Seemingly useless powers made useful

That's stupid and wouldn't even work unless there's something you're not telling us.

The whole point of duress is that it makes you look for ways to avoid what you fear. If he could be coerced into spilling the beans in the first place - even without knowing that the beans are, I might add - he can be coerced to flip the switch on his gibberish power.

No that this happened but. You, sir, are a monster.

The person OP is talking about is called Quentin Smedry from the Alcatraz Smedry books. Each member of the family has a seemingly unhelpful ability called a Talent (Quentin Smedry can only talk in gibberish for example, also he can't turn this off.), but these talents are actually quite useful depending on how you look at them (For example, as Quentin can ONLY speak in gibberish and nothing else, this means that anything you tell him is perfectly safe as even if he WAS giving away what you told him, no one would understand him enough to make the connection.)

Well hoowfully that fucker is literate.

I usually don't, but there are a few ways to create interesting superpowers:
First, you could split 'normal' powers into several weaker ones. For example, splitting "shooting huge lasers at enemies" into "shooting huge lasers at friends" and "redirecting lasers to enemies". With this method, you might want to decide whether or not you want the two powers to work together; the previous examples might need to be put on separate sides, but Exert Ten Times the Force Man and Strengthens Things He Touches Boy shouldn't be too powerful of a team.
Alternatively, you could just add quirks or conditions to powers. Flight, but only at night. Fire immunity, but for one fire per day. Regeneration, but you shrink when you lose mass.
Finally, you can just give people more weaker powers. Maybe, instead of just flying, you could have a hero who can resist blunt impacts and copy ammunition for weapons, and have him use bombs and body armor to rocket jump around. This also gives more opportunities for creativity without increasing their actual power level.

Why even bother telling him though? Why take the risk?

Because its not a risk.

Speak in, not write in gibberish?

It's pretty easy to turn minor powers into OP if you let them go conceptual and affect scope without limit.

Although your example
>speak in gibberish however he gained control of it, like an on off switch and became a great spy because he literally could not spill the beans if he wanted to once he turned on his power.
doesn't make sense: if he's in control, then torture can make him want to turn it off and talk.

>Or this other guy that was always late to everything, so he could also be late to any kind of injury and decide when he wanted to "arrive" to the pain or injury.
That on the other hand, is good example of going conceptual.

Easy, you can make anything that's happening to you happen to another, in addition to whatever you're trying to do them.

There are some limits, but workable.

Damn dude. That's cold.

>The campaign ended with me leading a cult of murder suicide assassins by pretending to be a god.
Were they dressed as Link?

Having the power to make people act unreasonably rude to you for no reason.
If you focus on a single person over an extended period of time, they'll probably try to beat you up.

You wanna torture some and expect them to write legibly? Most people lose coherent writing abilities after adrenaline dumps from scares or pain. Shock and internal withdrawal only make this worse. Thats why they torture you, get you to talk during as you can just shout things out to make it end, they wait some time for you to calm down, then have you put that shit into writing IF they even need that as most just record audio.

He needs to focus to turn it off. He also can just sit there and blab and blab and blab all day everyday so he won't be under the stress of keeping quiet.

This could possibly be used to get someone kicked out of somewhere, such as a respectable diner, etc.

>the power to shit yourself on command

Are you telling me you can't control when you shit? Are you literally incontinent?

>could only speak in gibberish however he gained control of it, like an on off switch and became a great spy because he literally could not spill the beans if he wanted to once he turned on his power.

Turn off your power, or we continue to electrocute your testicles.

>Or this other guy that was always late to everything, so he could also be late to any kind of injury and decide when he wanted to "arrive" to the pain or injury.

That's not a seemingly useless power, that's a power that's presented misleadingly so that it appears weak, until SHOCK HORROR it's actually retardedly powerful.

"I can change the colour of things."

"Sounds terrible."

"No, it means I can make myself invisible, or kill people by making them absorb all the radiation passing through them, or blind them, or create lasers or-"

"My body is made of rubber."

"Sounds terrible"

"I can literally jump off of the tallest man-made structure in the world and not be harmed by the fall."

There was a magic ring that unbalances things. That's the whole description: if something is in balance or equilibrium, it can unbalance it. There were some puzzle things in the dungeon we found it in, and we decided to keep it after that. First we realised you could trip people in fights. Then we realised that you could unbalance ANY system that was inbalance. An ecosystem, an endocrine system...

You are incapable of shitting yourself if you do not have enough material in your tank.
The superpower takes care of this problem.

Your index fingers are indestructible. JUST your index fingers can withstand any force.

Great. Now all i gotta do is punch finger first into peoples skulls and eyes. Maybe do that funny finger in the barrel of a shotgun bullshit.

>de-stabilize the fabric of reality
>profit?

AAAAAAAAH

So it's an entropy-maximizer and therefore an existential threat?

>attempt to destabilize reality
>it doesn't work
>find out i have to somehow make antimatter a thing again and in equal proportions to atoms in density and area to boot
>try it on a modern person
>nah their modern diet means their vital systems are all over the fucking place
>try it on politics and idealogies
>nope. Nothing.
>can't even make people fall over cause technically nothing on them is balanced as each limb has variations and the human stance isn't balanced either its just a bunch of minute self corrections 24/7 not to fall over
>can totally fuck up that perfectly spherical multibillion dollar silicon sphere though.

>sabotage of corporate mainframes
>make AI's go insane
>fuck up those little ball things that smack each other that people have on their desks

You can still fuck up any freestanding object, though.

Fucking up Newton's Cradles? Man, you're just a dick.

Wait. Are those balanced if the offset is being held back by the reinforcement and anchor points? Cause if you took those away they'd just topple themselves over. Maybe that tokyo tower with the big swinging ball though?
Shit. This actually gets complicated.
You ever see corporate mainframes? They're the most fucked up systems around and nothings organized for shit. Thats why they usually use an intranet with keywords and personal computers with individual storage.
I dunno about AI's though how can we say if they are or aren't balanced?
>those littl ball swingers on desks
You fucking monster.

Wait. If i make an equilateral triangle prism is that a balanced free standing object or one thats so stable it doesn't need to balance and therefore CAN'T fall over. I mean i'd understand if i stood it on a tip but just a flat face on a flat parallel surface?

>Fucking up Newton's Cradles? Man, you're just a dick.
>You fucking monster.

ALL WILL BOW BEFORE MY MIGHT, NEWTON'S POSTHUMOUS TEARS FUEL MY CRUSADE

So luffy?

>fuck up those little ball things that smack each other that people have on their desks
You must be stopped.

That dosent seem very balanced.

OFFICE ADMINS EVERYWHERE WILL LAMENT MY ARRIVAL

I'l have to pull out...my SECRET WEAPON!
Just try and stop me relegating my duties now!
MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!

I always really loved hair-growth and manipulation.

Good fun to be had by all

Two words to haunt you to the end of your days.

Hair vore.

Your finger might be indestructible but the rest of your hand isn't. If a bunch of buckshot hits your finger with no other venue of escape your indestructible finger is going to be jammed halfway up your destructible hand.

Whenever I'm playing I go out of my way to try to use such powers in novel and creative ways to make them useful, whether that's through using them in situations beyond their original intent or by creating synergy with them and other abilities at my disposal.

For example, there was one point where I was playing D&D 4e with some friends and since I was new to the game I decided to go with a recommendation and run a home brew race, the Vulshok, as an artificer and I picked up the Ironwrought quality for fun. The homebrew for Vulshok comes with an encounter ability that isn't really useless, but it's not exactly overwhelmingly powerful either. It's just an encounter with some ranged fire damage that scales with tier and that's about it.

Though it's ranged it was specifically described as a ranged attack the fluff says that the volley comes right out of your arm. So since I was running an unarmed build I would sometimes just run up to a larger enemy and call out that I attempted to shove my arm down their throat and fire it off while it was inside them and my GM would let me proc Inevitable strike with that for good measure.

It didn't always work out for me, but when it did it had a habit of making things explode in a cloud of gore, blood, shrapnel, and fire.

We also decided that my blood was bio-luminescent with that dude, due to the fact that he was an Ironwrought Vulshok . It was cool because it meant that all I needed was a glass flask and a blade to jew up a temporary torch. It wasn't so cool because it made it really hard to hide when I was bloodied.

THE INFERNAL CONTRAPTION FAILS TO SUCCUMB TO THE RING... BUT HOW?! THIS INFERNAL SORCERY IS BEING DOCUMENTED AND SENT TO YOUR SUPERVISOR AS WE SPEAK, COVER SHEET INCLUDED. YOUR OFFICE POLITICS ARE NO MATCH FOR MY CORPORATE ASS FONDLING, MIDDLE MANAGEMENT SCUM

Ewww

Peoples who's hair literally eats people. You're welcome for the mental scars.

Well, just target "The building and its supports". Or just tip over street signs, cars, and peoples coffee cups.
You could also ruin any video or traditional game you wanted.

If I was on /d/ that would just be another weird fetish to fap to

Nah. You finger would make a gas seal and the friction would keep it held the expand gasses would actually push against the skin which can't break and make the seal tight. The actual shot wouldn't go anywhere as pressure would prevent to much movement and since they're smaller than the bore by a good margin the gas would push forward past them, hit the block, and push back.
An essential aircushion effect would happen trapping the shot somewhere midway until the gas blows out somewhere. Assuming the breech is good is should blow the barrel first.
Believe it or not a frozen sausage can do the same shit minus some burns but we're talking indestructible.

Well, I learned something today.

Oh. I thought it meant eating hair

That was the power of someone from the Lord Darcy series, if I remember correctly. They were a cop or a government agent of some kind.

You were playing a Mirrodin game?