This Power Scale is an honest attempt to create a consistent combat ability rating system which is consistent and applicable across all fictional universes.

The Principles:

• The scale reflects combat power – the ability to defeat other characters on the scale.
• Characters are on the scale if we are fairly confident that we know where they should be.
• Placement of a character is achieved by an averaging system. In general, a character should be able to consistently defeat most of the characters below them, but very few above. Applying this concept to all characters leads to a fairly consistent scale.
• Items that the character generally carries are included in the comparisons, while items that they may have used only once (or only because of a special set of circumstances in their world) are generally not considered. In the cases where this introduces significant confusion as to the ranking of a character, the averaging system will put them in a position in between their higher and lower values.
• The scale is exponential, so a level 50 is much more than 20% more powerful than a level 40.
• Explicit effort has been made to counteract fanboy-ism. If you think your beloved character is too low on the scale, be ruthless with scrutinizing your reasoning before making you disagreement known. We didn’t come to these rankings lightly, so please be polite. That said, we are certainly interested in hearing what you have to contribute to the discussion since this is still an early incarnation of the scale created through the efforts of less than half a dozen people.

Reference points for the scale

Some useful numbers to keep in mind would be:

Average human is power level 1.

Around power level 10 you find (un)common heroes like Aragorn, Link, and Captain Jack Sparrow.

Power level 20 is where things start to get crazier. This is the transition point between the mundane (Batman) and the significantly supernatural (Luke Skywalker).

Power level 30 is where you find people like Gandalf and the Balrog.

Power level 40, and its vicinity, is where you find the super-characters at the heart of some epic combat mythologies, such as Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden), Dante (Devil May Cry), Rogue (X-Men), and Spawn.

Power level 50 is where you find Golden Age Superman – traditionally described as “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

Power level 60 is the edge of what would be considered godhood in most fictional universes. These characters are generally immortal and capable of at least some reality-warping achievements.

Power level 70 is Neo in the Matrix,

Power level 73 is the power level of Humanity on the planet earth in the year 2009 (note that this includes everything that we were capable of at that time, including nuclear weapons and minor space travel.

Power levels 80 through 100 is where you begin to find the ‘absolute’ powers of many mythologies. At this point, the major distinctions between the gods is the breadth of their purview. The universes of the ancient Greek and Norse gods for instance were much smaller and more limited than the transcendent multiverses ruled by characters such as Ao and UL.