scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3r35cs.md

[BST] Looking for suggestions on superpowers

• Author: u/eaglejarl *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3r35cs/bst_looking_for_suggestions_on_superpowers/

• Score: 12

• Created: 2015-11-01T15:23:29

Post:

I've been posting chapters of The Change Storms: Induction here for a while, and the whole story is available for free on my Patreon -- it'll eventually be published, at which point it may be taken down, but I'll give away an archive of it for free before I do.

I'm looking for suggestions on superpowers, because I can always use more.

I have plenty of powers that are based on phlebotinum ("powerful telekinetc, but only with things that are triangular"). More suggestions along these lines are welcome, but I'd really like to get some that are based in physics. I've been asking over on /r/askphysics -- I asked about "what happens if the speed of light doubles?" (answer: nothing), and "what if the nuclear strong force doubles in strength or becomes repulsive instead of attractant?" (answers: "don't know" and "a sleet of ionizing radiation that kills everything in the area")

Any suggestions?

EDIT: I should have said: I'll credit anyone whose suggestion I use, so please add the name you'd like me to use.

Comments:

u/krakonfour [+7] (6 hours later)

How about these:

-A person that can convert kinetic energy into thermal energy in a short-ranged field. Bullets become clouds of steam with no net forward motion. Punching him will scald your hand. He can perform incredible feats of impact, fall and damage resistance, but they come at the risk of boiling him alive, so he carries flas-vaporizing bottles of liquid nitrogen to act as heatsinks.

-Quantum dis-entangler/suppressor. Had no real combat effect... but some theories maintain that our consciousness and higher-level thought are linked to quantum properties of our intra-neuron communication. Suppressing someone's entangled neurons can cause them to become 'dumb', as in, they can think, react, feel, but not more than a really well-trained dog. In combat, being unable to react intelligently might cause you to lose. In other scenarios, you'd become much more open to suggestions, lies and misdirection, without feeling any different.

-Some more common examples: slowing down the speed of light. Imagine your opponent having to deal with relativistic effects at walking speed. The edges of their limbs shear off as they try to punch someone. Blood being pumped from the heart is sddenly many times heavier and blood pressure builds up... fun times.

-A magnetic capacitor: A weak-level magnetic manipulator that can't do more than pick up a kilo or so of iron in normal circumstances, but can accumulate 'magnetic energy' over time. In a combat scenario, he can hurl cars and swing lamposts about, but if he runs out of energy, he's back to being weak. For more gun, he has no upper limit.

-An touch-based electron-stripper

-A vibration manipulator that can only create extremely low Hz waves with massive pressure gradients. Basically, slow-moving aerial tsunamis.

And more, if you ask :)

u/eaglejarl [+3] (7 hours later)

-A person that can convert kinetic energy into thermal energy in a short-ranged field.

Nice. I really like this one; thank you.

-A magnetic capacitor: A weak-level magnetic manipulator that can't do more than pick up a kilo or so of iron in normal circumstances, but can accumulate 'magnetic energy' over time. In a combat scenario, he can hurl cars and swing lamposts about, but if he runs out of energy, he's back to being weak. For more gun, he has no upper limit.

Nice. And, of course, he needs to actually absorb magnetic energy from an external field. The Earth's field will charge him up over times, but an MRI machine is much better. Thanks!

-An touch-based electron-stripper

Oh, the jokes....

And more, if you ask :)

I'm asking. :>

How did you want to be credited?

u/krakonfour [+3] (7 hours later)

-For the magnetic capacitor guy, just make sure you shy away from recreating Electro: someone who can power up by directly connecting himself to an electric current. Maybe our magnetic protagonist wears a copper wire suit that he can hook up to the grid and turn himself into an electromagnet, thus directly feeding himself magnetic energy...

-Why not make this an actual male stripper that was kicked out of his profession for causing electric shocks and burns?

Other ideas will come soon. Might want to give me some direction?

PS: Credited? I just want to contribute something back to my favorite author.

Hummm...

Okay, how about this: You use anything from here in any way you like, so long as you complete another champter of Team Anko within this year? deal?

u/eaglejarl [+2] (8 hours later)

Okay, how about this: You use anything from here in any way you like, so long as you complete another champter of Team Anko within this year? deal?

You know, I had someone contacting me on FFN asking if anyone had volunteered to take over writing Team Anko? You miss ONE update, everyone goes berserk. shakes head sadly

It'll be back next week, don't worry. Might be a short chapter, but there'll be something.

u/krakonfour [+3] (9 hours later)

That person would have to step into some pretty big shoes...

Two more ideas for today:

-Third eye/Ghost: This person has a 'ghost' they can project from their bodies and control remotely. The ghost can phase through matter and theoretically travel right through the Earth. However, increasing the distance between ghost and user creates a feedback lag, as in, new commands are relayed instantaneously but the execution takes longer and longer to be accomplished. The supervillain uses this mostly for spying and scrying, as more solid interactions, such as manipulating switches, are very exhausting. Why villain? Imagine not knowing whether you're being watched, anywhere in the world.

-'Crowdsource'. A superhero with powers proportional to the size of the crowd they're in. Basically, they skim off a portion of the surrounding people's energy, making them Superman in a bustling city, but a skinny teenager out in the forest.

u/eaglejarl [+3] (10 hours later)

That person would have to step into some pretty big shoes...

Wow, thank you. You just made my day.

Ghost

Cool power. I like the time lag feature in particular. Definitely a good power for a seeker squad, and the Army of Freedom could get s lot of mileage from it too.

Crowdsource

Nice. Especially if the drain is ongoing, and potentially dangerous. Better power for a hero, I think -- it makes for more tension if the guy has to be careful.

u/krakonfour [+2] (a day later)

Had two ideas today:

• Status quo: when this guy enters a battle, the macro outcome will be fixed. Whatever you do, the balance of power at any point of the fight will not move. The guy doesn't decide what the balance is, but he can choose whether to use it or not, so rhe onl way to beat this power is through deceit. It can also be used negatively: if you're a villain and you see Status !uo being used, kill a teammate. Enemies will die.

Trigger: can cause anyone to have high fever symptoms and auto*immune attacks, but with no physical intermediate.

Mutiltate: self-harm allows the user to mutate limbs into nightmarish appendages.

Hypnolight: can cause any strong source of light into a powerful hypnotic. Hilarious when used on TV channels. Has never tried using it on the Sun...

u/EliezerYudkowsky [+4] Godric Gryffindor (3 days later)

My favorite gotcha along these lines was a Larry Niven story in which the characters discover a time accelerator - time inside the field speeds up by orders of magnitude. Later they find out that the inventor didn't mean it as a time accelerator, he meant it as an inertia-reducing drive for space travel purposes. It wasn't until years later that I thought back to the story and realized the link - I don't think it was ever spelled out in the story.

u/eaglejarl [+3] (4 days later)

I'm not seeing the connection either, aside from "super fast time emulates low inertia", which isn't something you'd get by mistake. Enlighten me?

u/EliezerYudkowsky [+4] Godric Gryffindor (19 days later)

If an object suddenly has 1/5 the inertia, it needs to suddenly be moving 5x as fast to preserve conservation of momentum, and so on down the line.

u/monster0 [+3] (2 months later)

One thing that bothered me about the time bubble in Niven's ARM is that it seems as though the air molecules should be leaving the bubble in much higher numbers than they would be entering from outside. So if the inertia factor is 1:500, wouldn't it be essentially vacuum inside the bubble?

u/EliezerYudkowsky [+3] Godric Gryffindor (2 months later)

That makes sense to me. Have you asked Niven this? :)

u/monster0 [+3] (2 months later)

On my to-do list, right after I explain to Ray Bradbury that it doesn't actually rain water on Venus.

u/DocFuture [+3] (a day later)

Maxwell's Demon--has the ability to make thermal energy flow from cold to hot. Power level can be adjusted by how quickly it works and over how big an area. Note that even with mild levels he can kill someone quite quickly by cooking their brain or heart.

u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)

Nice. And that would actually work on a Changed, as well, since the power isn't being used on them, it's being used on the air around them. Spiffy.

Name for the credit?

u/DocFuture [+1] (2 days later)

DocFuture, with a link to my own superhero story index on Tumblr, would be great: http://docfuture.tumblr.com/post/62787551366/stories

u/khafra [+1] (3 days later)

That's kinda the power I was thinking of, as well--however, Maxwell's actual demon changes the macrostate by observing the microstates and making only bit-level changes--but making lots of them. I think that power has a lot of potential, too.

u/Superguy2876 [+2] (an hour later)

Any specific area of physics you would like a focus on?

Either way, I think forms of momentum manipulation are fairly easy to think about while still being fairly interesting. A roleplay i started involves a character that has a field in which they can sap and re-use momentum from objects in that field. Although maybe your not looking for something telekinetic-ish.

I like to use random verbs to think of interesting abilities. Just got the word "Queue", how about some kind of local time manipulation in which you can re-queue events, or something.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (an hour later)

Any specific area of physics you would like a focus on?

Nah, I'm flexible.

momentum manipulation

I've got one guy who exchanges momentum between two objects, which is pretty nifty.

I like the idea of re-queuing events, although I'm not sure how it would work. What exactly are you thinking of?

u/ZeroNihilist [+5] (an hour later)

My guess is their intention would be something like this.

Original timeline:

1. Enemy pulls the pin.
2. Enemy throws the grenade.
3. Grenade explodes.

Into:

1. Enemy pulls the pin.
2. Grenade explodes.
3. Enemy throws the grenade.

To fit with the theme of powers not affecting Changed, you may not be able to switch the order of events directly performed by them.

u/Superguy2876 [+1] (an hour later)

yea something like that is what i was thinking of in terms of the main feature of the power.

u/Superguy2876 [+1] (an hour later)

Hmm, just thought of it off the top of my head so not well defined at all.

perhaps it needs to be activated, then once a certain amount of time has passed, they can re-organize events that happened in the bubble that the effect covers, within the time that the ability was activated. Being able to go and make sure that your friend stepped out of the cover after the bullets were shot, then having your return fire happen before the they ducked back down.

this would need good awareness of when the power could be useful, and maybe good intuition of how things play out after events have been re-organized. probably with a cooldown so they cant just constantly activate it.

Or perhaps its always active for the past 10 seconds or so, and serves a more re-active and defensive purpose.

other things that might need consideration: event awareness, do they need to know that a particular thing has happened to re-queue it. how do people react to having there actions requeued. if the alternate events would have cause different decisions, do those get added to the queue, or is there some other kind of resolution system.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (an hour later)

Hm. I think this would end up being difficult to manage. Maybe something like time clones? There's a video game (I wish I could remember remember the name) the goal of which is to shoot moving blocks. You play each level four times; each time, your previous playthroughs are repeated alongside your current run so, by the end, there are four of you shooting, but three of them are repeats of what you did before. There's a series of playthroughs on YouTube that were really interesting.

u/Superguy2876 [+1] (an hour later)

I know of a few games like that. The ones i can remember off the top of my head are Chronotron, and The Company of Myself. Both are flash games and fairly short, but they were pretty interesting otherwise.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 hours later)

It was a desktop game, and a shooter. You started off in a wide open room with a bunch of guns floating in front of you. The guns have various upgrades that you can buy, then you go through the door into the arena and see a bunch of floating cubes that are either white or red. Blowing them up gets you money; white are tougher but worth more. Usually the blocks move, generally in flowing streams but in a couple of cases they've been carefully arranged so that they make a giant spider that walks with realistic leg motion, or something like that.

u/DCarrier [+1] (an hour later)

You're allowing time travel? That's really OP.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 hours later)

I'm definitely not allowing any sort of open-ended time travel. Something like time clones is very limited.

Although, one of the main characters does have the ability "borrow time from her future self." She chooses an amount of time (e.g., five minutes) and when to borrow it from (e.g. ten minutes from now) gets that much time right now, while the rest of the universe is frozen. When the five minutes ends everything starts up again. Ten minutes from when things start up again, she vanishes from spacetime for five minutes. There are some rules about how she interacts with things while she's in hypertime, but that's the general idea.

And yes, it's a ridiculously powerful ability that has required some very careful handling.

u/DCarrier [+1] (2 hours later)

Borrow time from future self is fairly OP, but it's not time travel. With time clones, you can check the stock market on your fist pass, and then buy/sell on your second. Or have someone try to guess a password, and then go back and tell them if it worked and have them guess another one (although contrary to popular belief, that only works for short passwords. If it's too long, you'll just randomly die on one of the tries.)

u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 hours later)

Good points. I'd probably nerf it with something like "only 3 seconds into the past, and only 3 clones at a time and can't use it more than once an hour".

u/DCarrier [+1] (3 hours later)

How do the time clones function? Is this single-timeline time travel, or is it like in those games where each time you go back its a new timeline, but you have your past selves doing what they did before for no apparent reason?

Do they get to decide to use the time clones at the end of the time (like seeing their friend die and then going back to stop it) or at the beginning (so they might decide to go back, then have a friend open something that might be booby-trapped and stop them if it is)?

u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 hours later)

Hadn't really thought it through, I was just riffing. Yeah, it could be pretty borked -- it's not that it breaks the action economy (which is what I was intending), it's that it breaks the information economy. I'd have to think some more, and maybe just abandon the idea.

u/Superguy2876 [+1] (an hour later)

New idea, being able to disagree with the past. Probably limited to a certain amount of time in the past an a limited number of uses per day. Imagine going to a show, but you forgot the tickets, you could say "actually no I didnt" and the past would re-arrange itself to be the most similar timeline in which you picked up the tickets. Perhaps there would also be limitations on who and what you could affect with this.

u/None [+1] (2 hours later)

If it works unconciously, that's indistinguishable from having really good luck. Or a lazy author.

u/ZeroNihilist [+1] (8 hours later)

I think the game you're thinking of is Time Rifters.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (10 hours later)

Yes! That's it. Thank you, that was bugging me.

I haven't played it myself, but the Let's Play looked like a lot of fun.

u/Jakkubus [+1] (a day later)

I like the idea of re-queuing events, although I'm not sure how it would work.

Probably like that.

u/DCarrier [+2] (an hour later)

Perhaps something with warping spacetime. If you warp time, you get crazy gravitational forces, but warping space alone is pretty safe. As long as there's nothing rigid there. He may or may not be able to warp the space to make sure it stays flat anywhere where anything is. They could use it to make a bag of holding (although it won't be any lighter) or wormholes. I would make it so both ends of the wormhole need to be created right next to each other and then he warps space to move them apart.

You could also ask /r/askphysics for power ideas, instead of what each individual thing will do.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (an hour later)

warping space

I have someone who creates subspace pockets in which to store stuff. So far I've been avoiding creating Doormaker or any other portal-based teleporter because they are enormously overpowered and usually setting-breaking. If I can find a nerf for it that makes it unique and not OP then maybe. Any suggestions?

You could also ask /r/askphysics[1] for power ideas, instead of what each individual thing will do.

I was trying to specifically stick to the 'what are the physics of this scenario' so as not to be outside their purview but I think I'll take your advice and just preface it with "if this is off-topic for this sub I'll nuke it".

u/DCarrier [+3] (an hour later)

Wit my idea, you have to actually bring the portal somewhere. You can't just portal into the pentagon or something. Although you could still presumably move one end of the portal from the other end, and just keep it so tiny that nobody notices. You could have it so they can't hold a portal that small open for long, so any portals they leave lying around would be clearly visible. And they have to stay next to one end to keep it open, so if they left a portal where they shouldn't, someone could shoot them through it. There's also problems with air pressure. If they try to cross too much vertical distance, there'd be large amounts of wind through the portal. They could fix this by messing around with the time part of spacetime, so that there's a force to counter pressure, but it's probably better just to avoid giving them that part of the power.

u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 hours later)

Oh, that's very cool, and a great nerf for teleportaling. I will definitely use that, thank you. I'll credit you when I do -- what name do you want me to use? [EDIT: added that to the original post, because it should have been there to start]

u/DCarrier [+2] (4 hours later)

I usually go by DanielLC, so I guess that.

I suppose the best use of the power portal-wise is that you could keep one open to a safe-house, and then escape through the portal and close it behind you when you're in trouble.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 hours later)

You could also leave a portal end in front of your M61 Vulcan and bring the other end along. Talk about Final Protective Fire. :>

u/DCarrier [+1] (4 hours later)

It's might be difficult to aim through these portals. It depends on how flat you can keep it. It might be like trying to draw a straight line freehand.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 hours later)

Good point, I'll make a note of that.

u/Geminii27 [+1] (6 hours later)

Being able to warp space gives you very nearly every superpower except mental/psychic and enhanced reaction time, if you're smart about it.

u/DCarrier [+1] (6 hours later)

Theoretically, you can slow down time, giving you enhanced reaction time, and if you take psychic to mean predicting the future you can make it into a time machine. But even a minor amount of time slowing results in vast forces that can destroy cities. You can still get time travel just with the portals, but that takes a while. You have to have a significant amount of time dilation.

It's not just being smart about it. There's also limitations in how well you can control it.

u/ulyssessword [+2] (2 hours later)

Personal weight/mass manipulation: This person can alter physics within a zone (that covers only their own body, or whatever you decide), that can increase or decrease the effect of gravity, and the inertia of matter. The two effects could be independent (or not) and it could also include changing the direction of gravity (or not).

u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 hours later)

A college friend of mine played a Champions character called Lightweight. He wasn't super strong, but his strength was bought with massive amounts of extra knockback. He did damage by smashing you into walls. Might be fun to do something like that.

Changing the direction of gravity could definitely be fun -- I think I might have that in my 'ideas for powersets' list, but I'd forgotten about it. Thank you for suggesting it.

u/Kishoto [+1] (12 hours later)

Champions character called Lightweight

What game is this in reference to?

u/eaglejarl [+1] (13 hours later)

The Champions RPG.

u/Kishoto [+1] (13 hours later)

Ahhh, a tabletop. I wish I'd played more tabletops when I was a kid. Alas, they weren't all that popular in my home country. :(

u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)

It's not too late, you know. If you can't find one in your local area, go to an SF convention. There is generally a game room where there will be hosted games.

u/Kishoto [+1] (2 days later)

I still live in my home country (The Bahamas) and trust me when I say there's 0 market here for that sort of thing, especially on my specific island. No conventions either :\

u/WarningInsanityBelow [+2] (6 hours later)

TwoSome random suggestions:

1. The power to decide to change your physical state and position to what it was 10 seconds ago (in the reference frame of the heaviest nearby object or something along those lines), everything else is unaffected . Naturally since your brain state is part of your physical state using this leads to losing all memories gained in that time. To make it more interesting and powerful change the time to anything less than 24 hours. Now the character has the option to do things without having knowledge of having done it as long as they do it within 24 hours of having the idea. Also creates the possibility of noticing you just made a big reset and have no idea why.

2. Having access to your mental state precisely 10 seconds into the future that would exist if you didn't use your power in the next 10 seconds. This allows things like gather information counter factually (for example to learn what is behind the forbidden door decide that in one second you will check if you already know what is behind the door, if you don't open the door, now use you power). Also allows thinking faster than usual by repeatedly reading the mind of a version of you that has already spent time thinking about the problem, but unless the information can be absorbed very quickly this would only allow for something like a 10x speed up. Also perhaps somewhat surprisingly someone with this power can be surprised by something so long as it happens within 10 as a result of using this power.

3. Probability manipulation working as follows: the character may specify any number of events as long as it would in principle be possible to tell if they had occurred. Then out of "all possible futures" futures in which any of the events did not occur are eliminated at a rate proportional to the number of futures remaining. So, for example if it say takes 1 hour to eliminate half of all futures then this character can make something which previously had a probability of 1/2 be guaranteed with one hour of use of their power, something with probability 1/4 with 2 hours of use of their power or something with probably 1/sqrt(2) be guaranteed with 30 minutes use of their power.

u/eaglejarl [+3] (7 hours later)

Nice. I especially like the first one. I think I would do it as 'set a chrono-anchor, then revert to that anchor', and let him have up to 2 anchors set at a time, with an anchor "coming loose" after 24 hours.

Number 2 is interesting to think about, but I think it would be hard to write for. Not just that it's very powerful, but also that it's complicated and would be hard to explain.

Number 3 is also very cool but hard to write. I'll put it in the list, though.

How would you like to be credited?

u/WarningInsanityBelow [+1] (9 hours later)

I don't want my internet persona so easily connected to my real life person, are you ok crediting a pseudonym? I usually go by NoSuchPlace.

Also I seem to have undersold number 3 since you only seem to only consider number 2s power noteworthy. Allow me to try to amend that:

Suppose you want the answer to some yes/no question, you can decide to toss a coin in 1 hour and use your power to eliminate futures in which the coin lands heads and the statement is false and futures in which the coin lands tails and the statement is true. Then in one hour the coin is guaranteed to land heads if and only if the statement is true. This gives you one bit of information, by repeating this and using binary search you can find the answer to almost any question.

Suppose now that you want to work out the answer to a problem which you could solve in principle but might take you a very long time. You start to use your power to eliminate futures in which you don't find the answer within 2 days. After one hour you will have eliminated approximately half the cases where you don't find the answer effectively halving the search space or doubling the speed at which you search. After 10 hours you will have effectively increased the rate at which you search by a factor of 1000. The same trick allows them to build a computer that computes NP-complete problems in polynomial time.

By running their power for long enough they could make essentially anything happen (they can force one in one quadrillion events to happen by applying their power for 2 days). Their main limitation would be that they need to ask for something far enough in advance, and their requests may be fulfilled in ways they did not expect (with potentially catastrophic outcomes): The way the power works is simply by eliminating futures in which the event did not happen. So, the event will happen in the way it was most likely to happen:

For example say they want to force the outcome of a lottery draw, so they request that a certain string of numbers is drawn in the next lottery. It will probably be more likely that the power user will decide to rig the lottery more directly and because of their power succeed, than the numbers appearing by natural means, so the request will be granted by making the user decide to use their power to rig the lottery by more conventional means.

Essentially they have an outcome pump with an adjustable power setting. If they are smart they will avoid using it at anything close to full power. Apologies for the wall of text.

u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)

I don't want my internet persona so easily connected to my real life person, are you ok crediting a pseudonym? I usually go by NoSuchPlace.

Of course!

[outcome pump power]

No, I got it. It's a cool power, but I think it's (a) overpowered and (b) hard to write without it seeming like authorial fiat.

Although, I suppose I could give it to a villain who is mostly offstage...hm. Thanks for the idea.

u/WarningInsanityBelow [+1] (a day later)

No, I got it. It's a cool power, but I think it's (a) overpowered and (b) hard to write without it seeming like authorial fiat.

Ok, I was just making sure it couldn't be misunderstood to be limited to trivial applications like determining the outcome of coin tosses since that was strictly consistent with the description and I gave no examples like for the first 2.

u/GeeJo [+2] Custom Flair (6 hours later)

For some phlebotinum-types, I remember writing descriptions on Reddit of characters from an old superhero campaign I ran a while back. A quick use of google shows it was on the /r/Parahumans subreddit. Forgive the Worm-style classification, since it fit the place I was posting it.

Feel free to use anything there if it sounds interesting, but bear in mind that I was very much not going for a munchkinny or realistic approach to superpowers at the time.

EDIT: Heh, I just read the OP for that thread, and he came up with the idea of momentum-swapping characters, too.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 hours later)

Those are very cool; thank you for the pointer. How would you like to be credited?

u/GeeJo [+1] Custom Flair (7 hours later)

My username is already obliquely cameoed in Thousand-Year Emperor. I'll stick to using it for a credit here, if only for consistency :P

u/eaglejarl [+1] (8 hours later)

It's a plan. :>

u/Drazelic [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (7 hours later)

One superpower I came up with a while ago was the idea of implementing a Speed-of-Matter constraint in the same way a Speed-of-Light constraint exists. You can create spatial bubbles where there exists an arbitrary maximum speed that physical objects are allowed to travel at, and this can be used for instance to stop incoming projectiles or to essentially kill people by preventing them from breathing.

u/None [+2] (10 hours later)

[deleted]

u/eaglejarl [+2] (12 hours later)

Is this a Constantine reference?

u/None [+1] (13 hours later)

[deleted]

u/TimTravel [+2] (23 hours later)

I thought it was a reference to this.

u/TimTravel [+2] (23 hours later)

These threads had some good ones.

u/Izeinwinter [+2] (a day later)

Fleet Mind. At will you can accelerate your mental.. And only your mental processes by however much you like. At significant factors, this subjectively feels like a case if lock-in because your body responds at normal speeds so from your perspective, you are a thinking statue.

"Sensitive". You have an absurdly keen theory of mind, and perceive the emotional state, motivation and intents of everyone with ease.

"Truthtell" you can't deceive. This is accompanied by the supernatural certainty in everyone you communicate with that you are not being deceptive.

"Causal Lightcone Enforcer". You have been empovered by the Escaton. Time travel, ftl engines, ect, break down if within a lightyear of you. Then you are compelled to go and destroy them. Akrasia has no hold on you until this is done. That's it. Those are your powers.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)

Interesting; I especially like Fleet Mind. Thanks.

u/Jakkubus [+2] (a day later)

• Nonchalant time-based superspeed. The less user cares, the more he/she slows down time and thus the faster he/she moves.
• Tactile fat polarization. Ability to make lipids dissolve in water (or any other polar solvent) upon a touch. At first glance may not seem impressive, but when you consider how cellular membrane of living beings is built, it turns out to be basically touch of death.
• Contagious reverse empathy. User of this power unconsciously makes nearby people assume his mental state and they in turn pass it on other people like a virus. If he/she gets sad, everyone gets sad; if someone pisses him/her off, it may end up with riots; if he gets drunk/doped, then well...
• Energy storage through talismans. This power allows to sap certain kinds of energy, store it in inorganic trinkets and release on will. One trinket can keep only one kind of energy, so you cannot put e.g. lightwaves and momentum in the same object. So user can e.g. create flashbangs or accelerate himself/herself with stored momentum.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)

Wow, the first three are nice, but I really love that last one. That is definitely going to show up. What name for the credit?

u/khafra [+2] (3 days later)

The power of drag coefficient manipulation. Not true fluid telekinesis like Leviathan, just skin drag, pressure drag, maybe even laminar to turbulent flow boundaries.

The wielder of that power could synergize very well with a tinker, creating otherwise-unusable hypersonic transport or projectile weapons. Would also be very difficult to harm kinetically in an atmosphere. Offensive options would depend on manton limits, physical range, and the ability to independently affect different regions or objects.

u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)

Oh, nice. So, she could keep the flow of air around a helicopter smooth, allowing it to move faster without the airframe getting so hammered. That's a limit my characters have been running into.

Likewise, she could increase the drag in a particular area so that projectiles fired through it basically stop. Maybe she could even control vortex formation to push a projectile faster.

Yes?

u/khafra [+2] (3 days later)

Yup, exactly my thoughts! For higher speeds, she could just make the airflow laminar around an arbitrarily shaped jet or rocket-powered vehicle, adding slight turbulence as needed for trajectory adjustments. For combat, with absolute control, she could even halt melee attacks; but even slowing down punches by a significant percentage would provide a huge advantage, dropping the kinetic energy by the cube of the slowdown and throwing off the attacker's expectations. Asphyxiation, of course, would depend on the manton limits of the power.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 hours later)

"what happens if the speed of light doubles?"

Taken straight: particles in the zone where the speed of light doubles can be accelerated to a higher velocity than the speed of light in a vacuum. When they leave the zone they will emit the extra kinetic energy as cherenkov radiation.

Otherwise... what does it mean for the speed of light to double? Can you link to the places where people answered "nothing"? I'm not at all sure that's correct.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 hours later)

Over here. There was some interesting discussion about it.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (5 hours later)

I think the original response is wrong. Doubling the speed of light would have the effect of replacing "1" with "2" in all those equations the poster is talking about. Or changing all the other constants (including the mass of everything) to bring it back to "1".

I think that the most likely result would be the same as changing the rate at which time passes. Time is derived from the speed of light, not the other way around.

u/Frommerman [+1] (6 hours later)

Control over ferrofluids

Telepathy that only lets you hear when someone thinks some variant of "yes" to themselves

A quarter-sized absolutely indestructible force bubble that hovers 3 feet from your left palm

Telekinesis with fingernail clippings

The ability to push all atoms of a particular element within 5 feet of your body away from you.

You don't age as long as nobody can physically see you

Microscopic vision

The ability to know the name of any object or person you see, in the language of the people you are talking to

The ability to attract the attention of anyone in earshot (this one needs a cooldown to not be broken)

The ability to subsist off fire

The ability to smash objects with a volume less than 1 cubic centimeter into their constituent atoms

The ability to disassemble any piece of non biological technology perfectly, but not reassemble it

Absolute control over your own gut flora

Nitrogen fixation field

u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 days later)

The ability to push all atoms of a particular element within 5 feet of your body away from you.

I'm using this one for chapter 12; how would you like to be credited?

u/Frommerman [+1] (5 days later)

Just Frommerman is fine.

u/NotAHeroYet [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (8 hours later)

Absorbing electro-magnetic osciliations patterns- AKA light- as well as eletricity and magnetic and storing the energy, before returning it in the favored form. magnetic probably wouldn't be stable, though i don't know the physics well enough to be sure. still, electricity-light and light-electricity isn't bad.

u/OrzBrain [+1] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (8 hours later)

The power to change matter into magnetic monopoles.

Not sure what it might do. Large explosions are a guess as the matter converted into monopoles would no longer be bound. Also possibly larger explosions as I have heard a rumor about monopoles catalyzing proton decay(?). And if you could hold some monopoles in one place odd magnetic effects because monopole magnetic fields fall of with distance in some other way than by the inverse square, providing much greater range.

Secondary effect would be to revolutionize technology if the character can produce and package large amounts.

u/cae_jones [+1] (8 hours later)

I don't think this fits quite so well, but maybe it could, and I've been thinking about it for the past couple days, so: Human Shapeshifting.

The idea was to make it look as much like standard "change into anyone" shapeshifting as possible, without making it too horrifically broken. (That you already have someone with subspace-related powers helps, since I was thinking that would be crucial to making it work.)

So, for example: you can't violate conservation of energy so much (not that I know where the energy for the transformations come from), so you can't change into anyone larger than your default form, unless you exploit some technicality regarding eating while shifted to stock up on mass to use later.

Transmuting elements would be absurdly energy-expensive, but moving around molecules less so.

You'll want your clothes and ID to change along with you, so the ability should probably extend as far as clothing can be reasonably expected to extend (so a couple inches or so). Anything that leaves your range will quickly revert to its original form (maybe there would be a delay that follows your favorite inverse power law, so you can show your ID to a police officer or a bouncer without it immediately changing in their hands, but so that it won't make it easy to disguise money or jewels?).

Identities: you can only change into humans (I was thinking you'd need to change into unique people, excluding your default form, because the impersonation possibilities are scary and overused). The same applies to things that you transfigure: clothes change to clothes, rocks change to rocks, coins to coins, guns to guns, smart phones to smart phones.

Brute: not only can you shapeshift away many injuries, but it'd be real convenient if lethal damage to a shapeshifted form cause dyou to revert to your (uninjured) default form, subspacing or forcefully ejecting any loose penetrants. That wouldn't work so will if, say, someone has their arm through your chest, or if your body is in pieces that are more than a few inches apart, but if it's slow enough, you could take a typical burst of gunfire and keep going, provided nothing important got blown away in the process.

I kinda focused on civilian exploits. For example: you can't make anything persist once it leaves your range, but if you make something that can be copied (for example, stick a transfigured jumpdrive into a computer, hold onto it with one hand, copy data with the other), you can still get something out of it. The same applies to medical developments, if with more tedium. After all, your transfigured cells are replicators, and if you can get them to copy onto some unmodified material, you might be able to get something out of it.

Then, of course, there's the momentum question: what happens if you change into a differently-sized form while in motion? How long does this take? Can it be exploited to, say, jump higher, or get finer control over one's speed, or something? What if you're in a small form, someone grabs you, and you try to change into a bigger form?

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