I'm tired of OP heros

[Leonotis]

I’m going to say it: I am so tired of the Overpowered (OP) Hero trope. The character who gets a shiny, world-breaking ability that makes every challenge feel like a minor inconvenience. Where’s the tension? Where’s the fun?

I'm just bored of it.

What truly gets my creative engine running is a hero who has to outthink their limitations instead of simply overpowering them. Because the best abilities, the most memorable ones, sound absolutely terrible on paper.

Think about it:

Luffy(One Piece): Made of rubber

Ueki (The Law of Ueki): Can turn trash into trees

Mirio (My Hero Academia): Can phase through solid objects... but is blind, can't breathe, and falls through the floor while doing it. What a drawback!

On paper, these are C-tier, "stupid" powers. Yet, in the story, they are absolutely incredible.

What makes them so good isn’t raw strength it’s creativity.

These characters take a seemingly weak or deeply limited ability and turn it into a devastating, completely unique fighting style. They rely on strategy, experience, and sheer grit to innovate and find a weakness their opponent never saw coming. They train not just their power, but their minds, to maximize an imperfect tool.

That's the kind of hero I want to write. The underdog who wins because they understand their power better than anyone else. The genius who uses the environment, who sacrifices to get the upper hand, and whose victory feels earned.

It's not about the ability but about how they use it.

So, writers, I beg you: give your heroes a handicap. Give them an ability that makes me scratch my head. Give them a reason to be clever. Let's make our readers gasp not because of a bigger number, but because of a better idea.

Who’s your favorite hero who uses a “dumb” power in a brilliant way? Let me know in the comments!

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

I’m going to say it: I am so tired of the Overpowered (OP) Hero trope. The character who gets a shiny, world-breaking ability that makes every challenge feel like a minor inconvenience. Where’s the tension? Where’s the fun?

I'm just bored of it.

What truly gets my creative engine running is a hero who has to outthink their limitations instead of simply overpowering them. Because the best abilities, the most memorable ones, sound absolutely terrible on paper.

Think about it:

Luffy(One Piece): Made of rubber

Ueki (The Law of Ueki): Can turn trash into trees

Mirio (My Hero Academia): Can phase through solid objects... but is blind, can't breathe, and falls through the floor while doing it. What a drawback!

On paper, these are C-tier, "stupid" powers. Yet, in the story, they are absolutely incredible.

What makes them so good isn’t raw strength it’s creativity.

These characters take a seemingly weak or deeply limited ability and turn it into a devastating, completely unique fighting style. They rely on strategy, experience, and sheer grit to innovate and find a weakness their opponent never saw coming. They train not just their power, but their minds, to maximize an imperfect tool.

That's the kind of hero I want to write. The underdog who wins because they understand their power better than anyone else. The genius who uses the environment, who sacrifices to get the upper hand, and whose victory feels earned.

It's not about the ability but about how they use it.

So, writers, I beg you: give your heroes a handicap. Give them an ability that makes me scratch my head. Give them a reason to be clever. Let's make our readers gasp not because of a bigger number, but because of a better idea.

Who’s your favorite hero who uses a “dumb” power in a brilliant way? Let me know in the comments!

The question is, if it needs just effort to improve, was it an imperfect tool to begin with? Does poor usage not reflect on the user rather than on the ability? Aren’t you just also creating the supposedly weak trope there?

PS

Luffy is quite a terrible example, in this case.

 

[Leonotis]

The question is, if it needs just effort to improve, was it an imperfect tool to begin with? Does poor usage not reflect on the user rather than on the ability? Aren’t you just also creating the supposedly weak trope there?

PS

Luffy is quite a terrible example, in this case.

Yeah honestly stopped One Piece after he got 4th Gear... but he totally fits pre time skip!

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Yeah honestly stopped One Piece after he got 4th Gear... but he totally fits pre time skip!

He got the Naruto treatment, recently. Child of prophecy and whatever. So hardly weak.

 

[melchi]

Best heroine is the one from a noble family that uses a doll to defeat her enemies.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Best heroine is the one from a noble family that uses a doll to defeat her enemies.

 

[Cipiteca396]

I'm tired of weak protagonists who have to spend dozens of chapters marathoning the exact same power up montage over and over again just to get to the start of the story so that authors and readers can feel the character 'earned' their power. It's so unbelievably droll. Just start OP and get on with it, PLEASE.

And yes, "weak powers" that are "actually strong" count as OP.

Frankly, if you start genuinely OP, you can also still be creative with your powers. It's not like you're locked into the brute force approach just because you don't have an external handicap. Rather, if you need a handicap to be creative, isn't that just fake creativity? You're creating a problem that nobody needed or wanted to be solved.

 

[RainyLiquid]

It depends what I'm in the mood for. Sometimes it's annoying though. Like obviously we know the MC is going to be op if it's a traditional fighting series so why not just get there. Why do we have to sit and be told their power sucks and is useless and then not shocking twist, it's actually op! Who could have seen this coming.

 

[Valmond]

To be fair, if you can turn trash into trees. You can make a killing off of that.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

OK, I will write myself as the OP Dragon hero while you can be my weakling kobold sidekick. Maybe you can train your powers in making my hoard bigger.

 

[expentio]

Are we specifically talking about heroes? Because I got an OP character who is absolutely in no need to do any heroic act, but has severe mental issues that come with the way her powers manifest. Yes, she's OP, but she's also a mental wreck, and kinda was so even before the powers.

 

[Zagaroth]

it all depends on how you write the challenges.

One of my MCs has an OP breadth of power and a ridiculous growth curve, but even past 800k words, he has not surpassed some of the very powerful secondary characters we meet early on. He will do so eventually, and in an otherwise improbably short amount of time given how long it normally takes someone to get there, but there is still a way to go.

His biggest handicap until recently was an inability to leave his home territory.

And even as powerful as he is, he can't do *everything*. The most recent display of power I wrote had him basically clearing a path and taking on a sub-boss, then soaking some initial powerful hits from the real boss, which gave everyone else time to catch up and gang up one the final boss, but this takes him out of commission for a while. It takes some really rough field surgery and a lot of potions before the person helping him reaches the point of just needing to wait and guard him until he wakes up.

Even then, by the time he rejoins the battle, said boss is clearly having trouble and on the back foot. He helps finish the fight faster, but he doesn't swing the tide.

I get to show him off by having him do something no one else present could do, but it's not easy and it still takes the help of his friends and family to get the whole job done.

The difference is in making something OP relative to normal experiences of that world, but not so OP as to be an 'I Win' button.

 

[Eldoria]

I'm quite bored of seeing a weak MC who trains for hundreds of chapters only to be beaten by the boss. And what saves the MC? Plot armor. This pattern is predictable even before reading it.

I'm tired of weak protagonists who have to spend dozens of chapters marathoning the exact same power up montage over and over again just to get to the start of the story so that authors and readers can feel the character 'earned' their power. It's so unbelievably droll. Just start OP and get on with it, PLEASE.

And yes, "weak powers" that are "actually strong" count as OP.

Frankly, if you start genuinely OP, you can also still be creative with your powers. It's not like you're locked into the brute force approach just because you don't have an external handicap. Rather, if you need a handicap to be creative, isn't that just fake creativity? You're creating a problem that nobody needed or wanted to be solved.

Well, by designing OP characters, authors can think of dramaturgy for an interesting and unique story plot. For example, an OP MC but limited by strict rules on the use of powers, an OP MC but traumatized, an OP MC but tired (Saitama?), an OP MC but lazy, etc.

Thus the conflict will be more developed, no longer what is the MC's power to be able to defeat the antagonist? But how does the MC use his/her power to live a 'normal' life? Therefore, an OP MC presents a more prominent conflict from the beginning of the story.

Readers do not have to watch hundreds of boring practice chapters. Readers will immediately be presented with an engaging vertical and/or horizontal conflict.

 

[Jerynboe]

Well there’s always that web fiction classic, Worm. The MC in that has the ability to sense and control bugs. It is actually a very impressive ability once she figures out how to use it, but raw power wise it’s pretty mid.

For comparison, other powers in the setting include touch range biokinesis, making a fast moving ball of fire hot enough to melt concrete, growing to the size of a building, and slowly turning into a giant dragon with metal scales. That last one is literally the first supervillain she encounters.

MC becomes powerful as she figures out how to use the bugs creatively, multitask better, and process more sensory input from them without getting overloaded. As an example, one of her biggest combat upgrades” comes when she figures out a way to use them to deliver pepper spray without killing the bugs.

 

[NotaNuffian]

In my honest opinion, all superpowers are OP unless with a giant handicap that can never be overcome through training.

Picture this, if Deku's superhuman strength and durability has a very short time limit like Ultraman or Ben 10 every day, this will force him to fight in his "creative state" more and make the random assortment of powers he have more applicable instead of just "mini Allmight x random power ups GO!"

But we know this is impossible. The handicap must go to show growth. Hence the reason why often near the end, the work feels so boring. Because MC is literally the pivot of the world and his strength is now no longer capped.

 

[Nekyo]

I kinda feel something very similar, for me the coolest part of the journey is actually the growth and the breakthrough moments of the character, like the fights with the boss fight, for example Dragon Ball, Kenichi, Yu Yu Hakusho. Those old school shonen.

I mean sometimes the op trope is done cool in an enjoyable way like One Punch-man for comedy, Mob Psycho for introspection, Slime Tensei for Kingdom building, Reincarnated as the 7th Prince for System exploration.

The trope in relation to my stories: I would like to mention that in my stories I have inverted the trope:
- In Voidlight the main characters start as being OP but get nerfed to powerless. And have to regain powers again.
- In Deathend the main character is thrown into a harsh world with a blessing of a goddess that is only able to do so much so he has to figure out how to make the most out of that.

 

[LightHikari]

Only thing I'm tired of is bad writing.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I'm tired of people complaining about the power level of other writers' characters. They wrote the characters they either felt they needed to or that they believed readers wanted - if they're not getting an audience, then give them your opinion on what they're doing wrong... If they have an audience and you dislike what they're doing, read something else.

I mean, I know I used to hate Superman for this reason - but really it was lazy writers that I disliked. Written well, Superman is a very compelling and complex character, even when they get into the absurd power escalation mode (i.e. Silver Age or "Beyond Infinite Speed" crap). Done poorly, he's just a lame Hercules or Sun Wukong rip-off.

 

[Navillus]

I’m going to say it: I am so tired of the Overpowered (OP) Hero trope. The character who gets a shiny, world-breaking ability that makes every challenge feel like a minor inconvenience. Where’s the tension? Where’s the fun?

I'm just bored of it.

What truly gets my creative engine running is a hero who has to outthink their limitations instead of simply overpowering them. Because the best abilities, the most memorable ones, sound absolutely terrible on paper.

Think about it:

Luffy(One Piece): Made of rubber

Ueki (The Law of Ueki): Can turn trash into trees

Mirio (My Hero Academia): Can phase through solid objects... but is blind, can't breathe, and falls through the floor while doing it. What a drawback!

On paper, these are C-tier, "stupid" powers. Yet, in the story, they are absolutely incredible.

What makes them so good isn’t raw strength it’s creativity.

These characters take a seemingly weak or deeply limited ability and turn it into a devastating, completely unique fighting style. They rely on strategy, experience, and sheer grit to innovate and find a weakness their opponent never saw coming. They train not just their power, but their minds, to maximize an imperfect tool.

That's the kind of hero I want to write. The underdog who wins because they understand their power better than anyone else. The genius who uses the environment, who sacrifices to get the upper hand, and whose victory feels earned.

It's not about the ability but about how they use it.

So, writers, I beg you: give your heroes a handicap. Give them an ability that makes me scratch my head. Give them a reason to be clever. Let's make our readers gasp not because of a bigger number, but because of a better idea.

Who’s your favorite hero who uses a “dumb” power in a brilliant way? Let me know in the comments!

I personally would love to see an overpowered MC that uses there powers for absolute random shit and is a complete enigma… a slice of life story like that would be hilarious if done right… we need more variety in the Overpowered MC genre-nyah.

 

[Talon88.1]

I suppose this is a problem only in some genres? Sci-fi like I like to write is, assuming the writer tries to keep *some* manner of realism (Even if the tech is really advanced), means that the power can be lost, taken away, break down, run out of fuel, etc etc.
Depending on the writer, the protag has to be smart in order to be powerful.