Spirit Classes: Powerscale of Platinum Hearts

Spirit Class is broadly used to refer to the powerscale of an individual soul on Bleach: Platinum Hearts. It is a tiered system which classifies the maximum amount of power that a soul could achieve before depleting themselves. It is designed to give an impression of their maximum scope of feats. Once you understand what a character is able to do at their limitation, then you can understand how they can manage at lower levels and get a feel for how potent their energy is.

Lower Spirit Class vs. Higher Spirit Class: So, this character has the potential to oblierate a city -- what do I do? Just because your character might be a lower spirit class does not mean they are unable to effect those on the higher scale. This is because you can have almost any power you desire on a lower scale, but it needs to be adjusted to their tier level. So, to give an illustration: if someone had a master in magic, but was on a town scale level fighting against a character on a city scale level, then they wouldn't automatically lose the fight.

The fight would be tilted in the city guy's level, but the town-level character could unleash a spell which seals the characters power and makes the potency of their attacks weaker. Which means that all characters can influence higher or lower scaled characters. It's not an absolute and is mainly used to represent a scale where any number of match-up differences can influence the outcome of a battle.

Spiritual Classification In-Character: This system is both an external resource and an in-character resource. It is modelled off the Spirit Class term used in the Hell Chapter by Kubo and while it is not a 1:1, it is utilised in-character to determine and classify souls by major groups.

For example, if a hollow appeared shinigami may be alerted to the presence of a spirit class 5 threat in the area. While it is not necessary for characters to abide by this, for example if your character has had no formal exposure to the Gotei or some human organisations then they might just eyeball it and have an understanding of what strength is what but not the proper language to explain it. That's fine too.

How To Improve Spirit Class: Your soul is like any other muscle. If you exercise it then it will get stronger so the method to improve your spiritual power is to utilise it. As a result as a character develops they will passively grow in power as well such as using kido, cero, their zanpakuto, fullbring or high-spec powers. Therefore the more a character conditions themselves and grows as a soul, the more power their soul will be able to produce. Besides passive growth, a character can actively focus on this area but it will usually involve external, risky methods such as experimental and dangerous training with the goal of accelerating their growth.

Spirit Classification Modifiers: Some characters will be seen which have a plus or minus attached to them. These are modifiers which are conditional benefits or detriments to the character in question. For example, Ichigo does not simply have tremendous reserves of reiryoku at his disposal but he has a tremendous rate of energy recovery which would give him an advantage over someone else of his spirit class who does not have that attribute.

For the negative side of this, we can look at Juushiro Ukitake. A sickly individual who is on life support with body and spirit being unreliable. Someone like this would show a disadvantage due to relying on his body being in a proper state to fight and that he won't become too sickly in the battle.


Below are the twelve classifications that we utilise on Bleach: Platinum Hearts. This area will focus on ten of them which are relevant to the majority of characters on the site while the section afterwards will explain the characters who have broken out of the confines of traditional spirit classes.

SPIRIT CLASS 10 [Null]
For those that do not possess a spirit class they are considered to be individuals that do not have enough spiritual power to even be spiritually aware if they are alive and for the dead if they possess no spirit class then they will not require food due to having no spiritual power to maintain.

Note: This is very uncommon for living humans in the current setting of PH due to 99% percent of humans having enough spiritual power to be spiritually aware but not enough to manifest spiritual powers. Spirit Class 10 is true powerless, it is still common amongst the plus population of the Rukongai to not have any spiritual power though.

SPIRIT CLASS 9 [Individuals]
An individual of this range will have enough power to be spiritually aware if they are alive and enough spiritual power to display some level of feats. Your feats however do little more than affect targets on an individual level, if you were a high-spec human you might have the power to generate fire which could incinerate a normal human being but the fire wouldn't be very effective on blowing up your environment unless they triggered and effect such as something flammable or the fire causing an explosion with something else.

SPIRIT CLASS 8 [Small Buildings]
Reaching into the eighth spirit class is where your character can expect to begin destroying walls and smaller buildings. Structures that you'd expect to see in a residential area rather than a metropolis, by using the full extent of someone's spiritual power they could blow up a house but it would leave them pretty worn out afterwards to exert that much destructive power. If someone had the ability to establish an advantageous territory such as using magic to create a forcefield it could do well to fill a room but the person would quickly tire if they tried to exert their forcefield to cover a house.

SPIRIT CLASS 7 [Large Buildings]
Houses are a joke now for the seventh spirit class. You could smash through suburbia with no real trouble but the buildings which now give you trouble are those big skyscrapers, those multi-story buildings that take a bit more effort to to obliterate or influence in their entirety compared to the houses that you've been working with thus far. So whether it's created a barrier or blowing it up this is about the scale someone can achieve at this level of spiritual power.

SPIRIT CLASS 6 [City Blocks]
At this stage a character can make light work of influencing those multi-story buildings and are able to exert their power to further reaches. A character that has reached the sixth spiritual class can showcase a feat that can influence a city block with a lot of effort such as razing it to the ground with flames of destruction or generating their protective forcefield up up to this level.

SPIRIT CLASS 5 [Mulitple City Blocks]
At spiritual class five is where your character can begin to influence more than just a city block and can begin to extend their influence outwards to the point of two or three of these city blocks. A person with wind powers might create a tornado that could ravage through multiple blocks before they are exhausted for example.

SPIRIT CLASS 4 [Small Towns]
At this level of spirit class is where your character could begin to demonstrate the scope of spiritual power that can impact a whole town such as creating a thunderstorm so violent that the lightning and rain can flood and strike the town into oblivion before they tire themselves out, or be able to cast a kido spell that can create a barrier or destroy something of this scale.

SPIRIT CLASS 3 [Large Towns]
Large town or small cities. At this level if a character desired they could destroy something such as Karakura Town or Naruki City if they dedicated their entire being towards the goal and were unopposed before they reached their limitations and would find themselves depleted.

SPIRIT CLASS 2 [Cities]
With all their strength a character who belongs to the second spiritual class would be capable of influencing an entire city for better or worse before being completely spent and need to recover. Those of this spirit class are formidable individuals if they can properly use their spiritual power to its greatest potential.

SPIRIT CLASS 1 [Mountains]
The highest peak of spiritual class and reserved for those of tremendous power. Those who have this amount of spiritual power are able to influence entire mountains at their full power, basic expressions of their spiritual power is so dense that a city could be blown away before going back for more. At their maximum capacity the very landscape will be scarred if they wanted to turn their destructive power onto it.


WHAT IS TRANSCENDENCE?
A soul that breaks out of the standard classification system is classified as a transcended soul, few and far between these individuals scope of power is enough that any of the three worlds could have their foundations upturned for better or worse if the person turned their power onto them.

Due to the weight of the achievement of this level of power to enter into the realm of transcendent soul cannot be entered without a level of effort dedicated to this achievement in-character. Much the same vein as one dedicates effort into achieving a Master and Grand Master in a skill, there is expectation that a character reaching this level has a lot of work and narrative reason into being at this level of power.

Additionally, while there is two different types of transcendent levels both are referred to as a Spirit Class 0 in-character. The distinction of symbol to represent them is just for out of character purposes.

SPIRIT CLASS 0 ["Nigh-Limitless"]
Characters at a level where those whose influence is well beyond that of even the highest of spirit classes, and are capable of influencing areas comparable to the island of Cuba, or even the whole of Japan. Characters who have reached this level of power are invariably those who have reached it through means outside the norm, whether this be a one-of-a-kind method of growth or the intervention of a power far beyond themselves.

Examples: Mugetsu Ichigo. Oetsu Nimaiya. Lille Barro. Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto.

SPIRIT CLASS ထ ["Limitless"]
Characters no longer have limits which can be reasonably measured by anyone below themselves. They still wield what is ultimately a finite pool of spiritual power, but said pool is functionally limitless when compared to those who are not at the same level. All that can be said for certain is that their capability eclipses that of all others.

Examples: Ichibe Hyousube. Muken Aizen. Gerard Valkyrie.

SPIRIT CLASS — [Unobtainable]
These characters are those scant few beings which simply lack any limit on their capabilities. Not only the world, but multiple worlds, are easily within their scope of influence, and there is no end to the energy at their command. Only beings such as the Soul King can comprehend a degree of power at this level, let alone have it for themselves.

Examples: Soul King. God Yhwach.