(08-12-2015, 12:05 PM)Graeham Wrote: It's tricky because it's very, very subjective. Plus it's all too easy for an overpowered character to completely dominate a scene or for an underpowered character to end up being considered 'overpowered' for daring to secure the occasional victory and not become a punching bag to feed someone else's ego at every turn.
I've always been a huge fan of character development and plausibility myself so I'd much prefer to see people start out with their character(s) being fairly normal and untrained before becoming more competent and powerful over time through actual role-play.
It always rubs me the wrong way when someone's justification for a very powerful character is an extensive background. It's nice to read through an elaborate page of information on someone's wiki but if it didn't happen in-game, through actual role-play? I'm often skeptical.
Graeham started out as being unable to fight and over the year or so that I've role-played on him he's grown as a character, training and learning to defend himself better. This has been very satisfying - and provided plenty of role-play for other people in the process.
I also feel like it's a role-player's responsibility to make use of their character(s) where it's appropriate. I've always cringed when you see someone's non-combatant going exploring somewhere as dangerous as Azyz Lla or invading a Garlean outpost. It doesn't make much sense and they'd likely end up dead if not for immense luck/being heavily defended by their allies.
There's a flipside to this too. The longer a character has been around, the more 'powerful' they become simply on account of their cumulative experiences. Any combat oriented character who has been engaged in combat oriented rp is going to loom like a powerful veteran of war when you list down all the stuff they've survived through.
I have a shaman in WoW who's been around since launch, and if I paraphrase his backstory and IC accomplishments through rp, he just looks blatantly overpowered without the ten years of context.
