I had an idea for a villain that can teleport objects by touch and place them inside other objects. They primarily use this power to teleport objects inside people to incapacitate or kill them. An example would be teleporting a pencil inside someone’s head. With this in mind what are ways to limit this ability so it isn’t so overpowered? I have four limits in mind as of now. They can only teleport objects by touch, they can only teleport objects a certain distance (10-15 feet away), they can only teleport objects to a place they can see (meaning they can’t send an object behind a closed door) and they can only teleport objects of a certain size (no wider than a basketball and no longer than a baseball bat).
Are there any other limits the character could have or are the ones I listed good enough? Given that the character has other abilities from a writing perspective I could always fall back on the classic trope of a character having multiple powers but not simply using the most powerful one against every enemy they face. To use an extreme example the Flash can end virtually any fight by stealing his opponent’s speed yet he rarely does because he has other means of attack.
They’re like Carnage, Kid Miracleman and the Joker in that their only goal is to hurt and kill people for its own sake rather than money, power, revenge, ideology etc.
Not trying to be pedantic, but how does this work with trying to teleport a pencil behind a person’s skin/bones?
If you want a limit, what if the teleportation gives off a lot of energy, and burns their hands when they use it? That can range from a mild burn to something agonizing.
You could make it telekinesis rather than teleportation. This is physically a bit less silly, because you don’t have the question of what happens to the matter that was in the spot that you are teleporting an object to, or what replaces it where it’s teleported from. In a fight it’s not so wildly asymmetrical, because you can dodge or defend against things that are flying toward you.
To restrict telekinesis further, you could make action-reaction still apply. Your mind can only lift/throw things that your body is strong enough to lift/throw, and there is recoil.
You can also make the teleportation not be instantaneous. And the victim can feel it as it is happening (and it is painful or at least very uncomfortable), to the degree that if someone is in a position to be able to “dodge” they can jerk their body/head away from the object being teleported into them. Due to the discomfort, most people will instinctively move themselves. Maybe it takes a full 2 seconds. That could make it a very effective tool of assassination (especially on a sleeping or prone opponent) but not always an automatic-kill attack, and of limited use in battle where an aware and ready opponent will be moving out of the way every time they feel it coming.
Though if you are teleporting something like a grenade, even a quick dodge won’t do you a lot of good, so maybe it could still be pretty nasty in combat.
For a good villain nickname, I suggest Matryoshka.
You could make it that there are some types of matter that the villain can’t teleport
For example if they can’t teleport organic matter, or alternatively if they can only teleport organic matter, either way that could bring lots of interesting complications
I can see the nucleus of a good plot, here, but I think you will have to put some limits on the power, otherwise there is no defense. Proximity is an excellent limitation. Also, atomic density might be another. Teleporting a bar of gold could be a much lengthier process than, say, teleporting a wad of paper cash. Distance could be another limitation as in how far you can teleport something.
How about they have to roll the scatter dice and 2d6 each turn they use the teleport ability.?
If the scatter dice shows the “target” symbol, then the teleportation effort is successful, and the object is moved to where the user wants it - unless he’s rolled a ‘2’ on the 2d6.
If the scatter dice shows the “arrow” symbol, then the teleportation is off target in the direction of the arrow, by the distance shown on the 2d6 roll - unless he’s rolled a’2’.
If he rolls a ‘2’ on the 2d6, regardless of what the scatter dice shows, then a catastrophic telly-porta accident has occurred! Roll on the chart on page 46 to see what disatrous (and potential hilarious!) result has occurred!
If we assume that the transportation works by performing a swap - e.g., if I move a rock into a guy’s heart then the innards of the heart will move to the position of the rock - then it doesn’t make sense that you would need to touch the object. Technically, you’re moving two objects, the rock and the heart. Why would you only need to be touching one of the two and not both? (Granted, this could be an answer to your quest for limiters - he needs to be touching both targets.)
If we assume the alternate - that the rock being teleported just vanishes and reappears inside the person’s body - then we have the question of how it arrives? Does it phase in with the particles and atoms of that person’s body? Does it start as a microscopic nothingness and then quickly expand to full size, pushing everything out of the way? In either case, there’s quite a bit of physics that would apply. No two objects can exist in the same place at the same time so like…if you’re putting a rock’s worth of mass inside of someone, and everything moves out of the way, is that reaction more like taking a hammer to their insides; more like setting off a bomb; or more like a particle accelerator collision of extreme size, with nuclear fission/fusion style outcomes?
I’d also note that you’d probably expect a cavitation collapse where the stone disappeared from, which can be quite disastrous on its own.
If your power is going to act like a nuclear explosion at one end (including radiation) and send out an extreme shockwave at the other - that could certainly make a person hesitant to use the power. Cancer isn’t fun. Neither is deafness, repeated concussions, etc.
In terms of actual limits though, I would mostly think about energy expenditure. If we still accept thermodynamics and the basic idea that you can’t accomplish some task without spending as much energy as it takes to achieve that task then…how much energy is this actually taking? How much food do you need to eat to perform even one teleport?
If you haven’t read it yet, have a look at Alfred Bester’s The Stars my Destination (known as Tyger! Tyger in the UK). Among other things, it considers the social ramifications of teleportation, including what to do about teleporting thieves and how to keep teleporters in prison. It doesn’t, as far as I recall, deal with weaponized teleporting (although teleporters who blindly teleport run the risk of killing themselves), but it’s an interesting read on other, often overlooked, aspects of the implications.
In Star Trek, this would be blocked by shields (force fields).
In Champions (super rpg), teleporting something somewhere it’s not supposed to go could be blocked by Hardened Defenses, which is to say, defenses that negate the advantage of being Armor Piercing. One could then make one’s Teleport power Armor Piercing, which would negate the Hardened part, but that got expensive real fast.
Also in Champions, you can have a separate power called a Transformation Attack, which was use to mimic variations on a theme of Death Spell: Rather than actually teleporting the thing into someone’s head, you would use this power and Transform him into a Dead Person. This has much the same effect, and nobody’s going to do an autopsy on the guy and say “Huh, he’s got a pencil inside his head.”
Speaking of being expensive, make teleporting inside of an object cost a freak-ton of energy.
Not necessarily an impediment to some villains, I recall a short story where two objects forced to occupy the same space set off an explosion of near-fission-level kaboomy goodness. Granted, this would still kill the target, but it also tended to be hard on the person doing the teleporting.
That’s what I was thinking. If you touch a pencil and then teleport it into someone’s brain, you wind up holding a pencil-sized bit of their brain in your hand. That’s a bit of a giveaway to any witnesses.
If the teleportation effect is a type of technology, possibly it would only work on electrically conductive objects, or on specially primed or pre-treated “projectiles”. Perhaps it could be blocked by certain electromagnetic effects.
If it is psionic, perhaps it could only work on objects to which the villain has an emotional or psychic connection for some reason, like playing cards or gummy bears. Even more limiting, perhaps the character is psychically connected to a single object, and after teleporting the Blade of McGuffin into someone, it must be physically retrieved for re-use. Perhaps the villain’s irrational fear of insects or aversion to the color fuschia makes it impossible to psionically concentrate on any target protected by such things.
Perhaps the teleportation effect is magical, requiring the villain to employ a ritual phrase or gesture. Anyone who is aware of the villain’s ability would then be on the alert for that ritual action, and would leap out of range or strike immediately to negate the teleportation attack. Perhaps the magic only functions under moonlight or from shadows. Perhaps it only works when the villain makes a sacrifice, such as cutting one’s own hand.
I’m not sure of the setting you have in mind. That can make a big difference in how you think of his “power level”. I’m play-testing and generating super-powered characters for an RPG game, and I test them out fighting each other. . . your character would die a quick painful death in one of those scenarios if all he can do is the teleportation thing. What other powers/defenses does he have?
