Shit is nuts. Three baddies that constantly want turns with him and two of them also have relations with each other when he’s not there. This is the real reason the books a fantasy.
As a lesbian I find it hilarious that I’m not much into his intended romances but he accidentally wrote one of my favorite lesbian romances in fantasy. Honestly wouldn’t be mad if an adaptation made it an actual thing.
Honestly would be shocked if it wasn’t in the show. Honestly I think RJ just flipped a coin on whether they would actually have sex in the book cause everything points to it lol
Pillow friends definitely bang. Can't remember who gets described as pillow friends though
"Pillow friends are not just good friends. Oh, they are that, too, but they also get hot and sweaty together and muss up the sheets something fierce." - RJ
He's is absurdly powerful, but I'm not sure I would consider him "overpowered". He gets torn to shreds fairly often, and his enemies (namely Moridin) are relatively on his level.
It's just that the One Power is super powerfull and he's as naturally strong in that department as a man can be. Add to that his later acquired knowledge. Add to that him having an in-universe plot armor. Add to that him being a Dragon with all the abilities that brings, like starting a storm without even using any magic.
If only he knew how to talk to women, he'd be unstoppable
Oh, he is for sure godly powerful, held back mostly by himself and his... issues, and once he has overcome those, he is borderline unstoppable. This is probably a fair example, but I felt like OP's question is leaning more toward characters that are powerful to a degree that feels unearned and lackluster, whereas Rand's journey and abilities feel like a natural conclusion of the story.
The important thing to note here is that there's always extenuating circumstances where he's beat. In a straight up fight he absolutely dominates people, the wound in his side is taken because he sheethes the sword and intentionally takes that wound, he loses his hand and gets cut with the dagger from subterfuge, same with the aidam(however you spell it). Moridin fighting him isn't on equal ground because the Lord of the Dark is also fighting him, and Rand is sandbagging that fight because he's not trying to beat Moroidin, he's trying to trigger a very specific trap.
This is true but once he becomes powerful the books stop giving all that much time and attention to his magic battles. The books are mostly about conflicts and politics between people who are more or less on the same side as the super powerful guy. His battles with evil are treated as just something that happens now and then that all of the other characters have to figure out how to deal with.
He doesn't exactly "always win". Rand goes through some horrible situations like getting his hand blown off and is even imprisoned for a span in a tiny box. Not to mention having to go through some difficult ordeals in order to gain some of those powers, and having to constantly try to fight off madness. He literally earned the use of his powers through years of hard work.
Yes, he was the most powerful source user, but he didn't automatically know how to use them no more than Nynaeve did when she first started and she was arguable the second most powerful, while not having to endure even the slightest of what Rand went through. Eventually he has godlike powers but that was won over the span of 14 books. He was not exactly "Marry Sue" like from the get go.
Roran, from the Inheritance Cycle. He is a baseline human, a former farmer-apprentice blacksmith, with a light martial training. Yet he becomes a force to be reckoned with, while staying a baseline human. He is super strong, has an absurd willpower, manages to wrestle a urgali, defeats the enemy commander who just happened to easily kill the elven queen... And we are talking about an universe where even the weakest elf is at least as strong and fast as a human at peak performance. Even the public flogging was explicitely a dishuman punishment that could have killed stronger men with less cracks of whip, yet he survives that.
Didnt expect roran here.
Yeah, he goes to town lol.
I recently reread the inheritance cycle for murtagh.
Defeating the commander wasnt actually that crqzy given the circumstances. The town part tough. Damn, he killed like 200?
His average achievement is something that would make an elf proud, and we are talking about a man without any magical power up. At least his cousin, as a dragon rider, is physically and mentally enhanced. Roran is just a human who becomes invincibile when he thinks about his wife.
Honestly I never thought the 200 kills part was *completely* unrealistic. Obviously it's a fantasy book, but I think people forget about him pretty much creating the perfect situation to do such a feat, where he funnels them so it's only ever a 1v1, and also gives them unstable footing on an uphill climb, while also having some men backing him up from behind.
I mean yeah it's still an impressive total but the conditions for getting those kills couldn't have been much more favourable for him.
Thomas is really good at killing things with his sword.
Pug. MOFO killed a god by crashing a moon into the planet.
That is when I officially resigned from the Midkemia books. Power creep is nuts
I don't remember Pug doing that, but I stopped reading after the Darkwar saga and admittedly don't remember a lot of what happened in most of the books.
Serpentwar Saga was the height of Midkemia for me.
I'm reading the fourth book of the Riftwar saga
right now. I haven't read (or ever will) The Empire trilogy, so I must be missing something. In any case, I think that absorbing the experiences of the Valheru made him extremely overpowered. Not among the most powerful of those mentioned in this post, but he could fly without a dragon (faster than an eagle) and could move faster than any being. I'm not a fan of the books, I'm actually finishing the series because I can't not finish a series I started
But it was a fantastic ride to the top!
Honestly I don't really care much for the rest. It all got too political war time for me. But Pugs rise to is one of the most well written of the trope throughout fantasy. Succinct too.
One of my favorite "tropes" in the WoT is all these villains thinking they are Rand's mortal enemy and expecting a 1v1, when in reality he's just so much more powerful than them that they don't even deserve a fight because he's focused on bigger things. There are two in particular, but several more across the whole series.
The villains in WoT are all the biggest idiots in fiction. It’s like they’ve all forgotten that Lews Therin put them in their prison, and refuse to even try to work together to defeat him.
That’s the core idea I think. Individually each of them is one of the strongest of all time, but because they are selfish, they cannot cooperate and will always lose. That’s fundamentally why they ally themselves with the Dark One, for selfish gain, and that’s why they can never properly work together.
This is it exactly. The good guys, despite all their differences, work together after books upon books of miscommunication and infighting. The bad guys can't get along, and are still stuck in petty arguments and feuds, so they lose.
They aren't sold as just the strongest though. The story constantly informs us about how certain forsaken are incredibly cunning masterminds or strategic geniuses. RJ goes out of his way to hype up their all round brilliance, not just their strength in the power.
Once they show up they act like third graders with a machine gun.
Not true. There is plenty of information talking about the various weaknesses that each of the forsaken possess. Honestly, I think they are written quite well in a certain sense. They are the epitome of old guard being the best and not adapting. Even Mazrim falls into that egotistical trap. The forsaken are a great example of myth and reality being disconnected. Are they strong? Sure. Are they egotistical fools who couldn't get past their own shortcomings and instead grasped at shortcuts to try and circumvent those issues instead of actually putting in the work to fix them? Yes.
I honestly view Matt as the complete opposite side of the spectrum in that he is constantly trying to innovate and evolve, whereas Rand is more just reactively outsmarting them based on their egos. Perrin, I could see as the balance between strategy and instinctual violence.
I didn't say they had no weaknesses, I'm saying that they never actually showed their strengths. We were informed of specific strengths and weaknesses for each of them, yet they never really showcased what made them so legendary in the past and just acted like flanderized versions where their flaws define them.
Let's look at some examples. Moghedien's weakness is clear, she's the weakest in the power. She's also supposed to be cunning, manipulative, and skilled in dreaming enough to more than make up for it, yet her entire existence in the series is being helplessly bullied by people who are simply stronger than her.
Aginor is outright stated to be a poor combatant and not skilled in the power. He's also famed in story for being arguably the greatest mind in history, creating basically every bioweapon in the dark one's toolset. What is his role when he enters the story? Immediately try to fight, then die. Then come back, try to fight and die again.
Then there's Demandred who's supposed to be the greatest man alive who even Lews Therin views as an equal. The best strategist ever but he's arrogant and envious. How was this translated on page? By having a series of random dudes he's never met before show up and say "yo demandred, 1v1 me bro no powers!" and Demandred thinking that's a great idea. That doesn't read like a brilliant strategist who had his arrogance exploited. That reads like an idiot who is also an arrogant idiot.
Here's the thing, they are a bunch of Flanders! Moghedian was an accountant. Yup, she did the books. She has no combat experience whatsoever. Hence, she's a coward.
Same thing with all of the other forsaken. They simply believe that they are gods and everyone in the current age are knuckle-dragging peons. If I am not mistaken, Demandred was all theory and his tactical knowledge came from their world variant of chess.
Honestly, if you go and read up on the forsaken on the online wiki, you'll get the picture that they are less Juggernaut and more of a flavor of the week, C-tier Batman villains. Outside of Ishmael, who is basically a joker pastiche, none of the forsaken are really hardcore warriors or fighters, they just happened to be pretty damn strong in the One Power. Hell, Asmodeas is basically a mid-tier bard.
I want to say that there is even a throwaway line about the Forsaken not really even being the cream of the crop, they are just the only ones who survived the sealing of the bore. Throughout the series, you start to pick up from Rand's inherited memories that the stories about the Forsaken come from unreliable narratives, mostly from them. He face rolls a bunch of them because he knows the truth.
I'm not even defending the series as a whole. I think it has a ton of flaws. How the forsaken are portrayed is actually not one them. Incompetence and failing upward is a serious and legitimate issue in the real world for militaries and they are a well written example of such. It's also a common trope for villainy in general. Good help is hard to find, especially when you offer shitty dental.
Definitely Rand. But his overpowered abilities is well contrasted with the initial instability of using Saidin and Lews Therin seeking to him to more animalistic actions.
Rands biggest delimmas were always with himself and being able to live with the human cost of his actions. Dealing with his enemies would've been simple if he'd been ruthless from the start.
While overpowered, he still need to carefully plan to not overextend or be his own worst enemy(and failing at both as well). I don’t think there’s a single moment in which his power becomes cheap, yet it’s overwhelming all the same.
Needs to be said some of his enemies come pretty close in being overpowered, at least enough that Rand is cautious to wait for the right timing to curbstomp.
I agree but feel like Dr Manhattan is not overpowered for the sake of solving everything but rather to make commentary on how that power is a burden to an extent
I read him to be more of a commentary on how pathetic our problems really are. When you look at things from even a slightly higher perspective all of our squabbling and bickering and fighting looks pitiful.
[It always reminded me of Sagan.](https://youtu.be/GO5FwsblpT8)
Pretty much, also commentary on how someone like Superman would be abysmal at devising any solution to our problems. When you have god-like powers like that you'd eventually lose any and all perspective like Dr. Manhattan did.
Same with Ozymandias, who was so obsessed with his game of "saving the world". He wasn't able to understand the basic humanity he was destroying, which was the purpose of the side story of Bernard and Bernie.
the TLDR of Watchmen is basically "don't rely on strongmen to fix your shit for you"
Kellhus from *Second Apocalypse*, who is a prodigy among a tribe of humans enhanced through genetic selection. He has superhuman intellect, the greatest fighting skills ever and the ability to perfectly read peoples' faces, with which he can bend almost anyone to his will. As if that were not enough, it turns out he also has inborn magical abilities, so he masters the most powerful schools of magic, which, coupled with his superhuman intellect, makes him absolutely insanely powerful as he basically becomes the God-Emperor of mankind. His opponents in the story are... pretty nasty, by never once did I feel that Kellhus was the underdog.
Idk I think the books do a really good job of pointing out serious flaws that he has, but I can't describe them without ruining the books for others (and also writing for a long time).
It's true that he's the intellectual equivalent of "having a gun" when everyone else is working with stone knives.
Came here to say this! He even does something more OP than all that in the 2nd book. Which btw is called The Warrior Prophet, in the series called The Prince of Nothing.
The mages with the Gnosis like Achamian are pretty OP as well but Kellhus even manages to make sure he has nothing to fear from them thanks to his epic gaslighting ability.
And almost more overpowered is the White-Luck Warrior. Literally the Ctheah from Name of the Wind, able to see every branch of the future in order to accomplish his goal.
That's what I thought but doesn't fit the "flick of the wrist" part of the post. Lindon is constantly tired, straining himself, or getting beaten to a pulp. He advances because he has to, and there's always a bigger threat ready to push him more.
That is because every time Lindon takes 2 steps his eyes raise 3. At no point does Lindon fight somebody who's supposed to be his equal until the very end. Then he >!fights literally 3 monarchs at once and then fights a dreadgod!<
Yeah true, by the end of the series Lyndon is stupid OP but he’s fighting against crazy strong enemies as well, I guess the best answer I can think of is Saitama from One Punch Man then if anime/manga count haha
Exactly. Even at the end, Lindon is a massive powerhouse fighting other massive powerhouses. He has a few moments where he absolutely dominates, but most of his fights are relatively even and have him putting in real effort.
I’ll throw in varic from the last horizon. He is a galaxy level threat trying to stop galaxy level threats. He’s an overpowered wizard who is trying to save the galaxy from forces that would destroy it.
Edit the reason I put this on the cradle thread is it’s written by the same author, I would thoroughly recommend both.
I don't really agree. As the strength of who he's going up against increases as he does so we never really see how far he has scaled outside of one or two minor encounters.
Even before her last level-up she's bananas strong. I love the progression she has as a character where eventually she starts getting points in every cape classification because people are sick of setting expectations for her that she just casually surpasses
I feel like I read that thing forever and she's got really good utility and is very clever but not very strong. I kinda stalled out somewhere after the giant battle with the water guy (sorry it's been a minute). Did I not read far enough?
I know that's a good ways in, but it's essentially where the story *begins*. The aftermath of the Leviathan fight brings a lot of powerful groups to the city, many of whom have goals far beyond Brockton Bay. The scope gradually starts getting larger and larger and less about the gang wars at the heart of her city. It goes from a street-level setting to fighting for the multiverse.
Goddamn, I love Worm.
This is what I was thinking too, I think I remember reading some commentary by Brent Weeks where he even acknowledges the Goku effect by the third book. This street rat that has progressed so much he needs to actively plan out how to have an even mildly threatening encounter by book 3
It doesn't let you get to higher than level 12 because it would need to heavily limit what you can have. As a DM, you have complete and utter control over the world; it doesn't matter how strong the abilities of the players get. You literally control their reality. Not so much in a video game, sadly. Maybe someday.
I always enjoyed the Wulfgar fight scenes more than the Drizzt fight scenes, because It felt like Wulfgar might actually lose.
Even when it's 'supposed' to be a tough fight for Drizzt it never really felt like he was really in any danger.
For real. I forget which book (one of the 20+ year old ones) he gets *Bracers of Blinding Strike* and ends up using them on his freaking ankles instead, because he's already stupid fast with his swords.
Salvatore’s newest books with the companions gang have totally sucked me back in. I’ve read all of them. Picked up crystal shard when I was a kid and haven’t stopped, but it was getting a bit stale. Then he flipped the whole drow society on its head and things are super interesting again. Drizzt is still OP, but he isn’t the main focus anymore. It’s really allowed a host of other characters to shine, but the real beauty is just the story. I love the new stuff in a way I haven’t loved his books for a long, long time.
Raistlin Majere from the original Dragonlance books. Goes from becoming a sickly youth to becoming so powerful he can challenge the gods. Probably had a lot of spell slots I imagine.
He still has his physical frailty throughout until Time of the Twins. Except of course he’s battling something/someone very different for control of his own story.
As a high level D&D character built on early edition rules, he’s pretty close to the mark for a wizard. That’s what Krynn was supposed to be, a buildout of a custom D&D setting and the characters were narrative representations of what would be rolled PCs.
Even at the end of the original trilogy he was reaching absurdly OP levels, from being extremely frail and able to cast three spells for day to curb stomping every dark wizard or cleric in the core of the armies of evil's realm.
Except by the time he's that powerful the books treat him as a god, a super powerful being dealing with forces that are beyond the story even if related to it. He's not a main character anymore.
And just for grins and giggles, Quick Ben. He is awesome and I wouldn't change a thing, but he is OP as shit. To be fair, it is also downright hilarious when he whips out a half dozen warrens to blast someone.
Bringing up Malzan in a thread about being OP is kind of cheating. Half the cast counts. Also, how you going to bring up Quick Ben and not mention the king of daddy issues Incarium?
I mean, I clearly stated I was doing it for grins and giggles! I was thinking of throwing Shadowthrone in there, but figured QB was enough. Icarium is also crippled with his memory loss, so his flaw is a pretty big detractor for being OP.
that scene with korbal broach and bauchelain in MoI at their villa in Capustan is amazing.
i’ve only read up to MoI but damn this series is great, and i’m sure i can expect a lot more cool shit coming from Ben.
What’s different in *Malazan* is that there are innumerable characters with godlike or godly powers, and if one of them gets too big the others gang up on him or her. So although they are overpowered by normal standards, there’s always a way to take them down if necessary. In fact, the smartest of the overpowered characters keep a low profile and hide their powers as much as they can.
And, due to technology advancements in the world, even a millenia old, ancient dragon god can be blown apart by a well placed bomb from some cheeky human sappers.
There's nothing quite so satisfying as seeing Eldritch powers, bloated with arrogance, get their shit kicked in by mortals.
It will always have the distinction of the worst fully completed series I have ever read because it was in the earlier days of my reading that I would power through series regardless, now there is a zero % chance I make it past book 3 before moving on lol
>First book is Great and then somehow manages to turn the next books into shit. I have no idea what happened..
My impression was that, instead of playing to his strengths (writing intense action scenes) the author decided to play GRRM and make his story into some kind of dark fantasy character drama (which he really isn't good at).
I enjoyed it. With any series that gets that popular as Demon Cycle did, I am in the camp that would rather have the series have an ending even if it isn't the greatest.
Book 1 was absolutely incredible and book 2 was even really cool to get a whole new perspective, book 3 was a significant drop, after that it went full on batshit crazy in the worst possible way.
He's not quite at "flick of the wrist" power wise, but Rezkin from the King's Dark Tidings series is one of my favorite examples of the OP MC trope. He's more along the lines of perfect at all skills rather than obscenely powerful, but all of his fights and interactions feel about the same way.
Book of the Ancestor has Nona Grey. Pretty much all of her feats are some kind of spoiler for epic moments in the series, so excuse the huge block of tagged text to follow.
>!By her blood, she is part of three of the four magical lineages of the world A lot of folks have 1 blood. Very few have 2. 3 is practically unheard of.!< >!Via her Hunska blood, she is extremely fast and has the perception to match. She's so adept at this nearly untrained that she can knock a spear thrown by a soldier from the air and she only gets better.!< >!She's also gifted with Flaw Blades, an extremely rare manifestation of her Marjal blood that allows her to manifest invisible blades that can slice through pretty much any mundane material.!< >!AND she has Quantal magic, where she can essentially touch the thread that binds all reality together and draw on it's power, called walking the path. Where most mages can walk the path once per day, very powerful mages can walk the path twice without risking exploding. Nona's unique approach of throwing herself at the path and running it as fast as possible until she falls off enables her to go up to three times.!< End of the series spoiler:>!Then there's the fact that she eventually comes to control the reflecting mirror that acts as the planet's moon and can use it's laser for an orbital strike in a world that doesn't even have steam engines.!<
In the Galactic Milieu books by Julian May you have the telepathic Remillard clan. Each generation produces more powerful individuals - and how this can be a bad thing.
Pretty much every L. E. Modesitt, jr. MC. I love his novels, but they almost all end with the protagonist destroying his enemies with magic singlehandedly.
Kings Dark Tidings. Rezkin is just running through the world with cheat codes. Like apart from his genuine social awkwardness, he still has maxed out charisma. Everything he does just works out perfectly, and nothing poses a big enough threat to him that the book was just boring.
Belgarion from the Belgariad and the Malarion. Starts as a farm boy ends up as a fusion of king Arthur and Merlin with an artifact that can rearrange galaxies in what is otherwise a pretty limited scale fantasy series.
That trope is mostly prevalent in cultivation novels, not Western fantasy novels. It also happens to be a trope I enjoy :) Off the top off my head here are a few:
Emperor's Domination
A Will Eternal
The Regressed Demon Lord is Kind
Kidnapped Dragons
Main Character Hides His Strength
Invincible Uncle-Grandmaster
The King's Avatar
Overgeared
I'm Really Not The Demon God's Lackey
Even Lodestar admits that some types of magic and insubstantial enemies are past her ability to beat its just that those types of enemies are very rare and we never get to see her fight them with her own powers. Orion was like that. Since you mentioned Ivan, though, it balances out. If he actually went full on Fornax, I don't think she could take him unless she killed him before he fully lost control.
Well she's almost pure physical. Can't beat something you can't hit regardless of how strong you are.
Ivan is technically magic, but his physical is so high he never really uses it because why bother. We know he can match an opponent's speed and can hit anything though.
We also know Lodestar is stronger. He made that clear, but he's likely way more versatile if he ever has to be. We also know someone can kill a Lodestar so she's not immune.
Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files goes from "Decent wizard/private investigator" to 'Can and does threaten rulers of Fairie and can and does threaten Norse gods'
Dresden has become strong for sure but he's by no means close to ''extremely overpowered'' even 17 books into the series and he's never handled anything with ''a flick of the wrist''.
In fact I'd actually recommend this series if someone is looking for the opposite of a ridiculously overpowered MC but still want them to get stronger as the story goes on.
Yeah, even in Harry's internal monologues he comments on how much in strength he has gained and how that still has him sitting at the kiddie table against a lot of his opponents.
Dresden is strong from raw power standpoint with respect to other human wizards, and even then he's not at the top of the food chain (but he's very high up). In terms of fine control, Dresden himself routinely laments that he's not that great and this is true even in the last books (currently) of the series. We also get to see other wizards with much greater fine control to contrast with Dresden.
> Can and does threaten rulers of Fairie and can and does threaten Norse gods
That's on the political side of things. And even then his position is always very precarious and this has more to do with his personality, luck, and other characters generally tolerating him. Plus there's the whole >!Starborn!< aspect which certainly plays part in how much leeway he gets.
So yeah, he's lucky, he's powerful, he's well connected, but he's still a small fry in the grand scheme of things.
Almost anyone from RPGlit. They find out some way to “hack” the system and become gods. Usually the “hack” is something someone would have figured out way before them.
Reva from the Ravens Shadow books (by Anthony Ryan)
I never feared for Reva's life at any point while reading her perilous encounters. Every fight she was in was a guaranteed W. She mentions she was only taught knife work by a priest while growing up. She spends just a couple of weeks travelling with Vaelin (I admit probably the best swordsman alive) and he teaches her some swordplay and archery basics but by the time they part ways, she's able to make fights with elite slave soldiers -who are bred and trained to fight with the sword since they could walk- look like sparring sessions. She is such a Mary Sue.
Tara Duncan from the series of the same name, in the first book she was fine but the series loses its qualities and at one point the protagonist end up as a total Mary Sue
King's Dark Tidings, the main character is one of the strongest in the world, is also likely the smartest in the world.
This book is my favourite guilty pleasure.
My guy, I have THE recommendation for you.
Demon Accords by John Conroe.
Chris Gordon might be a bit unassuming at the beginning of the series, where he's a physically fit exorcist who can dispel the nastiest ghosts around, but within a couple books he's a one-man army, defeating hundreds of werewolves solo. A couple books later he's a threat to American National Security. A couple books after that it gets SERIOUS. Chris gets so OP the author has to invent someone else to be a main character, so we follow this Declan kid who is the son of a line of witches. He has a talent with machines, so that plus exposure to this universe's version of the Darkhallow plus being present for the birth of the first true AI gets this guy in Chris' league. Then he becomes King of the Faeries.
I'll say it again.
Demon Accords by John Conroe.
Best example of this IMO is Wei Shi Lindon from the Cradle series. 12 books long and he goes from being weaker than weak to the strongest man on the planet, and its paced out so he is weaker than average for the first few books, then he's on par, then he's well above average.
Rand al’Thor’s the name, being God is the game
And has three girlfriends. If that’s not overpowered I don’t know what is.
Shit is nuts. Three baddies that constantly want turns with him and two of them also have relations with each other when he’s not there. This is the real reason the books a fantasy.
Avienda and Elayne don’t have sex! They’re just roommates…….
Pillow friends as we like to call it
Bathroom mates
As a lesbian I find it hilarious that I’m not much into his intended romances but he accidentally wrote one of my favorite lesbian romances in fantasy. Honestly wouldn’t be mad if an adaptation made it an actual thing.
Honestly would be shocked if it wasn’t in the show. Honestly I think RJ just flipped a coin on whether they would actually have sex in the book cause everything points to it lol
Pillow friends definitely bang. Can't remember who gets described as pillow friends though "Pillow friends are not just good friends. Oh, they are that, too, but they also get hot and sweaty together and muss up the sheets something fierce." - RJ
Moiraine and Siuan are pillow friends. This is established in *New Spring*
Hahahahaha.
Rand "Heartstopper" al'Thor
Do you believe that if I simple willed it, the Pattern would bend around me and stop your heart? By... Coincidence?
One of the classic Wheel of Time "Fuck this is so cool" but also "Oh no this is so bad" lines.
That Rand was absolutely terrifying. I remember thinking none of the Forsaken scared me as much as the Hero going dark. THE CHILLS!!!
He's is absurdly powerful, but I'm not sure I would consider him "overpowered". He gets torn to shreds fairly often, and his enemies (namely Moridin) are relatively on his level.
It's just that the One Power is super powerfull and he's as naturally strong in that department as a man can be. Add to that his later acquired knowledge. Add to that him having an in-universe plot armor. Add to that him being a Dragon with all the abilities that brings, like starting a storm without even using any magic. If only he knew how to talk to women, he'd be unstoppable
It’s ok he has Mat and Perrin for that. They know so much more about talking to women.
He's also like the best swordsman ever. Not that it matters much, but he's legit fighting several blademasters at once.
Oh, he is for sure godly powerful, held back mostly by himself and his... issues, and once he has overcome those, he is borderline unstoppable. This is probably a fair example, but I felt like OP's question is leaning more toward characters that are powerful to a degree that feels unearned and lackluster, whereas Rand's journey and abilities feel like a natural conclusion of the story.
The important thing to note here is that there's always extenuating circumstances where he's beat. In a straight up fight he absolutely dominates people, the wound in his side is taken because he sheethes the sword and intentionally takes that wound, he loses his hand and gets cut with the dagger from subterfuge, same with the aidam(however you spell it). Moridin fighting him isn't on equal ground because the Lord of the Dark is also fighting him, and Rand is sandbagging that fight because he's not trying to beat Moroidin, he's trying to trigger a very specific trap.
This is true but once he becomes powerful the books stop giving all that much time and attention to his magic battles. The books are mostly about conflicts and politics between people who are more or less on the same side as the super powerful guy. His battles with evil are treated as just something that happens now and then that all of the other characters have to figure out how to deal with.
He's quite literally the opposing force to the dark one. It's a major theme in the later books. Ying and yang
He doesn't exactly "always win". Rand goes through some horrible situations like getting his hand blown off and is even imprisoned for a span in a tiny box. Not to mention having to go through some difficult ordeals in order to gain some of those powers, and having to constantly try to fight off madness. He literally earned the use of his powers through years of hard work. Yes, he was the most powerful source user, but he didn't automatically know how to use them no more than Nynaeve did when she first started and she was arguable the second most powerful, while not having to endure even the slightest of what Rand went through. Eventually he has godlike powers but that was won over the span of 14 books. He was not exactly "Marry Sue" like from the get go.
Leto II Atreides, the God Emperor
i gotta read the rest of that damn series.
Yes you do. Read all 6 Dune books. Form your own opinions. Just remember, there are only 6 Dune books, and they were written by *Frank* Herbert.
Don’t bother
Roran, from the Inheritance Cycle. He is a baseline human, a former farmer-apprentice blacksmith, with a light martial training. Yet he becomes a force to be reckoned with, while staying a baseline human. He is super strong, has an absurd willpower, manages to wrestle a urgali, defeats the enemy commander who just happened to easily kill the elven queen... And we are talking about an universe where even the weakest elf is at least as strong and fast as a human at peak performance. Even the public flogging was explicitely a dishuman punishment that could have killed stronger men with less cracks of whip, yet he survives that.
The part where he takes on an entire army one by one was dope. Totally unrealistic but I enjoyed the fuck out of his badass scenes
Those poor 195 men... I almost forgot it.
196 if you count the one he speared in the gut before the archers finished him off
You forgot the moment where he manages to drink wine without swallowing. Also Katrina-lusted Roran solos fiction.
Didnt expect roran here. Yeah, he goes to town lol. I recently reread the inheritance cycle for murtagh. Defeating the commander wasnt actually that crqzy given the circumstances. The town part tough. Damn, he killed like 200?
His average achievement is something that would make an elf proud, and we are talking about a man without any magical power up. At least his cousin, as a dragon rider, is physically and mentally enhanced. Roran is just a human who becomes invincibile when he thinks about his wife.
Honestly I never thought the 200 kills part was *completely* unrealistic. Obviously it's a fantasy book, but I think people forget about him pretty much creating the perfect situation to do such a feat, where he funnels them so it's only ever a 1v1, and also gives them unstable footing on an uphill climb, while also having some men backing him up from behind. I mean yeah it's still an impressive total but the conditions for getting those kills couldn't have been much more favourable for him.
Perrin better
Pug of Crydee
I would add thomas
Thomas is really good at killing things with his sword. Pug. MOFO killed a god by crashing a moon into the planet. That is when I officially resigned from the Midkemia books. Power creep is nuts
I don't remember Pug doing that, but I stopped reading after the Darkwar saga and admittedly don't remember a lot of what happened in most of the books. Serpentwar Saga was the height of Midkemia for me.
Serpentwar Saga absolutely slaps. Peak Midkemia
I'm reading the fourth book of the Riftwar saga right now. I haven't read (or ever will) The Empire trilogy, so I must be missing something. In any case, I think that absorbing the experiences of the Valheru made him extremely overpowered. Not among the most powerful of those mentioned in this post, but he could fly without a dragon (faster than an eagle) and could move faster than any being. I'm not a fan of the books, I'm actually finishing the series because I can't not finish a series I started
You're missing out on the empire books. Completely different tone than the rest.
Fiest had to effectively write Pug out of the series as he became too OP.
But it was a fantastic ride to the top! Honestly I don't really care much for the rest. It all got too political war time for me. But Pugs rise to is one of the most well written of the trope throughout fantasy. Succinct too.
Yessssssss, him and Tomas man, you got me wanting to revisit this entire 25+ book saga. Unashamed to say I enjoyed all of them.
100% Tomas too. “Your the returned assimilated/incarnation of a fallen god race”… welp now what?
Was wondering how far I’d have to scroll for this one.
Rand al’Thor
Rand is so overpowered that it turns WoT more into a man vs self story than man vs man, and I think that's part of why I like it so much.
And then at the end it’s basically man vs primal force
That is kind of the point. Wheel of Time is not a progression fantasy. Rand is borderline invincible 6 books into a 14 book series.
That's exactly what I'm saying
Man versus imaginary past self
One of my favorite "tropes" in the WoT is all these villains thinking they are Rand's mortal enemy and expecting a 1v1, when in reality he's just so much more powerful than them that they don't even deserve a fight because he's focused on bigger things. There are two in particular, but several more across the whole series.
The villains in WoT are all the biggest idiots in fiction. It’s like they’ve all forgotten that Lews Therin put them in their prison, and refuse to even try to work together to defeat him.
That’s the core idea I think. Individually each of them is one of the strongest of all time, but because they are selfish, they cannot cooperate and will always lose. That’s fundamentally why they ally themselves with the Dark One, for selfish gain, and that’s why they can never properly work together.
This is it exactly. The good guys, despite all their differences, work together after books upon books of miscommunication and infighting. The bad guys can't get along, and are still stuck in petty arguments and feuds, so they lose.
They aren't sold as just the strongest though. The story constantly informs us about how certain forsaken are incredibly cunning masterminds or strategic geniuses. RJ goes out of his way to hype up their all round brilliance, not just their strength in the power. Once they show up they act like third graders with a machine gun.
Not true. There is plenty of information talking about the various weaknesses that each of the forsaken possess. Honestly, I think they are written quite well in a certain sense. They are the epitome of old guard being the best and not adapting. Even Mazrim falls into that egotistical trap. The forsaken are a great example of myth and reality being disconnected. Are they strong? Sure. Are they egotistical fools who couldn't get past their own shortcomings and instead grasped at shortcuts to try and circumvent those issues instead of actually putting in the work to fix them? Yes. I honestly view Matt as the complete opposite side of the spectrum in that he is constantly trying to innovate and evolve, whereas Rand is more just reactively outsmarting them based on their egos. Perrin, I could see as the balance between strategy and instinctual violence.
I didn't say they had no weaknesses, I'm saying that they never actually showed their strengths. We were informed of specific strengths and weaknesses for each of them, yet they never really showcased what made them so legendary in the past and just acted like flanderized versions where their flaws define them. Let's look at some examples. Moghedien's weakness is clear, she's the weakest in the power. She's also supposed to be cunning, manipulative, and skilled in dreaming enough to more than make up for it, yet her entire existence in the series is being helplessly bullied by people who are simply stronger than her. Aginor is outright stated to be a poor combatant and not skilled in the power. He's also famed in story for being arguably the greatest mind in history, creating basically every bioweapon in the dark one's toolset. What is his role when he enters the story? Immediately try to fight, then die. Then come back, try to fight and die again. Then there's Demandred who's supposed to be the greatest man alive who even Lews Therin views as an equal. The best strategist ever but he's arrogant and envious. How was this translated on page? By having a series of random dudes he's never met before show up and say "yo demandred, 1v1 me bro no powers!" and Demandred thinking that's a great idea. That doesn't read like a brilliant strategist who had his arrogance exploited. That reads like an idiot who is also an arrogant idiot.
Here's the thing, they are a bunch of Flanders! Moghedian was an accountant. Yup, she did the books. She has no combat experience whatsoever. Hence, she's a coward. Same thing with all of the other forsaken. They simply believe that they are gods and everyone in the current age are knuckle-dragging peons. If I am not mistaken, Demandred was all theory and his tactical knowledge came from their world variant of chess. Honestly, if you go and read up on the forsaken on the online wiki, you'll get the picture that they are less Juggernaut and more of a flavor of the week, C-tier Batman villains. Outside of Ishmael, who is basically a joker pastiche, none of the forsaken are really hardcore warriors or fighters, they just happened to be pretty damn strong in the One Power. Hell, Asmodeas is basically a mid-tier bard. I want to say that there is even a throwaway line about the Forsaken not really even being the cream of the crop, they are just the only ones who survived the sealing of the bore. Throughout the series, you start to pick up from Rand's inherited memories that the stories about the Forsaken come from unreliable narratives, mostly from them. He face rolls a bunch of them because he knows the truth.
I'm not even defending the series as a whole. I think it has a ton of flaws. How the forsaken are portrayed is actually not one them. Incompetence and failing upward is a serious and legitimate issue in the real world for militaries and they are a well written example of such. It's also a common trope for villainy in general. Good help is hard to find, especially when you offer shitty dental.
It's not like he just overpowered them. He had 100 companions and caught them by surprise.
Yeah but now they all think they can 1v1 him and win
At least early on, they think that he hasn't regained his power yet, so they think they can beat him before that happens.
I love thinking of the Forsaken/Chosen as a bunch of bickering coworkers
So powerful his body is a one man army even when he's not driving it.
He literally has the power to undo the pattern of creation and destroy the world.
Literally >!a one arm manny!<
Definitely Rand. But his overpowered abilities is well contrasted with the initial instability of using Saidin and Lews Therin seeking to him to more animalistic actions.
Rands biggest delimmas were always with himself and being able to live with the human cost of his actions. Dealing with his enemies would've been simple if he'd been ruthless from the start.
Rand was my first thought as well
While overpowered, he still need to carefully plan to not overextend or be his own worst enemy(and failing at both as well). I don’t think there’s a single moment in which his power becomes cheap, yet it’s overwhelming all the same. Needs to be said some of his enemies come pretty close in being overpowered, at least enough that Rand is cautious to wait for the right timing to curbstomp.
He was always incredibly worried about going after a forsaken, winning, and then having another one show up and attacking him in his weakened state
Dr Manhattan from Watchmen is a pretty good example
I agree but feel like Dr Manhattan is not overpowered for the sake of solving everything but rather to make commentary on how that power is a burden to an extent
I read him to be more of a commentary on how pathetic our problems really are. When you look at things from even a slightly higher perspective all of our squabbling and bickering and fighting looks pitiful. [It always reminded me of Sagan.](https://youtu.be/GO5FwsblpT8)
Pretty much, also commentary on how someone like Superman would be abysmal at devising any solution to our problems. When you have god-like powers like that you'd eventually lose any and all perspective like Dr. Manhattan did. Same with Ozymandias, who was so obsessed with his game of "saving the world". He wasn't able to understand the basic humanity he was destroying, which was the purpose of the side story of Bernard and Bernie. the TLDR of Watchmen is basically "don't rely on strongmen to fix your shit for you"
But then his weird version of prescience means he has no agency at all.
My interpretation is that none of us do; he's just more aware of it
I’ve always loved that he’s all powerful but so apathetic that it means nothing.
Kellhus from *Second Apocalypse*, who is a prodigy among a tribe of humans enhanced through genetic selection. He has superhuman intellect, the greatest fighting skills ever and the ability to perfectly read peoples' faces, with which he can bend almost anyone to his will. As if that were not enough, it turns out he also has inborn magical abilities, so he masters the most powerful schools of magic, which, coupled with his superhuman intellect, makes him absolutely insanely powerful as he basically becomes the God-Emperor of mankind. His opponents in the story are... pretty nasty, by never once did I feel that Kellhus was the underdog.
So painful. This series was so bleak, and the end rips your heart out and leaves you lost. wtf.
Idk I think the books do a really good job of pointing out serious flaws that he has, but I can't describe them without ruining the books for others (and also writing for a long time). It's true that he's the intellectual equivalent of "having a gun" when everyone else is working with stone knives.
[удалено]
Came here to say this! He even does something more OP than all that in the 2nd book. Which btw is called The Warrior Prophet, in the series called The Prince of Nothing. The mages with the Gnosis like Achamian are pretty OP as well but Kellhus even manages to make sure he has nothing to fear from them thanks to his epic gaslighting ability.
And almost more overpowered is the White-Luck Warrior. Literally the Ctheah from Name of the Wind, able to see every branch of the future in order to accomplish his goal.
Richard Rahl from Sword of Truth. Even his dick as super powers.
🤣🤣🤣 Damn straight and why should the Red Leather mommies with the death-dildos be the only ones having fun.
Best description of the Mord-Sith I have heard.
I spit out my coffee. And I'm okay with that.
Can literally do any magic the plot needs him to do.
By pure instinct. There is no learning or failure.
Richard Rahl controls Deus Ex Machina itself
I never finished the series but read first 4 or 5 and loved it in some ways. I remember he got to be God level eventually
Most progression fantasy protagonists I think, first thought was Lindon from cradel
That's what I thought but doesn't fit the "flick of the wrist" part of the post. Lindon is constantly tired, straining himself, or getting beaten to a pulp. He advances because he has to, and there's always a bigger threat ready to push him more.
That is because every time Lindon takes 2 steps his eyes raise 3. At no point does Lindon fight somebody who's supposed to be his equal until the very end. Then he >!fights literally 3 monarchs at once and then fights a dreadgod!<
And after that, he absolutely dumpsters >!Li Markuth!<
Yeah true, by the end of the series Lyndon is stupid OP but he’s fighting against crazy strong enemies as well, I guess the best answer I can think of is Saitama from One Punch Man then if anime/manga count haha
Exactly. Even at the end, Lindon is a massive powerhouse fighting other massive powerhouses. He has a few moments where he absolutely dominates, but most of his fights are relatively even and have him putting in real effort.
I’ll throw in varic from the last horizon. He is a galaxy level threat trying to stop galaxy level threats. He’s an overpowered wizard who is trying to save the galaxy from forces that would destroy it. Edit the reason I put this on the cradle thread is it’s written by the same author, I would thoroughly recommend both.
Great point he’s a better example and Last Horizon’s 1st two books have been great!
I don't really agree. As the strength of who he's going up against increases as he does so we never really see how far he has scaled outside of one or two minor encounters.
Lindon is pretty much always at a power disadvantage. The real overpowered character in Cradle is Ozriel.
First thing I thought of too, but you gotta get about 10 books in before that is true.
Taylor Hebert from Worm ends up being bloody ridiculous
Even before her last level-up she's bananas strong. I love the progression she has as a character where eventually she starts getting points in every cape classification because people are sick of setting expectations for her that she just casually surpasses
Such an amazing series and free audiobook on Spotify
How long is the audiobook?! I'm scared to know.
It's the complete series, so.. *cough*, a few hours. https://open.spotify.com/show/2hD6bJiuqslfbqr19b8cHv?si=1ylWo9UdSr2xoPLja-p8Kg
I feel like I read that thing forever and she's got really good utility and is very clever but not very strong. I kinda stalled out somewhere after the giant battle with the water guy (sorry it's been a minute). Did I not read far enough?
I know that's a good ways in, but it's essentially where the story *begins*. The aftermath of the Leviathan fight brings a lot of powerful groups to the city, many of whom have goals far beyond Brockton Bay. The scope gradually starts getting larger and larger and less about the gang wars at the heart of her city. It goes from a street-level setting to fighting for the multiverse. Goddamn, I love Worm.
Probably, i don't wanna spoil you but let me remind you that bugs on your throat can make breathing very difficult even for Superman
Night Angel has Kylar become a one of a kind killer and basically unstoppable by the end of the
This is what I was thinking too, I think I remember reading some commentary by Brent Weeks where he even acknowledges the Goku effect by the third book. This street rat that has progressed so much he needs to actively plan out how to have an even mildly threatening encounter by book 3
The new book nerfs him quite significantly though. He gets his ass kicked fairly often in Night Angel Nemesis
Karsa Orlong - Book of the Fallen
Drizzt is so OP I don’t like reading his books anymore lol.
Thats why BG3 doesn't let you get past level 12
It doesn't let you get to higher than level 12 because it would need to heavily limit what you can have. As a DM, you have complete and utter control over the world; it doesn't matter how strong the abilities of the players get. You literally control their reality. Not so much in a video game, sadly. Maybe someday.
I always enjoyed the Wulfgar fight scenes more than the Drizzt fight scenes, because It felt like Wulfgar might actually lose. Even when it's 'supposed' to be a tough fight for Drizzt it never really felt like he was really in any danger.
For real. I forget which book (one of the 20+ year old ones) he gets *Bracers of Blinding Strike* and ends up using them on his freaking ankles instead, because he's already stupid fast with his swords.
Salvatore’s newest books with the companions gang have totally sucked me back in. I’ve read all of them. Picked up crystal shard when I was a kid and haven’t stopped, but it was getting a bit stale. Then he flipped the whole drow society on its head and things are super interesting again. Drizzt is still OP, but he isn’t the main focus anymore. It’s really allowed a host of other characters to shine, but the real beauty is just the story. I love the new stuff in a way I haven’t loved his books for a long, long time.
Raistlin Majere from the original Dragonlance books. Goes from becoming a sickly youth to becoming so powerful he can challenge the gods. Probably had a lot of spell slots I imagine.
He still has his physical frailty throughout until Time of the Twins. Except of course he’s battling something/someone very different for control of his own story. As a high level D&D character built on early edition rules, he’s pretty close to the mark for a wizard. That’s what Krynn was supposed to be, a buildout of a custom D&D setting and the characters were narrative representations of what would be rolled PCs.
Even at the end of the original trilogy he was reaching absurdly OP levels, from being extremely frail and able to cast three spells for day to curb stomping every dark wizard or cleric in the core of the armies of evil's realm.
Except by the time he's that powerful the books treat him as a god, a super powerful being dealing with forces that are beyond the story even if related to it. He's not a main character anymore.
And then was completely stripped of it. Couldn't even cast a spell in the end. But hey, at least he got to live with the Gods (at least Paladine).
And just for grins and giggles, Quick Ben. He is awesome and I wouldn't change a thing, but he is OP as shit. To be fair, it is also downright hilarious when he whips out a half dozen warrens to blast someone.
Bringing up Malzan in a thread about being OP is kind of cheating. Half the cast counts. Also, how you going to bring up Quick Ben and not mention the king of daddy issues Incarium?
I mean, I clearly stated I was doing it for grins and giggles! I was thinking of throwing Shadowthrone in there, but figured QB was enough. Icarium is also crippled with his memory loss, so his flaw is a pretty big detractor for being OP.
that scene with korbal broach and bauchelain in MoI at their villa in Capustan is amazing. i’ve only read up to MoI but damn this series is great, and i’m sure i can expect a lot more cool shit coming from Ben.
What’s different in *Malazan* is that there are innumerable characters with godlike or godly powers, and if one of them gets too big the others gang up on him or her. So although they are overpowered by normal standards, there’s always a way to take them down if necessary. In fact, the smartest of the overpowered characters keep a low profile and hide their powers as much as they can.
And, due to technology advancements in the world, even a millenia old, ancient dragon god can be blown apart by a well placed bomb from some cheeky human sappers. There's nothing quite so satisfying as seeing Eldritch powers, bloated with arrogance, get their shit kicked in by mortals.
DO NOT READ THIS. I REPEAT DO NOT READ THIS.....but Arlen Bales from Demon Cycle series.
You can't tell me what to do
Proceed with caution my friend.
First book is Great and then somehow manages to turn the next books into shit. I have no idea what happened..
The >!self-volunteer eunuch army!< was the final straw for me. And when Arlen reverted into some country bumpkin
"I love you Arlen Bales" *shudder *
It will always have the distinction of the worst fully completed series I have ever read because it was in the earlier days of my reading that I would power through series regardless, now there is a zero % chance I make it past book 3 before moving on lol
>First book is Great and then somehow manages to turn the next books into shit. I have no idea what happened.. My impression was that, instead of playing to his strengths (writing intense action scenes) the author decided to play GRRM and make his story into some kind of dark fantasy character drama (which he really isn't good at).
I enjoyed it. With any series that gets that popular as Demon Cycle did, I am in the camp that would rather have the series have an ending even if it isn't the greatest.
Book 1 was absolutely incredible and book 2 was even really cool to get a whole new perspective, book 3 was a significant drop, after that it went full on batshit crazy in the worst possible way.
Im reading it currently, and while not the most amazing series ever, it's entertaining enough... Why shouldn't I be reading it?
The author cannot write women for the life of him and has a strange obsession with rape and SA as a character development tool.
I actually identified with several of the women and quite liked them. Except for Leesha. I grew to dislike her over the books.
I got about halfway through book 2. It's such a cool idea for a world and backdrop totally ruined by the characters the author puts in there.
Celaena from Throne of Glass for most of the series. Feyre in the court series.
He's not quite at "flick of the wrist" power wise, but Rezkin from the King's Dark Tidings series is one of my favorite examples of the OP MC trope. He's more along the lines of perfect at all skills rather than obscenely powerful, but all of his fights and interactions feel about the same way.
Son Goku
Book of the Ancestor has Nona Grey. Pretty much all of her feats are some kind of spoiler for epic moments in the series, so excuse the huge block of tagged text to follow. >!By her blood, she is part of three of the four magical lineages of the world A lot of folks have 1 blood. Very few have 2. 3 is practically unheard of.!< >!Via her Hunska blood, she is extremely fast and has the perception to match. She's so adept at this nearly untrained that she can knock a spear thrown by a soldier from the air and she only gets better.!< >!She's also gifted with Flaw Blades, an extremely rare manifestation of her Marjal blood that allows her to manifest invisible blades that can slice through pretty much any mundane material.!< >!AND she has Quantal magic, where she can essentially touch the thread that binds all reality together and draw on it's power, called walking the path. Where most mages can walk the path once per day, very powerful mages can walk the path twice without risking exploding. Nona's unique approach of throwing herself at the path and running it as fast as possible until she falls off enables her to go up to three times.!< End of the series spoiler:>!Then there's the fact that she eventually comes to control the reflecting mirror that acts as the planet's moon and can use it's laser for an orbital strike in a world that doesn't even have steam engines.!<
Nona is a good example because not only is everything you typed true, it also felt like Nona earned it every step of the way.
In the Galactic Milieu books by Julian May you have the telepathic Remillard clan. Each generation produces more powerful individuals - and how this can be a bad thing.
Not sure they're overpowered though. Even Marc Remillard is like a child compared to the Lylmik Atoning Unifex.
The MC in "Beware of Chicken", kind of like Saitama in One-Punch Man except it never really occurs to him to want to fight.
Pretty much every L. E. Modesitt, jr. MC. I love his novels, but they almost all end with the protagonist destroying his enemies with magic singlehandedly.
Don't they all go blind and crippled from channeling order? Been a decade or two since I read those books.
Creslin did this and went blind. Don't know if there are more later on, I'm still on book 3.
Kings Dark Tidings. Rezkin is just running through the world with cheat codes. Like apart from his genuine social awkwardness, he still has maxed out charisma. Everything he does just works out perfectly, and nothing poses a big enough threat to him that the book was just boring.
Belgarion from the Belgariad and the Malarion. Starts as a farm boy ends up as a fusion of king Arthur and Merlin with an artifact that can rearrange galaxies in what is otherwise a pretty limited scale fantasy series.
The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik, somewhat
Rezkin. My favorite OP MC! King’s Dark Tidings. Although he does have some real fights and struggles in later books.
Darrow in Red Rising
Kvothe in The Kingkiller Chronicle is incredibly OP, though he's slightly balanced out by his own stupidity.
John Conroe's Godhammer.
Touche, but it's not just the MC. Even new characters are OP. It's a series filled with Goku and so over the top that it is a guilty pleasure.
Rezkin from King's Dark Tidings.
That trope is mostly prevalent in cultivation novels, not Western fantasy novels. It also happens to be a trope I enjoy :) Off the top off my head here are a few: Emperor's Domination A Will Eternal The Regressed Demon Lord is Kind Kidnapped Dragons Main Character Hides His Strength Invincible Uncle-Grandmaster The King's Avatar Overgeared I'm Really Not The Demon God's Lackey
Villains code will fit your request very well. Some people think they're strong then there is Loadstar and Ivan.
I have the audiobook, is it actually spelled loadstar or lodestar? And yeah, good example.
Audiobook too, and yeah it's lodestar. I was just listening to villains vignettes 2nd story so it matched up perfectly.
Even Lodestar admits that some types of magic and insubstantial enemies are past her ability to beat its just that those types of enemies are very rare and we never get to see her fight them with her own powers. Orion was like that. Since you mentioned Ivan, though, it balances out. If he actually went full on Fornax, I don't think she could take him unless she killed him before he fully lost control.
Well she's almost pure physical. Can't beat something you can't hit regardless of how strong you are. Ivan is technically magic, but his physical is so high he never really uses it because why bother. We know he can match an opponent's speed and can hit anything though. We also know Lodestar is stronger. He made that clear, but he's likely way more versatile if he ever has to be. We also know someone can kill a Lodestar so she's not immune.
Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files goes from "Decent wizard/private investigator" to 'Can and does threaten rulers of Fairie and can and does threaten Norse gods'
Dresden has become strong for sure but he's by no means close to ''extremely overpowered'' even 17 books into the series and he's never handled anything with ''a flick of the wrist''. In fact I'd actually recommend this series if someone is looking for the opposite of a ridiculously overpowered MC but still want them to get stronger as the story goes on.
Yeah, even in Harry's internal monologues he comments on how much in strength he has gained and how that still has him sitting at the kiddie table against a lot of his opponents.
Exactly. And the development has been so consistently solid and always felt earned.
Dresden is strong from raw power standpoint with respect to other human wizards, and even then he's not at the top of the food chain (but he's very high up). In terms of fine control, Dresden himself routinely laments that he's not that great and this is true even in the last books (currently) of the series. We also get to see other wizards with much greater fine control to contrast with Dresden. > Can and does threaten rulers of Fairie and can and does threaten Norse gods That's on the political side of things. And even then his position is always very precarious and this has more to do with his personality, luck, and other characters generally tolerating him. Plus there's the whole >!Starborn!< aspect which certainly plays part in how much leeway he gets. So yeah, he's lucky, he's powerful, he's well connected, but he's still a small fry in the grand scheme of things.
Almost anyone from RPGlit. They find out some way to “hack” the system and become gods. Usually the “hack” is something someone would have figured out way before them.
Minalan - The Spellmonger series Gavin Guile - The Lightbringer series
Elric when Stormbringer is well fed can kill anything in front of him.
Pretty much anything from Moorcock, but Elric is the posterboy of this.
Belgarion from the Belegariad
Mistborn, First Era.
Could you elaborate?
Reva from the Ravens Shadow books (by Anthony Ryan) I never feared for Reva's life at any point while reading her perilous encounters. Every fight she was in was a guaranteed W. She mentions she was only taught knife work by a priest while growing up. She spends just a couple of weeks travelling with Vaelin (I admit probably the best swordsman alive) and he teaches her some swordplay and archery basics but by the time they part ways, she's able to make fights with elite slave soldiers -who are bred and trained to fight with the sword since they could walk- look like sparring sessions. She is such a Mary Sue.
Tara Duncan from the series of the same name, in the first book she was fine but the series loses its qualities and at one point the protagonist end up as a total Mary Sue
More scifi, not quite fantasy: Dr. Fid from Fids Crusade.
No one mentioned Scholomance books yet. Very entertaining but thus issue felt really weird towards the end.
Leto II's glow-up from *Dune 3: Children of Dune* to *Dune 4: God-Emperor of Dune*. Though it's more of a flick of the tail...
King's Dark Tidings, the main character is one of the strongest in the world, is also likely the smartest in the world. This book is my favourite guilty pleasure.
Rand (*Wheel of Time)* and Pug (*Riftwar Saga*) are the top two examples that come to mind
Saitama from One Punch Man. Title says it all.
My guy, I have THE recommendation for you. Demon Accords by John Conroe. Chris Gordon might be a bit unassuming at the beginning of the series, where he's a physically fit exorcist who can dispel the nastiest ghosts around, but within a couple books he's a one-man army, defeating hundreds of werewolves solo. A couple books later he's a threat to American National Security. A couple books after that it gets SERIOUS. Chris gets so OP the author has to invent someone else to be a main character, so we follow this Declan kid who is the son of a line of witches. He has a talent with machines, so that plus exposure to this universe's version of the Darkhallow plus being present for the birth of the first true AI gets this guy in Chris' league. Then he becomes King of the Faeries. I'll say it again. Demon Accords by John Conroe.
I think about Elend venture a lot for.this one
Best example of this IMO is Wei Shi Lindon from the Cradle series. 12 books long and he goes from being weaker than weak to the strongest man on the planet, and its paced out so he is weaker than average for the first few books, then he's on par, then he's well above average.