You can have any superpower, but the first person to reply chooses a side effect

Luckyy@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 114 points –

self-explanatory!!

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I'll take a gravity power I guess. Manipulation of gravity in every sense.

Cool! Every time you manipulate gravity, your body loses mass in addition to and proportional to how much energy is needed to do the manipulation.

Which part of your body loses this (additional) mass is totally random. It could be your fat, it could be your brain tissue, it's all random. How the mass is lost depends on what is the most likely way it'd be dissipated.

if the part of your body losing the mass was actually completely random, the atoms would disappear roughly evenly across your body, so probably the main thing you have to be worried about is your DNA (and thus getting cancer).

That's something that, depending on your POV‌ (sadistic DM or a player), might be either interesting, or really terrible.

But then again, it takes time (to know that you're fucked) so I guess it's just horrifying. You'd never know if you've fucked yourself up using the power.

Daaamn. OK.

Thanks for making me think lmao. Can you eli5 your very last sentence. I think I understand but want to be sure.

I wasn't really thinking much about it, tbh, but it's more along the lines of "cell burns glucose to create energy", or "random photon hits skin cell, making it slightly warmer," or in the more unfortunate circumstances where the random part of the body is, say, a brain cell, it could have not much choice but to "spontaneously undergo nuclear fission."

It's me trying to cover my ass, tbh, and make things more interesting by just not going "E=MC² thus things go boom!"

I suppose you can go use the power safely most of the time, but there's a chance that something important might go off in the most unfortunate way.

OK I get. How about if it's not random, but the amount of force I need to use is dependent on where I take it from, according to importance to normal bodily function.

Like if I wanna make a leaf fall off a branch, it's my finger nail, and I can sort of, as a baked in part of the power, decide where I gets taken from as long as it meets the required energy?

I mean, that'd still make it somewhat OP, I think.

Though to be honest, your approach is similar to what I actually came up with as a consequence for a different superpower (time-space manipulation--which I think is a lot more energy-intensive), in the sense that it'd take energy from the least important part of the body to the most important.

However, I suppose just having the energy requirements already limits a lot of the OP potential of the superpower (can't just summon a black hole, lol!), so I think your changes are quite reasonable.

So, yeah! Let's go with your modifications.

(: I can live with that. I'd only be able to use it in emergencies I suppose.

That's basically it, lol!

Like how a DM of a tabletop RPG group would be like "interesting, but how can I make it more interesting and limit abuse at the same time?"

So in a way...I kind of already have this super power! Lmao

I mean, yes! But I don't really think ordinary object manipulation (like what we can already do IRL) counts as using the superpower.

The way I see it, it applies to things like telekinesis, or manipulating the mass of an object (making things lighter, or heavier), or even something as out of the left field as "manipulating gravitational lensing such that I can see things clearly". It can even be used in such a way that it can be lethal, such as "make someone's blood dense, and have them suffer a heart attack as a result."

The superpower is actually that OP in the sense that aside from the limits I've put (and the modifications we've agreed upon), only one's imagination is the limit.

Oh I know it's OP. I've actually thought alot about this specific power. That's why I said it lol. Like Fujitora from one piece. 🐐

Lol!!

Meanwhile, I was thinking more along the lines of FMA's law of equivalent exchange, but since the way equivalent exchange is handled is kinda hand-wavy, I tried to find a way to make it more realistic, while trying to limit the power's OP potential (hence, the random body part stipulation as initially stated).

TBH, I don't watch One Piece, but had I done so, I would have given you a nod by saying you need to be concentrating to use the power (and would backfire by randomizing the target of the power if you lost concentration).

Yep!

FMA is my absolute favorite Shonen btw. It's a masterpiece, imo.

One piece just holds a special place in my heart yknow, so it's my favorite by default. Lol

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