Combat and Endurance trials

Once a month, you can attempt to pass a trial to count towards ranking. You get two tries each time. The trials should be hard.

Any member can write up a trial, we'll playtest it, and decide whether or not to use it based on how easy or difficult it is.

For example:
Spear trial
-You line up with a recruit in front of you carrying a shield. An opponent lines up against you wielding a red weapon. You must kill the red-wielder 5 times before he/she breaks the shield.
Shield trial
-You start on a bridge, with a shield and weapon of your choice. There is a line behind you that you cannot cross. Stop at least 5 shield charges. You lose if you fall over, step behind the line, fall off the bridge, or if anyone gets past you.

Could you adapt these so that there's one person working on ranking but everyone's on the field? Aka the spear user has to kill the red user but both teams have more dedicated shields. Maybe if the shieldmen don't get swords and they just have to act like they're fighting, but it'd be really weird for a red user to just be chilling on their own without protection. Plus then you could run the same trial with the red user trying to rank up, aka break 2 shields or kill 2 people without getting stabby-stabbed.

hey, i use red without backup all the time

yeah, a "bridge" style spear vs. red trial, real basic. You've got 3 shieldies (no swords, they should be purely defensive) on each side plus a red user on one side and a speary on the other. Let's say red gets 3 lives and shieldmen die when their shields break or they lose a limb. If a shieldy bashes a red or spear, they die (keep peeps from charging foolishly). Whichever side wins, their weapon user gets a mark. Plus a mark for being a shieldy 6 times. The shieldmen can't go backwards or forwards past a certain mark, and can't come within striking distance of each other. Also they'd be on a bridge of a certain width, say 5x a normal shieldies' width. For a defenition of normal width, take Angus with his War shield and divide by 3.

Also I think to get higher rank folks should pass a number of trials, a.k.a. to be a higher-ranked spearman you should mark on spear but also as some of the others, maybe every category. At least as a shieldman, that way you can see what you'd wish your spearman would do so when you turn back to pikin' you can do it right.

Also there should be a distinction between claymore/zweihander reds and glaive reds. Purely for naming conventions.


Possible Ranking hierarchy:

Spear -> Spearman
Glaive -> Glaivesman
Claymore -> Swordsman
Shield ->Shieldman

Spear + Glaive -> Halberdier
Spear + Shield -> Pikeman
Spear + Claymore -> Lancer
Glaive + Claymore -> Doppelsoldner
Shield + Claymore -> Footknight
Shield + Glaive -> ?

Note: edited to change number of times a shieldman needs to fight to mark, and to avoid double posting.