Poll of the Day > What superpower would you want?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Time manipulation, which has a major QoL component, plus it insulates you from any potential consequence thereby facilitating larger risk taking -- as well as a massive profit component, since you could start by winning the lotto.

However, even beyond that, you could prolong your life indefinitely by continuously giving yourself one more day (although the quality of that day could be iffy)

Actually, how would the logistics even work? Any tele back creates a fixed future point you can only travel 24 hours before that time? Or there's a 24-hour cooldown after use? Otherwise you could chain it going forever.

captpackrat posted...

You should read The Man Who Folded Himself. Every time you go back in time to prevent something from happening, you're actually creating a new timeline with a new copy of yourself. You still get in the accident, but your past duplicate will manage to avoid it. And now there's two of you with time travel powers. You go back in time with the lottery numbers? You don't get the money, the past you gets it. And now there's yet another copy of you running around. And if you keep time jumping, before you know it there's a near infinite number of you mucking up the time line.

Spoiler: The protagonist eventually becomes his own father and mother.

That's one interpretation of the idea of time travel and 100% speculative.

SinisterSlay posted...

Time travel would be cool, but so dangerous.

It's one day, so it'd be easy to fix even if something goes wrong... unless a series of events has to repeat a certain way.

SinisterSlay posted...

I think I would pick teleportation. Although super strength and flying would definitely have uses, teleportation might be the most life fulfilling.
You could pop into every country to assemble your breakfast, pop into the kremlin and kill Hitler I mean Putin, save the world, be back home to watch it on the news.

Teleportation is potentially far more dangerous than time travel.

The kinda-only risk with this time travel is messing up and getting the time mixed up after you do something stupid, or doing something too stupid where you die before you can rewind.

Straughan posted...

At least with flying I could live on my own and subsist or sell my service to whatever application it would pay for.

I'd probably just live in the wilderness though. Build my own shit and take food from overhead somehow.

Honestly, I'd like to live somewhere I could mine for gold. Perhaps somewhere up north in the untouched wilderness man can't get to easily. Just smack rocks all day and hope to find gold veins. I'd like to learn how to process it and turn it into pure gold too.

That would be my dream. Not sure why I have this obsession with gold. I don't even own anything gold except for minor pieces of jewelry I never wear.

Not sure how any of that really correlates with flying, but okay >_>

CaptainObvius posted...

Telekinesis could conceivably give you flight and super strength as well. Depending on how much you could lift with it. Just thinking of all of the things they could do in the movie "Chronicle."

Yeah, that'd be my second pick if time manipulation wasn't an option.

Will need to come back the rest of this topic later.

Revelation34 posted...

Other planets would be colonized at that point so humanity wouldn't be gone.

You'd like to believe that, yes.

Also, even if other planets could be colonized, the species would still die out eventually. There will eventually come a time when no new stars are being created, and most of the planets around the existing ones would be tapped out. If your survival strategy is to just keep moving to new places once the last one is ruined, you'll eventually run out of places to move to.



Lokarin posted...

What if you got a superpower of mild-hovering. You can fly a couple inches off the ground but that's about it

It's like in the Wild Cards novels, where an alien virus gives people on Earth super-powers.

The people who get really cool powers are known as Aces, but the people with shitty lame powers are called Deuces. And they get powers like being able to change the color of your fingernails or make your hair sway in the breeze or something else completely minor. Or something which is technically powerful but hard to really benefit from in practice, like being able to foresee when other people are about to die.

Or like the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where they created their own superhero team:

https://youtu.be/UXqlX0MAfFM?t=42

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Also, even if other planets could be colonized, the species would still die out eventually. There will eventually come a time when no new stars are being created, and most of the planets around the existing ones would be tapped out. If your survival strategy is to just keep moving to new places once the last one is ruined, you'll eventually run out of places to move to.

We could always figure out extra dimensional travel and go to a new universe

Muscles posted...

We could always figure out extra dimensional travel and go to a new universe

We could, but I could also potentially discover magic is real and learn how to transmute lead into gold.

I probably shouldn't plan my future financial strategy around assuming it's absolutely going to happen, though.

SinisterSlay posted...

Poll says super speed, not the flashes godlike power to bend air molecules around him.

When you dodge a bullet, you cause a nuclear level explosion on the spot as your limb collides with the air and turns into super heated plasma.

Poll also says super power. Super powers tend to defy logic and physics to avoid stuff like that.

If we go with your line of thinking a lot of powers wouldn't be as useful.

And even still running/moving as fast as a car wouldn't cause all that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Vampire: the Masquerade

Malkavian or die!

Sufferedphoneix posted...

Poll also says super power. Super powers tend to defy logic and physics to avoid stuff like that.

Depends on the setting.

The problem is we live in the most "realistic" setting there is, so we tend to overthink things like physics or laws of nature because they apply here even if they don't necessarily apply in the Marvel or DC universes.



Zareth posted...

Malkavian or die!

I've played Malks, but if I'm going to be honest my clans of choice are Tremere and Lasombra.

Though my Malks include one that had multiple personality disorder (and each separate personality thought it was a member of a different Clan), a girl who was convinced she was a dead/a ghost, and a Malk who believed that all vampires were basically reincarnated sorcerer-priests from Atlantis.

Though my favorite might have been a conspiracy theorist who is basically Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory crossed with Charlie in the Pepe Silvia Always Sunny episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nTpsv9PNqo

I'd use clairvoyance to solve crime.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Depends on the setting.

The problem is we live in the most "realistic" setting there is, so we tend to overthink things like physics or laws of nature because they apply here even if they don't necessarily apply in the Marvel or DC universes

Comics tend to be based on worlds that on the surface anyways is just like out own. These powers existing is what changes things. If super powers existed in the real world our laws of physics wouldn't be the same. Much like in comics. Either it's magic/supernatural which ignore physics or our physics would have to be altered to allow it.

Sufferedphoneix posted...

Comics tend to be based on worlds that on the surface anyways is just like out own. These powers existing is what changes things. If super powers existed in the real world our laws of physics wouldn't be the same. Much like in comics. Either it's magic/supernatural which ignore physics or our physics would have to be altered to allow it.

There are required secondary powers for basically every super power.

Without it, they would be useless at best, and suicidal at worst.

Assuming no RSP, would just make things boring imo.

SuperVegitoFAN posted...

There are required secondary powers for basically every super power.

Without it, they would be useless at best, and suicidal at worst.

Assuming no RSP, would just make things boring imo.

And do you expect everyone who makes a poll like this have to explain every little detail like that. It's supposed to be a fun discussion geez

Sufferedphoneix posted...

And do you expect everyone who makes a poll like this have to explain every little detail like that. It's supposed to be a fun discussion geez

Exactly. Thats what i ment.

Wheres the fun in selecting teleportation and then get told, its just gonna kill you?

The only one I might take instead of flight would be telekinesis, but only if I could also achieve flight with it

ParanoidObsessive posted...

My go-to answer to this question has always been either time manipulation or mind control.

Twinsies.

Time manipulation by far for this poll. Easy money and eternal redos yes pls.

BlackScythe0 posted...

I'd use clairvoyance to solve crime.

Just for being a good boy, you get two superpowers.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

there are different types of immortality. one type just can't die at all, but the other just won't die of age/disease but can be killed

By definition if they can die then they're not immortal.

Speed force super speed? Yes.
Normal super speed, no thank you.

Sufferedphoneix posted...

Comics tend to be based on worlds that on the surface anyways is just like out own. These powers existing is what changes things. If super powers existed in the real world our laws of physics wouldn't be the same. Much like in comics. Either it's magic/supernatural which ignore physics or our physics would have to be altered to allow it.

Yeah, but most of those universes solve the realism problem by just going, ehh, it's fantasy, shut up and stop worrying about it. It's not so much that powers defy physics in-universe, as much as writers ignore physics.

And in cases where they actually try to explain how powers work in a realistic way, it very quickly becomes phenomenally stupid. Like Superman having to have subconscious telekinetic powers to explain why his clothes don't get destroyed or how he can grab a plane in flight and not have it tear to pieces from the stress. Or Ant-Man having to tap into an alternate universe to explain where his extra mass comes from or goes to. or Cyclops having to open extradimensional portals right in front of his eyes to fire EYE PUNCHES FROM THE PUNCH DIMENSION.

Basically, super-powers are stupid, and most of them would never work in a realistic universe. And we're mostly willing to ignore that and suspend our disbelief when it comes to a fantasy setting with alien civilizations and magic, but less willing to ignore the problems when we're talking about the real world.

So I'd argue that even if the Marvel and DC universes are "like Earth" on a superficial surface level, they're inherently and qualitatively different in tons of ways that change the entire discussion. They're not really "hard sci-fi" as much as they are "modern fantasy", which comes with different rules and assumptions.