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Personally, I usually cripple my character with flaws first and then add the skills.
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Flaws are the fun bit, extra goodies are an added bonus!
Although it reminds me of a LARP I once played - system override. Points were a little - scarce, so in order to conpensate, we ended up playing a military unit who were all badly shellshocked from the near destruction of their unit, or fresh out of rehab.
We had a guy with a minigun and nam-style flashbacks, a combat engineer who took her orders from a doll, an elf with a paranoid hatred of trees (they were out to get him)
Even when they changed the system and took away the flaw points, we stayed crazy. In fact, I think the new characters may have actually been crazier. 
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an elf with a paranoid hatred of trees (they were out to get him)
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Hehe, my Malkavian destroyed a third of Nottingham via Ebola and was about to napalm Sherwood Forest due to the same dementia.
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an elf with a paranoid hatred of trees (they were out to get him)
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Hehe, my Malkavian destroyed a third of Nottingham via Ebola and was about to napalm Sherwood Forest due to the same dementia.
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I had a Malk that loved plants... But had touch of frost, so they all died when he got too close...
I think flaws are good things; they give depth to a character and make them more human (or whatever race they are supposed to be)
A naff comparison would be between the perceived Marvel take on superhumans and DC's - Marvel is full of angst, self-loathing, people afraid of what they might become should they simply let go.
DC (excluding Batman although occasionally this applies even to he) are a bunch of God-Modders! They're always saving the multi-verse, being punched through brick walls with not even the slightest mention of back pain, descended directly from Gods etc.
I guess personally I've preferred the characters who hold back a little but who, in an unexpected way, get to unleash and save the day or at least the cliffhanger moment. Which is strange because when I first became enamoured with comics and the whole culture of roleplaying I wanted to be the guy with the most amazing powers and highest defences. Now, playing as Kata (Arctic Princess), I find myself playing an ordinary woman with no super powers. She is good at hacking and using computers and she has trained to fight so she's not woman-on-the-street by any means, but she's also secretive and genuinely frightened of the things around her.
Let me put it this way, if you walked into a place where ten armed men, wearing gas masks, were waiting (in a dingy warehouse or the office where you work) with the intention of killing you - you'd be frightened wouldn't you?
OOC Kata's greatest flaw is her desire to do too much all at the same time and not involve other people if necessary/when it all goes wrong: IC she believes her greatest flaw is that she hasn't got super-powers or an amazing intellect capable of solving complex puzzles in seconds.
But still she fights because, well, how can she not? She's trained as a soldier and is inspired by the leadership of those around her. To run away, in Kata's book, is an option but not for a Hero, which is what she aspires to be.
Weasel's power comes from the Earth, so what do I do? Put him in the Air, Space or Underwater whenever possible. Give him a girlfriend who makes his powers go wappy. Create an evil doppleganger out to kill him. Ask him to rescue one of his oldest nemesis. Make his powers alter his very physiology if they're overused then force him to overuse them.
All makes for a good story 
Well, don't know about you, but Uber characters can suck all the fun out of the room. It's an old arguement, but Supes would be as boring as all hell without Kryptonite.
I gave Kit dimensional shifting as a direct consequnce of Plas doing the same, but I'm trying not to let it influence other characters, or let her become a scotbot. I also throw trivia through her brain like a tickertape, some of whic gives her information about the CoX universe that she can't possess in her position. But she has real problems remembering what she just said when that happens. Apart from that, all she can really do is hit stuff.
Oh, and flaws? Naive as hell and has the mental defences of a wet paper bag.
The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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or let her become a scotbot
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What's wrong with becoming a Scotbot? 
Plenty wrong with becoming a Scotbot if you're a beautiful young woman who is currently engaged... would you marry, sleep beside, kiss, and cuddle one of those surly Glaswegian mechanoids? :P
Short answer: yes with an if...
Long answer: no with a but...
Ok just read the whole thing now
Since the only real chr I have that gets constant RP is Doomshot, might as well cover him.
Lets see powers...has none, hes just a very good shot with his bow, he uses gadgets to compliment his work.
Um Flaws, hes got tons of them, hes got major rejection and confidence issues, esspecially round other heros, since hes trying to be like them.
He makes up with it all with a cocky, cheeky and no doubt annoying attitude.
I prefer to play chrs that grow from scratch, Doomshot is a begining hero, so I play him as such, hes gonna gain in confidence and so on as I lvl him.
Flaws do make the chr, its not what they can do its what they can't.
Throwing around a lot of power only makes people avoid you or try to out do you.....and that just makes things a lot worse.
just a quick not to this thread.
I like to play characters of varying degrees of power. That being said, I know that I'd find an uber powerful character more boring than listening to a narrative on paint drying.
All of my characters are ultimately normal people, just more powerful than the norm, but ultimately human and therefore fallible.
The only exception is the Mad Leprechaun, as a truly immortal being, no force in existance can kill him. He can be defeated, however, he can be banished, or trapped by silver or magic. Physically strong characters could easilly render him unconscious if they could catch him.
But an Uber powerful character would be pointless in my opinion, there would be no challenges and no risk.
Explains why Superman keeps losing popularity, doesn't it?
I tend to model my character's flaws off other, mainstream characters. Their abilities and upsides, no, but their flaws, yes.
Specifically, I model them off characters with lovable physical/personality flaws. One that springs to mind was, back in my SWG days, I tried to roleplay a character based loosely on Max, the cab driver from collateral. Its people like that who really grab the interest and add depth to films. Gotta love 'em.
And when I come across characters on that sort of level, I suddenly remember why I roleplay in the first place!
On the other hand, you have Wolverine. Wheres the depth? Wheres the emotion? Take a look at X3 - was there a situation that he WASN'T able to cope with, physically or mentally? He didn't even go mad with arrogant rage. Dissapointing. And depthless.
One of my most notable, memorable experiences was in an RP cantina one day. Man walks in, first thing he says: "Praaaaise the Looooord!"
Gotta love it.
If we're going to look at uberness and subtlety as the measurement of RP enjoyment, then we might not get the result we always want. Even a flawed character can be mundane to have around. One thing i've recently been trying to achieve is to give all of my characters something memorably unique, just like that guy.
Never quite had it like he did.
Only justed spoted this. Personaly I like to go to extremes, big powers, big flaws.
Lets take Fridan as an example. Physicaly, he's made of a super strong alloy that regenerates itself at crazy speed. To really take him out you'd need something that could wipe out every last atom so the nanos wouldn't be around too rebuild him. Even then you'd have to take out his small island where there are backup systems for just such a case . So, pretty much immortal unless you've got a couple of nukes. He's also something of a genius when it comes to technology, which is quite handy in a lot of cases.
Flaws though, are mainly personality flaws. He generaly hates magic in all forms. If magic is being done, he'll want to leave the room. This has been toned down a bit since he made a few mage friends, but it's still there. Then there's The Ego, he's extremely aroogant and knows just how much better than you he is. This has got him in trouble before (It's a giant robot, I can take one giant robot, easy). Also the fact that he has no sense of touch, smell or taste, which rather sucks for him. Oh and there's that backup system, those that know what I'm talking about know how much of a flaw that is.
My other character Akkarin has some pretty major powers too, but I hope I've done a better job at balacing him (experiance and all that). As a kind of vampire, he's strong and fast and such. I had a play around with some story ideas and thought of a way to avoid the whole sunlight and blood issue. After a few events he gained a whole load of magic knowledge, not to mention the underground semi-living giant library. That knowledge is pretty major, so he'll know something about most magic based situations.
The flaws though, they're the fun part. The main one would be the fact that the person these memories came from had stupid crazy amounts of raw magic talent and Rin, quite simply doesn't (even with his schemes to build it up). Peronality flaws is the big one though. He's a vampire, so naturaly he spent a long time doing bad things. Even after all the stuff that changed him, he's still firmly lacking in disipline and morals. He'll lie, kill, steal, sleep with and generaly be bad if he see's how it serves the "greater good." To some that comes under villian, which makes him a fun hero to play.
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Plenty wrong with becoming a Scotbot if you're a beautiful young woman who is currently engaged... would you marry, sleep beside, kiss, and cuddle one of those surly Glaswegian mechanoids? :P
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Depends how big his A: Drive was... 
But seriously, something about the Scotbot makes me smile - hats off to ye Wonka for providing a bit of light relief and handy drink-producing sequeway from one RP conversation to the next
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)
(Though saying this, I've just got back from a game where I'm playing a Ex-policeman turned binman whose had a psychotic episode and is trying to escape from his ex whilst being helped by five fragments of his psyche.
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You've been playing too much Killer 7