Dec 30 2007
List of Superpowers
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This superpower list will help you write a superhero story or design a superhero. At the end, I also have tips to help distinguish your superheroes from other heroes with similar powers.
Generic Physical Abilities
- Superstrength
- Speed
- Durability
- Agility/reflexes
- Healing/regeneration
- Supersenses
- Sight/hearing/smell/taste/touch
- Sensing danger (spider-sense)
- Sensing other types of events (dishonesty, murder, etc.)
- Longevity/immortality
Forms of Transportation
- Climbing/wall-crawling
- Swimming/water-breathing
- Flight
Time-Based Abilities
- Temporal manipulation (like The Matrix)
- Time travel
- Prophecy
Elemental Control/Manipulation
- Basic elements (fire, electricity, water, earth, wind)
- Light and/or darkness
- Gravity
- Magnetic forces
- Radiation
- Energy
- Sound
- Nature
Generic Mental Abilities
- Skills and/or knowledge
- Popular categories: science, mechanical, computer/electronics, weapons-handling/military, driving, occult/magical.
- Super-intelligence
- Resourcefulness (“I’m never more than a carton of baking soda away from a doomsday device”)
Psychic Abilities
- Telekinesis (moving objects mentally)
- Telepathy (reading minds)
- Mind-to-mind communication
- Mind-control
- Possession (total mental control)
- Memory manipulation (may include creation/alteration/deletion)
- Mentally generated weaponry
- Mindblast
- Ability to locate someone mentally
- Forcefields
Biological Control
- Acid/poison
- Controlling plants and/or animals
- Animal morphing
- Ability to take on someone else’s appearance
Miscellaneous
- Elasticity
- Self-destruction
- Self-liquification
- Gaseous form
- Growth/shrinking
- Self-duplication
- Invisibility
- Absorbing someone else’s powers
- Negating someone else’s powers
- Luck manipulation (good luck for hero and/or bad luck for enemies)
- “Psychometry”– the ability to learn things about the past or future of an object by touching it
- Illusions
WAYS TO DISTINGUISH YOUR SUPERPOWERS
- Your story’s superpowers have some cost to the user.
- Fatigue. Your hero’s powers exhaust him.
- Equal and opposite reaction. Perhaps your supergenius’s brain will overheat unless he lets his mind cool down after a mental stunt.
- Energy. Your hero has a drainable and finite source of power.
- Risk to self (or others). Your hero’s powers, once activated, are hard to control and dangerous.
- Personality shift. Activating your hero’s powers transforms his personality or mindset, like the Hulk or Catastrophe.
- Loss of sanity. Your hero’s transformation makes him considerably less stable, like The Hulk or Niki.
- Your story’s superpowers have a limited duration or accessibility.
- His superpowers only last a certain duration and have to be recharged.
- His superpowers can only be accessed after a certain condition is met or at a certain time of day. For example, Captain Marvel has to say Shazaam first.
- His superpowers are only accessible after he transforms (like the Hulk or American Dragon).
- Superpowers are accessible only through a particular item, usually a magical or technological item (Sailor Moon, power armor).
- Your superpowers have an unusual origin or source.
- Because the hero’s alien or otherwise unhuman (Superman, TMNT)
- Because he’s a modified human (Spiderman, cyborgs)
- Because he has some artifact (power armor)
- Your superpowers have unusual limits
- Physical. Maybe his electricity shorts out in water or he gets really weak when exposed to Kryptonite.
- Time. Hourman’s powers only last (you guessed it) an hour.
Did you find this list useful? If so, please see our list of superhero writing articles.
This site is cool. It is helping me with a short story for school and all that stuff, so keep up the good work, fellas. Time to go save the world!
Let’s not forget “Bop you with this here lollipop.”
Whatever else you can say about Herbie Popnecker, the series definitely had a voice. I can virtually guarantee that the concept of hitting someone with a lollipop is 100% original.
Thanks! Can you add more unique superhero abilities that are not common to other heroes? I’m making my own superhero story, but I have no idea what abilities to give my superhero. I need a unique power for my main character. Your website has helped helped me a lot with some of my other characters. Thanks a lot!
One way which you could try altering these powers is changing their scope in some crazy way. For example, in Read or Die!, the main character has telekinesis that applies only to paper. I mean, if you take a generic power and only allow the superhero to use it on some random category of material, that could probably create a fresh-feeling character.
Also, a few of the characters in Superhero Nation have a few government-themed powers, like being able to telepathically operate government vehicles. (The in-story explanation is filled with jargon and not particularly important). Out of story, I like that parameter because it feels fresh and makes the character about as powerful as everyone else (impressive but stoppable). It’s a problem when characters aren’t on the same power level because the villains that can challenge a strong hero would roll over a weak hero. If one hero is much more powerful than another (Superman vs. Batman), you can usually only have them work together by being inconsistent. For example, in the final episode of Justice League, Batman goes hand-to-hand with Darkseid and somehow survives, even though Darkseid is about as tough as Superman.
I’m writing a novel about a superhero. Is he overpowered like Superman? His main power is elasticity, making him extraordinary even though he’s human. He gained his powers by swallowing a piece of radioactive gum at a college party. He has been taking martial arts since he was 5 years old and has increased strength because his muscles stretch out. He can lift parts of ships, a truck, but NOT planets or skyscrapers. How can elasticity increase speed? Should his powers have limits? What can I use for his weakness? Also, he needs transformations. What could I use with his powers?
Thanks! That is really helpful for a paper I’m writing for English class.
Hello, Chulance.
“I’m making a book about a super hero– is he overpowered like superman? his main power is elasticity…” That’s probably not over-powered. I imagine you’d be able to write some dramatic stories for him that aren’t as silly as pushing a planet out of orbit. Most importantly, I think that you’d probably be able to make an interesting and dramatic fight between him and regular (non-super) criminals.
“He gained his powers by swallowing a piece of radioactive gum at a college party.” I like that origin story.
“How can elasticity increase speed?” He could roll himself into a wheel or pogo-jump himself. I think that either of those would make him pretty fast, particularly if he’s in a hilly city like San Francisco or Washington, DC. Alternatively, if you want to be a little bit more ridiculous, you could try something like making him into a hang-glider or paper airplane (it worked in Paper Mario). There are enough high places (like buildings) in pretty much any city to make that work. Also, most cities will get enough warm air rising off the sun-heated pavement to create thermals that a hang-glider would be able to take advantage of. (Warm air rises, which would enable him to glide longer than he could otherwise).
“Also, he needs transformations. What could I use with his said powers?”
Quick question. When I use the word “transformation,” I’m usually referring to a species-change. So, if your guy is human, he’s probably not transformed. He may be an altered human, like Spiderman. If that’s the case, you have a lot of potential origin stories at your disposal. Mutations, genetic engineering, nanotech, radiation/cosmic rays and cybernetics will be easily understood by most audiences. I have a bit more of an explanation on one of my other comments… see my comment here.
If you’re up for a more scientifically ambitious story, you could try something with quantum mechanics, singularities, or some other distinctly futuristic tech.
The origin stories I’ve listed above are all science-fiction. Alternatively, you might want your story (for whatever reason) to be more of a fantasy. Then you could try magic, artifacts, divine intervention, etc.
wait, so what you’re saying is that MacGyver was a superhero with super-resourcefulness powers?
“You there! Give me that stick of gum. And you - your shoelace, quick! Quick, I said! Aha, I have made a rudimentary flying machine which will save us from this ominously ticking explosive device which is set to blow up the minute that I fly us out of here!”
I really love this website! I THINK SPIDERWOMEN IS RIGHT!
I really liked City of Heroes as well. Although the combat was underwhelming compared to World of Warcraft, I liked the CoH character creation process a lot more. Professionally speaking, CoH can be really helpful if you need to visualize what a superhero might look like, particularly if you’re a fan of Golden Age style (Superman, the Flash, etc.)
What do you think about a villain that has the power from the movie Jumper but can only jump through shadows?
Ok. I’m writing a character that has been genetically engineered by a government research program. I’m just having trouble coming up with some powers.
Cool.
But I could have thought of more.
Lilg, if you have any you’d like to offer, we’d be glad to credit you if we use them.
As for our list… when we were brainstorming, our list came out to 70 and included some wacky ones that probably wouldn’t benefit the average reader very much. (Color manipulation! Sonic attack!) We tried to take the ones that we thought would help.