Required Secondary Powers / Web Original

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• Cracked has examined them in two articles:
  • 7 Awesome Super Powers (Ruined by Science)
  • 6 Awesome Superpowers (That Would Suck in Real Life) gives several examples. Being able to throw lightning would require immunity to effects on sight and hearing similar to those of stun grenades, and force fields would need immunity to Not the Fall That Kills You….
  • Wolverine's required healing factor parodied in this video.
• Generally, metahumans in the world of Curveball have the secondary powers they need to use their primary powers effectively. It does come up occasionally, though.
  • Agent Hu has the ability to turn into living fire. Unfortunately, she doesn't have the ability to keep herself from immolating her own clothes (which, admittedly, isn't so much "required" as it is "would be really, really nice").
  • Officially, Agent Grant has the power of teleportation. However, in his particular type of teleportation, there's a split second when he exists at both the origin and destination points simultaneously. He learned at a fairly young age how to interrupt the process at that point. However, since his powers didn't originally involve cloning himself, they don't provide any help at all in keeping track of his various bodies. He recalls one incident where one of him turned left down a hall, and another one simultaneously turned left off of an overpass and into traffic.
• In the sixth Shadow Hawk story in Epic Tales, Shadow Hawk's required secondary abilities are actually a major plot point, as there is a character whose presence negates them. Also interesting in that Shadow Hawk's powers are magical in nature, while the negation powers are scientific in nature, and result after a section of really bad technobabble.
• How to Hero's entry on the side-effects of super strength mentions that if you're not also invulnerable, you're likely to get injured while testing out your powers.
• The Salvation War:
  • Demons all have giant back muscles that are very similar to the cells of the electric eels, which makes up for the energy a 20-foot-tall man would need. The flying demons are filled with a light and highly flammable gas that allows them to fly and breath fire. However, the byproduct to the gas makes the demon's blood highly acidic, and while their insides are well protected from the acid, their skin bursts into flames if the blood touches it.
  • Another example is the healing ability of the angels and daemons. One wounded angel noted he needed a lot more food and water when they were healing, and because of that his was slowed greatly. It is mentioned they have systems in their bodies that prevent such a fast healing rate from becoming cancerous. When an angel army was Nuked, the radiation broke down the systems with horrible results. They, however, also fall to the problem of healing fast does not mean healing right. The broken wings of several angels healed so the bones fused and the joints lost their ability to move.
• SCP Foundation: SCPs with seemingly beneficial properties inevitably have a drawback, often in this vein (such as one that grants immortality but shuts down the body's ability to heal), that renders them too dangerous to remain uncontained.
  • The only one which appears to have no side effects whatsoever is SCP-500, a jar of pills that can cure any disease within about two hours. However, there are only 47 pills left, down from 60 when the Foundation first acquired it. And it can't be synthesised.
  • Exemplified in the testing logs with SCP-896. Leveling up in the game allows the player to increase their real world stats in correspondence to the stats in the game. Testing involved getting 5 D-class personnel to each level up a different stat by playing the game: Knight (Stamina), Beserker (Strength), Cleric (Wisdom), Warlock (Intelligence), Bard (Charisma). As testing went on, the downsides to each increase started to show. Knight's skin becomes almost impenetrable, but is unable to move from the lack of elasticity. Cuts along the joints (achieved from using diamond blades) have allowed motion and he luckily does not feel pain. Beserker gains superhuman levels of strength, but is as physically durable as the next man. This results in his death when he rips a heavily-reinforced door off its hinges, shattering his bones from the sheer amount of force that he could generate but not withstand. Warlock is able to recall impressive magnitudes of information, but isn't capable of utilising it in a creative or meaningful way. Inversely, Cleric is capable of advanced organisation and problem-solving, but his long-term memory is severely lacking.
  • SCP-4290 is one of those all-consuming Eldritch Abominations with an endless hunger, and needs to be sealed or else it'll easily consume the world with its ten mouths. It also lacks the capability to survive extended periods of starvation, and when its seal finally breaks, it turns out to have been dead for 9000 years.
  • One entry in the Log of Anomalous Items is a piano that magically compelled people to perform Broadway show tunes... without providing them with musical talent or actual knowledge of the show tunes in question. The piano was disassembled with extreme prejudice.
• The illustrati of Shadows of the Limelight generally can't hurt themselves with their own power; for example, those with the domain of glass can't be cut by the sharp edges of broken glass, and those with the domain of flame are immune to burns.
• In Trinton Chronicles it would seem like everyone who has an ability that might normally kill them has an unmentioned secondary power. Best example of this is Dan who controls time, in order to move at hyper speeds when emulating Super-Speed he would need a way to extract air with out burning his lungs and in order to see when he slows time to a crawl he would need a way to speed light up to his eyes while still perceiving slowed time.
• This is a Running Gag on Villain Source (Your Online Source For Everything Evil) which sells awesome superpowers then lists all the unfortunate side effects in the small print.
• WitchCraft SMP: Most of the Witches have secondary passive abilities to compensate for their offensive powers.
  • FireFrost Witches are naturally Immune to Fire.
  • Nature Witches who have acquired the ability to shoot toxic mist at others gain Poison immunity.
  • Zombies will not attack Necromantic Witches unprovoked, i.e. they are rendered neutral instead of hostile mobs.
  • Water Witches have Super Not-Drowning Skills and can mine and move in water just as easily as everyone does on land.

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