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!!

264

The ability to stop pooping for three days.

Each day you don't poop, you lay an egg that hatches into a random monster. The egg is indestructible.

You have to post about it online and keep the community updated on your progress, becoming the first widespread Lemmy meme

You already can -- immodium

Or just some painkillers. I had surgery seven or eight years ago and I still remember how badly I wanted to shit by day three and it just wasn't happening.

But when you eventually poop your in the middle of human a human centipede

The ability to talk to animals

You can talk to animals, but it includes insects and birds... and you can't shut their conversion out for some peace and quiet

Imagine going outside during spring. All animals are just yelling "I'M SO FUCKING HORNY!".

Everytime you talk to an animal, every moving living being around you looks like the animal you talked to for the next 2 hours.

1 more...

Clear anyone of debt just by thinking it.

2 more...

The ability to touch a book to instantly know its content.

Turns out, the books you touch are actually quite satisfied and content.

The title of the book appears somewhere on your skin, and if removed you will forget any knowledge from that book, whether you obtained it through reading or your power. The titles must be legible, and cannot overlap.

Every book you encounter will always be written in a language you don't speak.

The ability to read, write, and speak every language

You become deaf and blind

It would be less efficient, but people who are deaf-blind can access the Internet and communicate using a refreshable Braille display. In-person they can communicate using an interpreter using a special sign language.

1 more...

Ability to secrete custard from my hands at will.

The custard is rancid.

Impossible!

Even fantasy there is no reality where custard is not delicious 🤤

Will calls the police and you are arrested.

Stopping time

Time stops for everything that isn't you, including air. You leave a vacuum everywhere you go and can never stay anywhere for long.

The ability to study, understand and use fantasy level magic.

But it still only works if magic actually works and if it doesn't, then you just understand really well how you would have used magic, if it were actually real.

14 more...

I can summon food by saying its name.

But the delivery guy still wants money for the food you ordered.

You take it from the hungriest person about to eat it, assuming there is someone at the time. You cannot turn this ability off, and it happens even when you aren't referring to the food. I hope those birthday cakes taste good, you monster.

I can obtain any super power just by thinking about it.

When you have obtained your superpower, you lose your ability to obtain any new superpowers.

So I get to chose one super power, but I lose the ability to think so it renders any powers I've obtained essentially useless? Man, this js the most realistic super power conversation ever. So realistic it's quite scary!

Teleportation by thinking of a place

It will only teleport your body, not your clothes

Thats a obvious oversight by me. Worth a try still.

Plus, I can go anywhere instantly as long as I'm in private.

I think you win. Easiest side effect to deal with. You could have go bags all over the world.

You are unable to control the ability and will teleport even when you are just be reminded of a place.

2 more...

Thinking includes dreams and nightmares. You wake up in interesting places.

You don't teleport to the place you're thinking of.

As you get older you keep thinking back to places that no longer exist.

You will arrive naked only - with an urgent need to vomit.

2 more...

Perfect timing.

Except you feel the need to always respond to everyone else's conversations. Your timing is impeccable yet everyone comes to resent your witty remarks.

I’m happy

An annoying happy-go-lucky theme song plays for all to hear around you.

... despite having nightmarish diarrhea every hour, on the hour.

The ability to find anything lost.

Everything you touch turns into a potato

What if the world turned into a potato ? The potatocalypse

read this with the kurzgesagt voice

The power to gain any superpower by submitting it as a comment to this thread, repeatable as many times as desired, keeping any power previously obtained unless explicitly commenting to void that power.

The highest voted side effect applies for all powers obtained in this way.

Telekinesis!

But the strain and concentration required causes you to dump your drawers.

You can be in the shit a lot with powers like telekinesis huh

It only works when nobody's looking, and everyone just thinks you were using your hands.

Control time

You retain no memories of anything that happened during a time stop. If you go back in time, everyone else remembers things normally, but you forgot that period of time completely.

When you stop time you cannot move as all the air molecules around you are stopped.

The ability to nullify side effects :) I'll be rich as a doctor

You no longer have any side effects, only things intentionally done will happen. You must now consciously think about breathing and blinking as they are no longer side effects of being alive. As this is not a side effect, but rather the effect itself it cannot be nullified.

Oh shit, bro has to manually pump this blood. Well, he's fucked.

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).

4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...
4 more...

Omnipotence

Every attempt at thought or action ends in an omnipotence paradox. E.g., can God make a rock so heavy even he can't lift it?

Having unlimited power means you control everything. You have no time to enjoy your power because you're constantly making sure the laws of physics stay and balance so the universe doesn't dissolve.

You have analysis paralysis. You can do everything, but you can't figure out what you want to do at any given time, so you just do nothing.

You also gain impotence. Congratulations! You now know that you can only be a god by being a paradox

1 more...

Fly with farts.

The only way you can generate fart power is by eating poo.

Yeah, but then you get to have a cool catchphrase like, "Eat shit and fly".

Your farts are now so powerful that they propel you upwards without bending any laws of physics

Can spontaneously manifest any variety of cheese

You're constantly followed by an army of mice that want to eat your cheese.

It appears from a random bodily orifice each time, and never the same one twice.

But you have no control over where and when.

The ability to move anything

You move the exact same distance into the opposite direction of the moved object, even if there already exists another object in that space.

Ability to successfully persuade any living being to do what I want them to do.

Your entire family was murdered in a dark city alley to lead to your powers.

Don't worry, he'll convince a genius to create a time machine. Problem solved.

Damn the last time that happened I only inherited immense wealth and used it to beat up street level criminals

You are never truly sure again if people are actually listening to you or even like you or they are just enchanted by your power. You are never again able to form meaningful relationships with that doubt in you mind, you can never find true love and become a recluse.

2 more...

i am joining this myself. telekinesis

Terrible migraines whenever you use it

so if I already have a migraine I'm in the clear...

Good ol' invisibility

You need to wear a ring to use it, and undead monsters hunting for the ring will instantly know where you are. It may or may not have a mind of its own convincing you to never part ways with it.

Ability to phase through non-Newtonian fluids as if they were regular Newtonian fluids.

Side effect: Newtonian fluids change their behaviour to that of non Newtonian fluids and you can't pass any of them in a hurry. You can run on water now though.

Running on goopy water sounds great, but hydration might become an issue if I have to eat water like it’s non-Newtonian pudding

Teleportation

You conserve your angular momentum, so if you move at all in latitude the earth we'll be moving at a different speed. It would be like stepping out of a moving vehicle onto the freeway but a whole lot faster.

I can fly wherever I want super fast so I can travel the world.

You can fly super fast but are unable to decelerate except by crashing into things.

3 more...