Witness... true power!

[Asuras]

Whether or not we've purposefully tried to, we've inevitably created a character in the past (or presently!) who takes the cake for "Most Powerful Character" you've created. Not everyone has made someone that would traditionally be called 'powerful', and those who they deem the most powerful may not be powerful in the same sense as others.

Nevertheless, they exist. Perhaps the character is most powerful simply by virtue of having trained more in a subject than your other characters? Perhaps they are powerful in a much more apparent way, such as being a martial arts master, a kingpin, a king, or a god!

Who is the most 'powerful' character you've ever created, and why? Do you enjoy playing powerful characters, or are less powerful individuals (comparatively) more your style?

 

[Jorick]

The most powerful character I ever created was pretty blatant, and it was actually the character that I made for my first ever forum roleplay. Well, he wasn't created overpowered, but he got there through shenanigans. It was a free for all roleplay in the Spam section of a non-roleplaying forum that used to be my primary place of internet activity. By 'free for all' I mean that there wasn't any real oversight by the GMs to keep characters in check, so combat became power level contests full of last second power up gambits very frequently, but that was fine because we all sort of balanced out by all becoming brokenly overpowered.

My guy started off with a sword that could disintegrate anything it cut and some generic superhuman strength/speed/endurance stuff, and he wasn't anywhere close to the strongest character in play at that point. However, through some collaborative ideas made with the co-GM who was in control of the big bad, he rather quickly became one of the most dominating forces in the game. He went off on a journey to the middle of nowhere because he felt something calling to him, and it ended up being some artifact thing that imbued him with power from the evil god (one of a pair of opposed good and evil gods) that made him basically a minor deity in his own right. The powers that this gave him was some literal omnipotence, meaning complete and utter control over every possible thing, in a small area around him, plus some hype mental things like godlike perception in a larger area around himself plus superhuman intellect and speed of thought to be able to actually comprehend his new power. As you might imagine, "I know literally everything that happens in this large area around my character" plus "I can think fast enough to damn near anything" plus "I can literally control everything that exists in this small range around my character" equals overpowered as fuck. He went from being a grunt in the evil army to being the big bad's strongest soldier. Despite this ridiculousness, the big bad was still defeated in the end thanks to the also god-powered good guy GM's character, but in the last moment the bad god dude threw extra power at my character for future shenanigans.

Shortly thereafter we did a sequel roleplay in which my character from the first one appear to be not involved, because he fucked off to the middle of nowhere to contemplate the loss of his patron deity (and to come to grips with the even greater power that others didn't know about, basically a vastly extended range of the god power zone plus near omniscience in a range best measured in thousands of miles rather than the couple miles of before). In that one I played a guy who was a cult of personality priest/prophet dude, who was preaching that the so-called heroes who had stopped the evil god from before were now ruining everything and needed to be deposed from their governance of the city. The prophet guy kept saying stuff about how the will of the gods would smite the city if the heroes weren't removed or destroyed, and he got a lot of the people of the city under his sway. After a while shenanigans mode ensued and the prophet said the wrath of god was on its way and then a few posts later my old character showed up, ready to fuck shit up hard and get the real party started; it turned out that priest guy was actually a sort of clone thing my character made of himself (he'd always worn heavy ass armor, so nobody had known what he looked like) and sent to prepare the way for a big ole gambit that would bring the evil god back from the purgatory type place he'd been sent. It worked, and more crazy fighting ensued, and my guy was only "stopped" in the end by the good side of the pair of gods showing up and throwing a bunch of power at him to balance out the evil.. also effectively doubling his range of power in the process, but that made him turn to actually helping to throw both of the gods into purgatory land where they would be in eternal conflict with each other and not fuck up the world any more.

So my character started off as a guy with a magical sword and some generic powers, but he ended up being basically a deity. Shenanigans he pulled over those roleplays included hastening a siege by riding along the stone wall and cutting a line in it with his magic sword to cause the big stone blocks to disintegrate, winning fights by just nicking people with his sword (though one guy ripped off his own arm to stop the disintegration effect from taking him entirely, which was pretty sweet), committing a seppuku style move to disintegrate himself but through god-powered shenanigans maintaining a consciousness that willed his individual atoms to fly off to somewhere else and then fucking combine back together and be totally fine after that, and as a matter of course doing that neat thing where a character calmly walks through a raging battle and absolutely nothing can touch him (because anything other than the ground/street beneath his feet that got within 10 feet of him would just disintegrate because fuck yeah god powers). It was hilariously broken.

Despite having played and enjoyed that character, I actually prefer more balanced levels of power. That one only worked and made sense because the whole roleplay was basically a game of people pulling powers and upgrades out of their ass to survive or get things done. Fights were less a matter of "who is stronger" than "who can come up with the most creative ways to get around the other character's powers." Despite my character being what would be brokenly overpowered in almost any other roleplay, he only ever killed characters that the player agreed should die and he took a fair amount of wounds even after reaching demigod status because people were able to come up with ways to get around his powers.

For the most part though, I prefer having characters who ride the average level of power. It's more fun when I have to actually struggle to accomplish things, just like any other player, rather than just breezing through obstacles with "lol check my power level scrubs, gg." Being weaker than the average can also be fun, but I usually prefer to do that by giving my characters various indirect handicaps and limitations on their abilities rather than straight up giving them less or weaker abilities than other characters have. For example, I've got a vampire illusion mage character (Zin from Legend of Renalta) who is naturally gifted with the illusion magic and has cool vampire powers that can make them even more effective, and together that could make her scary strong.. but she's a pacifist who's terrified of death so she is only just now coming to grips with how to make use of her abilities in combat in a non-lethal manner after having already gone through two dangerous missions. It's more fun for me that way, so that's how I roll.

 

[Lord Calibur]

I only tend to play as GM for tabletop games, so any submission I give would be a bit like cheating... but I'll give one anyway.

The most overpowered character I ever made was literally so powerful that no-one has ever actually met him. Go figure.
The most overpowered character that has actually made an appearance was probably this guy named Lord Xaxxon. Hell of a character.

The backstory behind the universe/characters involved is stupidly long, so the short/summarized version is that he was basically the leader of a faction of magic-wielding knights with a benevolent Illuminati agenda. These knights, sorta similar to Jedi but with an emphasis on weapon skill and clever combination of magical elements (like Fire + Water = Mist, Time + Mist = Stasis Mist, etc), are crazy respected and feared by the world. My man Xaxxon? He was the biggest and baddest of the bunch, complete with runes on his eyes and a muscled stature over 10 feet tall. He literally wielded anchors as his weapons. He dual-wielded bloody anchors, and he would swing them around on chains like bloody Kratos. Just his description would make my players sweat.

So, naturally, seeing as this universe has a major running theme of corruption, he had to go evil. Seeing as he was one of my characters, he had to have morally grey reasons for going evil. Basically, he made a deal with invading demons to let them live, but they had to grant him greater knowledge of the cosmos. This knowledge made him see into the meta-picture, which made his moral paradigm shift. He got more powerful, and more crazy.

Before long, he was concocting a plan to destroy all of mankind and demonkind in a single strike. He would literally baptize mankind in flame, and raise a new, purer world from the ashes. Yes, this villain loved his philosophical monologues. He certainly managed to turn a large number of the player characters to the dark side in the process, too - his argument was rather persuasive. On top of that, he basically had his fingers in every major cake on the planet - he was a multi-micro-tasker on a level that would make elite Starcraft players nervous.

The final battle against him involved his activating a three-mile wide giant God-Rune, making him immortal and giving him the power to summon a meteor to blast Earth. He could move and swing at mach speeds, so the actually-somewhat-overpowered party didn't really stand a chance. The only reason they succeeded against him was by manipulating the rules involved with the rune-magic, allowing for one of their own to assume power over the rune as well. At that point, it was god vs god - and unfortunately for Xaxxon, this other guy was clever enough to make the first hit / rolled a crit. His death was a dramatic scene, and wrapped up a whole mess of different plot lines - it was a beautiful thing.


I actually don't mind playing characters that are weaker, but my passion is playing villains - and as such, that usually means my characters are fairly powerful. My reasons for going big are mostly because I love the tension it pushes on other players - you can't just hack your way through a well-made villain. You have to be clever, you have to have timing and tactics, and you need to be dramatic. The best stuff comes from the highest pressure, so I like to build pressure - that's all. That said, a character needs to be more than just muscles and blades - I generally found my characters on different schools of philosophy, for their better or worse. Many of my villains have been defeated through dialogue, or otherwise been played against based on their personality's weaknesses. There is a difference between "overpowered" and "stupid", you know?

 

[Minibit]

Gosh, I don't think I've written a character who could be described as powerful in the formidable sense in years O.O

I guess Garland could be described as strong, but his main strengths were his patience and tenacity; in terms of physical strength he wasn't too far above average, and in terms of skill he was middling at best :/

most of my stories don't center around - or even provide many opportunities for - combat type scenes, so that's probably why

 

[BrattyCommissar]

Why talk about my single most powerful character when I could talk about all my 'most powerful' characters?? :D

I'll divide them by terms, I guess.

Most powerful PC: Ashrakard. Minor goddess, can literally bleed dragons, super tough, near invincible, effectively immortal, and had other stupid over the top powers. Was still considered weak for her setting. Note MINOR goddess. Full gods and goddesses were stronger... and were still considered weak compared to other things in the setting. Vastly more powerful than people and mortal armies, but weak compared to other things.

Most powerful PC ignoring the setting Ashrakard comes from: This one is actually pretty close. It's either Brooke Williamson or Azalynne. Both of these characters were from when I was a lot younger; and both were from my time playing a certain super hero MMO.

Brooke Williamson can be summed up as a steampunk ironman, but female, and ultimately got possessed by a demon due to being an idiot and not being safe around some demonic coral. Fun girl, never realized that she was turned evil. She just understood she was feeling stronger than ever, and her heart didn't need as much help from the machines to keep her alive.

Azalynne was a mutant, and probably one of the saddest characters I've ever made. She had a form of accelerated healing, but was suicidal. She felt she was a failure as a hero and tried to kill herself. Over. And. Over. She never stayed dead, but she realized that each time she died she didn't heal all the way back. Her body didn't fully recover, and also she lost some of her memories. So... she ended up killing herself more. Enough times that she forgot the pain she had in life from before. Her body was a ruinous wreck of abnormal growths, scars, rot, and etc... and really all she had left was some base instinct to try to do good. Her own self identity was lost, her name before Azalynne (a name given to her by others) gone. Her body outlived the scared little girl who once was her, leaving a rapidly reforming corpse that was full of naivety and good intentions and squick.

Most powerful NPC that things went into any detail on: The Resplendent Empress. She's not the most powerful in the setting, but she's the most powerful named character; far more powerful than the Most Tenacious Monk, the Breathtaking Thaumaturge, the Gallant Prince Lionheart, and the Magnanimous Companion of Nature. Granted, that entire setting, like the one Ashrakard is from, is over the top. So...

Most powerful NPC from a reasonable setting: Morpheus. He's from the RP I'm currently running. Details on him are pretty spoiler-tastic... so you get none.




Anyway, the long of it is, my own characters, even at their most powerful, are usually considered weak or something, for their setting. I enjoy the notion of being powerful, sure, but it is boring to be at the top. If your character is built around being powerful, then it follows that they need more powerful NPCs and challenges and things for them to deal with. Which can't go on forever, because that's also boring which is why I try not to have that be important with regards to my characters either. I also try to not play with people who have to be the coolest and most powerful. That's... not appealing to me. Sometimes it's fun to be a scrub. It's fun to suck and have to take it on the chin. It's fun to get frustrated and shout at your character because they have a flaw that's making them behave in a way you disagree with *stares at goody two-shoes Draza and her naive notions of heroism and friendship*

 

[Kagayours]

I've created quite a few characters who were literally gods.

I find it a bit difficult to compare their power levels when they're really just different flavors of infinitely powerful.

 

[The Mood is Write]

I've got a few OP kiddos, but even they have limitations. One VERY old (don'tjudgeme) character named Darkness (DONOTJUDGEME) not only saw the world as lines of code (think dense matrix but with trinary), but he could edit the code at will: copying and pasting, editing lines, etc.

Oh, and he couldn't age, though that came from making a deal with a weird bird alien possessed by a god.

Thank goodness he was never a main character, only a misunderstood and misguided (see: eternal teenager) antagonist in his daughter's story...

His daughter who inherited his pseudodivinity, part of his code-vision, and the ability to alter reality's code... if she had a special tool to use. Her weak spot in the coding business is magic: she sees it as shape and color instead of code eue;; and she's emotionally crippled making her less effective. Thank goodness for her, her father isn't actually trying to kill her or end her fledgling empire!