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I agree with Anti-Magic being an anomaly instead of a standard prize in the Superpower Lottery, but then again, there's the dilemma that Anti-Magic could be absurdly overpowered that even the lottery itself can be rendered obsolete by the Anti-Magic wielder.
edited 1st Aug '12 6:02:34 PM by judasmartel
The easiest way to deal with that is to scrap the anti-magic entirely. Think of some other ability that is fitting for the lowest ranked student.
Which is why I thought of Mega Manning in the first place. The anomaly supposedly has all the powers in the lottery, but what comes out every session is completely random so the wielder has no way of knowing which ability will come out.
But as he gets the hang of it, he can learn how to control whatever ability comes out, and possibly, control what kind of abilities come out when needed. But it's still an ability roulette.
edited 2nd Aug '12 4:45:13 AM by judasmartel
Mega Manning sounds like it should be for the top student though. S/he's the one who is supposedly the best at everything, after all. And even then I still wouldn't advise it. Ability roulettes are so easily abused for plot.
Let's see... how about listing the things that students with low grades usually do, and working it out from there?
Charles Atlas Superpower? Sounds like my hero would be a Badass Normal, then. Oh, man, creating an underdog hero sure sucks.
Alternatives:
- The hero gets a uber tutor that allows him to bolster his grades. (Kind of a boring way to go about it though)
- You can make it so that the hero is Brilliant, but Lazy though. Maybe have a deuteragonist whose main in-story role is to motivate the guy so he'd actually kick some ass.
- The hero might not be good at studies, but he's a MASSIVE fighting/martial arts/video games geek and he's able to apply his knowledge in fights.
- I really like this idea. It reminds of "defy the system" stories.
- Have the hero be average, except for this one subject, in which he excels.
- Like you said, Charles Atlas Superpower. Incidentally, that's basically what the protagonist of my story has— he has average grades, but he's so good he's already allowed to play competitively in track-and-field. Basically, his extracurricular activities give him a significant power boost.
I didn't like the first one. The third one comes down to what subject the protagonist is good at. Math is pretty overrated IMO, so I'm thinking of some other subject which is taken for granted more often than the others.
I like the second one. The hero can be the loser of the Superpower Lottery, but he's able to beat the best students in the school despite the general lameness of his powers because he's applied his RPG experiences into battle while the honor students don't even have an idea what an RPG is. Sounds like what Keima would look like if he's into CRPGs instead of eroge.
edited 2nd Aug '12 5:39:48 AM by judasmartel
Values Education or GMRC. There's also the Computer and Music subjects.
Values Ed? So the hero is a genuine Nice Guy? Wow, this is awesome! The possibilities are endless!
So how about White Magic and Holy Hand Grenade in a setting where most powers are used offensively? But of course, it could be possible to make healing work only on others and not on the user because that's the kind of thing that makes White Magic overpowered in individual battles.
Then if the wielder is an asshole, there's always the Evil Counterpart Black Magic. The drawback is The Corruption eating away on the user.
And oh, character is built, not made! Virtually zero whoring potential!
edited 2nd Aug '12 5:48:08 AM by judasmartel
Additionally, you can mix and match any of the alternatives. You can have him awesome at GMRC (I mean, who wouldn't be?) and he could also be a gaming god or something.
I've just thought of another alternative: a "Study Guide" ability for those with failing grades. Which basically allows them to learn the basics of any subject relatively easily... but what if this guy forces his ability to recognize "fighting" as a subject, and thus given Awesomeness by Analysis?
As You Know, some people think that being a gamer is a bad thing. But it's not like non-gamers are squeaky clean or something.
If you want some absurdly powerful abilities for the higher up students, you can ask me. It seems I come up with a lot of these.
Thanks. But for me, it seems too easy to give characters Game-Breaker abilities, but it's so hard to come up with a Difficult, but Awesome ability.
Inverse Law of Complexity to Power, indeed.
So, uhh, how's the story coming along?
- *Beat* Still can't figure out what Magikarp Power would I give the hero. Inevitably, it will become overpowered in the end, I just don't want to use it as some kind of an Ass Pull or Deus ex Machina.
Is it really possible to use a Magikarp Power to resolve the plot while still enabling the hero to earn his happy ending?
edited 3rd Aug '12 9:50:48 PM by judasmartel
I need a drink
Of course. In Willow, the protagonist's stage magic managed to beat a full blown evil sorceress.
Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.
Right now, I'm leaning towards GMRC = Holy Hand Grenade
edited 3rd Aug '12 10:06:13 PM by judasmartel
So I was thinking, "What are the top 5-10 most overpowered abilities and the top 5-10 most underpowered abilities in history?"
My idea is to give Game-Breaker abilities to the best students in my story (though at least one should be one of the protagonists, if not The Hero) while choosing between the most underrated powers to give to the underdog hero.
Just in case I haven't stated this before, I basically want to write a story where Baka Test meets To Aru Majutsu No Index.
edited 6th Aug '12 9:40:07 PM by judasmartel
That... is a really hard question to answer. We have a treasure trove of abilities— heck, I can give you 601 abilities from a single character in Medaka Box alone. You might want to narrow down your parameters.
Okay, asides from Charles Atlas Superpower (Super-Strength, Super-Speed, Made of Iron, etc.), what are the most overpowered and underpowered abilities that anyone here knows of?
Erm, let's see. Reality-warping, probability manipulation, omniscience, omnipotence, unlimited mega manning, skill negation— something along those lines would be the overpowered powers.
Underpowered is basically the gag powers. Like spontaneous arm-falling-off or cookie conjuration or something. One of the more interesting underpowered skills I've encountered is (SPOILER ALERT FOR MEDAKA BOX): Zenkichi's Devil Style. You know how protagonists are protagonists because protagonist things happen to them? Zen's skill nullifies all of that. He won't accidentally bump into a cute girl, he won't beat the odds, and he won't suddenly turn the tables in a hopeless situation.
edited 7th Aug '12 6:48:41 AM by fillerdude
Say, how would an anti-Accelerator look like?
Something to that effect, yes. Anyways, here's a rough draft of the synopsis of the Superpower Lottery School.
With the advances in technology, scientists from all over the world were able to convert psychic powers into programs which could be loaded into the human brain inside an artificial reality without carrying them over into the real world. And so they gained support from world governments to fund a test drive of this latest innovation: the Esper Academy, an academy of elite students to be placed in a secluded island at the center of the world under a revolutionary curriculum which brings far greater incentive than imaginable to those who try to be the best person they can be.
Students from all over the world who wish to enrol shall take an entrance test to determine eligibility for admission. Once admitted, each student receives an ability in a form of a computer program based on their strong subjects or fields. Their abilities can become more powerful by doing well in tests and exams, and if one becomes the best student in his class, he can become one of the Seven Emperors, one set of the best students of each class per year level.
A certain teenager somehow managed to get into Esper Academy by chance despite being regarded as a failure of a student all his life. However, he was not able manifest any ability at all upon receiving his ability data. This has happened to someone before, and it has been a year since he had gone insane and unable to finish his studies at the academy. Despite this, one of his classmates, a cute, refined girl who is actually one of the Seven Emperors in their year, put faith in him and believed that he had a powerful ability within him which will manifest in due time if he studies hard. Because of this, the boy resolved to study harder to prove himself worthy of being called an Esper and for her sake as well, in order to prove her right and impress her.
School, Tests, and Superpowers. When all of them combined, a certain magical adventure begins!
Sorry for my crappy writing. I had overflowing ideas in my head, but I can't seem to write them beautifully. To be honest, I must suck at writing.
@The Hero I'm not sure how to write an anti-Touma, except that his ability is actually a Magikarp Power based on GMRC unlike Touma who was born with his Imagine Breaker, so that he starts off powerless, then starts gaining immunity to Standard Status Effects, then gradually increasing Anti-Magic, and culminates in a Discard and Draw from Anti-Magic to either a Holy Hand Grenade or Black Magic, depending on how he builds GMRC.
@Seven Emperors: I had this idea from the seven level fives of Academy City. But unlike Index where only six of the seven level fives are revealed so far, I decided to reveal all the Seven Emperors in the hero's year. Of course there's the Insufferable Genius archetype, but I wanted to leave one of the elite students as The Ojou Love Interest that even Belldandy would be proud of. Because Shana and Mikoto are so freaking overrated already. But there's elemental personalities to consider as well (so much that when I thought of An Ice Person, I think of Kuudere and when I think of Playing with Fire, I think of Hot-Blooded). I'll explain more about the seven emperors later on.
I based the seven emperors' abilities on the seven common subjects encountered in our school system: Math, Science, Languages, History (counts as Social Sciences), Technology and Home Economics, Physical Education, and Religious Studies.
In the hero's year, the seven emperors are ranked from the highest grade to lowest, (not necessarily the relative strengths of their abilities, so that the academically weakest emperor can actually punch out the academically strongest emperor in combat), as follows:
- Number One is the anti-Accelerator I was talking about. Being a Math and Newtonian Physics specialist, he gains telekinesis. He can lift objects without touching them, but he can't deflect attacks automatically unlike Accelerator so he has to react to an attack first so he could brush it off with his abilities.
- Part of his plot includes him fighting the hero who is still the weakest student by then when his classmate Number Three was out of commission after a battle with a fellow emperor, so there's no one else to fight the Combat by Champion because his other classmates are terrified of him. It is later discovered that Number One's older brother was the one who got into the same predicament as Hero. The reason why Number One tried his hardest to become the best is so he could break the system to find out what really happened to his brother, who went insane. And then it's him who got insane this time, even unintentionally transforming into a nigh-unstoppable One-Winged Angel which carried over to the real world! Turns out the VR system is already broken beyond repair in the first place.
- Number Two is a language specialist which ability is to make any noun real as long as he spells out the words correctly. Non-nouns and wrong spelling results in Stuff Blowing Up, the former on opponents, and the latter on himself. After his defeat by a lower-ranked student (not necessarily an emperor), he decides to use flash cards containing the words instead of spelling them out because he's more vulnerable while spelling out the words.
- Homonyms work depending on what he thinks about that word, so that he can conjure both a BFS and an Action Bomb separately or at the same time with just the word "claymore" (definitely not that one). Proper nouns work depending on his concept of them, so that he can change the battlefield or summon other people, historical and literary figures, and zombies. Abstract nouns will be watered down no matter what his concept of these are, so that the word "death" cannot be used as a One-Hit Kill and instead knocks an opponent off his feet.
- Number Three is the hero's eventual Love Interest. As an Earth Science specialist, she has a wide array of abilities that just screams Black Magician Girl. As a result, she's a human Weather-Control Machine who can cause earthquakes, sandstorms, snowstorms, hailstorms, volcanic eruptions, heat waves, thunderstorms, tsunamis, heavy rains and tornadoes. Phew.
- It just bugs me though, how in the world could a Squishy Wizard Fragile Flower fight against other students without a partner to back her up? Otherwise, the hero could be the Sword she's looking for.
- Number Four is a computer specalist, but all I could think of is Frickin' Laser Beams a la Shizuri Mugino. Any suggestions for superpowers corresponding to Hollywood Hacking will be appreciated.
- Number Five is a Psychology specialist who can Mind Rape her opponents. Just think of her as an anti-Misaki Shokuhou with Tsukuyomi.
- Number Six is a devout Catholic who gains the ability to perform any Symbolism Magic involving Christianity. Just think of Fiamma Lite.
- Number Seven is the physically strongest student in his year, but is still incredibly well-rounded. He becomes a Shotoclone as a result.
Please feel free to comment about the seven emperors, thank you very much.
edited 13th Aug '12 11:02:41 AM by judasmartel
I have an idea regarding for the 'Anti-Magic for the weakest student' idea:
Make him (or her) an anomaly. Where others were given powers, his for some reason didn't take and was instead repelled and he consequently is able to disable everyone else's powers. However, it's because he repels people's powers that he's such a weak student; i.e. the correlation between the strength of the individual's power and his/her test scores works both ways.