The Wanderer
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Unusual and/or useless super-powers
11-03-2013, 04:21 PM
One of the ongoing games I play with one of my brothers is trying to come up with a totally useless "super-power", and then trying to find a way for it to not be useless.
This is often enough amusing that it seems worth sharing. Ideas in both directions are welcome; offbeat superpowers (not useless, but "wha?" or otherwise amusing) would fit here as well.
My most recent "useless superpower" idea - and, I think, one of the best candidates I've come up with - is:
If you honestly believe you're vulnerable to something, it cannot harm you.
The Wanderer
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I've unfortunately forgotten many of our older ideas; I'll post the worthwhile ones if and/or as they come back to me. Here's one I do remember, plus another I just came up with.
* The ability to control what anyone you can see can smell. This affects only the olfactory centers of the brain (or equivalent); for example, making someone smell chloroform won't knock them out, unless they they're especially susceptible to psychosomatic suggestion. It's not entirely useless because you could use it to prevent someone from smelling a dangerous gas that's filling the room.
* The ability to teleport your clothes to anywhere you've never been, without sending yourself with them. (Having teleported your clothes there before counts as having been there.) It's not entirely useless because, if nothing else, a time-delay explosive vest could be used to bomb an enemy base (or other desired target) from within.
The Wanderer
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On the "not useless but amusing" side, here's one I built enough of an actual superhero around that I might consider playing him if I ever get into that kind of RPG.
His basic powerset is your standard speedster, Flash-level and below. The things that make it amusing are the activation conditions and the side effects.
For the activation condition: in order to be able to use his speed, he has to be cursing, swearing, et cetera - the more and worse, the faster he can go. It doesn't deactivate immediately when he stops, but his available speed will fall steadily until he's back to human-normal, unless he charges it back up again by resuming cursing.
I'm not clear whether it activates immediately - including side effects - on a single swear word and ramps up from there (producing a fellow who has to be scrupulously careful to keep his language clean in his ordinary secret-identity life, but has to be able to keep up a constant stream of foul language in his heroic identity), or whether there's no effect until he builds up to a certain minimum level of "charge" (allowing dramatic transformation scenes).
There are two main side effects.
The first is that, when his speed is enhanced above human-normal, he turns a distinct, vivid blue - skin, hair, nails, eyes, teeth, even blood if that becomes applicable.
The second is that, when his available speed rises above human-normal, his clothes fall off - and clothes won't stay on him until he reverts back.
As for his superhero name - let's just say that in the "no effect until it reaches a certain level" activation scenario, his dramatic transformations are referred to as "cursing up a Blue Streak".
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* Bad Taste: the ability to make someone experience a taste in their mouths of anything you've ever eaten.
* Evil Wardrobe: anyone you punch has their clothes temporarily transformed into an outfit suitable for an 80s cartoon super-crime organisation (or the minions of a 60s James Bond villain)
* One Step: The ability to teleport about 2 feet but only forwards and only if there are no obstructions.
* Power Karma: The capability to use any super-power used upon you but only on whoever used the power on you and only as often as they've done so. And you don't automatically know how to control the power.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Ability to "phase" through solid matter like the X-Men's Kitty Pryde or the Avengers' Vision -- except that to activate it, he/she has to be moving at above a certain speed when he/she reaches the solid surface, and that speed is beyond the reach of his/her muscles. This means he/she has to be thrown by someone with super-strength, or dive off a cliff or building at least three stories high (and then sort of "swim" through the ground). Well, or crash a car into the surface. The car itself, though, is too much mass for him/her to take along into intangibility (he/she is able to phase some things with him/her, starting with clothing, but there are mass limitations).
Fun fact: this actually came to me as I was waking up this morning.
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The ability to emit a burst of energy equivalent to the surface temperature of the Sun, at orgasm.
Call them "Porn Star".
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drakensis Wrote:* One Step: The ability to teleport about 2 feet but only forwards and only if there are no obstructions. "How'd you get up there?"
"Wasn't easy."
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
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The Wanderer
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The ability to do anything that you do not want to do.
This isn't for things you just "would rather not do" or "can't be arsed to do"; it's for the sort of thing you would refuse to do if asked, and maybe even if paid.
Having this ability would grant almost no benefit, and would get you undesired attention from supervillains of all stripes - who would be quite willing to apply whatever coercive methods might be necessary to overcome your refusals.
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Quote:The Wanderer wrote:
The ability to do anything that you do not want to do.
This isn't for things you just "would rather not do" or "can't be arsed to do"; it's for the sort of thing you would refuse to do if asked, and maybe even if paid.
Having this ability would grant almost no benefit, and would get you undesired attention from supervillains of all stripes - who would be quite willing to apply whatever coercive methods might be necessary to overcome your refusals.
...and would be immensely useful when it comes to doing that one thing you really don't want to do, but have to get done. You know, like saving the world.
How about the ability to convert gaseous carbon to helium?
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
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