Best superpowers for multiversal protagonist?

[Path to Somewhere]

Multiversal protagonists seem to be hard to write because superpowers seems so hard to balance. There needs to be a balance between between being powerful enough to thrive in all settings without being so overpowered in any one setting that writing a good story becomes tough.

For example a character who is your average Harry Potter wizard would be a mind controlling, teleporting god in Westeros, something that might get boring quickly. But if I made a character who was the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms and then dropped them into Brockton Bay to go toe-to-toe with Lung I'd get one very honourable puddle of metal and ash.

Should you stick to defensive powers? Something like Blank or Information Defense seems like it would be vital in some settings without being overpowered in any of them.

Or should you focus on a superpower that changes to fit its setting? Maybe something to give you access to biotics in Mass Effect but take it away for other settings.

And which superpowers would you need to thrive in 40k without automatically being overpowered in everything else?

 

[Sadim]

Realistically most 'out of context' powers are considered overpowered or broken somehow. Either they're complete dogshit or absurdly powerful.
Which is kind of the point of making something be 'out of context'.

Or should you focus on a superpower that changes to fit its setting?

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Yeah. If you make a power that gives you whatever the local superpowers are, at whatever level you so choose, you would avoid the 'out of context' problem.

If you made it so that it converts to whatever strength you had relative to the setting you came from to the new one that would also get rid of the whole 'depowering' problem that sometimes comes up with fics that jump worlds.
Like if you were a fairly middling wizard in Harry Potter and you go to 40K your power would translate your skills at wizardry over to the closest equivalent as a Psyker or whatever (I'm not overly familiar with 40K, just snapped some things up from cultural osmosis). I'd just go with a percentage for the calculation. Are you in the top 20%? Then you will be in the top 20% over there too. Save yourself the endless grind and drop straight in at a higher level (that you already reached once and so have proven you can reach in the first place).

It doesn't really work well if you're already at god-like levels in universe and jump to another one, but considering the jump would give you a 'fresh start' in that Universe it might just be viable to try to become a New God in that world. That would be something to explore, even if the challenges are much different from what one would usually encounter in that type of story, which is mostly curb-stomping in my experience.

Granted my approach would turn a somewhat skilled Knight from Westeros into a somewhat powerful Parahuman in Worm / Earth Bet, so there might be some that take issue with that. Which could be a whole plot in its own. A parahuman without trauma? That didn't buy his powers? What is this sorcery?!

That's how I would approach it if I didn't want to do a curbstomp, suffer from a curbstomp or have my adventures end up being a grind to become the strongest across multiple worlds (I don't think I could be bothered to do that more than once, but it might be interesting to start at a higher level in a different setting because I practiced something to such a high level in my native 'verse).

That having been said. Feel free to not do that. You're the writer here.

 

[Path to Somewhere]

Thanks, that was a great reply. The only problem I having a "relative" superpower is just that there is no continuity. Is there any reason to have a multiversal character if his power fit to whatever setting, instead of just having a new character for any setting? Something for me to think on.

I think that's why I thought that "negative" superpowers might be best. If you had antimagic for example you'd be able to shut down wizards in one setting without giving you anything in a setting without magic.

 

[Sadim]

Thanks, that was a great reply.

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That's nice to hear.

The only problem I having a "relative" superpower is just that there is no continuity. Is there any reason to have a multiversal character if his power fit to whatever setting, instead of just having a new character for any setting? Something for me to think on.

Click to shrink...

That really depends on what kind of story you want to write and where your focus lies.
Character-focused stories would benefit from that superpower.
It would be a constant question of how that specific character would tackle a given world, if he only had powers that were very much available in that world.

Besides. Powers aren't the only things you can take with you if you consider a multiversal story.
'Items of Power' are very much a thing that could still be that 'out of context' or 'continuity' thing you're looking for in terms of plot.

'How would my MC tackle that Universe, without out of context powers?' would be a neat consideration you could make before actually throwing them into that world.
And the same goes for 'What would my MC actually take with him, if he knew that he could take as many items as he can carry from his current world to the next one'.

As long as there isn't any storage magic or inventory involved that decision would actually merit some real contemplation and add some real stakes, or complications if it turns out that some of those Items of Power don't work without their native magic or whatever backing them up.
AND there's also the fact to consider that useful Items of Power usually wouldn't be free. The prep stage for a jump could be used to dump pretty much all the money the MC earned in that world, so that's one regret less to consider when jumping... and one more hurdle to consider when collecting Items of Power.

The MC not landing in the world he aimed for would also have some serious consequences if he went with a completely different loadout that doesn't work anywhere near as well in that world as he anticipated it working in the world he aimed for.
(I'm assuming the MC is male, because that makes it easier for me to write the reply. It works just as well with any other sex / gender.)

That having been said.
Feel free to add some 'remnants' of the powers he acquired before, be it by 'flavoring' the powers he acquires or leaving him with a partial / weakened ability to use powers he acquired before.
Any weakening could be handwaved with the usual excuses for depowering a character after a jump, be it from there not being any native magic to support the abilities to the world actively resisting foreign influences like that.

It wouldn't really make any sense for any Knight training he did to disappear, so it also wouldn't make any sense for his powers to completely vanish if the powers themselves don't rely on the world providing the magic / energy to make them work. Internal reserves are key in that calculation.
If you're going with Marvel Sorcerers, then they wouldn't have access to the dimensions they draw their magic from if you threw them elsewhere.
Harry Potter Wizards? Magic is literally in their blood, so it would follow them wherever they go, even if they probably suffer from stunted magic recovery rate without the world feeding magic into their bodies. That would render them just as powerful as before, but make their spells that much more precious because they'd need that much longer to recover in-between uses, turning them from a mainstay / go-to power to something to be used sparingly.

That would pretty much be the way I'd approach it, if I had to make it engaging and tie different worlds together and make it so that previous journeys and adventures aren't meaningless.

EDIT: Missed a response.

I think that's why I thought that "negative" superpowers might be best. If you had antimagic for example you'd be able to shut down wizards in one setting without giving you anything in a setting without magic.

Click to shrink...

That could work too.
The thing is that 'negative' powers usually tend to be fairly ridiculous in their setting, to the degree that they could break the setting if they didn't have a significant downside or some form of limitation, like needing to touch whoever you're shutting down, or completely erasing your luck even as they erase all powers you come into contact with.

When adapting them for potentially multiversal use you also need to consider what it actually is that the negative superpowers disrupt.
Does it shut down just magic, psychic powers, Qi or esoteric energy manipulation as a whole?
Are there some powers that break the mold and are immune to being cancelled, despite fitting into the right category?

One example for that Moldbreaker would be Sorcerers in DnD.
They are born magical, it's a part of their very existence, so cancelling their magic would insta-kill them.
So does your power just cancel active magic? Or does it cancel all of it?
That would determine if you made your MC a bane to elemental beings, Sorcerers and a whole lot of other beings that could not survive without magic (and thus make your MC a person they would very much want dead asap) or if he's 'just' a bane to all wizards that can't think their way around someone who cancels active magic but not, say, inertia from a rock they yeeted at the MC with ridiculous amounts of kinetic magic (basically working like a bullet, except with magic instead of gunpowder).

With negative powers (better termed 'Negation Powers', for clarity) you need to be very sure about the limits and downsides.
At the very least it should negate your own ability to use the power you can negate if it's a passive power (making it a 'cannot be affected by magic, cannot use magic' kind of deal).

The continuity would be somewhat lacking with that sort of power, so... you might want to extend the ability to work in weird and unexpected ways if it's taken to a different world.
Like going from negating magic in Harry Potter to popping projections in Worm. Astral Projection is kind of magical and who knows how Shards work anyway?

 

[Biigoh]

Multiversal protagonists seem to be hard to write because superpowers seems so hard to balance. There needs to be a balance between between being powerful enough to thrive in all settings without being so overpowered in any one setting that writing a good story becomes tough.

For example a character who is your average Harry Potter wizard would be a mind controlling, teleporting god in Westeros, something that might get boring quickly. But if I made a character who was the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms and then dropped them into Brockton Bay to go toe-to-toe with Lung I'd get one very honourable puddle of metal and ash.

Should you stick to defensive powers? Something like Blank or Information Defense seems like it would be vital in some settings without being overpowered in any of them.

Or should you focus on a superpower that changes to fit its setting? Maybe something to give you access to biotics in Mass Effect but take it away for other settings.

And which superpowers would you need to thrive in 40k without automatically being overpowered in everything else?

Click to shrink...

The simple answer is "growth" type... ie something that can ramp up, either by stealing or copying the powers around you... or the bold choice of creating your own powerset.

So, while you start weak... you won't be weak, especially if you can develop your powerset.

 

[Path to Somewhere]

The simple answer is "growth" type... ie something that can ramp up, either by stealing or copying the powers around you... or the bold choice of creating your own powerset.

So, while you start weak... you won't be weak, especially if you can develop your powerset.

Click to shrink...

I think growth type powers are a trap. The problem is that they quicky get overpowered.

So, every time I see stories with systems or power stealing the same thing happens. Either:

1) The author realises that the power is OP and nerfs it or comes up with some reason why the character can't actually use it (like in those HP stories where the MC becomes Lord-of-all-houses and then immediately makes his lordship rings invisible and useless), or

2) There is just no challenge in the story so it just devolves into the MC grinding but without anything ever actually happening in the plot till the story just fizzles out.

I do think it's possible to write a good story with growth type powers, but it just seems way more difficult.

I think what I'm looking for is those powers that would be powerful in all settings without being overpowered in any specific setting. For example, a weapon mastery power. That would scale into any setting depending on it's native weapons without being overpowered in a medieval setting for example.

 

[Lorsïthrorung]

Closest I can think of is having a religious protagonist. Not in an abrihamic faith but rather esoteric concepts that are consistent within the multi-verse. Combined with being a 400lb wolfman who abuses his regeneration for immortality.

 

[Selias]

You mean to make a compelling story, or are you asking what the best potential power would be for a multiverse traveler? If it's the former, some kind of copying power.

 

[Soupervan]

I've seen light novels get around this pretty well by having the protaganist possessing a 'System' that implants them into a character each time, the tasker usually gaining no additional powers but those the person they possess has and gains only lasting while in that world. That and of course whatever knowledge and skills they learn, usually the only thing they're allowed to retain.

Even that last bit can be bypassed by having the System give the MC a mind reset between worlds though I never much cared for that when you can simply ramp up the danger rating of the worlds they travel to, going with more and more disatvantaged characters to possess and such.

 

[Oth]

Cheesetastic. Evolving powers such as Systems, ensuring that said singular powerset will never be made irrelevant no matter how far its host goes. From kicking slimes in the fields to killing God, evolving powers have you covered. Plus they tend to mutate into multipurpose multitools with endless utility.

For dimensional travellers on a budget? Defensive powers a la the Waifu Catalog's Defenses, for good reason. Nullifies conceptual "instant checkmate" effects such as hostile realities, extremely powerful pre/post/omnicogs, time travel assassinations and possibly even a pissy God-entity deciding to smite the uppity visitor .1 seconds into arrival. Stuff that has no logical way of defending against via normal means, and presumably does not have a friendly ROB or Author smoothing things over due to traveller initiating the entrance entirely on their own volition. Personal joke. The "playground Ultimate-Deathbeam-10000" rubbish that overpowered entities fling to totally delete targets from existence.

Opinion. Personally fond of a "personal Reality Marble" analogue to serve as an airlock between [subject]'s component reality and the new locale, either via converting entities passing into its boundary into compatible approximations and vice-versa, or maintaining a discreet planar "film" between [subject] and local environment to prevent catastrophic reactions. Also handily helps to isolate/reject overarching metaphysics on said [subject] unless configured so - so no Power Word: Die rubbish or Soul-Ripping.

Storywise? Universal capacity/potential of some sort, allowing said protagonist to have the possibility of picking up local tricks along the way, merging them into new and interesting combinations as they travel irregardless of differing energy systems and/or entire foundational physics. All the little trinkets and souvenirs coming in handy.