Best Of

Got to say. Love the Broken Mirror cocktails.

Hi Morro!

Making a novice program is a daunting task, but you seem to have the right goals in mind for it. There's a few things I would add to Kresslack's excellent point:

• Interactivity is tricky to get right. You want your tasks to encourage your novices to talk to their elders, but you do not want to gatekeep them based on other people's online schedules. You will want to minimise 'speak to this specific person to advance' tasks while making sure that your House, as a whole, helps and participates in preparation or presentation of the 'big' tasks. Several Houses have some kind of presentation, demonstration, duel, ceremony, or so on where the entire House, and maybe some of the rest of the city, comes to watch. Those tasks can go a long way to making it feel like a community rather than homework.
• Choices! Everyone is different, even in the same House, so the more you allow for players to choose their own path through your requirements, the better. You're in a scholarly House, so as an example, don't ask someone to write an essay to advance and present no other options. Instead, you might have them research a subject and present their findings in any way they choose to - perhaps they would rather give an oral presentation, or lead a discussion, or put on an allegorical play. If you are testing for knowledge, there's no reason you can't be flexible with how it is shared.
• I touched on this earlier, but, please, NO ESSAYS unless they are completely optional or just one way to progress. While some people love writing essays, I guarantee there are not enough of those to sustain a House in the long-term. Back in the day, it almost sort of worked (not entirely, given they were the reason for the infamous *CLICK*), but people were younger and had more free time and no one knew what they were doing.
• As Kresslack alluded to, the ideal tasks, once they are past the absolute bare minimum, are those that feel meaningful and contribute to the House or city in some way. If you are a warrior House, having someone recite every cure in the game by rote memory is boring, but having them complete a bounty on an enemy can be exciting. If you are a merchant House, establishing a monopoly for one of your House shops is more interesting than writing down every tradeskill's material requirements. There's no reason why meaningful projects should be gated to full-rank members only, even if the novice will require some supervision. This is all to say, your requirements can be INTERESTING and EXCITING, and they should be! Make the novice really feel the fantasy your House is trying to evoke.
• How you present your tasks is important, as well. If a novice's first introduction to your House is to read a 5,000 word, poorly formatted and confusing mess of requirements, they are much less likely to stick around than if you have something concise and inspiring. This is one of the reasons it is much better to have fewer, more meaningful tasks rather than a veritable spreadsheet of busywork to fill.

@Gurklukke I have to admit I was really hoping some of the milk would have a non-lethal amount of poison, if the frog spoken about in the events post is the frog I'm thinking off... (it gives you some super crazy hallucinations for a very long time. Something like eight real-life hours.)

Blood bubbles from your lips as your organs collapse. You try and unleash a terrible scream, but only manage to spew a torrent of milky gore upon yourself and the floor, the rest filling your lungs 

as your gorge fills with fluid and you choke. Consciousness fades and blackness envelops your senses  as the bitter taste of poison lingers upon your dying tongue.

You have been slain by Toby Treacletart.

Bravo, I love seeing a story coming together.

I love Toby even more than I already did, and honestly I love that things are moving along storywise.

#ThisIsAllEmbrelle'sFault

@Embrelle

Alright, as promised I'll do a more thorough evaluation going off of what I said above. Especially now that I'm understanding the 'obscurity' definition better (my half asleep state was reading it back to front :| )

Alchemist: A bit of a tough one since we're apparently combining Sublimation and Formulation despite the Knight specs being evaluated separately. But anyway... Its "hard to kill" factor should definitely be at (if not close to) maximum. If has tools for literally everything, not to mention a lot of their tools can be combo'd with their attacks.

Apostate: Simplicity, not sure I agree there. Maybe lower it a point; there's a bunch of things that I've only ever seen Mizik do. At its core it's just an ordinary double aff class, but there's a fair bit of complexity necessary to beat competent people. Hard to kill, probably lower that a point as well. Unless we're counting what I said in the above post.

Bard: Mostly spot on, tbh, aside from what I already said. It'd probably nudge its obscurity up; it can be a very difficult class to survive if they're using Bard's entire kit.

Blademaster: Fairly accurate, for the most part.

Depthswalker: Probably bring its obscurity mark back a point; it's not really that tough to survive, nor does it require anything complex TO survive.

Druid: TTK and Raid scores should be brought back a notch, Skirmishing as well probably. It's about midling in terms of prep class TTKs, and it doesn't really bring anything overly unique to groups. I'd rather have a Sentinel in pretty much every instance. Reclamation as a skill was DoA you can't change my mind.

Knights: Could make an entire post about these, I'll just stick with what I said above. Infernal isn't as simple as it is in the diagrams, nor is it as easy to survive. Paladin there's definite bias there (it's bad if not SnB, but that's not what simplicity or obscurity is). Raid/Skirmishing/Utility/Mobility they should all basically have the same (or close to the same) score.

Jester: Already touched on it above, the rest is mostly accurate.

Magi: Fairly affordable at a baseline. Much like Occultist, only REALLY needs a diadem, everything else is just luxury. Utility should be a 3.

Monk: I honestly don't feel like arguing; I'm trying to be constructive. Suffice it to say I don't agree on much of the scores given to either spec, though. We'll just leave it at that.

Occultist: Already touched on.

Pariah: See Monk.

Priest: Probably about right. Would maybe increase its "Hard to kill" number, and its movement hinderance. (though it's not a great ganking class, I'll agree there)

Psion: I'd increase its mobility score, and lower its simplicity score a notch. If you're just one-tricking blast it's easy, but that doesn't work against top tier fighters. (not the cookie cutter blast, at least, that 95% of Psions do).

Sentinel: Did this one already.

Serpent: Affordability is a grey area for Serpent imo. Lots of factors when it comes to Serpent and affordability. I'd put its Hard to Kill score at 4, though, otherwise it's pretty okay.

Shaman: I think I mostly touched on already. Maybe put its Prep to 4 as well; it's as much a prep class as it is a momentum class, much like Shikudo.

Dragon: I'd MAYBE bring its simplicity back to 3; there are some nifty tricks you can do with it, especially with a handaxe (I'm not flaming for once when I say this). It also gets harder to survive if they have an arti axe.

Elementals: I don't consider anyone who mains any of the elementals to be a serious fighter. All of them are pretty braindead, Earth is hardest to survive, they're all affordable. Agree with Gallida re: Fire Lord. Whatever to the rest.

Now let's get a chart for each class, but with handaxes.