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I'll state again that I strongly opposed the idea of separate "cosmologies," but I do support the idea of raising standards for narrative consistency in a way that isn't purely quantitative.
Maybe my problem is mostly with phrasing, but since this proposal is mostly to do with phrasing I think that's a big and valid concern.
No. We are still discussing and things have yet to be decided. If someone want to discuss the topic they'll unfortunately have to read through the arguments, and to be fair, there ain't much, anyway.
What defines "primary source of stories?" Is Iron Man's primary source his solo books or the Avengers or both? Is Doctor Strange's his solo books or Defenders or both?
You gotta be kidding me. The character whose name is on the cover. Iron Man's primary source is his Iron Man books. Doctor Strange's primary source is his Doctor Strange books. If a book is called "The Avengers" and not "Iron Man," it's probably not Iron Man's primary source. This really isn't a complicated distinction.
Consistent portrayal over incidental interactions is what we already have. This is just the already existing policy but worded in a way that adds more needless complexity. Most of what you said in your OP is fine, but for a proposal about clarifying standards, it is worded in a way that has created 3 pages of confusion and misunderstanding and has resulted in you dropping a point that was a central idea of the OP.
That's a valid correction, I did concede that crossovers shouldn't be treated as secondary across the board. The actual point is that crossovers don't take priority over a character's own consistent portrayal when there's a contradiction, which is a more precise version of the same idea. As for the existing policy already covering this, three pages of disagreement about what counts as valid scaling is pretty good evidence that it doesn't.
Since either the proposal has changed, or the phrasing in the OP isn't representative of the ideas you intended to convey, could you newly your proposed phrasing for the addition to the rules?
Cross-scaling remains valid, but a character's own consistent portrayal across their primary source material takes priority in cases of contradiction. A character's primary source is defined by the books centered around them, the ones where they are the main focus. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact, appear in the same event, or fight alongside each other incidentally.
Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books, events, or crossovers due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances, as that constitutes their primary source material.
Anti-feats are part of a character's consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their tier.
Cross-scaling between characters with no consistent narrative relationship should not be used to pull characters into scaling chains that don't reflect their own demonstrated power level.
This seems like a much larger issue than others have noted here, especially with regard to the attempt to split the difference character types into separate “cosmologies” which is a very big commitment
IIRC, there were plans to downgrade 1-A's scaling from Skyfather back to High 1-B, but we never got around to it and Ultima Reality has been quite busy with other things.
Ignoring Wolverine a little bit. What do you think about the thread now after we’ve discussed for several comments? I’m obviously willing to concede some points and arguments to make the proposal work, and implement more exceptions since there are characters that only appear in crossovers.
Also, since most of you think we already do everything this thread proposes, I'll gently offer examples of the opposite. The reason these characters were Massively Hypersonic+ before the downgrade was because everyone was scaling to everyone and we weren't looking directly at who's actually faster than who to warrant a different Tier, or calc different feats to reach a different Tier as well.
The reason they're all Hypersonic now, is also because they all scale to each other. And I was actually responsible for that. They're also 9-B scaling off of a few feats in the verse page, although it's more than speed, at least.
Like legit, if I upgrade Daredevil right now to High Hypersonic this would affect even Doctor Doom. It would upgrade Cable as well. I don't remember Daredevil interacting with Cable ever. We clearly do not already do what OP proposes.
This is a complicated distinction since Iron Man, like many other characters, is an extremely important main character in crossover books. This is a completely different situation than Daredevil appearing a handful of times in an Avengers book. There are very, very few characters whose primary narrative is confined primarily to books with their name on it, so for most characters their roles in other books is just as important as their own books. Primary narrative should include any story where they play a significant role in events
Your rephrasing and elaboration is a significant improvement though. Although, it doesn't make reference to the idea you presented of separate cosmologies, so I'd like elaboration on what you mean with that.
This is a complicated distinction since Iron Man, like many other characters, is an extremely important main character in crossover books. This is a completely different situation than Daredevil appearing a handful of times in an Avengers book. There are very, very few characters whose primary narrative is confined primarily to books with their name on it, so for most characters their roles in other books is just as important as their own books. Primary narrative should include any story where they play a significant role in events
This is already covered by the updated proposal. If Iron Man plays a significant and consistent role in Avengers books, those count as part of his primary source material. That's different from a character who shows up a handful of times in a book they have no central narrative role in. The criteria is significance and consistency.
Your rephrasing and elaboration is a significant improvement though. Although, it doesn't make reference to the idea you presented of separate cosmologies, so I'd like elaboration on what you mean with that.
On cosmologies, the idea is straightforward. Characters who consistently interact, share narrative space and are explicitly framed as comparable form a natural scaling group. Spider-Man and his rogues gallery, Captain America and his associated characters, the X-Men among themselves. Cross-scaling between these groups is where the problem lies, not within them. A villain from Cap's world shouldn't automatically inherit Spider-Man tier stats just because they crossed paths once, and vice versa. The cosmologies aren't rigid walls, they're just a way of recognizing that Marvel itself tends to keep certain characters operating at consistent levels relative to each other within their own narrative space.
And please don't tell me this "doesn't happen". It does. There is a reason everyone has the same stats across the board.
Ok so then why did you say that Iron Man was the primary source and not the Avengers? I simply think that it doesn't particularly matter what book it happened in as long as it is of plot relevance to that book. This is probably just a semantic disagreement, but I don't think a story needs to be specifically centered around a character for their actions in said story to be relevant.
I don't think that has anything to do with separate worlds, but is just poor scaling. Like maybe there are examples of characters being scaled that way, but that's an issue with those profiles. The way to fix that is just stricter implementation of already existing rules regarding scaling consistency, not by separating them into different cosmologies. I get the idea, but I think that the walls are so blurry and malleable that it doesn't work. Like realistically, how many characters are there that would just scale within a single cosmology?
I agree with the central idea of requiring narrative consistency and not just scaling based on anything that happens, but I disagree with some of the implications in the way this is proposed.
Ok so then why did you say that Iron Man was the primary source and not the Avengers? I simply think that it doesn't particularly matter what book it happened in as long as it is of plot relevance to that book.
The Iron Man example was responding to your specific question about what counts as primary source. The position evolved during this discussion after recognizing that narrative relevance and consistency matter more than which book specifically, which is why the updated proposal reflects that instead of the original wording.
See, in cases of contradiction. I believe that what the authors who write primarily for that character should have more priority if a contradiction or a high difference in Tiers happens during a crossover with different characters.
I don't think that has anything to do with separate worlds, but is just poor scaling. Like maybe there are examples of characters being scaled that way, but that's an issue with those profiles. The way to fix that is just stricter implementation of already existing rules regarding scaling consistency, not by separating them into different cosmologies. I get the idea, but I think that the walls are so blurry and malleable that it doesn't work. Like realistically, how many characters are there that would just scale within a single cosmology?
On cosmologies, the walls being blurry is the point. They were never meant to be rigid separations. The cosmology concept is just a way of recognizing natural narrative clusters that Marvel itself creates. The problem isn't characters existing in multiple cosmologies, it's isolated interactions between those clusters being used as primary scaling justification. Most characters would still scale across cosmologies when the interaction is narratively significant and consistent. The ones that wouldn't are exactly the ones that shouldn't be scaling that way to begin with.
Wanna see an example? I was talking with @Tomfer just now, and he posted Moon Knight's old profile. It had this:
Comparable to the Punisher and Daredevil. Can contend with the likes of Black Cat and Bullseye
Then he complements saying Moon fought Punisher twice, Daredevil, Bullseye and Black Cat once. None of these characters make part of his stories, no Werewolf By Night feats or scaling, no Jack Russel. And then when someone actually reads his stories they found out Moon Knight was actually stronger than these characters he was previously scaling to. A solid 4 Tiers above them.
Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact, appear in the same event, or fight alongside each other incidentally.
I have a very minor disagreement with this part. I just think that it should be rephrased to be broader, something like "A character's primary source is defined by the books in which they hold notable plot relevance"
Cross-scaling between characters with no consistent narrative relationship should not be used to pull characters into scaling chains that don't reflect their own demonstrated power level.
With this part, do you think a feat between two characters who rarely interact would be relevant if both characters have other feats implying their are on the same level? Like Character A and B fight evenly one time, but both characters are at separate moments stated to be comparable to Character C? Or if they only fought once but them being comparable was a significant aspect of the plot point?
Then he complements saying Moon fought Punisher twice, Daredevil, Bullseye and Black once. None of these characters make part of his stories, no Werewolf By Night feats or scaling, no Jack Russel. And then when someone actually reads his stories they found out Moon Knight was actually stronger than these characters he was previously scaling to. A solid 4 Tiers above them.
This is a good example. Frankly, I think most characters have justifications that are far too short and sparse. For such a massive verse with such complicated scaling I think a paragraph is needed in most cases to properly convey their scaling. Like Wolverine was discussed earlier and that profile lists one feat for a Low 1-C rating and only 2 for its 8-C rating.
I have a very minor disagreement with this part. I just think that it should be rephrased to be broader, something like "A character's primary source is defined by the books in which they hold notable plot relevance"
With this part, do you think a feat between two characters who rarely interact would be relevant if both characters have other feats implying their are on the same level? Like Character A and B fight evenly one time, but both characters are at separate moments stated to be comparable to Character C? Or if they only fought once but them being comparable was a significant aspect of the plot point?
More like if the narrative makes it clear that these characters are on the same level, or if their fight isn't just a consequence of a crossover, and rather a portrayal of their strength. Another example is during the end of the Civil War saga, where Spidey just mogged a couple of characters, and most of them are much stronger than him. Reed, Samson, Radioactive Man. Really, any crossover you'd have these things. And while yes, we do count them as just outliers, I think making the scaling more focused on what I call "cosmology" would make things much more consistent and concrete. Like just understand that if I upgrade or downgrade Elektra I'm bringing down with her probably more than a hundred profiles. It is insane that everyone is scaling off of her feats, even though she probably never met most of them. Know what I mean?
This is a good example. Frankly, I think most characters have justifications that are far too short and sparse. For such a massive verse with such complicated scaling I think a paragraph is needed in most cases to properly convey their scaling. Like Wolverine was discussed earlier and that profile lists one feat for a Low 1-C rating and only 2 for its 8-C rating.
To be fair, I don't even bother with Adamantium because I know it's consistently harming a bunch of characters above himself. Adamantium is kinda the go-to thing for street level characters harm and fight heralds. Shang-Chi once used Adamantium weapons and absolutely stomped Iron-Man. And I agree about his profile overral. It's kinda ass. He's one of the oldest Marvel characters, he has a bunch of feats and yet his profile has a two line AP justification. And it's actually just scaling, no own feat.
Also, thank you for engaging and trying to understand what I mean. It's a bit hard for me to express in English sometimes since it's not my native language. It's much better than telling people on Discord to argue for themselves, as I saw happening moments ago.
“This is better than what we got” regarding the op
The grid shows that marvel has a perceived level for every character and we should look for it in their narrative work instead of arbitrarily scaling people to others
Just a note that Marvel's "official power rankings" are just mostly random numbers that Tom Brevoort made up after a few minutes of gut feeling consideration based on very little logical basis, and that mostly heavily contradict both each other and what is in the actual stories, and are irrationally obsessed with the "100 tons" number, despite that even Spider-Man has transcended it by tens of thousands of times on multiple occasions.
Cross-scaling remains valid, but a character's own consistent portrayal across their primary source material takes priority in cases of contradiction. A character's primary source is defined by the books centered around them, the ones where they are the main focus. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact, appear in the same event, or fight alongside each other incidentally.
Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books, events, or crossovers due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances, as that constitutes their primary source material.
Anti-feats are part of a character's consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their tier.
Cross-scaling between characters with no consistent narrative relationship should not be used to pull characters into scaling chains that don't reflect their own demonstrated power level.
This seems reasonable to me. What do the rest of you think?
Also, for the record, earlier I was referring to that Wolverine should logically not remotely be able to exert sufficient force to harm beings of Thanos' or Hulk's caliber even if he is using sharp Adamantium weapons.
Cross-scaling remains valid, but a character's own consistent portrayal across their primary source material takes priority in cases of contradiction. A character's primary source is defined by the books centered around them, the ones where they are the main focus. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact, appear in the same event, or fight alongside each other incidentally.
Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books, events, or crossovers due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances, as that constitutes their primary source material.
Anti-feats are part of a character's consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their tier.
Fine, but I wouldn't take team books as inherently secondary to the "primary source material". Avengers runs or what have you usually do functionally feature characters as "protagonists" even if they have to share that spot. I understand the idea is that these stories sort of... pull characters outside of their usual power scale and are thus more prone to outliers but I think there's a better way to phrase that.
You're also just forgetting characters sometimes just... don't have much feats or scaling. I read through all of Daimon Hellstrom who's pretty consistently a herald-tier threat but just never has many AP feats in his own runs, which also feature few crossovers. He'd be Unknown if he didn't have clear scaling to 3-C...
... Is what I would say but I just realized he got upgraded to tier 1. Maybe we should delete the whole verse.
Cross-scaling between characters with no consistent narrative relationship should not be used to pull characters into scaling chains that don't reflect their own demonstrated power level.
This I just disagree with. Trying to pick off what characters are or aren't fine to scale to a certain feat off narrative proximity is bizarre and inevitably going to take a fuckton of effort. You said Cable shouldn't scale to High Hypersonic if Daredevil gets upgraded to it, who should then? Wolverine's fought Daredevil a bunch of times, does he scale to it even though Cable doesn't? How about Spider-Man villains, plenty have never fought Matt but Spidey sure has. Blade's explicitly blitzed Punisher and Deadpool, does that mean Dracula upscales?
I'd reword this as "particular care must be taken when a character would scale to a feat that doesn't reflect their own portrayal, especially in the case that they have no consistent narrative relationship with the character who performed the feat". Gets the same idea across but keeps it a tiny bit more vague so a judgment call can be made based on the individual case. But do be aware, street tier speeds are still probably just going to be mostly shared, that's just not something Marvel has much granularity about most of the time and pretending it does is going to lead to weird-ass outcomes.
If glubshittos won't work anymore I might deadass reject the proposal.
Like **** this popularity subjective crap if it actively invalidates the scaling for half the goddamn verse lmao, Moonstone is not exactly a 20 issue pixie and if the proposal only exists to jerk off Moon Knight and Luke Cage or something then **** it lol, verse is doing just fine without it lol.
Like legit, if I upgrade Daredevil right now to High Hypersonic this would affect even Doctor Doom. It would upgrade Cable as well. I don't remember Daredevil interacting with Cable ever. We clearly do not already do what OP proposes.
I mean I am gonna be honest I think this is fine because speed is the most dogshit thing to track in vs. debating period, you can get antifeats in the same goddamn issue by the same goddamn writer half the time. Ideal should be leaving it Unknown but they're genuinely all just kinda vaguely faster and slower than each other save for rare occasion one of them blitzes the other for a splash panel.
Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books, events, or crossovers due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances, as that constitutes their primary source material.
This should be phrased more lenient. You can get people who would act like "Scarlet Witch is only defined by her solo series because she became more relevant in 2010s" or some crap like that, this is a vibes-based criteria so it should be written like there is some room to debate this.
Also as said there should be keying here. Characters aren't always indefinitely getting printed. Characters like Shang-Chi and to a lesser extent Luke Cage were primarily in team books and special appearances since the 90s, and only in recent times were back in comics. That's three entire decades where you're saying "The five issue Luke Cage MAX Limited Series is actually more important than the 100+ issues of New Avengers he appeared in as the team leader, in this era ".
Cross-scaling between characters with no consistent narrative relationship should not be used to pull characters into scaling chains that don't reflect their own demonstrated power level.
(I still need you to give me an explanation on how you intend to scale characters such as Dracula, Dr. Doom, Paladin or your general roamer supervillains and heroes.)
Fine, but I wouldn't take team books as inherently secondary to the "primary source material". Avengers runs or what have you usually do functionally feature characters as "protagonists" even if they have to share that spot. I understand the idea is that these stories sort of... pull characters outside of their usual power scale and are thus more prone to outliers but I think there's a better way to phrase that.
You're also just forgetting characters sometimes just... don't have much feats or scaling. I read through all of Daimon Hellstrom who's pretty consistently a herald-tier threat but just never has many AP feats in his own runs, which also feature few crossovers. He'd be Unknown if he didn't have clear scaling to 3-C...
I’m not forgetting them though, I already said that characters that are dependent on crossovers are completely fine. And when I say that we should consider one’s “own feats”, that includes scaling. As far as I know, scaling to another character via harming them is also a feat.
You said Cable shouldn't scale to High Hypersonic if Daredevil gets upgraded to it, who should then? Wolverine's fought Daredevil a bunch of times, does he scale to it even though Cable doesn't?
Daredevil and Wolverine aren’t currently sharing scaling though, so why would they scale to each other? “They fought multiple times” yeah sure, Daredevil isn’t 8-C for that, so why would Logan scale to his speed if Daredevil can’t scale to his AP? Cool AP and Speed are different I agree. But Daredevil does have feats harming Logan. It goes both ways.
Yes because Dracula also blitzed Deadpool? He also blitzed Spider-Man’s Spider Sense, and was giving him a ass whooping and the only reason he was holding his own was because of Doctor Strange. What are even these questions.
I'd reword this as "particular care must be taken when a character would scale to a feat that doesn't reflect their own portrayal, especially in the case that they have no consistent narrative relationship with the character who performed the feat". Gets the same idea across but keeps it a tiny bit more vague so a judgment call can be made based on the individual case. But do be aware, street tier speeds are still probably just going to be mostly shared, that's just not something Marvel has much granularity about most of the time and pretending it does is going to lead to weird-ass outcomes.
If glubshittos won't work anymore I might deadass reject the proposal.
Like ** this popularity subjective crap if it actively invalidates the scaling for half the goddamn verse lmao, Moonstone is not exactly a 20 issue pixie and if the proposal only exists to jerk off Moon Knight and Luke Cage or something then ** it lol, verse is doing just fine without it lol.
I mean I am gonna be honest I think this is fine because speed is the most dogshit thing to track in vs. debating period, you can get antifeats in the same goddamn issue by the same goddamn writer half the time. Ideal should be leaving it Unknown but they're genuinely all just kinda vaguely faster and slower than each other save for rare occasion one of them blitzes the other for a splash panel.
This should be phrased more lenient. You can get people who would act like "Scarlet Witch is only defined by her solo series because she became more relevant in 2010s" or some crap like that, this is a vibes-based criteria so it should be written like there is some room to debate this.
Also as said there should be keying here. Characters aren't always indefinitely getting printed. Characters like Shang-Chi and to a lesser extent Luke Cage were primarily in team books and special appearances since the 90s, and only in recent times were back in comics. That's three entire decades where you're saying "The five issue Luke Cage MAX Limited Series is actually more important than the 100+ issues of New Avengers he appeared in as the team leader, in this era ".
This is another vibes-based statement. How do you quantify this? Why is this even wrong? This one should be removed entirely.
Also this borderline has cosmological implications because it affects Hell Lords and Pantheons I think, so again
IIRC, there were plans to downgrade 1-A's scaling from Skyfather back to High 1-B, but we never got around to it and Ultima Reality has been quite busy with other things.
Daredevil and Wolverine aren’t currently sharing scaling though, so why would they scale to each other? “They fought multiple times” yeah sure, Daredevil isn’t 8-C for that, so why would Logan scale to his speed if Daredevil can’t scale to his AP? Cool AP and Speed are different I agree. But Daredevil does have feats harming Logan. It goes both ways.
Because there's a lot more contextual evidence to say that Daredevil shouldn't scale to Wolvie's AP rather than vice versa with the speed. It's stupid to say DD is 8-C when he's clearly weaker, it's stupid to say Wolverine is 300 times slower than him when he's clearly comparable. Speed isn't something where you can say there's bubble tiers or "cosmologies" in the way AP does.
Yes because Dracula also blitzed Deadpool? He also blitzed Spider-Man’s Spider Sense, and was giving him a ass whooping and the only reason he was holding his own was because of Doctor Strange. What are even these questions.
Also I'll clarify rq in case you answer it like the way you did Armor: When I ask Avengers villains, I want to know who someone like Kang or Ultron scales to, and are they using the scaling from the characters' solo series as base? So if we were to get a wild ass inflated rating for All-Out Thor based on the fact all the antifeats from his team-up appearances are gone, is Kang just gonna scale to this huge rating regardless, even though he hasn't really fought that version of Thor or Hulk in the solo series before? And so if anyone was to scale to them, your Vision or something, are they also scaling to the All-Out Thor from the solo run through Kang? Or is the proposal going to be "Avengers Thor has some unlisted high end for his team up appearances that'll get used." Like I think you assume team-ups only wank characters up, but they also go the other way and normalize characters who are wildly overpowered in solo appearances— it normalizes the cast towards a median point usually.
And for roamer heroes and villains, I guess I want clarification as to why 80% of all villains wouldn't just become "Spider-Man villains" by appearance count, and just what the criteria is when you're placing characters in these "cosmologies"
After a long discussion with @Armorchompy we've reached an updated version of the proposal that I think addresses most of the concerns raised in this thread.
Speed is being excluded from the framework entirely. Marvel is simply too inconsistent with how it portrays speed at most tiers to make meaningful distinctions, and trying to apply this to speed would create more problems than it solves. For everything else, AP, durability, lifting strength and striking strength, there is enough granularity in how characters are portrayed to make this work.
The core idea remains the same. Instead of characters being pulled into massive scaling chains that don't reflect their own portrayal, they now scale to their own feats and to characters they have a consistent narrative relationship with. This doesn't isolate characters from each other, it just means that a character on the periphery of a scaling chain who rarely interacts with its backbone stops inheriting stats that have nothing to do with them.
A character's primary source material is defined by the books in which they hold notable plot relevance. This includes solo runs, team books, and events where the character plays a significant role, not merely appears incidentally.
Particular care must be taken when a character would scale to a feat that doesn't reflect their own portrayal, especially in cases where they have no consistent narrative relationship with the character who performed the feat. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact or appear together incidentally.
Anti-feats are part of a character's consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their statistics.
These guidelines apply specifically to Attack Potency, Durability, Lifting Strength and Striking Strength. Speed is excluded from this framework given the lack of meaningful granularity in how Marvel and DC portray it at most tiers.
Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books or events due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances.
They scale to whoever they're scaling already cause this won't change. I've been clear about what changes: Characters don't need to share a scaling chain, and upgrading or downgrading a character shouldn't affect different characters that have interacted once during a crossover, which is what I want to "remove", or at least, make it harder to scale based on one single, isolated interaction.
A real example would be if I upgrade Daredevil's AP to 9-A it shouldn't affect Gambit, and by consequence Fantomex, and then Mystique, and then Nightcrawler and then whoever scales to him. This is the current scaling chain we have. Just like they don't scale off of Daredevil's Class 5 and K feats in LS.
I actually want Armor to comment again so he can express himself before we continue.
A character's primary source material is defined by the books in which they hold notable plot relevance. This includes solo runs, team books, and events where the character plays a significant role, not merely appears incidentally.
Particular care must be taken when a character would scale to a feat that doesn't reflect their own portrayal, especially in cases where they have no consistent narrative relationship with the character who performed the feat. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact or appear together incidentally.
Anti-feats are part of a character's consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their statistics.
These guidelines apply specifically to Attack Potency, Durability, Lifting Strength and Striking Strength. Speed is excluded from this framework given the lack of meaningful granularity in how Marvel and DC portray it at most tiers.
Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books or events due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances.
Huge improvement imo. My concerns have been pretty much entirely fixed. I especially appreciate the more broad definition of "primary source material," and the phrasing of "particular care must be taken" so as to create guidelines without being too restrictive.
After a long discussion with @Armorchompy we've reached an updated version of the proposal that I think addresses most of the concerns raised in this thread.
Speed is being excluded from the framework entirely. Marvel is simply too inconsistent with how it portrays speed at most tiers to make meaningful distinctions, and trying to apply this to speed would create more problems than it solves. For everything else, AP, durability, lifting strength and striking strength, there is enough granularity in how characters are portrayed to make this work.
The core idea remains the same. Instead of characters being pulled into massive scaling chains that don't reflect their own portrayal, they now scale to their own feats and to characters they have a consistent narrative relationship with. This doesn't isolate characters from each other, it just means that a character on the periphery of a scaling chain who rarely interacts with its backbone stops inheriting stats that have nothing to do with them.
A character's primary source material is defined by the books in which they hold notable plot relevance. This includes solo runs, team books, and events where the character plays a significant role, not merely appears incidentally.
Particular care must be taken when a character would scale to a feat that doesn't reflect their own portrayal, especially in cases where they have no consistent narrative relationship with the character who performed the feat. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact or appear together incidentally.
Anti-feats are part of a character's consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their statistics.
These guidelines apply specifically to Attack Potency, Durability, Lifting Strength and Striking Strength. Speed is excluded from this framework given the lack of meaningful granularity in how Marvel and DC portray it at most tiers.
Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books or events due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances.
They scale to whoever they're scaling already cause this won't change. I've been clear about what changes: Characters don't need to share a scaling chain, and upgrading or downgrading a character shouldn't affect different characters that have interacted once during a crossover, which is what I want to "remove", or at least, make it harder to scale based on one single, isolated interaction.
A real example would be if I upgrade Daredevil's AP to 9-A it shouldn't affect Gambit, and by consequence Fantomex, and then Mystique, and then Nightcrawler and then whoever scales to him. This is the current scaling chain we have. Just like they don't scale off of Daredevil's Class 5 and K feats in LS.
I actually want Armor to comment again so he can express himself before we continue.
I can live with this, although I’ll have to wait to see what impresss thinks since unfortunately she does do a lot of the work when it comes to cross scaling
They scale to whoever they're scaling already cause this won't change. I've been clear about what changes: Characters don't need to share a scaling chain, and upgrading or downgrading a character shouldn't affect different characters that have interacted once during a crossover, which is what I want to "remove", or at least, make it harder to scale based on one single, isolated interaction.
A real example would be if I upgrade Daredevil's AP to 9-A it shouldn't affect Gambit, and by consequence Fantomex, and then Mystique, and then Nightcrawler and then whoever scales to him. This is the current scaling chain we have. Just like they don't scale off of Daredevil's Class 5 and K feats in LS.
I have a suspicion this may not end up being true. Gambit is a good example, he has no direct line to Daredevil, but he and other X-Men do clearly scale to Pyro (X-Men villain) who has very consistent durability scaling to street tiers - Hawkeye, Daredevil and Falcon according to his profile. It seems correct to say that Pyro should scale to these showings given they seem consistent for him, and I'd be surprised if other X-Men characters weren't portrayed similarly. Keep in mind Gambit's page is not very good, I'm sure he has a billion other instances of scaling to other street tiers, he's got 859 appearances. So even though you cite Daredevil / Gambit as unrelated characters I still think they'd generally share a tier unless you can make a very solid argument as to why they shouldn't.
That's an example but I think it generally serves to show that there's a few roughly consistent power tiers in Marvel. I'm fine with saying "hey let's be careful with random idiots that have one or two isolated bits of scaling" but when it comes to big characters that crossover often that's very rarely going to be the case. This is less me downright disagreeing with the proposal and more giving pointing out that it's not really going to be impactful on like, 95% of pages.
I don't have any actual issues with the proposal but I wanna wait for Impress' opinion.
A character's primary source material is defined by the books in which they hold notable plot relevance. This includes solo runs, team books, and events where the character plays a significant role, not merely appears incidentally.
Particular care must be taken when a character would scale to a feat that doesn't reflect their own portrayal, especially in cases where they have no consistent narrative relationship with the character who performed the feat. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact or appear together incidentally.
Anti-feats are part of a character's consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their statistics.
They scale to whoever they're scaling already cause this won't change. I've been clear about what changes: Characters don't need to share a scaling chain, and upgrading or downgrading a character shouldn't affect different characters that have interacted once during a crossover, which is what I want to "remove", or at least, make it harder to scale based on one single, isolated interaction.
A real example would be if I upgrade Daredevil's AP to 9-A it shouldn't affect Gambit, and by consequence Fantomex, and then Mystique, and then Nightcrawler and then whoever scales to him. This is the current scaling chain we have. Just like they don't scale off of Daredevil's Class 5 and K feats in LS.
I mean I am going to be blunt I think the rule proposed is funnily enough now lenient enough to not do that.
And again I just don't really see why this is a problem anyways. As Armor says there are actually a VERY FEW number of characters that have massive discrepancies in their showcase, that overpower crossover. And these are not like, "Gambit" or "Daredevil" or guys like that: I'm talking about guys like Conan the Barbarian or OG Guardians or Exiles or Marvel UK characters, where yeah they are usually very isolated in continuity so it doesn't make sense to act like "these guys fully scale to mainline consistently." when they show up in the odd crossover event or so. So yeah, maybe my Motormouth page should've tried to scale her independently and gotten her feats calced as opposed to equating her to the first mainline character she fought with and calling it a day, that's something I can recognise as a problem. Or maybe listing Jean Grey to 9-B+ because she randomly booped Gambit once, and otherwise she consistently just fights 9-Cs or something in X-Men, that seems like another case where this might be applicable.
I think it's fine for those characters, but acting like "Gambit CAN NEVER BE in the same tier as a street tier like Daredevil" or something is kinda ridiculous and probably poor rep for the verse as a whole, I simply don't see the merit in not doing something our wiki can tangibly do. Large scaling chains are fine, I think they're good rep and we don't need to arbitrarily eliminate feats. Writers do consider them and reference them, and provide input on them consistently. Not to the same extent as us of course, but it's not far-fetched for them to think "Daredevil and Gambit are martial artists and usually fight similar characters. They'd probably be similar physically." or "The Thing fought Captain Marvel in that Team-Up comic I once read, so he'd probably match Carol now too." These aren't wild assumptions and of course they don't align with our tiers or even each other perfectly, but they do have weight classes. Marvel has consistently even made wacky "how strong are these characters across different titles" charts even before the Handbooks formalized it, and even nowadays they print out new sheets for the Handbook to be cutesy, like they did for Sinister War. So I think if a format allows for it, we should try to get a large scaling chain indeed.
I don't mind the proposal now with the changes but I want to kinda make it clear in the wording that I am reading, this is basically applying to like, 20 to 30 pages max, currently.
And also like... even in the characters I do see it applying to, is the proposal just "Electro's 9-B+ should be removed because even if there is no contradiction, he only threw hands with Daredevil once or twice. Get it to be Unknown instead"?
Coz idk man I think that's just kinda lame lol, and unnecessarily complicates pages for, and invalidates feats for non-physical fighters. They're rarely fighting physically as is period.
I mean I am going to be blunt I think the rule proposed is funnily enough now lenient enough to not do that.
And again I just don't really see why this is a problem anyways. As Armor says there are actually a VERY FEW number of characters that have massive discrepancies in their showcase, that overpower crossover. And these are not like, "Gambit" or "Daredevil" or guys like that: I'm talking about guys like Conan the Barbarian or OG Guardians or Exiles or Marvel UK characters, where yeah they are usually very isolated in continuity so it doesn't make sense to act like "these guys fully scale to mainline consistently." when they show up in the odd crossover event or so. So yeah, maybe my Motormouth page should've tried to scale her independently and gotten her feats calced as opposed to equating her to the first mainline character she fought with and calling it a day, that's something I can recognise as a problem. Or maybe listing Jean Grey to 9-B+ because she randomly booped Gambit once, and otherwise she consistently just fights 9-Cs or something in X-Men, that seems like another case where this might be applicable.
I think it's fine for those characters, but acting like "Gambit CAN NEVER BE in the same tier as a street tier like Daredevil" or something is kinda ridiculous and probably poor rep for the verse as a whole, I simply don't see the merit in not doing something our wiki can tangibly do. Large scaling chains are fine, I think they're good rep and we don't need to arbitrarily eliminate feats. Writers do consider them and reference them, and provide input on them consistently.
I don't mind the proposal now with the changes but I want to kinda make it clear in the wording that I am reading, this is basically applying to like, 20 to 30 pages max, currently.
Oof almost a month of nothing. I thought i was initially excited for this especially for DC because then we could use more nuance to analyze characters like, New 52 (Post Flashpoint) Flash, someone who has all of 2 MFTL+ feats in his series and a bunch of Hypersonic to FTL feats, but is still rated MFTL+ with 0 variance because he's relevant to other characters
Oof almost a month of nothing. I thought i was initially excited for this especially for DC because then we could use more nuance to analyze characters like, New 52 (Post Flashpoint) Flash, someone who has all of 2 MFTL+ feats in his series and a bunch of Hypersonic to FTL feats, but is still rated MFTL+ with 0 variance because he's relevant to other characters
I decided to just wait because every time someone makes a thread to change Marvel or DC the scaling shows to be terrible and unreliable. So I’m gathering examples. The other day two calcs got remover and affected 72 profiles. Things like that.
I decided to just wait because every time someone makes a thread to change Marvel or DC the scaling shows to be terrible and unreliable. So I’m gathering examples. The other day two calcs got remover and affected 72 profiles. Things like that.
Actually it’s just when people make threads and try to change anything, be it a statistic or a scaling change. Someone tried to upgrade some Marvel characters to MHS+/Rel because they fly to space but apparently it didn’t work because you can backscale to the street dudes. So everyone is limited to a certain level. Look how idiotic this is.
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