User blog comment:ShonenChicoBoy/Thanksgiving and the Other Turkey in the Room/@comment-24384232-20161126020422/@comment-18812574-20161130062810

Yes well. Like I said, I was/am severely sleep deprived. I read your guy's comments this morning, so what I can remember is just to point out one last thing, and that is that we don't necessarily need to create antagonists who can match the protagonist cast in scope of power (and erh, weren't we going to limit the cast of "powerful" originally anyway? I can't remember) so long as there is proper leverage. Superman can't do jackshit against Lex Luther if the latter happens to be holding Lois Lane hostage in some ingenious fashion. In theory, anyway. So long as you make the choices for the protagonists difficult, as in, "there are no good options," (as opposed to there being too many or no choices, for example) then the power level should, hypothetically, be less of an issue.

The reason why power escalates is because it's easier. The reason why people keep using the "tried and true destroy the world plot" is because it is easier. But easier doesn't necessarily mean better, is what I am getting at.