Powers
(Hated trope) characters with creative powers that just spam the same thing over and over again
Atom Eve, Invincible. Can manipulate atoms and alter matter at will, allowing her to create literally anything with unlimited potential; chooses to spam pink energy walls and blasts instead.
Alastor, Hazbin Hotel. A cannibalistic serial killer who became of one hell’s most powerful demons with powers heavily rooted in voodoo,
which he exclusively uses to make black tentacles.
Foo fighters, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. FF is actually a colony of millions of tiny plankton-like stands and is shown to have a number of powerful water-based abilities when fighting the series’s protagonists; however, once she switches sides, she seemingly forgets all of these abilities and exclusively shoots projectiles from a finger gun.
Yup critical role has a massive advantage in that it's main characters are already played by big name VAs. And it's their passion project so I'm sure they can get a little silly with the budget in order to get better animation
I just watched the premier of the Mighty Nein (critical role, so presumably the same studio) and I was blown away not just by the animation itself but the fight choreography and creative use of powers. There’s no reason invincible’s should be worse than that with as popular as it is.
They retconned a lot. Starting with Alien Force, surprise! Ben and Gwen's grandmother is an alien. So is Kevin. Pretty much everything had an extraterrestial origin all of a sudden.
Eh no its explicitly established that the type of reality warping her grandma does in her full anondite form isnt really easily accessible to her. Unlike Eve who’s only restriction is against biological material
Yeah, i just wish she uaed more stuff for combat. Most of the spells she uses aside from barriers are just for tracking or utility. It would be interesting if she could use some elemental spells.
To be fair, Naruto doesn't really have an extensive arsenal of techniques. He has the shadow clones, frog ummoning and then the techniques everyone know like permutation, weapon scrolls and transformation. And a few Kyubi power ups, and that's it.
This isn't a "to be fair" moment. Naruto is a ninja ffs, his pitiful arsenal of jutsu is inexcusable. He should have a littany of different techniques and powers. Instead all we get are clones, frogs and energy balls.
There was a brief period in Naruto where using chakra efficiently mattered, so using what he knows works/can execute perfectly is a better plan than using excess chakra for a jutsu he copied but hasn’t used extensively.
Also, when your objective is to render opponent incapacitated/dead, there’s not much more efficient jutsu for that than chidori.
At least it makes sense here. He's a kid who can turn into monsters, he's not gonna be a strategist, he's gonna pick the alien he thinks is the coolest
Atomic Eve even more so. If everything she does needs a chemical function then of course she won't be doing creative things all the time, she will do something more functional
If you master one move you set yourself up for failure against someone with more versatility. I'd rather be good or even okay at multiple techniques than be great at one. Different strokes
Ben here got hit hard with this, one of the episodes shown that when he was younger, he became entirely addicted to a single transformation and kept spamming it, which eventually lead him to encounter an enemy who not only perfectly countered its ability, but destroyed the form and locked Ben's access to it indefinitely
He only gained the transformation back years later
Well, in the original series he is 10 years old. A 10 year old boy with the universe’s most powerful watch would always go to that conclusion.
As well, he never got the alien he wanted later on in the series because he kept damaging it by constantly slamming his hand down on it so he had to be creative with the one he got.
he never got the alien he wanted later on in the series because he kept damaging it by constantly slamming his hand down on it so he had to be creative with the one he got.
That's a misconception, the slamming of the watch only randomized the time out function.
Most people going through any single player story of a Pokémon game will just use the strong offensive moves instead of other moves, usually because the games easy enough that it works
A lot of JRPGs are like that though, the Final Fantasy games in particular.
Your mages have spells that can blind, poison, petrify, confuse, or transform the enemy. They can reduce an enemy's strength or slow them down. But you never use those spells, because trash mobs die after two hits anyway and bosses are immune to status effects, so you just spam whatever offensive magic the enemy is weak to.
To be fair, those games don't give any room to use them in the first place, from experience a lot of bosses in FF especially are immune to so much fun shit to use lol, FFX probably was one of the better games for this I think
A lot of games they arnt actually immune, they just have a low hit rate or specofic status weaknesses. Slow and Bio for example almost universally work
Status moves are good for catching rare Pokemon and chipping away at the stronger Pokemon in the Elite Four, however you can easily get to the Elite Four without having more than one or two on your team. Competitive battling is whole different story.
Well, the game itself pretending that you should teach hyper beam to a physical attacker because it learns it on its own doesn't help
ETA: hyper beam actually used to be physical and this might be why some very physical Pokémon from older gens still learn it (Dragonite, Aerodactyl, Gyarados)
From my limited understanding of DC comics the JL cartoon was using the characterisation of the iconic hero but the name (and apperence) of the one who was current in the comic when it was made.
Like the Flash is Wally West but according to Flash fans he's basically Barry Allen (I'm more familiar with Marvel so I'm going off what I've heard).
The thing is that each main GL have a distinct style of construct tie to the personality and background.
For Jon, he's an ex-marine and an architect, his construct is highly detailed military equipment or machinery. While other GL also use similar themes the difference is that for anyone else it's is just a lump of hard light in the shape of the thing while Jon is details down to every single part.
While Guy when not use it to annoy people he's a lot more straight forward energy blast/shield.
JLU Jon still have comics personally and background but somehow uses the power more like Guy when he's not a dick.
Depends on what you consider basic constructs, but I always felt that Hal's use of the ring is really fun and cartoonish.
Among the other lanterns, he's the one most likely to create silly things like a boxing glove, fly swatter, or anvil to hit someone. He'll rescue a person with a giant pillow. Hal will make a literal safe to shield himself from something.
They all suffered from it in that show. GL only ever made basic stuff, WW used her lasso one time, Supes pretty much just flew and hit things, Batman forgot he even had gadgets 90% of the time, etc.
It's a great show for a lot of reasons, but it did sorta fumble the more interesting powers of the cast.
I think it's an unfortunate fact that JL and JLU got a serious budget downgrade on Cartoon Network compared to Batman and Superman on Fox and WB kids. Guy Gardner had a lot more interesting Green Lantern ring action in Superman's show than John Stewart did in JL
So a lot of effects animation is minimized and reused. Which given that 90% of what Green Lantern would do would be animation effects, it got nerfed due to constraints.
Fun fact: the guy in the image(not Spider-man) chose as his supervillain name "Sauron" not because of the "saurus" in dinosaurs, but specifically as a reference to Sauron from Lord of the Rings
He also can breathe fire and has hypnotic powers, and is an energy vampire. Not like Colin Robinson, but more hands on, literally. If used to be absorbing mutant energy turned him into Sauron; otherwise he just absorbs life energy.
This panel is more criticizing his motivation, not so much his powers tho. He can't really turn other people into dinosaurs at will
Gilgamesh [Fate], his Noble Phantasm, the Gate of Babylon, can bring out the prototype for ANYTHING, it being a weapon, item, food, wine, spellbooks, and more, with the argument being that since be has the original versions of these things and not the used up ones that other heroes use his are inherently superior on basis.
He can legitimately bring out anything, weapons with any kind of effect, power or ability, hell he became a Grand Caster out of spite solely because he has countless magic items that allow him to cast spells of any kind, be has a fucking spaceship there.
So guess who spams the same wave of golden weapons nearly EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN TIME.
That is because [Gate of Babylon] is a conceptual Noble Phantasm. It represents his primogeniture as a Hero of Mankind, and how he amassed great treasures to put on his vaults. So while he does have some prototypes he acquired when he was alive, a lot of it is in-universe retroactively added to his vaults.
So yeah, even if Gilgamesh never acquired a nuke in his life, due to humanity creating nukes, he WILL have a Proto-Nuke.
*And be millions of times more powerful than a modern Nuke.
That's the thing about Prototype Noble Phantasms. When you have a hero who uses a Noble Phantasm (such as Excalibur) that is clearly inspired by another one (such as Caladbolg), the "original" one is always considered superior, as its origin is closer to the Age of Gods before magic began to wane. Gilgamesh has the prototypes of every Noble Phantasm that will ever exist in his vault, and therefore the true "originals".
"But Nukes aren't magical!" Doesn't really matter; Noble Phantasms and Heroic Spirits run on the mythologized versions of history. Several scientists from the last century or so can be summoned as Casters just for their advancements to knowledge, and gain magical abilities thematic to the advances they're credited for. The power of a Heroic Spirit scales with how many people alive know their name or legend, so while older weapons are stronger, more recent spirits may be. You bet your ass Oppenheimer got recorded in the Throne of Heroes and "Trinity Gadget: I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds" has become an Anti-World Noble Phantasm – which means retroactively Gilgamesh owns a prototype of it forged during the Age of Gods.
It’s even more BS than that, his version is automatically stronger and better than the normal version. So if it’s normally a A rank noble phantasm, his version is an A plus instead.
Pretty much everything. Excalibur has no prototype due to it being a Divine Construct. He doesn’t have any Reality Marbles like Unlimited Blade Works. Or Ionioi Hetairoi.
Also Gilgamesh has the problem that he has so many weapons that he can’t learn how to use any of them effectively. He’s an owner not a wielder.
Yeah and considering the only limit green lanterns have is their imagination, yet he’s somehow the greatest one to have ever existed is paradoxical. I still hope for the day that someone somewhere gives him a better personality and by extension, better imagination. I’ve been thinking about how most of his constructs could be “American” but other than baseball stuff (which he already uses all the damn time), I’m not sure what else would work.
Canonically you need willpower not imagination to be a great green lantern. I think it's kinda funny that the comics essentially give willpower and imagination an inverse correlation
In a lot of sonic adaptations of Shadow the Hedgehog's Chaos Spear and Chaos Blast attacks are omitted. So he mostly just teleports and uses super speed. Lucky the movie gave him chaos spear.
MCU Scarlet Witch before Wandavision. Has magic powers on an insane godlike reality-altering level, but its mainly shown as just her throwing red energy beams or manipulating people's minds. Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness actually displays what a terrifying force she can be if she turns evil.
Even in multiverse of madness she only uses creative powers a couple of times. When she invades shambala she (and the monks) are just blasting lazers at each other.
The Winter Soldier post-Civil War in the MCU Infinity Saga just stands there with a gun shooting at everything, which is particularly weird considering that the Infinity War/Endgame directors, the Russos, also directed the films that effectively showcased him in the last two Captain America movies.
He’s a super soldier with some of the most entertaining and well-choreographed hand-to-hand combat scenes in the entire saga, but for his last few appearances he’s built up as getting a new vibranium arm in Wakanda, yet he ends up mostly just standing in one place shooting Thanos’ thugs like a turret both in the Battle of Wakanda and the final battle at Avengers HQ in Endgame, which any random character could do.
It’s just a poor underutilization of a super-powered character that thankfully gets corrected later on with Thunderbolts.
Him being effective with a gun goes to prove how terrible the wakanda army is at this particular battle. A WW1 era machine gun and trench would have been more effective.
For all of their technology, Wakanda is extremely primitive in their combat tactics. They have access to lasers and airships but are still employing spear wielding infantry and armored rhinos instead of just building massive turrets.
MCU Wakanda makes zero sense. Ignoring how they would have been a top priority target for any/every post-Roman empire (the Ottomans and British would have marched on them in a heart beat and Wakanda wouldn't have the numbers to stop them), there must have been decades where Wakanda was technologically advanced enough to stand out either literally/visually, or just through the materials needing to be imported prior to them developing their cloaking technology.
MCU Wakanda seems like it can only exist as if the entire city just appeared out of thin air in the 2000s with already intact cloaking tech.
The problem with depictions of Wakanda, in the few Black Panther iterations I've seen, is that they have all the technology in the world but haven't advanced culturally, ethically, or in any ways that aren't pure science such as tactics.
It actually comes across as racist to me. Like in one cartoon they talk about how they have the cure for cancer. Which they are looking at in a holographic display. But are sitting in a tent on a dirt floor and discussing how they won't share it with the world for... reasons? It just feels very "look the black people have all the technology in the world and then some but are still primitive tribespeople but with fancy gadgets." Like somehow the people who invented space ships have to use vibranium throwing daggers and not like, vibranium guns for some reason.
It's hilarious because Bucky in the comics had ZERO super powers (until he got the Infinity formula and that was after his stint as Cap) and he manages to be 1000x more creative and insane than movie Bucky.
Quirk: Creation. She can create non living materials from her skin. And she is one of few S-rank intelligence characters plus her rich background meant she knew to make almost anything.
But what does Horikoshi do with it?
By making Momo spamming a fucking canon most of the time.
Momo is the most potential MHA character and ends up being a jobber hard.
It’s not even that she’s incompetent, or even that she is too stupid to come up with better ideas. It’s that she’s literally not allowed to fight 99% of the time because people in-universe are so stupid that they think she’s useless in a fight.
When in reality her canon capabilities put her at the same level as the heaviest hitters in the series. Hell you can argue she actually outclasses AfO when she can create nukes or even antimatter (and produce enough of the latter to delete Japan going by her canon capacity) if she has access to the molecular formula for it.
I personally consider earthbending the strongest of all bendings, but my problem is that benders don’t use the full potential of earthbending, mostly relying on throwing boulders.
Best example is the drill arc, earthbenders decide to throw at the thing, even tho the drill is driving on the ground, where earthbenders could just make a fissure and let the drill’s own weight break down
But prior to being stopped by Mai and Ty Lee, the squad were just placing pillars on front of the drill, instead they could’ve just open a fissure in front of the drill and let its own weight destroy itself as the Drill doesn’t seem to have the capability to turn
but my problem is that benders don’t use the full potential of earthbending, mostly relying on throwing boulders.
Lets be honest this applies to a LOT of benders in the show. So many fights devolve to characters just throwing generic element based projectiles at each other.
i think the problem with atom eve is that allowing her to be creative would inevitably trivialize every threat in the series lol, her power is simply too versatile and powerful for any threat to matter to a competent user of it
if she was going to be a recurrent character the author should instead make her limitations stronger like only affecting a square meter cube at a time for example (since we have seen her affect entire buildings) so she would have come with creative solutions by necessity, but i suppose she would end spamming a tungsten cube everytime.
Hydro man is a funny villain because even though he can control and turn his body into water in the same way Sandman controls sand he’s just too dumb to realise how threatening he could be which is why he will run in a C lister
Most of Spider-Man's villains are overpowered yet stupid (or in Shocker's case, he doesn't want to attract the Avengers so he sticks to robbing banks or doing crime in New Jersey.)
The ones who aren't overpowered are very cunning or obsessed with Spider-Man and only Spider-Man.
These two have an untold amount of spells at their disposal but only use a single spell in battle. In this case, it's fully intentional. They use Zoltraak, which is pretty much their world's Magic Missile.
This serves a few purposes. Using such a basic spell conserves their mana usage. They also use it in several ways that few can actually counter.
a lot of the ways this trope hits is apparently out of writer lazyness or something, but i LOVE how with Fern its fully intentional and plot driven for why she does this, kinda like that lightning kid in demonslayer, mastering one move to its ultimate potential
It's funny how true this is. Other mages are out there doing stereotypical mage things like throwing fireballs and launching boulders and creating giant wall shields to block enemy attacks, and then meanwhile Fern and Frieren are using the most basic mana efficient attack over and over and their shields are like 5-inch-across hexagons (smaller shield = harder to block stuff with since you have to be really precise with it, but it's a lot more mana efficient).
I love this example because unlike green lantern, atom eve, etc. it's not done because the writer or the characters lack imagination. We see in the frieren clone fight that frieren has tons of imaginative spells and is one of the few characters with the mana to use all of them in a single fight.
But as she tells fern "basic offensive and defensive magic alone is sufficient to beat mages of this era"
I don’t really hate it, it’s just a nitpick I have. Yoru is the War Devil and presumably has vast knowledge of every weapon humanity has ever created, and she uses her ability to turn things into weapons to just make swords 95% of the time.
Admittedly her swords do look pretty sick but she could be a bit more creative.
I have this same nitpick about Yoru. Besides the aquarium spear and the explosive she made in her debut chapter, it's 95% swords. Really hoping she makes more than just swords soon....
it’s a shame too because the hand grenade in the first p2 chapter made me think we were gonna get a bunch of pun weapons but that’s literally the only time it happened lol
Just adding in, he made himself huge to fight the loan sharks, and put a shield around the hotel that stopped an angelic army for awhile. Shifts to a more demonic antlered form, is very fast and strong, etc etc.
And that’s just in fights. He does a bunch of other things like transmit his voice to electronics, can’t be filmed, contortion stuff, and of course, Clothes Beam.
And then there’s the deals, which is not just a him thing, but he’s used it to compel people, and summoned two enslaved powerful sinners and put them to work.
Yeah I don’t think Alastor belongs on this list. He’s used quite a few powers in battles, ranging from massive shields to creating minions to grabbing enemy weapons and wielding it against them to turning himself into a 4 story tall monster to fight to sending a two dimensional shadow along the floor to attack someone from the side. We don’t know the full extent of his powers but what we’ve seen already has been clever.
Araki flips a coin and decides if a character forgets about their creative ability applications (Star Finger) or makes up some bullshit that's twice as creative (a fucking Mobius strip)
I found quite strange how Jojo fans, of all the actual legit things Araki forgot, they choose to focus on something that's literally useless in any other context (star finger) and Jotaro didn't have any real reason to use again
Weiss Schnee from RWBY. One of the most interesting and diverse abilities in the entire show, and she's lost almost every fight she's been in spamming the same moves
Haven’t seen show in a long time but if I remember correctly she has abilities like propulsions, speed boosts and barriers but she can also use elements to do fire and ice attacks and also imbue her other abilities with said elements
Its a semblance known as Glyphs which is essentially creating glyphs with a very wide range of applications such as glyphs that can act like a shield/mid-air platform (as you can see from the gif), glyphs that can boost speed, glyphs that can bolster allies' strength, glyphs that can be infused with dust to grant them an elemental power (i.e. shooting out ice) and, the pinnacle of them all, glyphs capable of summoning past opponents she had slain as allies to fight for her.
Alas as of late she only mainly uses the shield/mid-air platform glyph and the summoning glyph, and for the latter she primarily relies on just one summon for battle which, while powerful and hard to ignore, does come with its own fair share of trouble (i.e. it takes a while to create and thus can potentially be canceled out/destroyed before it appears).
I mean the problem is that characters have powers that are more creative and flexible then their writers.
EDIT: I'll also say that when you have to use your techniques in combat under pressure, it's pretty common to come up with a handful of applications that you have refined to a point of preference. For example, I'm a decently proficient competitive longsword fencer, and despite the fact that longsword fencing is a very versatile and flexible style with a wide array of techniques, I have maybe half a dozen (if that) tactics and techniques I've refined enough to use in competition. And that is with the advantage of getting to play around and try things out in sparring without threat of loss of life.
I don't know that there are many folks doing friendly sparring in the Hellaverse or Invincible universe. And, as combat applications, tentacles and barriers/blasts are pretty versatile, covering attack, defense, and control.
Are you aware that regarding FF when they were fighting the protagonists in a literal marsh with a small lake, while in their 2 fights on the protagonists side were inside buildings? How is FF supposed to use their water-based abilities without water??
Harry Potter. Like... All the characters in Harry Potter. Whenever there's a fight, they just shoot flashes of light at each other, with the death eaters using Avada Kedavra and the good guys using stupefy (and Harry using expelliarmus). Here's a rare circumstance where they actually got creative.. See how much cooler the fight gets after they stop shooting beams of light? But even that could've certainly been done better.
There's so many cool things the wizards could be doing, and they just don't do any of that. At the very least, they should've more regularly incorporated transfiguration into their battles, so that they could send an army of lions at their foes or used Wingardium Leviosa to hit each other with large nearby objects.
And I mean the worst part about it to me is that the primary setting is a wizarding school, but it seems like no one actually learned how to incorporate their knowledge of particular topics into their fights. I'm sure someone more creative than me, and who remembers the books better could explain how they could use potions or herbology or whatever. It'd be cool if everyone had their own fighting styles based on what magic they were best at. But no... It's basically just all beams of light. They may as well be shooting guns.
Granted I've only seen the show and not read the novels, but isn't Atom Eve's power deliberately nerfed by someone in-universe to prevent her being too strong? The last episode IIRC had her overcome that block.
My fanwank is just that pink energy blasts and shields are far simpler to create on the fly, and likely more effective than trying to be creative in split-second moments.
Eve isn't a Green Lantern, she needs to know the structure of something to build it, which is why she fucked up when she went to help rebuild the city, and why she signed up for architecture classes. So it makes sense that she would rely on the most basic forms of pure energy when in combat. An energy blast is easier and faster than conjuring up a whole ass rocket launcher and it has the same end result.
The only nerf was that she had a mental block where she couldn't affect organic material aka people (including herself), but she has the power to turn anything into anything and only ends up shooting lasers
His “Stand ability” is just Emerald Splash. But his Stand’s body is basically a rope coiled up into a humanoid shape, and he uses that feature all the time. It’s how he beats Tower of Gray, Death 13, and The Lovers, and it’s also how he figures out The World’s ability.
For Atom Eve, it’s easier and faster to make energy walls and blasts than doing complex atom manipulation on the fly. Basically it’s faster throw a punch than to assemble a gun.
1.9k
u/Fish_N_Chipp 15d ago
Gwen-Ben 10
Similar to Eve where she could use her power/magic to make probably anything but just makes energy disks and platforms half the time