With Regard to Power Levels

Greetings gentlemen, I have made this post to bring up some key questions regarding the Power Level system. What constitutes conventional weaponry? While we can generally agree that regular handguns and even some forms of rifles are conventional by the definitions of this setting what of weaponry that is not science fiction yet still possesses unusually high destructive power. Take a tank as a prime example. While a tank is a modern piece of equipment found in the real world it fits many of the criteria for PL 2. It can shrug off conventional weaponry (such as gunfire or melee weapons) with ease and dish out substantially more damage. Does this mean that a tank is a PL 2 piece of equipment and thus on par with PL 2 mutants and psychics or does this simply imply that a tank is a conventional piece of weaponry within the context of Power Levels? Likewise, would other pieces of advanced yet still mundane military equipment such as planes, submarines, and even some weapons such as rocket launcher be between PL 1 and 2 due to being unconventional? Or are all of these things conventional by the standards of the setting? Given that more resource-rich factions have begun appearing in the form of entire countries how do we categorize these factions by PL? Do we give them the PL of their most powerful member or take the average PL of the faction? Since many of these factions are bound to wield more powerful military equipment rather than mutants or psychics does that justify giving them a PL 2 rank or would that be overestimating their abilities and thus set them up for failure? My key point here is that conventional weaponry is a very vague and nebulous term that could imply that some character are equal to a tank when chances are they would either crush it easily or be obliterated. I understand that PLs cover a wide range of different degrees of power yet this single term is the foundation of much of the Power Level system. How strong is your mutant creation? Well, he can shrug off bullets without any effort so he must be PL 2? If that same character could be instantly killed by a non-science-fiction real-world tank can he still be considered PL 2 since a tank isn't conventional or is he rather PL 1? I just feel that giving more clarity to what qualifies as a conventional weapon could be useful for the PL system as a whole.

In my opinion, conventional weaponry consists of weapons the normal populace can relatively easily obtain, I.e. handguns, rifles, shotguns, sub machine guns, most melee weapons, etc. Weapons of war- tanks, ballistic missiles, nukes, etc.- have their own power levels depending on their defensive and destructive capabilities. Tanks are more defensive, but lack the destructive force of a PL 3, so are PL 2 in terms of difficulty to deal with. A ballistic missile deals heavy damage, but can’t do anything without orders, so a faction possessing them is only as strong as the destructive yield of their bombs, from PL 1-3, assuming they have enough of these to readily shoot many of them. If they only have a relatively low number of these high-yield bombs, say 1-4, then they are merely whatever power level they are from their other weaponry with a few trump cards to use (take Markus, who’s PL 1, but he has a single shot gun- his Thompson G2- that has enough power to damage and maybe take down a PL 2 entity. He’s not PL 2, because he has limited shots with it). Nuclear warheads is where this definition gets less accurate for description, as a nuke that could blow up the entire Dome and the surrounding area would be PL 4, and having just a few of these is enough to be a real threat and be considered a PL 4 threat, more due to the unwillingness of people to attack in fear of retaliation, thus the PL 0-1 can’t injure them. But as we said, PL 4 people should be considered heavily and C.A.R.E. must be taken when using them on the field, so to speak, due to their ability to remove or entirely alter settings from the game. So, all-in-all, “conventional” weaponry consists of mundane weapons civilians can reasonably get their hands on and are limited up to PL 1 in terms of power. Every other kind of weapon, whether stronger military equipment or some sciencey weapon, gets its own PL dependent on its strength and the defensive capabilities it gives the user and must be a widely accessible and usable piece of equipment for a faction to be able to use to be considered in calculating their PL.

PL isn't necessarily something that needs to rely on how well a creation could stack up against other creations (usually characters) of different/better PL's, unless its some kind of power or ability that explicitly only works on certain types of people, like mutants. But Alex basically answered your question, yeah. When I said conventional weaponry, that's more or less what I had in mind, common fire-arms, etc. Weapons of war will usually have their own higher rating,