Story-Breaker Power: Difference between revisions

* Entering [[Bullet Time]], [[Time Master|manipulating time in general]] or even [[Time Stands Still|stopping it entirely]]

* [[Flying Brick]], at least at higher levels of power

* [[Imagination-Based Superpower]]

* Mass [[Mind Control]]

** Wasn't the reason given that since [[Physical God|Alastor]] consumes massive amounts of energy, something the [[Big Bad]] had just flooded the city with, he now had another source of it other than his Flame Haze's.

** The Snake of the Festival is the God of ''Creation'', and ''he'' seems to have no problems showing off: infinite power, immunity to flame, [[Prehensile Hair]], and a sword that {{spoiler|causes anyone who tries blocking it to sustain heavy injuries (Blutsager)}}. Plus the whole "Creator" bit.

* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' has been suffering from this in recent seasons. During the timeskip between the second and third seasons, the main characters (who were already [[Person of Mass Destruction|People of Mass Destruction]] to start with) became obscenely powerful and had to have their powers nerfed in the third season by the use of [[Power Limiter]]s, extensive use of [[Anti-Magic]] fields and a half-hearted attempt to shift the focus over to the newer (and much weaker) characters, though ultimately the focus returned to the super-powerful main characters beating the crap out of people. The SSX Sound Stage and the ''ViVid'' manga solved this issue by completely switching focus to follow the new characters, but ''Force'' went the opposite direction by introducing villains with the ''even more'' broken power of ''complete immunity to all magic'', forcing the characters to essentially ditch their old powersets in favor of new weapons of [[Flawed Prototype|questionable reliability]].

** One cannot forget the new protagonist of Force, Tohma. He starts out rather basic, for this series anyway, but then {{spoiler|he becomes fully infected and is turned into a [[Divide by Zero|Zero Divider]], [[Cursed with Awesome|a person who can cause everyone around him to fall unconscious and possibly die, doing so completely subconsciously.]].}}

** As seen in the movies and video games, apparently Goku can absorb the energy of the spirit bomb to supplement his own strength. Though it might be [[Boring but Practical|more practical to throw it]] instead.

* ''[[Inuyasha]]'': Bakusaiga. It was introduced towards the end of the story just before the [[Final Battle]]. It was immediately lampshaded that the [[Big Bad]] didn't stand a chance against it, since it's capable of killing anything that merely comes into contact with anything it's cut and it can kill ''thousands'' with a single swing. As a result, the [[Big Bad]] immediately steals the sword owner's [[Morality Pet]] and traps her inside his body for most of the rest of the story. Characters even point out that this was done solely to prevent Bakusaiga from being used. When Sesshoumaru does finally rescue Rin and use the sword, Naraku's body is instantly destroyed, leaving the only threat left to be solved by Kagome making a wish.

* Sebastian Michaelis from ''[[Black Butler]]'' is a [[Genius Bruiser]] with [[Nigh Invulnerability]] who can also use [[Magic and Powers|magic]]. The true extent of his powers is unknown. For example, we don't know if he can [[Teleportation|teleport]] or if [[Super Speed|he's just that fast]], possibly with the aid of [[Time Stands Still|stopping time]] entirely. However it is, we can determine from other evidence that he does have some sort of [[Time Master|time powers]] among his many abilities. He solves numerous seemingly impossible problems with ease. Though, especially later on, the plot does provide him with some challenges, such as opponents who can fight on his level. The true factor that prevents him from solving everything is that he's acting as a tool for [[The Chessmaster|Ciel]], who wants his success to be because of his own efforts, as it won't be valuable otherwise. He doesn't know much more about Sebastian's abilities than we do, so Ciel isn't using Sebastian to his full effectiveness.

 

* [[Black Dude Dies First|Ambrose Chase]] from ''[[Planetary]]'' had concentration-based [[Reality Warper]] powers that allowed him to alter physics at will in a small radius around himself. Barring taking him completely by surprise (like a particular villain did by battling him in a universe that ran on [[Horror Tropes]] and using a bullet of [[Applied Phlebotinum]], hence the past tense), he was practically unkillable. {{spoiler|It turns out it didn't take; Chase used his power to freeze his own injury and trap himself in a pocket dimension until the others could extract and rescue him.}}

** The [[Big Bad]], Randall Dowling. His power allows him to [[Mind Virus|spread his own consciousness to minds around it]], basically screwing around with any parts of their memories at will, making people into [[Manchurian Agent]]s, or simply [[Hive Mind|turning other humans near him into more of himself]]. Notably, {{spoiler|he never even gets to ''use'' said power before the heroes drop him down a ravine, possibly because any conceivable combat scenario against him would involve the heroes having to fight enormous amounts of other people, provided they weren't ''already'' parts of him without being aware of it.}}

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* If you try making a [[Super Speed|super-speedster]] in a tabletop RPG like ''[[Champions]]'', you'll quickly discover that you have to do it by buying the abilities the super-speedster actually uses, not the abilities the comic claims he has, since the latter is just too powerful (and therefore too expensive).

** Worse, repeatedly casting the "Love's Pain" spell (someone the target loves takes damage, cannot be stopped) on a [[Mook]] who you have given [[Fake Memories]] of loving your enemy...

** Hypothetically, a well-prepared [[Dungeon Master]] can counter all of these by having equally hyped-up enemies with appropriate countermeasures in place. Unfortunately, this not only pits the DM's foresight against the collective ingenuity of the players, and is little more than shooting down any possible solution the players come up with other than "big epic battle", it also pits the DM's memory against the collective output of Wizards of the Coast... forgot to give your big bad dragon a countermeasure to ''shivering touch''? Ooops.

*** Really, this isn't that hard to do. Any spellcasting big bad you just state that he's always got one of the myriad scry fooling or blocking spells on his lair (heck, theres a standard magical item that makes him not scryable), stick a permanent anticipate teleport on his fortress in case of teleporting in, dump a bunch of magical traps of the "These go off if anyone bar me or my trusted minions is nearby" variety and have a contingent spell immunity up (say from the feat, or spell) that "Makes me immune to any spell effect that would incapacitate me". Plus have a silent Dimension Door or two memorised to jump away if all this fails.

Make your super powerful mage bad guy [[Genre Savvy]] and you're fine :)

* The ''[[Hero System]]'' rulebook puts stop-sign icons next to powers that have the potential to be Story Breakers, such as Danger Sense, Intangibility, Time Travel, or Summoning. The [[Game Master]] is urged to consider tightly limiting or outright disallowing them.

* Warp is extremely powerful in ''[[GURPS]]'', so much so that it is explicitly banned for players in the ''[[Dungeon Punk|Dungeon Fantasy]]'' books. The authors did eventually cave and add it in with the requirement that the player take a small Unusual Background named "Ha-''ha''! I Can Teleport!" and isn't able to improve it.

** There are rules for the Primarchs, but they can only be used in 5000 point or higher games. Said rules cause them to take up about one third of that total.

* The rulebooks for ''[[The Dresden Files (game)|The Dresden Files]]'' make suggestions on this front in two ways. In the section on building opposition, most of the guidelines are along the lines of taking your villain and giving him powers equal in cost to the [[Player Party]]'s. It suggests you create a group of antagonists instead, since as the party gets more powerful, the villain's powers would make them damn near impossible to fight effectively if the model was followed.<ref>One character having powers equal to three or four low-level characters is doable; one character having powers equal in cost to three or four high-level characters results in someone with huge magic potential, is impossible to hit, damn near impossible to harm even if you do hit'em, and will heal fast even if you somehow manage to harm them.</ref> It also suggests that Harry Dresden himself might be one, and gives suggestions for taking him out of the picture. Needless to say, Harry's margin comments are less than enthused about it.

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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Power]]