Shattered Kingdoms

Samurai apparently has some sort of feel in SK as there are katana type weapons. Ninja tos, wakizashis. Various types of weapons wielded by various warriors throughout the ages.

Infact there are some people that play as a Samurai even following Bushido code etc. There's even Samurai armor in the game (hayamizu anyone?)

So my question is, how can you effectively have something samurai'ish, although it may not go by that name exactly in SK lore, without having their assassin like counterparts, the ninja? The way SK is set up with all of it's weapon selections, diverse backgrounds of various countries, you could put just about any class in it and find some way to impliment the correct lore. That's my two cp atleast.

Funny with people saying "I don't see Ninja as a name fitting into SK" yet you have Samurai's their polar opposites.... Everything fits into SK, Yigg saw to that.

Can just make them a Melee/Debuffing class. Use of Poisons/bombs/blow darts/bleeds and the such to wreck havoc on your opponents wellness. Remove any big damaging attacks, cut their damage to average and make them swift in combat. Than just add the ability of Stealth and Running away.

And poof, a class that relays on reagents to get things done in fight. So catch him unprepared with this toys and all you have is a watered down Swashie/rogue.

with elemental powers, right?

Actually, that's just the problem I have. I've been lurking over this thread, reading only a bit here and there, and my number one issue with having a ninja class is that you can make a ninja in SK, just like you can make a Samurai. In fact, you could have a player group of ninjas, each with a different class.

I am honestly falling more and more in love with the idea of having an assassin/ninja cabal. My only problem with that is that they'd probably work something like a darker Harlies. If you gave it a somewhat adept-ish twist it could work, but then you'd have the problem of what the neo-adepts would end up with.

I think it would be very workable to make a new cabal (which has been a concern for a while), but I'm not sure we want the other classes to suffer by making a class out of a concept can be played out through other classes. Namely, I just don't want to see rogues hurt even more than they already are.

Lots of problems:

Our numbers really don't support the existence of another cabal.

A ninja cabal would present too much overlap with current cabals.

The ninja skillset has no real moral theme or purpose to it, on the global scale. Look at the Hammer - you're seeing very "crusader" type skills, abilities that look and feel like white aura, made to fight the ev0l. Midnight Council abilities are very militaristic, commanding, strong, they heavily represent the theme of the Empire. A ninja cabal would say nothing but "kill guys" - what else could a ninja cabal be? Do we really want an entire cabal devoted to that? Sure, it's not impossible to siphon some dynamic, interesting RPs and themes out of a ninja cabal, but the concept definitely works far better in a class setting. Which brings me to my next point.

Turning ninjas into a cabal would severely limit the potential use of the skillset and the RP spawned out of the concept. We'd essentially have another Fist - where a basic but very open-ended skillset (unarmed fighting, monks) is shrunk down to a small number of abilities and instead of complementing the strengths and weaknesses of current classes, hijacks the way its members function mechanically.

Lastly, I'd prefer to see something that everyone would be able to enjoy. Cabals separate and specialize the player-base, whereas a new class would undoubtedly enrich the whole game, allowing something new and exciting for everybody to benefit from.

I am not in favor of more cabals. Classes > cabal

And to think, I was all for the disbanding of all the cabals to keeping with a Tribunal based mud, this mud is about Kingdoms yet you have organizations with the exception of one that has no real claim to any kingdom unless a tribunal wishes it. So why even bother having this Cabals? They really add nothing to the game anymore besides the extra skill sets for the power mongers. There is no way to hide the fact you're in Cabal, it'll always get leaked. Just move the HQ's into the Tribunal's kingdoms and give it too them and merge the cabals back into the tribunals to have more players in one organization which will more than likely lead to bigger battles and grouping of players.

Then you can take the cabal skills/spells and add in new classes, Like Druids, Jesters, Cavaliers, Demonologist (Doubt I spelled that right if it's even a word), and Monks.

I'm trying real hard to think of why that would be a bad idea, and it's just not happening.

The only issue I can think of is a lack of potential character differentiation. The one advantage of cabals is that it provides a way for two of any class to be different, mechanically.

If that was really a problem or issue (Which it hasn't been) Dulrik would have added something similar to a feat list for classes to pick from at certain levels. However this differentiation problem you keep bringing up means jack [REDACTED], it never affected the game a slight bit when I played during the elitist era of cabals (Where people were lucky to even get in one). So then if it wasn't a problem before, why would it be a problem now? Cabals only applies advantages to those that twink their characters to best suit that cabals skill set and simply take full advantage of it during PK.

I would love to have a feat system. It would add variety to the classes would allow more differentiation between them.

Something like you get a feat for every status. Certain feats would have prereqs of course (lvl, class, race, etc.).