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okay, so! Here's something I'd like some input on. I've been working on the power set of my main OC, whom I'm calling Panacea here after a name I've used for her in some Aberrant projects, and I have been seriously frustrated by an inabiltiy to have it all make sense or work for me.

So I'd like to see if anyone has opinions on the problem as a whole, and see what you might think of some of my ideas I've been working on to figure it out.

The problem is simple; I haven’t been able to figure out a power set that isn’t too big or over-complicated that covers the sort of things that sounds the most fun to do.

Specifically, I generally focused earlier on her having a Kirby-esque power copy mechanic (described as incorporation a bit further down here) or a transmutation power inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist’s alchemy and Homestuck’s alchemizing system. Lately, though, I’ve been focusing on her potentially having stretchy/elastic powers in the style of One Piece or Ms Marvel, and/or energy construct powers that she can morph around to do basically the same thing and also shoot lasers or something.

So that’s a lot, and I don’t know how to fit it all, or even if I can stand the IDEA of cutting any of it. So, here’s a few possible solutions or power concepts I’ve been thinking about recently, and I want to see if anyone finds them interesting or workable.

In this long-standing idea, she’s had two prominent powers. The first one, and arguably the biggest pain in the neck (and the one I’m considering not being something she can naturally do, but uses a magical item to do it) is transmutation, in the style of Fullmetal Alchemist.

This is the power to transform materials and objects around her into new forms, turning a pile of lumber into a fully functional house or a big stick to whack things with, changing a street sign to say something playfully mocking about local authority figures, create a door in the middle of a hallway. She can apply this gradually to craft or mold things with her bare hands, doing any sort of crafting with (forging, sculpting, metalworking, and so on) just by messing around with it and speed it up.

Most often I’ve considered doing away with this but I just can’t let go of the funny image with the street signs, so I’m not really sure what to do about that, but I keep leaning on the idea that its not a native power, but instead an ability she’s picked up through her OTHER big power that I love but has been hard to figure out.

Briefly, she has recently had a bit with Steven Universe-inspired ideas; specifically Steven’s to float and make energy constructs, usually by applying his state of mind and mood to his powers; this is the energy construct stuff I mentioned above! Its a lot more limited than, say, Green Lantern stuff. She can generate as much as she likes, but the constructs are somewhat fragile and she usually has to physically mold them into shape, or distill them from her body, and it DOES hurt her if they are damaged as if it was her own body (because it sort of IS).

But the big thing that is at the core of her vibe, and the thing I’ve struggled most to figure out, is her primary power or at least what I focus on most.

So; her main power for a while has been incorporation; a Kirby-inspired power that allows her to fuse her body with objects or entities, or absorbing them; either way, taking on their traits and potentially applying them to herself or objects to create magical items and grant herself new abilities based on the situation, context and what sounds like fun, but usually with a 'discard and draw' gimmick, losing access to some of her other abilities and forcing her to commit to her new transformation, dealing with the negative side effects (similar to the original Ben 10 series where he would dial up an unsuitable alien and try to figure out how to make it work).

This does not harm objects or entities, but while they are absorbed she can manifest any power, skill or physical trait (body parts, features like claws or water breathing, ect.) they have, allowing for a form of shapeshifting by channeling them. With objects, she can draw upon their basic functions or conceptual depictions of their functions in a similar way, and transform herself to gain new abilities by combining any trait or function that are possessed things she has incorporated. They are all part of a stockpile she can access and transform herself to combine into radical new abilities at any time.

She can eject any assimilated object and entity she has incorporated, which does not harm them. She can modify them while they are assimilated by applying any trait or function in her stockpile, and can even merge them into a new form, creating new objects with just about any ability or power in her stockpile at the time.

This particular aspect of her abilities is based on Homestuck’s alchemizing system. She can combine these objects into a form combining their capabilities and traits, or apply the thematic functions and super-charge them with magic, making metaphors real and granting them new abilities based on creative interpretations of their functions. (She could take a gun and merge it with a bat and produce a big stick covered in little barrels that, when she hits something with it, will send them firing off in a specific direction like a bullet, based on how a gun shoots bullets and applying that on a conceptual level to a bat hitting stuff.) These items usually revert to their original forms after a few hours, but she can invest a tiring amount of power into them to make these permanent.

A similar mechanic allows her to modify herself, granting her completely new powers or capabilities instead of making an item that does this. She can normally only alter herself with a single such transformation; she can’t stockpile multiple abilities at once, though she can combine multiple powers that are somewhat similar, but altering it in any way will force her to revert to her previous form and lose those abilities and then reassemble them (not an easy thing to do, especially in a fight). Done right, this gives her a lot of flexibility, but it makes her heavily reliant on useful resources or things to work with.

The stockpile gradually empties itself, ‘digesting’ these traits to sustain her magical body. Without doing this frequently she will sicken and potentially even die from a form of starvation.

So, that’s the basic idea of her incorporation gimmick. So here’s a few ideas I’ve explored to see how it actually figures into her power set.

INCORPORATION FROM ITEM

In this take, her incorporation powers are NOT actually natural to her, or an outgrowth of her basic abilities. It’s instead coming from a magical item of some sort, perhaps with liminal or boundary-erosion powers that she’s somehow accidentally fused with, giving her its abilities but not something she can always use consistently or really understands.

In this take (possibly combined with some of the other ideas I’m exploring here, DO tell if they seem more interesting with this one), her other powers such as reshaping/elasticity and the like are her native abilities, or applications of a broader power unrelated to this artifact’s effects on her.

It being perhaps less used in favor of her other abilities is the result that she’s relatively new to it, and while its given her amazing new possibilities and allowed her to constantly reinvent herself and do all sorts of fun things, she doesn’t really understand it and its effects can be physically dangerous for her; its OUTSIDE her, or she feels that way, and part of her character arcs can be her accepting that its a tool to be used, rather than something to fear.

The transmutation gimmicks would also be from this item, or a strange interplay of her native powers and it’s properties; if she can naturally reshape herself or apply her emotions and state of mind into various effects, she can combine that with property incorporation to transform OTHER things, not just herself.

And, from the complete opposite take on that paradigm…

INCORPORATION AS ONLY POWER

This is a very solid and fun power set, so here’s the big question: this feels a BIT much combined with my current focus on her mostly using elastic powers, or wandering around transmuting street signs into silly forms to mock authority figures when she’s up to mischief. It’s VERY broad and that keeps rubbing me the wrong way, and I keep thinking about if there’s a better way to handle it.

So one idea I’ve had for that is this: the incorporation is her only native power, or a specific technique of her normal power set, whatever that should be (I haven’t been able to figure it out at ALL), but she uses it to perform the other powers integral to her, but might require special circumstances to be able to do them. Her powers might not be stretching, but she can absorb an item that lets her do it as if she had it as a superpower.

She cannot retain the powers she generates with her incorporation, but she can indefinitely retain magical items, drawing upon them to use their powers, so when she finds a power combination she really likes, she can use it up to make a special resonance that she can use as a magical ingredient, investing it into an object and creating a new item with that power after a long time of working on it. Then, she can assimilate that object and use that power again, as much as she likes.

In that paradigm, her various powers are not native to her but ones she’s created with a lot of tinkering, experimenting and fine-tuning, and generally uses a lot. They still have the same broad limitations; she can ‘switch’ between them and combine their abilities to a limit degree, or apply new powers to their effects to mash them up, but she can’t completely escape her ‘one config at a time’ limit. And the more items she incorporates, the more stress it puts on her, sharply limiting how many other objects or entities she can incorporate to expand her powers.

So using this, her other abilities that don’t fit neatly into the basic incorporation come from items she’s made and really likes using. But, since at the moment I haven’t got much feedback on whether this really works or not, I’m exploring other options.

The biggest problem is this. If she can do this sort of thing, what’s the point of incorporating anything at all? Wouldn’t it be easier to just have those things be her basic power? And a big part of what makes powers like this so much fun is that their mechanisms offer additional applicaitons that don’t seem obvious; things like Magneto’s power over magnetism makes him almost impossibly strong becaue electromagnetism is a REALLY BIG DEAL. And I’m not sure exactly HOW she does this, or what the mechanics behind it are that would allow for unexpected applications; I have an idea that sensing energy and conceptual or emotional resonances in the patterns of all things around her (granting her a form of psychometry and limited sensing of people’s feelings) is a BIG part of her power but that’s about it.

—

That said, this is FAR from the only option I’ve had that felt interesting to do, or potentailly really fun, so I also tried to work them out and put them down here as well.

Here are several ideas that focus a bit more on how they intermingle with each other, or make them feel more fully realized and not a grab-bag of semi-random abilities.

GOTTA INCORPORATE TO DO ANYTHING ELSE

The biggest issue is the fear of incorporation being somewhat redundant; in a lot of my imagined fight scenes she doesn’t actually do it that much, without even getting into whether or not it would count as outside equipment in a big fighting tournament. So this one solves that issue with the various powers she has feeling redundant (or, possibly, running on a ‘discard and draw’ gimmick where she loses access to them when she adopts a new power) by requiring her to incorporate SOMETHING to use any of her abilities at all.

In this idea, her other powers (stretching/weaponized body reshaping) are innate, or applications of her basic power, whatever it might actually be. However she cannot really use them normally without using incorporation to adopt new traits or stop her magical energies from getting too static and calcifying, which makes her unable to use her powers. So she must incorporate SOMETHING to do anything else, and these usually influence her other powers in unexpected ways; incorporating earth or metal might let her create an outer shell of appropriate minerals from what she’s absorbed, for example.

This neatly solves the main problem of her various gimmicks becoming inconsequential by making them one and the same; she has to make use of them SOMEHOW, even if its just ‘eating’ the energy from being hit. She absorbs it, it powers her up, perhaps grants her a strange power up from the nature of that attack, and now she can fight.

SPIRIT FORM SHIFT

This brings up another idea for this I was quite excited for about a week back (as of this writing); her powers functioning as various ‘points’ on a spectrum she can shift between.

The logic goes like this; I’ve seen a few takes on stretchy characters where they can shift the solidity of their body from a normal human body to a more liquid form, with various stages making them super flexible but still normal density, and then can become outright elastic and stretchy, and finally all the way to being liquid or completely intangible.

This works something similarly. She can ‘shift’ her body into a form of energy or spirit, apparently converting herself into the neon teal/pink light she generates when powering up. At low levels, this lets her draw upon emotional or abstract energies and absorb them and empower her attacks or modify her nature similar to incorporation, but passively drawing upon others.

At the far end of it, she may become living energy, a ghostly form or intangible, able to possess things or the like; I haven’t had any ideas there that grabs my attention. But a little before this point, her body is clearly made of a glowy energy stuff at specific parts of her body where she is consciously doing this shift (arms for a punchy attack, for instance) and can freely reshape them however she wants; stretching her limbs out to grab stuff, expanding her fist for a huge cartoony punch, and other stretchy feats. This is also where the ideas of her making Steven Universe-style bubbles and energy constructs, which I’ve mused over a LOT, are applied; she can bud off bits of this transformed energy and expand it or reshape it, as it is still functionally her body and she can transform it, even if its a glowy bubble or something. Once seperated from her she can’t control it like she normally could, but she can mold it by moving it the right way like a fancy depiction of someone making a clay pot; by taking a bubble and spinning it out to make a handle and then squishing a bit of it to make a hard-hitting head, she can make a hammer.

(These constructs ARE basically bubbles; they can do a lot of damage but they will burst from any damage or if she’s channeling too much power to them.)

Just below THAT level of energy transformation, she can stretch in a more conventional way by reshaping her body without the glowy visual effect, though with the limit of being restricted by force and energy; to stretch out she must punch out with her arm and use that motion to extend herself, for instance. She can also do weird things like make herself functionally boneless and super flexible, wrapping herself up into a little ball to roll around.

A key point of this particular idea is that she can shift back and forth with any part of her body at any time, and do so REALLY fast, and she can use this to functionally shapeshift by turning a bit of her body to energy, reshaping it into the form she wants, and then returning to her base state. Boom, new form! (This is mostly aesthetic, if she’s not using incorporation.)

Her energy form is somewhat volatile and can burst or detonate; she can weaponize this by moving in such a way that the blasts are fired out where she wants, even if this IS literally blasting herself apart as a ranged attack or accident.

Finally, one idea I was considering is that the weird form of her energy/spirit extreme of the sliding scale erodes boundaries; this is possibly a way to handle her incorporation, by having her taking on the nature of things around her; this is a more passive form of incorporation, and less invasive, though she CANNOT control it. Once she’s in that state, like it or not, she WILL take on the traits, thoughts and feelings of others, and can use them in her abilities but they will influence her mind and thoughts, potentially overwhelming her.

This particular stage is also one possible way to handle her transmuting things; she can invest her power into substances (and living things, but only if they consciously allow her to do so) and reshape them in the same way she can alter herself. This allows her to freely reshape them and functionally transmute them, Fullmetal Alchemist style and even alter what they’re made of, though this is a lot more draining to do and she usually only does this if s he has plenty of resources or stockpile to draw upon.

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