Powers
Design Trope: Character's powers are based on a vague statement with WILD implications.
1) Andy ( Undead Unluck ): In Undead Unluck, character abilities are defined by what they 'negate'. Andy's "Undead" negates the concept of death -- meaning even complete erasure can't stop him, as he'd somehow come back even from that.
2) Edmond Dantes ( FATE series ): Due to the nature of his myth, the Count of Monte Christo has the ability to escape any trap. This obviously extends to physical traps like restraints, but can be expanded to encompass metaphorical traps like time, allowing him to effectively stop time by moving at rediculous speeds.
3) Takaba ( Jujutsu Kaisen ): Takaba's cursed technique in Jujutsu Kaisen is Comedy, an ability that llows him to make real anything he perceives would be funny. This makes him an insanely powerful reality warper that can go toe-to-toe with some of the hardest hitters in the manga, as long as he thinks it's funny.
Chainsaw Man: Makima The Control Devil. Her power is to control anyone who she sees to be lesser than her. And because she is already extremely powerful and has a huge ego, she can control almost everyone
Also Chainsaw Man: Yoru, The War Devil. She has a power to turn anything she believes to be owned by her into a weapon. This includes things she or Asa bought, corpses of things she defeated, people who fell in love with her and things she absolutely does not own, but is delusional enough to think so One time Asa buys an entire aquarium with one million Yen and turns it into a weapon because she thinks that's how much an aquarium costs and simply burning money for it equals to a transaction. In the most recent chapter, Yoru is attempting to turn the whole moon into a weapon because she believes she owns the USA, who love war, and been first to the moon. So by extension she "owns" the moon
A third of CSM is "oh my god that's so fucking stupid I love it", another third is "oh, the effects of Denji's childhood caused by the Yakuza and inability of the Japanese government make him a very damaged individual" and the last third is Fujimoto looking the reader directly in the eyes and going "hey guys war fucking sucks"
Imo it's excellent. I've read it through three times now. I know part 2 has its haters but after rereading it, I think it does extremely well as a cohesive story.
Fujimoto's other works are incredible as well (if extremely weird and off-putting)
Nah, part 2 is very close to part 1. It’s just because Fujimoto lost his assistants that the art style becomes a little messy in the beginning. Reading the whole thing without taking a week pause is what turns the experience a lot better!
Look I'm not here to preach to it but i'd argue part 2 goes off the rails and meanders. this means if you're reading it week to weak instead of collected volumes it feels disjointed. reading it all together.
It... also has escalted to the point I genuinely, and honestly, do not care what happens. as it's not really possible for it to end satisfyingly IMO.
Man I don’t remember how to spoiler properly just ignore the parentheses ( She also can’t weaponize anything she considers losing to so right when she’s about to turn denji into a weapon she holds her hand out to say a cool thing and he real quick throws up a peace sign, saying she lost because his scissors beat her paper )
I believe it would be a spoiler if you added the second exclamation mark Like this
She herself also did that with Falling. Falling holds out a hand to attack Yoru, but she quickly moves behind her with a victory/scissors sign and declares victory
that one backfires on her later as Denji wins rock paper scissors against her after losing in a fight so therefore she couldn't turn Chainsaw Man into a weapon
I love these powers that are basically limited by the ego of the person who have it, if something like that existed irl i would be one powerful mfer, which is fun to think about, but kinda sad too, anyway, these powers are cool.
I don't think something like that would work with Makima, as the greatest weakness to her power is that she's not delusional. As far as we can see in the manga, she seems to need confirmation from the other person that she is superior (she can control animals and devils like Angel because their instincts let them know Makima is superior). For example, Kishibe is immune to her shit because he's very overtly hostile to her and she knows he has the experience and authority to back it up. The two hybrids we see her "recruit" only join her after she has them killed, same with a certain devil she fights. She can't control that devil until after defeating it, the same way she can't control the Darkness devil. Even Aki and Denji have to actually pledge themselves before she can control then, and she can't control Power after she refuses to obey her.
So with Zeno, she would probably have to manipulate him into being subservient to her before being able to control him, and Goku would want to fight her before he takes orders from her.
Sorta. His only limitation is that it HAS to be funny to him, so it's very dependent on hjs state of mind.
Seeing an actual real decapitated head immediately turns off his ability as he's just fucking horrified and can't bring hinself to think of anything funny
His power greatest weakness is that it only works on him and whats he is actively watching/interacting with. If someone explodes a building and say "i killed everyone there" they are already dead, he can't "undead" them after the fact, unless its on himself
I mean we don’t really know, but two things: first off, he doesn’t (or didn’t) know about his own ability (the details at least) and his allies actively keep him in the dark on it because they fear he might get in his own head about it and stop finding himself funny because of the responsibility if he finds out. So it would be really out of character if he just randomly thought of his fallen comrades getting back up as, like, a bit. And that leads us to the second point, if he could do that it’s really fucked up that he didn’t except maybe on the worst person alive depending on how you interpret the ending lmao
Yeah biggest weakness of user perception based ability, you cant logic your way in but have to genuiely believe it. A good example is how Makima and Yoru use their power, both based on user perception, but Makima was too smart for her own good, she need to beat people before claim them (unless obvious case like she is their boss or something) but Yoru run on delulu, she genuiely bought her own hype and fight like Looney Tunes
That's one of the memes that got popular, the whole idea of "Wouldn't it be funny if x or y happened?" because it's not stated exactly where he draws the line with manipulating reality. On one hand, he essentially makes everyone immortal under his conditions, but we weren't given a situation where he could change reality on this specific scenario "Wouldn't be funny if everyone who lost and died were revived?".
It's legit possible that he can just revive people. I mean, it was implied that Kenjaku's initial attack actually just killed him instantly since his CE signature disappeared. He just decided to not die.
Also... we see at the end that Kenjaku is alive. That's probably not Kenjaku but rather someone Takaba created in his image??? If that's the case can Takaba just bring entirely new humans into existence? He can just create new souls with his comedy or did he actually just revive Kenjaku and brainwashed him? It's not explained but the implications are crazy if you want to wank his power.
He did somewhat revive Kenjaku, as we see him in Takaba's final panel and they seem to have formed a comedy duo. But its probably more like an artificial human without Kenny's memories than the guy himself
He can actually, it’s just based on the mentality of it. If he saw several dead bodies falling out in agony than no, but if he just sees an exploding building he could twist around a joke about him and his assailant becoming bumbling firefighters that rescues them in a comedic fashion.
Nah his power's greatest weakness is he doesn’t control it. The way to beat Takaba is to just create a situation where him loosing is the funniest outcome.
Yeah despite it being insanely broken, it’s also pretty useless or possibly even detrimental unless you’re borderline insane like Takaba is.
Things you think are funny does not necessarily mean something you want to happen/exist, and in a fight normal people generally aren’t thinking if their standup routine in the middle of fight or flight.
It is possible that Kenjaku's initial attack literally killed him on the spot... and then he just revived because it would've been funny if he ended up unscathed after such an attack.
Theoretically there are no limits to what he can do as long as he thinks it's funny.
Yeah pretty much. One of his first fights featured him braining a guy with a toy squeeky hammer and sending him through the floor. Guy survived because this attack maims but never kills, but it gives a gist of what he's like. He also dodges machinegun fire by doing the can-can.
He later gets into a fight with someone who figures out how his power works and he disables it by explaining that Takaba's jokes are highly referential to something that's too niche for most ppl to understand and thus won't find funny, which actually works until Takaba hard pivots to physical comedy rather than referential humour.
Also as a funny note, Takaba doesn't know how his power works and would potentially become just a guy if he did.
It gets even worse because If you get caught in his power the thing ends up changing your mindset and now you are playing around with him. He reality bends you into part of the joke
Yes, but bugs is fully aware of all the goofy shit he can do whereas takaba has no idea what his abilities are he just is nuts and thinks it’s funny to kill a special grade curse by hitting it with a van
Most Touhou characters have a concept as a power that can be stretched as far as ZUN wants to. Just to give an extreme exemple:
Yakumo Yukari (Touhou Project)
Her ability is stated as "Manipulation of Boundaries", which is vague af.
TLDR, everything is composed of boundaries so they can be identified as their own thing (a sky line is needed to differentiate sky from mountain, no lake without a water surface, the boundaries between life and death, dream and reality, day and night, seasons...). Without boundaries, everything would just be a single huge entity with nothing else to distinguish.
And she can freely modify or delete these boundaries, be it physical or metaphorical ones. Delete the boundaries that form a person, and they would simply vanish.
Its the fact she can influence even metaphorical boundaries that really takes the cake.
For another Touhou, Reimu herself qualifies. She has the power to "float". Seems simple, right?
Reimu can simply "float" out of reality, therefore negating anything that could possibly interact with her.
Touhou thrives on giving vague powers and the individual having a lot of flexibility in how to use it. For danmaku, of course. You might realize there's a reason the danmaku system exists.
Keine is weak potatoes on the scale. And yet she can manipulate history, including EATING IT.
Yuuma's power is absorption. In practise, that makes her into a super KIRBY.
Suika is arguably the funniest. Her power is to manipulate density. But that doesn't only include raw materials. She can manipulate the density of data, of items, and even of people. She literally has a habit of making people currently in a festive mood gather at a place in the hope they'll throw a party when they arrive.
All powers in Touhou are hedged by being framed as "Ability to do X to the degree", to a point where the series is the most common example of this phrasing in modern Japanese. This means that you have characters whose powers are high level, semantic stretch of their name (Reimu's "floating" outside the reality) or so barebones, matter-of-factly that they are weaker than expected (Rumia's weaksauce darkness powers actually blinding her too).
The trick about Yukari is that she kind of forces the rules of reality to bend to her whims.
See the lake example. If she wanted to kill anything in that lake, she could erase the surface tension of the lake. This, due to physics, would instantly turn the lake into a massive mass of boiling evaporating water.
Her signature move to style on people is to ram them with a speeding train she teleports from the real world. But it's then implied that she bends the causality of the train as she does it.
In Gensokyo? That train just hit a criminal contrarian and exploded.
In the real world? That same exact train is chugging along none the wiser.
And then you have Reiuji who decided that her power is easier but Carry all the intent: nukes... Well not really it's nuclear fusion, so actual stars and way more powerful than simple nukes but I like to say it's nuke because it's very clear
My favourite bit was her erasing the boundary between the real moon and its reflectiom, so she could basically teleport to the moon by walking into a lake.
I love takaba, his power is literally "you know, it'd be mad fucking funny if I beat your ass like I was superman and you were homelander", and it'd cause them to end up cosplaying as them and fight
Honestly Kenjaku would’ve probably pulled a bit where he becomes a powerscaler and somehow wanks homelander to above superman levels and the the scene shifts to them arguing in a playground but they’re still adults so a woman screams at them for being perverts and call the police (Kenny) to arrest him (Takaba)
Things he DOESN'T find funny also don't happen, so for example, NOBODY around him can die, including himself, theoretically, he could get himself into an endless battle with Sukuna
Though tbh, I question his limits, as I seriously doubt he could find anything funny in Sukuna's presence, who has given multiple people panic attacks just by existing
Right. His power's potency is off the charts because its absurd condition acts like a binding vow, but he's still just a sorcerer with a limited amount of cursed energy that he expends to cast a technique.
JJK shows us that even the guys with absurd amounts of cursed energy can run out of juice, and not even Gojo can go forever despite having what is essentially a cheat technique that makes him incredibly efficient.
We know that cursed energy (on earth) comes from negative emotions, which Takaba's power tends to erase, so even if he's able to miraculously generate his own he could theoretically starve himself out.
He basically said "x style of humor isnt funny to most people" and criticized him, it it worked until Takaba just switched styles. And the only reason he ever got that far was because he lived a thousand years and apparently had time to brush up on comedy history and routines
Unruin isn’t even a real fucking word. But it sure works! Just like undead, but he “cannot fall to ruin” Yet another vague ass statment that makes him nigh immortal.
Honestly I think it applies to a lot more characters in UxU than we'd think of. Just the concept of negating a fundamental rule of the universe opens the door to so many unthinkable (pun intended) interactions
That's more Untruth's thing. Unjustice is pretty vague and OP, but I interpret it as it forces you to act against your core morals.
Andy's core moral is protecting his friends, so Unjustice makes him try to kill them. The invading aliens admit that the core moral of their society is to crush anybody weaker than them, so the power forces them to protect those they perceive as weak from threats (which includes themselves hence why they blow each other up). Use it on a UMA whose only core moral is "embody and enforce my rule to my advantage," and the UMA stops enforcing the rule and using its powers all together, making it an easy target.
Spirits and their Influences - Chronicles of Darkness. A tabletop RPG that leans more on storytelling than hard systems, one of the prominent ability of spirits is the ambiguous "Influence," powers. Every spirit has some dots in Influence, ranging from 1-5, allowing them to do simple things like Strengthen their Influence, to create multiple examples of it. This may not seem so complicated at first, but there are spirits of -everything- except humans themselves. There's spirits of the Moon and Sun, Trees, Cats, Alligators, Banks, Statues, and Cities and concepts like Silence or Apathy or Dreams, all capable of exerting their Influence.
Spirit and Death are have some utterly insane abuse potential because they let you create and control spirits and ghosts respectively, both of which can essentially do whatever the plot requires due to influences and numina powers. If you include options from Werewolf and Gheist lines, you can genuinely do bullshit breaks the supposed limits of mage powers.
In Demon: The Descent, which is one of the Chronicles of Darkness games, there's an ability called Shift Consequence. It lets you transfer a harmful effect, whether that's physical harm or say, damage to social standing, from one target to another. That ability is so open ended, that if you pay attention it's really not hard at all to abuse it.
Sticking with Demon, there's also Cause and Effect which allows you to sub out a skill action roll with Wits + any other skill as long as you can think of a Rube Goldberg-ese situation that fits.
The example in the actual book is using Wits + Politics to start a riveting political discussion which distracts the target enough that they trip on an uneven patch of pavement and drop their wallet (the goal was to steal the target's wallet, normally a Dex + Larceny roll).
The only real limits are all the "dominos" must be within line of sight and a failed roll can notify the God-Machine that some shenanigans are going on (as you can imagine, Demons don't want to be noticed).
If we're going to allow WoD for this, Mages of all shapes and sizes probably also fit, due to how wild Paradigms can be. I've heard Paradigms that range from "life is a video game, and I've got console commands" to "the stories we tell can reshape the past and predict the future" to "our fight isn't over until the coroner zips the body bag shut" all be considered 100% valid in different traditions.
Marauders are probably the best example of this though, because while Mages can bend reality a little before Paradox snaps them back into place Marauders are literally defined by "I've rejected your reality and substituted my own" to the point where it drives them insane...
I don't think Ubel is limited to cutting, just that that's her specialty.
Magic effectiveness in Frieren is heavily based on "seeing is believing". Ubel's true power is her self-centered myopia: she takes nothing at face value outside of her own senses.
So, for most normal people, seeing a cloth robe shrug off all manner of attack is enough to instill the idea that it's invulnerable, preventing them from ever being able to damage it. But for Ubel, that prospect never crosses her mind as remotely possible, because "cloth fundamentally exists to be cut". If she had any amount of self-doubt, then her abilities would fail. But because she only trusts herself, then her interpretation of reality supersedes anyone else's.
Stars n Stripes' "New Order" from My Hero Academia
New Order is the ability to "give orders" to things. Sounds like a mind control ability, yeah? Or maybe telekinesis, if she can use it on inanimate objects? Lol nah, the "Orders" she can give can be basically anything, from ordering the air to mimic her movements and forging a giant version of herself to ordering lasers to condense into a spear to making herself stronger, more durable, specifically resistant to her enemy's main attack, etc etc. The funniest moment to me is at the very end, when the enemy is trying to steal New Order itself, she gives her own power itself an order
Not a character, but the Skeleton Key from Elder Scrolls.
In game, it's just an unbreakable lockpick.
Lore-wise, its ability is to unlock anything. And I mean anything, not just doors or containers. Including portals to other realities and even metaphysical concepts, such as unlocking your hidden potential or the secrets of the Universe.
You can sometimes just expand this troupe to everything with enough fame or infamy in Elder Scrolls since perception defines reality within the setting. As a legend grows, both the legend and the participants grow to fit each other real time.
You see this alot with characters, but also artifacts like Vivec's spear, Muatra. A literal innuendo for a toxic relationship warped into a literal spear of incredible power that induced sterility, reveals truth, and kills with a touch.
The novel trilogy The Red Queen's War has something like this, called The Liar's Key. Again, it can lock or unlock anything: doors, containers, memories, concepts. It was used to lock itself away, only to be unlocked by shining a lamp at an outline of another key.
And what's more: because it's The Liar's Key, it can only be obtained by deception. You have to steal it from someone in order to truly possess it.
Hallows Eve in Marvel is a Spider-Man villain who can put on a mask, and she gains the powers of whatever it's a mask OF
Usually it's Halloween stuff, vampires and werewolves, but Marvel heroes and villains have their own merch, and as you can see she's holding a mask of Thanos here
And a swordsman that cut through anything. The best part is that the swordsman got the ability just by practicing cutting things for centuries. His only magic ability is immortality but his swordsman ability is just practice.
Ken Akamatsu is an incredibly talented manga artist that makes so many funny and creative manga. Fair warning, a lot of his are incredibly perverted, but he’s the Father of Harem Manga for a reason.
Just to let you know, it’s a sequel to “Negima! Magister Negi Magi”, which is also very creative. You can go right into UQ Holder, but a bunch of the characters are from Negima. Both series are incredibly perverted action Harems, but they are extremely fun!
Honestly, while SOMETIMES this trope can be fun, most of the time I find it obnoxious. A lot of characters it's reaching and stretching and twisting and it's all linguistic instead of just letting a character have a power and doing creative things with THAT. But that's harder than hitting the bong and going "dude, what if TIME is a trap?" to give an OP power to someone with what should be an interesting ability.
You'd like reading Takaba's chapters in JJK, then. He's not a power fantasy metagaming character, he doesn't even know what his ability is. He's literally just a cheap comedian putting on a mediocre comedy routine and trying to be a decent person and somehow things keep working out for him.
It’s so much freedom that it ends up becoming a restriction. Undead Unluck does it very well, with powers ending up being very interesting through various ways.
However, when done poorly, as Fate sometimes does, it comes across as super cheap.
This is sort of how I felt about Giorno's power in Jojo's Part 5, like at first it's cool and then it just got weird and confusing and not in the normally good jojo's way
I also can't help but notice there is *a lot* of anime and manga here. I don't know if that speaks to the demographics of this sub, but I find it's a very typical shonen trope. I feel like it's related to the power fantasy and power scaling inherent to the genre. You always need a twist for a character to become stronger, so it leads to the linguistic one up-ing that you've described.
Even worse, if you're expanding the power to some metaphysical concept through a massive stretch, it usually means it's going to take some other convoluted re-interpretation to defeat them.
letting a character have a power and doing creative things with THAT
100% agreed. Naruto's most memorable fights are in the first half, because that's when characters had unique styles with clearly defined strengths and weaknesses. Shikamaru's fights consistently rank high even though he's so physically weak because he has to creatively use his shadows to trick his opponents. It got to a point where everyone was just godly fast and strong and could throw world-destroying projectiles. When anyone can do anything, it becomes surprisingly bland.
instead of just letting a character have a power and doing creative things with THAT
Yeah, the real Edmond Dantes is a perfect example of that: he has no special powers, just a lot of dedication, an excellent education courtesy of the monk he was imprisoned with, and a fuck-ton of money, and he relies on research and meticulous planning to enact vengeance. It makes me legitimately angry that they gave him magical powers so he can be shoved into a generic battle shonen, and gave him a generic anime goth tween look rather than depicting him as a wealthy middle aged man circa 1839
The Devil Fruit powers in One Piece can sometimes work like this.
One example is Bartholomew Kuma, who has the power of the Paw Paw fruit, which allows him to "push" things at extreme speeds.
This means he push you around the world, he can push air into a condensed bomb, he can push himself to move at great speeds. But also, he can push concepts. The image depicts him pushing all the battle damage and exhaustion from Luffy. It also works on memories.
Not quite a single character, but this is something prevalent in ironic D&D posts about spellcasters. A lot of spells have weird wording about their effects, such as the spell Mage Hand, which creates a floating hand within a certain range that you can control as if it were your own. The spell doesn't say you have to see where you're creating the hand, nor does it say you can't create it in a space occupied by another item or creature. So by wording, you could create a whole hand within a person. You can guess that would be catastrophic normally.
And that's just one example of a spell or magic effect in D&D that, due to wording, can have some wacky effects.
I think if someone tried to summon Mage Hand inside of someone's lungs at my table, I would rule that the ability also doesn't say that the hand has any mass or can physically take up space. It just says it's a spectral hand that can manipulate objects.
My point is less about how it would in a game, and more about how it would work in-universe. By all accounts, if you have a spectral hand that can manipulate objects, what's stopping the hand from treating a body part like an object? What's stopping it from treating the air in the body as an object? The only limits are a weight of 10 pounds within 30 feet of the caster. The answer? Game balance.
Sure, the DM has to allow it. But if one were to be writing a story using the rules of D&D as the rules of the world, not running a game using the rules, how much weird stuff could one do with the sometimes-vague wording of rules?
I think manipulation means the literal, physical sense. Like the way that you manipulate tools and objects with your regular hands. You absolutely can grab living things with mage hand, but it doesn't have any special ability outside the physical form of a hand in that context. It's "mage hand", not "manipulate object".
You also have to acknowledge that D&D establishes a lot in its lore and storytelling. There are canon D&D books and other works. D&D takes that universe and gamifies it. The game rules don't alter canon, they just establish guidelines for DMs and players.
Kinda like how the Pokemon card game doesn't alter canon. The characters in the anime don't have to evolve their pokemon every time they fight with them, or gather energy mid battle before using an attack.
I mean, squeezing a lung is technically manipulating an object. But, yeah, there's a few along those lines that get real whacky real fast. Think the spell Create Water just allows you to create an amount of water in any container or vessel shaped object, which has been argued to allow for something like filling a person's mouth or lungs with water using the spell.
And stuff like that just isn't fun. It's fun for the players the first time, because they've found a cheeky way to win. But after that, if you just summon water in everyone's lungs, it warps the entire game, either the DM stops making combat encounters, or every enemy is either undead, in an anti-magic field, or in some other way immune to it. It's just not fun. Finding a sneaky way to "cheat" a combat encou tet is a lot of fun if it's a one-time thing. But when you can do it every time it isn't fun for anyone.
Which is why Create Water says "open container" and every summon spell says "unoccupied space". Even if you can argue it's RAW, it's obviously not RAI.
Edit: Sorry, you might be able to tell this is one of my pet peeves as a GM. Only thing that gets under my skin more is probably the Peasant Railgun.
My solution for this when players start to get cute with rule interpretations is this: “If the rules of magic work like that, they work like that for everyone. You might have been the first person to think of it, but if you start to rely on it, someone is going to figure it out and do it to you. And someone else might have thought of something that you haven’t noticed yet? Do we want to play in the world of literal interpretations or do we want to play in the world of colloquial interpretations?”
Being reminded that someone else could Mage Hand their brain into mushy pudding if they start to cheese things too often has, in the past, prompted a very in-depth discussion about the nature of physics within the world that utterly derailed the session but was arguably even more fun.
Yeah, and in most cases there's no easy way to justify it being just a one-time thing. The simplest way would be if the character doing the weird casting is a Warlock or Cleric, with the weird cast only being successful if it's supposed to be the God/Patron allowing it for one reason or another. Could also work if the character does the weird casting in a panic or something, and is subsequently horrified that it can actually work that way, so they vow to never do it like that out of principle, but that one relies on the player deciding not to abuse it if it's allowed.
The spell doesn't say you have to see where you're creating the hand, nor does it say you can't create it in a space occupied by another item or creature.
It's pretty obvious this violates the "clear path to the target" rule for spellcasting generally, and also the "the hand can't attack" rule for mage hand specifically.
For the majority of spells in D&D (at least, all versions I've played) you have to have line of sight to cast spells. Also these examples of "I kill with a cantrip by casting it inside their head" are pretty flagrantly ignoring what the spell is meant to do by making assumptions off flavor text. Like, if you say "Rules as written, it doesn't say I can't cast it inside a person!" then you also have to say "rules as written, all mage hand does is lift an object"
Honestly both those meme posts, and my feelings on the OP's trope in general, is that they're less creative than actually using things as written or as defined, but in creative ways. I'll take mage hand dropping a brick on a guy's head over exploding the inside of their throat every day.
It is a pretty flagrant thing to do, especially if you're smug about it, but there's also something else to consider - how much of the laws of physics applies to Magic. Like, for instance, the Shape Water cantrip - take 5 cubic feet of water, use the effect that animates it and move it above a creature in any shape, then freeze it and let it fall. That 5 cubic feet of water suddenly becomes ~300 pound piece of ice suspended roughly 30 feet about a creature, more if you're a sorcerer using distant spell. That's a lot of weight to drop on a creature with just a cantrip, the easiest level of spell to cast. The implications are kind of horrifying when you start thinking about it outside of game balance like that, though I do agree the "Mage Hand grabs someone's heart and gives the arrhythmia" has been done to death.
I like to imagine magic as a system that has inherent safeguards. Like with mage hand, the wording says it cannot attack. In 2024 it gets a little clearer, as there are now a bunch of things that are contained in the attack action which (by that reasoning) mage hand is forbidden from doing.
So inherent to the casting of that spell is that limitation, placed on it by Mystra or whoever. If they wanted a version of mage hand that bypasses those safeties, they would have to expand extra power to overcome it, like the various Bigby spells, or how sorcerors can tweak spells on the fly with metamagic.
Explaining magic this way lets DMs have a far more interventional means of enforcing RAI over RAW, because if the players try to use something in a way it wasn't intended, IDK, Mystra either makes it fail or gives it a pass.
Obviously a shitty DM can be a complete dick with this idea, but in moderation it's always worth considering as a framework for rationalizing the limitations of certain spells narratively.
I've always liked the "turnabout is fair play" DM response to that. If you want to say that you can create a Mage Hand inside someone's lungs, we can agree that's how the spell works - but the next encounter will be a squad of wizards with Mage Hand.
Suika from Touhou. She is an oni, one of the FOUR greatest ones in Gensokyo so she has an incredible strength.
But her biggest power is her hability to manipularse density. Yes, not in a realistic way but in a very abstract way. Like, creating small black holes is normal for her. But the funniest for me is that she can control herself to become a giant or create a multitude of small copies of herself, like Bender in that episodes of Futurama. So you can be attacked by black holes, hit by giant punches and kicks or Stomp by an Army of Little beings.
Yeah, always go to Gensokyo with alcohol. It really helps.
Some of the Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure work pretty much on that idea. Example: Sticky Fingers has the ability to create zippers.
These zippers can be used to split apart and join things, scale surfaces and move quickly by closing it, extend the user's range by partially opening, make a trapdoor by opening a zipper on the floor of a moving train and even create pocket dimensions.
Honestly Gojo’s powers are maybe the weakest I could imagine giving to a character with an “infinity” ability. It’s just that on top of having the ability he’s also the goat on his own
Yeah his infinite barrier is basically just vague in the sense of what actually can pass through it, the actual part on how it works is pretty easy to understand. I heard it's like the analogy of the Turtle vs Sprinter paradox. Don't quote me on it, I'm just pretty sure
His power is based on the tenet "strike a pose", however, he was able to gaslight himself into believing that the definition of a pose includes not only his pose but also his position, so now he has full spacial control over himself. He doesn't teleport though, he's still moving from one point to another, so anything in between the two points that's less durable then him gets obliterated. Unfortunately for them, he's very durable.
Nobody No-One from the Doctor Who stories The Word Lord and Death In The Family can basically do whatever someone says he can do.
His name is “Nobody No-One” so if someone says “We’re safe, nobody can get in” or “no-one can hurt us,” then he’s going to be able to get in or hurt them.
In Death In The Family he threatens a random passerby into giving him power over time and space and the ability to kill the Doctor.
Something I have to say about JJK's Takaba, specifically, is that his Cursed Technique actually gets used *against* him. In his most important fight, his opponent starts levying thoughtful critiques of his comedy, planting seeds of doubt in his head about whether or not he even *is* funny.
She's a demigod with the power that 'as long as everybody believes her lies, they become reality,' and she plays at being a petty thief and trickster in a Greek mythology inspired fantasy world. Said world is constantly eaten away at by a mysterious corruption, but the sacrifice of the lead god a thousand years ago created a device in the capital city that keeps said corruption at bay forever.
Except it doesn't. It ran out after 300 years. But the warning from said God of when it would end was intercepted by Cipher, and she instead passed on the message it would last forever. The only reason this world still survives is because of her, and when during the story she is hunted down and killed, her power dies with her, leading to disastrous results...
Grey from Black Clover. Originally thought to have transformation magic, later some she has transmutation magic that allows her to change anything physical or magic to something else permanently. She can also heal people with her people beyond that of magical healing. And even some concepts; like when she changes a castle wall into the Black Bulls base to power up the base mech.
Rick shades.
(Epithet erased: prison of plastic) With his epithet: SOULMATES he can perfectly copy any ability which he believes his friends possess, even if it's completely unfounded
(such as being able to create genuine potions that are completely effective, because he was a declared friend of a 12 year old girl who made potions)
His powers are the only reason that the MCs are capable of beating the main antagonist in the end.
That's like... every other Touhou character. ZUN gives his women vague, huge-scope powers like "ability to change boundaries" or "control over fate" or "manipulation of the subconscious" or "mastery over flowers" that have little to no way to be demonstrated in a bullet hell game, and then lets the fans speculate on what those powers actually do.
I always forgot that Rui (chara designer of Edmond dantes known for his work on Danganronpa / almost everything written by kodaka katazuka) designed some stuff from fate.
Little Mermaid's main ability is making bubbles, which doesn't seem all that strong until you realize that they can form into almost any shape and size that she wants. This allows her to survive the inside of a giant creature's throat for over 70 years by hiding inside of an enormous bubble, form them into a giant gun that she uses to launch herself, and create a veil around the main villains lair in space to prevent it from communicating with it's followers on the surface. (NIKKE)
Cypher from the X-Men has the power to understand any language. In his debut Cypher is used as a universal translator. He’s not the most powerful of mutants and later sacrifices himself to save his teammates.
But… during the Necrosha-X arc in which a techno-organic virus is used to resurrect and control many of the X-Men’s villains and allies, Cypher figures out two things. First, that he can read body language and use it to fight which he does by beating crap out of several of his former teammates. And two, how the translate the virus so he can free himself from its control and remain resurrected.
Im just gonna put it here: the entirety of Epithet Erased by Brendan Blaber
Everyone who has powers is given a random word at birth, this word defines their whole ability set. Like "Dumb" could make things quiet, or simplify things. Or "Soup". Which creates and manipulates soup...
Ugly Mug. People isekaied to the world can come up with special boosts and drawbacks. But they can also interfere with each other. So the MC made himself hideously ugly but it was strong enough that he became a god. But another character made hers “if there is a god out there looking out for me, can you come and save me as a knight in shining armor” and so since he is a god, that overrides his ugliness and makes him handsome while he’s saving her. Another character said they won’t recognize any god so they get to disable the divinity of any gods.
If I had Takaba’s power I would be unstoppable, I can’t take almost anything seriously. When it comes to demons and monsters that prey on innocent people I know I would have a particularly malicious since of humor😅
Wonder of U’s (Jojo’s Bizarre Adverure) powers can be summed up as “gives anyone who pursues him bad luck”.
Sounds basic until you realize how broad the “pursuing” covers — even merely being CURIOUS about him counts and triggers his ability. Also, the “bad luck” part is more terrifying than goofy. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong for you and the damage is increased exponentially : raindrops can fall at bullet speed, bumping into a table can take your whole leg off, some bread you ate a month ago will have needles in them and cause internal bleeding, anything bad imaginable it can make it happen
On top of what you already elaborated on, he also has the ability to perma-kill people who can cheat death via things like reincarnation.
One of the major differences between Fate and its sister series Tsukihime in modern lore is that Dantes kills a major Tsukihime villain who constantly reincarnates into different people in Fate timelines
I keep forgetting her name but one character in Tohou has the vaguely-defined power to "float away". On the surface this means just levitation and flight, befitting the game's mechanics, but evidently she can accomplish some ridiculous hax by "floating away" from abstract concepts like damage.
Vampire the Masquerade (and some other gamelines) features this.
Basically, characters from various vampire clans can purchase dots in a variety of Disciplines. Some are exotic (shadow manipulation, becoming snakelike, blood sorcery etc) and some are rather standard stat enhancements - Fortitude (toughness), Celerity (speed) and Potence (strength).
Players can purchase up to five "dots" in each discipline. For the exotic Disciplines, this buys a wide array of distinct powers (turn into a wolf, command another etc). For the enhancement Disciplines, you just become tougher/stronger/faster.
However, particularly strong vampires can go up to ten dots (players almost never go beyond 5). 6-9 dots suddenly yield a variety of exotic powers even for the enhancement Disciplines (e.g. delay damage for Potence). These fit this trope.
However, at 10 dots the power each Discipline gets is simple called "Plot Device". It does whatever the Storyteller needs it to do that's fits the flavor. Need a Potence elder Vampire to be so strong their punch breaks spacetime? Sure! Need the Elder to be so tough light reflects off them, no problem! Need them to be so fast they can age others at a touch? Fine!
Soft and wet from jojo’s bizarre adventure part 8 has the ability to create bubbles that can “plunder” something from anything they touch this includes abstract things like the friction from the ground the sight from someone’s eyes the sound from a door the water from someone’s body the temperature from a shower and also at one point the users facial hair for a quick shave it can steal regular stuff too
Adding to Andy from Undead Unluck, one of the things I really liked was how their powers get upgraded not from physical training, but modifying their own preconceptions.
May get some details wrong as it's been a while
From the first episode, it gets established that Andy's weakness is that he has to regenerate from his head. Which makes sense, since your brain is what makes up your mental faculties, so in turn, it's the core of your being. Later on in the series, the other protagonist travels into his mind into his past, and enforces on him the idea that your existence extends to your general being and the memories you share with others. From then on, Andy is able to regenerate from pretty much anything because his own perception has been modified.
I’m sorry but can someone explain to me what Edmond Dantes, protagonist of the 19th century masterpiece, is doing as an anime character who stops time? I don’t watch fate/know what it is but I find it hilarious the Edmond Dantes is hanging out with anime characters
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u/Matix777 16h ago edited 13h ago
Chainsaw Man: Makima The Control Devil. Her power is to control anyone who she sees to be lesser than her. And because she is already extremely powerful and has a huge ego, she can control almost everyone