Strength: Franklin Richards possesses the normal human strength of a boy of his age, height, and build who engages in moderate regular exercise

Known superhuman powers: Franklin Richards is a mutant with vast psionic powers. His abilities are so great that he can create "pocket" universes in alternate realities. (A "pocket" universe is a cosmos that does not equal our own in size.) When Franklin achieves the conscious use of his full powers, he will have telepathic powers, tremendous telekinetic powers, the ability to fire enormously powerful energy blasts, and the ability to rearrange the molecular structure of matter, even up to a cosmic scale.

It has often been speculated that Earth's human race is evolving into a superhuman race with great psionic powers, and Franklin may be an early example of what humanity will someday become.

Franklin Richards has imposed mental blocks within his own mind to prevent him from using most of his psionic potential while he is still such a young child. It is possible that the strength of these blocks will fade over time, or that they cannot prevent him from utilizing his full powers unconsciously. The mental blocks also work only when Franklin is in his physical body; his astral form can apparently use all of his psionic potential if it has separated from his physical form.

The mental blocks did not restrict Franklin from using his precognitive abilities, which manifest themselves in his dreams, enabling him to envision possible future events. Although there are countless possible futures, Franklin foresees the most probable future path, and therefore his predictions usually come true. Franklin seemingly cannot foresee events more than roughly a few days in the future. Franklin's precognitive power developed to the point at which he could see images of future events even when conscious.

Later, Franklin developed the ability to place himself in a trance-like state while remaining fully conscious. While he is in this trance, he can project an intangible, ghostlike image of himself to another location, through which he can see and hear what goes on at that location. What Franklin has called the "dreams" he has while in this state are not truly dreams, but his conscious awareness of the environment into which he has projected his "dream-self." It is not yet known how far Franklin can project his "dream-self" away from his physical body, but he has projected it onto a planet while his physical body was in a starship high above the planet's surface.

Franklin has not recently manifested his powers to perceive the future or to project a "dream-self" and it is not clear whether he can still use these abilities or whether they have returned to latency.

First, the radiation somehow affected Susan Richards' body in such a way as to give her serious difficulties in giving birth. For unknown reasons, soon before she was to give birth to Franklin, Susan Richards' blood cells were observed to be carrying a strange form of energy that threatened the lives of both herself and the baby. Presumably, this energy effect is linked with Susan Richards' superhuman powers over energy that enable her to become invisible and to create force fields.

With Franklin's birth imminent, Reed Richards and his teammates, the Human Torch and the Thing, journeyed into the anti-matter dimension called the Negative Zone to find the only means known to Mister Fantastic of saving his wife and unborn son: the Cosmic Control Rod wielded by Annihilus, one of its most dangerous inhabitants. Mister Fantastic succeeded in obtaining the Rod and drained energy from it into a special container, which he and his two colleagues then brought to their own dimension. Reed Richards succeeded in using the energy from the Rod in bringing the energy in his wife's blood under control, and she safely gave birth to a healthy son. The infant was named Franklin Benjamin Richards in honor of his late grandfather, Franklin Storm, and the Richards' best friend, Benjamin J. Grimm. In his early years the sorceress Agatha Harkness acted as Franklin's nanny and protector.

The cosmic radiation that had given Reed and Susan Richards their superhuman powers also resulted in affecting the genetic structure of their son: Franklin was born a mutant. Unlike most superhuman mutants, whose unusual powers do not emerge until the mutant reaches puberty, Franklin began manifesting his superhuman powers at a very early age. In the normal course of events, Franklin's psionic powers would presumably increasingly emerge as he grew older until they reach their full, vast potential when he achieves maturity.

However, this normal process was ruined by Annihilus, who, during a later conflict with the Fantastic Four, placed Franklin within a machine that triggered the release of his full psionic potential. Franklin was too young and inexperienced to control the vast energies building up within him, and Reed Richards feared that his son would be unable to prevent himself from releasing so much psionic energy to destroy all life on Earth. Unable to find another means to deal with the problem in the short space of time left before disaster would strike, Reed was forced to use a device that rendered Franklin comatose, and thus unable to project psionic energy.

Months later, while the robot Ultron-7 was attacking the Fantastic Four and other superhuman beings, energy radiating from the robot affected Franklin's mind, releasing great psionic energy from Franklin's mind that overpowered and defeated Ultron. Franklin was thus released from his coma, and his psionic powers were apparently now back at the level at which they were before Annihilus subjected him to his machine.

Reed and Susan contacted Professor Xavier and enroled Franklin into the Institute so he could grow and learn how to use his powers properly.