Ok so like a genie comes to you and offers to give you a superpower of your choice. He informs you that everyone on the earth is getting this same deal (EDITED - choice of superpower for them). Also you can’t be OP. So no monipulating molecules or total control of history. Its one power but it can be versatile but the more versatile it is the less powerful it will be. So like a good earmark is a straight up offensive power won’t make you more lethal than a commonly well equiped soldier. So like cyclops beam could be equivalent to antitank, antiaircraft shoulder things or whatnot. But if you were like the human torch where you can fly, produce and manipulate flame. Well your going to be on the level of a military flame thrower. Power has to be around something though so you can’t be like superman with unconnected powers of flight, heat vision, strength, invulnerability. But superstrength and resistance to damage would totally makes sense as part of one thing. As you will see below its about using your judgement.
Ok that is the setup but what I want is for you to say what your super power is and then play the role of the genie and decide how it needs to be limited to not be OP (EDITED - OVER POWERED. I realized it could be confused with original poster but im using it in the gaming sense). Here is my answer as an example.
I would ask for teleportation and the genie would be like ok but you can’t teleport anything living with you (being able to teleport people where ever like above a volcano is op. I thought about it being limited to people who allow it but you know its to easy to trick someone. I also say any living thing because dropping some predators in places or a disease). Speaking of what you can bring with it can’t be to much. No teleporting a semi truck over your opponents. Figure it can be as much as you (I) can carry on an all day hike. Also no teleporting parts of things. So if im driving the semitruck I cannot teleport away with its steering wheel but if the steering wheel of a semi truck were sitting in a junk yard it could totally come along. Ok then in addition nothing volatile. So essentially no explosives or accelerants.
On a final note I had thought about electronics and poisons but ultimately felt it was not that op and would cause the opposite where the limitations start getting pretty annoying. I also want commentary on how wrong it might be or unfair limitations with mine or anyones. I have to admit that once I thought along the lines of OP the power gets worse and worse. Not being able to bring people really locks out one of the better things with this power which is sharing it and saving folks by getting them out of danger.
EDITED - Some responses seem to miss what im going for. The idea is to eliminate anything that would make the power OP. Not limit it to the point where it is no longer a superpower. Keep in mind the examples like cyclops beams being able to take out a tank or a plane. I want legitamate super powers but also though around limiting them from being dominant over all others. Thing in terms of like balancing in a game system.
Another EDIT - this is a bit of a tease but remember everyone on earth is selecting a power from a genie (or the genie maybe he can duplicate himself) at the same time. There was a power or two I was going to put in examples but I kinda wanted to see if anyone would mention them.
EDIT3 - Ok so I teased it and not sure who might see these updates but no one took the bait so what I expected was people to jump onto disabling, copying, and absorbing powers. With everyone in the world having powers these become really useful and could guarantee a job at sensitive locations. It seems to me the examples from media I know are limited enough. Leech from marvel disables all powers around him and he can’t control it much outside of increasing the area he effects with effort or holding it in to a smaller area with effort and then the teacher from my hero academia who can precisely target one person at a time and they must be in line of sight (honestly having to not blink seems a bit much to me. I mean one on one it just makes both of them unpowered although its really powerful in a team). I think with copying powers it just needs to be some mix of one at a time, line of sight, not being able to bank or maybe a limit to banking or time period they can be banked and it being a poorer copy. I think the poorer copy has to be there given the versatility or it would be like the definitive choice. Absorbing is tough. I think it would require touch and take time to absorb and something like you could absorb 9o or 99% but the person would still have a bit left and the moment you stop touching you will be losing it and they will be regaining or something. I mean seems a pretty big deal to both shut down the other persons power as well as getting it for yourself.
Precognition. Like “spidey sense”, I’d get a feeling something bad will happen, and depending on the distance from me I could get more or less details about what will happen. Depending on the severity, I could even know about major events a few minutes in advance, but with basically no detail, since they’d likely happen very far away from me (e.g. “A war is about to start somewhere”).
I don’t think that this by itself is overpowered.
Only thing I can think of is maybe horse racing. Because lottery stops selling tickets some minutes from the drawing and you can’t be at the drawing. Still not sure if making money at the track is exactly OP. Very nice fringe benefit I would say.
Let’s try flying.
You can fly, but you still have to put in the same amount of effort as if you couldn’t fly.
For example if you want to fly over a house it would be at the same speed as climbing a ladder and taking an equal amount of time.
Or if you wanted to fly a mile away it would be the same as running or walking a mile. Also if you want to carry someone or something, how fast could you move while doing it? Same as on the ground or in the air.
Basically you still get the convenience of flying, but you have to put in all the work.
thats pretty restictive. I actually did want the powers to be super, just not op. Fight does have the problem of dropping things from the sky or being able to kite with a gun. I think your restrictions are more than enough. I tell you given how hard it is for me to run a mile im not sure I would want to fly too high. I can walk for long periods at like 4 miles an hour though and being able to travel as the crow flies would be very nice. You would be sorta a spectacle sometimes and even though everyone else has some sort of superpower I think that is why I like teleportation but it could be nice to hover and take in a site. Oh man concerts.
I think to even it out hovering would have to be free, or maybe a very slow descent. I don’t want people to be able to rest in the air, specifically so they can’t cross oceans. I guess flying at 4 mph across an ocean is already a hard/long enough task.
I don’t really see the problem with crossing oceans even if you could do a 4 minute mile you would not be able to keep it up and even 4mph with breaks would average maybe 2 over a whole day with sleeping. Thats one heck of a long voyage. Don’t feel its op but wouldn’t hovering be like standing. You would get tired but you could do it all day. If it was like standing it would definitely make crossing the ocean impossible. Some people can sleep standing up but I don’t think anyone could stand all day and sleep standing up without leaning on something somewhat regularly.
Not being able to teleport another person is mote since everyone will be able to teleport.
I think there has been a misunderstanding. Everyone gets their own superpower they decided on but the genie will limit it to not be OP.
Time stop limited to oneself.
Stipulations:
- “half-life” of half your life expectancy (exact figure, as the genie would know how long you’d live). this means that every second you spend in time stop, there’s a chance of some particle/cell/molecule in your body just disappearing.
- complete time stop outside your body, no movement (other than expected due to quantum fluctuations). this means you cannot move, nor breathe, nor do anything. but you can think, formulate a plan, whatever so long as no part of your body moves.
- you age according to your own body’s reference frame. if you spent a cumulative of two years in time stop, you age two more years more than your birth date would indicate.
I think these stipulations make the power useless outside of a handful of situations.
Well we don’t want it useless just not OP. I feel like the first bullet is unnecessary if you have the other two and it would not be OP but would be useful enough. There was a comedy cartoon actually were the main character had a power like that. He could stop time but only to think things through although actually I think the joke was he could do other things but he basically only used it to get his head together. Honestly I think you could even remove the last bullet point. Just having time to think I don’t think would be OP. I mean would allow you to do better on tests and game shows but that seems more a perk than OP.
The way I imagined it, the first stipulation is the “price” of the power. It also discourages someone from just stopping time for “long periods of time”. The third stipulation is a result of the second–if time is stopped except for your own body, your body will continue to age. But this will only be relevant or noticeable if the user is making too much use of their time stop power, that they spend years in time stop.
But yes, I think in terms of limiting the power’s OP’ness, only the second stipulation is relevant.
It would make sense to prevent the person from stopping time forever I guess. Maybe its like you say with bullet one but it can be real slow. So perfectly safe if you spend less than an hour but you would have some bad consequence damage if you go like a day. Or to simplify what about you can’t do it when asleep or unconcious. That would prevent stopping time forever and give you a bit of a weakness if someone can knock you out. So it would not actually become dangerous to you but you would lose your grip on stopping time eventually just do to exhaustion.
I was actually thinking that the first isn’t necessary given that the second already limits breathing. No one can ever hold their breath for long, and an assumption I made (which I should have made explicit) is that you can’t use the power unconsciously. So if you lose consciousness (like from holding your breath for long), time resumes.
So I guess the second bullet point is all that it needs, it limits the power from being abused. If one can “power through” all the stopped air particles and whatnot (another superpower–super strength) and have quite an amount of air in one’s lungs, one can actually do some stuff with it. It’d be weird though, as dropped things will just float midair (no time to start falling).
I can imagine someone stopping time for a bit, move all the way to the other end of the room, and make it seem like one “teleported” from one end of the room to another.
But yeah, might be limiting, but in conjunction with a few other superpowers (like super strength) it can be quite useful.
second point explicitly said you can’t move though. so it sounds like time is stopped except for your ability to think. I actually thought with time stopped you did not have to worry about breathing.
Hmm it’s not that useless, imagine doing parkour stunts where you can stop time each fraction of a second to judge where you need to move your arms/legs.
Or coming up with the perfect riposte for a negative comment from someone :D
Do you mean with all the original limitations? I just felt they were a bit heavy handed as opposed to making the power useless and could be scaled back…
Yeah sorry I read your first sentence and just wanted to be a contrarian :D I agree with the rest of your comment though after reading it, it could be made a bit more concise with more or less the same effect
I’ve always wanted to be a shapeshifter. The only thing I can imagine for it not to be op is to limit its time and give it a cooldown.
Maybe something like :
- I can transform for a maximum of 1 hour
- When I’m me, I stack minutes to transform again
So I can switch appearance for many different, for 1 hour max. If I stop, the time I am being myself is added to the pool. So if I wait 5 minutes, I get 5 minutes of transformation.
But, I’m not sure I’d like this power with this restriction tho.
I actually do not see why it would be very OP to even need the restriction. I mean highly versatile and great for sneaking around but you would not fight better than the animal you are. Someone felt teleportation was to restrictive to the point I would no longer want it and said shapechanging would be my second choice. I was thinking as long as its limited to animals around today (no dinos) and if it took some time to change. Like just a minute so that you cant fly up as a bird and change into an elephant overhead like beast boy sometimes does (although honestly most times you would likely injure yourself quite a bit doing that). I figure even the old werewolf transformations where not a minute of screentime. So my feeling is your almost being to restrictive.
Oh then it is a vocabulary issue of mine. I thought transforming into other humans. Like I could pretend being the President of a country or whatever, pass biometric security etc. (scanning eyes or fingerprint would work)
oh oh. Now your limitations make more sense. Honestly a fairly scary one given the potential for fraudulent activity. There should likely have to be a mechanism to get a persons shape like touch or getting their dna or something and maybe not being able to store more than one. So if you shake hands you could steal the persons shape later without turning right then but you can’t shake a dozen hands and have them all available. Allowing anyone who you wanted at any time would allow you to steal all the monies :)
Oh sure. Didn’t think about getting rich. I was thinking about destroying capitalism and my retrictions seemed to require planification and luck. 😅
I was thinking in terms of fucking wives and or husbands as well.
I can control the inertial forces that my body produces and effects of inertia I create.
Nothing else in my life changes. Same job, same bills.
You can teleport, with these restrictions:
- Only between just inside front entrance of your residence and just inside front entrance of your workplace
- Cooldown on using it is 4 hours
- You can only take yourself, clothes you’re wearing, and whatever you can fit into a modestly sized backpack, laptop bag, or messenger bag
- You can’t take a coworker, partner, child, pet, or neighborhood crow with you
- If there is a valid warrant for your arrest, teleportation no longer works
I feel like the restrictions are going beyond just keeping it from being OP.
How about, you can teleport, but you’re frozen in place for the time it would take to get to your destination by conventional means
So you want to teleport across the room? Practical, from your perspective you skip walking, but not exactly usable in a fight. You want to teleport a single step? That’s usable in a fight, but only as part of a martial art
And you could teleport across the planet, but it might take a full day or more
Is that necessary to prevent it being OP? So instaneously across the planet is OP?
Definitely. Even freezing at the destination would be insanely OP
Think of the possibilities of asymmetric combat… You basically get a free shot at anyone. Even if you couldn’t take anything with you, you’re instantly unfindable
Never thought of the act of teleporting as quite that powerful. You still have to think and react. Its not really a free shot. I mean like a cycolps person could be blasting someone really far away and have no chance of being hit back unless the opponent also had a ranged superpower (or a gun). I mean you can’t really fight someone on the other side of the planet as you would not know where they were precisely enough to go over land a blow and come back. It would allow for ultimate kiting though so you might have something. I will say I would likely change to something else at that point. Going anywhere anytime instantly is really the main draw of the power. If I had a second choice it might be shape changing into any modern animal. A bit like beast boy but not the weird color thing. My guess is it would not be to OP because animals are not OP in relation to a soldier. I could see it taking a bit of time because the whole change into something massive while leaping around in combat does seem OP. A few minutes should suffice I think. And no dinosaurs that seems to much.
Think of it like this…cyclops has to sleep. Cyclops doesn’t know you’re coming… Or at least not when. You can abort an attempt over and over the second you’re sketched out. Unless they catch you by surprise, you have every advantage
Animal transformation has a similar problem. You can go anywhere as a fly or a rat, then you can turn into an elephant and kill anyone instantly
These abilities have way too much tactical value… They’re insanely OP. Compared to increased strength or eye beams, these abilities are automatic wins. Unless you get nerfed by loosing any ability to understand tactics or work with others
I apparently have this nerf although I get what your saying. I just did not quite think of it so assassin-ly. Still you are sneaking up on a guy with something akin to super precise rocket launcher in that he does not need to be worrying about using it at close range. I mean you might teleport away in time but might not. Similarly the shape changing will not save you. Remember it takes some time to do. The reason for that rule was to sorta prevent the suddenly squash thing. What if the shape changing makes noise and a light display so its obvious its happening and hard to sleep through. Actually that could work with the teleportation to.
Are walls a barrier? And what happens if you, say, path through a tunnel; but it collapses while you’re shifting?
Can you teleport someplace you’ve never seen? Or to a place you’re seeing in a picture? Or a live camera view?
The tunnel collapsing during the period extends your “trance” by the difference of going around. Quantum style, you get the minimum conventional journey at the moment of your arrival
You have to know where you’re going, pictures work if you have an intuitive understanding of where it is. You have to know how to get there, but you don’t have to have been there before or know that it looks like currently
I’d take a shot at super speed, I feel like simply saying “but your physique stays as-is” would be enough of a limitation with the following notes:
- You can decide to speed up your perception and run up to e.g 20x your base speed. That would make a 6 km/h walking speed into 120 km/h. Maybe we can do 50x and then it’s 300 km/h.
- Your body experiences the physical task as if you did it at base speed. You exercise for 10 minutes, the physical toll is 10 minutes, even if you sped yourself up to 50x in that timeframe.
In one second, you could zip through 80 meters just by walking, quick enough to be super useful, but still possible to counter since you will get tired after a while
I think the big limitation would just not to be able to speed up perception or physical resistance outside of your body (so you won’t tear apart your ligaments but you will have to deal with air resistance). I mean if your perception is normal its actually going to be tricky using the speed but its still gonna be hella useful.
Hah, you mention game-like balance - I suspect you might enjoy crafting superheroes in GURPS! It has built-in costs for all kinds of abilities, based on their utility. And you can get a discount on the price if you attach certain limitations to them, as well as get a point refund for taking on limitations yourself.
I’m not clear just how powerful gets into OP territory; what’s the baseline? Superman is presumably too far; are the rank-and-file X-Men okay? Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, but not Professor Xavier? Where do Spider-man and Batman come in on the scale? I assume Green Arrow’s fine, but Green Lantern’s on the OP side, I’m guessing?
I’ve actually got a few superhero designs kicking around for a side project, lets see how they rate! One has the ability to touch a machine, and possess it. While possessing it, they can also make extensive physical alterations to it - think making a car into a Transformers-style robot and controlling it, or a motorcycle into powered armor while you’re riding it. This also makes conventional hacking pretty easy (when done in person) - when you are the system, you decide who’s allowed to do what! The limiting factor is the size of the target - a car is easy, a locomotive or helicopter causes some strain, a container ship would need a plot device or macguffin before it could happen!
Another has a limited form of telekinesis - they can push and pull on things, or force them to remain at a set distance; but can’t apply “lateral” force to them (no lifting unless they’re above or below the target). Trick is, the same force applies to them - so if they push on the ground, they launch themselves; if they target a street light while falling, they can maintain a certain range and swing! For the cool factor, have this force be carried by colored beams; emitted typically from the hands, but potentially from anywhere on the body. A similar force inside their body lets them shrug off high G forces and blunt force (or any?) trauma. Finally, faster reflexes would help them zip about in a more Spider-man style.
I’m also always a sucker for an iron-man style tinkerer. But I’m not sure how that doesn’t eventually scale to OP levels…
(edit) missed the well-equipped soldier benchmark - sounds like Cyclops and Nightcrawler maybe, Wolverine’s healing might already be too much. Car-transformer needs a large machine to do big stuff, so that might still be in the soldier’s neighborhood? Not sure about the tractor beam power though. And the tinkerer is… basically a super-equipped non-soldier? :D
I have used gurps but prefered the hero system. FYI if its still running champions online uses it somewhat. It does not exactly have a variable power pool but it does have a freeform that can dip into various power sets and you might like to know that power armor is a pretty cool one. My favorite character was power armor. Anyway I think you have it right in the last paragraph. Someone mentioned colossus and I said power man would fit better I think but I think wolverine without the adamantine might work. Be a lot easier to knock him out then. Was trying to avoid multiple powers though like claws and healing or natural camo, prehensile tail, and teleportation. I figure powers based around an animal are still sorta one thing maybe. Much of this post was to hear from folks without the answers like. I can do this one little thing and here is how it would make me invicible. I wanted people to think along the lines of superpowers but not an I win at everything power. I have heard someone talk about a power a bit like one of yours. don’t suppose you sold comics somewhere between high school and college?
I have used gurps but prefered the hero system. FYI if its still running champions online uses it somewhat. It does not exactly have a variable power pool but it does have a freeform that can dip into various power sets and you might like to know that power armor is a pretty cool one. My favorite character was power armor.
I’ve heard about the Hero system off and on for a while now, I might need to look into it.
Anyway I think you have it right in the last paragraph. Someone mentioned colossus and I said power man would fit better I think but I think wolverine without the adamantine might work. Be a lot easier to knock him out then. Was trying to avoid multiple powers though like claws and healing or natural camo, prehensile tail, and teleportation. I figure powers based around an animal are still sorta one thing maybe. Much of this post was to hear from folks without the answers like. I can do this one little thing and here is how it would make me invicible. I wanted people to think along the lines of superpowers but not an I win at everything power.
Sounds like you’re looking for unified power sets for street-level superheroes? Multiple powers allowed as long as they’re thematically tied together?
I have heard someone talk about a power a bit like one of yours. don’t suppose you sold comics somewhere between high school and college?
Hah, no, sorry! Don’t have the disposition to be in sales, and didn’t really get into comics much until college. Still not a huge collector, just like superheroics in general :p
Here’s one I’m still struggling to figure out where to place power-wise: a tinkerer/gadgeteer type who makes custom super suits, gear, and vehicles for other supers, specializing in things that work with or enhance their existing abilities. The kind of guy who might have made Cap’s shield, Spidey’s webslingers, and the Incredimobile.
In the field he leads a squad of mildly enhanced people, all using his gear and vehicles. He rarely engages directly, instead directing his squad in battle. In a pinch, he can also enable “enhanced features” of the gear remotely - things that were in the manuals, if people would only read them! (Though they might not have existed before they were needed, on a meta-game level)
How do you scale the power level of a support/buffing character? By the squad size, by how big of buffs they can grant?
Honestly when henry pym ran with the avengers (might have been west coast version) he was a bit like that. He had a bunch of minaturized gizmos. He as like this because it was found the whole minitiarization and embiggening thing basically has bad health effects over time. Not sure if they retconned that. I had not thought much about buffing and support. This isn’t actually for a game I thought it would be fun for people to say what they want and but also have to reign themselves in and maybe end up with some discussion threads on the reign in. Im actually surprised at how much people have looked to limit it. I gave the examples because straight out attack seemed the easiest to sorta set and figured I would leave it to folks to sorta gear their power request to not do way better than the basic attack guys.
I just wanna be Colossus
I think this would be hard by the not more powerful than a well equipped soldier metric. I could see having the look and feel but more at a power man level. That would be my genie take.
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Time looping.
The person creating the loop is the only one with knowledge during the loops, everyone else forgets the day at the end of the loop.
What does the genie say about OP or do you want others to do that part?
