This ranking system is designed to allow storytellers to have a good idea of what kind of power levels are being brought into the game. Likewise it should help to allow moderators and other staff to better approve new characters.
Rank Classifications
The basic ranking system goes from a scale of A to F, which A being the most powerful possible and F being the least powerful possible. Overall, these classes of ability can be used to denote training or a lack of training. Generally speaking, attaining Class A or Class B cannot be done without training in ability or skill except in the case of a long period of in-the-field training teaching ones self with a concerted effort.
Rank Categories
Since we want to leave it open for some characters to have extremely high or low levels of power, we also have categories of abilities.
- Category 1
- These are normal everyday people and abilities. As such, this is what a person can achieve with hard work and no other additive skills, powers, or abilities.
- Category 2 (Augmented)
- These are very close to normal people, but have some extra something added into the mix. It could be magical powers, supernatural abilities, or even cybernetic augmentations. Training to use these abilities still requires hard work just like a normal person, the added power just allow them to achieve (with hard work) superhuman or super-normal status.
- As a side-note, this also allows a normal person to achieve far more than the average person with less work than it would take a regular person.
- Category 3 (Super)
- Abilities in this category are so far above normal that the best of all humanity would have trouble coming to match the lowest among these people. With hard work and training someone of this category is able to outstrip even the the best of the augmented people by a large degree. They are able to, at the top most levels, reverse even a large scale disaster or bend the laws of reality in subtle ways to alter events.
- At this level of ability, characters are able to do things no one should be able to reasonably do but it is still an effort to do so. To warp physics or alter reality requires someone operating at Class A, someone at Class B or Class C would be unable to do so. Even at that level, one cannot completely warp reality, but only in subtle ways.
- Category 4 (Cosmic)
- Abilities in this category are so far above that of a normal person, they might well be considered divine by even the most ardent atheist on witnessing their power. At his level, characters possess the ability to routinely warp the physical / metaphysical world around them with little training. They are able to change the actual fabric of reality and can work outside the normal physical, magical, or supernatural laws.
- At this level, a character can accidentally cause widespread destruction or disaster if left unchecked and training would be required to ensure this doesn't happen. Characters unable to be trained, should have a limiter of some sort placed on them. In some cases this could be a device (necklace, ring, or similar) that blocks the use of their powers, other cases would have this be some kind of mental or psychological block - the character doesn't believe they can use special powers and thus they cannot.
- Category 5 (Author)
- This is the most powerful category, at this level of ability rankings such as Class A or Class F are meaningless. These are literal deities.
Using the System
The system categories are numeric so that they pair well with the rankings. Thus, a Category 3, Class A abilities could be noted as being simply 3A. When a category is not noted, it is assumed to be a Category 1 rank.
Rankings should be noted on any special abilities or skills of significant note. This includes if a character operates mostly as a Category 3 but one or two abilities are Category 1 signifying that they are on par with normal people. Abilities without any rank noted are assumed to be 1D or 1C, which is about average normal-person abilities. If a person is noted as being an Expert or Veteran in a specific ability but it is otherwise left without a rank, then once can assume it is a 1B or 1A respectively. A ranking of 1F is reserved for something a person has either no or minimal skill / power / training in a particular area.
The Default
A characters default skill should be thought of as their overall skill at what they do. Such as a military officer who is a Commander can be said to have a default military skill of Class C. That is to say if another military skill doesn't cover such things, then one can substitute in Class C for military skills not specified to be otherwise. Skills should still have a designated skill level with them, to show how good the character is at those skills. The default skill level overall is always Class F, with the default for their occupation being determined by their rank in that occupation.
Just a side note, some characters have been doing what they do for an absurd amount of time, such as immortal characters or characters with extremely long life spans. This means that even though their character may be middle-of-the-road for their own people, as compared to everyone else (baseline of Class F for normal every day human beings), this may grant them an overall Class C or even higher. Again, this is down to the specifics of the character. Generally we do not go above a default overall of Class C in even extreme cases of just a lot of learned knowledge. Higher than that for untrained skills and it is time to consider a higher category for the character.
The default category works differently. This is determined by the characters specifics, what special abilities they have, are they augmented in some way, do they have super-powers. Say a character has super powers, say the character is similar to the Flash. Now, his default is Category 3, for things pertaining to his super ability. That is to say speed. All other abilities default to Category 1, since other than super speed, the character is a normal person. Similarly, a character who possesses some kind of genetic manipulation to augment all of them could have a default of Category 2, but wide-spread, so that it applies to everything they do. Since they are overall genetically engineered to be superior.
This is why specifying skill and ability levels in the sheet can be very important, since it can add much needed clarity.
Character Rank
Although most often the rank field for a character bio refers to some kind of honorary or earned title that confers some amount of skill at what they do. This isn't always the case, however, so here we have a basic comparison that is designed to serve as a guide for players to use for the purposes of deciding on a players skill level at various tasks. Now, please understand, this does not say that a Chief Petty Officer is just as skilled overall as Major or Commander. But rather, for what that person does, it says that a Chief Petty Officer is Accomplished and thus has a similar skill level for what they do as someone who is Accomplished at what they do. Since an enlisted person has a very different job than an officer, this tracks.
Some military ranks will fall between these ranks, it is up to the player (if needed the Staff) to decide what ranks fall into what skills if it comes up. If it doesn't come up, then don't worry about it.
| Standard | Officers | Enlisted | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unskilled | ||||
| Novice | Ensign | Lieutenant | Private | Seaman |
| Experienced | Lieutenant | Captain | Corporal | Petty Officer |
| Accomplished | Commander | Major | Sergeant | Chief Petty Officer |
| Expert | Captain | Colonel | Sergeant Major | Master Petty Officer |
| Veteran | Admiral | General | Command Sergeant Major | Command Petty Officer |
Ranks / Skills / Dice Rolls
Since our game isn't heavily based on dice, we can make this system for comparative dice rolls to be rather simple.
There are two kinds of dice rolls:
- Contested
- Uncontested
Modifiers
Skill's can be modified by the level and category of the intended action for both kinds of rolls. The characters skill and category go into how difficult it is for the character to do something. All skills not mentioned or that do not fall into a listed skill are assumed to be Class F. For contested rolls, the rolls have the modifier added to them and then are compared between the two characters. For uncontested rolls, the player rolls, modifiers are added, and then rolled against the uncontested chart for required roll. Again, natural 1 will always fail and natural 20 will always succeed.
| Roll Modifiers | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| F | -2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | NA |
| E | -1 | 0 | +1 | +3 | |
| D | 0 | +1 | +2 | +5 | |
| C | +1 | +2 | +5 | +7 | |
| B | +2 | +3 | +7 | +9 | |
| A | +3 | +5 | +9 | +10 | |
Contested
A contested dice roll always rolls against someone else. So, if Bob wants to hit Jim with a hammer and Jim wants to doge (or perry, etc.) they would roll against each other. Each person would roll a 1d20 and account for any modifiers. Whoever gets the highest end result wins. A Natural 20 always wins, however, and a Natural 1 always loses.
Uncontested
This is where someone is trying to do something, remember something, perform some skilled work, etc. where they are not going against anyone but still want to know if they actually can do it or not. Such as playing the flute, you wouldn't roll against the flute of course.
The base score to roll against is a 10, higher than a 10 is a success and lower is a fail. However some jobs are harder than others to complete. The following table is based on how much skill is required (column headings) to perform an action vs. how much training the character has (row labels).
| F | E | D | C | B | A | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | 10 | 12 | 13 | 15 | 17 | 19 |
| E | 8 | 10 | 12 | 13 | 15 | 17 |
| D | 7 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 13 | 15 |
| C | 5 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 13 |
| B | 3 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 12 |
| A | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 10 |
Limits
Any character being brought into the game with a power category above 3 will require special approval, to be noted in the character sheet along with who approved it to be there. In addition, anyone with a Class A or Class B ability should have it noted (any category) how they got so much skill in that ability.