A Note on the Shinobi Forces In This World

So, the Ranking Systems and the Shinobi Forces of most of the Hidden Villages are generally structured in the same, though there are two major exceptions that cause the Villages to differ, and those are the difference between Major Villages and Minor Villages and the difference between Vassal Villages and Independent Villages.

In general, the Hidden Villages have Shinobi Programs that use an Academy, Have at least an Intelligence Department, Combat Ninja Department, Administrative Department, and Logistics Department, and the ranks of Academy Student, Genin, Chunin, Jonin, and Kage/Village Head. These are common across all villages no matter whether they are Major Villages or Minor Villages and whether they are Independent Villages or Vassal Villages.

In all Hidden Villages, promotion is generally bureaucratic based on skill levels rather than seniority. A Jonin could be in his young teens while you could have sixty-year-old Genin. While careers can be frozen, that isn't always the case. Every Hidden Village can send Genin to a type of Chunin Exam to try and earn promotion, but this is only generally how the best Genin get promoted. Most people get bureaucratic promotions. The reason for this is that the big Chunin Exam Style Promotion Tournaments are largely done to advertise the Villages Services to potential clients. It is not the only way that Genin get promoted. Each alliance system holds their own Chunin Exams, with neutral villages being able to send teams to either one.

The differences, meanwhile, are largely a matter of complexity, size, and quality. Naturally, Major Villages tend to have more complex systems, better quality Shinobi, and larger Shinobi Forces than the Minors. In terms of Complexity, all the Major Villages have an ANBU Department and various Specialty Departments, such as Konoha's Barrier Team, Suna's Puppeteer Division, or Iwa's Explosion Corps. It is rare for a Minor Village to have similar departments. Taki has an ANBU Department, but no Specialist Departments, for instance, while Kusa has the Specialist Negotiation Team, but no ANBU Department.

In terms of the size of shinobi forces, most Major Villages can call on anywhere between ten and fifteen thousand Shinobi to fight without drawing on vassals or allies, though it is likely that Kiri's issues with Civil War have put them at less than Ten Thousand Shinobi capable of fighting. This number does require a full mobilization in order to achieve, however. Meanwhile, most Minor Villages have only five thousand Shinobi or less at full muster. The only exception is Taki, which is the strongest of the Minor Villages and hovers near the six thousand mark in terms of size of forces. Most Minor Hidden Villages fall in the middle of that range, such as Oto with three thousand Shinobi at full muster and Kusa at three-thousand-two-hundred.

Then there is the quality of forces. The Majors naturally have an edge in quality Shinobi over the Minors. Nowhere is this clearer than with the Rank of Tokubetsu Jonin. It is a rank unique to the Major Villages, as all the Majors require that their Shinobi meet a minimum threshold of quality across the board in order to receive promotion to Jonin. Tokubetsu Jonin is a rank for those Shinobi who are Jonin-level in some Shinobi Skills but not in others. Meanwhile, the Minor Villages cannot afford to turn their noses up at powerful Shinobi, even if they are only powerful in a few areas, and promote these Shinobi straight to Jonin. It leads many Major Village Shinobi to think of the Minors as having Weak Jonin compared to a Major Village.

Of course, even among the Majors, the quality of Shinobi varies. For instance, Kiri's brutal training regimen has put them ahead of the others in terms of the quality of individual combatants, but Konoha's Shinobi excel at and emphasize Teamwork in their training and can match that quality collectively. At the same time, prodigies can come from anywhere, and the Minor Villages have produced a decent number of such Shinobi themselves, such as Kakuzu of the Black Thread, who is from Taki originally and was capable of fighting on the same level as the First Hokage for a limited time during his Prime. Such geniuses are the exception to the rule, however, and by and large the Majors have a quality advantage over the minors.

Then we get to the differences between Independent Villages and Vassal Villages. By and large, a Vassal Village will be a village that has entirely specialized in one specific aspect of Shinobi Life over the others. These specialist villages tend to be quite good at one specific thing but lack the staying power to retain their independence in the face of a more well-rounded village. These gaps in their capabilities are usually caused by the villages being based around a single clan with a smattering of civilians. Naturally, over time the village would gravitate towards their one clan's specialty above other aspects of Shinobi life and become vassals of a larger, more well-rounded, Village because of it.

Chori Village, for example, specializes in the Ceramics Trade using their Nenton (Clay Release). This has allowed them to make Ceramic Armor and Weapons which can do amazing things, and to utilize Ninjutsu to manipulate clay and other ceramics. It has also allowed them to grow rich off the ceramics trade. However, they lacked in Taijutsu, Genjutsu, and all Ninjutsu that wasn't Nenton or Doton techniques. It was that wealth and that lack of other skills that made Chori a target for the more well-rounded Tanigakure, who conquered them and turned them into a vassal thanks to having a more well-rounded Academy Curriculum. Most vassal villages have similar stories, whether it be Chori's Nenton Specialists, the Kenjutsu Specialists of Tonika Village, or what have you.

The size of the Shinobi Forces of most Vassal Villages also tends to be much smaller than even Minor Villages, with most being a third of the size of the average Minor Village at around one thousand Shinobi in total. At the same time, time, a much smaller percentage of those Vassal Villages' shinobi tend to be Jonin than any other Hidden Village, with some, such as Tonika Village, having less than ten Jonin in the entire village. True Jonin, by Major Village Standards, are even rarer, with maybe a dozen across all the Vassal Villages in the Elemental Nations. Because of the overspecialization of Vassal Villages, the vast majority of Vassal Village Jonin would be considered only Tokubetsu Jonin if they lived in the Major Villages.

In total, however, between all Hidden Villages, Major, Minor, and Vassal, in all the elemental nations, there are at maximum one-hundred-eighty-five-thousand Shinobi who can be called on to fight. Compared to Samurai, Wushi, and Other Warriors, of which there are three-hundred-seventy-five-thousand capable of utilizing Chi, of which fifteen thousand are Samurai and Wushi of Iron who can also utilize Chakra, or the Armies of the Polar People which can put up to eight-hundred-fifty-thousand of their troops equipped with their advanced technology into the field, Shinobi do not have the numerical advantage. It is part of why the balance of power in the Elemental Nations is the way that it is. When the Fire Daimyo Alone can put three times your maximum number of forces into the field, all of which can use Chi to boost their physical prowess, you as Hokage might think twice about attempting to coup the Daimyo and rule openly, should he pinch your funding.

But Samurai are going to be analyzed in a different post, as will the Polar People's Army of the Tundra. . .