>1. Is there any truth to the somewhat commonly held belief
>that after you die your skill improvement chances increase?
>I've always noticed anecdotally that during my ghost and
>early-material hours, I seem to get skill improvements faster
>than during regular practice.

Nope.

>2. Is there any truth to the belief that practicing a weapon
>has diminishing returns in real time hours, meaning, you get a
>bunch of improvements in, say, the first rl hour, but after
>that it slows down (more than just by dint of you having fewer
>improvements left)? I vacilate between thinking that when I
>wield one of the balator practice weapons I will have to wear
>it a while before it kicks in, really (which seems unlikely,
>but it's not a rational feeling I admit), and thinking that
>after a while I'm just not going to get any more improvements
>in that weapon in this session, so I should change to
>something else. What's the deal?

In real time hours, no. Obviously, later gains in any skill are harder to get than earlier gains.

>3. Do balator practice weapons help improve any skills other
>than the actual weapon skill itself?

Nope.

>4. When the village was split into the three options,
>defender, berserker and scout, there as a good bit of time
>when spellbane seemed to bane everything. Every spell. I was
>Diarmuid at the time, an invoker, and I used several fights
>(which I logged and posted if you recall) showing me casting
>every single spell possible, including faerie fire and magic
>missile and wall of fire and all the low spells, not just the
>final path spells against rager berserkers and not a single
>spell went through. For about two weeks or so (I then deleted
>so I don't know how much longer it would have lasted). At the
>time the general statement from the staff was that spellbane
>hadn't been changed in the village remodeling. Is that really
>true? I suppose theoretically the RNG was to blame, but we're
>talking about hundreds of spell castings here, and not one
>went through. Was spellbane perhaps inadvertently beefed up
>and then later toned down to its normal efficiency?

As far as I could tell, it wasn't changed.

Granted, spellbane can be more/less effective for some characters than others. As a general rule, characters that are better at making saves are also better at spellbaning.

>5. Finally, and I apologize for the posts on me personally
>but, well, there's plenty of history here... was there ####
>done to any/several of my chars that I *don't* already know
>about? Were any others nerfed in some way? There were a
>couple that I suspected, but had no real proof or evidence
>other than my own personal cf knowledge and experience, which
>while pretty good, is obviously far from complete. I'm ready
>to call it all water under the bridge now, but I'd like to
>know for some peace of mind. And by nerfed I don't mean
>something really obvious or horrible, like that fake history
>post, I'm talking anything, things just to make the char worse
>behind the scenes. That would be very nice of y'all to let me
>know.

As far as I can remember, no.