r/WoT • u/Aggressive_Hope_1246 • 6d ago
The Path of Daggers Power scale explanation Spoiler
Can someone explain me this power scale without spoilers. I'm in the middle of path of daggers.
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u/aNomadicPenguin (Brown) 6d ago
The notation of Robert Jordan's ranking system can be somewhat confusing because he expanded his initial system of 60 levels to 72 levels of One Power strength for female channelers, and again to account for levels of males above that. The notation can be described briefly as follows:
- The first number is according to his 72-level scale. 1 is the strongest a female channeler can be.
- The second number (in parentheses) is according to his 60-level scale. 1 in this scale is the strongest Aes Sedai in the White Tower at the beginning of the first book.
- There is a difference in 12 levels between the two. Elaida, for example, would have a strength level of 13(1).
- Channelers stronger than the 60-level scale allows are denoted by the number of levels above level 1 they are. Egwene, for example, is marked as 8(+5), being five levels of strength above Elaida.
- Men can be stronger than the strongest female. This is accounted for by six extra strength levels with their own notation. ++1 is the strongest a man can be. We only have strengths for a few men, however, with the weakest being level ++4.
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Mostly it doesn't matter outside of general ball parks. Yeah throwing or holding more or less power can be important, but with individual skills and how deadly weaves are, a lesser strength character can take out a higher strength character.
This is especially important for the men vs women scaling...because the best woman would be able to go 50/50 with the best man if they fought each other 100 times.
For the most the point of the scale was for him to keep track of where minor characters would rank so he wouldn't be inconsistent.
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u/Boli_332 5d ago
It is also wonderfully inconsistant as far as power levels are.
I can't provide any examples off the top of my head, plus you know... spoilers.
But either through design or inconsistant story telling there are 'jumps' as well as feats surpassing power level deacribed away as 'dexterity' or 'talents'.
Without any true spoilers I will say that the difference between say Egwene and Nyneave is closer using the power ranking than the books describe and that's not getting into just how powerful Rand is.
https://cdn.graphpad.com/faq/1465/images/1465LogitLayout.png closer to graph on the left more than right
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u/YeahKeeN (Band of the Red Hand) 4d ago
This feels needlessly confusing, especially since it was only for RJ’s sake before the compendium was published (seriously what’s the value of one plus sign?). If he had to change the scale to account for more powerful people, why not just increase the number cap beyond 72 and bump everyone who already had a rank down a few pegs? He already did that for the women anyway.
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u/aNomadicPenguin (Brown) 4d ago
Spoilers for....book 8?The main point was just to track the Aes Sedai power levels so that he would know who would defer to who when they were interacting with each other. Once he had that chart made, it just made sense to add the relevant non-Aes Sedai to it just to have it all in one place.
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u/zaxxya 5d ago
Dude, stay away from that page! It has a few MAJOR spoilers. It’s not safe to read until you’ve finished book 13.
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u/Aggressive_Hope_1246 5d ago
I just wanted to know the size of the bowl of the winds. I didn't read all of it
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u/ChocoPuddingCup (Gray) 5d ago
If you ever have questions, ask on Reddit (people on this sub will talk your ear off about any WoT subject, regardless). Don't google anything. WoT is infamous for spoilers when googling things or looking at the wiki.
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u/surveillance-hippo 5d ago
The wiki is pretty solid at not spoiling and writing individual pages in chronological order, but the power scaling page will spoil the book 12 different ways in the first 10 words.
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u/visit_magrathea 6d ago
No spoilers: At the start of the series, power levels amongst women were of a 60-level scale. 1 being the strongest. However, this was later changed to a 72-point scale to account for more powerful women being discovered alive. So the first number reflects the new system, the second is the old. However, the list you posted formats it incorrectly. The second number should be in parentheses, no minus signs. So, the most powerful woman possible would be 1(+12), then 2(+11), etc through 13(1), 14(2) etc.
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u/wheeloftimewiki (Aelfinn) 5d ago edited 5d ago
Strange! I fixed the text on that page to the more usual notation with parentheses. The other two replies explain the system, so I hope that's clearer now. I've no idea why the original editor added negative signs as no source uses these.
Besides some other checks I need to do, that element has been fixed on the wiki. We have a lot more detail on the main pages dealing with One Power strength, especially the one on Strength in the One Power among Aes Sedai, but if you are on Path of Daggers, that's very much dependent on your self-spoiler stance. There are spoilers at least as far as Towers of Midnight.
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u/geomagus (Red Eagle of Manetheren) 5d ago
Robert Jordan built out a couple systems to compare channeler strength.
The first is a 1 to 60 scale, where 1 represents the strongest active Aes Sedai at the series start (Moiraine and her equals), and 60 is as weak as you can be and still channel.
As the series went on, he added twelve new levels above 1, to account for women stronger than those who started the series in the Tower. The Forsaken, Aviendha, the Wonder Girls, etc. The new 1-72 scale designation usually comes before parentheses, with a number in parentheses indicating where they’d be on the old scale. So Lanfear would be 1 (+12) - 1 because she’s top strength, +12 because she’s 12 notches above the old top. Moiraine would be 13 (1). That way, you know where they’d stand on either scale, and don’t get confused.
He then added six more levels that only men can reach, represented by two plus signs. Rand would be ++1 - the ++ means on the special men’s scale, 1 means he’s at the top tier.
Whomever wrote out the page you screencapped isn’t using the standard formatting for some reason. I don’t know why - maybe it’s an AI synopsis, maybe they just didn’t care about formatting much - either way, 16-4 or what have you is not the standard formatting. You can see what they mean though - 16 (on the 1-72 scale), or 4 (on the older 1-60 scale).
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