Free template
A power scaling ladder that warns you before book four
Seven tiers from Mundane to Mythic, a roster that grades every antagonist against your protagonist's current level, and a headroom column that tells you when your world has run out of anything left to threaten them. Free, no signup.
LitRPG power tier and threat ladder (Excel)
Free download, no signup. Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers.
What is in the workbook
Tier ladder
Seven rungs with level range, how many exist, scope of influence, signature capability, narrative role, and the column most authors skip: what can still kill them.
Threat roster
Every antagonist and monster with a level. Set the protagonist’s current level once and each entry says whether that fight is worth staging.
Scaling check
Book by book, the protagonist’s level against the highest threat in the world, with headroom, how many threats still outrank them, and a verdict.
Series readout
The first book where headroom goes negative, the smallest headroom across the series, and the ratio of world growth to protagonist growth.
How a tier reads
Tier 3, Veteran (levels 25 to 49)
Dozens per city. Holds a district or a guild. Combines three or four abilities under pressure. Killed by an Awakened with terrain and preparation. Rivals come from here.
A graded fight
With the protagonist at level 26, a level 34 named rival returns the verdict "needs a plan, a party, or terrain". A level 148 world event returns "loses without an outside factor".
A headroom warning
Book 4: protagonist at 45, world ceiling at 210, one threat still above them. Verdict: the ceiling is so far off it is abstract, so introduce a mid-tier threat the reader can measure.
The hardest problem in progression fiction
A protagonist who grows is the promise of the genre. A protagonist who has outgrown every threat you invented is its most common failure, and it is usually discovered around book four, when the only options left are a power reset readers resent, a villain who arrives from nowhere, or an ending you did not plan.
The instinct when headroom shrinks is to invent a stronger enemy. Do that twice and the numbers stop meaning anything. The alternative is to change what is threatened rather than who is threatening: a protagonist who cannot be killed can still lose a city, a reputation, a faction, or a person. Headroom in stakes does not run out.
The level bands here match the feel bands in the stat and attribute calculator, so the two workbooks describe the same world. Change the bands in one and change them in the other.
Keeping the ladder true to the draft
The roster is only as current as your last edit to it. Clifford tracks each character and their stats against the chapter that changed them, so the level you are scaling against is the level in the book. See the LitRPG stat tracker, part of the LitRPG writing software, or the story bible for the world side.
Power scaling FAQ
- Does this work for cultivation and progression fantasy?
- Yes. The tiers are named generically and the levels are yours; rename the rungs to realms, ranks, or circles and the roster and headroom math are unchanged.
- What is headroom?
- The gap between your protagonist’s level and the highest threat level in your world. Watch it stay positive and shrink slowly. Once it goes negative you have already written the problem.
- Do I need Excel?
- No. It opens and recalculates in Google Sheets, LibreOffice, and Numbers.
Know what your world can still throw at them
Clifford keeps characters and their levels current chapter by chapter. Start free.