On Stock Superpowers and how they can be used

(warning: written from iPhone. Autocorrect shenanigans may ensue)

So. My friend and I are writing a story. It's way too complex for me to describe it here, so I'm going to pose a question based on the Stock Superpowers used by some of the characters.

Mainly, EVERYTHING is an Imagination-Based Superpower.

For instance, one of the characters has lightning powers. The fact that he's got tons of experience in using this power makes him dangerous enough to the bad guys, but then I remember something: Everything in the human body is driven by electricity-based nervous impulses. If this guy touches you, he could completely wipe your mind and replace it, or he could literally turn you off.

That said, I'm kinda curious what else would come up with this. The main heroes use fire, space, and Pure Energy. The villains with powers have light and time. I already know that light has tons of uses, so how would it work with other powers?

If all the powers are that versatile, you have a bunch of characters that are basically omnipotent by the standards of most stories. Keeping all the powers from being a Game-Breaker will be a real challenge, so I hope you're prepared for that.

Light- can make visual illusions, can shoot lasers, turn invisible, blind people.

Time- can time travel, age people at will, perform geological chemical processes instantly, restore youth, send other people through time, make time pass faster or slower in a certain area or for certain individuals.

Fire- burning things obviously. Cook food instantly. Freeze things. Probably the most useless power.

Space- Disintegrate people by increasing the space between the molecules of their body. Reduce space to set off fusion explosions or black holes. Fill in cavities. Create empty space and use the vacuum to control the wind and weather.

Pure Energy- You'd have to define what this energy can do. It would have to be different from heat, electricity and light, to avoid overlap with the other powers.

Re time, see here.

"Fill in cavities" - What Kind of Lame Power is Dentistry, Anyway?!

edited 30th Sep '12 11:15:08 PM by kassyopeia

Also, they don't start out knowing how to do everything. For instance, the girl with space powers doesn't even know she has them when we meet her. She spends most of the story just trying to figure out how to use them efficiently.

The light guy is the Big Bad, and he has five million years of practice with his own abilities, to the point where he is almost an Invincible Villain. Fun fact: this is a cosmic horror story, and he's not one of the cosmic horrors. He actually has a phobia of them, mainly because most planets in the universe (including Earth and his own) are abominations. He's not as powerful as they are, but he's still worryingly powerful.

I kind of generalized "fire" to plasma, AKA stars. The user here is a heroic harlequin of sorts, whose main ability is being really, insanely fast.

Time travel is not possible in this Verse, nor is completely stopping it. The Big Bad's butler can SLOW time to where it seems stopped. He generally uses this with his weapon(s) of choice: every weapon made on the British Isles ever. I forgot to mention he's an Anglo-Saxon. Think Dio Brando with greatswords, spears, axes and lots and lots of dakka.

My friend would have to explain the Pure Energy himself, since he understands the verse's mechanics (specifically the quantum ones) better than I do. I think he summed it up as energy of creation, though.

fire:make big flame to suck up oxygen in set radius, choking them shoots fire from feet< fly's superheats the floor, like as flaming coal walks shoots fire from mouth, like a dragon

Fire is plasma, you say. Well, lightning is also plasma. And if you choose to obey rule of conservation of energy, then you have to take heat from one place to make it somewhere else.

In short, your "Fire" character is actually Fire, Ice, Lightning with a side order of Magnetism Manipulation (see plasmoids, and of course electric field is accompanied by magnetic field and vice versa). Meaning that not only does harlequin person have same powerset as the Big Bad, they can:

• boil people from inside out
• explode stuff with heat
• kill by taking heat
• yep, freeze stuff
• work as a living EMP
• deflect bullets(? - not sure)
• manipulate metal objects
• cook stuff

Oh, and if we're talking power of stars, then Light 'em Up applies as well, along with all that comes with it. Plasma is actually one of most vertasile powers out there, IMO.