Ooh, Agent Carter is a good example! Even when she's not up against superpowered people, there's often Magical Deathray Guns and other super-tech that she has to match with ingenuity and creative approaches.

Vlad mostly works for me, I think, because for the first few books he really is relatively low-powered, and then as his power scales up so do his enemies - he's gone from opposing individual Dragaeran Jhereg to whole Jhereg organisations, and frankly seems to be teetering on the line when it comes to going after Verra herself...

Narrative voice might have something to do with it, too. As hamsterwoman says, Vlad seems to perceive himself this way, which makes it easy to fall into that view of him. (For me, at least, there are some particular points about Vlad's narration that brings the "feel" of the trope up; I think the biggest one is the way he sometimes just has to accept pain or damage, and doesn't rage against it; he's always very dry and sweeps it under the verbal rug. Sometimes he even acknowledges it as his due for mouthing off or acting against someone more powerful.)