Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 1971393" data-attributes="member: 1165">A fighter, maybe with a few levels of rogue if your DM isn't introducing a Iajitsu Focus feat. (Obviously not all samurai were masters of iajitsu.)The Minamoto were known as "rough" samurai. When one of them killed a youth and found he had a flute, none of the rough Minamoto samurai were cultured enough to play it. So much for spouting poetry... only some samurai did that.Speaking of which, samurai was both a profession and a social class. Many samurai (in terms of social class) would write poems, but they probably wouldn't have many fighter levels. (Lots of samurai were aristocrats with some weapons training.)The first samurai wore bulky armor and rode horses, shooting bows. Later on in their history they started using spears (often on horseback, based on tactics and personal preference) and then finally swords (on foot) as battlefields got more crowded with larger numbers of non-samurai soldiers. Only a few could wield a sword from a horse, since that required them to use a katana with one hand (many didn't have the Exotic Weapon Proficiency required to use a katana with one hand).The prevention of non-samurai from carrying swords didn't happen until nearly the end of the Sengoku period, by which point guns were becoming pretty common in Japan.Dual-wielding was rare, but Musashi was not the first well-known dual-wielding samurai.Besides iajitsu, the biggest problem facing samurai in the rules are medium armor. There's very little reason to use any medium armor in the rules. You can get heavy armor for the same speed, or if you're fond of skills get a chain shirt. I don't know of any samurai equivalent of a chain shirt - call it light lamellar? - but you'll still be weaker than a heavy fighter. (In-game, light fighters are usually pretty weak.)If you want to play an aristrocrat, well you're out of luck. It can't be done without some non-core classes (or using an NPC class). I suggest Tactician (whatever it's called) or the DLCS noble. You'll feel silly when your tactical abilities work if your character has an Int of 8 but don't work if you're in an anti-magic field, but whatevah...If you want to play a iajitsu master, I suggest Rog 1/Ftr 2 with Improved Initiative plus Quick Draw and, if you're daring, no armor. (I think this would closely replicate Jubei Yagyu, but you would need Dodge and Improved Unarmed Strike to more closely copy him.) But if you want armor, go ahead and do it. Practice on the eta if you feel like it, since no one will complain.If you want to play a battlefield samurai, don't bother with the Exotic Weapon Proficiency. Maybe take some mounted feats (if so, get a bow) or if you prefer fighting on foot, get a spear. Yup, a spear. Maybe a longspear, so you don't feel too weak. There was a battlefield prize awarded to the first kill with a spear, and another for the first kill with a sword.Some samurai were notable foot-archers, but this was pretty rare.Some less professional warriors were part-time farmers. They were called "one-fief, one suit of armor" samurai (there's a shorter Japanese word for that, of course), even though many were actually peasants rather than samurai. They would keep their spears sitting in the culverts as they farmed rice, with their sandals attached to the spears, so they would be ready to fight at a moment's notice.</blockquote>

Verification