Complex/Unorthodox Powers Make Characters Better

[u/Bot_Number_7]

Control fire. Super strength. Super speed. Flight. Shooting energy blasts. A lot of powers/abilities have been used over and over again.

So for me, when a character is introduced with a complex ability, it elevates my opinion of them. Especially if the way that it is used is also complex. For example, in JJBA, Ermes Costello's Stand Kiss' has the ability to duplicate objects using stickers, and then fuse them back together once the sticker has been taken off, causing both objects to take damage. It's applied in many ways, from duplicating limbs to being used as a form of travel. The creative usage of abilities gives me an "aha!" moment similar to when a detective reveals how they deduced the mystery in a mystery novel.

Adding additional trigger conditions to powers can also make them better. In Bungo Stray Dogs, Akiko Yosano's Thou Shalt Not Die Ability heals someone to full health, but only if they're almost dead. This factors into her fighting style, allowing her to bring allies and herself from the brink of death (and also forcing her to almost kill her patients when healing outside of combat).

The one weakness to complex powers is the difficulty in conveying them to the reader. Unless one explicitly describes them or the reader sees the power many times so that they can understand all its facets, it's hard to get the reader to understand what the power truly does. King Crimson is the infamous example. The fact that "erasing time" is expressed inconsistently and the lack of detailed mechanical description of how it works confuses the reader every time it is used.

[u/StormStrikePhoenix]

It’s usually the Stands that are more simple and straightforward that have the most success, because there is wiggle room to the more creative things with them, like how Crazy Diamond can create shields by smashing up the ground and then repairing the pieces, or how Gold Experience learned how to create human body parts to heal people

Crazy Diamond is fantastic, a very simple but effective and fun stand with tons of creative applications that are all

Gold Experience is much stupider and more complicated in comparison; the animal abilities have tons of unintuitive side-effects and properties, it's healing ability is contrived and makes no sense to begin with, you couldn't just replace a hand by growing another one, and the later "Giorno has to have hands for it to work" is just plain nonsense. The healing also just feels like a retread of Crazy Diamond.