Power Limiter on protagonist

Cainlord the Zellyord is a blacklord (the equivalent of Death Knights) slayer. He has seventeen demon familiars, each with his own handsome form and his own "beast" form. he has the ability to manipulate rotting energy (excess magic) which exists anywhere.

How do I limit this?

Tone him down. Is all that really necessary?

Basically, in one story deal with three subsets of the antagonist. Deal with on in act one, the other in act two and the final in act three. They grow in potency in each act - see http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html

Make him an idiot. It doesn't matter how powerful the character is if they are too stupid to see the applications of their powers and resources.

And really seventeen familiars? Why not just throw in an entourage and groupies while you are at it?

edited 6th Feb '11 4:03:20 PM by Alkthash

Tone him down and make him less ridiculously OP'd.

How about 5 demon familiars? If that's even nesscary. And have him go up against foes who can actually challenge him

Hey, one can never go wrong with demon groupies.

Why do demon groupies make me think of Heavy Metal Magazine?

Making him an idiot sounds like a good suggestion. Or you could, you know, just tone him down. What would you possibly need with 17 demon familiars?

Take his greatest weapon, attack, or method of attack, and prevent him from using it to its fullest extent.

edited 20th Feb '12 4:38:47 PM by CrystalGlacia

Have the familiars all sealed away and make him have to free them one by one.

The familiars themselves could be very limited or specialized at doing a certain task (a bit like the Six Paths of Pain in Naruto). That way your blacklord slayer doesn't have to be an idiot and still has to work around some limitations to be powerful.

Yeah, that works.

And then you can either make the dark lord weaker...

... or make his enemies stronger, or better adapted to fighting him. He has seventeen demon familiars? His enemies are a thousand-strong paladin army. Beast form? Legendary beast slayer. Using excess magic? Have a character that can nullify magic.

Lesse. You can have him be Willfully Weak. Reasons being because he finds it more satisfying to think his way out of things rather than just wave a finger and solve all his problems, the world he's in could have a negative view on whatever species/class he's in, and he can't afford to deal with that. If the characters a Blood Knight, then that could be another reason he chooses to suppress his power. This limitation could also extend to his familiars as well.

Whether a character is overpowered or not is really relative to the setting, but the way you've described him in the OP makes it seem too excessive to take seriously. Like the seventeen demon familiars: is there really a good reason for there to be seventeen of them? As in, each individual demon's presence is justified by the narrative? You could start there, I guess.

Have some of the demon familiars be useless in combat (a succubus who serves more as lover than familiar, and will also provide the story with a Ms. Fanservice) or have very specialized uses (a creature whose blood is used in sacrificial rituals, but has no powers other than that).

Have characters, creatures and/or artifacts that block some or all of his powers (nullifying magic was mentioned in another post, and I like that as long as you don't overuse it... do like Timothy Zahn did with ysalamiri in The Thrawn Trilogy, and come up with creative and innovative uses for nullification of magic instead of stuff we've seen before).

Pitting him against characters of equal or greater power could also work, especially if you're shooting for a World of Badass (which I'm assuming, from your character description, was your intention). When every major character's Super Weight is at least a 4, it stops mattering as much how powerful they are because anyone, with enough luck, wit and skill, can kick anyone's ass. However, powerful characters tend to be the first ones accused of being MarySues, so be careful.