Pseudotech

Have you ever noticed how all the heroes that beat those tech-based villians... don't haul the spoils down to a business somewhere for reverse engineering? Likewise, the good tech-based heroes don't open-source some of their seemingly zero-pollution designs to replace cars, planes, trucks, and so on. Why?

Simple answer: They literally can't.

Under the Pseudotech paradigm, the folks with tech don't really have technology: They have a super power that invests in things of the Pseudotech user's designs, making them functional despite being nonsense... to the limits of the Pseudotech user's power. So a theoretical user, Jetpackman, and a jetpack that works... for Jetpackman. If Jetpackman is nearby, it can work for other people. However, if a baseline human steals Jetpackman's jetpack and takes it away... it won't work for very long (and Jetpackman will build a new one with a little delay). Jetpackman can also make jetpacks for his teammates... but again, they'll only work when Jetpackman is relatively nearby, and even at that, he can only keep a certain number running. On the other hand, another pseudotech user who steals Jetpackman's jetpack might be able to keep it running... but the jetpack would then be running on the theif's Pseudotech abilities, not Jetpackman's.

This applies to most tech-based charcaters and their inventions, including robots: Which leads directly to the inverse law of robots. The Pseudotech user has a specific amount of power available to spread among the robots... so when the Pseudotech user manufactures thousands if them to patrol a city... they can individually be taken down by something minor, such as a hit from a high schooler's fastpitch. But for the prototype the Pseudotech user has spent months building, with the Pseudotech user right next to it (or even inside piloting it)? It has a lot of power from the Pseudotech user, and may very well be able to cut through tanks like they're little more than paper mache. However, if the Pseudotech user runs away, then the user is no longer actively feeding power to the creation, and it will weaken. Likewise, if the Pseudotech user mass-manufactures the prototype... the same power limits apply, and the production version is back to being very fragile and weak.

Keep in mind: A pseudotech user's power is just like other super powers: It can grow with time, it may be subject to the user's emotional state, and so on. Pseudotech tends to be very flexible in that it allows one super to do many different things... but it requires preparation (time to build the gadgets), and is more subject to disruption (gadgets are generally breakable).

Addendum: Occasionally, a Pseudotech user puts enough of themselves into a creation (usually a robot, sometimes a computer, always something that was designed with some ability to think and reason) that it achieves an independent existence, effectively becoming a child of the pseudotech user's power. Such descendant robots are rare, are almost never deliberately made independent, and are almost always pseudotech users themselves.