You need 16 seconds to cast four spheres, plus another six for the meteor to land. Will you have enough time?

You don't need four spheres for a meteor. You could get away with two, maybe. Razenth is right, though, there are better damage options, like Inquisition, negative volcano or dragon as it falls, then Radiance spam. But it's not as epic.

Yeah but...but...I want my meteors to deal full damage.

Also: What is this thing called Radiance?

Can you use it to bash?

Only against undead, where it's superior to anything else.

If you used BEAST WHISTLE and then moved to another plane, will the beast still get to you or do you need to whistle again?

BEAST WHISTLE brings the beast to you automatically, so that wouldn't be a problem. If you summon a beast from the stable and move off plane, yes, it will still get to you regardless.

I sometimes think they wander all the planes anyway with summon, since it takes ages for them to finally show up.

combat stance

Does "Intimidation" influencing mean Weakening?

Intimidation is not a type of influence, it's a mindset. Intimidating is weak to paranoia. Greedy is weak to weakening.

..then that makes no sense. Illithoid have "Level 3 Paranoid Influencing" and "Level 3 Intimidation Influencing".

I never actually noticed that. It almost looks like a typo, like someone put Intimidation and then said "Oh wait, you use paranoia on intimidating, it's not actually a type of influence", added the Paranoia line, but never took out the other.

Except that Viscanti also have a bonus to "Intimidation" Influencing. I'm thinking its supposed to be weaken.

It's weakening.

Is it intended that when a hermit card is placed back into a magical deck it loses the location it was set to? I was thinking of making and maintaining a set of common bashing and questing spots but if cards decay within a month that plan is kind of ruined.

My guess is yes, similar to how esteem imbued gems lose their esteem when put into the rift. I think rift-like skills, like pocketbelts and tarot decks, are designed to not maintain individual characteristics to reduce the space take up by unique items on the server.

Also, that would let you have basically have non-decay, power-free spores that work anywhere instead of just in the forest. It wouldn't be a huge imbalance, but would be kind of annoying since Tarot already has Catacombs.

Alright, since none of my other questions have given me the info I need to help my friend decide which guild she wants to make a character for, I'll just ask one more and then give up.

Do either Nekotai or Ninjakari have any blatant (dis)advantages going for them that could help make the decision?

Edit: And just a note, I'm not like talking about which one is more OP, really. Just general things to take into account as she probably won't be aiming to be a top-tier combatant or anything.