Ronin?

[Venger]

so, my brother showed me Complete Warrior's Ronin prestige class today and told me that it was laughably awful. my experience in iron chef made me somewhat dubious, because surely it couldn't be all that bad.

full BA, 4 dice of SA, and 2 feats (albeit from a short subset of the fighter list) isn't too shabby, and I thought the bonuses for old levels of samurai/trade in samurai levels like blackguard was actually kind of cool. infamy is interesting, but the DC is too low in my opinion (people can make the darn check untrained!) and it sort of necessitates ranks in disguise, which for someone with only 2 skillpoints per lvl (despite a surprisingly good list) is sort of a pain in the ass.

I really liked the addition of SA. I always thought samurai should have it because iaijutsu is all about striking the enemy before he's got his defenses up (SA or sudden strike, but really, samurai needs all the help he can get) so it's kind of nice that they can pseudo get it this way.

I was wondering about a couple of things:

1) does master of masks's gladiator mask EWP:everything count as EWP bastard sword for the purpose of qualification for ronin?
2) does the samurai's daisho proficiency count as EWP:bastard sword for the purpose of qualification for ronin?
3) has anyone ever actually used ronin in a build? if so, how did it go? what sort of build did you use? did you have a fun time? was s/he able to contribute to combat? what sort of backstory did s/he have?

I pointed out that 1 dice of SA seems relatively equal to the 3 points of BA that one gets over 10 rogue levels, since I know of no other class that is 10 lvls long, has full BA and gives 5 dice of SA, and the retaining of the samurai's free TWF (which is kind of worthless as a samurai) with the SA you need to make it actually do anything is kind of a cool combo.

he responded that if one wanted to go SA and BA, that daring outlaw fit the bill. I didn't really know how to respond to that, since it's sort of true. I'm not really sure why, I just kind of view this class as having a certain amount of potential. I've never heard of anyone using it (I can kind of see why) but I was curious what people had in mind for ways for it to be useful.

[ThiagoMartell]

Banzai Charge is actually a good ability.
There was a famous build back in 339 that abused Banzai Charge and other AC reducing abilities, I think it was in the CO World Record Thread, you can google it.

[Cespenar]

It seems to me that Banzai Charge and Shock Trooper can stack with each other. Just to put it out there.

[deuxhero]

Just remember it lets you get rid of CW Samurai levels (Only Warrior can't be optimized better than a Samurai, and even then the optimization methods are for the full-BAB/HD body and no the class features). That alone is big.

[eggs]

This being 3e, it can be laughably awful while still being above average for a nonmagical melee class.

The class itself is a glass cannon. It has robust damage output from charge and sneak attack, but little else - mobility, noncombat scenarios, and magical attacks and defenses can all shut it down hard.

I used a Ronin dip once on an old gish build. I was using it to play up Raumathari Battlemage's Bastard Sword element, alongside a dip in Exotic Weapons Master. It wasn't a bad character, but I'm not sure all the CL loss was justified from an optimization standpoint.

I've also used it as a basis for an army of NPCs at high levels. And in that case, it was actually pretty scary - at ECL 11, it has a lot of damage output. Even though the players could easily shut down large groups of the ronins at a time, they were absolutely paranoid whenever they found out that the army was around.

[Person_Man]

Yes, by RAW you can qualify for prestige classes or feats with temporary class features, spells, or magic items. But if you ever lose that effect, you lose all of your prestige class levels. In this case, you could qualify for Ronin with Master of Masks. But if the character ever changed masks (or had that class feature suppressed somehow) he would lose all of his Ronin class levels. I've also seen Hulk builds that used Righteous Might or Expansion or Mountain Rage to gain entry into War Hulk.

Having said that, Ronin is a pretty standard Tier 4 PrC. You increase damage, and can add a few status effects thanks to Sneak Attack (Staggering Strike being the most noteworthy). But it's not that difficult to get similar increases in damage and status effects for a lower investment.