What are the specifics of his ability?
They should have sent a poet.
Kuroko in A Certain Scientific Railgun has a teleportation superpower and does some pretty neat stuff with it. In general, she can teleport around to dodge and retain the element of surprise, but that's something that can more or less be done with superspeed as well.
She can also teleport things she is touching. She mainly uses this to teleport her needle weapons into the clothes of her opponents to pin them in place. She also famously teleported panes of glass into the supports of a building to drop it on an enemy.
If your character can't teleport other things, they could potentially still simulate some of that to some extent as long as they still teleported with objects that they are wearing or holding.
And then there's Goblin Slayer, who uses a teleportation scroll to create a makeshift high pressure water cannon by building a portal to the sea bottom and teleporting water from there.
There're many ways to utilise the power of teleportation, not just water. You can do it with lava, magma, desert sand, or even a planet.
Edited by Mhazard on Dec 28th 2018 at 12:08:52 AM
Only teleporting half of someone (if they're the kind of superhero that's ok with killing).
Teleportation is one of the most powerful (and more importantly versatile) powers to give any character and can quickly become a story breaker if it has no limitations. I'll take the backwards approach and try to go through what I come up with applications and what limitations would prevent them so you can just pick out what's relevant to your character.
In its raw form teleportation can do nearly anything, some of those things were already mentioned by previous replies. However, how effective teleportation's raw killing power is depends on how much control your character has.
If it's a "I want to go there!" poof type of teleportation then you can still quickly reposition, for example teleport behind an enemy and attack them or dodge an attack.
If the character has more control over what exactly they want to teleport they can of course teleport parts of their enemy out of them or objects into their enemies, though typically this would require more concentration and/or training to use.
Another question is if line of sight is an issue or if the character can potentially teleport themselves into situations that would be harmful (like halfway into a wall), which requires the character to, again, think before teleporting, which is slower.
On that note, if any amount of concentration is needed (accurately) teleporting in the heat of battle, under fire or while wounded might also be difficult. It might also be impossible to dodge some attacks because they come in more quickly than a baseline human can react.
Okay, so with teleportation you first have to decide whether the character can only teleport themself, or if they can teleport other things. The technical term for this is aportation. Then you have to decide if they can aport only things they are in contact with, or if they can aport anything (perhaps limited by line of sight).
If the character can aport, then they become SUPER dangerous. If they can aport things into other things, they can basically One Shot One Kill anything with anything. Aport a can of coke inside someone's skull and they're dead. Even if they can't aport things inside of other things, they may still have options like aporting a car directly over the target so it falls on them, or aporting the target 50 feet in the air and letting them drop. A caveat: A smart character with this power is nigh unstoppable. It's very hard to defend against aportation.
If the character can only teleport themselves, then you have to decide how fast the character can teleport. A character who can teleport extremely quickly can combine this with basic martial arts or boxing training and essentially become a one-man gang of attackers. They can use wolfpack tactics without any other wolves — basically you teleport behind the guy you're fighting, hit him, and then when he turns to face you, you teleport behind him and hit him. Repeat until they surrender or collapse.
If the character can teleport themselves and other people (and it sounds like this character can), then they can do skydrops — grab your target, teleport both of you into the air, then let go of the target and teleport away. They fall.
While dropping someone from 50+ feet in the air is obviously going to break legs and possibly kill them, even teleporting a character a few inches off the ground will totally mess up their day. You ever walk up or down a flight of stairs and miscount the stairs, and try to step on to a step that doesn't exist? Totally throws off your balance. Teleport an enemy 5 inches into the air while their midstep, and they get to experience the same thing without taking significant damage.
Another thing to consider with teleportation is whether the character can change position while teleporting, and whether they keep any inertia they've got. For example, if the character is riding in a car and teleports to the street outside and keeps their inertia, they're going to hit the ground tumbling and rolling as if they'd just been thrown out of the car. Do this to an enemy and it'll rough them up really bad.
The fairest way to balance the teleportation is to make it so that the character can only teleport or open a portal to where they can see clearly, so no Tele-Frag may occur, and it's not OP, while also put some skill cap on your character, as they need to know exactly where they are in relation to enemy and what direction they will be facing if they want to attack.
As for what are the thing that Teleportation can do but speed and flight can't, pass through tight space, bypass detection without being find out, and bypass environmental hazard without getting hurt by any mean, since you techincally didn't get pass THROUGH them.
Edited by Andermann on Jan 31st 2019 at 5:47:55 PM
I'm afraid to write, but I like to imagine.
Hi! I'm writing a story about a young couple with superpowers who fight crime together. One of them has teleportation as his superpower. I initially didn't envision him doing much fighting, but when I showed the story to some friends, they found it weird that he just kind of drops his girlfriend off at the crime scene to take out the bad guys. What are some ways that he could use his ability in a fight? I'm specifically looking for things that could be unique to teleportation, rather than stuff that could also be done with, say, super-speed or flight or whatever.