[quote=@BrokenPromise]
[@whizzball1] I should probably clarify that when I say powerful character, I am taking their combat abilities, problem solving skills, level of intelligence, number of friends, synergy with others, etc in relation to the other characters. I am not talking about just their combat abilities. A king who commands an entire nation is a powerful character, even if he himself lacks combat capabilities. Otherwise I agree with most of what you said. But Spectre has a lot of utility powers, can summon henchmen, is deadly at range and close quarters, is very precise, Highly intelligent, has friends despite being "slightly introverted," with his only real weaknesses being maybe his ability to talk to some people and that he needs to work hard to make his magic work. Barring the fact that it's extremely easy to power play with a character like that, the only people he really needs to surround himself with are people who are good communicators. 

This doesn't necessarily make him super strong in every setting. With the right team, I see Spectre filling in the roll of a support character during a big team fight, augmenting the powers of those around him. But in skimming the other characters, they were all far more specialized and couldn't do things as well as Spectre can. Power is relative.

This is another thing that can make judging power really hard. Some players make really tight kitted characters, but push those characters to the very limits of their sheet. Others have characters that look OP on paper, but they have lots of nuances that they didn't write down yet respect, making the actual character weaker. This is probably the largest contributing factor to me seeing Spectre as being so strong. Because while you may play him fairly, not everyone will. 

Avatar: The Last Airbender. Good show, but Sokka spent most of his time just being comic relief. Once Aang became the actual Avatar, the only thing he really needed everyone else for was to deal with things he didn't have time for. Aang fought Ozai because he was the only one who could, and was the best choice for that event. It's wonderful if you can find RP groups that can function like that, but I don't see them too often.
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"This is probably the largest contributing factor to me seeing Spectre as being so strong. Because while you may play him fairly, not everyone will." That's pretty much the essence of my point on this limitation. I've made many characters with strength comparable to Spectre's, and I've never once been accused of playing them unfairly. But I believe that's because of the context. I argued that it takes skill to maintain the relevance and meaning of a powerful character in relation to others, whether as a lone writer or as many. If not everybody has that skill, it's easy for the whole thing to fall apart with power players and irrelevant characters.

I'm certain that a group of skilled RPers could pull off a roleplay without any semblance of a power limitation, especially because the RP I've been involved in longest has done exactly that. I think that, with the power limitation, I and my fellow roleplayers are given much more creative freedom. But I can also clearly see how that limitation is necessary for roleplays that are open to anybody. But I demonstrated, between Spectre and Jade, how that restricts options. Spectre's theme is less fully realised in Jade; in order to consolidate the powers it ends up getting expressed as more of a moral thing. Because all of the powers inhere in crystal alone, their relevance to the theme is less clear and their relevance to crystal even less so.

In short, I think the power limitation in whatever forms it may exist is generally necessary but restrictive to creativity. It doesn't limit [i]all[/i] ideas, but it limits several, especially when expressed like it is in the Breakfast University of Magic (specific, power-restricting themes: the five Aeons).