Forums » RP Discussion » Limiting characters Powers

What do you guys think should be a limit on a demon? Or a angel? Or....any thing really.

I think the amount of powers you have arent an issue. Its how you balance power with weakness or counters.

It really depends on the genre, or the preference of you and your partner if it's a 1x1. There's no hard or fast rules, just as long as everyone involved is comfortable with it.

Personally, I'm not a fan of limits so much as weaknesses. I've seen too many people who make their character an unstoppable badass that just can't really find a way to interact with.

(Then again, I've also known of immortal, powerful characters who were a riot to play with. Powers dont make or break the character, their personality does.)

You can have as many strengths/weaknesses/quirks to a character as you damn well please.
But it depends on how you depict them in story, how they work in scenario, that matters.
IMO of course.

So the personality makes the power? Trying to understand here. Autism so forgive me if I'm not completely understanding fully just yet

the way i see it, it's not a matter of how powerful or balanced the character is, it's a matter of how well the character is written and how it fits into the story. extreme power imbalance can open up interesting story possibilities if the people you're rping with don't mind.

a character doesn't need to have a 'kryptonite' to be a good character, and i think most people would rather RP with a god-like character that's written well than a badly-written powerful character with dumb/random weaknesses shoehorned in to make them 'fair'. i don't actually see truly overpowered godmode mary sue type characters very often, but I have seen a lot of inexperienced writers make up arbitrary and complicated limits for their characters, like 'oh, my character can breathe fire, but only for 7.5 seconds once every two and a half days' and it's like...why

however, i understand the need to apply more limits in large community RP settings like furc dreams, where the overpowered character needs to fit into the continuity as a whole in a non-obnoxious way. for small groups or one on one rps, though, it just comes down to what makes a good story.

No problem. I word things weird when I'm typing off the top of my head.

I can't speak for everyone, but I don't mind if a partners character is more powerful than mine. How they act either because of, or in spite of that power is more interesting.

However, there is a stigma that people who play powerful characters only do so because they want to show off. The power exists only as a way for the person behind the character to "win" at RP. This isn't always true. I've had a few partners with immortal OCs who were the life of the party, and had in-depth personalities.

What I'm trying to get at is, having a powerful character isn't always a bad thing. As long as I have communication between myself and the player, and we both know the others personal limits and what they're not comfortable with, I don't care if you play a living God.

...this probably wasn't any more coherent, I'm sorry.

In my experience, it boils down to two things:

*Don't be a d-bag

*The other person should have just as much fun as you.

And that's it. The other side of the equation is that you don't let other people be a d-bag to you, and if other players are intent upon tearing you down because your character is OP, try to have a discussion with them. A calm, civilized discussion. If they won't go for that, then there's no reason to listen to them further. The only one you can control is yourself, and by extension your characters. Do you, and do you well, and you'll be fine.

Well... it depends on the kind of RP you intend on doing. If it's slice-of-life, pure romance, or that sort of thing, the level of power in a character may not matter. But if there's any source of strife -- whether it be combat, diplomatic relations, injury, illness, or another character's weaknesses such as mental or physical disability -- having powers which can instantly solve these things can be a problem.

In the case of the last -- mental or physical disability -- other players usually won't want these elements of their character 'cured', and if they do, they're likely looking for a long process -- not a sudden 'poof, you're better'. Be especially aware of players who put much of the basis of their character's development into their weaknesses. In general, it's always best to ask OOC.

In general, the problem with overpowered characters isn't that they make the other player feel inferior, but that they erase all possible sources of conflict in an RP. Imagine if Lord of the Rings featured a particularly overpowered character, present at the Council of Elrond.

"The ring must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. We must form a party of brave souls to take it on this perilous journey. It will take many months and there will be terrible dangers -- wait. Where -- where did the ring go!?"

"Oh, that whole party of brave souls thing seemed kinda risky. I just teleported the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Problem solved!"

Kind of funny, but there goes all the adventure and drama. As long as you keep your character's abilities in scale with any planned or likely conflict, you'll be fine.

In other words, be careful of those who put only mental illnesses as a weakness? I would agree on this insight.

But I would also agree that amongst the weaknesses of the mind, there can be strength. Such as LOTR depicts.

I would agree with you, that instant power to fix everything seems absurd and makes the story not only less believable because often at times, feats are not achieved automatically. But it also makes the story less...fun.

So that far that I can read, I think we all agree on similar views. All characters should have strengths of not only character, mentality, and physicality.

But also should have weaknesses that balance out amongst all of these. Personality, mentality, physicality. Each one should have a strength that counters the weakness. You can have a strong character, but not have him be as nimble and agile as a elf.

Eh, not exactly what I meant... more that it's probably a poor idea to use the ability to magically cure mental illness as a power/ability, and that someone who plays a character with a mental illness or physical disability is playing that character that way because they *want* to play it out, so curing them is not appreciated. (You may laugh, but it's something I've seen happen a few times, where I'll have a deformed character and people will POOF cure their deformity, or a character with PTSD and someone will POOF magically go 'no more PTSD', etc...)

I think we're all pretty much in agreement here, though... seems to me the people who need the advice are rarely those who ask for it.

I kind of feel like personality does in fact dictate what the power level is. Like, if you have a weak little newbie Vampire for example, they aren't going to be that powerful, but a Vampire that has been like that for say 4 years, would be less likely to die in a fight because they have some control over the standard speed and such powers.

I know you probably weren't thinking about Vampires, but that's just what popped into my head at the moment.

It's not so much as how powerful your character is as much as their weaknesses. If you character has no obstacles then there's no tension and development and that's just not that much fun for you or other people. I personally have some rather powerful characters but they each have some sort of drawback; being powerful isn't the thing that makes them interesting. It's their quirks and weaknesses, having them work their ways around problems in their own unique ways is the fun part.

It's contingent on the setting. If you make a Demonic character ala Lucifer from Fox' new hit TV show of the same name, there's no issue provided the power level is appropriate to the setting. Alternately, a character with tremendous powers might be fine, even if the character's power is completely asymmetrical to everyone else's, provided the character doesn't use its abilities to smack down others' story lines.

An immortal prankster spirit with tremendous powers is fine, if all it ever does is move your stuff around, put gross stuff in your drinks and play its part. It'd only become an issue if the player used the character as a vehicle to step on other player's toes.