100 KiB
[Q] Lamest superpower (challenge)
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Author: u/eaglejarl *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2lrdx2/q_lamest_superpower_challenge/
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Score: 25
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Created: 2014-11-09T13:42:47
Post:
I'm feeling like writing a superhero story. (Once I finish everything ELSE on my plate, anyway.) Writing flying bricks and winners of the superpower lottery is boring, I'd rather write someone who gets creative with an apparently lame power.
What is the absolutely stupidest, most useless power you can think of?
Comments:
u/None [+20] (45 minutes later)
The ability to start glowing when you are in danger.
u/Charlie___ [+17] (an hour later)
Or when orcs are near.
u/None [+4] (5 hours later)
Yeah I got the idea from Sting, I always thought Bilbo should have got a more stealthy (burglar appropriate weapon) not paint a massive target on himself.
u/Gurkenglas [+10] (an hour later)
Like, whenever the probability of you dying in the next few moments if you had no danger sense overcomes a treshold? Easy time travel computer.
u/fljared [+8] United Federation of Planets (3 hours later)
I'm going to shoot you in five minutes if you guess wrong on the next coin flip. You initially guess heads, and then start to glow.
u/None [+6] (5 hours later)
Perfect for bomb defusal xD
u/qznc [+6] Chaos Legion (7 hours later)
More like a paradox. If you are about to cut the wrong wire, then you start to glow and you will not do it. Therefore you are not actually in danger, therefore you do not glow. Since you do not glow on the wrong wire, you are in danger, therefore ...
u/ulyssessword [+8] (8 hours later)
That's why there's the "if you had no danger sense" clause in the description.
u/sephlington [+2] (22 hours later)
But the original statement didn't have that clause, thus making it a really lame superpower.
u/E-o_o-3 [+5] (a day later)
When you think you're in danger, or when you're really in danger regardless of what you think? Depending on the specifics of what exactly causes it to glow, you might be able to spin the latter into a generalized "answer any binary question" oracle.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
When you ARE.. let munchkining ensue
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (a day later)
Wait what? Doesn't you're = you are?
Edit: neeeever mind not sure why i thought that was a grammer correction haha
u/Hello_ItsMe [+2] (a day later)
I think he means "when you ARE," as opposed to "when you THINK you are."
Could be wrong, no idea what munchkining is.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
u/autotrope_bot [+2] (2 days later)
Munchkin
The Munchkin is the Tabletop RPG player who plays the game to win at any cost, even if that isn't the point of the game. Perhaps the most ridiculed Player Archetype of all time, this player is rarely interested in the _ story _ behind the game. Indeed, his characters are little more than extensions of his own personality or whatever personality would give him the most bonuses.
I am a bot. Here is my sub
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (a day later)
oh you're right, thanks
u/None [+19] (40 minutes later)
Ability to believe anything.
u/None [+16] (5 hours later)
So, a normal unpowered human.
u/fljared [+10] United Federation of Planets (2 hours later)
Useful, if you're in one of those "belief makes it real" universes, like WH4K or Discworld.
u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (a day later)
Not so hot for the average horror move, though.
u/None [+9] (5 hours later)
You would be the ideal mind reader misdirection specialist, suck it Professor X.
u/JosephLeee [+4] (2 days later)
So I can consciously change my beliefs?
If so, I believe in myself. As the saying goes: "If you believe in yourself, you can do anything"
Therefore, by believing in myself, I am now a god!
^Ok ^not ^really ^please ^don't ^try ^this ^yourself
u/None [+5] (2 days later)
Damnit, you munchkined the dumbest power I could think of into unlimited Spiral Power.
u/JosephLeee [+2] (2 days later)
Um no it doesn't actually work.
However, you would probably act (and be) more confident, giving you an edge over everyone else.
u/None [+3] (2 days later)
u/DCarrier [+2] (19 days later)
If you honestly think you can't lose, you won't last long. It might help to make you believe you have a chance of winning, but once you're convinced you're immortal, it will be all too tempting to try to block the enemy's bullets with your face.
u/Lethalmud [+18] (6 hours later)
Random objects around you are invisible only to you. You do not know which ones.
u/Shiningknight12 [+3] (11 days later)
This would let you see through objects.
u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (a day later)
Would make hiding bodies a real hassle.
u/J4k0b42 [+18] (6 hours later)
Actually, I've got a better one: neutrino bending. You can alter the course of any neutrinos passing within a mile or so of you by a few degrees. Your control is not fine enough to ensure that they impact matter any more than they usually do.
u/PeridexisErrant [+13] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (9 hours later)
Physicists hate him!
u/ulyssessword [+4] (10 hours later)
With a powerful enough particle accelerator on your side and a broad enough interpretation of the power, you could have pretty good prescience over a wide area.
Get a 2 mile wide beam of neutrinos shot at you at ~100 million times the intensity of the sun. The number of neutrino collisions in a person will go from ~1/year to 30/second. You can then detect all matter (by density) in your range by seeing where the neutrinos suddenly stop existing.
u/OffColorCommentary [+15] (3 hours later)
When press your hands together and release them, a dove comes out.
u/puesyomero [+16] The Culture (3 hours later)
boom food problem solved for any community that has you in it and doesn't mind chicken
u/6340 [+15] (4 hours later)
Hm. How fast can you press your hands together and release them? If we say that a light clap counts as a press, and you're a super naturally fast clapper at 4 claps per second, then you'll be producing 4 doves per second (assuming that each dove is magically carted away as soon as it's created)
A person eats about 2.1 kg of food a day, which is roughly the mass of a dove (according to Google). There are 86400 seconds in a day, and 4 doves per second means that you can feed 345600 people per day at max rate.
So if you're on some super-amphetamines to produce nonstop, you could feed a country the size of Belize (with some really involved distribution system), or over 1/10 the United States.
u/OffColorCommentary [+9] (10 hours later)
How many people can I feed if I become the world's most famous stage magician and donate as much as I can?
Because that sounds like a lot easier lifestyle. And the super-amphetamines would be purely recreational.
u/6340 [+8] (14 hours later)
Let's say you're as popular as Beyonce. She makes $2.4 million per city. With your super-amphetamines and magical stage performance skill, you'll still only be able to pull one show a day, in order to hit prime time and get the right audiences (unless you have a very supersonic jet).
Let's be generous and say that with your impressive transportation from being an expert performer, you can make $5 million a night on average. If we call the price of the components and the making of a meal about $5 (being generous), then you can make a million meals, and feed 333,333 people.
Wow, isn't it interesting that the two numbers seem to be nearly the same? Though of course, I doubt you'd be able to keep the world interested with the same act forever, and practicing new acts takes time away from our philanthropic procedure...
u/illz569 [+2] (2 days later)
You can buy a big sack of rice for five dollars in the US, it'll go way farther than one meal in some places.
u/E-o_o-3 [+3] (a day later)
Problem: at 4 claps per second you'd be smashing the doves into each other. What even happens when a spawning dove has no room to spawn? (answer may lead to hackable thing)
u/6340 [+2] (a day later)
See:
(assuming that each dove is magically carted away as soon as it's created)
Of course, this may be the wrong place to talk about realisticness... But we can have them appear so their feet land on the surface of a super fast conveyor belt and they're yanked away immediately.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (a day later)
So, in the general case where you can summon matter from your hands and force it to be in a specific place, this should have quite a few high-powered hacks. The hard part is not injuring your hands.
u/OffColorCommentary [+2] (a day later)
I'm going to assume the dove fully fits into the space that you sweep through with your hands, so you can only force matter into existence where you can already push your hands through.
Actually, mechanically, let's make it be that the inside surfaces of your hands become an air-tight, dove-cross-section-shaped portal, wrapped around a dove, somewhere. As you pull your hands apart, you move the portal so two ends of the dove are somewhere, and the middle is between your hands. If you try to move your hands in a way that does not fit a dove, you encounter as much resistance as it would normally take to bend the dove that way (if you're strong you can use this to summon a dead dove).
This does mean that if you're in a closed room, each dove summoned will slightly increase the air pressure. I'm pretty sure the equivalent underwater does not actually cause a shockwave any more than it does for someone without this super power, but I could be wrong.
u/DCarrier [+2] (19 days later)
Use it to build an interstellar spacecraft. It would take a lot of clapping, but you have infinite fuel, infinite reaction mass, infinite food, etc. This would work especially well if you have advanced enough technology to power a fusion reactor with doves.
u/Elementoid [+17] (4 hours later)
- The ability to grow your hair at a slightly faster rate than normal humans
- The ability to correctly guess how works of fiction will end after experiencing only a fraction of their content
- The ability to synthesize random numbers
- The ability to look fashionable in any clothing
- The ability to know the local time
- The ability to instantly vaporize yourself (works exactly once, for obvious reasons)
- The ability to know whether or not (a binary value) if the injuries you currently possess will be fatal in the next 24 hours
- The ability to correctly guess the outcome of a situation, but only so long as you believe that outcome to be inconsequential (ie you don't believe you nor anyone else has any stake in it)
- Constant, can't-be-turned-off, X-Ray vision
- The ability to always insert a USB drive correctly on the first try
u/MoralRelativity [+10] (5 hours later)
The ability to always insert a USB drive correctly on the first try.
Now that's just crazy talk!
u/ulyssessword [+9] (9 hours later)
The ability to correctly guess how works of fiction will end after experiencing only a fraction of their content
First use: Perfect lie detector. When someone tells you what happened in a situation, you can instantly tell that they are making up the story if your power triggers off of it.
Second use: unbreakable cryptographic communication, although the bandwidth varies with the specifics of the power. Get someone to send the necessary fraction of a purpose-made story to you, along with a key to interpret the results. For example: "the butler did it" means attack now, "the maid did it" means wait until morning, "the wife did it" means that reinforcements are incoming and so on. Alternatively, "your orders are what the last page of this story says."
The ability to correctly guess the outcome of a situation, but only so long as you believe that outcome to be inconsequential (ie you don't believe you nor anyone else has any stake in it)
How transitive is this, and what is the threshold? Assuming very permissive limits, you could pull stunts like "I have no money bet right now. That roulette wheel will turn up a 12. I guess I should bet now." or compound many small things together. "The home team will not score between 0:00 and 0:05 of the first quarter of the basketball game. The home team will not score between 0:05 and 0:10 of the first quarter of the basketball game..." and so on for every 5 seconds of the game. No one interval that size matters, so no one prediction fails.
The ability to look fashionable in any clothing
This seems like it would need to act as the opposite effect in order to make sense: You have the ability to look appropriate for any situation, as fashion is defined by where you currently are and what you are currently doing. It would be a great power for a spy, as they could go from a posh party to hiding as a homeless man in seconds.
The ability to instantly vaporize yourself (works exactly once, for obvious reasons)
That looks like a pretty decent suicide bomb, and it's obviously undetectable. My numbers may be off, but I got 100 kg of TNT equivalent energy.
u/xamueljones [+7] My arch-enemy is entropy (10 hours later)
The ability to grow your hair at a slightly faster rate than normal humans.
Human hair is used to mop up oil spills because of how absorbent it is and there are organizations who collect them from barber shops. Or sell your hair to be used as wigs.
The ability to correctly guess how works of fiction will end after experiencing only a fraction of their content.
You can fool others into thinking you are an oracle, ghost-write the ending to famous incomplete works, or predict the future by writing about events but with minor details changed to make it 'fiction based on a true story'.
The ability to synthesize random numbers.
You can encode messages without a computer.
The ability to look fashionable in any clothing.
You can disguise yourself among the rich and wealthy. You will appear wealthier than you really are and will gain respect in formal or business settings.
The ability to know the local time.
Can you know the local time of the Sun, the Galaxy, or the Universe to deduce the age of the Universe to a more precise figure than 14 billion years (repeat for nearby astrological objects)? You will never need watch and you can time anything down to the millisecond.
The ability to instantly vaporize yourself (works exactly once, or obvious reasons).
Any terrorist would love your ability to defeat bomb detectors and can you vaporize cut off body parts as well?
The ability to know whether or not (a binary value) if the injuries you currently possess will be fatal in the 24 hours.
I'm assuming that the power is just the ability to know if your body won't be able to heal in 24 hours without medical services instead of true precognition. You can test poisons with an antidote in increasing dosages until you have the smallest amount that can kill in 24 hours and just take the antidote. Test effectiveness of safety gear where you can get hurt, but won't die instantaneously and have trained doctors ready to help. There's a lot of ways to use this power in situations where slow-acting deaths which can be treated can tell you something.
The ability to correctly guess the outcome of a situation, but only so long as you believe that outcome to be inconsequential (ie you don't believe you nor anyone else has any stake in it).
Have people ask you random hypothetical situations where the majority are meaningless and you become able to predict the important ones, but you can't know which ones are important until after the prediction.
Constant, can't be turned off, X-ray vision.
MRI scans are ridiculously expensive. You just saved the hospital you work at a lot of money.
The ability to always insert a USB drive correctly on the first try.
You can now magically fixed smashed USBs into its normal shape.
u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (7 hours later)
The ability to correctly guess how works of fiction will end after experiencing only a fraction of their content
Does this apply to works of fiction which have not been fully written yet?
u/pseudonameous [+7] (9 hours later)
Who cares. He could start reading the bible and tell everyone for sure if it's fiction.
Actually, he could probably start reading any message whatsoever and tell if it's true or not.
If we squeeze it a bit, it could maybe be used to check hypotheses for science! They write one, if it's true, the guy doesn't know how it ends.
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (11 hours later)
I love this idea, but if I wanted to nerf it, I'd rule that fiction can be "based on a true story" so your power applies unreliably to true things.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (15 days later)
So ... you can predict the future just be reading a history book?
u/None [+1] (a day later)
He could start reading the bible and tell everyone for sure if it's fiction.
ifWe can already do that. Not a superpower.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
"The ability to correctly guess how works of fiction will end after experiencing only a fraction of their content"
Write the ending of the story based on some future event. Now you can predict the future by predicting the course of your own story.
"The ability to correctly guess the outcome of a situation, but only so long as you believe that outcome to be inconsequential (ie you don't believe you nor anyone else has any stake in it)"
Suppose you have to be 99% certain it's inconsequential. Someone asks you what the answer to the question they wrote down in this envelope is. 99% of the time it's inconsequential. The other 1% of the time it's not.
"Constant, can't-be-turned-off, X-Ray vision"
Can you just see X-Rays, or is this something where you're projecting so many of them that you can make out objects from the backscatter? If it's the second one, you could tune solar panels to that frequency and get electricity from it.
"The ability to always insert a USB drive correctly on the first try"
Fix the computer in place. Attach the USB upside-down to a turbine. In order to insert the USB drive correctly, you have to spin the turbine, generating large amounts of power. You're superpower must allow you to do this.
u/Nepene [+12] (3 hours later)
I will focus on the word lame.
The ability to get lost.
The ability to emulate in voice and appearance any member of a boyband.
The ability to make anyone bored of an activity.
The power to find bits of food hidden in crevices and beards and such.
The ability to ace any test.
A supernatural ability to make teachers love you.
The ability to shoots rainbows out of your ass.
The ability to talk to dead old white guys (since old people are often lame).
The ability to out alpha anyone for a girl.
The power to think up the exact words to kill any party.
The power to resist the influence of any drugs or sexual attraction.
The ability to gain any disability at will.
u/None [+17] (4 hours later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+6] (4 hours later)
The ability to get lost.Being lost generally requires not knowing where you are. You can now escape from most places (like jail).
Earlier today I was reading (in one of the threads that was linked from here? on TVTropes? not sure) about a book in which someone had the power to get lost...and he used it while falling from an airplane. Someone else had "arrive late to anything", and used it to arrive late to the pain of being tortured.
u/Nepene [+9] (5 hours later)
Alcatraz by Brandon Sanderson.
The main character has the ability to break things.
u/Nepene [+4] (4 hours later)
Being lost generally requires not knowing where you are. You can now escape from most places (like jail).
Indeed you can.
Infiltration. Too easy. Be sure to read up on the boy bands in other countries.
You may get some unexpected surprises when people find that Justin Bieber is infiltrating their neo nazi group.
"Living" is an activity.
It is, though I'd probably make the power more limited than this- people don't actively live, they breathe and such. Also, you have no control over autonomous functions-people will breathe and be hungry regardless of what your powers do. I'd imagine the story would have a lot of exploration of what boredom worked well to stop a person and have a lot of exploration of motivation and reasons people do things.
Suppose there was a religious extremist and you made them bored of religion to stop them. You then find out that actually what really motivated them was pleasing their companions.
This test has a time limit of five minutes, and consists of one essay prompt. Drawings and schematics are encouraged. The prompt is, "outline, in detail sufficient to build a working model, plans for a stable cold fusion reactor, which can be built from under $1,000 worth of parts at an average Super Wal-Mart."
I'd probably use a different definition of ace- they perform better than the majority of testers around them, or they perform to the expectations of the tester. A test with an imprecise mark scheme like 'A working cold fusion machine' wouldn't be enough- suppose the machine actually worked via quantum bullshit, how would the tester evaluate this?
Mind control? Way too easy.
Not mind control, mind alteration. You can induce love in teachers. You can't control what said teachers do.
Dazzler is potent.
Einstein, Machiavelli, Charlemagne, Nostradamus... At the very least, I'm sure there are some very good advisers available.
Yes there are, though they may not know english or be happy to talk to you.
"Avada Kedavra"
The power would be about ending social interaction. It wouldn't give you any magical power to kill people, it would be a mental ability involving enhanced body language reading skills and intuition and mind reading to achieve the goal of ending parties.
u/Stop_Sign [+2] (a day later)
The ability to make anyone bored of an activity.
"I was gonna yell at you, but now it's just boring."
This is practically the Notice-Me-Not ability, except it is much more versatile, can cover other people, and can be projected to specific people.
u/TimTravel [+2] (a day later)
Being lost generally requires not knowing where you are. You can now escape from most places (like jail).
That's brilliant!
u/6340 [+10] (4 hours later)
The ability to ace any test.
You can only pass this test by writing a Friendly AI in less than 20 minutes. Your power activates and you do it somehow.
Let's be honest, being able to retrieve any knowledge you want based on the arbitrary definition of a test is an immediate victory.
u/Nepene [+3] (5 hours later)
You can ace this test.
So you can perform better than 80% or so of programmers in designing a friendly AI.
Testing implies a tester who can verify the success of your abilities and acing a test implies doing better than the average.
Tests are often also applies en masse- if you're the only person your power may be less compliant. You can't really ace a test only you do.
With these powers if you attempted to apply them to situations they didn't fit they might just nope you. This doesn't fit my test criteria, you're on your own.
u/Zephyr1011 [+4] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (6 hours later)
acing a test implies doing better than the average.
Doesn't ace mean to get full marks on a test?
u/Nepene [+3] (6 hours later)
It normally means receiving an A, which tends to not be full marks but something less.
u/Zephyr1011 [+6] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (6 hours later)
In which case, you can easily mess with how marks are allocated on that test to get your desired result
u/Nepene [+1] (6 hours later)
To some degree, but the power in my mind has its own definition of ace as well. You can game it a little, but if the power regards it as not a true test or doesn't have enough people to let you ace it won't activate. Something like an ace is doing better than most people, a test involves several people being evaluated by some reachable criteria.
u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (7 hours later)
Well, doing a test with a hundred of other people, all of whom fail, means you must do better than them to ace it. Which is easily exploitable
u/Nepene [+2] (7 hours later)
You could fail slightly less poorly than them.
I'd use a definition like this.
something (as a series of questions or exercises) for measuring the skill, knowledge, intelligence, capacities, or aptitudes of an individual or group
So it needs some comparative measurement criteria. If no one can succeed you can't measure it. It's off the scale.
Suppose the test was 'lift the planet'.
You're not really measuring strength in most people since they can't really do much to lift it. It's not a measurable power. You can't do better than anyone else. You'll always fail.
So the power would go 'fake test, not helping you, kthxbye'.
Or 'construct a friendly AI'
Ok, what are you measuring. Friendly AI construction abilities? How do you confirm that this is a real friendly AI? What are other candidates evaluated on? What would be a B grade mark, an A grade, a C grade?
If your answer is 'you decide' then the answer will be 'no'.
u/frodo_skywalker [+2] (21 hours later)
So the power isn't 'ace any test'; rather it's 'perform near the top in group testing'.
That's still pretty useful. Lots of employers use aptitude testing for hiring. Universities typically look at school leaving exams for admission (and scholarships).
u/Nepene [+1] (22 hours later)
I defined the word ace and test carefully. People wanted to take the widest possible definition but I disagreed with them.
The power requires there to be a test and some ability to ace it, but it doesn't require you to actually be competing in the test. You could use it to gain the knowledge of a Chemistry university student and use that to make a bomb say.
u/6340 [+3] (7 hours later)
Sorry about that, I defined ace to be "to score above 90% on the test, regardless of others' performances", rather than "to score in the 90th percentile". Disagreements on definition are the worst.
u/Nepene [+3] (7 hours later)
The definition of test is "a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use."
"c : something (as a series of questions or exercises) for measuring the skill, knowledge, intelligence, capacities, or aptitudes of an individual or group "
So regardless of the exact details of the power 90% on the mark scheme isn't enough. It needs to have measurable standards for performance on a reasonably official scale, and is generally applied to a group.
u/6340 [+1] (7 hours later)
So using your definitions, is there a way to game it to extract knowledge that does not yet exist by forcing the power to ace a test?
u/Nepene [+2] (7 hours later)
No, though you can extract information from unusual groups from it- you could say, ask it to prepare you for an interview for a promotion in a billionaire's household to head of security. It could extract information from an enemy group.
u/6340 [+1] (7 hours later)
Can I ask it to prepare me for a test who's premise is to determine large prime numbers?
Or something similar, to determine something that's not impossible, but difficult to know?
u/Nepene [+3] (8 hours later)
You can.
It will be much more effective if you can specify a particular group to test against.
https://www.eff.org/awards/coop
E.g. say you want to ace this challenge against these people. It could provide you with aid to try and ace the test, like hardware and software improvements people have done, ways to get access to super computers, skill to program programs. It won't necessarily be better than the best of them but it can synthesize the best of their different approaches and find shortcuts and tricks to beat them.
This would, of course, be seen as lame by many people, you using your superpower to try to beat a bunch of nerds in doing maths, and so be very in fitting with the challenge.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
So 90% of the time the AI is friendly. And 10% of the time, it killed everyone and tiled the universe with regular dodecahedrons.
u/6340 [+1] (a day later)
The test is 1 point, the point will only be awarded for achieving the objective. To ace, or even pass, the AI must be friendly, by my definition at least, not /u/Nepene's
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Objective one: Change your definition. Nanoprobes deployed.
Objective two: Tile universe with regular dodecahedrons.
Test passed.
u/bbrazil [+3] NERV (4 hours later)
So exploitable:
The ability to get lost. The ability to emulate in voice and appearance any member of a boyband. The ability to make anyone bored of an activity.
Stealth/escape.
The power to find bits of food hidden in crevices and beards and such.
Infinite food/matter.
The ability to ace any test.
Knowledge.
A supernatural ability to make teachers love you.
In Ireland at least, many of our politicians are teachers (and still on the payroll).
The ability to shoots rainbows out of your ass.
Protons on demand, in all the wavelengths.
The ability to talk to dead old white guys (since old people are often lame).
The ability to out alpha anyone for a girl.
Out alpha Elon Musk, bam electric plane.
The power to think up the exact words to kill any party.
Assassin.
The power to resist the influence of any drugs or sexual attraction.
Can't be poisoned.
The ability to gain any disability at will.
That smell that'd make you retch? No you can't smell.
u/Nepene [+2] (5 hours later)
Stealh and escape is fine.
You can get infinite food and matter from the food hidden, but not at a high rate. Enough to survive certainly, but not enough to massively change the economy. Finding a chicken wing stuck under your sweaty nipples even once a second isn't going to end poverty.
Knowledge.
Indeed, though it's limited to testable material. Without aliens you can't ace an alien technology test say. There needs to be a tester and such.
In Ireland at least, many of our politicians are teachers (and still on the payroll).
Then they are yours.
Protons on demand, in all the wavelengths.
You can't shoot much outside the visible spectrum. A bit of infrared and ultraviolet. It's what we normally see as a rainbow.
Out alpha Elon Musk, bam electric plane.
Your power probably wouldn't summon an electric plane. It would try to make you more impressive, or give you an appropriate grab bag of minor powers to enable to cheat your way into it. Stealing someone else's plane say. Or stealing his plane.
Assassin.
Parties aren't sentient beings, assassins tend to not want to be publicly ending parties, secrecy is their game.
Can't be poisoned.
Indeed.
That smell that'd make you retch? No you can't smell.
That would be within your powerset, as well as removing your pain or hearing or sight.
u/holomanga [+0] (7 days later)
The power to think up the exact words to kill any party.
Wipe out your political opponents. Become president.
u/Nepene [+1] (7 days later)
The party refers to social gatherings in a localized area more than entire organizations. You can certainly start a fight in any political gathering. If you can get to the right people maybe you can kill a political party.
u/holomanga [+0] (7 days later)
When it comes to munchkinry, all that matters is the author's wording. Their actual meaning is irrelevant :P
u/Nepene [+1] (7 days later)
The intent is also important- the power is about being lame and being a party pooper, so obviously the power is focused along those lines.
u/Nepene [+1] (7 days later)
Plus there's the issue, the power doesn't say it tells you who to say the words to, or what body language or such to use. To end this political party you have to say "She never loved him, if you go to him now you can still have her back. She always wanted her Victoria dreams." Go.
Hence why it's a lot easier in a localized party.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
"The ability to get lost."
Rob a bank. When the police chase you, get lost.
"The ability to emulate in voice and appearance any member of a boyband."
Start a boyband. Make your target an honorary member. Also, you could make a lot of money as a prostitute. And you could sub for any member of any boyband that gets sick or something.
"The ability to make anyone bored of an activity."
Make them bored of fighting you. Make supervillains bored of crime.
"The power to find bits of food hidden in crevices and beards and such."
Infinite source of food. Also can be used as fuel and reaction mass on a spaceship.
"The ability to ace any test."
Your test it to rescue the Crystal Empire from King Sombra.
"A supernatural ability to make teachers love you."
There are a lot of teachers. You will be a very powerful, if very hated, supervillain.
"The ability to talk to dead old white guys (since old people are often lame)."
Anyone can do that. The question is if you can make them talk back.
"The power to resist the influence of any drugs or sexual attraction."
If there's any supervillains that use chemical weapons, you are now immune.
"The ability to gain any disability at will."
Curse yourself with awesome.
u/Nepene [+1] (19 days later)
Rob a bank. When the police chase you, get lost.
Completely doable.
Start a boyband. Make your target an honorary member. Also, you could make a lot of money as a prostitute. And you could sub for any member of any boyband that gets sick or something.
The first one is skirting the definition of boyband- I'd say it wouldn't work unless they were part of the vocal group. It's magically fueled by the love of girls for boybands, they need to be up on stage singing for it to work. The other two are fine.
Make them bored of fighting you. Make supervillains bored of crime.
You can do the first, though for the second you don't have any ability to make people bored of stuff outside of your presence. It might not stick.
Infinite source of food. Also can be used as fuel and reaction mass on a spaceship.
Doable.
Your test it to rescue the Crystal Empire from King Sombra.
Probably not a test, so no. It needs to be a set of problems used to evaluate a group, with you getting a highish but not top tier mark, per the normal definition.
Anyone can do that. The question is if you can make them talk back.
Talk often carries a connotation of a back and forth conversation, so yes.
If there's any supervillains that use chemical weapons, you are now immune.
You're immune to things that cause substantive effects via metabolism, things that attack say skin are not included- sulphuric acid would still burn you say.
Curse yourself with awesome.
You could, but that's not a disability.
u/6340 [+11] (4 hours later)
Controlling bugs. Duh. That's just so useless and unworkable.
More seriously, any "open ended" superpower is probably munchkinable in some way or another. What you really need is something that seems cool, but is restricted. Say you could only control bugs, but they had to be within 5 feet of you? You're limited to only the bugs that are already near you; if you try to run around too quickly you'll leave some behind, but otherwise you'll never come across a really significant amount. (Of course I expect someone to be able to munchkin this. The point being that while it's still usable, it's less usable than the open-ended version)
u/darkflagrance [+4] (6 hours later)
This is a worms reference right?
u/6340 [+6] (6 hours later)
In case you or someone else hasn't read it: http://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-1-10/arc-1-gestation/1-01/
You can challenge gods with a couple insects.
u/bbrazil [+8] NERV (8 hours later)
u/6340 [+2] (8 hours later)
Could I ask spoiler up to what arc? I'm not through with that monster...
u/bbrazil [+3] NERV (8 hours later)
It's towards the end of the story, not sure of the exact number.
u/6340 [+1] (8 hours later)
Well, not touching that one yet! Thanks anyway, though.
u/GeeJo [+3] Custom Flair (8 hours later)
Final arc.
u/holomanga [+2] (7 days later)
I'm only up to Chapter 7 and I read the spoiler anyway.
This is gonna be good.
u/bbrazil [+1] NERV (7 days later)
Don't expect to get much else done for the next month :)
u/bbrazil [+3] NERV (6 hours later)
Yes, this is the main character's power. You should read it.
u/notentirelyrandom [+10] (3 hours later)
Whatever the current most useless answer is, except it only works half the time.
u/Chronophilia [+6] sci-fi ≠ futurology (11 hours later)
Conclusion: The most useless power is one that never works at all.
... logic is overrated.
u/failed_novelty [+4] (9 hours later)
This becomes the best answer, so 50% of the time, it fails to work 50% of TT he time.
u/tilkau [+2] (21 hours later)
Zeno's Uselessness Paradox? ;)
u/Nepene [+2] (23 hours later)
If you downpower a superpower too much it becomes less super and so fits the question less. I think a better answer is something that is objectively powerful and has an obvious effect but which is lame.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
What if the current one has negative usefulness?
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+10] Godric Gryffindor (13 hours later)
The ability to apply a force of 10^-40 Newtons to a single quark. You do not know where the quark is.
u/Nepene [+7] (23 hours later)
Can't anyone do this? It's not really super. Gravity is a general ability.
u/kenkopin [+1] (2 days later)
I now find myself wondering how anyone (including they who possess it) could know this power existed.
u/Askspencerhill [+9] I almost stole Cruithne's flair (7 hours later)
The ability to, at will, become unable to walk normally because of an injury or illness affecting the leg or foot.
That's the lamest you can get.
u/traverseda [+3] With dread but cautious optimism (11 hours later)
Ouch.
Fuck you.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
Alternately, you can walk fine. It's your superpower that can't walk.
u/bbrazil [+8] NERV (7 minutes later)
There's been a few of these on AskReddit, such as:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1xlh65/reddit_whats_the_worst_superpower_you_can_come_up/
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tn9do/what_is_your_lame_superpower/
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/i8org/reddit_what_is_your_shitty_superpower/
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1491ck/what_would_your_minor_superpower_be/
Quality isn't great, though there's a few gems.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (52 minutes later)
Wow.
Ok, I was pretty sure that I could weaponize pretty much anything but...yeah. Mostly, I got nothing.
Although, there's some really cool one, like these:
The ability to hear the soundtrack of my life.
Always have the correct amount of change in pocket
I can close any door at will.
The ability to unwrinkle or straighten anything.
Knowing exactly how someone's sentence will finish, but never how the next one starts.
Being able to pull $10 out of my pocket
There's a few that are too obviously powerful, though:
The power to make someone feel another person's emotions.
Turning any liquid into alcohol
Thanks for the pointers, and sorry for the repost.
u/GeeJo [+7] Custom Flair (3 hours later)
The ability to unwrinkle or straighten anything.
Seems pretty breakable on a small scale. Proteins, for example, do not appreciate being straightened, so you've got a pretty horrific Touch attack at the very least. There's probably also some way to cheese gigantic buckytubes out of the deal, too.
And hey, it's not a repost. A crosspost at worst.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 hours later)
Oh yeah, good point. I was thinking of breaking it with things like "straighten your clothes to imprison you" or force carbon fiber threads to stay straight so you could use them as shuriken or stabbing devices. Alternatively, if they wanted to kill someone, there's the "unwrinkle your brain" trick.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I straighten the loops of string theory.
Everything stops.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Yowza. That's fairly impressive.
u/Vebeltast [+4] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (3 hours later)
It'd be fun to have a giant grab bag of useless powers and see if you could put them together for great power.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 hours later)
Oooh, I like that! Thanks!
u/Vebeltast [+3] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (4 hours later)
Yeah, it hits all three of Sanderson's Laws right on the head. Tons of opportunity to pull out surprising but elegant and understandable combos to solve problems.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
Always have the correct amount of change in pocket
That's easy. Find someone who only accepts solid gold coins.
Knowing exactly how someone's sentence will finish, but never how the next one starts.
Is there a rule on how long it can take for them to finish the sentence? "The winning lottery numbers are ..." wait a week, give the winning lottery numbers. Now you can win the lottery.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (19 days later)
Yep. These are the ones that I actually could figure out how to weaponize. Other ways to abuse the "correct amount of change":
- A friend says "hey, can you give me change for this hundred-dollar bill?" Repeat.
- Always have small objects to throw
- Always have a dime to use as a screwdriver, or a penny to use as a conductor
The soundtrack, of course, is great for information gathering and hypothesis testing -- when you start to hear creepy music then yes, the murderer is behind that door. When you hear Thus Sprach Zarathustra, then you know you've correctly solved your problem, etc.
The ability to straighten things is just horrifically lethal, as discussed above.
u/dcb720 [+6] (2 hours later)
Ability to mentally repel soap suds.
u/J4k0b42 [+2] (5 hours later)
Depending on the force you could make weapons with a chamber of suds inside and then fire them at stuff.
u/dcb720 [+2] (5 hours later)
Would force pop the bubbles, and now it's just soapy water instead of suds?
u/J4k0b42 [+2] (5 hours later)
Maybe you could flash-freeze them.
u/puesyomero [+5] The Culture (3 hours later)
The ability to determine the outcome of any coin toss I'm aware of before or during the fact. The ability to change any bottled drink to any liquid ever drunk only before opening the bottle. to be able to determine exactly the aroma everyone else perceives of me independently of my current hygiene. The ability to see a halo or horns on people if their last conscious decision was aligned with my morals (like horns on people who don't wash their hands coming out of the bathroom etc..) The ability to instantly calculate the amount of time something will continue to be edible.
u/6340 [+3] (4 hours later)
The ability to change any bottled drink to any liquid ever drunk only before opening the bottle.
Drink something weird. Maybe a tiny bit of C-60 buckyballs, or a small amount of liquid gold. When I say small, I mean tiny. Only enough molecules to define it as a liquid. Aaaaand infinite [anything liquid]
The ability to see a halo or horns on people if their last conscious decision was aligned with my morals.
Lying is against your morals? Politician truth detector!
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (11 hours later)
Drink something weird. Maybe a tiny bit of C-60 buckyballs, or a small amount of liquid gold. When I say small, I mean tiny. Only enough molecules to define it as a liquid. Aaaaand infinite [anything liquid]
Congratulations, you can turn any bottled liquid into a milligram of gold.
(Still munchkinable.)
u/6340 [+2] (14 hours later)
I can only make liquids into the exact volume of liquid that I had before? Easy-peasy, drink a lot of [non-lethal liquid], and turn 1 mL portions of water into that liquid. Creating new mass, aw yeah.
u/J4k0b42 [+4] (6 hours later)
The coin one gets you an easy million dollars from the JREF.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
The ability to determine the outcome of any coin toss I'm aware of before or during the fact.
Toss the coin onto some kind of fan that can keep it up indefinitely. When you know the answer to whatever it is you wanted to predict, set the coin down on the appropriate side.
The ability to change any bottled drink to any liquid ever drunk only before opening the bottle.
Ever drunk? By anyone? With enough money, you can convince someone with a terminal illness to drink anything.
The ability to instantly calculate the amount of time something will continue to be edible.
Predict the future by selectively poisoning food.
u/ajuc [+4] (2 hours later)
Each nanosecond you get different, randomly selected superpower, but you never know which one you have at any time.
BTW when I was 5 I believed sth similar - I thought people must pray for a reason, so when they want sth hard enough it happens, but for me it didn't worked, so I thought maybe for me it works one way half the time (I want sth - it happens), and another way the rest of the time (I want sth - it doesn't happen). I even tried to test if it changes every hour or every day, or if there's timeout.
u/ulyssessword [+2] (10 hours later)
Wait until you get a timestop power. With 1 billion powers per second, it shouldn't take long.
u/MoralRelativity [+4] (5 hours later)
The ability to ripen any fruit.
u/J4k0b42 [+1] (6 hours later)
Depending on radius and speed you could make really good money working on plantations, helping them get multiple harvests per year.
u/MoralRelativity [+2] (10 hours later)
Good point. Also, extra $$ from rarity of ripe fruit out-of-season.
u/J4k0b42 [+4] (5 hours later)
The ability to exude a small amount of salt-water from your pores, at say ten times the rate of a heavy sweat.
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (6 hours later)
"The ability to sweat at will" was the winner of the last lame-superpowers conversation I had.
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (9 hours later)
Let's assume it's an actual power where you do not need to consume more salt and stay hydrated. Otherwise it's a genetic condition like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperhidrosis. As a result you have a near infinite resource of slightly salty water. We currently have a shortage of fresh water throughout the world and the problem with salt water is that the salt concentration is so high it's really hard to remove all of the salt from it. Sweat on the other hand is much easier to use for Osmosis to extract fresh water from.
u/autowikibot [+1] (9 hours later)
#####
######
#### Hyperhidrosis:
Hyperhidrosis is the condition characterized by abnormally increased sweating/perspiration, in excess of that required for regulation of body temperature. It is associated with a significant quality of life burden from a psychological, emotional, and social perspective. As such, it has been referred to as the 'silent handicap'.
====
^Interesting: ^Focal ^hyperhidrosis ^| ^Night ^sweats ^| ^Compensatory ^hyperhidrosis ^| ^Palmoplantar ^hyperhidrosis
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+clxut9d) ^or [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+clxut9d)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Mods ^| ^Magic ^Words
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
You could by Dr. Horrible's minion.
u/embrodski [+3] (2 hours later)
The ability to moisten things by touching them.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (9 hours later)
So can you make things that are dry moist such as a dried out sponge? Find super-absorbent material and you have a source of fresh water.
u/pseudonameous [+3] (9 hours later)
Power that makes you go back in time when you die, but only to the moment when you die so you can't prevent it and relive it again and again.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (13 hours later)
Well that would suck.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (10 hours later)
In my opinion this power is the winner!
u/ulyssessword [+3] (9 hours later)
If you get half of a Feruchemist's power (from Mistborn), it would be pretty useless. You would get the ability to put some of your attributes in metal "batteries" of different types, but not the ability to draw them back out of the batteries to boost yourself like a normal Feruchemist can.
You would get 17 abilities: (they are temporary and can scale to any amount you can survive, unless otherwise noted)
- Reduce your mass (useful!)
- Reduce your physical speed
- Dull any of your five senses
- Reduce your muscle mass
- Reduce how fast you think
- Reduce your body's core temperature (useful!)
- Permanently remove memories
- Fall asleep without getting rest out of it
- Lose oxygen from your bloodstream
- Lose calories from your stomach (useful!)
- Become sickly
- Become apathetic
- Become unlucky
- Become less magical (maybe? it's unknown)
- Lose your connection to yourself, spiritually (unknown)
- Lose spiritual attachments to other people, so you don't connect to them (less empathy both ways, if I'm right, useful!)
- Become older.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (13 hours later)
Become older.
You said that these wear off, right? So our 16-year-old Feruch (she didn't get the -emist part) would be able to become 21 so she could go drinking and then, after a little while, she would de-age to be 16 again?
u/ulyssessword [+2] (13 hours later)
Yup. It can be used as a very effective disguise, but also carries all of the downsides of old age, like being weaker and such. Some of them aren't quite as useless as the others. Specifically: Mass (breaks conservation of momentum), losing calories (instant diet pill), dulling senses (painkiller), removing memories (eyebleach, operational security), reduced muscle mass/old age (disguises and deception. Also breaks conservation of momentum and mass).
They're more like super-strength-without-super-ligaments or super-speed-without-super-reflexes tier powers than truly useless ones.
As for wearing off, that isn't quite it. You need to actively store the attribute in order to lose it, and you go back to normal the second that you want to. Storing memories is the exception to this rule, as it is permanent once you decide which memories to store.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (23 hours later)
Ah! So, I can reduce my mass to basically zero, run at someone full tilt to get lots of v^2 and then bring all my m back to produce a lot of KE?
Can I store anyone ELSE's attributes, or only my own?
u/ulyssessword [+2] (a day later)
Ah! So, I can reduce my mass to basically zero, run at someone full tilt to get lots of v^2 and then bring all my m back to produce a lot of KE?
Yes, but it wouldn't work quite as well as you might think. You still need to deal with wind resistance and losing grip (from having low weight) and the max speed your muscles can move. Also, your clothes and other stuff is unaffected.
Can I store anyone ELSE's attributes, or only my own?
Only your own.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
Hm. Suppose I store, say, 2kg of mass, then eat enough to regain the weight, repeat until I have 1,0000kg or so stored away? This would take a long time, of course, but maybe if I had a teammate whose power allowed me to gain weight / gain mass.
Does my shape change when I store / recall the mass (i.e., do I get thin / fat), or just my density?
u/ulyssessword [+2] (a day later)
It's just your density, your shape doesn't change at all. For example, if someone was normally 50kg, and they started storing half of their mass, the only differences would be that they are attracted by gravity half as much it's twice as easy to change their speed.
In this case, if you were to gain 1000kg you would still look (and be) severely obese, even if you weighed the same.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Well, one thing I could definitely do: gear-less BASE jumping. Jump off a building and, just before you hit the ground, reduce your mass to 0. You suddenly have no momentum, so you'll simply stop in place. Revert your mass to normal, get up and walk away.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (2 days later)
You'd have to do it naked. Your clothes aren't affected. Also, I don't think that it can truly go to 0, just 0.5% or so (~4x air), or else you could float like a helium balloon.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Meh. Ok, well, the weight of my clothes won't represent enough mass to matter. If I'm falling in a delta track (face-down skydive position) I'll be generating so much wind resistance that my mass dropping to negligible will stop me almost instantly.
u/Topher876 [+2] (13 hours later)
at a certain point human running speed peaks, so being able to store your speed and get more would let you pass the plateu.
If we're going with literal velocity then we have a wealth of powers such of surviving falls and saving up some speed from some launching mechanism for later.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (14 hours later)
being able to store your speed and get more would let you pass the plateu.
The best this half-feruchemist can do equals what they could do without any powers. Being able to store and then retrieve these attributes is what a normal feruchemist does, and isn't even close to the lamest superpower. Edited my post for clarity.
If we're going with literal velocity then we have a wealth of powers such of surviving falls and saving up some speed from some launching mechanism for later.
Nah, it's canonically just muscle speed and reaction time, basically anything a normal person would consider "physical" as part of a person. It doesn't interfere with outside physics.
u/mack2028 [+3] (21 hours later)
he is implying that by making yourself slower you could train until you were as fast as you were then let the power wear off.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (a day later)
Ah, yes it could be used for easier training, but I think muscle mass would probably be a better attribute to focus on there.
u/Nepene [+1] (23 hours later)
Nicrosil stores charges tapped from other metal minds. It can also store ambient magic from other sources.
Duralumin stores connections, causing effects like you being distant from others, easily forgettable, alienated from loved ones.
Aluminium stores identity. You become easier to sway by others when you use this power.
u/CopperZirconium [+3] (18 hours later)
The Extraordinary adventures of Ordinary Boy is a children's book with a great variety of lame powers. Some of the lamest powers include:
Being able to whistle a perfect tune
Lobster claws instead of hands
temporarily grow hair on anything you touch
Inability to be stained by ink
Strong-smelling farts
Ability to turn pale white
A head that resembles a watermelon
u/autowikibot [+1] (18 hours later)
#####
######
#### Ordinary Boy (novel series):
Ordinary Boy is a series of children's novels written by William Boniface. It follows the adventures of a kid named Ordinary Boy, who lacks superpowers, and his friends who live in a city full of superheroes called Superopolis.
^Interesting: ^List ^of ^Shakugan ^no ^Shana ^light ^novels ^| ^Henry ^Huggins ^(novel) ^| ^List ^of ^deities ^in ^fiction ^| ^Isaac ^Asimov
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+cly92eo) ^or [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+cly92eo)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Mods ^| ^Magic ^Words
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
Being able to whistle a perfect tune
Whistle at 2600 hertz. Free phone calls.
temporarily grow hair on anything you touch
Can you only grow hair where you touch? Touch the villain. Grow hair on the inside of his lungs. Also, how temporary? You could make a lot of money from bald people. And how much control to you have over this hair? Can you touch coal and make carbon nanotubes?
u/CopperZirconium [+1] (19 days later)
"Fuzz Boy" can only grow hair on things he directly touches, and the hair only lasts a few hours. I think he can only grow human hair, evidenced by a prank he pulled on his little brother (the protagonist's best friend) involving water balloons with hair grown on them. He makes money by growing mustaches and beards on his peers, allowing them to sneak into adult movies.
u/DCarrier [+1] (a month later)
When you say the hair only lasts a few hours, do you mean that it falls off or it disappears? There seems to be a market for human hair: http://hairsellon.com/. I'm pretty sure you can use it for high-end wigs, which are expensive. You could make a fortune with that power.
u/CopperZirconium [+1] (a month later)
It disappears. The hair grows out of nowhere and vanishes into nowhere.
And yes, that does mean you can make a perpetual motion machine by weighing down a lever or something with hair and then waiting for it to vanish. But there are much more useful powers for infinite energy, like Thermo or Snowflake, who can control heat and cold respectively. Although Snowflake is already using her power well by working in a cryonics facility.
u/tilkau [+3] (21 hours later)
- The ability to cause any one effect that is physically possible and expends no more than 1 millijoule of energy per second.
(that is, you can switch effects -- and any knock-on effects that have been caused wont be wiped out -- but only one effect may be active at once. 1 Millijoule/sec was a rough estimate -- it should be possible to tweak the threshold to make the power both sufficiently difficult to effectively use and sufficiently munchkinable) )
Also,
- The ability to forget anything that you don't want to forget.
Sakaki (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya)'s power, as interpreted by Kyon: Big Damn Hero, is also a candidate -- possibly TOO lame:
- The ability to witness only things which you can explain with your current understanding of the universe. If that sounds confusing, you can imagine an 'absolute normality field' projected around you, where 'normality' is defined by your current understanding of what is possible in the universe. Inside that field, your sense of normality is never contradicted; events which are possible under actual physics but not under your understanding of it simply cannot occur.
(It's about the only power I can think of that is useless in a horrifying way. Any munchkining would, AFAICS, have to be done via someone else. And is likely to involve brainwashing.)
EDIT: This third item may require more explanation. It's essentially absolute anti-falsification. Here's an example. Supposing you are a bigot who genuinely believes that gay and bi people don't really exist, and someone bi enters your sphere of influence... then they will be unable to perform any act which would classify them as genuinely gay or bi to you. Which could be as little as a mannerism, or as much as having sex, according to your particular interpretation. Your AoE is 'anywhere you are currently perceiving', so if they are in another room then your power would probably have no effect on them.
Or here's another example: You believe that quantum mechanics doesn't work. Most likely, this has no effect, because if you believe quantum mechanics doesn't work, you probably don't have any idea of what it working would be like. (AFAICS, if you both understand quantum mechanics and believe it doesn't work, I think this would prevent anything at all from happening in your AoE ever.)
Now, if you believed something smaller -- like 'USB keys don't work', then they indeed would not be able to work in your vicinity. Not through any modification of their functionality, but physical prevention of any event that would prove that they did work. Again, your AoE covers only what you are currently perceiving, so people could use USB keys in your vicinity as long as it wouldn't lead to you discovering that USB keys do in fact work.
In other words, the effect does not alter the rules of physics to suit your preconceptions; rather, it prevents you from witnessing anything that is contrary to those preconceptions; it suppresses possible evidence.
So, a final example: 'No-one is strong enough to pull a train'. This wouldn't prevent anyone from actually being strong enough to pull a train. It would prevent them from using enough of that strength in your AoE to actually pull a train. If you thought that one type of train, a heavier type, was pullable and another, lighter, was not, and they in fact had the strength to pull either, then they could only pull the heavier type in your AoE.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
It's about the only power I can think of that is useless in a horrifying way.
Up until a religious person has it, and the phrase "events which are possible under actual physics but not under your understanding of it simply cannot occur" begins excising spherical chunks from the universe.
u/tilkau [+1] (a day later)
That's rather open to interpretation, actually; Because people generally don't act as if God actually exists or that their particular sect's way of seeing things is actually true, no matter how fervently they claim that he does and it is, it's questionable whether the average religious person's sense of normality is really that different. We need to look at what they actually do to see what they believe will really happen.
There's probably a way to abuse it, all right, but since the power denies the non-'normal' rather than creating the 'normal', it seems surprisingly difficult to achieve any great effect with it. The most interesting effect I've thought of so far that could be done with it, is a field of truthfulness (via brainwashing that 'people claims always match what they believe to be most true').
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Implicit in my comment is the assumption that by "a religious person" I mean a person who is religious, and not one who is not but says they are.
u/tilkau [+1] (a day later)
Okay. I'm still not sure how that leads to the repeated excision of spherical chunks from the universe. What religious belief is consistent with that?
u/None [+1] (a day later)
The "understanding" that nothing could exist without god.
In a universe where god isn't possible.
The power can't even leave a nothing behind, because nothings aren't possible.
You have a horribly destructive sphere of annihilation out to the limit of the power's range, and I don't know what happens in the region surrounding it. Do they fold shut immediately against the user only to immediately be consumed in the next tick of the power's action? Does all of reality collapse at lightspeed in on the power user as spacetime are unwritten in light of the reality of the absence of a being without whom the power's user believes nothing is possible?
u/tilkau [+1] (a day later)
The "understanding" that nothing could exist without god
Ooh. Haaaahahaa. Well, that cannot be disproved, it's an axiom. Meaning that the net result of somebody with this power believing that, is exactly and precisely nothing.
I may have not been clear enough about what the power is supposed to do; It's an anti-falsification power; you cannot witness things that definitively contradict your sense of normality.
I've made some edits to the original post, with some examples (the most destructive of which is timestopping everything in your AoE forever).
u/MugaSofer [+1] (15 days later)
... wouldn't this optimize everything you can see, because it's impossible for this not to be the best of all possible worlds (as you imagine it)?
It would essentially make you into God.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
The ability to cause any one effect that is physically possible and expends no more than 1 millijoule of energy per second.
Just say milliwatt. What do you mean by "physically possible"? Superpowers are generally defined by how they disobey physics. If you have to attach a battery and resistor to a wire to make sure that it's physically possible for a milliwatt of electricity to move through it, then the power didn't do anything at all. On the other hand, if we go into quantum physics, everything possible happens, and everything impossible happens for a short amount of time. You didn't narrow it down at all by saying "physically possible".
I was thinking reactionless drive, where from your point of reference a milliwatt does a lot more than from the point of reference of the Sun, but then I realized that from you point of reference it actually takes no power.
Sakaki (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya)'s power
Her normality field extends to things she's witnessing through a camera. They are taking a series of pictures and showing them to her after the fact. Granted, it's only a fraction of a second, but there's always ways of taking advantage of that sort of thing. She can send messages back in time. I like how her power is actually more physically impossible than most of the stuff it prevents.
u/tilkau [+1] (19 days later)
Superpowers are generally defined by how they disobey physics. If you have to attach a battery and resistor to a wire to make sure that it's physically possible for a milliwatt of electricity to move through it, then the power didn't do anything at all. On the other hand, if we go into quantum physics, everything possible happens, and everything impossible happens for a short amount of time. You didn't narrow it down at all by saying "physically possible".
Well, given the electricity example, the kind of thing I was talking about would be just making that 1mw of electricity flow through the wire. That violates physics because you have conjured free energy, but once that energy is in the world it must behave in accordance with the rules of physics. Another example usage might be for starting fires. Or of course, you might be able to charge a battery.. very slowly.
Yeah, Sakaki's power is pretty broken, just awkward and anti-scientific enough that it's a bit difficult to work out how to usefully exploit.
u/BekenBoundaryDispute [+3] (23 hours later)
You can conjure a live animal, uniformly randomly chosen from a currently living specimen of the family Muridae, at the approximate range, relative momentum, and precision of anywhere you can throw an object of the same mass and shape within your line of sight.
- You can do this about every three or four minutes, but it gets gradually harder and more exhausting without rest.
- The mice/rats/whatever are not under your control or direction any more than you can mundanely accomplish.
- The conjured animal does not 'dismiss' itself after a period of time.
- The specimen is selected from the world's current population of murids, and teleported to location you conjure it. You cannot choose a specific organism. It carries its natural flora, gases, pathogens, dirt, digested food, etc. with it, but does not transport any non-food items intentionally attached or fed to it. It arrives in the same condition it was, though momentum from the conjuration or pressure differentials could kill it.
- You will get something reasonably mouse-shaped; immortal cell lines, individual cells, cancers, teratomas, etc. don't count. You will not get unborn embryos on their own. Pregnant creatures take their babies with them.
- You can only conjure specimens on Earth, and if then, only while you are on Earth (assume a 100 km altitude edge of space, no "different Hubble volume" nonsense). You can't use conjuring to transfer information faster-than-light any more than you normally can.
- The critter disappears and reappears more-or-less instantaneously, with minimal sonic effect; it's not quite clear if the volume of air that formerly occupied the space where you conjured goes to where you displaced the conjuration from. In any case, you can't use the process to displace something out of your way.
- There's no obvious indication that you are using your power other than its result and the physical effects of your conscious intent (mind-reading works to detect it, mind-control works to use it). You can use your power with the approximate mental effort and intentionality it takes to pick up an object and throw it; random gerbils flying out of nowhere from a seizure are extremely unlikely, but in principle possible. Physical restraint has no effect on your ability to conjure. Inability to visualize the situation could effect your success, but you could still conjure something at an abstract vector from yourself.
u/autowikibot [+3] (23 hours later)
#####
######
#### Muridae:
The Muridae, or murids, are the largest family of rodents and indeed of mammals, containing over 700 species found naturally throughout Eurasia, Africa, and Australia. A few species, including the house mouse, brown rat and black rat, have been introduced worldwide. The group includes true mice and rats, gerbils, and relatives.
The name Muridae comes from the Latin mus (genitive muris), meaning "mouse".
====
^Interesting: ^Muroidea ^| ^Murinae ^| ^Rodent ^| ^Apodemus
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+clycags) ^or [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+clycags)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Mods ^| ^Magic ^Words
u/eaglejarl [+2] (23 hours later)
That's...really weird. And yet cool. Well done.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
If I conjure a creature from a lower altitude to a higher one, is it colder than it was before? If I conjure a creature from a higher altitude to a lower one, is it warmer?
u/BekenBoundaryDispute [+2] (a day later)
The creature should be the same temperature it was before it was summoned, initially. That could rapidly change, of course.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
Excellent. I can break thermodynamics, entropy, and all sorts of related shenanigans. Get above the altitude where rodents live naturally so that each will be coming up to me. They don't get colder, so I've conjured potential energy from nothing. Dropping them to their original height produces energy, violating numerous symmetry equations, -- and once one law of physics goes out the window, the rest follow.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
Even if they did get cooler, you'd still break entropy.
u/E-o_o-3 [+3] (a day later)
Guys, these are a bit too lame and many aren't even supernatural. They should at least be room for creatively hacking them.
Here is my offering:
The Ineffective Rain-Dancer: You can spawn a single raindrop per second. Your range spans roughly any visible part of the sky (raindrop can be defined as a sphere of water of a certain small size, sky can be defined as a specific range of distances from the ground - not too close, but not out in space either, and your range is a function of distance from your body - the "visible part of the sky" bit is just a rough heuristic for how far the power goes).
If too easy, decrease accuracy over where the drop spawns.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
Hm. Well...if you could create one drop WAAAY high up, then create the second inside the first as it falls, then the third ditto...you could get a noticeable water ball when it finally hits. I'm having trouble figuring out where to go from there, though.
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (a day later)
Haha I didn't even think of that! That's actually a fairly dramatic thing you can do straight out of the box!
I'm sure you can think of more though...as a rule unless the world-builder has taken steps to prevent it nearly all supernatural powers involving matter manipulation can be used to at the very least generate large amounts of energy if you're creative enough.
Hint: I'd probably start the hacking thought process by thinking of cool stuff I could do if I could summon water drops in general without the sky constraint, and then go ahead and do those things while in an airplane or mountaintop.
You definitely need to integrate technology to do any truly powerful stuff, and how much you can munchkin this is definitely in proportion to your knowledge of the natural world and your engineering-style creativity.
This is also a good time to start fleshing out edge cases, such as what happens to the material which previously occupied the location ofthe summoned water droplet. Via your water droplet example, you've implicitly chosen "things get displaced (pushed out of the way)" - as opposed to say, things disappear. That itself is an extremely promising avenue for hacking - you can force stuff into some very high-energy, unstable situations.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Just because I couldny think of anything before doesn't mean I can't think of anything else. It just means I had to go get on an airplane. ;>
Hm. Ok, how about this: create two drops so close to one another that you can extract vacuum energy from them.
Are the drops pure water? If not, can I control what impurities they contain?
How about creating the drops such that they turn a waterwheel? Not much power, but some.
Can the drops be created inside another object? Creating the drops inside a computer could short it out. Creating them inside a person's eyeball would make them highly unhappy. They'd need to be far enough up to do that, though.
How long does it take from the moment I use the power to when the drop appears? Can I do FTL signaling? If not, I can still use it for remote communication -- when my team sees the drop appear, that's the signal to go. Or have them set up a keyboard and I create drops over the relevant keys to spell words. Slow but workable.
It's a sphere of water, but you didn't specify liquid. Can I choose to have it be ice? Or steam? Or plasma? Or one of the weird variants of ice, like ice IX?
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (a day later)
Yessss. Plane-jacking via damaged circuitry and small globs of water in people's vital organs was one of my first weaponized thoughts as well - might be something a villain would do, maybe someone pissed off at what the technologically advanced society was doing to his poor water-starved village, in which he is a failure of a rain dancer :P.
Using it for communication is also brilliant and I hadn't thought of that - you can even do that on the ground actually, since the drops will fall down to the intended recipient and you can use the mega-drop trick to make it noticeable. Drop size and distance could be used for increasing information density, and although each drop takes you one second to create the recipient can get the drops slower or faster depending on your spacing - you could essentially do morse code, or some other alphabet.
I think creating droplets inside of objects is definitely where all the more advanced applications come in - just the ability to create a bunch of matter anywhere you wanted within a subset of space should be a boon to engineering. My version of the thought was to put multiple droplets in a very enclosed space and then using the extremely high-pressure situation that would arise to some advantage - weapons, or energy. (The amount of energy you can get out of this is limited by the practical constraints of devices you can create, so it's hard to estimate how practical this is as an energy source.)
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
What happens if you create one inside a solid object? If we're using the "things are pushed aside" interpretation then you could splinter stuff, but it would take a while to break a large object.
u/E-o_o-3 [+1] (2 days later)
I don't know! I think it depends a lot on the particular object. A rock will probably just get little cracks in it. A diamond? Who knows?
The way I see it, if it's extremely energetically unfavorable to inject water into an object, and then you just... do it anyway, you should end up with a lot of potential energy locked into one place. Theoretically you should be able to harvest the same amount of energy that it would normally take to accomplish the act.
There's practical limits of course - if the diamond just shatters, for example.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
You summon a drop of water. In the form of ice IX. The world ends.
u/drageuth2 [+3] (a day later)
Rather than completely useless powers, I'll try and figure out double-edged ones that are very unconventional or at least fun to play with in some unique way.
Coin Flip: The power to make any action either succeed or fail spectacularly... but you have no way to predict which way things will go. If you punch someone and use your power, you might send your foe flying, or break your own wrist. For extra fun, YOU actually go and flip a coin each time the power is used in the story, so that the results aren't even predictable to you.
Killer Shadow: Your shadow is animate and capable of applying surprising amounts of force. But it doesn't always follow your actions, especially when you can't see it. Sometimes, it even seems almost traitorous.
Super Solipsism: If you don't know something is there, it can't effect you. You can walk down the street with your eyes closed and ears plugged and the cars will just harmlessly pass through you. But if one of them honks loud enough for you to hear...
Respawn: Any time you're killed, your body disappears and then reappears in perfect health somewhere within a 100 meter radius. Any blood/biomass you lost also disappears, and any foreign bodies within you are left behind where you despawn. Your clothes and possessions may or may not move with you, depending on which way you think would be better for the story. Other than that, assume baseline human, and dying usually hurts like hell.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
The coin flip power is really interesting. You'd need some way to manage / predict it, at least a bit, or you really couldn't afford to use it. Maybe if the results are always diametrically opposed, or if you can choose the "fail" outcome? So, you could say "I'm going to hit this guys with massive force, and he force is either vectored into him or into me."
I don't entirely like that...any other thoughts?
u/drageuth2 [+1] (2 days later)
I think the unpredictability of it is kind of the fun of it, really. It makes every use of it a balance of risk to reward.
How it works would ultimately be up to you, but I think the way I would write it would be to make the negative consequences always roughly match the positive ones. If you try and use your power to make a really nice bird house, then the worst that will happen is you'll end up making a really bad birdhouse that breaks under the slightest breeze. If you try and use your power to stop an out of control train... well.
I don't think the person with the power should be able to directly predict the negative outcome, but they should have a rough idea of what will happen, based on the action they're trying to commit.
That way, you can always 'cheat' by picking a negative outcome that's disastrous and drama-enducing, but not story-ending :P
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Cool, thanks for the suggestion.
Interesting gimmick: the hero has to literally flip a coin to make her power work.
u/drageuth2 [+1] (2 days later)
Then you've got a less lame Two-Face :P
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
snicker
Very true, very true.
u/mhd-hbd [+2] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (2 days later)
Traitorous killer shadow is basically what Mord Naag has in Worm. Her shadow beast familiar is powered by genocide.
u/Law_Student [+2] (7 days later)
The respawn power reminded me of a hilarious build a friend made once in the RPG Champions. He took as his only powers an instant reincarnation power that worked like your respawn idea and a power that allowed him to blow himself up with highly damaging and fatal results to himself and anyone nearby.
u/TimTravel [+3] (2 days later)
You can make someone forget something but if you do you make yourself forget what you made them forget. As a result you have no memory of ever using your powers.
u/DCarrier [+2] (19 days later)
You can still establish that you have it. For example, writing down what you'll make them forget beforehand. It's just memory erasure with a slight inconvenience. You could make a fortune in what would otherwise involve NDAs. Someone wants an outside expert to look at proprietary information that they don't want stolen? Just hire you to erase their memory afterwords.
u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (6 hours later)
The ability to make your head explode at will
u/mack2028 [+1] (7 hours later)
the ability to use anything as a melee weapon as long as I am touching it.
u/GeeJo [+2] Custom Flair (8 hours later)
Fate/Zero's Berserker managed with that power quite nicely.
u/mack2028 [+1] (8 hours later)
i didn't say it wasn't good, just that as "superpower" is usually defined it is pretty much the worst. It doesn't make me any better at fighting it just lets me use crap laying around as a weapon so that means that i need to use my normal human muscles to hurt people (maybe with a little boost) and my normal human skin, bones and organs to resist damage and all I have the power to do is cause damage slightly more conveniently.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (13 hours later)
Can't anyone pretty much use whatever they're touching as a melee weapon? I mean, sure, a cooked noodle isn't a very good melee weapon, but....
u/mack2028 [+1] (13 hours later)
I was thinking that it would tell me how to do it. Like maybe I could use a noodle to hit someone in the eye or shove it up their nose. In real life I have no idea if that would work.
u/khafra [+1] (2 days later)
Baseline humans can gain that ability. I had a martial arts instructor who invited people to bring any item in, and he'd demonstrate some effective melee uses of it.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
Am I missing something? That sounds insanely overpowered. You could use a building as a melee weapon. Or a planet.
u/mack2028 [+1] (19 days later)
you are not any stronger so while you could use them as such it wouldn't be very effective. like maybe you could fight someone and bash them into a building but you couldn't pick up the building.
u/DCarrier [+1] (a month later)
Unless the power is being able to refer to anything as being used as a melee weapon, there has to be something pretty impressive you can do. What if your enemy is flying, and you use the ground as a melee weapon?
u/mack2028 [+1] (a month later)
you would know exactly how big you would need to be to swing the planet and the best way to hold it but you wouldn't be any stronger or larger.
u/DCarrier [+1] (a month later)
And this would allow you to use the planet as a melee weapon how?
u/mack2028 [+1] (a month later)
It give you the knowledge of how to, all that and you could do it by grabbing the guy and smashing his face into it.
u/DCarrier [+1] (a month later)
So, if he happens to be in a plane at the moment, it lets you shoot him down?
u/mack2028 [+1] (a month later)
no, it tells you how to use it as a melee weapon. so it may tell you how to crash the plane but not fly it.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
You can rot fruit.
You can change someone's favorite color at will.
All superpowers work against you, but only once.You are immune to every other bullet that hits you.
Every stoplight is red when you drive to it.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
You can change someone's favorite color at will.
When Sir Galahad is walking across the Bridge of Death, right before he says his favorite color, change it from blue to yellow. Also, you can use it for faster-than-light communication. And by altering your point of reference, you can use it to send information into the past. That doesn't really work without two people with this power though.
u/michaelkeenan [+1] (2 days later)
The opposite of The Hulk. You're extremely strong except when you're angry.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
This sounds like an awesome power. In everyday life you have superstrength, and in a fight you just need to keep your head and stay calm.
u/DCarrier [+1] (19 days later)
I'd think not having to worry about doing something you'd regret when your angry would be a benefit, not a cost.
u/scooterboo2 [+1] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (2 days later)
The cheater: is able to produce a playing card from his sleeve as long as it is the 2 of diamonds and not the same color/design of any cards he is holding.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Can he specify the materials and/or style of the card?
"His" sleeve...does it have to be the sleeve of a garment that he's wearing?
u/scooterboo2 [+1] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (2 days later)
- No, the card style can not be chosen.
are made of waxed paper like ordinary modern playing cards.- Yes, the sleeves of whatever garment he is wearing on his arms.
- To clarify: the cards that are produced are of a different set than any he has in his hands. No control on the look (other than it won't be like any he has in his hands).
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Hm. Can he at least control the size of the cards? Playing cards come in multiple sizes -- bridge cards, poker cards, jumbo cards for display, etc.
u/scooterboo2 [+1] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (2 days later)
http://www.acceleratedecommerce.com/customer-service/customization
the index and size is also random.If it can't be pulled through his sleeve, it can't be produced.
u/scooterboo2 [+1] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (2 days later)
I'm going to unlame it by modifying #1
u/scooterboo2 [+1] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (2 days later)
I'll pm you for want I have in mind for unlaming it.
u/xavion [+1] (3 days later)
Giving the power to be calm and rational when in combat to the Hulk.
The ability to summon a random useless object, whenever you figure out a use for the object it changes what it summons.
To have all of Superman's powers but they either stop working or refills in power when it would increase dramatic tension. They always reset to normal if it would decrease future potential for drama though.
Power proportional to unused intellect, so stuff like munchkinning decrease your power.
Or for something that can actually be exploited a bit the inability to get bored.
Of course a better contendor for most useless possible power is to passively boost or weaken people near you based off how much they want to harm you. Obviously desire to harm = boost and conversely desire to help = weaken. You have no control over it and it affects everyone.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (15 days later)
This will be buried, but:
Your muscles exert twice as much force as they "should", physically.
You can predict the future; but when you do, it's always the worst outcome (for you) that could plausibly happen. The future may or may not be immutable
You can control people's brains within a 1-foot radius. Not their minds, just their brains, up to the limit of modern brain-surgery. (I assume this is going to a hero?)
You can kill plants with a thought.
You can teleport yourself to a random point in space and back. No bringing your enemies with you.
You can phase through a specific material, and only that material. (Varies in it's lameness a bit depending on the material.)
u/DCarrier [+2] (19 days later)
You can predict the future; but when you do, it's always the worst outcome (for you) that could plausibly happen. The future may or may not be immutable
How much control do you have over what you're predicting? If you ask yourself "will I die today" every day, you can only get "yes" and "no", and generally "yes" is implausible. If not, shorten the time until it is. You are now immortal. At least until you get old enough that dying in your sleep on a given night becomes plausible.
Not their minds, just their brains, up to the limit of modern brain-surgery. (I assume this is going to a hero?)
You allow someone to do brain surgery, at the same quality as a team of the best surgeons in the world, without cutting open the persons brain? That is an awesome power.
You can kill plants with a thought.
There are a lot of harmful plants that people would love for you to kill.
You can phase through a specific material, and only that material. (Varies in it's lameness a bit depending on the material.)
I was just thinking, this is suicide without the appropriate secondary superpower. There's on way you could force yourself through the 14 pounds per square inch of air pressure to get back out.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (19 days later)
How much control do you have over what you're predicting? If you ask yourself "will I die today" every day, you can only get "yes" and "no", and generally "yes" is implausible. If not, shorten the time until it is. You are now immortal.
Dying isn't very unlikely in dangerous situations, though - that's why they're dangerous in the first place. I think this would just make you die sooner.
u/DCarrier [+1] (a month later)
Don't use it if it would be plausible to die that day.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (15 days later)
You can control people's brains within a 1-foot radius. Not their minds, just their brains, up to the limit of modern brain-surgery. (I assume this is going to a hero?)
Hm. I'm not sure what the limits of modern brain surgery are. It would be easily weaponized though -- lobotomies are pretty straightforward, and you could repair the damage once the person was in cuffs. Pain induction would also be an option. I'm not sure about pleasure induction -- is there a "pleasure center" in a human brain that can be poked? I know they can do it to rats.
You can teleport yourself to a random point in space and back. No bringing your enemies with you.
This would be an easy way to launch space probes. Although it would be most likely to land you outside our galaxy, so maybe that wouldn't be so useful.
Let's make some simple assumptions though: we're not writing a snuff comic or a NSFW comic, so the teleport will put you somewhere on Earth, only in a safe location (not into the core, not 100 miles in the air), and you can bring with you whatever you are wearing / carrying up to a small load limit (say, ~10 pounds). That means your clothes and your (e.g.) messenger bag go with you. You didn't say that there was a cooldown on the power so, if you teleport enough times in sequence, you'll eventually land somewhere near whatever destination you want and can proceed the rest of the way via normal transit. Not useful for traveling across the city, but useful if you just need to get to France from the US.
phase through a specific material
If the material is air, then you would be immune to wind-based powers and I think to certain kinds of motion sensors that work off air movement. You might be able to get work doing things inside a wind tunnel, maybe adjusting sensors in real time.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (15 days later)
I'm not sure what the limits of modern brain surgery are. It would be easily weaponized though -- lobotomies are pretty straightforward, and you could repair the damage once the person was in cuffs.
Lobotomy, yes. Un-lobotomy, I don't think so; that's why I specified that you had no more precision than modern instruments.
Let's make some simple assumptions though: we're not writing a snuff comic or a NSFW comic, so the teleport will put you somewhere on Earth, only in a safe location (not into the core, not 100 miles in the air)
That's the advantage of being able to teleport back again :)
Space is big enough that you probably wouldn't end up in a planet or star, anyway. And yeah, no cooldown, that would just be unfair.
(I wonder how far you'd fall before you had time to react, though? That is a pretty interesting idea for a power.)