Oct 01 2009
The Super Teacher’s Review Forum
I’ve created eleven heroes with their own superpowers. But what’s a superhero without a weakness? Any suggestions for weaknesses to go with the following would be awesome: telekinesis, photokinesis and vitakinesis, chlorokinesis, shapeshifting, teleportation, aerokinesis , duplication, invisibility and phasing, geokinesis, force fields and energy blasts, and pyrokinesis. Thanks!
All I can think about is that the guys with shapeshifting, teleportation and duplication would probably be really tired after using their powers for a while. And maybe the guy with pyrokinesis would only be able to use his powers in places with a lot of oxygen: using it in a closed room would probably make the air around him too hard to breath.
The pyrokinesis weakness is great. Thanks.
Photokinesis would probably be useless in a dark room. There just isn’t enough “material” to work with.
Another idea I had: the guy who can become invisible would probably do so by making his refractive index (I think that’s what it’s called) the same as air’s. So it would be easy to see him if he was underwater because air and water don’t have the same refractive index.
Ooh, I like that. Also, it’d probably be much easier to see someone’s air bubbles or motion ripples underwater, even if they themselves were invisible.
With phasing and maybe teleportation, I would recommend against having the hero be able to take someone else with him. Otherwise, the phaser’s job is done as soon as he phases everyone in the back-door. In contrast, the ability to phase only himself means that he get assigned to to do something dangerous by himself even though his powers aren’t too useful for combat.
Characters like Shadowcat and DL Hawkins have done things like root their enemies to ground and phase their heads through someone’s skulls, so a phaser isn’t exactly useless in battle.
I agree with both B. Mac and Shardreaper. Either use of the phasing would work well in a story, I think its just up to the author as to which would work better in their story.
“phase their heads through someone’s skulls…” True! However, it’s sort of like telekinetically rearranging someone’s organs. I don’t think it’s typically too useful. (That scene with Linderman was pretty kickass, though).
Yeah, it was. Can telekinetics actually do that?
Telekinetics vary from those who can only affect what they see to those who can indeed rearrange someone’s internal organs. However, even if they can affect what they can’t see, it’s quite easy to explain any arbitrary limitations by pointing out that telekinesis is a mental power and that their mental state can indeed affect what they’re actually able to do. Consider the following as a possible interchange;
>’Why didn’t Telekinetic-man just stop the guy’s heart?’ asked the young hero.
>
>’Because he didn’t actually think he could, or possibly didn’t think he should,’ said the older hero. ‘Psychics can’t do anything they don’t actually think they can do. His powers come from his mind… so his mind’s also what limits them.’
“Can telekinetics actually do that?” If the writer wants them to, sure.