How do your characters know how strong another character is?

[Bartun]

Through observation. You can tell by the type of weapons and armor someone is wearing if they are seasoned or not, but in a world without powers or magic you can never truly know how dangerous one can be.

 

[Generic.Archdemon]

 

[HelloHound]

well a few saw her crush a rock with a simple squeeze but otherwise most just think she's a strong kid (which is true but they're not quite aware of how strong)

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

I like magic auras and appraisal. That said, I don't think those things should paint the whole picture. Just like in real life, someone can lose a fight to someone smaller than them. Someone with more magic can lose to someone with less magic depending on skill.

 

[K5Rakitan]

The fun part is not knowing and underestimating your opponent.

 

[Alfir]

You put levels on them if there is a power level or something. A more creative way is to eloquently write a narrative of the feats the character did, can even go so far as to make the character kill famously strong characters like how Pain killed Jiraiya from the Naruto series.

 

[Sylver]

Actions and Reactions.

What we the readers see from this character that defines their strength/power, and how the others within the story react to their display of strenght/power.

 

[Premier]

Knowing the power level going in is kind of like telling people. "Hey watch this fight, the guy in red wins!"

That or as the wise Vegeta once said. “Power levels are bullshit”

 

[EldritchCoomer]

I am not fine with authors cutting corners and would like explanations for such stuff, I'm a lore nut. I need the lore.

As for how I do it, the characters just sorta wing it and hope for the best. For a book I'm planning to write there is a thing called a looking glass, a scouter like eye piece or futuristic googles or head wear that allows you to measure the amount of aether in the air mostly used to determine cosmic phenomena, but can be used to measure characters power levels. I'd not exactly accurate 100% and plus it's expensive so not many people use and a lot of people that do use are either well off or fashion their own out of old parts that's even less accurate.

My thoughts on appraisal skill is I'm not a fan of it, most of the time it's not explained well and most just opt for the system route without explaining how the system strained that information or who made it work in a way that intelligent life could even comprehend the information. A lot of times these are never brought up which irks me, cause I got questions that I know would never be answered.