Spoiling ninjas

[Punishment]

Ninja-belt system idea (not commenting the bonuses from belt/robes, though those would be handy to rethink too)

Color belts should be tied to mainguild, for obvious reason and it should be possible to get 1st from it after maxing all the skills available.

There are 65 levels, split
20 main guild
10 brutal
10 nerve
10 range
10 shuri
05 circle

Basically the skills in the other guilds should be maxed to get the dans from them, first could be from main guild with a little twist.

There should be "exp grinded" AND "mastery raised %" requirements for new dan, naturally this would mean resetting masteries in reinc and/or when not using the skills for the particular mastery for x amount of time.

So, throwers would need 10 levels, maxed throw mastery and x exp made with throw to get dan from it. Likewise, shurigrinder would also need to have made x amount of shuris and maxed mastery for the shurimaker dan. Similar idea to rest of them, would mean:
20lvls = 1 DAN
30lvls = 2 DAN
40lvls = 3 DAN
50lvls = 4 DAN
60lvls = 5 DAN
65lvls = 6 DAN

This would leave another 3 or 4 DANS to be distributed. One should go for maxing all the masteries, one for making x amount exp with maxed masteries and the final one for total time in guild AND guild leader while evaluating or some other, not static system.

Ok, this is a bit simplified system, naturally some skills/mastery could have different weight when calculating the progress, but in my eyes, there are no "waste of space" skills in the guild.

Another aspect would be the stances, which currently blow goats, which leads us to one helluva big wormbox. Every stance would need a mastery, masteries should be divided to MELEE, THROW, CRAFT, SNAPSTRIKE and think some six more to match the DANs. Besides stances, there are helperskills for the corresponding stance, which opens up possibilities. One could be only allowing mastering one or two stances or similar to before, using other stance weakens the mastery of other.

Okay, this should cover the main mastery/belt system, I would like to go back to the bonuses for a short while.

The guild items should give bonuses according to the choices player has made. Snap striker would get bonuses in snap strike, throw users to throw. The bonuses given would then be related to two separate things... Following yet? Ok, then, add stances to it... Defensive posture* would alter the bonuses too!

Okies, so far so good... Now... we would need a few more stances and corresponding helper skills to them. Oh, and while we are at it, we could, like, well, add preff-damage for those, or features like poison, fire, cold, you invent something!

*) "stance" is just a work name for fighting styles.

I hope this will give a nice seed for proper ideas, go ahead and add your cents to it!

[Punishment]

Oh, forgot to add, that there should be a strickt requirement for advancing in DANs, you can NOT get them only by getting the skills and levels!