Difficulty without stupidity: apprentice, adept, archmage

Tiers degrade resources and repertoire, never judgment — the design
constraint was that no tier may ever look dumb. The APPRENTICE draws
one card a turn instead of two (a poorer wizard, not a worse one),
spends counters only on heavy hits (thrift, not blindness), and
carries a modest spellbook: damage, summons, stones, keys, and
treasure play, with no afflictions, amplifies, ambushes, guarding
tricks, or deja-vu. The ADEPT draws fully and knows everything except
ambushes and amplify. The ARCHMAGE is the full curriculum. Every card
any tier plays, it plays correctly.

The lobby workshop gains a tier picker beside the temperaments
(default adept); the tier persists with the seat, shows in roster and
scoresheet ("⚙ apprentice mystery"), and rides the drive loop.
Measured where it should matter: in berserker combat mirrors the
archmage beats the apprentice two to one, while pure treasure races
stay honest — the handicap lives in the card exchanges a human
actually feels, pinned deterministically in the tournament suite.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

packages/server/src/index.ts

@@ -173,7 +173,7 @@ function roomInfo(room: Room) {
     started: room.state !== null,
     colors: Object.fromEntries(room.colorChoices),
     bots: Object.fromEntries(
-      [...room.bots].map(([name, b]) => [name, b.secret ? "mystery" : b.style]),
+      [...room.bots].map(([name, b]) => [name, `${b.tier} ${b.secret ? "mystery" : b.style}`]),
     ),
   };
 }
@@ -331,7 +331,11 @@ wss.on("connection", (socket) => {
           const room = session.roomId ? getRoom(session.roomId) : undefined;
           if (!room || !session.playerId) return send(socket, { type: "error", message: "not in a room" });
           if (session.playerId !== room.hostId) return send(socket, { type: "error", message: "only the host seats automatons" });
-          const result = addAutomaton(room, typeof msg.style === "string" ? msg.style : undefined);
+          const result = addAutomaton(
+            room,
+            typeof msg.style === "string" ? msg.style : undefined,
+            typeof msg.tier === "string" ? msg.tier : undefined,
+          );
           if ("error" in result) return send(socket, { type: "error", message: result.error });
           broadcastRoomState(room);
           break;