Hey, can I ask what everyone's favorite super hero type characters are...

Hey, can I ask what everyone's favorite super hero type characters are? I'm trying to start a new supers based game and want a good jumping off point.

Feel free to chime in with your favorite power, most overused power, and best tone for a super-powered game.

Other urls found in this thread:

webmshare.com/azRLM
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

self bump

Ultimate Captain America and Spider-man tier strength, endurance, and ability. Never been a big fan of fliers, controllers, or blasters.

yeah flying can give a bit to much utility. I fucking love ultimate captain america. good choice.

favorite power: unrestricted telekinesis. À la Akira or Chronicle.
most overused: any "control over X" power.
best tone: Overburdened by the responsibility of power. You're vastly powerful but your best still just isn't good enough to save everyone.
Dreaming of getting a PC to get PTSD and another to get more and more reckless until he becomes a greater threat than the villains he keeps punching through populated city streets.

>Favorite Superhero-type characters
Thinkers, gadgeteers, etc. Underdogs who fight much more powerful villains/heros using mainly their wits. Skitter, Pulp-y Batman. Basically a hero who wins with prep time where you actually get to see the prep time, as opposed to Mary Sue "he's the smartest" Batman.

>Favorite Power
Anything interesting and nuanced.

>Most Overused Power
Punching things. I could say "Superstrength/Flying Brick" but its really Punching Things. It annoys me how so many superpowers boil down to "good at punching things". The avengers line up? One is good at punching things and throws a shield, one is big, green and good at punching things, one guy punches things and sometimes shoots lightning, one shoots lasers and punches things in suit of armour, one punches things while also being a woman, and one punches things with a bow.

I get that you need visual powers for a visual medium, but BNHA manages to have a bunch of people with superpowers without devolving into DBZ.

>Best tone for a superhero game
Thriller/Horror.Villains should be scary or dangerous. Although this depends on your players, some might want some schlocky Silver Age stuff fighting Apes on the Moon.

Solid choices all, I fucking hate control over whatever powers. And strong TK is always a fun rout. Snaping the necks of goons with TK is my favorite way to fuck up jobbers.

I like that range of power because it's enough that you don't need Plot Armor to be useful but still have to think your way around most supervillain fights.

Punching things is overused but it taps into probably the most common power fantasy so I tend to let it slide, it's overused as hell though.

I love scary villins, Dr. Doom, Darkside, Robot from Invincible all come to mind. The smater the villain the bigger the threat.

Yeah it's not a ground level punching thugs in back alleys deal, but you are't lifting planets and doing ridiculous crap like that. Spider-man is popular for a reason and his power level is probably a big part of that.

Reminder that the best villains are jealous autists.

I'm with you guys with telekinesis. I've always wanted to write a villain who uses telekinesis, since it really is just directed kinetic energy, to manipulate biochemistry. The vast majority of biochemical reactions that occur within cells are a result of Brownian motion or signal cascades. Provided the telekine's "awareness" was finely tuned enough and they had the proper knowledge, they could consciously manage their own bodily function: direct protein use and function, control the cell cycle, repair their own DNA damage and prevent cancer/aging, etc. The could become the perfect being.

speedster / slut

Dr Doom is a great supervillain. He's pretty much the supervillainiest supervillain

Favorite are water controllers and psychics.

Do you read "Super Powereds" by Drew Hayes? there is a guy who has control over his body down to the molecular level. What he does is a lot like what you are describing, it's a fun powerful ability.

Psychics like they read thoughts? Or psychic like they can see the future?

The latter are fortunate tellers.

Never heard of it before; sounds cool. I just saw/read Akira and thought, "hey yeah that makes sense, depending on what telekinesis really is." So provided it is just "unrestricted kinetic energy" that can be applied wherever the user has awareness, they should have full control of their own biology/chemistry. They could even mutate themselves if they so desired, or do any of this stuff to someone else.

The one responsible dude with enough discipline to rally a bunch of weirdos into a working team. Best when they don't even really have a superpower, they're just better skilled and slightly more superhuman at most, e.g. Captain America

>Best tone for a superhero game
Space opera. Just fucking give up on any pretense of it being realistic or modern day, and enter a universe where ray guns and psychics and celestial robots are expected.

I don't think that he can do it to anyone else, his power is focused on his own body. He does do some mutation like things at times. bone armor eating carbon and other minerals to make his body super strong and resistant to damage. Also he did this awesome thing where he turned his blood into a kind of water saw to cut through someone's armor and weapons.

>favorite super hero type characters
1.Flying bricks
2.Super Genius
3.Animal/insect themed hero
4.Non powered costumed crime fighter
5.Matter manipulation
6.Ghostly/Un-dead heroes
7.Martial artist hero
8. Cosmic Hero
9.Mage Hero
10.Winged Hero
Also is this a supers thread?

That sounds like a fun game, I was thinking about something more grounded, not a street level game but not 4 colors either.

I love the guy with social engenering strong enough to rally a bunch of misfits into being his goons. The party always needs a face.

fuck yeah it's a supers thread!

agility based heroes like spidey are my favorite, bonus points if they have a novel way of moving.

Like others said, flying is kinda dumb. It feels like they can escape whenever they need to, and they never use it to their advantage against nonflyers

>favorite power
Super intelligence because of it's sheer flexibility and potential.
>most overused power
Can't really think of any power I would describe as overused for me it all depends on how the power is used (see Uvogin vs the shadow beasts for example)
>best tone for a super powered campaign campaign
Four colored adventures featuring a colorful cast of villains to fight and a pervasive sense of Wonder and excitement to the setting. I also always wanted to play a crisis crossover themed game. Also, a cyberpunk themed super hero game could be cool.

>flying is kinda dumb. It feels like they can escape whenever they need to, and they never use it to their advantage against nonflyers
Not really a flying character could have difficulty moving around if he was in an enclosed area like a room.

...

depends how big of a room. If it's a warehouse, there's no reason not to be out of punching range. How many superhero fights take place in an office building, and don't end with the combatants crashing through the walls into the street?

In a contemporary setting setting most mooks will be carrying guns and a lot of villains will take advantage of the environment in some way (doc octopus for example) plus if you are a close range fighter you might want to stay close to your opponent.

I like it when supers have non-combat applications for their powers.

>Can control insects
>Stop bee colony collapse by helping researchers understand what causes it
>Import exotic spiders, make them weave high-strength silk cloth, and sell the cloth for huge profits

>insects
Oops, sorry--I meant "arthropods".

This nigga

I want to play a Fire Punch knockoff.

Mumen Rider for life!

>favorite super hero type characters are
what does that even mean?

I don't know what this is but it looks cool as hell.

Well do you like brawlers like Hell boy, Wolverine, or the Thing? Or do you like blasters like Cyclops? What about sneaky guys like Batman? Something tells me you are a fan of gritty sad sacks like Spawn. Tell me I'm wrong.

Dude with regeneration is set on fire by a dude whose fire never goes out until the victim dies. Since the dude is constantly regenerating, he's permanently on fire. Series starts out edgy, but gets fucking amazing when the MC decides to be a hero.

>hating on Spawn

Pleb taste. Negative emotional themes are under-utilized in characters and their arcs. It's a shame it went so far off the rails into wank though.

I'm tired of people with lasers/beams that are just force. If you're gonna give your superhero/villain energy beams, be willing to show the effects of it.

pic unrelated

huh, I like them all I guess. I mean you can't have a superhero world without them. Maybe its easier to tell you what I don't like. I don't like superheroes that are suppose to be the best. Like Superman, Wonder Woman, Manhunter, Flash, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, Phoenix, those truly world wrecking heroes aren't my style. Wolverine is kinda bullshit too now that I think about it really well. My favorite heroes are Spiderman, Punisher, and Batman. Does that make sense to you? Not sure if I'm answering your question with this but I hope so.

He's a guy with incredibly fast regeneration who can regrow severed limbs in a matter of seconds and survive without food or water indefinitely. He lived in a village, feeding everyone with his own flesh, until one day some soldiers discovered that the villagers were engaging in cannibalism and massacred everyone with magic flames that burn until their target dies. After rolling around on the ground screaming for years on end, he gets up, still burning, and marches off to get his revenge.

He ends up freeing a bunch of slaves who start a religion worshipping him, as seen in that pic.

>Favorite
TK
>Most overused
Brick
>Best tone
Pulp

>favorite power
Probably super strength and toughness (they're basically always together, so let's count them as one). They're easy to envision, and they're not quite as open-ended as many others, making it easier to keep the arc of the character more grounded.
>most overused power
I wouldn't say it's exactly overused, but super intelligence. Whether it be Tony Stark or Batman, they tend to wind up being uncontrollable wanky, and often require the other characters be portrayed as total morons to make the guy with the smarts seem smart.
>best tone
I'm sure someone will call me a fag, but I prefer a slightly gritty iron age tone. Most of my supers settings tend to feature a USSR that never fell due to (insert super science reason here) and a lot of covert bullshit for the supers to be involved in; the larger than life supers that save the world tend to be propaganda pieces, even if they do actually sometimes save the world.

Love this answer, overpowered hero's are boring as fuck. Spiderman level supers are my favorite too.

I'm a fan of really vague elemental powers that get better the more you master them. Maybe you can produce and move water? Starts out really lame, right? You can get lucky and maybe electrocute a guy or put out a fire. Then you can pressurise it and use it to fight and cut. But when you start thinking about what water is capable of you realise it's really dense and impossible to compress. Makes great armor and shields. Use it to catch an out of control car, or sunder bullets. Use it to auto-drown people, or float yourself to unreachable places. Create clouds of mist to obscure yourself. The only limits are your creativity and your ever increasing control.

I love elemental powers, but my biggest grip with them is
Do they manipulate existing elements or create them out of thin air?
If they create it out of thin air...why? If they manipulate it, how bullshit can it get? Can the water manipulator control what we normally call water or literally hydrogen particles? If so, can he manipulate the air, the blood, the different liquids inside your body like the stomach? Can the manipulator expand the element of choice? Can he extract the water out of a glass and make a tidal wave with it? Or does he need high quantities of water to be able to use his powers? Just what are the limits of the powers? Can the water manipulator control Ice or is that reserved to an Ice manipulator?

The more I think the less feasible I enjoy the power, either it starts to seem like a bullshit open ended power, or way too restricted to be enjoyable. Do you think about this stuff as well or is it just me?

No of course. It's called the one exception rule. You must suspend your disbelief in order to accept that the superpower exists, but further explanation actually degrades that suspension.

What about actual element manipulation? What if you could use your mind to manipulate, like, cesium?

This sounds like a cool setting.

>Batman
>Punisher
>Not supposed to be the best

If you have full control of cesium, can you replicate it endlessly? I imagine you could cause a nuclear holocaust with it since contact with water makes it explode.

I love me some henshin heroes.

>Favorite power
Super strength, sweet, simple and oh so satisfying. Also durability when it's a major focus.

>Most overused power
Fire or energy based powers. I never like when a hero is "aim hand, shoot stuff" and nothing more than that, it's especially egregious in western comics, where blaster heroes do nothing but shoot lasers, no variety in their attack methods, and shonen battle mangas have spoiled me on using super powers
>Best tone
I think an overall light tone, but dips into some serious moments when 'arcs' start to escalate, but it should never get too dark or too serious, or stay in the serious places for too long. Also an air of triumph, so the heroes really feel super.

kamen rider heroes are great
not much of a fan of power rangers

I like Plastic Man for the possibilities, and making the player think. But for one player in a group, it's too powerful. It would need to have a usage drawback like a stun effect after a few turns of use, and weight/ intensity limits.

I think flying could be great if it's like, the user only power. I've been thinking of how I could make a super hero who only has flying as a power and make him interesting, cause I wanna go that Rocketman or Steamboy route

The awfully generic title always drove me away.

It's as if LotR had been called "Short Person on a Quest".

I like super sentai for the team aspect, silly posing and giant robots, but I agree, Kamen Riders are more entertaining to me.

Flying logically requires the user to have a higher than average resistance otherwise your skin would melt and you wouldn't be able to breath while flying.

So flying as your only power would be kinda useless I think. You need Flying+Hardened Skin as a minimum requirement, specially if you want to become some sort of rocket man. Either flying+hard skin, or flying+personal force field can work.

After that there are plenty of stuff you can do with your power, from using yourself as meteor strikes to just grab opponents and throw them around, or a flier using weapons.

I like the different sentai vehicles and weapons they get, and yeah the teamwork is cool, but you can't really transfer well the mecha part into tabletop

You're going to find fans of all different types, so I'm not sure if you're going to find a consensus or anything.
Though I do have one major thing, if super powers were a recent thing in setting, IE they weren't around before but by some development they come about, I like super powers being used for more than just fighting. Aberrant is the game that comes to mind, with project utopia getting rid of major diseases, halting or fixing several environmental problems and so on. Of course that shouldn't just be easy, but show that heroes do more than just beat up bad guys. Like at least a clean up crew after major fights would be cool
Again though, I'm sure there are people out there who utterly despise that sort of thing.

>Favorite
Energy absorption/controlled re-release
>Overused
Meta-wise? Insane durability
Otherwise, probably super-strength
>Best tone
Upbeat. A friendly atmosphere fits the inherent campiness of super hero themes better, and it also lends more weight when you want to have serious/dark moments for drama.

>Flying logically requires the user to have a higher than average resistance otherwise your skin would melt and you wouldn't be able to breath while flying.
Why? Birds manage to fly without any of these things happening to them its actually all about the speed, your average flyer will have most of the same problems as the average speedster plus the problems associated with high altitude.

pretty much this, but the thing I love most is when heroes are smart with their abilities. Like they'll couple super-strength with using big guns or heavy armor that normal people wouldn't be able to get away with. They keep some gadgets on hand for just in case things don't cut it, and in general bolster or supplement their existing powers with other things.

For starters birds don't have noses, and they have wings to reduce air resistance, feathers to protect their skin, birds don't really fly that fast either as all they do is use their wings to reach higher altitudes and then just glide. You are not gonna hurt anyone gliding in a city. That one falcon from the Himalayas, requires well..an Himalaya mountain to reach bullet speed while bulleting down.

Or make guns as equally non-lethal.

I played a character where the faster she flew the tougher she got, dive bombing guys was absolutely a thing. Hero name: The Flying Brick.


Peregrine falcons only reach around 200mph during dives, and they've got special eyelids and nostrils to see and breathe at those speeds.

Melting, though, is only really a concern at ICBM or re-entry speeds where you're measuring velocity in miles per second. At that point you're overlapping into speedster territory in addition to flight.

I think flying plus a very simple personal field could be a good set. A field that doesn't make you invincible, but gives you resistance while flying and a bit of durability

>Flying bricks
>Speedsters
>Gunslingers
>Psychics
>Element users
>Beastmen
>90's edgelords with guns and blades
>Super martial artists
>Sentai/Transforming hero
>Cyborgs
>Rubber body
>Super geniuses using crazy ass gadgets
>Heroes of divine origin like reincarnations or deity parents
>Artifact wielders
>Aliens
>Wizards

Fucking hell, I forgot how cool superhero universes are. Modern fantasy where anything can happen.

>Favorite power
Super strength
>Most overused power
Power negation
>Tone
I like my heroes bright and loveable, with a generally good society who cheers them on. But I like villains to be disgusting edgelords, sadists, terrorists, and monsters.

Marvel style universes where everyone is a prick just makes me apathetic.

>I get that you need visual powers for a visual medium, but BNHA manages to have a bunch of people with superpowers without devolving into DBZ.

But everyone in BNHA seems to get super durability in addition to whatever else their power is. It would be a lot harder to fight the punchy guys with your cleverer power if you don't get to survive being thrown through a wall or whatever.

Chiming in here, one of the more interesting examples I’ve seen is immunity to a specific type of conventional element. I remember reading a webcomic once where the villain was completely fireproof and had turned himself into a walking, repeatable firebomb vía a suicide vest of Molotov’s.

That’s basically what the Green Lanterns use to fly. Every Lantern is taught to create a construct field that automatically purges waste from the surrounding area and traps enough oxygen that they can comfortably breathe while they travel in it.

>your favorite power
Super strength when it's used creatively.

>most overused power
Super strength when it isn't used creatively.

>best tone for a super-powered game
Fighting against cartoonishly evil communist nazis in some indeterminate time between the 20s and 50s.

Thanks man.

>I wouldn't say it's exactly overused, but super intelligence. Whether it be Tony Stark or Batman, they tend to wind up being uncontrollable wanky, and often require the other characters be portrayed as total morons to make the guy with the smarts seem smart.
Super intelligence is just a power fantasy for people who complain that punching people good is a power fantasy. There's right ways to do it, but it's really hard to do well compared to how common it is

>self-harm scars on thighs.
Thot detected

>those scars
Where art joy?

True. It's still shonen animu. You can't have people getting splattered whenever someone with superstrength flicks them. Although it would be interesting to see a villain made out of steel fighting fighting a hero with a power like teleportation or structural thinking.

Worm kinda ruined other superhero settings for me. Now I'm always hoping they're a rationalist thriller about strategy defeating powers and I'm always disappointed when none of them live up to the impossible standard in my head.

Okay opinion time
Calling out attack names, or no?

Tetsux4 made short work of the poison boy

I like the "soldier-turned-superhero" type of character. It can fit in a darker world or a lighthearted one, too.

I'm a huge fan of invisibility too. It's really powerful but isn't completely broken and can be tweaked to be weak to different things if necessary.

Only for specific moves, not every single fucking thing they do. Pretty much no for western superheroes though, because western superheroes don't have that history of incredibly dramatic shouting that lets stuff like shonen get away with it.

webmshare.com/azRLM
I feel like if I ever get to play a super hero themed game I'll go super dramatic and have multiple finisher moves.

I sort of like wackiness and surrealism. Also, psychopomps are very interesting.

>Reed Richards
>no sense of right and wrong

>Calling out attack names, or no?
Hard no unless they are incorporating it into a conversation or statement in progress.
>Acceptable Enthusiasm:
"You resisted my attack but can you withstand my... OMEGA PELVIC THRUST!"

>Generally Unacceptable Nonsense:
*mixes Ovaltine* "STIRRING ACTION POWER!"

Any universe where it it is not considered radically bizarre for anyone to shout out what they are currently doing damn well better have villains that can be thwarted by fruit-based confections.

that sounds INCREDIBLY painful

More like self-HARM, amirite? Harr harr harr.

My OC donut steal power:

Each punch/kick leaves a crosshair on the target that detonates after a delay; the power of the detonation is a multiplication of the first strike. The longer the delay, the higher multiplication.

I like light-based powers. My next character's going to be based on pic related... but as a butler. Wish me luck teegee

You mean like that one guy from that one greentext about that one game in a freeform RP?

(Squid Guy from The Legend of Eduardo)

During a particularly fun superhero LARP (it was about as gay as it sounds), one of the girls in our group managed to somehow become both a speedster and also get elastic powers a la Reed Richards.

It was the most OP bullshit I'd ever seen. I heavily suspect she was flirting with the mod at the time because no way in hell would anyone else approve of this nonsense for any other reason.

>While sitting around our table to roleplay having a meeting, she'd run around the group eating energy bars, fixing people's hair and costumes, running out of sight then back, and stretching over people to grab papers and pens and stuff and just generally acting autistic
>She did this to create the illusion that she was so fast that she was doing this all in mere seconds while we were talking at our meetings

While I appreciate her efforts in attempting to immerse ourselves in her situation, and while the gimmick has potential to be an amusing diversion, at the end of the day, fuck you, that shit's too OP, tone it down.

I like heroes who due to their powers are changed physically and mentally, their powers make them out to be monsters but the hero still has a good heart and good intentions even if he looks monstrous.

As for powers I'm a real fan of bio-manipulation which is basically where you can enhance and change your flesh in order to suit your needs. So for example you're trying to pull your car uphill because your house is right there so you enhance the muscles in your legs and arms while also strengthening the joints of your arms so that you can pull the car up the hill. Could even remove your shoes and manipulate your toes into being able to literally grip into the ground to hold you steady as you pull the car up.

Stuff like is cool to me because I don't feel like they're a lot of heroes with these abilities mostly villains or monsters have that.

Most body manipulation powers are used by villains, probably because of some thought process of changing flesh and altering your body in unnatural ways I'd seen as 'villainous'

I posted this elsewhere but my favorite consept was a dude named bean.

Bean had the power of altering luck. He was a low-superhuman physique, but things just seemed to miss him. He was also incredibly lucky, hitting things that dealt more damage, dodging the best marksman in the world, etc.

Luck manipulation is such a cool power.

...

Worm also sticks to arbitrary durability/reflex conventions in some places. I tend to sort of drone it out and not care about that stuff any more.

The best type of superhero story is a bunch of villains and morally questionable rogues from Z-list to D-list taking on insane jobs that are barely within their capabilities while being bossed around by illegal government black-ops, incredibly rich sociopaths, A-list supervillains or some massive crossover threat that leaves them the only people who even have a chance.

UUUU

I like those really tough to kill types
For example Deadpool