Discussion Weak Super Powers Discussion

A comment I read elsewhere a couple of months ago today led me to think about the power level of various Super Powers. Most characters with Super Powers have ones that are outright powerful, or sets of powers that work together to be incredibly powerful. These are not the ones I want to talk about. In opposition to that, there are a couple of characters out there that have purposefully powerless Super Powers, who rely on their intellect & luck to make their mark on the world around them. While they aren't who I want to talk about either, they're an appropriate subject.

What I wish for us to talk about is those who have superpowers that are useful but fundamentally weak or flawed. As such, I will supply categorisations, and ask that people describe why their power fits each category. I shall use skin-based Powers to help set the levels.

Powerless Level:
- Colour Change Skin - Can be fun at parties, but has little to no direct combat capabilities, protective capabilities, or general uses. Maybe useful for a spy/assassin, but as the only change to appearance is skin colour, it's little more than a party trick.

Weak Level:
- Invincible Skin, and nothing else - Convenient in day-to-day life, but doesn't really protect against anything apart from sharp blades. Due to the inherent flexibility of skin, a hammer or other blunt object hitting the head would be just as fatal with this power as it would be without it. Would be higher if included layers below skin, or if power includes the ability to harden skin.

Moderate Level:
- Enhanced Touch - A positive/negative power that can be said to give notable benefits in exchange for notable drawbacks. The benefits include pretty much gaining every sensory power on the largest bodily organ, giving the ability to learn things like echolocation though skin contact. The drawbacks include the normal drawbacks to sensory powers, it's very easy to get overwhelmed by them, it can't be turned off, and do you really want to taste your gym socks, because you'll be tasting your gym socks.

Strong Level:
- Complete Skin Manipulation - Gains the ability to manipulate own, and possibly other's, skin in various ways. Can create more, use it like Mr Fantastic's Stretchy Powers, separate some for remote use, enhance or reduce touch sensitivity, make it invincible & hardened, or soft & stretchy. Incredibly powerful, if a little gross, even if limited to the user's own skin. If extended to allow for control over other's skin, it's insanely powerful, even with artifical limitations like "must be in direct contact".

 

X ray vision, useful but if it is the only power owned by the character then it will be a harsh journey for them if they are in a super power based world

 

I like soft rice
I hate jack all trade MC from pill, ...all he could do like shit

I prefer MC who support and make team/legion/army of beauty and he use his knowledge to make them powerful andnot leaving them in their home, sect or her master. They journey along, fight along MC exclude coz he's weak. So basically all his partner strong he's chicken and always together, and the most important, I hate author to write simple heroine, like 2/6 chap and she fall for MC (no such real woman exist, except golddigger), read TWGOK how MC use every means to conquer heroine, he only smart as dating sim master

 

The thing about the starting "weak" protagonist thing is that usually, the power is blown out of proportion the moment MC realizes the power is OP. And then the author goes completely nuts and power-hungry afterwards. More often than not, it usually ends up as a revenge story, collecting all 800 super-pretty women scattered all across the world, and or cooking random dishes with only "super tasty" as descriptions and nothing about the cooking itself whatsoever.

Honestly, an MC without a power or a weak one that they come to understand better are the most interesting ones. An MC that doesn't try to improve their power isn't going to be interesting unless the focus of the story is not about powers and if they change in a different aspect. A strong MC can be interesting to follow, but authors generally run into a sort of dragon ball z-esque rut where it's just a rinse and repeat of breakthrough, training, battle, defeat.

Oooooohhhh, can't wait to read about our beloved Nepotism-Practicing, Bird-Brained, Rich-Second-Gen-Fatty #30281, super interesting, totally original character. I'm on the edge of my seat to see the next way he defeats his opponent. Will it be using P2W items from Mom's Credit Card? Or will it be chucking money at the enemy until they die? Or will it be teleporting their bank vault on top of them?

Something like herculean strength is flawed. Too little control and things will easily be crushed. Items have to be replaced frequently, with plenty of spares. In combat, you can't take advantage of your strength with say, a firearm. You instead would center your combat style on throwing heavy objects and close-combat. But even then, super strength doesn't equate to super reflexes, nor does it say anything about your endurance.

Another pretty cool superpower would be being a human lie detector. It doesn't do anything combat wise, but boy would you become one of the best detectives/investigators if you play your cards right.

 

So true.
There was one particular manga that I like that had the protag be a powerless guy in the middle of all the "powered" people (personally, I suspect that he has a power, just that it is not an obvious one) and some parts of it cover the negative effects of these powers, like someone who always knows when people lie to her. The problem is that it makes social "white lies" useless, so she runs around in a permanent bad mood because "everyone is lying to her".

Pity it got discontiuned.

 

Don't fo4get its most OP ability, the power to say the N-word without getting cancelled by the raging Twitter mob.

 

Could be deadly to the MC if it is not paired with an endless supply of tissues.

 

Personally, I chose (A starting "weak" protagonist who discovers their powers to be "secretly" powerful, and becomes OP) because it makes the most sense to me when done right. Typically it isn't and becomes either a rinse and repeat story or an OP story. If the story is done well however where the MC leverages that power over time and with hard work like the option before it then the story becomes amazing. The problem I have with that set power leveraged over time option is that I feel the MC would run into some inherent limits and be unable to stand at the peak or stay there if they succeed. I like stories in which the MC goes from zero to basically a god and the other options don't really cut it for me and since fantasy is my preferred genre it makes sense that that is the option I picked.

 

Also, superpowers that are fundamentally weak/flawed can still be OP. It's just a different type of OP. For example, an otherwise weak/flawed power that can be considered OP if taken far enough is appraisal. Usually it's just a power identifying objects or determining their value but if taken to the extreme can easily become OP. I remember one work I read where the MC can appraise any object and get so much info out of it that it makes him OP. For example, he can appraise herbs and learn how to make potions or appraise a key and learn exactly what it opens, etc. Information is power is taken to a whole another level leading to OPness but the base power (appraisal) is still fundamentally weak/flawed as all I gives is info and it fails to give the MC power in any other form.

 

For the poll, my thought process was:
1. No Power/Power useless in combat.

2. Weak Specific power that cannot grow or change. Think most passive Super Powers. You can get stronger through training, but your Super Power will be the same no matter what and will have no change. An individual's Super Powers of Empathy or "Slow" Regeneration normally does not improve over time, but the individual with said powers can still train to maximise their power's effective use.

3. Weak Specific power with variance in use. Think of most active Super Powers. Even if the power itself is not overly strong, you can figure out ways to adjust it's use in potentially powerful ways. Even if an individual's powers as a human flashlight-like light beams is not strong (and cannot be leveraged into creating destructive lasers) learning how to project strobe lights of various colours into an enemy's eyes can really mess up their vision.

4. "Weak" Power who's "Secretly" Powerful. This is the "standard" outside of Comic Books nowadays. Basically, people who have a really powerful Super Power that they don't know how to use, or has some variant method of utilisation that anyone with half a brain could figure out was going to happen, but the MC can't for a while either before the story starts, or a while into the story. This is your "Slightly Fast" Super Speed due to Time Manipulation discovering how to Stop Time and Time Travel. This is your Earth Manipulators changing from lifting large rocks and throwing them to shaping the world and cityscapes as they please. This is your "crafter" powers realising that the same power that allows them to make toy minions & tunnelling vehicles can also be used to make them weapons with the comparable destructive power of a Nuke or other WMD's concentrated solely into a few square centimetres, with inbuilt safeties so that that they can't be turned against their creator. Basically, this is the "Oh, you thought your powers were weak? Why weren't you using more than just the simplest parts of it before, you idiot!?"

5. Strong from the Start. This is your Superman, your Wonder Woman, your Saitama & every other protagonist who's powers are outright OP from the time they're revealed. I really don't think that I need to explain this one.

 

I generally don't read books for superpowers so my preferences are towards either very weak powers or no powers at all. That said, I find that what's really important aren't powers at all, or even how they're employed in a story. Instead, what's important is the quality of the writing and how the writer positions the different story elements.

The common problem with overpowered characters is that these books tend to still be about combat and defeating the enemy. In such stories, the outcome is a foregone conclusion and there's no tension or anything else interesting going on. As a result the stories wear out their welcome very quickly. On the other hand, you can have super powered characters, ones who can easily overcome all their enemies and still tell compelling stories as long as the book has compelling characterization and has good themes. These stores tend to not be about combat so they'll introduce all sorts of challenges that can't be overcome by combat powers. It's pretty easy to see when books do this but it does require a skilled writer and I don't know how often such books get translated.

 

Exactly this.

I find that I enjoy stories where the protagonist is overwhelmingly powerful (One Punch Man), stories where the protagonist is overwhelmingly weak but can use the environment and people around him to survive (Isekai de slow life wo (Ganbou)), stories where the protagonist has weak abilities but can use them in unusual ways to accomplish miracles (Lonely Attack on the Different World), so on and so forth. And that's not because of the type of superpowers or the strength/weakness of the superpowers. Even when I really enjoy a specific ability (like summoning) and the story does it well, if the rest of the story is mediocre I won't enjoy it at all.

And I find that while many people with OP powers tend to lack suitable challenges, people with weak powers often also lack suitable challenges? They usually end up in dangerous situations that get solved via deus ex machina regardless of effort or resourcefulness. So, in the end, it's up to the rest of the writing.

 

I agree. I think that too many readers are caught up on the idea that they'll like a book because it's the kind of subject or powers or what have you that they're looking for. The reality is that almost everything depends on how that story is told and the ability of the writer to bring the most out of the experience. I read a ton of isekai novels because their subject matters interest me but that level of interest doesn't do anything to improve the quality of the writing. About the most that happens is that I'll stick around a little longer but it wouldn't ever make me feel better about the book.

I think I'm reading different kinds of books but I don't this to be the case at all. For example, the famous modern wuxia novels traditionally start off their protagonists as relatively weak and they're constantly bombarded with obstacles that run the full gamut of challenges. These tend to be extremely entertaining so I don't think it's hard for any competent writer to do. I suppose that it also depends on the writer's instincts and what they're trying to achieve with their story.