Why does every card come with a limitation?

Because a power with no cost is not a story, it is a wish: a character who can do anything has nothing to fail at. The interesting part of an ability is the line it cannot cross, so every card carries one, and there is no setting that turns it off. The limitations are written to land on any power in their category and they take the power by name, which is why they read like rules rather than filler: the step works once on any given person and never again on the same one, the frost needs something already alight, already flowing or already falling, every use of the pull takes an hour out of the middle of your day. The third part, the hook, is the scene that makes the limit matter this week.

Can I get the same power back later, or send it to somebody else?

Yes, and that is what the seed is for. A card is the category, the strength and the seed, and nothing else: those three are printed under it and travel with every copy. Seed 5904 with the category on Elemental and the strength on Any gives Ashwalk back, with the same limitation and the same hook, on any machine and on any day. Seeds run from 0 to 999999. Shuffle picks a new one at random, and the number in the box is the only thing that changes.

What do the categories and the strength setting actually change?

The category decides which abilities can be drawn, and the tags are real rather than decorative. Elemental is fire, water, stone, weather and cold. Mental is memory, attention, language and other people. Physical is the body: weight, speed, reach and skin. Time is moments held, moved, repeated or replayed. Nature is growing things, animals and the living ground. Machine is made things, engines, signals and records. Each of the 6 categories holds 9 abilities. Strength is how big the power is: Quiet is small enough to hide, Street settles a fight or a room, and Cosmic works on a city, a valley or a season. Every category carries 3 abilities at each strength, so no filter runs dry, and a limitation or a hook written for one category is never handed to another.

Are any of these powers taken from comics, films or games?

None of them. All 54 abilities, 42 limitations and 38 hooks were written for this page, and no existing character, franchise or published power list is drawn on. The names are invented for the cards they sit on, and the abilities are written to be specific rather than generic, which is the honest way to avoid handing you somebody else's signature move. If you are writing to publish, that is worth more than it looks: a generator that returns a famous hero's power in different words has handed you a problem rather than an idea.

How many cards can I draw at once, and can I get them off the page?

Up to 10 in one draw, and no card in a draw repeats another: when you ask for more cards than the filter has abilities, an ability comes round again with a limitation and a hook it has not had yet. Copy takes the whole draw as plain text, laid out the way it reads on the stage, and Markdown takes it as one heading per card for a notebook or a wiki. Both carry the category, the strength and the seed with each card, so any card can be found again from the text alone. If the browser refuses the clipboard, the page says so and the cards stay on screen to select by hand.

Is anything saved or uploaded?

Nothing is uploaded. The whole corpus ships with the page and the draw happens in your browser, so there is no account, no upload and no server that sees what you generate. The category, the strength, the card count and the seed you last chose are remembered in this browser so the page opens where you left it, and Start over at the top of the page forgets them.

Superpower Generator

Every card here is three parts rather than one: an ability, the limitation that makes it worth writing about, and a hook that puts the power in a scene. The corpus is 54 abilities across 6 categories, 9 in each, at three strengths from Quiet through Street to Cosmic, with 42 limitations and 38 hooks written for this page and tagged so that nothing lands where it does not belong. Because the limitations and the hooks take the power by name, the deck holds 65,934 different cards rather than 54, and the draw is a seed rather than a random call: type the same seed with the same category and strength and the same card comes back, up to 10 of them at a time.

Elemental
Any strength
1 card
Seed 5904

Ability
Ashwalk
Step into any fire and out of any other fire burning at that same moment.
Limitation
The step needs something already alight, already flowing or already falling: it starts nothing by itself.
Hook
The only other fire burning tonight is inside the building you meant to rob.
category elemental · strength street · seed 5904

Common questions

Why does every card come with a limitation?: Because a power with no cost is not a story, it is a wish: a character who can do anything has nothing to fail at. The interesting part of an ability is the line it cannot cross, so every card carries one, and there is no setting that turns it off. The limitations are written to land on any power in their category and they take the power by name, which is why they read like rules rather than filler: the step works once on any given person and never again on the same one, the frost needs something already alight, already flowing or already falling, every use of the pull takes an hour out of the middle of your day. The third part, the hook, is the scene that makes the limit matter this week.
Can I get the same power back later, or send it to somebody else?: Yes, and that is what the seed is for. A card is the category, the strength and the seed, and nothing else: those three are printed under it and travel with every copy. Seed 5904 with the category on Elemental and the strength on Any gives Ashwalk back, with the same limitation and the same hook, on any machine and on any day. Seeds run from 0 to 999999. Shuffle picks a new one at random, and the number in the box is the only thing that changes.
What do the categories and the strength setting actually change?: The category decides which abilities can be drawn, and the tags are real rather than decorative. Elemental is fire, water, stone, weather and cold. Mental is memory, attention, language and other people. Physical is the body: weight, speed, reach and skin. Time is moments held, moved, repeated or replayed. Nature is growing things, animals and the living ground. Machine is made things, engines, signals and records. Each of the 6 categories holds 9 abilities. Strength is how big the power is: Quiet is small enough to hide, Street settles a fight or a room, and Cosmic works on a city, a valley or a season. Every category carries 3 abilities at each strength, so no filter runs dry, and a limitation or a hook written for one category is never handed to another.
Are any of these powers taken from comics, films or games?: None of them. All 54 abilities, 42 limitations and 38 hooks were written for this page, and no existing character, franchise or published power list is drawn on. The names are invented for the cards they sit on, and the abilities are written to be specific rather than generic, which is the honest way to avoid handing you somebody else's signature move. If you are writing to publish, that is worth more than it looks: a generator that returns a famous hero's power in different words has handed you a problem rather than an idea.
How many cards can I draw at once, and can I get them off the page?: Up to 10 in one draw, and no card in a draw repeats another: when you ask for more cards than the filter has abilities, an ability comes round again with a limitation and a hook it has not had yet. Copy takes the whole draw as plain text, laid out the way it reads on the stage, and Markdown takes it as one heading per card for a notebook or a wiki. Both carry the category, the strength and the seed with each card, so any card can be found again from the text alone. If the browser refuses the clipboard, the page says so and the cards stay on screen to select by hand.
Is anything saved or uploaded?: Nothing is uploaded. The whole corpus ships with the page and the draw happens in your browser, so there is no account, no upload and no server that sees what you generate. The category, the strength, the card count and the seed you last chose are remembered in this browser so the page opens where you left it, and Start over at the top of the page forgets them.

Every card is built from tagged templates written for this page, and every card carries a limitation as well as an ability, because a power with no cost is not a story. No existing character, franchise or published power list is drawn on, no template field is ever left unfilled, and the same category and seed always give the same card.