the pyrokinetic never demonstrates such use.

[Orcus The Vile]

... no.

Even discounting all the additional baggage the word has accumulated in later years, the point of necromancy is not talking to dead people, it's that they can talk to you. And this immediately raises a heap of questions: if they're dead, how are they doing this? If their body is destroyed or absent, what are you even communicating with? Is it their soul? If so, where was that soul before you began the talk and how did it get here? What did you do to create this situation where a person normally incapable of communication is now communicating with you?

So on and so forth. It doesn't take a whole lot for the implications to become very ugly. "Just" has no place in this discussion.


The ability to do everything possible necessarily entails knowledge of how to do everything possible. For an omnipotent being, the level of incompetence you describe here would require willfull stupidity.

It'd be like a pyrokinetic who only shoots fire at things that won't burn. "Can set things on fire" still logically follows from "can control flame", even if the pyrokinetic never demonstrates such use.

Well, if you want to be technical, necromancy is the practice of talking to the spirits of dead people, and that is not necessary evil, in many cultures is part of their faith.

A necromancer can serve as a very important member of the community.

http://68.media.tumblr.com/0d3bce8044b0e14c456b9fc4bd0a991e/tumblr_njnhss4OXF1u8ju99o1_1280.jpg

Although that power may have some bad side effects.

http://68.media.tumblr.com/01185b0a8b359d646ea1af679fb30fc6/tumblr_nzcsitJjsG1u8ju99o1_r1_1280.jpg

And a pyrokinetic if you want to be technical, they just set fire on fire with their mind, they have "the ability to excite the molecules within an object until they generate enough energy to burst into flame" the control flames part was only added much later.

[Bohandas]

It'd be like a pyrokinetic who only shoots fire at things that won't burn. "Can set things on fire" still logically follows from "can control flame", even if the pyrokinetic never demonstrates such use.

No, it'd be more like the pyrokinetic girl from Hellboy, who could set things on fire with her mind but had only limited control of which things and when.

Or a bit like Cyclops from the X-men just with lasers swapped out for fire.

[Bohandas]

Necromancy is actually just talking to dead people.

I thought it was any type of fortune telling involving death or dead people

[cildan]

Also with Super Healing or Regeneration, means you can't have lasting tattoos as someone mentioned, also impossible to get drunk, or have operations with anesthetic.

[Chen]

Also with Super Healing or Regeneration, means you can't have lasting tattoos as someone mentioned, also impossible to get drunk, or have operations with anesthetic.

I'm not sure about tattoos. Part of the mechanism that keeps the ink at the spot you put it is the body's own reaction to the foreign substance. One would imagine the tattoo would just heal up and be in its final condition much quicker with someone who had an advanced healing factor. I suppose if its the type that would expel foreign substances it wouldn't work of course. Drunkenness or anesthetic wouldn't work if the healing factor was just metabolism based, but any type of mystical super healing would still work. It's also possible that super healing would be of the type where only the wounds or direct area that needed healing would have the increased metabolism and thus wouldn't necessarily disallow getting drunk or having an anesthetic.

[S@tanicoaldo]

... no.

Even discounting all the additional baggage the word has accumulated in later years, the point of necromancy is not talking to dead people, it's that they can talk to you. And this immediately raises a heap of questions: if they're dead, how are they doing this? If their body is destroyed or absent, what are you even communicating with? Is it their soul? If so, where was that soul before you began the talk and how did it get here? What did you do to create this situation where a person normally incapable of communication is now communicating with you?


These are the best links for you: [LINK (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/Whatevermancy)] and [LINK (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Whatevermancy)]

[Frozen_Feet]

Considering those trope pages don't meaningfully address any of the questions I posed, I must conclude you completely missed the point.

[Bohandas]

OK, don't think about neon green earthworms. Does that bypass your thought process?
That works even worse. It has to be something the person already has a stock image of in their head

[JobsforFun]

With the speed healing is that also taking into account how Wolverine regenerated from a single drop of blood/cell at one point in time?

[Strigon]

Also with Super Healing or Regeneration, means you can't have lasting tattoos as someone mentioned, also impossible to get drunk, or have operations with anesthetic.

That's only if you're also immune to poisons. Which would in many cases make you immune to illnesses as well. And once you're immune to disease, and you heal almost instantly, how many operations do you expect to have?

[Xanyo]

That's only if you're also immune to poisons. Which would in many cases make you immune to illnesses as well. And once you're immune to disease, and you heal almost instantly, how many operations do you expect to have?
Some things can't be healed naturally. Brain death, DNA mutations, various things that change how the body does stuff, etc. You won't heal from cancer, for example. In fact, the healing may aggravate the cancer, accelerating its growth. Better stick to a vegan diet. And hope that's enough.

[Strigon]

Some things can't be healed naturally. Brain death, DNA mutations, various things that change how the body does stuff, etc. You won't heal from cancer, for example. In fact, the healing may aggravate the cancer, accelerating its growth. Better stick to a vegan diet. And hope that's enough.

It depends largely on what you mean by "healing". If you just meant "everything your body does to repair itself is now done more effectively", then that would include your body's natural defences against cancer, making it less likely.

But I was saying that, if you're immune to poison, and the healing factor includes regenerating dead cells (it would be a shoddy healing factor if it didn't), then most illnesses aren't a concern. Bacteria mostly kill, as I understand it, because they produce toxins. Viruses destroy cells in an attempt to replicate themselves. The only thing you'd still feel would be your own autoimmune response - things like a fever.
Which leads to the brain death portion; you're right, of course, but every infection is a race against time. Either the infection kills you, or your own immune system kills the infection. But an infection would have a hard time shutting down organs, or causing brain death, when it's being constantly regenerated. Your antibodies would finish them off before it got to that stage.

The only thing that leaves is cancer - which sucks, admittedly, especially if you're immune to poison (chemo is right out). But as for how it would interact - making it more or less likely, or even impossible/certain - depends on the mechanism your healing factor is using.

[Flickerdart]

If you have super-healing and get the flu, will you also have a super-fever?

[HandofShadows]

If you have super-healing and get the flu, will you also have a super-fever?

I think there are two possibilities with super healing and the flu. Either you get sick as a normal person would as the super healing does not work with an infectiouse disease (It's super healing, not super immunse system). Or you don't get sick at all since the flu bug can't infect the person's cells to replicate itself.

[SaintRidley]

For a more down to earth and realistic super power and its downside:

Looking 40 from age 20 to age 70
Hey, you're a living fountain of not-quite-youth! You won't get carded for beer, and you look quite young for your age for quite a long time.

But you spend your 20s looking 40. Not fun.

[Some Android]

Frost Breath
Goodbye summer breeze, hello frozen lungs.

But can't you just...Let it Go.:smallwink::smallbiggrin:

[Strigon]

I think there are two possibilities with super healing and the flu. Either you get sick as a normal person would as the super healing does not work with an infectiouse disease (It's super healing, not super immunse system). Or you don't get sick at all since the flu bug can't infect the person's cells to replicate itself.

Or you get sick but just get over it quickly.
Or your body overreacts like it has an autoimmune disease because everything is souped up.
Or you get even more sick because your body recovering so quickly both allows a fertile ground for the virus to spread, and makes your immune system less likely to react.
Or you become a carrier but never feel the effects because you heal them before they affect you.

The point is, there's a lot of things that could make sense.

[HandofShadows]

Or you get sick but just get over it quickly.
Or your body overreacts like it has an autoimmune disease because everything is souped up.
Or you get even more sick because your body recovering so quickly both allows a fertile ground for the virus to spread, and makes your immune system less likely to react.
Or you become a carrier but never feel the effects because you heal them before they affect you.

The point is, there's a lot of things that could make sense.

Well if you recover quickly then it's unlikely you would have getten sick in the first place.
If your body overreacts to a virus it's going to be overreacting to everything all the time since people are exposed to all sorts of new and different bugs all the time.
You can't get sicker because your body recovers faster since if it recovers faster you don't get sick in the first place.
Becoming a carrier is possible.

[Armok]

How about psychic powers? Sure, you can hear people's thoughts... the chaotic, disjointed ugly things they really feel, but never say.

I guarantee you'd never look at your friends the same way again.

[Flickerdart]

How about psychic powers? Sure, you can hear people's thoughts... the chaotic, disjointed ugly things they really feel, but never say.

I guarantee you'd never look at your friends the same way again.

The whole point of superpowers is not doing things the same way again...

[Armok]

The whole point of superpowers is not doing things the same way again...

Tell that to Barry Allen. :smallbiggrin:

[McBish]

In some fantasy book series I read (forget the title... but it was about the Chosen of the Earth saving the nation while fighting the Chosen of Fire and against some bug-like xenomorph thingies... Better than it sounds by that description) folk could get investments by 'stealing' things like strength, metabolism, intellect, etc. from others.

You could get the need for a secondary power if you dipped in one without getting the other lest you be a 'warrior of unfortunate proportions'. I forget how some of it worked. One thing I was remember was that super metabolism (which, there, basically equated to super-speed) meant your aging also increased.

Runelords by Farland.

If I could have just one super power I would want to have "be main character in long running fiction." Plenty of downsides but they can be ignored for plot.

[Xanyo]

Runelords by Farland.

If I could have just one super power I would want to have "be main character in long running fiction." Plenty of downsides but they can be ignored for plot.
OK, your mom dies, your dog dies, your brother dies, your best friend dies, you lose a hand, you get an awesome scar across your face that's really annoying, and the fate of the world is in your under-competent hands.

Good luck.

[Ierox]

OK, your mom dies, your dog dies, your brother dies, your best friend dies, you lose a hand, you get an awesome scar across your face that's really annoying, and the fate of the world is in your under-competent hands.

Good luck.

Ah, but see, you can rest easy knowing that you will inevitably win.

[Flickerdart]

Ah, but see, you can rest easy knowing that you will inevitably win.

So what? When a hero defeats the evil threat, that's just restoring the status quo. I already don't have to deal with a villain.

[Bohandas]

How about psychic powers? Sure, you can hear people's thoughts... the chaotic, disjointed ugly things they really feel, but never say.

There was an aside similar to this in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels; wherein a race of aliens, having developed telepathy, eventually had to adopt a cultural custom of incessantly making mindless smalltalk in otder to drown out the psychic noise with regular nois.e

[Gaurdian_Angel1]

Wolverine Speed Healing
Super healing! Too bad it doesn't come with pain resistance!



It's not supposed to.

[Shamash]

OK, your mom dies, your dog dies, your brother dies, your best friend dies, you lose a hand, you get an awesome scar across your face that's really annoying, and the fate of the world is in your under-competent hands.

Good luck.

Hahaha. So true.