Identically Powered Team

Doing whatever an army of spiders can.

A Super Team, Five-Man Band, Badass Crew or Badass Army where everyone on the team has the exact same powers or abilities, by and large. Often times, The Chosen Many will also be given similar abilities.

This can take several forms:

• Everyone on the team has the exact same abilities, in equal application and scale.
• Everyone on the team has the same powers or skills, but with some able to use them better, or in different ways, than others.
• Everyone on the team has the same BASIC ability (like Super-Strength) but with slight differences (one gets their strength from a Hulk Out, another gets it from Powered Armor, and another gets it as a Charles Atlas Superpower).
• The superpowers come from a costume, accessory, Background Magic Field or other Plot Device which bestows the same core abilities.

However, this does not include:

• Stock Superpowers that are vastly different, but overlap in one specific ability. ^note  For example, a team consisting of a Beast Man, a Do-Anything Robot, and someone with Ki-Detection, the fact that they all have Super-Senses as one of their Combo Platter Powers would only qualify for this trope if being a Sensor Character was the team's primary function or purpose.
• Teams where everyone is a Muggle or Badass Normal. This is specifically a trope for characters possessing extranormal powers and abilities.
• Ki or "The Force" only qualify if it grants the exact same powers with little to no variation or room to add different powers.

With some abilities, this makes it easy to have an All Your Powers Combined moment, since all they need to do is focus their identical powers on the same target at the same time. On the other hand, this may lead to Crippling Overspecialization. Sometimes, this is done to make sure everyone on the team is equal, without relying upon a Plot Tailored to the Party. It can also allow writers to focus on characterization to differentiate each teammate rather than rely on their powers to do it.

See I Believe I Can Fly, for when every member of a team can fly. Compare Superhero Team Uniform and contrast Cast Speciation and Superhero Speciation. Can easily overlap with Alliance of Alternates, although it's also possible for members of such a group to be identical except for their powers.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Claymore warriors are usually created having the exact same powers as cadets and rookies, aside from the exceptionally gifted ones. However, as they gain more experience and control, they usually develop their own techniques and powers which rarely makes any two the same.
• Gantz: All players partaking in the titular Deadly Game get the same black suit that grants the wearer Super-Strength and Super-Toughness..

Comic Books

• Many of the most iconic DC Comics characters have their own 'family' of characters who've built up over time; thanks to the popularity of the Kid Sidekick, Junior Counterpart, Distaff Counterpart and Spear Counterpart, and Legacy Character, there's many groups formed entirely around multiple characters with the same gimmick and power, but with vastly different personalities or ways of using it. Marvel Comics have employed this too with some franchises, but it's a more recent trend, while DC have been doing it in some form since the Silver Age.
• Aquaman: You have Aquaman, his wife Mera, the original Aqualad (now Tempest) Garth, Aquagirl Tula, Garth's wife Dolphin, and also the Atlantean Navy when needed.
• Batman: The Dark Knight tends to operate in Gotham City with a crew of vigilantes that, much like him, have no superpowers and tend to operate in a heroic ninja-like manner. His allies include Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing, Batwoman, Orphan, Red Robin, Spoiler, Azrael, Huntress, and Red Hood.
• The Boys:
  • Compound V is responsible for humans gaining superpowers, but the Boys are only injected with enough to have Super-Strength and super endurance (so when they get in a fistfight with supers, they end up with bruises and cuts rather than decapitation).
  • Dear Becky has a half-dozen vaguely Thor-like goons, although they seem to only have physical strength rather than electrical powers.
• Captain America: The Serpent Society, who all have snake-themed powers.
• Darkstars: The Darkstars wear advanced super suits which all have the same abilities, basically making them a Flying Brick with energy blasts.
• Deadpool: The Deadpool Corps, made up of various Alternate Universe counterparts of the merc with a mouth. Dogpool and Headpool, being a dog and a zombie respectively, are probably the biggest outliers.
• The Flash:
  • The Flash Family, originally formed in the Silver Age in The Flash (1959) by grouping up the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick, with the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, his Kid Sidekick Kid Flash, Wally West, with several reprint specials also including unrelated character Johnny Quick/Jack Chambers as part of it.
    • When Wally West became the Flash in The Flash (1987), the concept was revived and expanded on, including himself, Jay Garrick, another Golden Age Super-Speed hero Max Mercury (originally named Quicksilver), as well as new characters Johnny's daughter, Jesse Chambers, AKA Jesse Quick, and Bratty Half-Pint Kid from the Future Bart Allen, AKA Impulse. For some stories, they were also joined by Bart's cousin Jenni 'XS' Ognats. Much later, after Wally and his wife Linda Park had twins, Jai and Irey, they too joined the line-up.
    • After Barry Allen was revived, the Flash Family were briefly featured in The Flash: Rebirth, but all of them outside of Barry were quickly pushed to the wayside and Exiled from Continuity because Executive Meddling from those Running the Asylum believed that the Flash Family induced Uniqueness Decay and made Barry Allen less special. However, the popularity of these characters lead to them eventually being reintroduced, but not until after a new Flash Family had formed with the new Kid Flash, Wallace West (the original's cousin, created during the time he was exiled from continuity to 'replace' him), as well as The Flash of China, Avery Ho, and Evil Former Friend turned Anti-Hero Substitute August Heart, Godspeed. When the previous Flash Family were brought back, the two groups merged into one big happy family.
• Green Lantern:
  • The Green Lantern Corps, except for a few outliers, all have the same Imagination-Based Superpower. They all vary in control and application, however, since it's fueled by willpower.
  • The other Corps also apply—but their abilities differ from color to color. The Orange Lanterns fit this best of all, because they are all ring constructs created by the one actual Orange Lantern, Larfleeze.
  • The creators of the Lanterns, the Guardians, all have the same powers as well. Of course, when that power is technically Reality Warping, you really don't need anything else.
  • The Manhunters, another group of space police created by the Guardians, are all androids with a uniform set of powers and abilities.
• Hawkeye: The C-List supervillain team the Death Throws, a team comprised solely of evil jugglers!
• The Incredible Hulk: In The Incredible Hulks, the Hulk forms a team that includes She-Hulk, A-Bomb, Red She-Hulk, Skaar, and Korg. While each of these abilities differ in scale and application, they are each a Person of Mass Destruction with Super-Strength as their core ability.
• Invincible: The Lizard League are Expies of the Serpent Society and thus have similar powers.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Often Defied with the Legion. They won't let in new members if they have powers that are similar to any current members. The Legion of Substitute Heroes may take them, though.
• Metal Men: The Metal Men are a team of metal robot people who all have shape-shifting powers. The variance comes from the fact that they're all made up of different metals, which all have different properties. For example, Gold is an excellent energy conductor and very malleable, while Lead is more of an insulator and much heavier.
• Nova: The Nova Corps are pretty much the same as the Darkstars, with the exception of Nova Prime, who not only has greater power than the others, but various extra abilities.
• Secret Wars (2015): The police force of Battleworld was the Thor Corps, comprising various people who, in their reality, were worthy to bear the hammer of Thor.
• Shazam!: Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family. They're basically people who not only have the same powers, but usually get them from the same source (or another mythological equivalent).
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man has clones, alternate universe counterparts (Spider-Man 2099, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions), distaff counterparts, future children, symbiotes, symbiote spawn, and magical doppelgangers that have his core set of spider powers. They have teamed up, in various combinations, in many, many stories. Spider-Verse, in fact, was built around this trope.
• Superman:
  • The Man of Steel is often paired up with other Kryptonians like Supergirl, Power Girl, Superboy, Krypto, as well as Daxamites like Mon-El. Each of them (barring the occasional bizarre retcon) are basically Flying Bricks.
  • Likewise, the Phantom Zone criminals are all Kryptonians with the same set of powers.
  • The Superman Emergency Squad was made up of Kandorians (Kryptonians from the bottle city of Kandor). Inside Kandor they have no powers, but outside, as Kryptonians they have the same powers as Superman.
  • The Hypertension storyarc in Superboy's own book featured him leading an army of his alternate counterparts against another counterpart that had gone rogue.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Each of the TMNT, by virtue of all being turtles, have the same extranormal abilities (swimming, limb retraction, etc.). Downplayed since these "powers" aren't very extensive and the focus is more on the turtles' different skills.
• What If?: One issue had four stories in which the members of the Fantastic Four all got the "same" powerset rather than four different ones. All flame-users like the Human Torch, all monsters like the Thing, etc. The invisibility chapter "cheated" as each member got a different power related to invisibility.
• Wonder Woman: Besides Wonder Woman herself, the two Wonder Girl legacies, Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark, along with Anti-Hero Substitute Artemis, and the rest of the Amazons fulfil this. Strangely there's less effort to push them as a team compared to the Green Lanterns, Super-Family and Bat-Family.
• Comic book writer Dwayne McDuffie once satirically pitched a team called "Teenage Negro Ninja Thrashers" due to the prevalence of black skateboarding heroes in the Marvel Universe.

Fan Works

• With This Ring: When the Justice League recognizes that they need a more structured expansion plan than just "recruit superheroes we all personally know," Paul proposes several options, of which his favourite (but one he knows they won't pick) is to use Earth's various bits of super science to make their own heroes with standardized powers.
  Paul: I mean find people —ex-military, police, or just people who have the right attitude— put them through a training program and if they pass give them super powers. Both the Danner and Garrick Formulae are easily mass produced. Power armour, perfectly mass producible as both the Russian government and LexCorp are proving. Cold guns, mass producible. Orichalcum, not currently mass producible but we're working on it. Kinetic belt, mass producible…

Literature

• In Animorphs, everyone on the team can morph into an animal after acquiring its DNA via contact, but only rarely do they all morph into the exact same animal. One notable exception was the time they all turned into polar bears, and this almost ended up being their downfall.
• The shadowhunters from The Mortal Instruments qualify for this. They are all superhumanly strong, fast and resilient, and have the ability to use angelic magic. Mostly runes, but they can also use weapons made by angels. Interestingly, this is inverted by the main protagonists' team, because among them is a vampire and a warlock, and among the minor protagonists is also a werewolf.
  • In The Dark Artifices, the main protagonists are all nephilim, but one of them is also a half-fairy, and has some fairie powers, which is why it is an "Almost Identically Powered Team".
  • The same is true for groups of werewolves who band together to hunt demons together.
  • A villainous example can be found in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy. In the past, the shadowhunters were far from being really good, killing completely innocent downwolders. For this reason, several warlocks have teamed up to fight the shadowhunters.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Zigzagged with demigods. They all have the same basic powers, but depending on the particular divine parent, a demigod can also have extra powers that other demigods do not have. However, most protagonist teams in the series are made of demigods with different parentages.
  • In the camp of the demigods, however, the respective cabins compete against each other in different competitions (in one cabin each, the children are from an Olympic god). In these competitions, this trope is played straight.
  • It is also played with the hunters of Artemis. The goddess Artemis welcomes girls who are virgins and makes them immortal. In addition they get still some further forces, which are however always the same.
• In The Stormlight Archive, there are ten orders of Knights Radiant, and two members of the same order will have the same Surgebinding abilities (which they also share with one of the ten Heralds). Each of their two Surges are also shared with one of the other orders, and all ten have some basic abilities in common.
• In Worm, the Chinese Yangban are built around a pair of Parahumans: Null can spread a single power amongst a group at the cost of proportionally reducing its power, and Two can enhance powers which counteracts Null's downside. The end result is that every member has every power at about two-thirds of the original strength. They're extremely hard to fight, because they're also trained to attack in concert, and they usually bring a power that lets them resurrect dead teammates.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Last Airbender, there are entire nations of people with similar bending abilities, and it often takes multiple benders to perform a feat.

Live Action TV

• Kamen Rider: Shows up sometimes in series with a Gotta Catch Them All element, where the central Plot Coupons That Do Something can be used by multiple characters (albeit said characters aren't always on the same side).
  • Kamen Rider Gaim: Every Armored Rider transforms by inserting a Lockseed into a Sengoku Driver (or later a Genesis Driver), providing different armor and powersets depending on the seed used. While there is some minor variation between Drivers (e.g. different undersuit designs, higher or lower power output, or coming with a sword), most types of Lockseed exist in large numbers and can be passed between users freely, as can the Drivers themselves. Characters only begin to display exclusive powers towards the end of the series, due to some of them mutating into Overlords.
  • Kamen Rider Ghost: Ghost, Spectre and Necrom all transform by equipping the Eyecons of historical figures, and indeed Ghost and Spectres' Transformation Trinkets are identical apart from coming with different weapons. Each also has a unique Eyecon which serves as their base form, but these can still be passed around if needed. Even when Ghost unlocks three character-exclusive Super Modes, Spectre receives Palette Swap versions of two of them. Originally Necrom's suit was set apart by its Explosive Overclocking function and the ability to absorb other Ganma to recover energy, but the former is never used and he loses the latter after joining the heroes, presumably because it would be overpowered.
• Most Super Sentai teams fit this, barring the Sixth Ranger. Their insignificant differences typically encompass their weapons/fighting styles, Humongous Mecha, and color schemes, but their abilities are usually uniform.
• The US adaptation Power Rangers mostly follows suit, but has a tendency in later seasons to give each member a different stock superpower that they can use without transforming, as well as for the Red Ranger to gain an exclusive Super Mode. The latter would eventually pass back into Super Sentai, but usually in the form of an Upgrade Artifact that other team members can borrow when Red is unavailable.

Tabletop Games

• In most Old World of Darkness and New World of Darkness games, the player characters will play a group all from the same supernatural type: vampires, werewolves, fae, mages, wraiths, or whatever.
• Warhammer 40,000: The Eldar specialize in this, with each of their units being a specialist in some form of combat. However, it is expected that each Eldar try to maintain some flexibility, so their units' leaders are referred to as "having lost themselves on the Path" they were following.
• Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG:
  2157. Doesn't matter if we all have different costumes and names, the group is vetoed if it's clear we're all Thor.

Video Games

• Warcraft III:
  • Night Elf females have the Shadowmeld ability, which makes them invisible at night when immobile. As two of their starting heroes and their basic units have it, early games Night Elves can apply this trope for effective ambushes and night attacks, with no unit being targeted more than the others.
  • While the standard game doesn't allow having two of the same hero type, team matches can use do this to very good effect (the paladin is a good tank with a big healing spell, but can't cast it on himself. Two paladins, on the other hand...).
• Dragon Quest IX zigzags this: Unlike VI, spells are not kept when switching classes, but the huge stat boosts that can be acquired during that class are, helping to avert Squishy Wizard. In addition, the combo system makes a party composed entirely of a single class not unattractive, as casting the same spell or ability repeatedly (including a standard attack) increases the damage done.
• Averted in Golden Sun. It's possible to switch Djinn around until your entire party has the same spell loadout, but doing so greatly decreases your stats and makes using Summon Magic tricky (since the Djinn you use to summon also govern what type of magic you have).
• Doable in several of the Final Fantasy games, particularly in ones where you can freely choose classes.
  • In Final Fantasy, for instance, a player can start the game with a party all of the same class, which ranges from the frightfully easy — Black Belts in particular require no equipment and turn into hideously destructive killbots down the line — to crazy hard — a party of four White Mages will have a lot of trouble doing damage.
  • This was a criticism of certain games in the series, notably Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XII, where the game systems effectively encouraged the characters to all develop the same skills, making them essentially interchangeable.
  • It's not for the whole game, but a couple of the early tutorial battles in Final Fantasy IX are fought by Zidane alongside his Tantalus compadres — all thieves.

Web Comics

• League of Super Redundant Heroes: The multiverse turns out to have an entire team of heroes with Lazer Pony's powers (firing energy beams from behind their eyes, whose masks have handlebars so teammates can aim them). While Lazer Pony is a Super Zero, his counterparts (the Lazer Stallions) are highly capable despite being blind (and one is in a wheelchair).

Western Animation

• The commonality of this trope in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is why the Avatar is special. Different nations and groups of people can bend earth, wind, fire and water, and indeed teams with different abilities (like our heroes) are an exception. The Avatar is, himself, a walking One-Man Army capable of bending every element on a scale equal to entire armies, especially in the Avatar State.
• Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.: All five members of S.M.A.S.H., Hulk, She-Hulk, A-Bomb, Red Hulk and Skarr are gamma powered mutants with super strength. There are a few abilities unique to certain characters, but for the most part they have the same power set.
• The Powerpuff Girls all have identical powers, which included flight, super strength, and laser vision. Among others. Later, however, they each started gaining new superpowers; for example, one story dealt with Blossom gaining frost breath. Said episode also explains that each of the girls has one ability unique to themselves. For example, Bubbles is apparently an innate omniglot.
• Parodied in a South Park Halloween episode where we discover the band Korn all have the ability to turn into various forms of corn.
  Korn Powers Activate!
• The Crystal Gems of Steven Universe do have unique powers (Pearl can make Hard Light copies of herself, Garnet can predict the future), but they tend to be situational, inappropriate for combat, or curiously underutilized. The vast majority of their fighting is done with the powers inherent to all gems (made before a certain period): Super-Strength, Super-Toughness, creating an individual-specific weapon, regenerating from a Heart Drive if their body is damaged, and creating a Containment Field to keep other gems from regenerating. Theoretically, they can all shapeshift, but their aptitude with it varies. Outside the main team, there are gems whose primary ability is more different than a weapon (like Lapis Lazuli, Bismuth, and, eventually, Peridot) and some newer gems use non-summoned weapons to compensate for physical weakness.