Flight, definitely. And of course if you want to go higher than a few hundred feet, you HAVE to be invulnerable to withstand the cold and UV radiation. And of course, to actually GET anywhere with flight you have to be able to go a few hundred miles an hour, because that’s how long it takes airplanes, and boy, is that long enough! Is that much speed included in the power of flight, or do I need super speed on top of the other two?
I would definitely be a super villain, and crush you petty mortals who got in my path. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
The cold at high altitudes isn’t a problem if you wear warm clothes. (Preferrably streamlined warm clothes, if you’re going to be flying fast.)
The UV radiation also isn’t a problem if your skin is covered, and doesn’t start to be a problem at all until you’re up around the level of the first ozone layer – which starts at, what, 50,000 feet?
Avoiding the omnis, I think shrinkage (go ahead, insert your own joke here) is underrated. It would convey most of the benefits of invisibility, micro-vision, and X-ray vision, and be useful in many situations where you might normally use super-hearing or telescopic vision (i.e, spying on bad guys). And if your mass reduces proportionally while shrinking (presumably your density remains constant?), then shrinking far enough might get you some limited flight ability as well. One should be able to foil most evil plans by being really small and clever.
You might also want invulnerability to avoid being squished like a bug though.
Forget omnipresence and omniscience - there are just some things I’d rather not see or know. My parents having sex, for one thing.
(Not that they DO have sex!)
Anyway, omnipotence sounds great, but people that have too much power tend to turn into assholes.
Soooo, I think I’ll take the ability to fly. And if you offered super-metabolism (the ability to metabolize all extra calories), I’d go for that one, too.
There was a short-lived DC comic during the 1960s called “The Inferior Five.” I recall one of the members was known as “The Blimp”…he had the power of flight, but no real speed. So he sort of floated along.
Thank you Ukelele Ike! I’ve been trying to remember the name of that strip forever!
Invisibility–wouldn’t radar, laser sensors, etc. , make that power a lot less useful than it used to be?
Worthless hero–Dual Damsel. She’s from a planet where everyone can become triplicates (her ONLY power) and she manages to get one them killed off. Fun on a date, maybe, but not much of a hero.and don’t forget Bouncing Boy–he can make himself…really fat.
One of the Champions ™ players I came across had developed a pretty useless superhero, named GAZEBO BOY. He was an 11-year-old boy who had the power to turn into a gazebo and back at will. While in gazebo form, he could, um, basically stand there inconspicuously on somebody’s lawn and spy on them. Until one of the occupants quipped, “Hey, I don’t remember putting up a gazebo in our back yard.”
One of my personal Champions creations was JET MAN. He was an ordinary airline pilot until, one day, he accidentally swallowed a jet engine! (It was a pretty small jet engine, you understand.) Rushed to the hospital, the doctors there had a choice: surgically remove the jet engine (yawn), or build the engine into his body as a permanent cybernetic attachment. … He now carries several gallons of jet fuel around in a hidden interior tank, and can fly quite fast – but it looks kinda weird having that jet exhaust nozzle sticking straight down between his legs. He’s also the only superhero to follow FAA regulations and get an Airworthiness Certificate and display a tail registration number.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
I am endlessly amused by the sub-standard superheroes. Anyone who’s got enough balls (or delusions) to join the Legion of Substitute Heroes is someone I really wish I could drink with. Chlorophyll Lad is probably a hoot at parties. And the Superheroes League of Hoboken remains one of my favorite computer games of all time (did they ever make a sequel?).
As far as Champions, I once had a character in mind for an off-the-wall campaign, but the GM would never run it. He was Major Yo-Yo, modeled off of DC’s Captain Boomerang. I even had a sidekick-Nerf Lad.
For the OP: probably super strength and flight. Mundane choices, I know, but also the most fun. Unless you like to be sneaky around people.
He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral