: Re: How can I handle a powerful mentor character without killing them off? I'm writing a book series that involves people with various superpowers. One of these characters and is more or less the

@Cooney417

You have many options for why your mentor could not act instead of the main progaonist.
They are mentoring
Ultimate risk to the univerise is not so bad that if the protagonist fails it is a big enough deal that it is not worth the reward of developing the protagonist. Like a good manager of a big company they know that delegationw will grow the capacity of the team and that people have to learn.
They are testing
Rites of passage or simply to see if the protagonist is up to it this might be some level of test, similar to the mentoring above. Maybe if your mentor is a little indifferent to the protagonist or to those that will suffer if they fail it adds a new angle. Mentor is so powerful they loose some of their humanity and are now in it to find worthy super heros and develop them rather than in it to "do good" for humanity.
They are busy
They cannot be everywhere all the time. There is some special task only they can take care of. Some hidden text they must reasurch elswhere. Obviously the bad guys choose to turn up while the mentors back is turned. Or maybe they are off fighting unimaginable levels of terror elswhere that would vapourise the protagonist.
Think Gandulf off to read about the ring leaving the fellowship for a while or Dumbledoor being off doing whatever.
They are an influencer only
Some accord has been struck between the various mentorer level powers in the past to keep the universe from being destroyed or to maintain "the balance" or whatever. They have agreed to certain restructions on what they can all do and this is policed by some big bad council of metorer level beings (or those that make the mentorers seem like ants that are tired of dealing with the mess they make so made them all agree).
Think the bet between God and Saitan or the forces in Nightwatch/Daywatch.
It would look bad
Mentor is probably high profile and maybe what needs to happen is something they should not be messing with. Maybe if the protagonist were to do it people would be disgruntled but its not big deal as they are only a minor player in the world.

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