I don't think you need to make a character suffer, but I do think you need challenge a character, challenge their beliefs and their skills. There are infinite ways to do that. It all depends on the type of story you're telling.
There are stories where the protagonist changes and stories where the protagonist doesn't. But in all stories, the protagonist must be challenged.
If a protagonist changes, then it could mean they had a flaw of some sort that needed to be dealt with. It's not always the case but a generally it is. Obviously characters can be changed in other ways.
When a character doesn't change during a story, it generally means they don't have a flaw. Their beliefs and their abilities are, for the lack of a better word, right. But during the course of the story, those beliefs and abilities must be put to the test. If a character believes A then someone should challenged them and say A is wrong. B is right. And the character must deal with this in meaningful way.
As a writer if a character is great at X, I would find situations in which X is useless or near useless to them OR throw someone against them that is their equal in X. Now you can have a clash of beliefs between two equally matched foes. And your protagonist wins because they hold fast to their beliefs (what ever that may be, no cheating, red meat is good for you, or the Dragon Palm Six Fingers of Death move is the best ever), and because of that they find a way to win.
So maybe what issues you're having are that you're not understanding what type of story you're trying to tell, and are trying to apply conventions from a different type of story, so things are not exactly jiving.
You can have super powerful characters but you have to challenge them. If you don't, then you might as well just write the following.
Bob faced off against problem X.
Bob solved the problem.
The End.
There are stories where the protagonist changes and stories where the protagonist doesn't. But in all stories, the protagonist must be challenged.
If a protagonist changes, then it could mean they had a flaw of some sort that needed to be dealt with. It's not always the case but a generally it is. Obviously characters can be changed in other ways.
When a character doesn't change during a story, it generally means they don't have a flaw. Their beliefs and their abilities are, for the lack of a better word, right. But during the course of the story, those beliefs and abilities must be put to the test. If a character believes A then someone should challenged them and say A is wrong. B is right. And the character must deal with this in meaningful way.
As a writer if a character is great at X, I would find situations in which X is useless or near useless to them OR throw someone against them that is their equal in X. Now you can have a clash of beliefs between two equally matched foes. And your protagonist wins because they hold fast to their beliefs (what ever that may be, no cheating, red meat is good for you, or the Dragon Palm Six Fingers of Death move is the best ever), and because of that they find a way to win.
So maybe what issues you're having are that you're not understanding what type of story you're trying to tell, and are trying to apply conventions from a different type of story, so things are not exactly jiving.
You can have super powerful characters but you have to challenge them. If you don't, then you might as well just write the following.
Bob faced off against problem X.
Bob solved the problem.
The End.
Troubadour
