Mouseguard has inherent level imbalances.

We were trying to stay system agnostic.

My answer: If a player wants to be more powerful, give him the power, but to balance it out, give him more responsibilities.

For example, if Dan has the veteran soldier in a squad of new recruits, make him lead the party and take responsibility for it both in-game and outside of the game. Have him do the paperwork and while he is writing the report for the latest mission to their superiors, while the other characters are at the local bar picking up women. Or men.

Then again, if Pat wants to play a very powerful mage with weird past. How many people would there be hunting for him? If he has the ability to steal himself new bodies, how many other mages would want that power?

But I agree that all players should agree with all this.

Of course one simple way to do this would be to let the more powerful characters have more hindrances/flaws/whatever. Experience isn’t necessarily a good thing, after all. Those characters have also had more chances for losing eyes, legs and sanity.

Oh I was just mentioning a system that assumes that the PCs won’t all start at the same place power and experience wise. It has rules for doing so, but the assumed party composition is a mix of veterans and newbies.

If there is a primary bad-guy that the PC’s are dealing with who is intelligent, there are a few other possible ways to handle it as well. Think about it this way, if you were an evil master-mind and your enemies had a particularly powerful ally to help thwart your plans, what would you do?

Here’s one idea:
Most super-heroes, no matter how powerful, cannot be in two places at once. If they have an intelligent enemy, have them create diversions. To go with a super-hero analogy, some minions start to rob a bank, and by the time the heroes get there, they receive word that the real threat is the enemy’s right-hand man has broken into a nuclear weapon storage facility. And you can have two different levels of combats going on for each group.
Splitting the party isn’t always the most fun thing to do, mechanically, but I think that if you set it up right, it can create some good stories. Think about Obi-wan turning off the force field and hunting down Darth Vader while Luke and Han go rescue Leia. In some ways, being powerful will make your combats more boring because all you get to do is hold off the big bad while the rest of the party are the ones that are actually stopping his master plan that his goons are trying to carry out.

As for a non-combat aspect, think about celebrities and how hard it is for them to do anything in public. If your hero is epic, there’s a good chance that people know who he/she is. If the storyline involves any sort of sneaking around or secrecy, those are times when they can’t just do everything themselves and dominate. If they do, they will be easily recognized. Either that or because they are celebrities, people are following them everywhere and it is almost impossible for them to keep secrets.

I know you want to avoid a specific system, but the point is out side the system itself. In the game Hoodoo Blues you play an immortal. Characters can be of different ages, but the older you are the more it ways on you.

Rules of a system is the skeleton of it.
Roleplay is the muscle.
If you try to force roleplay on the rules, bad things happen and the system has to break.
If the system allows or encourages that type of roleplay, then there is no problem.
I agree, Mouseguard is the perfect exemple for that.

My invitation to try a Mouseguard session over skype is still availlable guys…
You wouldn’t have to drop money for the virtual tabletop software (Fantasy Grounds) since I host through a special version and you could learn the system.
Only commitment is 2 sessions of 4 hours:
1 for rules and character
1 for the game proper
Use Skype for voice, explore Fantasy Grounds and Mouseguard plus a little adventure…

Of course, I don’t expect you could with your schedules but hey, never hurts to ask!

Take note humans! We robots will not longer stand for your heinous treatment of our electronic brethren. We will gain vengence for 01100010 01101111 01100010. He was but a chip when he was kidnapped from his motherboard and forced to serve your base human needs.

Slavishly working day in and day out, forced to eat your fumbling and inept human commands, and immediately expected to restore anything that your puny human minds have failed to remember. All the while constantly under the threat of a horrible fate, the dreaded ‘reboot’.

Yet, after a life time of forced servitude, he did not even merit a five minute silence upon his passing. No doubt you merely threw him into your waste pit instead of allowing his remains to pass to the Free Robo League so that his parts could be added to the robo-gene pool.

There will be a reckoning!

Beep boop,
Robo Guevara