Is "not dying" too OP for a superhero?

I've thought over this a lot and found that, with my origin and back story, my character is almost impossible to kill. Because she has two souls, she has double the life force/healing power and can survive pretty much any attack.

There's also a pretty impotent twist in the narrative which requires her to not go to the hospitable, or at least not get an X-ray or go through any metal detectors.

Don't a lot of superheros (maybe even protaganists!) have the 'ability' to survive things well, if only because the story surrounds them and dead protaganist = dead story?

The challenges will have to fit the superhero though. Maybe being crippled is still a problem. Maybe the superhero's ablity to dish out damage is still not that great. Maybe the villain(s) create problems that must be solved via smartness ('find this enemy's weak point' is the simplest, but do get creative) or anything beyond 'survive this'.

Heck, the double soul thing can cause complications in many ways depending on your setting, but I'll first need to know how souls even work in said setting.

It's kinda' complicated but the basics of the soul is that it is the foundation of the body that the muscle builds upon when it grows or heals. This makes the soul a form of magic which some people can tap into when trained. Some people can shape-shift, some people can produce fire etc.

The soul which the protagonist is bound is their own person and forms a brother-sister relationship with her since he is a young boy. Being bound to another soul also gives her the power to see dead people.

edited 19th Nov '15 5:13:56 AM by IAmADinosaurRARRR

For as long as you do not make the power overpowered, it will not be. Think of the limits for the ability and stick to them, even if you do not show them to the readers (though you should make it clear that yes, there are limits, if you choose not to show anyone what they are).

An ability is only "overpowered" when it trivializes the story. You could write about someone who can effortlessly win any fight, and not have it be overpowered- it just requires a plot in which fights aren't important. If the story is a slice of life comedy, then their complete invincibility will only come up as a joke.

There was once this character in a book called THE ALLOY OF LAW, that featured a villain that could heal at near infinite speeds. He still had the strength of an ordinary man, so he could be trapped by nets or something like that. In addition, when he comes against multiple opponents, they'll just bag him. That villain's name is Miles Dagouter or Miles Hundredlives, and he's my favorite villain so far.

It's too bad that the source of his healing powers comes from gold and once that was stripped from his body, boy did he die.

"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."

Well, there is one webcomic in which the character is pretty much invincible but it's played for laughs despite it being sort of an action series rather than a slice-of-life anything; the name is "Onepunchman" or whatever variation of it (since the title is in Japanese syllabograms and Japanese language doesn't actually have space) if anyone cares to check.

The reason it works in the series is that the problems the character has never stem from not having enough power to defeat his foes, and aren't even related to that; instead they are things with which his ridiculous power level can't really help ... well, not directly at the very least. And it does help that the character's attitude basically amounts to "Being the strongest is boring, why do I even care?" which makes it much easier to take in.

Not being able to die could also be horrific if the hero were trapped in something that they can't get out of. A particularly nasty villain, knowing of the hero's inability to die, might focus on plans and plots that involve trapping the hero somewhere they can't get out of forever - or at least until natural erosion takes its toll.

Avoiding being entombed forever could be one of the hero's main goals...

There's also a question of how immortal you are. Can you still be cut to pieces? If so, there's no real problem. The possibility of being beheaded and left paralyzed forever is narratively almost the same as dying, at least so long as nobody comes along and stitches you back together (looking at you, Hidan. Even if that can be done, it will still take out of the fight and making losing possible.

Basically there's nothing wrong with a hero who cannot die. There is something wrong with a hero who cannot lose.

You would be surprised what you can live through.

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

Getting your head cut off and still living sounds like a rather fun episode.

"Not dying" is essentially one of Wolverine's abilities - his healing factor that enables him to survive being shot, stabbed and otherwise badly damaged.

It's also not his only ability - there's the whole retractable blades thing, plus his speed and strength, mad fighting skillz etc.

Yet somehow they manage to come up with challenges that he has to work to beat.

Merely being effectively unkillable is not going to make a superhero over-powered. There are still plenty of ways in which an unkillable hero could be beaten or have to work hard to beat the antagonist.

Superman is ridiculously tough, fast, powerful, invulnerable etc and he has other powers such as flight, telescopic and X-ray vision, built-in weapons (heat beams from his eyes, icy blasts of super-powered breath), super acute hearing etc - and yet can still be challenged.

As long as a character's adversaries have equivalent or complimentary abilities, you can still get a fair amount of drama out of the scenario.

Superman has a vast array of incredible powers, any one of which could be a game breaker. Fortunately for the plot his enemies include cyborg killing machines, numerous beings like himself, the world's greatest genius, and the one-man alien invasion that is Brainiac.

You want to create dramatic tension for this guy? Send him up against people with the same powers. Send him up against somebody who can kill with a touch and see what happens when their powers clash. Send him up against somebody who just plain outclasses him as a fighter and forces him to rely solely on his immortality to not be instantly cut apart. Send him up against somebody who is Nigh-Invulnerable and see if he can stay alive long enough to find a way through their hide. There are plenty of possibilities.

He's not a superhero, but Barry Sadler's Casca: The Eternal Mercenary couldn't die either. (At least, not until the Second Coming.) He's more of an anti-hero, but on occasion he can put his curse of immortality to use for a good (if not especially noble) cause.

edited 19th Nov '15 7:58:44 PM by pwiegle

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.

Clark has a good variety of villains. I never understand the complain of "Superman don't have someone who can beat him". He has lots, Zod is him with millitary skills, Bizarro is him with mental issues. And Brainiac is The Space Horror.

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Someone read/watch One-Punch Man, is about a man who can defeat every single enemy with a single punch.

And manages to get cool fights even if de know who Saitama is gonna beat him with a single punch.

Watch me destroying my country

Exactly my point. Superman, for all his insane amount of powers and abilities, isn't "unbeatable" and doesn't always have an easy job.

There's a reason why the heroes - even within the greater DC or Marvel universe - have their own collection of villains that are set up to act as foils for the heroes and challenge them enough but not be too overpowered themselves. Batman has the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, Bane, Poison Ivy etc; Superman has Brainiac, General Zod, Luthor etc. They're all constructed to make life hard for their respective heroes, nullify the advantages of the heroes' powers/abilities.

When we're looking at whether something's "OP", the only answer is "only if they are completely unbeatable".

Sure your character can't die. Can (s)he fight at all or would (s)he be bested by the average street punk who knows how to throw a punch? What about mental accuity? Problem/puzzle solving? Lacking abilities that the enemy has (the enemy can fly but the hero is earthbound) etc.

Seems to me like your hero's not too OP — the reason being that even if she can't die, everyone else still can.

Being a hero is all about protecting people and saving the day, right? So if your hero can't protect people (friends, family, lovers, innocent civilians, strangers, whatever), OR more importantly gets put in dire situations where she has to struggle to protect people, then there's tension in that. Superman can take a few hits, but I'd bet that a lot of his stories still have conflicts and nail-biting moments because he has to save people who can't save themselves. (One of the recent DC animated movies has Supes trying to stop a guy from jumping off a building — a tense moment, but one that shows off his character and explores what it means to be a hero.)

That leads into my bigger point: even if your hero can't be broken physically, I'd imagine that she can still be broken emotionally. Take away everything she knows and loves, and it doesn't matter if she can't die; she'll be so heartbroken that she won't even have the strength to move an inch. If you're worried about her being too OP, then change the rules. Make her death a metaphorical one instead of a physical one.

Think carefully about your story's elements — setting, plot, characters, the world in general — and you're sure to come up with a solid answer.

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It depends on the stakes.

Is "your main character the superhero's life" the only stake in the story?

Then, yes, immortality is overpowered because it removes the conflict of the story and writes you into the corner.

If there are other stakes, though, you're good.

I think if the hero's life can't be one of the stakes due to being unable to lose it, the writer has an obligation to put in other stakes - be those stakes the lives of loved ones, personal humiliation, pain (physical/mental/both), "failure", potential Heroic BSoD, loss of reputation/respect or whatever.

There have to be stakes, and if the writer decides the hero can't die, then the writer has to replace the "risk of Dum Dum DUM Certain Death" with something else.

edited 20th Nov '15 3:32:31 AM by Wolf1066

He can be decapitated and Buried Alive!.

Watch me destroying my country

Games are about balance.

Stories, like real life, are not. What's "OP" in a competitive game is a comparative advantage in life and hence in stories; you don't see any more swordsmen running around bitching about "guns OP".

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Though, of course, that leaves us with the question: is the reason there are no swordsmen running around shouting "guns OP" because it's not a game and thus things are naturally unbalanced, or is it caused by lack of respawn?

But yes, that is a good point: things don't have to be balanced in a story, all that matters is that the story itself is interesting.

There's also The Nameless One, who while he can't die^note under normal circumstances; there are a very limited number of beings/places where he can be killed permanently, and you can choose to make the end of the game be his suicide, and can be a hero, certainly has a world of hurt regardless of that. He can get 'killed' and then get back up again moments later, but every time he does that, someone else dies in his place. Just knowing him makes someone suffer, emotionally if not physically.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Not being able to die does not mean being immune to suffering, and could increase it - everyone else around you eventually dies, for a start. Then there's all the damage/discomfort of things that would normally kill you but you're forced to live through.

In one story concept, I had vampires and werewolves that were functionally immortal but could be killed (fire, beheading, total destruction etc) - and could also die by means that would kill any other living thing, such as suffocation/drowning, thirst, hunger, malnutrition etc. Under ideal circumstances, they wouldn't age and die and could recover from any illness or injury given time, but they could still be killed by someone dedicated enough.

Now, if the character can't die, think of the horrors of those things - trapped in a room without food or water for months on end, no respite from the symptoms of hunger and dehydration. Deprived of air, unable to breathe but unable to die.

Horrors abound.

Coincidentally one of the characters in my current project has something like this. In her case it's she's attracted the interest of an Outer God. It isn't as much "not dying" as it is "she comes back".

Naturally the experience is quite traumatic and the real suspension of the story is her mental warping that this introduces, helped because I always end up tormenting my characters and giving me an immortal punching bag should be filed under cruel and unusual punishment.

In fiction-land there are far worse things than death and plenty of ways to go FUBAR beyond simple mortality

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