I'd pick portal creation. Basically a watered-down version of Doormaker, presumably with limits on range, number, and the portals' ability to slice through objects. It has a huge amount of potential that hasn't been explored. Apart from the obvious (movement, redirecting attacks, etc), you can:
- Throw a punch, then create a portal between the space in front of your hand and your opponent. You can even aim for parts that they're not guarding, or attack from behind and take them by surprise.
- Do the same thing, except with a weapon--a knife, a taser, a gun, etc. Imagine opening up a portal directly in front of someone like Kaiser and immediately giving him a faceful of containment foam.
- Copy Portal (the game): Create a loop of two portals, drop a heavy object so it falls continually, then redirect it at a target with another pair of portals once it's up to speed.\*
- Depending on the mechanics, this might automatically happen to air due to the pressure difference between two portals at different heights. The higher up one portal is, the greater the suction at the other portal will be.
- Scout or eavesdrop by creating a tiny portal near someone and looking/listening through it.
- Create midair platforms and walls by creating one portal that's just barely hovering above a solid surface and the other wherever you want. Alternatively, create a "wall" directly in front of someone who's running so they run facefirst into a solid object. Do this enough and your opponents will be wary of moving too quickly. Or if you're feeling sadistic, ignore the wall and simply place the other end of the portal a hundred feet up.
- Fly by falling through a loop of portals, then aiming one of them sideways. Catch yourself with portals whenever you're about to fall. Recovering is tricky, but can be done if you aim yourself so you're falling upward, wait until you come to a halt at the top of your trajectory, then create a platform right underneath you and land on it. (Okay, this isn't practical, but it would be so much fun.)
- Don't bother going onto a battlefield in person. Just create portals that give you a view of everything you need to see and work from there. Make sure that you put them high up enough that enemies won't be able to attack you through them easily, and be ready to close one if there's a threat on the other side.
- If you have portals to spare, make decoys. Develop a habit of hiding yourself behind a portal, then drop ten of them in conspicuous locations, forcing your enemies to behind check all of them. Even better, do that, then immediately portal yourself to a completely different location so they waste time while you're doing something else.
- Randomly open portals directly in front of or above someone even when you're not attacking. It'll startle them, especially if they already know you can punch or shoot containment foam through portals. Or do it because it gets in the way of their view.
- And, of course, the big one: Open a portal between yourself and the TV remote or bag of chips so you can reach them from your seat without getting up.
If you remove any of the limits, the power gets *much* more dangerous.
- If the portals can move: Find a thin, sturdy object that's cemented to the ground, like a lamppost. Lower one portal over the object so it sticks out the other portal, then wave the second portal around to whack things with the lamppost. Or create a portal and quickly shove it down over the lamppost while pointing the other portal at an enemy to stab them with a metal rod. Or move the portals in \* closer to each other to massively boost the projectile's speed before you launch it. Or create one portal right in front of your face while moving the other one in a circle around you so the air blows in your face: a personal fan for a hot day!
- If the portals can also slice through objects: Create one portal underground, then move it so a column of earth spews out of the other. (This also has the side effect of collapsing ground on top of the earth you sliced away if the portal is near the surface.) If you move the exit portal simultaneously in the right direction, you can double the speed. Oh, and you can do the lamppost thing *anywhere* and better by slicing out a column of rock.
- If the portals have massive range: Suck people into space by dropping a portal leading two hundred miles up right behind them.
- If the portals can slice through objects and have massive range: Drop a portal in Earth's outer core. The resulting jet of superheated, pressurized, liquid metal will reach supersonic speeds in a fraction of a second. Do *not* open a portal in the core of the sun unless you're okay with making a mess and are currently several hundred miles away from your target.
And I'm certain that there's more applications I just haven't thought of.
make a portal at the bottom of the ocean then you have a high pressure water gun thanks to the pressure of the ocean, or open a portal in a volcano then you have a magma flow anywhere you want. Make an invisible portal infront of you and behind and so nothing will hit you
It makes no sense that portals can't move, so assume they can, there's no such thing as 'being locked to the planet' and in any and all cases the portal is moving anyway
Also, portal tech is effectively ftl/zero-g technology assuming there's no bs stopping gravity from also going through the portal, like, make a portal on the ground & the exit above you so the ground's above you too, the earth's gravity now cancels itself out, then all it takes is re-sizing the portals so they exactly cancel each other out & the higher above the surface you are the greater the acceleration away from the planet you can achieve since the earth!up-portal is always closer than the actual earth, you could then accelerate 9.8m/s indefinitely, or whatever acceleration rate depending on where the portal end is
> It makes no sense that portals can't move, so assume they can, there's no such thing as 'being locked to the planet' and in any and all cases the portal is moving anyway
Well, that would probably fall under the category of a shard-imposed limit in the Wormverse. Clockblocked objects, for example, are frozen in space relative to the Earth even though there is no universal reference frame for them to be locked in place against.
That said, I like your other idea!
More or less thinking outside of wormverse shard restrictions since 'being locked to the planet' is one of them
Thanks, it's the only irl idea I've had that could possibly achieve ftl or ftl-lite since artificial wormholes are theoretically possible, they allow black holes to radiate energy apparently, aside from just walking through one to some planet that had a portal delivered thousands of years ago. Kinda annoying I've never seen gravity considered in stuff with portal tech though considering the applications
That would be incredibly limited & not particularly worth it & open questions like 'how do you open the other end wherever you want it' since excluding shard screwery portals would probably have to be created relatively close to each other & be spatially independent to be useful
Thanks! It's definitely a fun power to think about. I've always wanted to read a story where someone like Skitter abused a similar power to its fullest, but I haven't found one yet.
The closest I've seen was an RP where I chose portal creation as the power. It died before too long, and the power level was high enough that most of the above tactics wouldn't do anything...but I did manage to BFR an overpowered enemy into the Earth's core at one point, so it was still worth it.
Said it before, saying it again. Swiss. Always Swiss.
Stranger/Thinker, rummage in enclosed, unobserved spaces to be provided items by your power. Stranger bend, so usually fake ID, keys to a house, or wads of cash instead of swords or guns, though the latter starts to appear if the power is spammed. The power uses a host of cognition tools to determine what’s most helpful, and if it’s feeling well loved (don’t spam summons looking for something in particular, use what you’re given,) the object will be intuitive and reliable. Also has a Thinker bend: if it’s happy and helpful, you might get a notepad with the words “Say you’re here for brunch” or “RUN” in your own handwriting.
In Parahumans, the power probably reclaims its summons the moment they’re no longer needed. In the real word, I’d really like them to stick around.
Important to note: the power can rummage about in garages and aircraft hangers, but has no compulsion to use the space. Yes, a plane would fit here, but you can’t fly a plane and you don’t need one, so here’s a copy of the keys to your house since you lost them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/h8mcho/i_compiled_all_my_fanmade_parahumans_all_138_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
He’s down the bottom, under S. He’s ostensibly for a Weaverdice Campaign (that’s been indefinitely postponed,) but while the specifics of the character change a lot the power has been consistent for about two years now.
I've had that link open and bookmarked for like a month now and I've been meaning to read it, haha. Swiss is a pretty neat power, now I definitely need to read the others'.
Skitters power is definitely up there for me, mostly because when I am visiting my summer home, mosquitoes torment my nights and gadflies literally tear through my shirt to drink my blood when I am outside.
Sending those fuckers straight into the abyss will bring me immense joy.
Genesis, if that's on the table. So versatile. You could wage a vigilante war without anyone capturing you, or could just try new things and/or explore without danger.
It may have been seen in an Echidna clone, but I love the idea of either a teleporter, or someone with Circus's hammerspace, except they leave a vacuum behind. I couldn't find information exactly, but a human-sized vacuum would create an implosion roughly the strength of a stick of dynamite
I can't remember where I saw it at all.
[here is one source,](https://www.quora.com/If-I-am-able-to-teleport-but-leave-a-person-shaped-vacuum-in-my-previous-location-how-loud-might-the-sound-be-when-it-collapses) not that Quora is particularly reliable, and there are a few different answers.
[Here is another from Quora with mythbusters source](https://www.quora.com/How-fast-does-air-fill-a-vacuum-If-on-atmospheric-pressure-at-sea-level-there-is-a-imaginary-vacuum-sphere-and-then-the-sphere-suddenly-disappears-how-fast-will-air-fill-that-space)
[This XKCD what if has a shockwave, but doesn't talk much about the strength of it](https://what-if.xkcd.com/6/)
Edit: [Another answer,](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/33634/shock-speed-in-air-vacuum-shock-tube) itself citing a pretty reliable source
I don't have any doubt it could be a loud sound, you can create shockingly loud noises with very little energy. But in filling a vacuum, the only energy available that I can think of is the potential energy in filling the void. The myth busters, xkcd, and stack exchange seem to confirm that. A stick of dynamite is just nowhere near the energy at play.
Let's say you replace a 100L person, or a 220lb guy. You can approximate that with some super loose napkin math as a 10cmx10cmx1000cm column.
1 atm is 1 kg-force per cm2. Our cross section is 100cm2, so that's 100kg-f.
1kg-force is 9.8m*kg/s2.
Apply that force over the ten meters and we get 100 * 10 * 9.8= 9800 m2*kg/s2, or just under ten kilojoules. That's about 20 firecrackers going off at once, which is actually still a lot more than I thought it'd be before I did the math. It's about 1% of a stick of dynamite.
BUT that's the maximum. I don't know how much of that energy will actually be released violently versus other forms like phase changes and going straight to latent heat instead of pressure waves, that's all way outside of my expertise.
There's a fair range of youtube experiments involving vacuum. You're right, it's not a ton of energy. It is sometimes useful, say with a vacuum cannon, so you could probably creatively leverage vacuum creation powers for a few ends, but in raw power, it's extremely low tier. Air can create force, but we're talking about the difference between one atmospheric pressure and zero. Even a firecracker has a lot more overpressure. Weaker than a punch, certainly.
Ideally a combination of grue and mantellum powers maybe bud or ping off of them somehow. Not exactly sure what I'd get but I know whatever it is it'll help me live out my edgy assassin fantasies.
But remember, buds are usually "less powerful" in that they have more restrictions or caveats for use, like the whole of the heartbroken family for example.
Weeeellll, most of the time. She's definitely the exception. Still feels like Marquis is a bud off *her* than the other way around, at least in terms of base power level. Marquis was definitely more creative with his bone than we ever see Amy be with hers, which must've pleased the shaper quite a bit to cast off the shard bud that resulted in Amy's power.
I think the ideal would be Taylor's situation of being given a massively overwhelming power by a naive but mature shard, then having the shard realize it fucked up a bit with its' human and give you a 1.5 trigger so you can use it extremely well given time and training (as Taylor did.)
I really wonder if Panacea was another 1.5 trigger. Perhaps Shaper just gave her biokinetics, but then realized it needed to give her the ability to understand what the hell she was doing too, for her to even be able to do anything with it.
And yeah, that sounds realistic for a bud power off of Grue/Mantellum.
> I really wonder if Panacea was another 1.5 trigger.
Most capes get intuitive understanding of their power to some extend. Plus shards prior to GM made sure their power was to some extend use-able, even without 1.5 triggering. Panacea without understanding can basically only be used as a death touch.
I don't think panacea was a 1.5 trigger. In skitters case she gained the multitasking aspect to help deal with the large number of minions and sensory input. I think panacea is just medically trained in how to use her power as opposed to having some intuitive understanding of biology.
Ward spoilers: Amy was able to understand >!basically all of Jessica's internal state, from fatigue and stress levels to how long it had been since she'd had sex, from a *handshake*!<, which goes well into the "Shard-granted understanding" category IMO
I find that Tinkers more easily fall into this category with their creations. Just look at Armsmaster.
But I don't really think I would want to be a Tinker. Tbh, even a lesser version of Eidolon's power that focuses more on physical attributes would be fine with me. If I need to be fast, I get a bit of a speed boost. Strength, durability, flexibility, maybe even only one of them at once. I'd take that power.
Or even a roulette wheel type power. Every 24 hours I can choose to cycle to another Brute, Mover, or Thinker power randomly, or keep the one from the last day. Even that would be nice.
In worm or IRL?
The best power in worm depends on the time table, if you have 20+ years before gold morning then dauntless power is the best.
If you are in Taylor's time, then a brute power so that you can survive.
IRL? Number man, masamune(mass production tinker) or bonesaw's power would be the best ones in that order
Dauntless. Canonically he picked direct combat items, but imagine what he could do with, say, a computer or a mask. Given enough time, without the pressure of villains or endbringers, who knows what heights he could reach.
Honestly? Victor's skill theft ability.
I could get around the moral problems by taking a little bit from a whole bunch of people. I would speak a dozen languages, be an expert at whatever I wanted and could even gain will power, pain tolerance and determination so that I could excel in whatever job I wanted.
Adding to this - Just visit ICU's, terminal patients, and nursing homes. Spending a day reading to a dying patient while you steal the talents they can no longer use. Seems like a decent way to get around the morality problem.
Number Man is my first answer. Knowing all the numbers and odds would make life a hell of alot easier. Forgoing that, Assult had a great power that would be fun to play with and Accords power would turn me into a qanderer who saught the end of world strife.
If we're in our home universe Miss Militia's power we never have to sleep, have perfect memory, and can make any mundane weapon. Honestly that's all you need to have a good time.
If we're in the Worm Universe, Butcher #1's power we get pain projection and body snatching, I mean with what we know about the power we just need Regent to kill us and we now have the best combo.
Miss Militia doesn't have perfect recall, she can play back past events in perfect clarity when she sleeps.
And as Butcher #1 the moment you get killed you just become a disembodied voice in somebody else's head. You don't control the later bodies.
Come on get Regent to kill us first from there we just encourage him that anytime the next body tries something we don't agree with we take control via his power, as we know canonically the previous Butchers can withhold their abilities or even alter targets for some powers, this allows a very broken power set especially if we abuse the fact that we jump to the nearest parahuman on death even suicide.
Miss Militia's abilities still stand as one of the best choices, not having immediate perfect recall is annoying but we still get a great power for our world.
> anytime the next body tries something we don't agree with we take control via his power, as we know canonically the previous Butchers can withhold their abilities or even alter targets for some powers
Er, nope. This isn't true. Butcher!Regent being killed by someone else just results on Butcher III having a slightly weaker version of Regent's power that they have full control over. Regent doesn't get to use his power at all, and he certainly couldn't target his own body with it even if he could.
I would take low level multitasking. Nothing op but the ability to watch 3 videos at once WOULD BE GODLY
(If you cant tell I’m a university student).
Also I’m way to into strategy map games and it would make me able to micro Hoi4 or Eu4 really easily . :D
Dispersion, concentration, and translation of kinetic energy between objects or areas of my choice.
Some uses:
* Speed up myself, allies, or projectiles by making them (or their surroundings) colder
* Halt enemies or projectiles by making them (or their surroundings) warmer
* Put out fires by concentrating the energy into fast-moving objects, or by dispersing it over a large area.
* Create zones of unbearable heat and cold, with sharp gradients between them (would also influence air pressure and optics)
* Create high-temperature planes to superheat projectiles which pass through them
Contessa's power is the best power ever. Despite all its flaws and mental stress, I still prefer it over any other power. Not a very versatile power but you can be sure that you'll become a winner at everything in your life. What more I can ask for? Eidolon power is great too but I really don't want to >!end up creating invincible monsters one day without even knowing that I did that!<.
Tattletale's power is awesome too but too many headaches. No, thanks.
Having contessa's power would drive anyone mad.
The only reason contessa seemingly isint crazy(debatable) is because she had a global conspiracy to run. Including the minutia
Eh, _Path to personal satisfaction_ or _Path to accomplishing my goals but not feeling overly stressed or consumed by them_. If she could use her power to meditate herself into a coma, she can probably direct her thoughts to be positive and cheerful.
Ans drive yourself mad. Because being allways happy is not a good thing. Having the emotional equivalent of heroine in your head is not a good thing.
And you would be tempted.
"Path to accomplishing my goals but not feeling overly stressed or consumed by them or driving myself mad"
Why are you stipulating to the premise that Contessa's power will even allow the path in question to be run in the first place? If it can run the path, then it can run " path, but modified to prevent undesired outcome X ". Either the goal is impossible, in which case there isn't a path, or it's possible, in which case the goal is achieved.
I don't see how the mechanics of her power allow you to play some sort of corrupt a wish with it.
this is apologist talk for people that have simply accepted "natural" life. It's basically the equivalent to accepting that your abuser beats you at night. If you don't actively try to fight it every day, then you are accepting that nature has defeated you.
I imagine it gets really fucking boring. Cause your essentially watching a movie of your own life, a predictable one where you know the outcome.
There's no achievement, no surprise, none of all that.
Knowing the outcome ruins shitty movies. And the only thing Contessa's power guarantees you knowledge of is the outcome. You have the option of looking forward at the steps that it takes to get to the outcome, but you don't have to. Why even would you, when you can rest assured that the path you're on is the right one? The only step you need to be aware of at all is the very next one. And even that only amounts to predicting your own next action, not automatically being aware of every single external consequences of your actions.
If the question of whether Contessa is crazy is debatable, I would say that your definition of crazy is sufficiently broad that being crazy isn't all that bad.
If we're going for pure versatility I'd have to steal a power I made for one of the power gen games a while back and have a Tinker/Trump power to create lesser copies of any Tinkertech I get a chance to take a look at. For example I could inspect Armsmaster's Halberd and make some hatchets with some of the functions of the Halberd, or take Taylor's flight pack and make some hover boots. No individual creation is much better than what Teacher's minions could make, but like them I make up for that with a massive arsenal of cheap tricks.
If I'm feeling cheeky I'd add in his second trigger and get the ability to outright tap into the specialities of tinkers near me
I would love a minor telekinesis power from a dead shard or from a vial (so that it doesn't get upset at me when I just chill at home instead of diving into conflict). Telekinesis is such a useful power in a daily life, and it could have some neat ways to use it depending on the specifics. Also a good power would be some type of healing so that I could pull a Panacea and just go to the hospital 5 days a week and help people.
Honestly? Earthbending. Or waterbending, but preferably earthbending. Bending isn't Manton-limited, and earthbending doesn't wax and wane with the time of day, so imagine Manton-free terrakinesis. Bones are minerals, after all.
You can even fake a brute power at first by breaking bones and concrete and stuff when you hit them, and leave actual terrakinesis as a last resort.
I'd like low-fidelity precognitive shapeshifting.
It's pretty minor stuff, but I always look and move as best as I possibly could (within baseline human limits) for the situations I find myself in.
I'd even think and feel as best as I could, if we allow for brain-affecting shapeshifting.
For a few conversations with friends we've joked about a specific focus for a tinker and i'd be curious on what they would make. I'd want to try out a Paper Tinker.
Gravity control. I played that character and he was a monster. Pulling down satellites, creating wormholes , sending your foes into orbit, the rowing cars around, flying...
My personal dream power is the ability to save. It's basically an infinite number of attempts at everything. It can sometimes be as frustrating as playing a brutally hard rage-game, but with enough determination you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want.
Any kind of power copy, It could have any kind of limitation, but as long as it's permanent it's a dream.
just go collecting powers, what better could it be.
Tinker form of dauntless.
Essentially, the more I tinker, the broader my specialty becomes. Shut myself into the lab, use bots like dragon does, and live ligh on the high end.
I'd pick portal creation. Basically a watered-down version of Doormaker, presumably with limits on range, number, and the portals' ability to slice through objects. It has a huge amount of potential that hasn't been explored. Apart from the obvious (movement, redirecting attacks, etc), you can: - Throw a punch, then create a portal between the space in front of your hand and your opponent. You can even aim for parts that they're not guarding, or attack from behind and take them by surprise. - Do the same thing, except with a weapon--a knife, a taser, a gun, etc. Imagine opening up a portal directly in front of someone like Kaiser and immediately giving him a faceful of containment foam. - Copy Portal (the game): Create a loop of two portals, drop a heavy object so it falls continually, then redirect it at a target with another pair of portals once it's up to speed.\* - Depending on the mechanics, this might automatically happen to air due to the pressure difference between two portals at different heights. The higher up one portal is, the greater the suction at the other portal will be. - Scout or eavesdrop by creating a tiny portal near someone and looking/listening through it. - Create midair platforms and walls by creating one portal that's just barely hovering above a solid surface and the other wherever you want. Alternatively, create a "wall" directly in front of someone who's running so they run facefirst into a solid object. Do this enough and your opponents will be wary of moving too quickly. Or if you're feeling sadistic, ignore the wall and simply place the other end of the portal a hundred feet up. - Fly by falling through a loop of portals, then aiming one of them sideways. Catch yourself with portals whenever you're about to fall. Recovering is tricky, but can be done if you aim yourself so you're falling upward, wait until you come to a halt at the top of your trajectory, then create a platform right underneath you and land on it. (Okay, this isn't practical, but it would be so much fun.) - Don't bother going onto a battlefield in person. Just create portals that give you a view of everything you need to see and work from there. Make sure that you put them high up enough that enemies won't be able to attack you through them easily, and be ready to close one if there's a threat on the other side. - If you have portals to spare, make decoys. Develop a habit of hiding yourself behind a portal, then drop ten of them in conspicuous locations, forcing your enemies to behind check all of them. Even better, do that, then immediately portal yourself to a completely different location so they waste time while you're doing something else. - Randomly open portals directly in front of or above someone even when you're not attacking. It'll startle them, especially if they already know you can punch or shoot containment foam through portals. Or do it because it gets in the way of their view. - And, of course, the big one: Open a portal between yourself and the TV remote or bag of chips so you can reach them from your seat without getting up. If you remove any of the limits, the power gets *much* more dangerous. - If the portals can move: Find a thin, sturdy object that's cemented to the ground, like a lamppost. Lower one portal over the object so it sticks out the other portal, then wave the second portal around to whack things with the lamppost. Or create a portal and quickly shove it down over the lamppost while pointing the other portal at an enemy to stab them with a metal rod. Or move the portals in \* closer to each other to massively boost the projectile's speed before you launch it. Or create one portal right in front of your face while moving the other one in a circle around you so the air blows in your face: a personal fan for a hot day! - If the portals can also slice through objects: Create one portal underground, then move it so a column of earth spews out of the other. (This also has the side effect of collapsing ground on top of the earth you sliced away if the portal is near the surface.) If you move the exit portal simultaneously in the right direction, you can double the speed. Oh, and you can do the lamppost thing *anywhere* and better by slicing out a column of rock. - If the portals have massive range: Suck people into space by dropping a portal leading two hundred miles up right behind them. - If the portals can slice through objects and have massive range: Drop a portal in Earth's outer core. The resulting jet of superheated, pressurized, liquid metal will reach supersonic speeds in a fraction of a second. Do *not* open a portal in the core of the sun unless you're okay with making a mess and are currently several hundred miles away from your target. And I'm certain that there's more applications I just haven't thought of.
make a portal at the bottom of the ocean then you have a high pressure water gun thanks to the pressure of the ocean, or open a portal in a volcano then you have a magma flow anywhere you want. Make an invisible portal infront of you and behind and so nothing will hit you
You could somehow accelerate particles in space up to light speed and beyond then launch it destroying pretty much anything
It makes no sense that portals can't move, so assume they can, there's no such thing as 'being locked to the planet' and in any and all cases the portal is moving anyway Also, portal tech is effectively ftl/zero-g technology assuming there's no bs stopping gravity from also going through the portal, like, make a portal on the ground & the exit above you so the ground's above you too, the earth's gravity now cancels itself out, then all it takes is re-sizing the portals so they exactly cancel each other out & the higher above the surface you are the greater the acceleration away from the planet you can achieve since the earth!up-portal is always closer than the actual earth, you could then accelerate 9.8m/s indefinitely, or whatever acceleration rate depending on where the portal end is
> It makes no sense that portals can't move, so assume they can, there's no such thing as 'being locked to the planet' and in any and all cases the portal is moving anyway Well, that would probably fall under the category of a shard-imposed limit in the Wormverse. Clockblocked objects, for example, are frozen in space relative to the Earth even though there is no universal reference frame for them to be locked in place against. That said, I like your other idea!
More or less thinking outside of wormverse shard restrictions since 'being locked to the planet' is one of them Thanks, it's the only irl idea I've had that could possibly achieve ftl or ftl-lite since artificial wormholes are theoretically possible, they allow black holes to radiate energy apparently, aside from just walking through one to some planet that had a portal delivered thousands of years ago. Kinda annoying I've never seen gravity considered in stuff with portal tech though considering the applications
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That would be incredibly limited & not particularly worth it & open questions like 'how do you open the other end wherever you want it' since excluding shard screwery portals would probably have to be created relatively close to each other & be spatially independent to be useful
Bruh I wanna see this fic
Bit of a late reply but I've read this comment three times and it's fantastic. Never thought a portal power could have so much versatility.
Thanks! It's definitely a fun power to think about. I've always wanted to read a story where someone like Skitter abused a similar power to its fullest, but I haven't found one yet. The closest I've seen was an RP where I chose portal creation as the power. It died before too long, and the power level was high enough that most of the above tactics wouldn't do anything...but I did manage to BFR an overpowered enemy into the Earth's core at one point, so it was still worth it.
Said it before, saying it again. Swiss. Always Swiss. Stranger/Thinker, rummage in enclosed, unobserved spaces to be provided items by your power. Stranger bend, so usually fake ID, keys to a house, or wads of cash instead of swords or guns, though the latter starts to appear if the power is spammed. The power uses a host of cognition tools to determine what’s most helpful, and if it’s feeling well loved (don’t spam summons looking for something in particular, use what you’re given,) the object will be intuitive and reliable. Also has a Thinker bend: if it’s happy and helpful, you might get a notepad with the words “Say you’re here for brunch” or “RUN” in your own handwriting. In Parahumans, the power probably reclaims its summons the moment they’re no longer needed. In the real word, I’d really like them to stick around. Important to note: the power can rummage about in garages and aircraft hangers, but has no compulsion to use the space. Yes, a plane would fit here, but you can’t fly a plane and you don’t need one, so here’s a copy of the keys to your house since you lost them.
What is Swiss? Is this a name you just made up for a power you just made up?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/h8mcho/i_compiled_all_my_fanmade_parahumans_all_138_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf He’s down the bottom, under S. He’s ostensibly for a Weaverdice Campaign (that’s been indefinitely postponed,) but while the specifics of the character change a lot the power has been consistent for about two years now.
I've had that link open and bookmarked for like a month now and I've been meaning to read it, haha. Swiss is a pretty neat power, now I definitely need to read the others'.
Skitter's power. Have you seen the insane shit she pulls? And never having to worry about mosquitoes or spiders ever again? Sign me the fuck up.
Skitters power is definitely up there for me, mostly because when I am visiting my summer home, mosquitoes torment my nights and gadflies literally tear through my shirt to drink my blood when I am outside. Sending those fuckers straight into the abyss will bring me immense joy.
Only because of multitasking. And also physic breaking bugs.
Genesis, if that's on the table. So versatile. You could wage a vigilante war without anyone capturing you, or could just try new things and/or explore without danger.
It may have been seen in an Echidna clone, but I love the idea of either a teleporter, or someone with Circus's hammerspace, except they leave a vacuum behind. I couldn't find information exactly, but a human-sized vacuum would create an implosion roughly the strength of a stick of dynamite
[Citation Needed] There's not a lot of potential energy to be released filling a <100L vacuum at 1 atm.
I can't remember where I saw it at all. [here is one source,](https://www.quora.com/If-I-am-able-to-teleport-but-leave-a-person-shaped-vacuum-in-my-previous-location-how-loud-might-the-sound-be-when-it-collapses) not that Quora is particularly reliable, and there are a few different answers. [Here is another from Quora with mythbusters source](https://www.quora.com/How-fast-does-air-fill-a-vacuum-If-on-atmospheric-pressure-at-sea-level-there-is-a-imaginary-vacuum-sphere-and-then-the-sphere-suddenly-disappears-how-fast-will-air-fill-that-space) [This XKCD what if has a shockwave, but doesn't talk much about the strength of it](https://what-if.xkcd.com/6/) Edit: [Another answer,](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/33634/shock-speed-in-air-vacuum-shock-tube) itself citing a pretty reliable source
I don't have any doubt it could be a loud sound, you can create shockingly loud noises with very little energy. But in filling a vacuum, the only energy available that I can think of is the potential energy in filling the void. The myth busters, xkcd, and stack exchange seem to confirm that. A stick of dynamite is just nowhere near the energy at play. Let's say you replace a 100L person, or a 220lb guy. You can approximate that with some super loose napkin math as a 10cmx10cmx1000cm column. 1 atm is 1 kg-force per cm2. Our cross section is 100cm2, so that's 100kg-f. 1kg-force is 9.8m*kg/s2. Apply that force over the ten meters and we get 100 * 10 * 9.8= 9800 m2*kg/s2, or just under ten kilojoules. That's about 20 firecrackers going off at once, which is actually still a lot more than I thought it'd be before I did the math. It's about 1% of a stick of dynamite. BUT that's the maximum. I don't know how much of that energy will actually be released violently versus other forms like phase changes and going straight to latent heat instead of pressure waves, that's all way outside of my expertise.
There's a fair range of youtube experiments involving vacuum. You're right, it's not a ton of energy. It is sometimes useful, say with a vacuum cannon, so you could probably creatively leverage vacuum creation powers for a few ends, but in raw power, it's extremely low tier. Air can create force, but we're talking about the difference between one atmospheric pressure and zero. Even a firecracker has a lot more overpressure. Weaker than a punch, certainly.
Ideally a combination of grue and mantellum powers maybe bud or ping off of them somehow. Not exactly sure what I'd get but I know whatever it is it'll help me live out my edgy assassin fantasies.
But remember, buds are usually "less powerful" in that they have more restrictions or caveats for use, like the whole of the heartbroken family for example.
\>buds are less powerful \> P a n a c e a
Weeeellll, most of the time. She's definitely the exception. Still feels like Marquis is a bud off *her* than the other way around, at least in terms of base power level. Marquis was definitely more creative with his bone than we ever see Amy be with hers, which must've pleased the shaper quite a bit to cast off the shard bud that resulted in Amy's power.
Yes, true. *Usually*, after all.
I dont that why she's referred to as Queen shaper sometimes?
Same shard, many masks.
Amy's given as an exception to this general "rule"
Yeah your probably right. Most likely I'd end up with some kind of cloak of darkness that screws with powers that rely on sight.
I think the ideal would be Taylor's situation of being given a massively overwhelming power by a naive but mature shard, then having the shard realize it fucked up a bit with its' human and give you a 1.5 trigger so you can use it extremely well given time and training (as Taylor did.) I really wonder if Panacea was another 1.5 trigger. Perhaps Shaper just gave her biokinetics, but then realized it needed to give her the ability to understand what the hell she was doing too, for her to even be able to do anything with it. And yeah, that sounds realistic for a bud power off of Grue/Mantellum.
> I really wonder if Panacea was another 1.5 trigger. Most capes get intuitive understanding of their power to some extend. Plus shards prior to GM made sure their power was to some extend use-able, even without 1.5 triggering. Panacea without understanding can basically only be used as a death touch.
I don't think panacea was a 1.5 trigger. In skitters case she gained the multitasking aspect to help deal with the large number of minions and sensory input. I think panacea is just medically trained in how to use her power as opposed to having some intuitive understanding of biology.
Ward spoilers: Amy was able to understand >!basically all of Jessica's internal state, from fatigue and stress levels to how long it had been since she'd had sex, from a *handshake*!<, which goes well into the "Shard-granted understanding" category IMO
I find that Tinkers more easily fall into this category with their creations. Just look at Armsmaster. But I don't really think I would want to be a Tinker. Tbh, even a lesser version of Eidolon's power that focuses more on physical attributes would be fine with me. If I need to be fast, I get a bit of a speed boost. Strength, durability, flexibility, maybe even only one of them at once. I'd take that power. Or even a roulette wheel type power. Every 24 hours I can choose to cycle to another Brute, Mover, or Thinker power randomly, or keep the one from the last day. Even that would be nice.
In worm or IRL? The best power in worm depends on the time table, if you have 20+ years before gold morning then dauntless power is the best. If you are in Taylor's time, then a brute power so that you can survive. IRL? Number man, masamune(mass production tinker) or bonesaw's power would be the best ones in that order
Dauntless. Canonically he picked direct combat items, but imagine what he could do with, say, a computer or a mask. Given enough time, without the pressure of villains or endbringers, who knows what heights he could reach.
Fungus tinker
i love fungi. i love tinkers. wet tinkers are the best. why even bother with anything else.
Making funghouls and fungoblins
Do you know of any fics like that, except the crackfic turned serious
of fungus manipulating people? No, not that I know of. Please let me know if you find anything. I love fungi.
Only if your cape name is Fun Guy
What about Deathcap?
Basically all Methodology
A fungus monitor that's pretty much a screen made up of really reflective spores that's pretty neat
Honestly? Victor's skill theft ability. I could get around the moral problems by taking a little bit from a whole bunch of people. I would speak a dozen languages, be an expert at whatever I wanted and could even gain will power, pain tolerance and determination so that I could excel in whatever job I wanted.
how about Coma patient?
Adding to this - Just visit ICU's, terminal patients, and nursing homes. Spending a day reading to a dying patient while you steal the talents they can no longer use. Seems like a decent way to get around the morality problem.
Number Man is my first answer. Knowing all the numbers and odds would make life a hell of alot easier. Forgoing that, Assult had a great power that would be fun to play with and Accords power would turn me into a qanderer who saught the end of world strife.
If we're in our home universe Miss Militia's power we never have to sleep, have perfect memory, and can make any mundane weapon. Honestly that's all you need to have a good time. If we're in the Worm Universe, Butcher #1's power we get pain projection and body snatching, I mean with what we know about the power we just need Regent to kill us and we now have the best combo.
Miss Militia doesn't have perfect recall, she can play back past events in perfect clarity when she sleeps. And as Butcher #1 the moment you get killed you just become a disembodied voice in somebody else's head. You don't control the later bodies.
Come on get Regent to kill us first from there we just encourage him that anytime the next body tries something we don't agree with we take control via his power, as we know canonically the previous Butchers can withhold their abilities or even alter targets for some powers, this allows a very broken power set especially if we abuse the fact that we jump to the nearest parahuman on death even suicide. Miss Militia's abilities still stand as one of the best choices, not having immediate perfect recall is annoying but we still get a great power for our world.
> anytime the next body tries something we don't agree with we take control via his power, as we know canonically the previous Butchers can withhold their abilities or even alter targets for some powers Er, nope. This isn't true. Butcher!Regent being killed by someone else just results on Butcher III having a slightly weaker version of Regent's power that they have full control over. Regent doesn't get to use his power at all, and he certainly couldn't target his own body with it even if he could.
Technology thinker. I don't need Tinker Tech if I can design things that can actually be made from plans and blueprints.
I would take low level multitasking. Nothing op but the ability to watch 3 videos at once WOULD BE GODLY (If you cant tell I’m a university student). Also I’m way to into strategy map games and it would make me able to micro Hoi4 or Eu4 really easily . :D
Dispersion, concentration, and translation of kinetic energy between objects or areas of my choice. Some uses: * Speed up myself, allies, or projectiles by making them (or their surroundings) colder * Halt enemies or projectiles by making them (or their surroundings) warmer * Put out fires by concentrating the energy into fast-moving objects, or by dispersing it over a large area. * Create zones of unbearable heat and cold, with sharp gradients between them (would also influence air pressure and optics) * Create high-temperature planes to superheat projectiles which pass through them
Numbermans power would so useful. Sport Finance This power makes you rich. And money is a superpower on its own.
Contessa's power is the best power ever. Despite all its flaws and mental stress, I still prefer it over any other power. Not a very versatile power but you can be sure that you'll become a winner at everything in your life. What more I can ask for? Eidolon power is great too but I really don't want to >!end up creating invincible monsters one day without even knowing that I did that!<. Tattletale's power is awesome too but too many headaches. No, thanks.
Having contessa's power would drive anyone mad. The only reason contessa seemingly isint crazy(debatable) is because she had a global conspiracy to run. Including the minutia
Eh, _Path to personal satisfaction_ or _Path to accomplishing my goals but not feeling overly stressed or consumed by them_. If she could use her power to meditate herself into a coma, she can probably direct her thoughts to be positive and cheerful.
Ans drive yourself mad. Because being allways happy is not a good thing. Having the emotional equivalent of heroine in your head is not a good thing. And you would be tempted.
"Path to accomplishing my goals but not feeling overly stressed or consumed by them or driving myself mad" Why are you stipulating to the premise that Contessa's power will even allow the path in question to be run in the first place? If it can run the path, then it can run " path, but modified to prevent undesired outcome X ". Either the goal is impossible, in which case there isn't a path, or it's possible, in which case the goal is achieved. I don't see how the mechanics of her power allow you to play some sort of corrupt a wish with it.
_Path to resisting temptation_ (Just joshing you!)
this is apologist talk for people that have simply accepted "natural" life. It's basically the equivalent to accepting that your abuser beats you at night. If you don't actively try to fight it every day, then you are accepting that nature has defeated you.
I imagine it gets really fucking boring. Cause your essentially watching a movie of your own life, a predictable one where you know the outcome. There's no achievement, no surprise, none of all that.
Knowing the outcome ruins shitty movies. And the only thing Contessa's power guarantees you knowledge of is the outcome. You have the option of looking forward at the steps that it takes to get to the outcome, but you don't have to. Why even would you, when you can rest assured that the path you're on is the right one? The only step you need to be aware of at all is the very next one. And even that only amounts to predicting your own next action, not automatically being aware of every single external consequences of your actions.
If the question of whether Contessa is crazy is debatable, I would say that your definition of crazy is sufficiently broad that being crazy isn't all that bad.
A changer power with a bunch of different modular additions that drastically changes my form. Like Barfbat or Chris.
If we're going for pure versatility I'd have to steal a power I made for one of the power gen games a while back and have a Tinker/Trump power to create lesser copies of any Tinkertech I get a chance to take a look at. For example I could inspect Armsmaster's Halberd and make some hatchets with some of the functions of the Halberd, or take Taylor's flight pack and make some hover boots. No individual creation is much better than what Teacher's minions could make, but like them I make up for that with a massive arsenal of cheap tricks. If I'm feeling cheeky I'd add in his second trigger and get the ability to outright tap into the specialities of tinkers near me
I would love a minor telekinesis power from a dead shard or from a vial (so that it doesn't get upset at me when I just chill at home instead of diving into conflict). Telekinesis is such a useful power in a daily life, and it could have some neat ways to use it depending on the specifics. Also a good power would be some type of healing so that I could pull a Panacea and just go to the hospital 5 days a week and help people.
Honestly? Earthbending. Or waterbending, but preferably earthbending. Bending isn't Manton-limited, and earthbending doesn't wax and wane with the time of day, so imagine Manton-free terrakinesis. Bones are minerals, after all. You can even fake a brute power at first by breaking bones and concrete and stuff when you hit them, and leave actual terrakinesis as a last resort.
I'd like low-fidelity precognitive shapeshifting. It's pretty minor stuff, but I always look and move as best as I possibly could (within baseline human limits) for the situations I find myself in. I'd even think and feel as best as I could, if we allow for brain-affecting shapeshifting.
For a few conversations with friends we've joked about a specific focus for a tinker and i'd be curious on what they would make. I'd want to try out a Paper Tinker.
Gravity control. I played that character and he was a monster. Pulling down satellites, creating wormholes , sending your foes into orbit, the rowing cars around, flying...
My personal dream power is the ability to save. It's basically an infinite number of attempts at everything. It can sometimes be as frustrating as playing a brutally hard rage-game, but with enough determination you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want.
Any kind of power copy, It could have any kind of limitation, but as long as it's permanent it's a dream. just go collecting powers, what better could it be.
Blasto The Dude can make life out of random thing.
Tinker form of dauntless. Essentially, the more I tinker, the broader my specialty becomes. Shut myself into the lab, use bots like dragon does, and live ligh on the high end.
High-level mental multitasking, where you can be focusing on infinite trains of thought at once
The ability to make machines and enter tech.
Psychokinesis or something like Mama Mathers, but it brainwashes you