: Re: How do I round out a powerful character? I've created a character named "Mathias Mindblade" who is trained by a wise wizard to lead a rebellion against the Darkness Empire and eventually to

@Lee1909368

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First off:
How do you make a character quintessential, but not cliched or cartoony?

Should provide some groundwork.

After you've mulled that over, specifically in this case there's two ways to go about this.

Mathias is meant to be a badass hero. Stay the hell out of his head, view him through others. The amazing Celtic heroes were always viewed through the eyes of chroniclers who idealised them from a distant perspective. The only evidence of what was going on in their heads was from their deeds. A badass hero is mysterious somewhat beyond human and this is their tragedy, no regular person will ever understand them however fascinating they are. The recent reboot of Doctor Who on the BBC is really a huge treatise on this. The Doctor is not a viewpoint character and the series plays with this fact that he's benign and godlike but, at the same time, lonely and beset by tragedy. Study that hard if you're going for this.
Mathias is meant to be a regular joe who happens to accomplish some badass feats. In this case it is important to establish his humanity in short order. A cheap shot is to give him a wholesome girl-next-door to dote upon and set him up with a desire to be a family man. Be careful the relationship is wholesome and emotionally pure and not some kind of sentimental or soft-paw corn fantasy, be careful to communicate clearly that he just wants to live a normal life, go to work, come home, kiss the wife and spend quality time with the kids, for real. Then hit him with the news that before any of that can happen he just has to, oh, defeat the evil empire and save the world. Then his quest for power is not presumed to be a quest for glory and you can show him screwing up occasionally but being devoted to defeating the evil ones because really his goal is to take Mrs Mindblade (nee Goodheart) up the aisle and retire into a job as an insurance clerk.

The latter case, for reference, is something Shakespeare did to make Henry V into the Elizabethan action hero. In that play Hal spends his youth getting drunk with a bunch of reprobates in a pub. Then his dad dies, a messenger arrives, delivers the sad news and Hal puts down his beer mug, sobers up, raises an army, gives the French a jolly good thrashing at Agincourt and then marries to create an alliance and lasting peace for the lands of Britain. Shakespeare is careful to set Henry up as desiring this life as an idle drinking prole who then mans up spectacularly to become a dream king who does his duty regardless of his own personal desires to party his life away. That's not a cheap shot, but then Shakespeare just worked out the shot that worked, sometimes they were cheap, in this case it happens not.

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