New abilities

[Endenes]

What are your sources when looking for new abilities or powers for a character in your story? Or do you come up with them purely through imagination?

 

[letmego]

i think the togashi power system is very well done. use his system. take example famous characters. like the series bleach,naruto and so on.

think about things that looks too unreal, too fantasy

 

[Kurayami]

I just use imagination. Sometimes I take the simple things like fireball, but other times it is from my imagination.

 

[Rosica]

They were promised to me 3000 years ago.

 

[just_darkjazz]

I just mostly just steal cool things I pick up here and there. Not that you'd know from my current writing :))

 

[raeyothelazycat]

I prefer logical power systems, so I create a base power system around which modifications are done and new skills/techniques are formed.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

40 years of role-playing games, fifty years of reading comic books, and a lifetime exposed to fantasy (with dad having read Lord of the Rings to my mother, about a chapter or two a week, during her pregnancy with me, finishing Return a little before my second birthday) and "light horror" (dad read Ghosts and More Ghosts out loud to mom and I every October until I was five or six - still have fond memories of "Do You Believe in Ghosts?" and "Obstinate Uncle Otis")

 

[MakBow]

Taking the powers from other sources and modifying them to work in my own or I just use the lore of my own world to make a power.

 

[Zagaroth]

40+ years of reading fantasy novels.
35+ years of TTRPGs/D&D, video games, and anime/manga
30+ years of experience with interactive, short form writing (i.e., online roleplay via chatrooms and forums)
Ongoing exposure to more stories and new ideas. I had been reading stories on Royal Road for only a few months before I was inspired to start my serial.

Narrow that down with a combination of what is consistent with a character's current abilities and their current goals. If a character realizes that they need to figure out a way to deal with flying enemies with ranged attacks, one of them might be focused on finding a way to fly, while a different character might be more interested in ranged attacks of their own, or otherwise making their attacks hit from a distance.

 

[Amateur_Artist2008]

I normally look at normal abilities and then add onto the ability with unique ways to use it.