Little more sober now. This change really shouldn't impair imperials in my opinion. There are reasonable ways to collect reasonable amounts of gold at every level and I'd be happy to show any one IC. They take modest time investment but you can net around 100 every real time hour. Imperial donations aren't that much so reasonably any character can spend a couple hours RL and have enough to be mechanically elite. So I pass on this aspect of the bitxh fit.
That said. My evolution of thieves goes a long way back. When we were thugs who would bind your legs and get cheap sh. s in between our backstabs. Before paths. I have played every combo of thief extensively, excluding trappers after knocking myself out on eastern for ten hours. So these are my opinions based on that experience. Shanta, Charlee, Rockeano, Messervy, so so many others.
Poisoners were extremely flawed in the implementation from the on set. They are extremely buggy and that has been a problem for the staff since creation. Not an offensive statement but a truthful one. Back when I made the king of blindenstone power word himself at rank 35 without a scratch to me I was convinced. That said I believe NEP did worse with his emperor and I pick up my experiences after that original Nerf after his character died. Then changes were made to make suggest toned down and seclude more commands you could use while suggesting. (ie hit drink suicide cb). All reasonable changes. The seantryn thing had been reviewed and left as it was. I know it was blatantly exploited but I had always assumed the big Z (amen) left it as it was to offset the huge Nerf he implemented. That Nerf made suggest and mind control a trick pony skill and no longer a broad versitile option. That single allowance made it reasonable to collect 500 gold in a RL hour plus or minus RNG. Currently changes are being made to restrict suggest even more in addition to taking away this source of gold and all other thief inspired sources. The most expensive path thief path left to gathering moderate quantities of coin.
Let's compare some rough numbers. Lets say it costs 1 gold for you to attempt to make knockout. 2 gold for fear, 3 gold for mind, and 2 for neuro. Let's also say emetic is free but it costs 1 RL minute for each. Consider the math on time and gold to come close to skill mastery. A well versed poison path will require at least 2000 gold to be moderate, nothing above 90% aside concoct, and some RL spam time in seclusion. Now that you have that out of the way. A sack of poison preps is going to cost you about 150 gold for 20 knock outs, 15 fears, 15 mind, 10 neuro +/-. This sack will not last long either.
To me 1000 gold is enough gold to last any character a lifetime, imperials included. A poisoner with a 1000 gold is 2 good logins.
