Ninja Career v1.01

What It Does

TL;DR version: It adds a fantasy ninja career, for the little boy in most of us. I mean, ninjas are cool

It's a new career. It's not even possible to overwrite existing EA careers with NRaas Careers, and even making resources clash would actually involve some work and actually trying to.


What You'll Need

You will need the NRaas Careers, since this is just a data package for it. You do not need the career modules or his assassination skill, but it won't conflict with either. You just need the base module, in a version compatible with your game's patch level. Get it here: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Careers

It was built and tested with phase 13 of the mod, corresponding to patch level 1.50 of the game. But since the NRaas Career file format didn't change recently, you might be able to use it with older versions just as well. Try at your own risk.

Since this career uses the Martial Arts skill, you'll probably also need World Adventures. Note however that you can also learn the skill on the job, so you don't actually need to go on adventures to learn it.

No other custom content is needed for this mod.


How To Install It

To install it, just unpack the zip file into your Mods\Packages directory. (If you don't know what that is, check out the MTS how-to about installing custom content.) Just double-click the file you downloaded, and drag and drop the package file from the explorer window that just opened into that folder.


How It Works

The short version is: pretty much like any other rabbithole career in the base game. The longer version is as follows.

All ninja ranks work from 5 PM to 11 PM, Monday through Friday, at the criminal building. (Sorry, I tried 6 PM to coincide with night fall, but the game has serious problems if a job ends at midnight.) This means some form of factory on most maps, though Monte Vista also introduced a "Good Guys Inc" building that looks different.

This means exactly what it sounds like: ALL ranks work 30 hours a week. The top ranks don't get to work 3 hours a day, 3 days a week like some other careers. You will be expected to put in 30 days a week even if you're the clan leader. But you can still take days off or go on world adventures or to college, as usual, if you need more time away from work.

Ninjas don't get to wear a ninja outfit to work and back. Think of it this way: you'd blow your cover. Wearing a spy uniform to work is a bad idea for the obvious reason. And historically they didn't. The black uniforms associated with them were used by theatre stage hands in Japan, not by ninja.

The Ninja ranks consist of 5 trainee ranks (White/Yellow/Blue/Green/Brown Belt Trainee), followed by 5 ninja ranks (Genin, Chunin, Tokubetsu Jonin, Jonin, Kage.) The 5 trainee ranks get colour coded belts, while the last, actual ninja ranks are supposed to be all black belt. Basically until you're a black belt ninja, the clan considers you still a trainee.

The belts are not related to the belt you've earned in normal martial arts. You might have already earned your black belt in China, but in the Ninja dojo you'll start as a white belt, and have to convince your sensei that you deserve even the yellow one. Think of it as ninjitsu being a different martial art than kung-fu.

Conceptually, the trainees don't actually do much for the clan. They don't actually get sent on any missions that would bring money or prestige to the clan. They just train and use up the time of their teachers and supervisors, as well as valuable space in the dojo. As such their pay is very low. In fact, the starting position is much lower paid than any EA starting position, at only 10 simoleons per hour. At that point you're a replaceable white-belt wannabe that didn't show any real skill or reason why they'd want to keep you instead of getting some other random guy off the streets. Think of it more like a stipend to help you a little through training, rather than a real wage.

The pay does ramp up faster with each rank, though, with the Kage (clan leader) position being better paid than any EA job, at 460 simoleons per hour, 30 hours a week. So basically, it will pay better in the long run, but first you'll have to earn that pay the hard way.



Note that it won't be easy though. Promotions aren't as easily earned as for a desk job, and you will need high athletic and martial arts skill. Both can be learned via tones, on the job -- which in fact is the whole point of being a trainee -- but if you start from zero and have no training devices at home, you're in for a long ride. You'll also need relationship with the other ninjas very soon, which adds more time to build up. Again, you'll have to really earn your way to the top.

As such, it might not necessarily be the best job for a new character with 500 simoleons left after buying the house. You have been warned.

On the bright side, if you just want a job to train your athletic and martial arts skills and can afford to coast on minimum pay for some days, it can be used as just that.


Additional Credits:

Twallan for the NRaas Careers module.


Version History:

1.01: Adds custom names for the standard tones like "Meet The Coworkers" or "Suck Up To Boss"