• Detection. Think about your own life. How often do you run across evil? Sometimes, I bet. But probably not often enough to do much about the overall problem, assuming you were trying to. That's why it doesn't matter how powerful a superhero is, unless he or she also has some way to know where to go and when to be there, to save the day from crime in the nick of time! Batman has his Bat-Signal for when the police have a job for him, plus his fearsome detective skills for the rest of the time, when he's chasing down crime on his own schedule. Spidey has his spider-sense and a high vantage point (plus...he lives in New York. Which, for a crimefighter, really ought to be considered cheating somehow. You get crime on a silver platter! Served up any time you happen to be in the mood!). Supes has super-hearing, telescopic vision, the whole sensory package. You need some way to KNOW - when the wrong things need setting right. Or you could just wander around and get lucky, I guess. That works out for the Hulk sometimes. He's always blundering into bad guys when all he wanted to do was smash through some brick wall that was bothering him. "Hulk! How did you cunningly track us to our secret warehouse hideout?" "Evil gang mock Hulk's blundering with sarcasm! HULK SMASH!!"
Note: if you can get around fast enough - we're talking, the Flash - you can probably just keep the news station on or a police scanner, and that will work out okay.
• Protection. You need something that will keep you from getting killed all the time. Some sort of protection, preferably super powers. Invulnerability, or at least, superhuman toughness. Instantaneous healing factor (preferably coupled with adamantium-laced bones, otherwise somebody could break your leg and it would heal all crooked before you could set it properly - ugh!). Invincible armor. Super-speed - we're talking bullet-dodging speed obviously, with the reaction time to go with it. Super-agility - although, super-agility alone won't dodge bullets if you don't have something else to guide it (the aforementioned spider-sense works well). Don't kid yourself: savoir faire alone is probably not going to cut it. Yeah, yeah, we all know, "Batman!!"! But Batman is capable of hanging upside down suspended from a fifty foot length of cable as he whispers grimly into somebody's ear, and in the half-second it takes for them to whip around all shocked and surprised he's *POOF* gone! I don't care what he claims. Batman has powers.
• Extraction. See Batman as the prime example of this. He may be a teleport, I'm not sure. But he can get the hell out of there in a blink, just as long as nobody's looking at him right then. Nobody ever captures him mid-scramble! You never see someone whip around just in time to catch a half-second of Batman tear-assing out of there. No, he's gone already, always. Here a second ago, gone now. But you don't need to do it that way - that's just a stylistic quirk on his part. As long as you have some means of leaving the scene after a successful crime-stoppage, some method of making a fittingly graceful exit, some way of going where the adulating crowd can't undulate after you. Wall-crawling's nice. Flying is of course the gold standard. So dignified! Turn and wave, smiling as you drift away accelerating. Nothing beats flying! Some kind of super-vehicle is always good, but if you're one of those heroes always quasi-semi on the outs with the law, the recurring "endless cop chase" routine can be a pain. You really don't want to get into the habit of leaving the scene in a manner that suggests you are the bad guy. This is also why you can't just take off running (again, unless you're Flash-fast). It looks like you stole somebody's purse.
So, yeah. That about covers the essentials. There are all sorts of other powers and abilities you could have that will come in useful and/or make you stand out in a crowd of capes. But you need to be set in those three key areas, or else your effectiveness will be cripplingly hindered. No Detection - you're never going to be where you're needed in time to do jack about it. No Protection - you're going to get whupped-upon when you try to do jack about it. No Extraction - just as important as the first two! Unless you're so powerful that you can waltz through any obstacle or adversary, you could find yourself arrested, or captured for permanent study by ubertech government spook scientists. Even if you are that powerful, do you really want to be hounded all the way home by paparazzi and autograph-seekers? Where's your dignity?
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