Thanks, that was a great reply.
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.
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.
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?
