Weak but skilled

[Woolen_Monkey]

Seeing things in slow mode...

 

[Gryphon]

A power that I think of when it comes to this is the ability that anything you throw will return to you no matter where you are in the world. If you throw it and nothing stands in its way, then it'll loop around the world and return to you. If it bounces against something, it'll return to you instead of falling. Anything that breaks on impact will reform back to its original form whenever it left your hand.

I thought of this power when thinking of potential Jojo Stand powers. It's a personal favorite of mine cause of the amount of strategy it can provide in not only fights, but also daily life.

Edit: Also keep in mind the thrown object will essentially be free-falling sideways until it bounces off something and returns. Anything can, and will, reach terminal velocity as it goes. No, the user isn't immune to the effects of his ability. If he's hit by something coming at him 90mph, then he will feel it if it lands on him. Good luck trying to find workarounds. There are several that come to mind, but I won't spoil the fun.

 

[MintiLime]

Ability to spread a scent in the air. This could be quite important. You could clear out a top secret facility if you spread the scent of a dangerous gas. You could lure away hungry animals with the scent of dinner. You could trigger memories with scents of home. Small, but powerful

 

[Cortavar]

Just teleport a ping pong ball straight into an opponent's brain. Instant win.

The challenge with going for something like this is you're inviting the readers to think. So, you've got to be very smart and plug all the holes when plotting because your story will fall if readers spot something that the character should've done, but didn't. Compare this to OP MC. No one cares about plot holes for OP MC stories because that's not their point. Webnovels usually don't ask readers to think.

The selling point for your intended story is being smart, so you should be damn smart for this. I'm not smart enough to give suggestions for powers, lol. Yeah, I can give useless powers, but useless powers that become useful if skilled is very hard since it's more likely to come out as assuming the reader is "dumb" and you've figured out something they didn't, instead of what you were actually going for.

But I can give you a suggestion on how to work this out. Do it backward. Have a plot first, and then think of a useless power relevant to the plot that you setup beforehand. Let's say your climax is a fight at a luxury hotel or something where the rich bad guy has a party. So, a stupid power for that would be something like I can inflate any food I cook to triple in size. Let's go about this backward

- Start the fight after the buffet, inflating the stomachs of people and making them vomit or worse, and win (end)
- MC joins as a line cook in the hotel where bad guy is having a party.
- Shenanigans how he'll apply at the hotel
- Maybe he doesn't know how to cook, insert meeting a new teammate who could teach him
- formulate plan for revenge
- The bad guy kills the poor people MC feeds in a shootout with a rival gang.
- He uses his powers to help feed the poor. They value him more than the famous heroes.
- MC is laughed at for his sucky powers.

Read this from the bottom upwards, and you've got a basic setup. Anyway, I'm just illustrating the insane challenge you're taking on for yourself. And I'm procrastinating from my own writing, so I'm helping out on how to go about your plan. Otherwise, you'll just receive either truly useless suggestions. Or suggestions that are actually OP when the reader is invited to think.

Yeah, you're probably right, that's going to be a lot of work, and I'll never be able to outsmart an internet crowd of readers. Outsmarting a real life crowd is simple, but once you give people the ability to take time to think and to feed on each other's thoughts, it's a loosing battle.

That doesn't really matter for me, it might even fuel further episodes if I take notes of suggestions. I still plan to have a few surprises along the way, and I hope I'll be clever enough to satisfy my readers.

I think a good ground rule for my settings would be that unless the power specifically deals with altering another's body or mind, those are off-limits. Otherwise teleports, elemental manipulation, grow/shrink powers, etc... become too easy to abuse.

Ability to spread a scent in the air. This could be quite important. You could clear out a top secret facility if you spread the scent of a dangerous gas. You could lure away hungry animals with the scent of dinner. You could trigger memories with scents of home. Small, but powerful

Oooh! I like that one!

Underused senses are cool, and smell is one of those.

 

[Deleted member 68927]

I am writing something like this, but not with superheroes but with players in a LitRPG. A turn based LitRPG with mercenaries. So, it is a lot of planning to get through the quests. My MC had 120 Protection, which is insane for a level 1, but instead of running through the lava floor to the other end of the chamber, he climbed the walls along the way, and didn't get burned.

I think what you should have in mind, is that your characters will avoid pain and be smarter about it all.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Turning body fat into matter, replicating a heard sound, perfect memory, the ability to swap places with someone or teleportation but with heavy restrictions, aerokinesis but it uses your muscles like you'd walk/lift/throw things/move without your power, low-level "magic" like they can turn their fingertips into a zipper or zap people, but that's it, the ability to create chemicals or minerals they digested proportional to how much they consumed, the ability to be convincing, transferring your depression to someone else (but not getting rid of it)... There's so much stupid stuff you can turn valid if you're smart enough.

Seeing things in slow mode...

would be pretty broken if your body can keep up with your sight, so you either give it to someone that's disabled in one way or another or let your character go through at least 3 training arcs before it gets useable

 

[Woolen_Monkey]

Turning body fat into matter, replicating a heard sound, perfect memory, the ability to swap places with someone or teleportation but with heavy restrictions, aerokinesis but it uses your muscles like you'd walk/lift/throw things/move without your power, low-level "magic" like they can turn their fingertips into a zipper or zap people, but that's it, the ability to create chemicals or minerals they digested proportional to how much they consumed, the ability to be convincing, transferring your depression to someone else (but not getting rid of it)... There's so much stupid stuff you can turn valid if you're smart enough.


would be pretty broken if your body can keep up with your sight, so you either give it to someone that's disabled in one way or another or let your character go through at least 3 training arcs before it gets useable

You would need to have extremely fast reflexe. So it would take a lot of training. At least that's what I think.

 

[HungrySheep]

Seeing things in slow mode...

I would like this power to deal with professors who move on from the current slide way too fast.

 

[Woolen_Monkey]

I would like this power to deal with professors who move on from the current slide way too fast.

It would be good for taking notes...

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Hi everyone!

I've got this story idea macerating in my head about a group of superheroes who've all got the short stick in terms of raw power, but who compensate for it with training and creativity.

I've got some ideas for my characters, but I would need a few more of them. Could you help me fill up the ranks with ideas of powers that, while weak, can become awesome when used with a lot of skill, imagination or the right mundane equipment?

Exemple: a teleporter limited to a few dozen grams (let's say 125g) of inert matter in a short range (less than 10 meters), uses micro-drones for reconnaissance and high explosives for combat.

(Not sure if it's the right section, feel free to move that post someplace appropriate)

If she is limited to ten meters, she'll explode hersef too and at that point she might as well just be a suicide bomber.

Besides using such resources is not being creative, that's being very rich and having connections. Forget about explosives, a normal person would not be able to get a drone weighing 125 grams. If they can do it, why not just buy guns. Or better yet, hire people who are good with guns. Or, even better, if they want to be heroes and are this rich they could just get into lobbying for better living conditions for the poor.

How about learning how to reload guns on the fly? How about passing supplies (medical and such in small ampules for example from a highly protected suitcase), stealing id cards, forging evidence, doing cloak and dagger shit, disabling bombs, disarming guns, stealing from safes, disabling locks. Why not just teleport tranquilisers into the victim?

She could be a much better hero by learning how to be a surgeon. She'd save way more lives.