Feat Measurements

 All abilities a character has, essentially regardless of type can be measured along 3, kind of 4 axes with feats for them. This blog is going to be just a quick explanation of the type of metrics a feat is measured in.

If a character does not have a feat or anti-feat in a particular measure it's what is called "baseline," or in other words just how strong you would expect by default assumptions. For example if a character has the ability to shoot fireballs but no feats for it, one would just assume these fireballs have the properties of real fire and that's it. If a character can punch, as most characters can, but they have no punching feats it would be assumed their punch has enough force as you would expect of someone of their size and experience.

Three of the scales are very heavily connected:

Potency: Potency is the measurement of how intense an ability is, how hard it is to resist. It's the most important in most cases, and what is most commonly asked for and most commonly expressed when it is said that "character is THIS level."

Scale: Scale is the area of effect of an ability, how large an area or how many people it can affect. Broadly Scale is by default assumed to scale to Potency at the point of impact though with some exceptions, but Potency does not by default scale to Scale. This is due to the inverse square law which is a scientific law that states that a physical quality is inversely proportional due to the square law of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. Basically a character 10 meters from the epicenter of an explosion takes only 1% of the energy a character 1 meter from the epicenter. This doesn't apply to all fictional properties; for instance in the game Magicka wizards can use a Magicka to cause a thunderstorm, but it would be a real stretch to say they could then attack someone with one shot that has all the energy of that thunderstorm. But any property that spreads from an epicenter should be assumed by default to follow this law, as it's fundamental to all physical laws. Scale is not usually as important as potency but it does make attacks harder to dodge and is useful for fighting very large characters

Precision: Precision is the opposite of Scale. Scale is how big the attack can go, but precision is how small the attack can go. It can be viewed as a measurement of accuracy or the degree of control the character has over their power. Being a sniper that can hit a human from a kilometer away is a precision feat. Hitting a fly from that distance is even greater precision. Hitting an atom is even further. Similarly, using an electrical attack that hits three targets in a room while not hitting hostages right in front of them would be a precision feat. It's a measurement of how well one can focus the attack.

The trick of these three is while it looks like three measurements, it's actually two. Potency is just the ratio of scale to precision. Take the maximum scale of an ability, divide by the maximum it can be focused and you have its potency, how intense it is. Most attacks due to depiction and lack of specific precision feats are assumed to be at a baseline human scale precision so the potency just becomes equal to the scale since it's what you could describe as being divided by one, though having low precision is basically the Magicka example above. Kilotons or Megatons of force in a thunderstorm but divided over kilometers of land, without any way to focus it. There is one other metric however

Fundamentality: In any kind of non-materialist fiction, there is a hierarchy of the ontological "real-ness" of an object with more eternal, more fundamental and meaningful, or more "real" objects having a kind of non-quantifiable superiority. For instance, a soul is generally viewed as an eternal non-physical object which matter can't interact with. Fundamentality is a measurement of how high a plane of reality the ability affects. Some verses try to quantify it and equate it with a degree of physical potency, and while that's fine for them, by default this type of feat is unquantifiable and impossible to compare with the other metrics. Which is more impressive, to punch a mountain to rubble or to punch a soul out of one's body?

An example of having feats and baseline for every combination to hopefully make it more intuitive based around punching.

Baseline Scale, Precision, and Fundamentality: Character has the ability to punch and would logically be as good as a normal person their size and experience unless there is reason to think otherwise.

Scale Feat but Baseline Precision and Fundamentality: Character is a mythical scale species with one thousand arms but each punch only carries the punch of a normal person. These punches can cover a scale hundreds of times the scale a normal person could cover and could maybe harm characters a normal baseline punch wouldn't just be hitting them at numerous areas at once, but does not scale to the full area of effect the character could hypothetically punch as they can't connect with close to all their fists at once due to spatial issues.

Precision Feat but Baseline Scale and Fundamentality: Character has super senses and superhuman precision such that they can precisely punch nerve clusters or vulnerable points on the body, but lacks any more force in their strikes than normal. Once again can hit a bit further out of their tier due to precision acting as an effective force multiplier, but still has a clear limit.

Fundamentality Feat but Baseline Scale and Precision: Character can punch the soul out of someone's body, but their punches carry normal amount of force and against soulless characters are no more dangerous than a normal human's punch.

Scale and Precision Feats but Baseline Fundamentality: Character can punch a mountain to rubble. There is both scale and it's concentrated and because it comes from an epicenter, their fist, it scales back to their attack potency. 

Scale and Fundamentality Feats, but Baseline Precision: Character can punch the concept of humanity, hurting every single human in existence at once. This has infinite scale, and conceptual fundamentality but without any ability to focus the damage, the amount of damage done to any one human in the verse is arbitrarily decided by the verse's rules and could be no more damaging than a normal punch would be. 

Precision and Fundamentality but Baseline Scale: Character is a mystical martial artist type who can punch someone so precisely as to disable their body parts and induce instant death or wipe memories. This means their punch has both precision and can affect the the non-physical parts of them. However they can still have no scale feats.

Scale, Precision and Fundamentality Feats: Character punches a giant with enough precision to serve the atoms between them, erasing their body and their soul. This is effect a large scale, a very precise area, and a deeper fundamentality. 

These come up most often with reality-warpers. Reality-warpers are characters with the ability to broadly do anything they want, the classic example being wish-granting. So that they are not an NLF, it's generally accepted that while reality-warping can be used to broadly perform any type of power, arguing they can perform a more impressive feat on any of the three metrics then they have is an NLF. Lacking a feat in any one of the three categories can severely nerf the OP nature of reality-warping making them a lot less dangerous in vs matches but making them a lot more reasonable in most settings.

Reality-Warpers without Scale are like the Territory Users from Yu Yu Hakusho or arguably Spongebob with the Magic Pencil from Spongebob. Territory Users can create a space where they can create new physical laws that even astral entities must obey, but these spaces are incredibly limited in scale, usually only taking up the scale of a room. Spongebob with the magic pencil can create or erase basically anything he wants, including metafictional lines on a character but it's concentrated to the edges of his pencil. In both causes avoiding the small area of effect or having even light reality-warping resistance would protect one entirely. 

Reality-Warpers without Precision are like Haruhi Suzumiya from the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Adam Young from Good Omens. Both have shown the ability to warp the reality of the universe including the metaphysical aspects or concepts within it like the horsemen of the apocalypse, but are mostly unaware of their abilities and so completely lacking in precision. This means that it becomes a matter of luck and tactics avoiding their reality-warping, and a lower level of reality-warping resistance could hypothetically be used to resist their reality-warping since they're not focusing it on the person.

Reality-Warpers without Fundamentality are like Blackstarr from DC Comics who has control of the physical cosmos in every aspect or Bruce Nolan who was given god's power to warp reality but was forbidden from messing with free will in any way and lacks metaphysical feats. This type of reality-warping can be viewed as the ultimate form of matter-energy manipulation along with the ability to manipulate the rules governing matter-energy. While resisting this conventionally is very difficult, if a character is a metaphysical entity like a ghost, it might be impossible for them to affect the metaphysical entity.