Ninja Guild is Live

Ninja Guild is now live:

• The guild is in the Sakura Dojo. You can get a guild-only portal to it for your home, ninjas only.
• Quest requirement is the Secrets of Sidewinder Caverns.
• No race restrictions. Welcome to all. There is custom artwork for all races.
• Core Bonuses: Bonus 1/level to Blades, Sneak, Dodge, Meditation and Hurled (for throwing stars, later)
  • The Sneak ability is disabled whenever you wear metal armor, but other materials like leather are OK — not exactly the same as the Monk’s guild armor restrictions. And you still get guild XP for kills as long as you are wielding a blade (or for a Rak or Naga, unarmed or Claws).
  • Crystal platemail also disables the sneak bonus. Let me know if you find other armor that probably ought to. (Dragon mail is all no-sneak except for gold dragon mail, so that’s probably the best ninja guild armor.)
  • Giants are not very good at sneak normally, but can get up to +15 total (or even higher with magical bonuses) as guild members.
  • All shields currently disable sneak.
• Claw Sharpening: Rakshasas get sharpened claws: +1 wc-cut per guild level
• Speed: Big move-speed bonus: -20ms/level (almost like an extra speed boots each level)
• -5/level to all Arts and Elements. I know some of you wanted Spellblades, and that could potentially be a future specialization. Would have to come with downsides, though.
• Backstab: Bonus +1/level to your weapon skill (+10 skill at guild max) when you backstab an enemy. They simply need to be facing the same direction as you for it to count as a backstab. Works with ranged attacks as well as melee attacks. The skill that’s augmented is whatever you are using for that particular attack.
• Fast Healing: There is no HP bonus for the guild. Instead, there is a ninja-only focus command, which uses mana to fast-heal you when out of combat.
  • You can do it every 60 sec, scaling to every 30 seconds at guild level 10.
  • It takes 20 seconds to fill you up from 0 to max-hp at level 1, scaling down to 10 seconds at guild level 10, regardless of race.
  • If you move/cast/fire while focusing, it breaks concentration and stops midway, and you have to wait for the cooldown again. You can move on purpose to stop focusing, if you want to stop burning mana.
  • If you run out of mana, focusing stops and the cooldown starts. You can do partial heals if you do not have enough mana for a full heal. Similarly, if your hp fill up, focusing stops as well.
  • If any enemies are nearby (within 10 squares), you cannot focus, even if they cannot reach you.
  • Giants cannot focus while shrunken, because being shrunken also requires concentration and their tiny brains can only do one thing at a time.
  • All races except Giants can fully heal by focusing. Giants can heal anywhere from 35% (Stone) up to 61% (Storm) because of their limited mana pool, but they do it in 3 to 6 seconds at max guild level. Tigers need 100% of their mana to heal fully (0 to max), and other races use less, down to Pixies, which only use 11% of their mana to heal fully. Nagas can focus in any form, but would be wise to do it in frog form.

The focus command has a new button-bar icon