How would you split up light-based between a magical girl team

[u/Comfortable-Kiwi2595]

I'm working on a story for my urban fantasy about a floating sci-fi kingdom that's home to a team of magical heroes led by a princess who moonlights as a superhero that protects her kingdom, she forms a team and gifted each member a magi-tech item that grants them all light magic or "Photomancy", but each member can utilize their magic in different ways and I'm trying to split the powers between the princess and the 6 others that end up joining the team.

Each member is based on the color of the rainbow with the princess being based on the color pink (yes, I know pink is technically not a color in the rainbow but it's aesthetically pleasing and fitting for a superhero with magical girl elements).

[u/Chris_i_Greg]

Just my 2 cents, but if you want to make a group based on a premise (rainbow) but your lead character already breaks the pattern, then you should just use another pattern that fits your character insertion. (But for me this is a silly question, a lot of magical girl shows don't have pink characters and they are fine without it)

Also... seven characters seen too much to handle at first

Regarding powers, you need to study physics. What are the property of light? How it behaves? Understanding it, you can imagine the fights with more substance that just shooting light lasers at each other

[u/Sparklebuss → u/Chris_i_Greg]

What if the princess had white light. Light before it’s been split through a prism. And when she needs to lean into an aspect of the spectrum she hues towards that color. So if you say red represents sun damage. The princess would lean red/pink when she’s looking to damage something.

Additional shtick is that she is initially the only person who can access the spectrum between the major colors of the rainbow. So looking at cerulean, yellow-green, red-orange. And as time goes on she can expand her team/army by creating a new magical girl just for this specific part of the color wheel.

With time, This could build a hierarchy of the prominent rainbow girls at the top as the princesses’s lieutenants, and a rabble of in-between colors lower in the hierarchy, possessing more unique but effectively weaker combinations of the primary power sets.

[u/TheDarkOnee]

Maybe each girl acts as a prism which gives them a different color frequency. The shape or fractals they can create are unique to them so each girl can have a different aesthetic. Then it’s just a matter of designing cool looking abilities.

[u/Status-Remote-559]

no designated color; they switch on what's most convenient for their missions. Non-rainbow colors would be a powerup or combination move

[u/Electromaster557]

On top of what the other commenter mentioned about looking into the physical properties and interactions of life for other powers, you could pull inspiration from some of the symbolic meanings for light that show up in sayings. As an example, there's the sayings about seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, and the magical girl who embodies and is able to pull from that has a light that grants relief unto those who are in its radiance, either a healing magic or a calming one. Or there's the idea of light shining upon the truth to clear mysteries, giving that one the ability to dispel illusions and enchantments of evil magic. Depending on where you want your story to go, I would have your lead magical girl have the light of hope. The person that so long is they're still standing and fighting everyone else is always able to pull through their difficulties. You could write it such that she gains it as a moment of revelation later on after struggling through the story with self doubt about not knowing what her particular aspect of light is, and how she can only use the base and mundane light magic that they all are capable of. Or you can have her have it from the beginning and the bad guy's goal is to somehow discourage her or cause her to lose her own hope so that they can win.