SilverStar's Tier List

This tiering system, rather than being based on specific attributes like lifting strength and durability or a "Who'd beat who in a fight?" heirarchy, is instead a system that can rank how "Useful" an alien or character can be under normal circumstances. And by normal circumstances, I mean... Well, any alien can be useful under the right circumstances, and anyone can be a hero. A writer can easily create a scenario in which any alien, even one that seems rather lame or situational, can be the perfect guy for the job. But divorced from the specific scenarios you could put an alien into, and how powerful an alien "Could" become after absorbing enough sunlight or eating enough matter or copying enough powers or training for long enough... What is the alien good at, how good is that alien at their jobs, and how useful does this make that alien?

For example, Upgrade would be the best possible thing to turn into if you were in the Death Star and some villain had it pointed at a planet you liked, but he's far less useful without any technology around to absorb. Ripjaws is great when you're underwater or near water, but not exactly the greatest above land. Pesky Dust would be incredibly useful if you wanted to put someone to sleep, avoid a fight, end a fight without property damage or injured hostages, or get intel from someone's mind, but he would be useless against robotic enemies and aliens that don't sleep/dream, or are able to control dreams better than him and kick him out of their minds. Pesky Dust and Gutrot can both put foes to sleep, but while Gutrot can create a wide variety of alien chemicals, he can't manipulate dreams directly like Pesky can. Either can be more useful than the other in certain situations, but both will usually be more useful than... let's say Molestache. And Gutrot's list of things he's been seen doing (And list of things he could theoretically do) is longer than Pesky Dust's, so Gutrot would outrank Pesky Dust.

Please do not add your characters to this tier list directly or argue over what the strongest characters in each tier are. Instead, it is best used as a guide to keep in mind while designing aliens if you want to avoid them becoming overpowered or underpowered.

Tier Seven

NO GOOD AT ANYTHING, becoming this would be worse than being an average human. Joke characters.

Tier Six

HAS ONE JOB, SUCKS AT IT.

Tier Five

HAS ONE JOB AND DOES IT WELL, BUT IS USELESS IN OTHER ROLES AND YOUR ONE JOB IS ONLY USEFUL IN RARE/HARD-TO-CREATE SITUATIONS. For example, a melee-only Underwater Combat alien that can't survive on dry land and lacks a ranged option and a reliable way to bring fights underwater, such as water manipulation. Or an alien that can fly, but isn't very good at anything else. Or an alien that's only good at being slippery and fleeing danger. Or an alien that's only good at getting beat up.

Tier Four

HAS ONE JOB AND DOES IT WELL, BUT IS USELESS IN OTHER ROLES. Fortunately this one job is something incredibly useful like Healing, flying pretty fast and attacking from afar, building/repairing/using powerful alien tech, being immune to something rather common like mana, ending fights quickly through "Hax" aka those tricks that can let weak fighters defeat far stronger foes such as sleep inducement and timestopping, and so on.

Tier Four aliens tend to be small or physically frail to compensate for how game-changing or game-ending their powers can be. Writers will often introduce foes immune to the "Hax" abilities of these aliens to necessitate the usage of other aliens and longer, more visually-interesting fight scenes.

Tier Three IS GOOD AT AT YOUR MAIN JOB, WHICH IS SOMETHING USEFUL. AND IS STILL USEFUL IN SITUATIONS WHERE YOUR ONE JOB ISN'T NEEDED. For example, Swampfire would still be useful in a fight where fire/plant control can't be used, as his super strength, stretching, immortality, and regeneration would still make him a good fighter with a lot of staying power. His super strength, stretching, plant control, and regeneration could also be used in a wide variety of situations, especially if the Swampfire in question or whoever turns into one knows how to grow alien fruits with incredibly strong effects.

Tier Two

HAS AS MUCH RAW POWER AS THE TIER 1 GUYS, BUT DOESN'T HAVE AS MANY TRICKS/AS MUCH VERSATILITY. Could give them a good fight, but couldn't upstage them in a magic show. These tend to be the "I could punch out a god, but I'm not actually a god and I can't use divine magic to will things into being like they can".

Tier One

CAN DO ANYTHING BETTER THAN ANYONE, BUT CAN STILL BE DEFEATED/CHALLENGED. STILL HAS LIMITS ON IMMENSE POWER, USING IMMENSE POWER HAS DRAWBACKS, OR BOTH. Alien X is at the top of this tier. These kinds of characters work great as incredibly powerful side characters, such as Beerus and Whis from Dragon Ball Super. Or one-off characters like the Naljeans. Or immensely powerful background elements like the Celestialsapien race. Giving your protagonist access to this kind of power as anything other than a last resort isn't recommended. Unless you can think up a reason why your character doesn't just always use this to win and make everyone else irrelevant, such as "He doesn't think it's his place to use Alien X's power to reshape reality unless absolutely necessary" or "He wants to prove to the universe that every alien in his watch matters, not just the best one".

Tier Zero

CAN DO ANYTHING INSTANTLY AND EASILY WITH NO LIMITATIONS OR DRAWBACKS, SURPASSING EVEN ALIEN X AND BREAKING ALL STORIES THIS GUY'S EVER PUT INTO. Any tier above this would be pointless, as this is the "Can't fit on this scale" tier. This isn't the "Best of the best" tier, this is the "Too strong to exist in a story without solving all problems within it instantly" tier. The "Good for theoretical discussion about what the Ultimate Character would look like or how good the Absolute Best Omnitrix Possible would be, but impossible to write a story about unless it's an origin story" tier. The "Best friends with Pun-Pun tier".