Newsletter 04-26-06 Supernatural Powers

Powers Beyond Those of Normal Fantasy Characters (Or Maybe Not)

Today I'm going to tackle a question received recently, from swirling_mist

I am in a dilemma. I would love to give my characters supernatural powers, but I don't want the same old ones that everyone uses, such as invisibility or reading minds. Do you have any new and interesting suggestions?

It's a very good question. Characters from both mythology and fantasy often have powers that normal men can only dream of. But they tend to come from a very limited stock. Strength, speed, invulnerability(hmmm...I seem to recall the combination from somewhere...can't remember where but I'm sure it was a super character.  , reading minds, turning invisible, flying, controlling the minds of other men; they've all been done night to death. So how can you come up with ideas that haven't been used before?

Well there are several ways to do it. First you can always use the old standbys but make the characters who posses them interesting. What if your flying character was afraid of heights? What if your inhumanly strong character was a total pacifist? Give them personalities that don't fit their gifts. Of course that can only be take so far before it becomes absurd, cliche or both. So let's look at some other possibilities.

1) Everything old is new again. You can make a new power for a character by simply adding some limitations or otherwise changing the nature of an over used power.

For example, with invisibility, suppose instead of being able to turn invisible, the character could only turn things she held or carried invisible? Very useful for someone who operates at odds with the law. "I'm not holding any stolen gems mi lord. See? Nothing in my hand." It would also be very useful in a fight. The best trained warrior in the land would still have a tough time defending against a sword he couldn't see.

With mind reading, how about if the character could only read the 'collective mind' of large groups. He wouldn't be able to ferret out specific information about any topic, but he would instinctively know the layout of any town or city he entered, the general populations feelings about any given subject, who the most influential people in the region were and so on.

This technique has an added advantage. If you make your power original by putting added limitations on it, then you don't have to worry so much about it becoming overly powerful in the story. So the characters will still have to rely on their other skills and their wits to get through most problems.

2) Lesser used powers. It's very hard to find abilities that have never been used, but it's easier to find some that are used less frequently. Some examples follow.

a) Speaking with the dead: This can be done by communing with a 'residual spirit' that inhabits a corpse, and thus accessing whatever the body knew in life, or by actually summoning the soul of the deceased. Either way it's not commonly used, and it can have great effect on a story. Brian Lumely based an entire series on this ability in the Necroscope books.

b) Communicating with things that don't talk: Animals, plants, rocks, buildings and other things that normally don't communicate with people can be fonts of information. You can also connect this with another infrequently seen power, seeing through another's eyes, so that the character can see and even hear everything the category of thing he can communicate with can see and hear. The Beastmaster of movies and TV, and Perrin Aybara of The Wheel of Time possess this ability.

c) Illusion. Not as powerful, perhaps, as regular magic, illusion is a fantasy staple and can be used to great effect by people with clear heads and good wit. To limit it, only let the character trick one sense, maybe hearing or smell. The character will need to think about how best to use the power.

3) What good is that? One good way of getting powers that are original and not often used is to think of an ability that would seem completely useless to a hero in a fantasy story, and then figure out how it could be used. For example,in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comic book, there was a character who could cause flowers to from out of thin air. Seemed not really useful, until she was abducted, and left a trail of her flowers on the ground for her rescuers to follow.

Here's some other examples. The power to summon a swarm of butterflies. Not only good at garden parties but also useful for creating a large obscuring cloud to baffle your enemies. The power to shatter glass and crystal, perfect for dropping shards of crystal on enemies standing under chandeliers as well as dropping a foe to his doom if he's leaning against a window. The power to transform gold into lead. Not a great get rich quick scheme, but when the evil wizard is about to finish the ritual to destroy everything, and has the gold chalice almost to his lips, it could come in handy.

The main thing to remember about such powers is fit them to the story and to the characters. Don't just drop in a power because it sounds good. Make sure there is a good reason for it to be there. Then whatever the power is, it will fit well with what is going on.