Rank charts for a Supers setting

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

The setting is one with a number of interstellar alien empires interacting with an Early 21st Century Earth that happens to have a large and potentially powerful superhuman population. However, Earth itself is still rather "Balkanized", not "united" like the alien empires trying to conquer it would expect. The majority of superhumans appear to be from the United States and Europe; quite possibly there are even more superhumans in China and India, but they don't make the front page as often.

As such, these charts are geared towards the United States for Earth-level rankings. (Yes, this is for my Marvel Reboot project; it could just as easily be adapted for Star Wars. A lot of it is based off the tables in Traveller: Interstellar Wars.)

Administrative Rank
18 - Leader of a first-tier interstellar empire (Kree, Skrull, Shi'ar Empires)
17 - Leader of a second-tier interstellar empire (Rigellian Empire)
16 - Leader of a third-tier interstellar empire; Leader of an over-sector (up to a dozen sectors of an interstellar empire)
15 - Leader of a major sector (up to a dozen major star systems) or a small interstellar nation
14 - Leader of a major star system or a minor sector (up to a dozen minor star systems)
13 - Head of a major interstellar empire-level government agency (about 500 million subordinates); Leader of a major planet or minor star system

Not a good idea. Consider what rank does to reaction rolls. Humans are not that much more impressed by the Shi'Ar empress than they are by the ruler of a single alien planet.

[Langy]

I'd be wary of expanding ranks beyond eight or so, no matter the size of the organization. Anything greater than that can just be handled via Courtesy Rank, really.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Not a good idea. Consider what rank does to reaction rolls. Humans are not that much more impressed by the Shi'Ar empress than they are by the ruler of a single alien planet.

Having Status etc. add to reaction rolls fails to make sense in a lot of other circumstances too. I don't think that's so much a problem with number of levels of ranks as it is with tying them to reaction rolls at all. More or less the entire point of Rank is you can give orders to people they must obey *regardless* of how they would react to you as a private individual.

But I do think this is way too many levels. My personal rule of thumb is take the log of the number of people in an organization. That's the highest level rank in it. So you'd only have 18 levels of rank in an organization with 10^18 members, which is probably more than most galaxies. Admittedly this also ends up flattening some of the tables in the RAW, but I don't see that as a problem.