Break a magic system

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

I was doing this with my friend the other day, and thought that many Sharders would enjoy it. The game works like this: 

A superpower or magic system is proposed, either intended to be fully useless, or merely decent - for instance, the ability to magically close and open one folding table is “useless”, while the ability to speed up the growth of plants by touch is relatively useful but not very. 
Then, the other player takes that power and comes up with an unintended application that makes them stronger than intended, either making the useless power decent or the decent power unstoppable. For instance, the table could be used to generate energy at no cost, and could potentially crush things in its way, while plant growth of a large and networked plant could be used to overgrow a large area with a fast growing plant, pulling water from a lake and only needing to touch the plant at one point. 
Mimicking the common structure of forum games, each poster should exploit the magic system the last person proposed, then list their own. I’ll start: 

Mental control over an incorporeal sphere of light, which you can direct around and dim or brighten to, at maximum, that of an ordinary lightbulb. 

Edited December 13, 2024 by Ookla the Inquisitive
Spag

[Mr. Misting he/him]

After some very cursory reading of my AP psych textbook, I think it would be really horrific if I made an invisible incorporeal sphere fly into someone's eye, past the lens, and then have it turned up to a lightbulb level of light. Since the iris, pupil, Corena and lens help modulate, focus and control all entering light, I don't think the person's eye could handle if light turned on past those protections. I'm not sure if it would cause instant blindness, but it would probably, best case scenario for them, make that eye useless or very weird for at least a minute. Repeat with another eye and they are theoretically blind long enough for the user to easily destroy them in a fight.

Ability to hear sneezes seven seconds before they happen.

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

Quote

Lol this is what I sometimes do to create magic systems

Like Adtae, his power was completely unintended by the person who created their magic.

Or the Spirits, Madness broke her own universe.

Okokok hear me out… I’m going to take some liberties…

If you can hear someone sneeze twice, you are essentially doubling the energy absorbed by the ears… so you stick some deathly ill or similarly situated people in a room of some frozen super powered ears, then store the energy, you can double the vibrational energy received.

Trust, it works!

 

Convert analog format energy/motion into digital. (NOT LIKE YOU PUT IT ONTO A COMPUTER) (essentially, say that you walk from point a, to b. But instead of continuous motion, one goes just as far, in just as long, but they move noncontinuously…)

[Through The Living Glass She/They]

Huh. Okay.

Let's rob a bank (classically, of course).

Break in, steal what we want, but before we're done begin the travelling process.

Then BOOM, you're out of there in an instant.

Basically a not-so-easily accessable version of the classic teleporting power.

 

The ability to charge your phone by glaring at it for two hours (as in, it won't charge unless you keep glaring at it for the full two hours).

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

Place millions of phones in the distance but barely visible. Boom.

(Alternatively, redefine phone to mean a battery able to hold infinite charge safely  )

 

Within a two foot range, create a small sphere, two mm in diameter. 

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

Even if the material of the sphere is mundane, depending upon what happens to what is where it was, different exploits can be done. If it explodes when things overlap, you can make explosives. If you replaces matter, you can cut through anything through repeated application of the sphere. If matter is displaced, you can potentially propel things or use it offensively, and finally even if only “unoccupied” locations for the sphere are valid, I can create a bunch of ball bearings to trip people, and potentially power a turbine by summoning spheres above it. 
You bring a diegetic (so you can hear it, though it follows musical and movie patterns) musical number everywhere you go, with mood-matching music and people randomly compelled to act as backup dancers, though nobody is prevented from carrying out actions for more than thirty seconds - in some cases they simply perform their actions to the music. 

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

Reanimate corpses for a time.

 

You can launch a speck of dust (mass 0.000001 kg) with an acceleration of 10000 m/s^2.

[Mr. Misting he/him]

I put a very distinct speck of dust into a bullet, and command that dust to shoot forward. While the increased size would make it lose a lot of acceleration, I'd still hazard that it'd be lethal. 

Alternatively, based on what a paint flake did the International Space Station (cracked their crazy expensive window), even if the speck of dust is moving roughly 7 times slower than the impact of space station to paint, I think a human skull is 7 times weaker than ballistic space windows. So, grab a handful of dust and machine gun everything.

 

You have a single basic spiral notebook that you have perfect knowledge of everything on its pages.

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

Fill projectiles or a turbine with many speck of dust, then propel them to either generate energy or be a railgun. 
Edit (ninjas!): place things you need perfect knowledge of on the notebook’s pages. Alternatively, if you only know the words written on it, you can get unblockable communication, using stamps or an actual typewriter to speed up the process. 
You are a wonderful electrical conductor, causing nearby electricity to ground to you through the air, so much better than even wires you are. You can turn the power on and off, but you lack any required secondary powers. 

Edited December 14, 2024 by Ookla the Inquisitive
Ninja

[strmblsd he/him]

go to a powerplant and use the electricity conductor to charge all of your batteries but conducting it through you. oooh alternatively go to a racetrack and mess with he racecars very delicate electrical circuits and make them all crashhhh

 

you have the ability to give curses that don't do much to a person just slightly affect the quality of life (like your sock is always wet)  

[Mr. Misting he/him]

Ok, given that you didn't put a cost on giving a curse, or a distance limit on to who I can put curses on, there are a lot of ways to break this power. The way I would probably do it is send a letter to a rich person with an ultimatum. For each day I don't get x amount of money, I give them a curse that will last forever. If I do this to maybe a 100 people, at least a few will cave to avoid have an ever-increasing number of slightly annoying things, and I'll be rich as long as the law doesn't catch me. 

Or am really mad at an army, or one person trying to fight me, I can spam give them curses, say two million curses to the entirety of the army until, given the number of slightly annoying things they are not very effective at fighting.

 

You have the power to mentally inflict paper cuts onto people, but for each cut you give you get one as well. 

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

I’ll put my paper cuts all somewhere that doesn’t usually touch things, like my ear, but put my opponent’s paper cuts on their eyes. 
You can cause things to combust by touching them, but you are still burned just as much as an ordinary person would be. 

[Wittles he/him]

If we count things taped/glued together or whatever as one thing, then get like a string and attach something bigger to the end, you could launch it so it would be far enough away that it would be a little ouchy on your end and a big ouchy on the other end.

Spoiler

I don't entirely know how combustion works, so this might not be realistic, but it's fun so whatever

every purchase you make, no matter how expensive to everyone else, is now $32,000,000 but only for you

[Through the Living Questio he/him]

Get a private Butler to buy things for you, then only pay for the super expensive things myself. Also I can buy a ton of companies and be rich forever! 

 

you can turn on and off switches and open and close doors from a distance, but you have to yell/say random words from tv shows and movies and books. How loud you say it determines how fast the chosen action happens.

or, if I did that wrong, 

you can turn on and off switches and open and close doors from a distance.

[strmblsd he/him]

I immediately start yelling words from shows with magic like Harry Potter and making those things happen. like yelling Lumos very loud and making all the lights in my house turn on. then go on to  be a successful wizard/ magician and since the definition of door is "a hinged, sliding, or revolving barrier at the entrance to a building, room, or vehicle, or in the framework of a cupboard. I can use this on practically anything with hinges allowing me to make many things move at once screaming magic words.

you can fly but only for 1 second at a time with a 2 second cool down.

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

Depending on how fast I fly, I could still go places by flying back up during my second. Alternatively, I could use it in bursts for epic jumps or adding force to my attacks. 
Air, to you, has the viscosity, resistance, and texture of water, though you can still breathe it. 

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

Gore warning:

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Delimb yourself and use your arm as a kite/sail thing.

When you touch a pureish enough object, you can change how dense it is, conserving mass.

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

Expand and contract some pure rods connected to shock absorbers connected to you or a vehicle. This should allow you to bound through the sky. Also just use it for pistons to generate free energy. 
You can move air molecules and heal yourself, but to use either power you need to have wind blowing at you, or else you have to burn through life force, causing you to bleed to death. You can make impressive gusts of wind, create sound, and vibrate molecules for heat, as well as link together air molecules to create what are essentially force fields. (Definitely not crowdsourcing tactics for an RP character. I have some already anyway, and probably won’t metagame.) 

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

26 minutes ago, Dragonheir said:

Expand and contract some pure rods connected to shock absorbers connected to you or a vehicle. This should allow you to bound through the sky. Also just use it for pistons to generate free energy. 
You can move air molecules and heal yourself, but to use either power you need to have wind blowing at you, or else you have to burn through life force, causing you to bleed to death. You can make impressive gusts of wind, create sound, and vibrate molecules for heat, as well as link together air molecules to create what are essentially force fields. (Definitely not crowdsourcing tactics for an RP character. I have some already anyway, and probably won’t metagame.) 

...

I refuse to comment.

Cole is powerful enough as is.

[Through The Living Glass She/They]

23 minutes ago, Ookla the Dragonslayer said:

...

I refuse to comment.

Cole is powerful enough as is.

You just commented tho

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

22 minutes ago, Ookla the Dragonslayer said:

...

I refuse to comment.

Cole is powerful enough as is.

I've got some! Make vacuums within invincible air walls, allowing for lighter-than-air flight in addition to his powered flight. Use resonance frequencies. Make blades inside people's lungs. Pneumatic in general. I can go on. 

Ability to reshape your bones, and only your bones. This can result in damage to your body, if the changes do things like overstretch muscles or rupture blood vessels. 

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

Quickly and easily amputate limbs. (Plural?)

Whoever you point at thinks 1.1 times faster.

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

1 hour ago, SpiritOfWrath said:

Quickly and easily amputate limbs. (Plural?)

Whoever you point at thinks 1.1 times faster.

Drive people with ADHD slightly more insane from boredom, help your [any academic competition] team be slightly faster, listen to videos on 1.1 speed (or more, honestly - depending on how fast the talking is I can probably do 2.25 speed on my own). Or, if it’s a magic system and not a one-off power, hire a bunch of people to point at you and take advantage of exponential growth. 
[You are] particle man (particle man), [so you can be] doing the things that a particle can. In other words, quantum mechanics applies to you on a macro-scale. 

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

Well of course, if you put yourself in a box, you exist in a state neither dead nor alive, no matter if ya were previously dying. And then, you get a cat to complete the ritua- I mean allusion.

Sacrifice household pets to get 1.1 times more money.

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

Buy some fish, preferably ones that breed fast or are easy to source. As long as a tenth of your money is more than the cost of a fish, you’ll get really rich really fast. 
You’re really affected by the placebo effect. Heal limbs back if people can fool you that it will work level affected.