Re: A question of power level
Power level can mean so many things.
I like seeing a breadth as characters develop.
One of my more frustrating characters was a speedster. I wanted to have him do lots of power tricks and such, but I would of had to drop power by a lot. Instead, he was very fast and hit very hard multiple times. And very boring. Thankfully, the campaign itself was very interesting with many different plots going on.
Another character of mine, tech wiz with many different skills and ways to do things. The first character would clean her clock, but she's more interesting to play. She's also about an extra 100 points...
When you get down to low powered supers, I find them boring and probably have an adverse reaction to them due to some forced low power campaigns which were more low powered heroes and then you'd have 20 agents that were only 10-15 points lower than you in any combat.
That being said, The Hero System is a toolkit that builds an infinite number of campaigns. You and your group have to work it out.