Character Superpower Workshop

I have this pyrokinetic robot in Red Revenge. He was supposed to be a (probably rocket-engined) UACV, but developed a mind of his own. The pyrokinesis was supposed to be some kind of an accident, he wasn't originally meant to be able to do that. He's made of an extremely rare fictional metal with the forging temperature of about 2000°C, which allows him to get hot enough to melt steel.

So there's a few questions. How could i justify the pyrokinesis somehow accidentally happening instead of the intented thing? How can i justify fuel pyrokinesis not being very short-lived per use? Where should the fire actually come from?

Edited by Nukeli on Aug 4th 2023 at 11:40:44 AM

One question: Does it need to be justified?

It's made of a rare fictional metal after all, so whatever this robot does, can just be handwaved as a property or chemical reaction of the metal even if science itself can't understand it properly and only make guesses on how it works at best, it makes sense to the metal itself.

I mean, Superman for example, all of his powers have the simple explanation of "runs on solar power" and that's all the readers need to know to accept it.

Why not the same simple response regarding what Living Inferno does? It's enough to just say "It's the metal." and leave it at that, isn't it?

Edited by Trainbarrel on Aug 4th 2023 at 7:52:44 AM

There needs to be some kind of an explanation for why the fire goes into the wrong place and the engineer fails to fix it, and even if the "how/why?" is unknown, people (and the audience; this would be a visual media) would still observe what happens outwardly. And somebody would also say something about it, plus i need to name the issue for the character summary (and the engineer would say it to somebody).

Sometimes things do need to be explained. And this is also one of the last two things i need in his character profile.

Edited by Nukeli on Aug 4th 2023 at 6:45:02 PM

Okay, I´ll try something different to come up with something reasonably sound for this.

I will create a scene with a bunch of scientists discussing this metal, a purely hypothetical one, to establish the mood and find a possible solution to your problem.

Characters: Scientist A, Scientist B, and Scientist C

Here it goes.

...

Scientists gathered around a table in the chemistry lab, the sample specimen of the unknown metal secured and locked up after numerous tests done on it. The scientist looks like they're having a massive collective headache in the aftermath of all these tests as they do a recollection of their results between one another.

Scientist A (In absolute defeat while checking the papers with the latest results): "Excellent, so all we can determine from a week of work is that this thing ISN'T a part of Earth..."

Scientist B (Looking up while seated on a chair with his hands pressed up against his face.): "As the one who first found it told us from the get-go..."

Scientist A (Throws the papers down at the table and strolls around in the room): "It's undeniably a METAL! Attracts compass needles. And it got a Thomson structure!"

Scientist B (Glances at him in exasperation.): "And the bad news?"

Scientist A (Sighs and looks where the sample is stored.): "It's untouchable by acids. Any acids. In fact, all they do is lowering its temperature for a bit before it goes back up again. And when heated artificially, it leaves no gas or residue or show any signs of decomposition. But, if left alone, the temperature keeps rising and THEN gas forms from it, but it ignites at contact with oxygen, leaving nothing to study... and there is zero loss on the sample's mass despite the natural gas forming from it."

Scientist B (Sinking in his chair and puts his hands over his face again.): "You forgot the strange parts."

Scientist A (Chuckling in small bemusement and disbelief.): "It glows when exposed to x-rays." (He chuckles again and shakes his head.) "And makes water shimmer like oil-stains when put NEAR them, without even touching the liquid..."

Scientist A walks over to the window and just sighs.

Scientist B (Getting up from the chair and gathering the papers.): "Well, we still need to get the report done to the guy working on it, even if it will be a thin one." (He turns back to Scientist A) "Maybe we'll be lucky tomorrow with this thing with the more unorthodox tests?"

He pats Scientist A on the shoulder and leaves the room.

Scientist A just shakes his head and prepares to leave as well, he stops at the door as he turns around with a frown on his face.

Scientist C, having been dead quiet for the whole meeting, is standing with a paper on the table in front of him and a pen in his hand, tapping it on the white sheet, without acknowledgement to anything around him. His gaze wide-eyed and empty like gazing straight forward and beyond, at the sealed up container.

Scientist A (frowns): "Hey! We're leaving! Time to go!"

Scientist C drops the pen and wakes up as from a trance. He looks around in confusion, paper in hand. He turns towards Scientist A. Still holding the paper.

Scientist C: "Boss... I... have a question."

Scientist A: "Yes? What?"

Scientist C: "Did you... hear something?"

Both men goes silent and listens.

Dead silence.

Scientist A: "Like what?"

Scientist C: "I..." He looks down at the sheet of paper in his hand. He frowns and puts it away on the table. "I'm maybe too tired..."

Scientist A: "Infuriating, isn't it?" (He glances at the sealed up box with the sample.) "Come on. We'll rest up and go back at it again tomorrow."

Scientist C (confused nod): "Y...yes. Yes sir."

The men leaves and close the door behind them.

On the table, the paper Scientist C scribbled on is left in the view from the street lights outside. Scribbled completely from top and down to the bottom.

All of it being the same one sentence chained infinitely.

???: "/***- - -***/***- - -***/***- - -***/***- - -***/***- - -***/***- - -***/"

...

Could any of this theoretical scenario be used as a possible explanation?

Edited by Trainbarrel on Aug 5th 2023 at 8:59:33 AM

Kinda vague and weird question for a sci-fi story:

How would someone with a power to manipulate water molecules could gruesomely murder someone, without making it directly look water-related?

Context: In the story's setting fairly large percentage of the population are born with superpowers. Some of them are born/have developed such extremely powerful abilities that they are basically considered strategic weapons or/and natural disaster in human forms - let's call them Class X, for the time being.

One of them, a second part of the main character duo - currently named Eleanor, if that helps - has the power to change physical and chemical properties of anything she touches, as long as she knows the objects' property. Even among the members of Class X, she is considered among THE most powerful and the final villain's goal is to take her power to a reality distorting level.

For the most of the time, she only uses her power to non-organic objects, and that has been the impression that most people have, including her partner and the first part of the main character duo. When push comes to shove, though. she can extend the scope of her power to organic matters and, well, living things as well.

Naturally, she is very fearful of her powers, especially because during her childhood she witnessed her power killing a person in an absolutely gruesome manner. Ever since the incident, she only uses her power properly when she gets permission from her mother, another well-respected and influential Class X member whose ability involves manipulating water molecules.

The big twist somewhere around the middle is that the said brutal incident which traumatized the Eleanor...was actually committed by her mother. Turns out that she's the mastermind behind everything and have been gas-lighting her all these times, in order to control the development of her powers. That and the said victim - a longtime family friend and superpower researcher - discovered her mother's true nature.

Oh, and the poor man gets murdered so violently - in front of the child's sight, no less - that there's barely any piece to identify him with and he's considered missing by the start of the story.

Hmm...can manipulating water molecules within a human body can cause the person to explode in a bloody mess?

Maybe, if she gets it to the boiling point without actually boiling, then gets disturbed, it rapidly boils and releases an explosion from the sudden process.

Expelling all the water from the body at once could probably be very gruesome, but the dried up remains would point to water manipulation.

Increasing pressure in one part of the body (heart or head) until it explodes may be a bit more stealthy.

I have no idea what would happen if water was cooled down (by slowing down the molecules) in parts of the body while heated up (by accelerating the molecules) in others. This would be very bad for the victim's health, but I don't know how gruesome it would be. Just like it could be gruesome while pointing people to heat-related powers.

Maybe she could make water behave like a solid in some parts of the body, and behave like a gas in others. The result would certainly be very unpleasant, and could readily evoke Eleanor's power of changing the physical properties of what she touches without pointing to water specifically. The human body is 60% water anyway...

Edited by C105 on Oct 9th 2023 at 3:37:14 PM

I need help coming up with a superpower for an OC:

The OC is from a story where the characters are all based on classic literary characters and a decent amount of them have superpowers based around their literary inspirations. The OC is based on Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby.

I'm struggling to come up with a superpower for the Daisy OC and here's what I got so far:

• The superpower is called Beautiful Little Fool (The superpowers each have their own name a la Quirks from My Hero Academia; the names represent the superpowers whether literally or symbolically)
• It's on the abstract side and it's pretty OP (I'm saving the fact that the Daisy OC even has a superpower as a plot twist late in the story)
• An aspect of the ability is that the OC can see how much people love her, which is represented by jars that have colored auras within them in the visions she can activate with her superpower. For example, the jar that represents the Jay Gatsby-based OC who loves the Daisy OC very much is one big ass jar filled to the brim with green light. I don't want this aspect by itself to just be her superpower because it's kinda boring that way.
• I'm considering maybe letting the superpower give the Daisy OC a transformation.

Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Dec 27th 2023 at 10:08:17 AM

Just the power, right?

Then how about this?

"The more you love her, the more badly you'll get burned when you finally touch her."

Basically, making her a human-shaped electric fly zapper.

The jars being her way to tell how much electric charge that will be released through someone's body when she finally touches them.

It does not take that much to fry a human nervous-system and fry its light-bulb.

And if you're wearing anything conducting or in water the hope for the "Great Author" in the heaven's above to have mercy on your soul and make it quick.

I'm thinking about balancing measures for... a really goddamn powerful Jean Grey-esque psychic superhero, without having her conveniently forget her powers or have kryptonite-equivalents everywhere, nor be an utter story breaker. Her being so powerful is the point and plays into her character a lot.

Going to get a bit in-depth here, forgive me.

Context: Coming from a world that very much tries to avert Reed Richards Is Useless in its general level of technological and societal advancement, Adrienne Palmer aka Lancer is very much the archetypal Cape, having grown up in the midst of a massive bottom-up social revolution wherein as a very young child she bore witness to the oligarch who ran her home town (think 'even more despotic EPCOT') losing his shit and detonating a seismic weapon in the middle of it rather than bending the knee to revolting workers and encroaching revolutionary forces, rendering the place an uninhabitable tectonically-damaged exclusion zone for decades to come and indiscriminately killing thousands before they could evacuate and the weapon could be shut off.

Having narrowly escaped with surviving family, she effectively grew up a war refugee as the new society picked up the pieces and built itself into something better, her earliest memories being of death and destruction and upheaval—this lead to her adopting what one might see as a painfully naïve viewpoint, that there's always a third option in difficult dilemmas, 'always another way.' This informs a de-escalatory approach to conflict and influences how she uses her powers, though like many superheroes she is not wholly pacifistic if lives are at stake. In addition, she strives to use her powers to help people whenever possible, and in ways only someone like her can—stifling and diverting volcanic eruptions, stopping hazardous near-Earth asteroids and making them available for mining, as well as aiding in the construction of space stations/spacecraft and in missions to other planets in the solar system, among other things.

As mentioned before, she is an immensely powerful psychic (her powers gained like most supers in her setting, known as Innates, from prenatal exposure to trace amounts of the radioactive material Radeite, triggering the development of superpowers into the mid-teens and early adulthood), capable of telekinetically lifting many tens of thousands of tons, manipulating numerous objects at once, as well as delicate minute applications including manipulating air to surround herself when she travels through space—something her powers also allow her to do incredibly quickly, crossing the distance between Earth and the Moon in under an hour—disassembling weapons and cybernetics, and even bending light, which occurs even when she exerts her powers in other ways, manifesting as a distinctive rainbow aura/shimmer.

She is also a capable telepath, sensing the presence of beings with nervous systems, reading emotions and surface-level thoughts, as well as outright mindreading and telepathic communication, though she refuses to read minds on principle because of the privacy-violating aspect in addition to the fact that this reading can be felt and actively resisted.

This telepathy ties into my approach to balancing her, however, as she does not possess an omniscient mind and can't fully 'turn off' her telepathy, always being subject to the psionic noise emitted by even rudimentary nervous systems (which in this setting includes the hyphae of fungi and by extension the mycelium network beneath forests). Less than an hour on Earth, with all of its complex life, causes her painful migraines which eventually become debilitating and can endanger her health if she stays much longer, not to mention draining her and hindering her ability to focus her powers. For this reason, she has established a 'fortress of solitude' on the Moon, thanks to its distance from Earth—which from the Moon is beyond the range of her powers—and its lack of life beyond a botanical garden she tends and a few manned scientific outposts that she can tune out easily enough. From here, she receives feeds and long-range communication from Earth and stays on top of emergencies in which only someone of her power level can intervene... which are the kinds of things she has to consciously restrict herself to lest she run herself ragged with 'small' things and end up helping nobody.

It's worth noting that power suppressants are a thing in this setting, in the form of medication that deadens Radeite-induced powers with continual use, with said powers taking days or weeks to return if the regimen is stopped. When she was a teenager and started feeling that noise as her powers grew, she had to choose between 1: taking these suppressants, thus losing those powers and being unable to use them to help people, or 2: eventually having a fatal aneurism, to which she chose the above third option.

FWIW, for all the myriad powers Innates can have, 'full-platter' psychics like her are exceedingly rare, usually possessing either telepathy or telekinesis, and rarely even a tenth as strong as hers, meaning she doesn't really have any adequate support network and has had to figure out a lot of things herself, like meditation techniques and managing the noise when she has to stay on Earth for extended periods.

Innates generally speaking also don't have entirely reliable abilities, occasionally outright lacking Required Secondary Powers and needing to compensate with technology, this specific subcategory of supers being known as 'Amps', for 'amplifying' what's already there. She'd technically count—aside from the noise, her powers have also resulted in neuromuscular atrophy that she compensates for with a bodysuit/uniform that functions more or less like soft powered armor as a means of physical protection and backup if her powers somehow fail her or are neutralized.

Edited by Chortleous on Dec 29th 2023 at 3:46:16 AM