Samurai in the core rules

[drnuncheon]

Fighter 3. At first and 3rd levels, use your 'free' feats to take Open Minded (from the XPH/Psionics SRD) and thus gain 10 extra skill points for your courtly skills. Meanwhile, the fighter feats will keep you good in combat.

J

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I wonder...

Perhaps the focus on iaijutsu was the recognition that being hit hurts?

Brad

 

[argo]

Well, personally I'm fond of the OA samurai but a core rules samurai is not hard at all. Just play a straight single class fighter and RP the code.

Requried feats: (Greater) weapon focus, (Greater) weapon spec, Improved Crit. All for the bastard sword. Power attack is required as well. Try to sweet talk your DM into letting keen and improved crit stack and focus on milking 2:1 PA and critical damage for all it's worth. Combat Expertise is optional but highly recomended. Exotic Weapon Prof [bastard sword] is completly optional, most of the time you should be wielding your sword two-handed anyway for the power attack. Wear the heaviest armor you can find and carry a longbow and spear as your backup. Put skill ranks in intimidate, ride and jump. Assign your stats as follows: Str then Dex then Con but don't forget to put a 13 in Int if you intend to take Expertise. There, that is your basic samurai, the rest is just a matter of focus.

Other important feats:
Iorn Will (cuz you don't want to fail a fear save and have to comit sepuku in disgrace )

Cleave, Combat Reflexes and maybe Imp Sunder. For the "wade into the horde and build a bulwark out of their corpses" samurai.

The mounted archery chain, if it looks like you will be spending any time in the wide open spaces at all.

The spring attack chain. If you decide you want to go the lightly-armored samurai route.

Improved init, Quick draw and one level of Rog. For the iaijutsu master (don't forget to also charge and PA your flat-footed opponents in the first round in addition to the sneak attack). Improved Disarm can be his backup trick on round 2+. Combines well with the spring attack samurai.



Also consider multiclassing for 2 levels of monk. That 2 level dip nets you a +3 to all your saves, improved unarmed strike, two bonus feats which complement the samurai style nicely, evasion, and a few skill points to blow on balance or tumble or diplomacy or spot or listen all for the cost of one point of BAB and a few HP. The only real problem with this is that it slows down your all-important aquisition of Greater weapon focus/spec.

So at third level I would build a samurai somthing like this.

Human
Str 15 Dex 14 Con 12 Int 13 Wis 10 Cha 8

Feats: Iron Will, Power Attack, Weapon Focus [bastard sword], Cleave, Combat Expertise


Hope that helps.

 

[wingsandsword]

Ranger 2/Fighter 1

The ranger levels give you a lot more skill points (especially if you're a Ranger at 1st level). You can select either combat style. Two weapons is akin to the Nito Ryu school made famous by Musashi, and made the whole point of a samurai's existence in the terrible Complete Warrior Samurai (if you can get DM's permission for a Samurai base class, get the OA samurai, please!). The archery combat style is for using a daikyu (longbow), since samurai did practice archery.

The Favored Enemy is whoever his Lord dislikes or is at war with.

As you level up, you might want a 3rd level of Ranger (but not 4 or more levels, the spells and animal companions don't fit with the concept), otherwise go straight up in Fighter.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Be sure to play a reasonable code.

If a samurai took four wounds for his lord and then runs from combat he is still a samurai, and doesn't have to kill himself.

If a samurai arranged a duel and then ambushed the duelist from a hiding spot, killing his opponent without actually dueling him, he's still a samurai and doesn't have to kill himself.

Samurai were real-life people with real-life motivations.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Be sure to play a reasonable code.

If a samurai took four wounds for his lord and then runs from combat he is still a samurai, and doesn't have to kill himself.

If a samurai arranged a duel and then ambushed the duelist from a hiding spot, killing his opponent without actually dueling him, he's still a samurai and doesn't have to kill himself.

Samurai were real-life people with real-life motivations.

The 'extreme honour' samurai were made up a long time after 'real' samurai existed. It's like reading the 'Knights of the Round Table' stories and thinking that historical knights were all like Galahad or the other 'paladin' knights.

Geoff.

 

[Sejs]

Yeah, as noted - the over the top code was kinda penciled in after the fact for people who wern't there. I mean hey, it's not like they knew any different, after all. And it made for wonderful prestigue for you and your lord.


Anyway, yeah. Samurai? Fighter.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Fighter, possible fighter-monk if a more physical or Ki-style is the intended samurai.

Paladin does well enough as well.

Got to love that feeling in western society that samurai were the best fighters EVAR and Ninja's were the best rogues EVAR.

Geez. Pride in ones history is a good thing. Yellow fever is another.

 

[Logan]

Fighter. And if you wanted a more sterotypical "warrior-poet", Multi-class into rouge for the skill points.
Personally, a home brewed "fighter with more skills class" works fine for me,
since I don't like any the one WOTC has done so far.

 

[BryonD]

Fighter 3. At first and 3rd levels, use your 'free' feats to take Open Minded (from the XPH/Psionics SRD) and thus gain 10 extra skill points for your courtly skills. Meanwhile, the fighter feats will keep you good in combat.

J

That works.

Or ask the DM if you can add a couple social class skills to the fighter list in exchange for serious Bushido and duty demands on the character. It treads a little into the RP for ability danger zone. But I don't think this case is problematic. A point-buy human fighter with 12 INT and 12 CHR can do very well once you get some class skills to work with. Adapting the Cosmopolitan feat also works.