I generally don't have an issue with powerful characters, but then again, I spent a lot of time RPing in CoH where those were the norm ("You're a super-soldier from another dimension with a bow that shoots archers, who have bows that shoot witches? Cool. I rewrite minds with a thought for a living. Wanna get pancakes?"). The trick is to make sure that the power isn't a Solution for Everything and that you have appropriate weaknesses and flaws. After all -- and at the risk of invoking Comic Book Fan Ire 
-- even Superman is interesting when the stories focus on his flaws, and Marvel's made a business out of showing really powerful people laid low by sidethinking and their own problems.
With that in mind, I personally try to write any character that's powerful in one area as having significant weaknesses in other areas. If they have ways to circumvent those weaknesses, those workarounds have their own problems -- they're fragile, difficult to employ, and most importantly don't bring the character up to the skill of someone who learned it and practices it "the hard way." The more powerful a character is, the more and more severe the weaknesses I apply to them are.
Another approach that works, especially in conjunction with the "balancing weaknesses" approach, is to "turn down" the "RP power" of things your character does but isn't specialized in. Just because you have the class at 50 doesn't mean you have to RP it with that level of power. You could call yourself a "dabbler" who has some training, but not a high level (or even largely competent level) of expertise.
What informs both of these approaches is viewing character skill from a different tabletop RPG standpoint -- your "class" is just points in a skill, and you have a finite number of points. To me, it's not like D&D-style multi-classing, but instead just sticking a couple of points here and there to reflect limited expertise (a "White Wolf" approach, for those familiar with the system). You put a lot of points into your specialty, but you don't have enough points to specialize in a lot of fields.
As a side note, it may just be me, but I largely don't care about the age of characters. Final Fantasy heroes are typically quite young compared to Western fantasy heroes with rare exception. As long as there's a narrative explanation for the skill displayed and the character fits into normal FF age ranges (16+, typically) I accept it as a trope of the setting.
-- even Superman is interesting when the stories focus on his flaws, and Marvel's made a business out of showing really powerful people laid low by sidethinking and their own problems.With that in mind, I personally try to write any character that's powerful in one area as having significant weaknesses in other areas. If they have ways to circumvent those weaknesses, those workarounds have their own problems -- they're fragile, difficult to employ, and most importantly don't bring the character up to the skill of someone who learned it and practices it "the hard way." The more powerful a character is, the more and more severe the weaknesses I apply to them are.
Another approach that works, especially in conjunction with the "balancing weaknesses" approach, is to "turn down" the "RP power" of things your character does but isn't specialized in. Just because you have the class at 50 doesn't mean you have to RP it with that level of power. You could call yourself a "dabbler" who has some training, but not a high level (or even largely competent level) of expertise.
What informs both of these approaches is viewing character skill from a different tabletop RPG standpoint -- your "class" is just points in a skill, and you have a finite number of points. To me, it's not like D&D-style multi-classing, but instead just sticking a couple of points here and there to reflect limited expertise (a "White Wolf" approach, for those familiar with the system). You put a lot of points into your specialty, but you don't have enough points to specialize in a lot of fields.
As a side note, it may just be me, but I largely don't care about the age of characters. Final Fantasy heroes are typically quite young compared to Western fantasy heroes with rare exception. As long as there's a narrative explanation for the skill displayed and the character fits into normal FF age ranges (16+, typically) I accept it as a trope of the setting.
The Freelance Wizard
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
