This sorcerer classification is a tiered city-style system for tabletop or fiction that maps capability, duties, legal visibility, and mechanical costs. Use it as a reference for character power, mission suitability, promotion, and worldbuilding.
Grades
Grade 4/Ashkin: Street Tier represents novices and weak sorcerers who handle single-target, low-threat tasks such as basic scouting or cleanup. They expend minimal reserve, and municipal wards easily contain incidents involving them.
Grade 3/Slatewarden: Block Tier covers trained students and average field sorcerers who are reliable on small missions and in group operations. They draw low to moderate reserves and may prompt municipal audits.
Semi-Grade 2/Relayhand: District Tier describes competent operatives able to tackle multi-target threats and hostile lattices across a neighborhood. These operatives draw moderate reserve, and their actions are likely to attract registrar intervention.
Grade 2/Vaultwright: is a District to City borderline tier denoting above average combatants suited for solo high-risk missions and capable of defeating Grade 2 curses. They require sustained attunement that leaves ledger traces and has strong legal visibility.
Semi-Grade 1/Inkmarshal: City Tier are near top sorcerers trusted with sensitive missions and leadership roles who can challenge Grade 1 threats. They incur high attestation costs and draw immediate registrar interest.
Grade 1/Reliquary Captain: City to Metro Tier are elite sorcerers who lead large operations and are often required to subdue Special Grade threats when teamed. They make very large reserve commitments and face municipal writs and high oversight.
Special Grade 1/Crosswrit Custodian: Metro to Regional Tier denotes exceptional unregistered individuals or those with unique authority who operate at or above Grade 1 capability. They trigger intercity registrar alerts and receive intense intercity scrutiny.
Special Grade/Bloomforged: represents extremely dangerous sorcerers comparable to a nation-threatening power who can singlehandedly shape major operations or devastate regions. They require triple ledger rites and heavy collateral, and they attract registrar and sovereign attention with possible containment.
Calamity Grade: represents extremely dangerous beings able to kill multiple Special Grade Sorcerers, Curse Users, or Cursed Spirits at once, the entity points to Semi-God/Latticeborne
Semi-God/Latticeborne: is a God Tier precursor covering sorcerers on the cusp of transcendence who wield quasi-divine lattice control, possess significant immortality traits in native realms, and can contest true God Tier entities. They have enormous attestation and reserve costs, annual codicil risks, and immediate cosmic registrar monitoring.
God/Codexheart: describes transcendent sorcerers whose abilities alter metaphysical law or grant near immortality within native realms. Their actions face permanent juridical bindings and extraterritorial mechanics, and they invoke cosmic registrars and existential checks.
Promotion and advancement
Promotion follows precedent where recommendations and mission performance determine advancement. Promotion requires attestation credits proportional to the target grade. Formal examinations, field evaluations, and endorsements can shorten or lengthen promotion time. Fast tracking is possible for extreme deeds but increases ledger and legal scrutiny.
Legal visibility and enforcement
Legal visibility increases monotonically with grade. Grades at or above Special Grade prompt multi-jurisdiction registrar coalitions. Higher grades may require escrowed collateral, energy siphons, or binding writs. Extraterritorial actions impose surcharges and stability checks.
Use a threshold rule: if a sorcerer expends more than 25 percent of total reserve in a single action, trigger a stability check.
Reserve and attestation
The reserve is an overall energy pool drawn from personal stores and attestation. Attestation credits are a bureaucratic currency used for higher-grade actions, rituals, or permanent bindings.
Cost scaling is nonlinear and increases exponentially beyond Grade 2, so higher grades require disproportionately more attestation and reserve.
Stability and corruption
Risk factors that rise with grade include lattice scarring, compulsion, synchronized hunger, and reality bleed. Apply stability checks when sustained attunement exceeds capacity, when reserve draw crosses the 25 percent threshold, or when performing extradimensional or godlike rites.
Failure consequences include temporary debilitation, permanent scarring, corruption of lattice affinity, loss of attestation, and forced containment.
Registry, containment, and enforcement tools
Municipal warding handles Grade 4 and many Grade 3 incidents. District registrars respond to Semi Grade 2 and Grade 2 incidents. Intercity registrars handle Special Grade 1 and Special Grade alerts. Cosmic registrars and sovereign authorities manage Semi God and God Tier phenomena.
Containment measures include ledger bindings, escrowed attestation, siphon arrays, and ceremonial triple ledger rites.
Mechanics suggestions for tabletop use
Treat the reserve as a numeric resource where each ability consumes a portion per activation. Make reserve values tied to grade, with higher grades having larger pools but greater minimum commitments. Use attestation checks as skill or ritual rolls to authorize high-grade actions where failure increases ledger traces and legal visibility.
Implement stability checks as periodic rolls when thresholds are exceeded. Failures add corruption points; at a set corruption total, apply lasting penalties. For promotion require a set number of missions, endorsements, and attestation credits, and scales these requirements by current grade.
Example NPC templates
Grade 3 field operative: reserve 30; role: squad support and reconnaissance.
Grade 2 solo specialist: reserve 80; role: independent hunts and lattice breach repair.
Special Grade 1 unregistered: reserve 240; role: rogue authority and regional influence.
Semi-God candidate: reserve 2000; role: reality-altering experiments.
Quick rules of thumb
Promotion depends on performance and recommendation. Legal visibility increases with grade, and registrars become involved above Grade 2. Reserve use of over 25 percent in a single action triggers a stability check. Resource scaling is nonlinear and requires planning beyond Grade 2. Containment of higher grades requires ledger bindings, escrow, and intercity or cosmic oversight.
Next steps
I can convert reserve, attestation, and stability mechanics into explicit numeric formulas, produce sample ability lists with reserve costs, or create ready-to-play tabletop stat blocks if you want.