How do you keep your characters feeling balanced and not overpowered?
I tend to use the emotions/intelligence/strength system where a character who's good at two things has to be bad at the third. For example, my character Irfa is incredibly intelligent and strong, so he's very out of touch with his emotions. My character Elowan relies heavily on emotions and is very strong, so she's not smart.
Obviously, this is a little oversimplified, but I find that it works decently well. I just kinda wanted to know what y'all use.
I haven't really thought of it in a way.
To be honest, I usually make a character first and then use this later to make sure they'll have flaws and weaknesses to use during the story.
They have faults but they all correspond to their strengths mostly.
Yeah, I try to find the balance between that and my system. Like, Elowan's really impulsive (a blessing and a curse), which is both a sign of her being in tune with her emotions and not taking the time to think through her actions.
Sorace can be confident to arrogant.
Daniella is in control of her life and is a control freak.
Yeah, connecting big strengths and weaknesses is kind of fun because it makes for really interesting characters. Ru is a people pleaser and likes making everyone happy but because of this he can't stand up to physical confrontation or say no to anyone
lol, I guess you're right
I didn't know if you would get this.
I've seen Pride and Prejudice about a thousand times. My mom's lowkey obsessed with it. I don't remember a lot about it tho, just some of the characters and a couple of random scenes.
Nice! From what I remember it was pretty good. I've actually been thinking about rewatching it because I was way too hyper as a kid to appreciate it.
Austen was a master, but she's not really my thing.
Yeah, most old books are pretty hard for me to read because they're so, like, dense. I tried reading Dracula for school and it just hurt my brain.
Dracula was good. Les Miserables was awesome. Lord of the Rings was beautiful.
I've been wondering if I should read Les Mis! It seems so long, and I never really knew if it was worth the read. is it?
It is very long. It is also my favorite book. Hugo can literally stop the plot to write a treatise on humanity and I am still swept along. Mind you, the really long part about Waterloo is really boring. It is also essential to the story, but I don't see why it had to be that long.
I uh..
I just had so many over powered characters in End of Time, I made everyone overpowered in their own way. That’s one way to fix it, right? There’s one character though, the Red Mountain, I just decided to either fix it in one or two ways (make him not exist and just be a legend) (make him exist, but have to go through several weaker stages before he can get to his final form.) I have no idea which one I’m going for. A lot of the characters didn’t start out OP either. They had to work to control any abilities they may have or get better at skills.
So basically, if these characters were put into our world for example, they would probably seem OP to us, but in their universe, they’re all pretty normal.
I also kinda use correspondence. Obhil might be powerful, but also isn’t a good talker, and also doesn’t think too much of Defense while in a fight, since their fighting style focuses on fast or powerful attacks with little to no thought put into them. Obhil isn’t a tactical being.
(And if I’m role playing with them I usually change up their abilities just for that roleplay to make them a little weaker, or so so.)
It’s a lot better than it sounds. I promise.
I mean, I basically do the same thing with my good at 2, bad at 1 rule. I figured if they were always bad at something, they were never going to be too perfect
Thank you for making this post :D
When I come's to weakness, I try to think what would logically be hindering them from being overpowered. For Example…
My Character Jin-Wook-Shin, has the ability to glitch in out of focus, allowing him to teleport sort distances somewhat, even through walls! He also has the ability to destroy/hack electronics with his hardwired glove, but it's draw-back is that he need's the gloves in order to hack something. With his glitch ability, it only work's efficiently if he angry, other times he'll decide to teleport forward but might end up teleporting him to the right.
IDK.
No problem! I really struggle with this, so I wanted to see how other people did it. Giving characters who have powers limitations is a pretty good way to keep them from going nuts. Honestly, I don't limit my character's powers too much because most of the time the powers have their limits baked into them.
Like, I have a character named Hollyn who has a bunch of tattoos, and she can turn those tattoos into physical objects (Knives, bandages, shields, etc) BUT she only has so much ink on her body, so she's working with a limited reservoir right off the bat.
I think of it in terms of what is interesting for a reader. Overpowered and super caring characters can be really fun like One punch man or mob psycho you just need to convey the right emotions for people to enjoy them. You soon forget about whether they are overpowered and start thinking about whether people are enjoying the story. It's the same with RP, what kind of character would you like to interact with? Generally, most people would hold the same opinion. Think less about OP and more about what serves the story and the readers.
