Random Superpower Generator
97 powers, and every one comes with its catch. Press the button for one at random — you get the power, what kind it is, and the limitation that makes it interesting to write, play or argue about. A power with no cost is a wish, not a character.
Press the button for a power.
97 powers in this list.
All 97 powers
| Power | Kind | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Flight | Movement | You are visible to everyone and cannot hide the direction you came from |
| Super speed | Movement | Friction, and the world moving too slowly to talk to |
| Teleportation | Movement | You can only go to places you have seen, and you arrive exactly as tired as you left |
| Phasing through walls | Movement | Falling through the floor if you lose concentration |
| Wall-crawling | Movement | Useless on glass, and terrifying on a ceiling |
| Water breathing | Movement | Drying out on land after a few hours |
| Super strength | Body | Everything ordinary breaks in your hands |
| Invulnerability | Body | You still feel every blow, you just do not break |
| Rapid healing | Body | Scars never form, so you have no record of your own life |
| Shape-shifting | Body | Holding a shape takes effort and you drift back when asleep |
| Size-changing | Body | Your mass stays the same, so small means dense and large means fragile |
| Stretching | Body | Cold makes you stiff and brittle |
| Perfect memory | Mind | You cannot forget anything, including the things you would pay to |
| Mind reading | Mind | You hear everything, unedited, all the time |
| Telepathic speech | Mind | Anyone you speak to can trace it back to you |
| Mind control | Mind | It leaves a residue the target eventually notices |
| Precognition | Mind | You see what will happen, not why, and not how to stop it |
| Photographic learning | Mind | Skills fade after a week unless you use them |
| Lie detection | Mind | Most people lie kindly, and now you know |
| Empathy at a distance | Mind | Other people's grief arrives without warning |
| Invisibility | Senses | You are also blind while invisible, since light passes through your eyes |
| Night vision | Senses | Daylight is painful |
| Super hearing | Senses | Cities are unbearable without earplugs |
| Super sight | Senses | You see the dirt on everything |
| X-ray vision | Senses | Nothing is solid any more, including the floor |
| Echolocation | Senses | You have to make a sound to see |
| Fire control | Elements | You are not fireproof |
| Ice control | Elements | Everything you touch frosts over |
| Lightning control | Elements | Electronics near you fail |
| Water control | Elements | Nothing to work with in a desert |
| Earth control | Elements | Useless above the ground floor |
| Wind control | Elements | It is very hard to be quiet |
| Plant control | Elements | Plants grow at plant speed |
| Weather control | Elements | The weather you take from here goes somewhere else |
| Light control | Elements | You cannot make darkness, only push light away |
| Shadow control | Elements | Nothing works at noon |
| Gravity control | Elements | Your own body is subject to it too |
| Magnetism | Elements | You cannot wear anything with a zip |
| Sound control | Elements | Silence is easy, speech is hard |
| Time stop | Time | Nothing moves, including air, so you cannot breathe for long |
| Time rewind | Time | You keep the memory of what you undid; nobody else does |
| Slow time | Time | You age at the slowed rate too |
| Seeing the past of an object | Time | Everything you touch shows you how it was made and by whom |
| Aging touch | Time | You cannot turn it off |
| Healing others | Life | You take on a fraction of whatever you heal |
| Talking to animals | Life | They are not interested in what you have to say |
| Talking to the dead | Life | They have not changed |
| Bringing objects to life | Life | They want things |
| Duplication | Life | Every copy is a full person with your memories and its own opinions |
| Immortality | Life | Everyone else is not |
| Luck control | Chance | It has to come from somewhere |
| Probability sense | Chance | You always know the odds and can never enjoy a bet again |
| Finding lost things | Chance | You also find things nobody wanted found |
| Always landing on your feet | Chance | Only your feet |
| Energy blasts | Force | You have to eat enormously to fuel them |
| Force fields | Force | Nothing gets out either, including sound |
| Telekinesis | Force | Fine control takes as much effort as brute force |
| Explosive touch | Force | Gloves, always |
| Cutting anything | Force | Including whatever you are standing on |
| Absorbing energy | Force | You have to release it somewhere |
| Reflecting attacks | Force | Only if you see them coming |
| Technopathy | Craft | Machines argue back |
| Perfect mimicry of voices | Craft | People trust you less each time they find out |
| Instant language | Craft | You lose your own accent |
| Perfect aim | Craft | Only with things you throw or fire, never with words |
| Building anything from a picture | Craft | The picture has to be accurate |
| Cooking anything perfectly | Craft | You can no longer enjoy other people's cooking |
| Disguise on touch | Craft | You have to touch the person |
| Animal form | Transformation | You keep the animal's instincts for an hour afterwards |
| Liquid form | Transformation | Containers become traps |
| Stone form | Transformation | You sink |
| Gas form | Transformation | A strong wind is a real problem |
| Living shadow | Transformation | You need a light source to exist |
| Metal skin | Transformation | Heavy, cold and conductive |
| Summoning small creatures | Summoning | They expect to be fed |
| Summoning weapons | Summoning | They are exactly as sharp as you imagined, which is not very |
| Summoning a door | Summoning | It opens onto the same room each time until you learn to change it |
| Calling weather | Summoning | It takes hours to arrive |
| Portal creation | Summoning | Both sides stay open |
| Nullifying other powers | Meta | Yours too, while you use it |
| Copying a power by touch | Meta | You lose the last one you copied |
| Power sensing | Meta | You are a beacon to anyone with the same sense |
| Turning powers off in a room | Meta | The room has to be a room |
| Borrowing a power for a minute | Meta | The owner loses it for that minute |
| Seeing a person's weakness | Meta | Everyone has one and now you see them all |
| Underwater speech | Odd | Only underwater |
| Perfect balance | Odd | Others notice how strange it looks |
| Never needing sleep | Odd | Dreams stop, and with them most new ideas |
| Never feeling cold | Odd | You also never notice frostbite |
| Talking to plants | Odd | They are slow |
| Turning things blue | Odd | Only blue |
| Knowing the time exactly | Odd | Every second of every meeting |
| Making things slightly heavier | Odd | Slightly |
| Instant sleep for others | Odd | Not for you |
| Unbreakable bones | Odd | Everything around the bones still breaks |
| Growing hair at will | Odd | It does not retract |
| Perfect pitch for danger | Odd | You hear it, not where it is from |
The catch is not a rule — it is a suggestion for what makes the power cost something. Swap it, ignore it, or invent a worse one; the point is that the interesting question about any power is what it takes from you.
How this list was built
Every power has a catch, because that is where the story is. A list of powers is a wish list. A power with a cost is a character: someone who can read minds and cannot stop, someone who heals others and keeps a fraction of every wound. The catch column took longer to write than the powers and is the reason to use this page over any other.
No characters, no franchises. None of these powers is described by reference to a comic, a film or a game, and none is named as belonging to anyone. They are the plain powers, which are older than any franchise and belong to nobody.
The odd ones are on purpose. Turning things blue, knowing the exact time, making things slightly heavier — useless powers are a genre of their own, and for a writing prompt or a party game they are often funnier and harder to use well than flight.
Kinds are for filtering, not for ranking. Movement, body, mind, senses, elements, time, life, chance, force, craft, transformation, summoning, meta and odd. Pick from one kind for a themed cast, or from all of them for a random one.
Common questions
How many superpowers does this pick from?
97, across fourteen kinds. All of them are in the table on this page with their catch.
Can I use these for a character, a game or a story?
That is what they are for. The catch is the part to keep: it turns a power into a problem, and problems are what stories and games run on.
Why are the catches so harsh?
Because an unlimited power is boring to write and impossible to balance. Every catch here is meant to be worked around, and working around it is the interesting part.
Why are there no comic book characters?
Because the characters belong to their publishers and the powers do not. This page lists the powers, which are older than any comic and free for anyone to use.
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