Rank charts for a Supers setting

[Phantasm]

I just looked up some numbers. The US Army has about a million soldiers and officers - including reserves and national guard. The US Navy, including the Coast Guard, has about 500,000 sailors, give or take 50,000 or so. The US Air Force has about 600,000 airmen. The Marine Corps, a semi-independent branch of the Navy, has about 200,000 soldiers.

On average, the three major branches have about 750,000 each. This places the head of each branch of the US military at about Rank 8 or 9, depending on how generous the GM is.

As far as authority goes, the Commissioner of the New York Police Department (Police Rank 7) can tell the Captain of that Coast Guard Cutter (Military Rank 6) to take a hike while in New York Harbor - but he'll get into some political trouble from the Vice Admiral (Military Rank 7) the Captain answers to if he does so (this is where the Politics skill comes in handy). However, the Coast Guard Captain cannot command a New York Harbor Patrol boat to get out of his way - he can request it, and the Harbor Patrol will probably do so, but he can't command it.

There are many differing and overlapping jurisdictions involved, it seems, but remember that Rank essentially extends primarily to just the organization granting it. Joint operations happen, of course, but there the authority over the other org's Rank 0 peons is conditionally given - formally or otherwise - and can be rescinded at a moment's notice.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

13 - 500 million
12 - 100 million
11 - 20 million
10 - 5 million
9 - 1 million
8 - 200 thousand
7 - 50 thousand
6 - 10 thousand
5 - 2,000
4 - 500
3 - 200
2 - 50
1 - 10
0 - none

Someone reality-check these numbers for me?

If you use that system, then US Congresscritters would be rank of around 2 or 3. A head of a small permanent committee would have probably have +1, a large permanent committee +2, majority/minority leaders +3, and head of body +4, which would put Nancy Pelosi in the neighborhood of the rank 7 suggested in City Stats.

Theoretically, the US President has about 5 million subordinates, between executive branch employees and military personnel.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

.

I'm starting to agree that 18 ranks seems a bit too much (even though that's what T:IW gives the head of the Vilani Empire), but I don't think 8 ranks is enough for an interstellar empire - it's just too big for that few ranks.

OK, here's part of the problem. You need to realize that a level of the Rank advantage doesn't correspond to a single specific rank. There are plenty of hierarchical systems where there is a rank chain in which *nobody* has the same rank as anybody else - militaries for example tend to do this with dates of rank - you've been a Major two days longer than him, so you outrank him. This does not mean the US army needs to have a million levels of Rank so you can separate all of those.

Another factor that's probably especially true for large organizations that might seem like they need a lot of ranks is that quite often the formal rank structure not closely related to the actual chains of authority. There can easily be people who hold formally higher ranks, who, because of the way the command chains run, are not authorized to give orders to the lower ranking people also present. In this case it can be quite reasonable to treat everybody from say Undersecretary of Whatever to individual office managers in the Department of Whatever as having the same rank. Formally there is a pecking order of them, but the odds are most of them can't legally give each other orders in 90% of the situations in which they are interacting, so as a practical matter they don't outrank each other.

[Figleaf23]

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) ...

I just realized one problem you've got there.

By RAW, Rank structures apply within an integrated heirarchy. So leaders of different independent empires will not actually be in a Rank relationship toward eachother.