Character Powers and Personal Limitations

I was pondering the other day about how ridiculous it is that I have two characters that speak French. I don't speak French. This made me wonder, should a character's abilities deviate much from a person's own abilities? Granted, things like super strength and energy projection are pretty convertible to the fictional world, but what about things like intelligence? 
 
I've noticed several profiles where people listed their character as having genius level intelligence. I wondered if this mean their character is literally a genius or if people just don't like having small numbers on their power grid. (Hey, I'm guilty. I sure want to be omnipotent!) But it seems that fictional intelligence has to be somewhat reflective of personal intelligence. You can have a genius character and not be a genius, but you have to be smart enough to make it believable. I'm sort of a grammar nazi, but I do try to keep my mouth shut. It just strikes me as rather ironic that a character who has a level 6 intellect is written with poor spelling and almost nonexistent grammar. I realize that even I make mistakes, but when I see posts like that... I have to facepalm. 
 
I'd say one solution to this is training. I know little to nothing about fighting, combat, cars, and weapons. So, I try to stay away from that (to an extent) sometimes. Maybe if I was taught a bit, I could learn. So, what I'm saying here is, there are some powers that are not people's fortes, maybe that should be taken into consideration when formulating characters, and help could be sought to create better writing and character development. 
 
And the roleplaying stories are why we're here, isn't it? :) 
 
(Please no one take serious offense. These are just some observations.) 
 

I agree. I'll also admit that when i first started Sha was a "Genius", eventually i removed that from her bio because it didn't make any sense for her to be a genius; and I myself had a ninth grade reading level lol. IT's like when i see people who know nothing about Martial Arts, as masters of all forms of combat. SMH 
 
 
I support this!

I've ramped down basically all my stats with every new card. My original was ridiculous. I had like a seven in fighting ability and I think intelligence was a five or six. Two things that Cass has never actually demonstrated. 
 
I still need to work on my fighting scenes. I'm not anywhere near where I'd like to be with that writing ability. 

Well with Bob it's pretty easy, to write him accurately. I gave him practically all human abilities, no great combat training, no genius intellect, no abnormalities of any kind. He can be a little boring to write since I can;t have him do anything amazing, like crush a skyscraper or fly around the world, but it really makes me push myself as a writer to make him interesting, since he has no interesting features of his own.

" I've seen many self-proclaimed geniuses write posts that make me want to scratch out my eyes."  

Old MM like me, was a hug addict :D

" (I also had to learn what a newton was and the formula for finding out force.) 
"

" @The Psyentist: :D
@Icarusflies said:

" Solenoid has negative intelligence if that's at all possible. >_> "

As possible as me having a negative wiki point. :P "

" @The Psyentist: :D
@Icarusflies said:

" Solenoid has negative intelligence if that's at all possible. >_> "

As possible as me having a negative wiki point. :P "

Band Lone is suppose to have a good level of intellect and specially a great ability to memorize thing instantly. Also he was implanted with artificial intelligence. Basically he knew everything you could find on the internet about war, martial arts and people.  
 
Whenever I wrote for a characters and I made him a know it all I made sure that what I wrote was accurate which was a big pain in the ass when it came to a real historic event because I had to study the event in order to not mess up. (For example as Sammy I had to study the battle of Hattin for an RPG because Sammy was a huge brainy.)
 
Band was also suppose to be able to understand all languages at one point but he eventually forgot. Now he can just speak English and Spanish and understand a few things in Portuguese, French and Italian. (Which is basically what I can do in real life) However because I also have Japanese connections he also knows a bit of Japanese IN STORYLINE. 
 
But all that has changed because I got tired of him been a know it all.. In my new fan fic you can see how much of a know it all he was at the beginning. Band is still aware of a great deal of things but because of the things that have happened to him most of his artificial intelligence has been forgotten and replace by actual events and experiences of his life. Basically, Band is an old model.. Just a shadow of what he was before. 
 
If the person is dedicated they can make that super intelligence work.

I always wondered this when I want to add things to my characters or when I read the person with genius level intellect. I did that in the beginning, but who was I kidding? I research the things I want to add to my characters that I'm not familiar with. I don't limit myself,  but I want it to be believable. 

"Whenever I wrote for a characters and I made him a know it all I made sure that what I wrote was accurate which was a big pain in the ass when it came to a real historic event because I had to study the event in order to not mess up."