I frequently see questions related "powers" in fiction; what's good or bad, or how to develop sets or systems. I have my own solutions to these conundrums and while they won't work as is for most people, I think the GUIDELINES are easy to understand for wrangling your own speculative musings. What IS a Power System In simplest terms, a power system is an abstract pecking order. You can say that there are two power systems in the real world, wealth-based power and political or influence-based power.
I don't think I really need to explain much here... the more wealth and influence you have, the more freedom, assets, and societal control you can exert. If you THINK even a little bit... you can see the "magic" in how one tweet can make stupid shit happen. Pursuit of Power Consider the statement : the powerless wish for freedom, the powerful hunger for greater reach and more control. This is a storytelling trope that even if it isn't said out loud, there's some internal resonance with it. Having some unique stand-out ability is a pretty common desire. So, fantasy and science fantasy that make zeros into heroes are predictably POPULAR.
One only needs to note the success of the MCU movies to see the verity of that. Power and confidence can come from a lot of sources. In less exaggerated speculative fiction, it can be a simple desire for revenge and willingness to pay any cost in order to accomplish something. Such freedom from worldly concerns and consequences can give the saddest of sacks- sharp teeth and the ability to do the unthinkable. That's the thing. It's about gripping visceral story.
ALL protagonists have power. The power of CHOICE. Protagonists are (in general) forced to make hard choices. They often choose to do things we common readers and viewers would NEVER do. That's why we follow them. If we think of protagonists as toys, if you play too hard with them... they break.
So, if we want to give more room for dramatic consequence... what do we do? We pump the characters up. Let's take a successful franchise like John Wick. What's the power here? Essentially, the hero is this super sturdy mayhem monster able to kill with a paper-clip. His ability to endure continuous violence might as well be magic.
That's the thing, his power is purportedly just talent, training and heaps of get-the-F-out-of-my-way determination. While JW is near the top of power pecking order largely due to plot-armor, the show is always reminding you he is mortal as he grunts and groans through increasingly thorny situations. If there's anything to take away here, it's that you need to sell that your characters always have some limitation, that they CAN die or be torn down and vulnerable due to their stakes in the story world. If we go back to JW for a moment, one of the killing sprees is sparked simply from the villain killing his dog. Screw the house, you nuked the pet... I LIKED him... you are so F'ing going to die now.
Thus proving that you shouldn't trigger homicidally-tended assassins with large arsenals at their disposal. So, before we start flying and wearing a cape... just remember that a grounded story and motivation are what pull readers in. They might like all the "flights of fancy" but underneath we need heroes and heroines that have backstory, depth and actually give a crap about things. In other words... emotions and relatability. Standing Up the Stand Out Let's define "power" as it relates to a fictional character. A power is just some ability that can be used in some consequential way.
For writers, it's any ability capable of effecting the plot- and most importantly- the ability to create a PLOT HOLE. Since I bring it up, allow me to digress briefly on plot holes. When you start making up a story where powers are involved, plot holes should be one of your first concerns. For instance, the premise is a mystery whodunnit and you give the ability to read minds to the protagonist. If that person doesn't read the minds of everyone and know who committed the crime... I am here to tell you the reader is going to ask WHY.
So the number one caveat of all powers... do NOT introduce abilities that allow easy circumnavigation of story problems. This is why super-man can't see through lead... otherwise that ability would bypass all kinds of searching conundrums. Know the extant kinds of things your characters may face... having loophole powers hurts you because it destroys the ways for you to challenge your heroes. Back to powers. I want to stress that a power doesn't have to be magic or "super". It can be intuition, smarts and education.
Sherlock Holmes qualifies as a powered character because his sleuthing is almost magical to an extent due to what is essentially super-human observational skills. There is a whole range of "street level" power users. Daredevil ... he has super-human sensory ability backed up by intense martial training. The two things together in synergy allow him to do things an ordinary mortal could never do. Powers or not, he can still be cornered and swarmed. What I am trying to say here is don't overlook "mundane" abilities.
Being smart, beautiful, socially adept or insightful may have a bigger effect in the long run than some other exotic ability. This is DOUBLY TRUE of weaknesses... being powerful physically but socially awkward, being naive or easily manipulated and this sort of thing. So, when thinking about a power, think of it more in terms of what ways it can be used to advance a story. Let's take one I'm currently working on. Ethermancing... or the trope of teleportation... being able to pop from one place to another. The immediate plot hole this creates is it is VERY HARD to trap a person with this ability.
So, how do we limit it? The person has to be able to concentrate and it takes some five or ten seconds to prepare and do it. They need sufficient mana. They can only go places they've "marked" before. They need to be able to cast... so the cast shackles we just invented can stop them from teleporting. See what I did there?
It's a super powerful ability, so ways to stop and mitigate the power are essential in order to keep it balanced in the story world. For every minute you spend considering an ability for a hero, spend five on ways you can keep them from using it to circumnavigate plot consequential problems. Powers, Resources and Critical Thinking In story milieus where characters other than the "chosen ones" in world can have powers too, it's important to think in terms of origin. Where do the powers come from? One example of this is the idea of an X-gene in Marvel universe comics. The X-gene is what makes "mutants" in the marvel comics.
In the milieu, they make it clear that a significant portion of the human population have the gene. It's just that in rare cases, it results in a super-mutation of consequence. Done. No more explanation, you got an X-gene, and somehow that allows you to do super stuff. Awesome. What do you want?
They're comic books! As a writer, if I'm being honest, it's pretty weak and dumb... but how can I take a dump on my youth? I love Chris Claremont's X-Men damn you! AHHH AHHHHH! That's the thing. HEALTHY HEAPING DOSES OF A SELF DEPRECATION AND HUMILITY.
For all the muses, love your creation and invest in the ideas, but also be conscious enough to play devil's advocate. So, powers in your book milieus boil down to how ambitious you are in terms of what kinds of stories you think you will end up telling. In my Ring Realms universe I wanted to do EVERYTHING ... comic-like book cross-overs ... tech... magic... psionics... a "kitchen sink" universe as it's called. Such a thing requires a legendarium to track all the characters, histories, powers and explanations. Here's mine : Ring Realms Glossaries [A-C] Do you need this? No.
It is surprisingly easy to build your own reference in a spreadsheet application though. So, in my Ring Realms story power grows out of two things... heredity and magic... or the heredity to DO magic. Creatures that have magic have evolved the ability to metabolize 'psion'. Psion in turn allows the ability to channel and create conduits to accumulate more of this energy. Psion can be used to create mana (magic)... To limit magic I added interactions with physical stamina, neuro depletion, and negative psion build-up.
Negative psion is like the lactic-acid in muscles... as you work mana there is a build-up of toxic residue in the body. Too much residue, too fast without enough "conditioning" can cause all kinds of bad stuff to happen: heart attacks, blindness, loss of casting ability, strokes, brain embolisms and of course straight up seizures that result in death. Regular "mortal" casters are pretty fragile and therefore have a lot of limitations that can only be skirted by walking various tight-ropes of warding, efficiency and so on. When a user caps out and goes down due to casting backlash. I never want to break the rule and let them cast until it's fixed. This is also true if they go "psion negative" meaning they deplete the store of local energy that gives them access to magic.
Backlash suppresses psion production in a casting capable creature. This is a biological defense mechanism to prevent magic-using creatures from worsening cast-related injuries. Having at least thought it out to this extent, magical ability is handled in "medical" capacity, casters have unique adaptations that are exaggerations of abilities all sentients possess. Having free psion in the air encourages the growth of mana metabolism. So, on technical worlds where mana is scarce means little to no magic abilities. Casters from psion dense worlds can still work magic on "mundane" worlds but magic recovery is super slow and cast powers are significantly reduced.
Because of a lack of competition for magical resources, powerful casters can monopolize ley lines (sources of psion) to achieve the same kinds of powers they have in psion-dense worlds. This usually requires some kind of fetish and some artificial well that concentrates the available psion. The fact that I can elucidate this shows I considered how this all plays out across possible story contexts. When you create power "systems" like this one ... make sure you take your ambition and storytelling into account so that you don't have to invent something new (unless you want to) in order to tell your story.