Samurai concept

[AbdulAlhazred]

Something I’ll change in my homebrew system!!!
But, just for notes, I’ve seen Samurai done as a good class. There are some fan-adaptations of the Final Fantasy series to table-top systems. They appear good to me. And, of course, there’s the series itself. But, in my honest opinion, it’s a concept too good to just throw it out of the window.

Actually I liked the way the old Bushido game handled it. There was a class, 'Bushi', and 'Samurai' was a social class, not a mechanical one (there were a LOT of complex rules that dealt with various forms of honor and social standing, so social classes were a BIG deal in that game, but MECHANICALLY there wasn't anything specifically different about a character who was a Samurai vs one who was some other form of Bushi. They all had the same basic fighting skills. IIRC there WAS a Kensai class however, which had its own rather different rules. In fact Bushido's take on oriental classes was a LOT different from that of OA and hence pretty much all of D&D that has followed from it. While the system is IMHO pretty much crap, its a useful one to go back and reference in terms of alternate ways of imagining Japanese 16th Century cultural RP concepts.

 

[Igwilly]

I have a problem with samurai as a class because there's already one or more classes that cover most samurai concepts. You might need a new class if you're dealing with mystic samurai though. I don't see why Final Fantasy-style sword moves could not be powers or feats instead. A slayer with a feat that boost Power Strike (flavoring it as multiple sword swings, for instance, or as a single really fast strike) appeals to me. You don't need an entirely new class for such a concept.

D&D 3.0's "Oriental Adventures" did samurai pretty right. There was actually a class, but many of the NPC samurai were depicted as warriors or fighters, and could still take the Iajitsu skill and other samurai-specific abilities. I think things like ki shouts were feats too.

OA had several clans (I think there were seven) each of which focused on a fighting style. The Crab Clan actually focused on non-traditional weapons better suited for killing setting-specific monsters. The Dragon Clan focused on dual-wielding, which I want to make a point about: dual-wielding among samurai were rare, and the wakizashi was normally used defensively, which is where the Complete Warrior samurai fell down, but OA didn't deny the existence of dual-wielding samurai. It gave numerous options and let the player choose what they wanted.

Barring (mostly bad) flavor issues, leaving out the name, the Complete Warrior samurai seemed to exist solely so a fighter-type could dual-wield while wearing heavy armor and not having a high Dex score. The entire class could have been replaced with one new feat, "Armored Tempest Style" or something along those lines. Well, you would have to have one more feat for the weapon-that-levels-up-with-you but, again, make an ancestral weapon-style feat. You don't need a new class just for that.

I can't say I'm some sort of loremaster of Japanese history, but I like to think I read at least one more book than whoever wrote the Complete Warrior samurai. I distinctly recall reading about a battle that took place in the 1500s, where seven samurai got trophies: one of the samurai was using a bow, one got an award for first kill with a sword, and another got an award for first kill with a spear.

Well, I do understand your view. In fact, I partially agree: we don’t need Samurai as a different class.
But classes are not about what we need. They are about what we want. If the opposite was true, we would only have 2 classes. Better yet: no classes are needed; point-buy systems work just fine.
The big challenge is making them right. This will depend on the system.
Those questions aside, Samurai did were much more versatile than RPG and video-games try to make out of it. I just don’t know how much versatile they can be as a character class: that will depend on the system. Again. The series itself, and its fan-made systems, can give someone good ideas about this concept.
Honestly, people are too harsh on them. D&D never was greatly balanced. Although Tier 6 is pretty sad.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Honestly, people are too harsh on them. D&D never was greatly balanced. Although Tier 6 is pretty sad.

I didn't see any discussion of balance at all. The CW samurai sucked, but it's weakness wasn't just in the mechanics.

 

[Igwilly]

I didn't see any discussion of balance at all. The CW samurai sucked, but it's weakness wasn't just in the mechanics.

That's a balance issue for me.
Anyway, you get my point. Not talking about the CW samurai. I'm talking about D&D samurai in the general sense.

 

[Tony Vargas]

However, what other races would make for fine Samurai. Let me know your opinion.

Dragonborn leaps immediately to mind, being all honor-obsessed.

I know there's a legit class for this

There's a Theme in Dragon #404.

Fighter seems like an obvious way to go: for the iaijutsu, all-offense type, Slayer. Greatweapon fighter if you want to use a nodachi or naginata (greatsword or glaive). (One of the first 4e fighters I saw played was a greatsword fighter who was very obviously a samurai type, and the various close & move-and-attack fighter exploits worked very well for chambara-style action.) Tempest fighter is a near miss for the daisho type, but you might make it work. Re-skinned scale should work for armor, maybe Banded if you want to be cute.

I'm looking to make a Samurai esque character using the multiclass system. I've looked into Warlord and I think it being paired with Avenger would be good for a tale of a Samurai whose out for revenge for being betrayed by his lord.

A Samurai without a lord would be a Ronin, no? And Avenger is a Divine class. I suppose you could finagle that, depending on the culture they're from.

Warlord has the advantage of having a STR-based Archery option, which, either alone or combined with Fighter, would let you get away with alternating between daikyu and katana.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Truthfully you can go with most any weapon-using class. For example:

Rogue, you can skin a rapier as a katana easily enough, they are both fairly light quick blades (though definitely different in some details, but still, D&D is pretty abstract). You could even pick up the feat that lets you use heavy blades, though it is a trap option at best. Obviously this option gives you good bow capabilities, though you won't get to use a longbow (but again, is a Daikyu really the same as a longbow?). You can obviously skin this as something like a secret Ninja identity etc.

Fighter, already covered pretty much. You can also pick up what little options there are for mounted combat.

Ranger, quite effective as a sort of classic bow plus sword pair user. Skin your hide armor as one of the lighter variants of armor worn by Samurai (many of them wore various forms of leathers).

Paladin, you can do this too, kind of an odd concept, but definitely workable.

Avenger, kinda already mentioned, works fine on its own, though again its a bit on the 'magical' side.

Barbarian, hey why not? You're that Samurai that gets pissed off...

Warlord, kinda already covered by Tony

Warden, heh, again, why not? This guy is definitely got a little bit of a story going!

The Essentials fighter builds will all work, though some are obviously more thematic than others.

No doubt there are more possibilities, but you really don't NEED to hybrid to find good ones.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I would only call the longsword rogue feat a trap if you are playing with enough optimization that feats are super limited, and your numbers need to be really tight. otherwise, it's fine.

But yeah, the rogue makes the best samurai for using a bow and katana, IMO. the only issue with the rapier is you cant use it two handed.
The essentials theif has a lot of really really good movement tricks, which is the main thing I want out of a samurai that the theme doesn't do. IMO, samurai and sohei are both good samurai theme options.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would only call the longsword rogue feat a trap if you are playing with enough optimization that feats are super limited, and your numbers need to be really tight. otherwise, it's fine.

Well, like pretty much anything that uses up a couple feats to no good effect, it won't really do your character any big harm. I guess if you are wanting to build to a very specific spec that requires a bunch of feats, then you'd avoid this sort of thing. It is a 'trap' option though in the sense that you might think at first blush, as say someone relatively naive to 4e build options, that wielding a big sword would be a pretty good idea. It just isn't, and you will burn 2 (or maybe only one depending on your race) feats total (and possibly a 3rd one) plus perhaps even other feats if you simply must push this concept. Yet you'd be much better off sticking with the rapier.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

well, no

I've played it, and it works fine with just the one feat, regardless of race. Obviously you do the same level of weapon focusing you do with any other weapon choice, so i'm not going to count things like Expertise.

The only thing you're missing out on is the ability to specialize more by going with a light blade, which is something you only need to do in optimized games. Otherwise, it's 100% optional to go any further than an expertise feat for the basic system math.


Now, again, if you don't mind using a one handed sword instead of the classic Bushido two hands style most folk associate with samurai, rapier is a better choice. If you want to dual wield, rapier and short sword is great.

We ended up doing a bunch of houserules that eventually made the feat redundant by just basically making it part of how the rogue class works, and letting any feat that relied on light blades work for versatile or one handed heavy blades and a couple other weapons, including staff. But before we started houseruling 4e, the feat worked fine.

edit: we are also heavily reigning in stacking damage bonuses. IN fact, what we've come to right now, and it may stay for the long run, is that there are only the Feat Bonus, Item Bonus, Enchantment Bonus, and Situational Bonuses. Untyped bonuses get pushed into a category based on where you get them. IE, if it's from a feat, it's a feat bonus. Bonuses from class, PP, and ED features are trickier, but we rarely have a problem there. We've discussed treating those all as one kind of bonus, too, for the purpose of determining if they stack.

So, the abuse of light blades with multi-attacking is less severe.

We also are working out reworking the basic math. the hardest part, in terms of work time to get it done, is working out a conversion system to apply to monsters based on role and level, so we don't have to go in ahead of time and rewrite a whole book worth of monsters just to play the game.

Or we may just delete the attack/defense math from the game, and replace it with new shared numbers on a much slower progression, like 5e did.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

well, no

I've played it, and it works fine with just the one feat, regardless of race. Obviously you do the same level of weapon focusing you do with any other weapon choice, so i'm not going to count things like Expertise.

The only thing you're missing out on is the ability to specialize more by going with a light blade, which is something you only need to do in optimized games. Otherwise, it's 100% optional to go any further than an expertise feat for the basic system math.

Well, I don't disagree with you actually. I think that its just a matter of what you're considering. If its just "have fun, take some feats that make your character cool, and maybe you want to mix in some version of these one or two that are kinda 'needed' at some point" then any notion of 'trap options' is meaningless (and so it would be in other even more heavy optimizing games like 3.x, though being casual in that game can easily make your character worthless).

Its just a 'bad' option for those who care about such things. The feat literally does nothing for your character, he trades a d8 weapon for another d8 weapon, with the option to up it to a d10 weapon, a slight upgrade of 1 damage which the rapier wielder can get other ways. Beyond that light and heavy blades are pretty equal in terms of what you can add onto them.

Anyway, I agree with you when you say it might as well be fluff. In my 4e hack weapons are greatly simplified, and thus this sort of thing is really mostly fluff.

Now, again, if you don't mind using a one handed sword instead of the classic Bushido two hands style most folk associate with samurai, rapier is a better choice. If you want to dual wield, rapier and short sword is great.

We ended up doing a bunch of houserules that eventually made the feat redundant by just basically making it part of how the rogue class works, and letting any feat that relied on light blades work for versatile or one handed heavy blades and a couple other weapons, including staff. But before we started houseruling 4e, the feat worked fine.

edit: we are also heavily reigning in stacking damage bonuses. IN fact, what we've come to right now, and it may stay for the long run, is that there are only the Feat Bonus, Item Bonus, Enchantment Bonus, and Situational Bonuses. Untyped bonuses get pushed into a category based on where you get them. IE, if it's from a feat, it's a feat bonus. Bonuses from class, PP, and ED features are trickier, but we rarely have a problem there. We've discussed treating those all as one kind of bonus, too, for the purpose of determining if they stack.

So, the abuse of light blades with multi-attacking is less severe.

We also are working out reworking the basic math. the hardest part, in terms of work time to get it done, is working out a conversion system to apply to monsters based on role and level, so we don't have to go in ahead of time and rewrite a whole book worth of monsters just to play the game.

Or we may just delete the attack/defense math from the game, and replace it with new shared numbers on a much slower progression, like 5e did.

Well, I think everyone's probably already read my "here's what we did in my hack of 4e" routine, but its roughly similar. We don't even use bonuses for situational things. Either it is worth (dis)advantage, or it isn't really meaningful after all. Much faster combat!