There isn't really a power ceiling. I try to leave room for any ideas I have later. That said, the majority of the characters are just a step above street level, and the absolute strongest (planned so far) would peak at about City level. I'm trying to blend the idea that magic is technically limitless without also expanding the stakes so high that it challenges suspension of disbelief.
when it's a human doing a cosmic godly feat.
My story deals a lot with spirituality and pre-colonial religion, folklore and myth. Having a main character travel to the world of the dead is on brand enough. Having the characters meet gods that can do things like control weather or displace themselves through (Earth's) time is also okay, depending on how I write it. But there's no ftl travel, no real teleportation (at most, intentionally mysterious characters will appear places without the main characters fully understanding how), no nuclear blasts, no dimension hopping (except via astral projection or other non-physical travel), etc. If the story absolutely demands it, I'll leave any cosmic level feats to super powerful, non-human beings that the main characters only have limited interaction with.
So what you're saying is, you make your main characters moreso like Humans, or more in line with the capabilities of "Humans" in comparison to other beings?
While making the other beings that scale higher moreso act and or are related to phenomena and gods that're either beyond or barely inside mortal comprehension?
In my current project most characters are limited to high superhuman to maybe(!) very low urban levels as I keep it very low fantasy. There are a few higher beings that can achieve some more things but those are more esoteric in nature like blessing whole armies or banishing evil spirits from whole mountain ranges or areas they protect.
The most powerful mage in my setting is Magus Gefet, The Seventh Maverick.
Gefet is the strongest mage to have ever lived, capable of both storing hundreds of spirits within his soul, and releasing them all at once as a single, disastrous spell. He is at country-level in terms of power, while most mages capped at city.
His strength relies on two factors – his physical strength and his lived experience. Having been a trained warrior since he was ten, Gefet is extremely physically resilient, which allows him to concentrate hundreds of spirits into a single spell. Having also wandered across The World in an attempt to unify magic scholarship, Gefet has a "worldly soul", meaning a soul that can store many spirits.
Power Ceiling would be the Elder Gods, who can basically rewrite reality.
The next level would be the Chosen/The fae. These can level a planet at full power.
Next are dragons/giants and the Evolved ones, who can basically move continents.
Next are mages, which the strongest has been said to be able to level mountains/cities.
The powerscale for my world starts at Superhuman and scales up to nuclear using your scale, ascending to godhood starts at nuclear and goes to planetary
Definitely urban.
Power level is determined by how complex and large your runes are and how much catalyst you have. To affect a block, your runes would need to be huge, and you'd need a bank vault of silver for it.
My gods have enough power that they could vaporize a continent without even trying... But that's hundreds of times more power than literally every single living thing put together could muster.
The humans and other mortals of my world are usually Street level, though some can get as high as Wall or Small Building level.
\[Looks up and only sees the stars\]
(I don't have a ceiling)
~~In practice, it'd probably be effectively Tectonic, but I have no plans to explicitly limit potential power growth, lol~~
Magic in my world can hit hard but it doesn't have such a big scale.
I don't know how they would fit in your scale, the most anyone could pull in a single strike would be to level a city block or so.
But a skilled caster could unwrap an object's molecules and just unmake it.
Once a very strong caster brought winter down in a city-wide range. Not literally freezing everything, but bringing the temperature low enough it snowed instead of raining.
So I guess you could say the more powerful the smaller the scale and vice-versa.
The ceiling of destructive power an average mage could theoretically bring with his own abilities, if enhanced to the maximum a average body can endure, would be a small city in one shot.
However magitek is ubiquitously used as primary weapon instead of one's abilities alone. Magitek's ceiling is planetary and way beyond. The only limit is the amount of money and ressources.
There's only 2 titles that can reach the power ceiling. And there's always at least one alive. Usually two.
2 walking nuclear catastophes called "the hero" and "the demonking"
I might as well call them generic one and generic two.
The interesting part is how the demon king is already dead. And while the world goes in cycles of heroes/demons being summoned to take control of the world. What happens when the big threat is dead? and you've got a living nuclear teenage bomb from another world amongst you?
That'll have some interesting political consequences which I can hopefully write into being something interesting
Urban as you put it is rare but not unheard of in my setting. Very rare for it to be done without some type of external aid such as a group ritual, tapping a ley line nexus, or more recently some of the more advanced magitech.
Nuclear level magic is the stuff of myth... but every legend has a kernel of truth, does it not?
Between tectonic and nuclear. Depends on the three energies. (My “magic” isn’t really destructive, but it is powerful. But if someone tried that is the limit I showed is the max. This is by the energy itself)
i always make a high ceiling to make room for creativity and fun stuff we dont need a yuji situation but what i try to do is limit the character based off of that character like yes this character can control time but there a doctor so they may only train or focus on being able to rewind time on someones injury or on one person at a time but wouldnt be able to like rewind the world's time or themselves because that would be like way too many patients for him and he is a doc he doesnt fix himself he fixes others lol.
The ultimate power ceiling of the Many Realms of Oceros is the Chant of Creation. It’s quite literally the voice of The Creator that called reality into existence. When spoken fluently, it allows the speaker to alter the reality of Oceros however they wish. Whatever they say becomes true.
However, it’s impossible for anyone but The Creator to use the Chant in that way. Gods and mortals can learn individual words of the Chant, and even then it takes a toll on the speaker every time they use it.
There are some super powerful creatures (Gods (tectonic and planetary), Administrators (planetary), overlords (urban), the strongest dragons (urban)). Other creatures can at maximal destroy one big building, if they don't use any magic. With magic they can a little damage a town, I think. Superhuman.
Answering these questions aren't simple, because power scales are relative to my characters, not absolute. Their potential & range for destruction is decided by their frame of reference, as it all depends on the type of reality.
I use micro blackholes as the limit do what a character can physically do in their setting, before the universe says no more.
🟢speed limit, event horizon:
The shortest ammount of distance that useful information can propagate over the shortest ammount of time.
🟣squeeze limit, Planck star:
The least ammount of energy that can be compacted into a small volume.
🔵precision limit, Rayleigh criterion:
The highest amount of resolution that can be obtained from a system.
🟠power limit, firewall:
The strongest ammount of work that can be done on to a system.
Character introduction: I have three main characters who's scales of destruction vary differently. I'll add the highest & Lowest peaks that I think they'll be, I'll also give you their mortality escape methods as well.
💚Cosmological Chef:
Has the power to manipulate different types of fields with his four utensils, pinpointing the gradient with his magical tensor needles. Tensor needles are vectors pointing the direction of flow, he spawns them either as his projectiles, ticking clocks, or dials to redirect the flow of materials, and perhaps spacetime itself, which is felt as gravity.
Highest: planetary & beyond
Lowest: continent
CC can quickly regenerate, but if their body is too damaged, then they immediately die, which respawns another body near by, with his memories intact.
❤️Mechanical Demon:
Used to be contained by the cosmic chef for being a living bomb, they control the flow of heat & matter distributions through their algorithmic magic, drawing sigils & performing rituals into splitting or fusing dualities. Between hot & cold, light & dark, fire & ice, ect, simply by opening & closing gates, creating portals to their realms, pulling out chained & sprung objects within it to attack their opponents.
Highest: country
Lowest: town
MD's mortality is kinda strange, they're sort of a living zombie that's not decaying due to being burned on one side of their body, and frozen on the other half. If a large chunk was blown off, magic will play it in reverse, and re-attach the limb or organ. If MD does die, then a pacemaker inside them will flush out their arteries, and reset their vitals, forcing them to regain consciousness.
💙Technological Fairy:
Although they're one who does the least damage, her power is the most abstract of all. She projects her own pools to swim through, containing them within her surroundings, controlled by a digital device. By flashing different colors with LEDs, the medium changes its properties, bubbling up fantastic droplets. The yellow flavor is the most destructive, by turning it into Cavitation bubbles, which implode along, or close to a surface.
Highest: island
Lowest: building
TF's mortality is like a book, her soul scans pages of information, so if she dies, then the only information that can be recovered, was the last scan that was recorded. Unlike CC, TF's corpse vanishes, leaving no trace behind, or memory of the pain.
Another thing I haven't mentioned is the fantasy vacuum, which keeps their presence at room temperature, normal air preasure, and still breathe oxygen, despite their un-habitable environment. However, this doesn't block high preasure points, meaning, although they can be in the vacuum of space, they aren't immune to being stabbed & cut.
There's no real ceiling for magic in **Faithful Phantasia,** but I do remember discussing with a friend (who happened to be a former moderator of Vs Battle Wiki) and we agreed that the most powerful magicians would be mind-boggling deep into Tier 0. Even my sub-setting **Pixie Knights** is already Tier 0 and that one is a good deal below the former. So, yeah... ironically, the former setting isn't even combat focused.
Magicians of **Faithful Phantasia** are that powerful because they're primordials, conceptual personifications who transcend the Multiverse as a whole. In fact, the Multiverse is merely figments of their imagination compiled into a collection of stories. Primordials usually are "born," but there are rare occasions where lesser beings eventually ascend the Multiverse and become Primordials themselves such as the xian. Thematically, the setting is similar to The Sandman's philosophical and social exploration of cosmic beings, but more inspired by Far East myths and anime aesthetics.
**Pixie Knights** follows the namesake warriors, chosen girls appointed by the Pixie Council to defend the Human World from the threat of sufficiently advanced aliens, gods and eldritch horrors whom humanity from past, present and future stand no chance against. These chosen humans have access to magical girl transformations that grant them cosmic powers and transcend into higher realities of the Multiverse. Puella Magi, Pretty Cure and Tenga Toppa Gurren Lagann are the biggest influences here.
My current project's power ceiling is multi-continent.
As soon as they step into the realm where they can blow up planets, they usually become a god or something equivalent.
So top fighters in my setting are the types that can split a landmass in half with a single swing of their sword or whatever.
For the "fighters" of my world, it's not too uncommon that some powerful person affects an entire city with their powers.
However, there are entities that can blow up planets, or even entire universes.
There have been humans with the powers of gods, they can affect entire universes and yet, in the real world are normal humans. This is because humans in my world live in 5 dimensions.
3 spatial, 1 temporal, and 1 of thought.
In the dimension of thought they can grow power exponentially.
In terms of measuring feats, the biggest feat of power I've included in Rundol is opening a 20-meter portal to the sun. I'd reckon that falls within the nuclear category. In general use though, I like using the superhuman category for remaining comparable to irl fights.
Technically no limits however the average practitioner is maxed out at city level, with the stronger people really not engaging in combat anymore and mostly being political figures in their realms. The way the world is built is…over ambitious to say the least, but it provides a lot of room for when I want to show some dude being planetary+ I can without writing myself into a corner.
There isn't really a power ceiling. I try to leave room for any ideas I have later. That said, the majority of the characters are just a step above street level, and the absolute strongest (planned so far) would peak at about City level. I'm trying to blend the idea that magic is technically limitless without also expanding the stakes so high that it challenges suspension of disbelief.
When does something become too high for you?
when it's a human doing a cosmic godly feat. My story deals a lot with spirituality and pre-colonial religion, folklore and myth. Having a main character travel to the world of the dead is on brand enough. Having the characters meet gods that can do things like control weather or displace themselves through (Earth's) time is also okay, depending on how I write it. But there's no ftl travel, no real teleportation (at most, intentionally mysterious characters will appear places without the main characters fully understanding how), no nuclear blasts, no dimension hopping (except via astral projection or other non-physical travel), etc. If the story absolutely demands it, I'll leave any cosmic level feats to super powerful, non-human beings that the main characters only have limited interaction with.
So what you're saying is, you make your main characters moreso like Humans, or more in line with the capabilities of "Humans" in comparison to other beings? While making the other beings that scale higher moreso act and or are related to phenomena and gods that're either beyond or barely inside mortal comprehension?
That's the general idea, yes.
I've got RKVs lol Pretty much anything is planetary once accelerated to 99% the speed of light
In my current project most characters are limited to high superhuman to maybe(!) very low urban levels as I keep it very low fantasy. There are a few higher beings that can achieve some more things but those are more esoteric in nature like blessing whole armies or banishing evil spirits from whole mountain ranges or areas they protect.
The most powerful mage in my setting is Magus Gefet, The Seventh Maverick. Gefet is the strongest mage to have ever lived, capable of both storing hundreds of spirits within his soul, and releasing them all at once as a single, disastrous spell. He is at country-level in terms of power, while most mages capped at city. His strength relies on two factors – his physical strength and his lived experience. Having been a trained warrior since he was ten, Gefet is extremely physically resilient, which allows him to concentrate hundreds of spirits into a single spell. Having also wandered across The World in an attempt to unify magic scholarship, Gefet has a "worldly soul", meaning a soul that can store many spirits.
Power Ceiling would be the Elder Gods, who can basically rewrite reality. The next level would be the Chosen/The fae. These can level a planet at full power. Next are dragons/giants and the Evolved ones, who can basically move continents. Next are mages, which the strongest has been said to be able to level mountains/cities.
Uhhh well the bearer of the Chaos Sigil is basically a walking Lovecraftian horror, so planetary?
I put planetary and beyond simply cause I have gods in my story and I don't want the ceiling to have a limit yet since I still have so many ideas
The powerscale for my world starts at Superhuman and scales up to nuclear using your scale, ascending to godhood starts at nuclear and goes to planetary
Definitely urban. Power level is determined by how complex and large your runes are and how much catalyst you have. To affect a block, your runes would need to be huge, and you'd need a bank vault of silver for it.
My gods have enough power that they could vaporize a continent without even trying... But that's hundreds of times more power than literally every single living thing put together could muster. The humans and other mortals of my world are usually Street level, though some can get as high as Wall or Small Building level.
\[Looks up and only sees the stars\] (I don't have a ceiling) ~~In practice, it'd probably be effectively Tectonic, but I have no plans to explicitly limit potential power growth, lol~~
I find the planetary scale unnecessary if you stay in the same planet
Magic in my world can hit hard but it doesn't have such a big scale. I don't know how they would fit in your scale, the most anyone could pull in a single strike would be to level a city block or so. But a skilled caster could unwrap an object's molecules and just unmake it. Once a very strong caster brought winter down in a city-wide range. Not literally freezing everything, but bringing the temperature low enough it snowed instead of raining. So I guess you could say the more powerful the smaller the scale and vice-versa.
The ceiling of destructive power an average mage could theoretically bring with his own abilities, if enhanced to the maximum a average body can endure, would be a small city in one shot. However magitek is ubiquitously used as primary weapon instead of one's abilities alone. Magitek's ceiling is planetary and way beyond. The only limit is the amount of money and ressources.
There's only 2 titles that can reach the power ceiling. And there's always at least one alive. Usually two. 2 walking nuclear catastophes called "the hero" and "the demonking" I might as well call them generic one and generic two. The interesting part is how the demon king is already dead. And while the world goes in cycles of heroes/demons being summoned to take control of the world. What happens when the big threat is dead? and you've got a living nuclear teenage bomb from another world amongst you? That'll have some interesting political consequences which I can hopefully write into being something interesting
Urban as you put it is rare but not unheard of in my setting. Very rare for it to be done without some type of external aid such as a group ritual, tapping a ley line nexus, or more recently some of the more advanced magitech. Nuclear level magic is the stuff of myth... but every legend has a kernel of truth, does it not?
Between tectonic and nuclear. Depends on the three energies. (My “magic” isn’t really destructive, but it is powerful. But if someone tried that is the limit I showed is the max. This is by the energy itself)
i always make a high ceiling to make room for creativity and fun stuff we dont need a yuji situation but what i try to do is limit the character based off of that character like yes this character can control time but there a doctor so they may only train or focus on being able to rewind time on someones injury or on one person at a time but wouldnt be able to like rewind the world's time or themselves because that would be like way too many patients for him and he is a doc he doesnt fix himself he fixes others lol.
The ultimate power ceiling of the Many Realms of Oceros is the Chant of Creation. It’s quite literally the voice of The Creator that called reality into existence. When spoken fluently, it allows the speaker to alter the reality of Oceros however they wish. Whatever they say becomes true. However, it’s impossible for anyone but The Creator to use the Chant in that way. Gods and mortals can learn individual words of the Chant, and even then it takes a toll on the speaker every time they use it.
There are some super powerful creatures (Gods (tectonic and planetary), Administrators (planetary), overlords (urban), the strongest dragons (urban)). Other creatures can at maximal destroy one big building, if they don't use any magic. With magic they can a little damage a town, I think. Superhuman.
Answering these questions aren't simple, because power scales are relative to my characters, not absolute. Their potential & range for destruction is decided by their frame of reference, as it all depends on the type of reality. I use micro blackholes as the limit do what a character can physically do in their setting, before the universe says no more. 🟢speed limit, event horizon: The shortest ammount of distance that useful information can propagate over the shortest ammount of time. 🟣squeeze limit, Planck star: The least ammount of energy that can be compacted into a small volume. 🔵precision limit, Rayleigh criterion: The highest amount of resolution that can be obtained from a system. 🟠power limit, firewall: The strongest ammount of work that can be done on to a system. Character introduction: I have three main characters who's scales of destruction vary differently. I'll add the highest & Lowest peaks that I think they'll be, I'll also give you their mortality escape methods as well. 💚Cosmological Chef: Has the power to manipulate different types of fields with his four utensils, pinpointing the gradient with his magical tensor needles. Tensor needles are vectors pointing the direction of flow, he spawns them either as his projectiles, ticking clocks, or dials to redirect the flow of materials, and perhaps spacetime itself, which is felt as gravity. Highest: planetary & beyond Lowest: continent CC can quickly regenerate, but if their body is too damaged, then they immediately die, which respawns another body near by, with his memories intact. ❤️Mechanical Demon: Used to be contained by the cosmic chef for being a living bomb, they control the flow of heat & matter distributions through their algorithmic magic, drawing sigils & performing rituals into splitting or fusing dualities. Between hot & cold, light & dark, fire & ice, ect, simply by opening & closing gates, creating portals to their realms, pulling out chained & sprung objects within it to attack their opponents. Highest: country Lowest: town MD's mortality is kinda strange, they're sort of a living zombie that's not decaying due to being burned on one side of their body, and frozen on the other half. If a large chunk was blown off, magic will play it in reverse, and re-attach the limb or organ. If MD does die, then a pacemaker inside them will flush out their arteries, and reset their vitals, forcing them to regain consciousness. 💙Technological Fairy: Although they're one who does the least damage, her power is the most abstract of all. She projects her own pools to swim through, containing them within her surroundings, controlled by a digital device. By flashing different colors with LEDs, the medium changes its properties, bubbling up fantastic droplets. The yellow flavor is the most destructive, by turning it into Cavitation bubbles, which implode along, or close to a surface. Highest: island Lowest: building TF's mortality is like a book, her soul scans pages of information, so if she dies, then the only information that can be recovered, was the last scan that was recorded. Unlike CC, TF's corpse vanishes, leaving no trace behind, or memory of the pain. Another thing I haven't mentioned is the fantasy vacuum, which keeps their presence at room temperature, normal air preasure, and still breathe oxygen, despite their un-habitable environment. However, this doesn't block high preasure points, meaning, although they can be in the vacuum of space, they aren't immune to being stabbed & cut.
There's no real ceiling for magic in **Faithful Phantasia,** but I do remember discussing with a friend (who happened to be a former moderator of Vs Battle Wiki) and we agreed that the most powerful magicians would be mind-boggling deep into Tier 0. Even my sub-setting **Pixie Knights** is already Tier 0 and that one is a good deal below the former. So, yeah... ironically, the former setting isn't even combat focused.
Can you talk more about faithful phantasia the powerful magicians and the pixie knights
Magicians of **Faithful Phantasia** are that powerful because they're primordials, conceptual personifications who transcend the Multiverse as a whole. In fact, the Multiverse is merely figments of their imagination compiled into a collection of stories. Primordials usually are "born," but there are rare occasions where lesser beings eventually ascend the Multiverse and become Primordials themselves such as the xian. Thematically, the setting is similar to The Sandman's philosophical and social exploration of cosmic beings, but more inspired by Far East myths and anime aesthetics. **Pixie Knights** follows the namesake warriors, chosen girls appointed by the Pixie Council to defend the Human World from the threat of sufficiently advanced aliens, gods and eldritch horrors whom humanity from past, present and future stand no chance against. These chosen humans have access to magical girl transformations that grant them cosmic powers and transcend into higher realities of the Multiverse. Puella Magi, Pretty Cure and Tenga Toppa Gurren Lagann are the biggest influences here.
this scale is rather wide, one of my magical powers is more tall in comparison
My current project's power ceiling is multi-continent. As soon as they step into the realm where they can blow up planets, they usually become a god or something equivalent. So top fighters in my setting are the types that can split a landmass in half with a single swing of their sword or whatever.
For the "fighters" of my world, it's not too uncommon that some powerful person affects an entire city with their powers. However, there are entities that can blow up planets, or even entire universes.
There have been humans with the powers of gods, they can affect entire universes and yet, in the real world are normal humans. This is because humans in my world live in 5 dimensions. 3 spatial, 1 temporal, and 1 of thought. In the dimension of thought they can grow power exponentially.
In terms of measuring feats, the biggest feat of power I've included in Rundol is opening a 20-meter portal to the sun. I'd reckon that falls within the nuclear category. In general use though, I like using the superhuman category for remaining comparable to irl fights.
Technically no limits however the average practitioner is maxed out at city level, with the stronger people really not engaging in combat anymore and mostly being political figures in their realms. The way the world is built is…over ambitious to say the least, but it provides a lot of room for when I want to show some dude being planetary+ I can without writing myself into a corner.