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Check of Power for Protagonist

i have read many times on this board that having extremely over powered characters is a bad thing and i get that. But what about an over powered character with flaws and limitations? For example my main character Kreymar can essentially live forever, but he has to feed off the life force of others to maintain his artificial immortality. He is able to wield powerful black magic that he stole from ancient gods he betrayed, but he is constantly being hunted down and the darkness acts like a poison that corrupts his body and soul. He is able to teleport by creating portals into a spiritual realm, but doing so is a great risk as the malicious spirits who dwell there crave to possess mortal bodies and minds.

My character is very powerful but he has these rules and limitations that hold him back. The very powers he uses are draining his soul and shredding his humanity apart, and yet he uses these powers as a necessary evil for the greater good. Do you think that this is a good balance of Power so he is not superman over powered yet still a terrible force to stand against?

(His enemies are deities that he has betrayed and/or sworn to murder)
 

X Equestris

Maester
I would say you're fine. If a character has limits on their abilities and has flaws, they aren't really overpowered. What you want to avoid are characters who are great at everything, super powerful, don't even have a single flaw, etc. That's where you get into Mary Sue/Gary Stu territory, which most people don't like because they kill all tension, are often written with protagonist centered morality, and sometimes ignore basic logic.
 
I personally think that you have put a good amount of limitations on the character. I really like the idea of the power coming with a cost. This will create tension within the character, especially if he has a moral conflict about it. Also, making his enemies deities definitely gives him a nice challenge as far as fighting goes.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
Any character can be good, they just need to be either be interesting (as in, three-dimensional with depth and growth) or fulfill their narrative purpose.

You say your guy is being hunted down because he betrayed some dudes? Well, that's all fine and good but you should be worried about how he feels over his betrayal. Maybe he has some strong guilt or regret or maybe he's totally contented and glad he did it? Whatever. How is his view of morality shaped or challenged by the powers he uses?

It doesn't matter how powerful they are. Too many writers (and critics) put too much stock in superficial crap like how powerful a character is. The reason why people hate Mary Sues is not because they're all-powerful but because they consist of nothing but superficial strengths and weaknesses.
 

Nimue

Auror
Your mileage may vary with this one, but I think that super-powerful characters are incredibly difficult to pull off, and should generally be avoided if you haven't been published and established as a writer. They seem more common in amateur fantasy than published stuff--and when they are in successful books, they've often become super-powerful only after the course of a long series. I may be wrong about this, but from observation, often super-powerful characters are old ones, ones that someone has been writing about since their teens. Over time, these writer-favorite characters acquire more and more abilities, and their awesomeness and worthiness is self-evident to the writer...but if someone has no investment in this character, you're asking them to take a lot of their awesomeness on faith.

It can be pulled off with great writing, plotting, and characterization, but I really think that these kinds of characters should be whittled down for their first book or foray. People like to read about characters they can identify with, and that involves them having human weaknesses and human motivations. I mean, what does having one's soul shredded even feel like? Does it honestly hold him back, or does he continue to churn out Awesome Moments unimpeded, despite brooding about it? It needs to feel as though there's a very great risk that he could fail, that he could be broken, and there are so few super-powerful characters out there that really make you believe that.
 
The basic premise of the story is that Kreymar and His people were betrayed by their original God (named Uther) who deliberately abandoned them and allowed thousands to be slaughtered. Kreymar and a few former priests swore allegiance to dark gods that were exiled and erased from history that they discovered. Magic in my world is only available through invocations to patron god, without praying to a God and them blessing you, you can not wield magic. But Kreymar finds a new magic that can be used without divine assistance and he sets out to rid the world of religion because for centuries mankind has been enslaved to the cruel and blood thirty gods that rule over the world. Kreymar sees himself as the instrument of mankind's salvation and freedom from divine oppression.

However he is addicted to the dark magic that he used from his service to the dark pantheon and the darkness inside is slowly rotting his spirit. He needs to absorb the black magics stored in ancient relics so that his curses feed off them instead of his soul. But even that is not enough so he absorbs the souls of others and lets the corruption devour them instead. He sees all this as necessary evil to free all of humanity. Though he is losing his sanity from the absorption of so many spirits at one point in the story he can't even tell which memories and thoughts are his and inside him is a storm of spirits constantly trying to rip his soul apart.

So yeah he's got some issues...
 
I think you have created a nice balance of power for your character so that when you do set him up to face an obstacle, readers aren't going to suggest to themselves that there is no possibility other than (X) which can be explained. A lot of authors do create overly powerful characters without properly balancing them though, I kind of felt like the main foe in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn novels was like this, but I lost interest in them and didn't complete the series so it could have worked out but that in itself is a cue that balance is essential in writing.
 
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