Bringing samurai up to snuff (tier 3.5 samurai?)

[danzibr]

Taken down for revision (but not because of Vaz's negative criticism).

[danzibr]

Hmm. 80 some views. Any thoughts?

[Vaz]

Limiting weapons to the class is bad. Optimizers don't like it, and random loot doesn't like it, particularly when it comes up with setting specific exotic weapons. It just so happens that every dungeon you go in has a Katana or DaiKyu.? Really? Even though you have simply renamed usual common weapons, i think that you should be able to progress the class in your own manner.

Giving Free Weapons? Why? Why not include a mechanic for a sponsor? Its clunky, that is why, and quite frankly should be purchased by the usual method, a Samurai should have their kit no easier to come buy than any other martial character coming from a military background.

Horse Companion: stupid broken from here. Bears, Tigers etc all available. It is also an ability of questionable use if forced into a horse. Dungeoning and all the mounted combat chain is begging for an ACF.

It also just throws on arbitrary scaremongering. It is too easy to beat fear causers, it is all a bit binary, at which point it is no better than a normal fighter built for 2wf.

Not really much more powerful, but better than a CW Samurai. Ish. Not a particularly inspired creation when all you did was 'throw some feats on it'. Very little to set it out from any other weekly samurai fix.

[Durazno]

The quote confuses me a little. I might be misreading it, but it looks like our samurai is essentially saying, "I'm not a samurai. I'm a samurai." (Or it's not or they're not... whatever the implied pronoun is in their conversation.)

Is the samurai correcting someone's pronunciation? Are they objecting to the capital letter? Are they trying to make a point about how we have a flawed idea about what samurai are?

[danzibr]

Thanks for the response!

Limiting weapons to the class is bad. Optimizers don't like it, and random loot doesn't like it, particularly when it comes up with setting specific exotic weapons. It just so happens that every dungeon you go in has a Katana or DaiKyu.? Really? Even though you have simply renamed usual common weapons, i think that you should be able to progress the class in your own manner.
This doesn't make sense to me. Katana are treated as bastard swords in official D&D. Did you miss that the weapons grow with the samurai? The "It just so happens that every dungeon you go in has a Katana or DaiKyu.? Really?" really confuses me.

Giving Free Weapons? Why? Why not include a mechanic for a sponsor? Its clunky, that is why, and quite frankly should be purchased by the usual method, a Samurai should have their kit no easier to come buy than any other martial character coming from a military background.
Why not? That's how OA Samurai did it.

Horse Companion: stupid broken from here. Bears, Tigers etc all available. It is also an ability of questionable use if forced into a horse. Dungeoning and all the mounted combat chain is begging for an ACF.
Stupid broken? It's strictly inferior to Druid AC. And Druid's get full casting.

It also just throws on arbitrary scaremongering. It is too easy to beat fear causers, it is all a bit binary, at which point it is no better than a normal fighter built for 2wf.
CW Samurai has a fear theme to it.

Not really much more powerful, but better than a CW Samurai. Ish. Not a particularly inspired creation when all you did was 'throw some feats on it'. Very little to set it out from any other weekly samurai fix.
I wonder if you even read the whole thing. Actually, surely not. Do you think all fixes are supposed to be innovative or something?

If it wasn't clear (which it should be by anyone who can read), the purpose is to make a fighter which resembles stereotyped samurai in that they can fight on horseback, do archery (or KyuuDou as you'd probably capitalize it), dual wield if they wish, use a polearm, and are scary.

[danzibr]

The quote confuses me a little. I might be misreading it, but it looks like our samurai is essentially saying, "I'm not a samurai. I'm a samurai." (Or it's not or they're not... whatever the implied pronoun is in their conversation.)

Is the samurai correcting someone's pronunciation? Are they objecting to the capital letter? Are they trying to make a point about how we have a flawed idea about what samurai are?
Right, yeah. Just the capitalization.

I mean, when we say Fighter or Warblade or Samurai we're referring to published classes. The lower case s is meant to separate them from the OA and CW Samurai.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I said the quote didn't make sense because Japanese doesn't distinguish between capital and lower case letters. The closest they have it using katakana for caps.

[Vaz]

What defines Samurai?

The weapons? Scaring? Mounted Combat? Fine.

Why limit the weapons? We are playing dnd not Historocal. If someone wants to do it histirocally, let them, but don't shoehorn people into playing it in that way.

As for how OA did it, i know. I don't like it any more outside of copying it from Rokugan.

The AC is a powerful tool, one that outclasses the samurai at fighting. Sure a druid has other things it can use, but the AC feature is stupidly powerful regardless. An animal companion more than doubles your output, but essentially renders your combat noneessential. You've rendered the class useless outside of fearstacking once.more.

[danzibr]

What defines Samurai?

The weapons? Scaring? Mounted Combat? Fine.

Why limit the weapons? We are playing dnd not Historocal. If someone wants to do it histirocally, let them, but don't shoehorn people into playing it in that way.

As for how OA did it, i know. I don't like it any more outside of copying it from Rokugan.

The AC is a powerful tool, one that outclasses the samurai at fighting. Sure a druid has other things it can use, but the AC feature is stupidly powerful regardless. An animal companion more than doubles your output, but essentially renders your combat noneessential. You've rendered the class useless outside of fearstacking once.more.
Good points. What would you suggest with the weapons? I mean. The plan is to have them be able to be competent with a bow, spear, bastard sword and shortsword if they wish.

Also, I've changed the Horse Companion to, well, horses. As cool as a samurai riding around a bear is...

[Vaz]

They shouldn't have to be a listed weapon. Let the player choose. The Ancestral Weapon feat and the Kensai class being the most current iterations of an improveable weapon have no stipulation as such.

[danzibr]

They shouldn't have to be a listed weapon. Let the player choose.
I don't follow. What do you mean by a listed weapon? Just a weapon appearing on a list?

The only thing the class currently asks is for one light, one one-handed, one two-handed and one ranged. I was under the impression that *all* weapons fall under one of these categories. How does this remove the player being able to choose? If they want, say, two two-handed weapons then they can choose one for their class and buy the second.

[Deepbluediver]

I've always thought that the samurai was really just an far-eastern flavored knight-type class, and the two should really be more similar. Historically, they filled similar roles in their respective societies, and Bushido and Chivalry had similar cultural importance (that is, little to none, since they where both made up by post-medieval authors as a literary/propoganda device)
Gamewise, both tend to be fairly low-ranked, so combining the two might give a better selection of class options.


CLASS FEATURES
So the samurai is similar to the fighter but with a better will save and more class-skills. But he replaces the bonus-feat versatility with more rigid class features.



Bushidou:

It's funny, I thought about doing something like this for my monk. It's possible to work around, but it makes it really hard to pick up being a samurai anywhere down the line from first level.

I'll suggest something that I've considered for my paladin fix: Once you take your first level of Samurai, you can only advance as a samurai or as a class you had before becoming a Samurai.
So taking the class does narrow your focus somewhat, but ideally the rest of the options should compensate for that. The key word here being "should".


everything else

Looking through the list, I can pretty much see that we've traded advancing more weapon styles simultaneously for the fighter's varying options (such as they are) and added some at-will fear abilities. And the paladin mount. None of this is bad, but in my book it lacks any of the real versatility that makes a class attractive to a large group of players, and EVERYTHING about it is still combat related. So I'd say this is tier 4, at best.


I want to speak a bit more generally, for a minute. There are a fair number of homebrewed classes I see (and some published ones, too) where some one said "I have a great idea for a class!" but then found that the material was a little thin when stretched over 20 levels. The same 20 levels where a wizard masters 8 different schools of magic. (not that the Wizard is a better balancing goal, but it illustrates my point nicely)

IMO, there are a quite a few concepts that really should be just a 5 or 10 level prestige class instead. The idea of a Knight (or Samurai) is one of these. You have a couple levels of something else to prove yourself a worthy, brave, heroic warrior, and then you get knighted for your deeds or bonded to a noble, etc etc etc.

Mechanically, this has the benefit of allowing you to condense the best of the abilities into fewer levels, and you don't need to come up with as much new material, since it is expected that the player will be combining it in interesting ways with other class abilities. Something to think about.

[danzibr]

I'll suggest something that I've considered for my paladin fix: Once you take your first level of Samurai, you can only advance as a samurai or as a class you had before becoming a Samurai.
So taking the class does narrow your focus somewhat, but ideally the rest of the options should compensate for that. The key word here being "should".
[\quote]
The only reason I added that thing in Bushidou is, well... it's absolutely ridiculous for a dip. At first level you can get EWP four times! And TWF. And a mount. And two good saves. It may not be as good as a Cleric dip with the right domains, but that's still good.
[quote][...]thought-provoking stuff[...] Something to think about.
Hrm, indeed. I'm quite happy with a label of tier 4. Yeah, especially rereading the tier list. Well. I'm still inclined to say maybe 3.5, or 3.75. Combat is obviously their thing, so to speak, and while they have a lower roof than, say, a Warblade, they can do respectable damage. Free +10 weapons, good base competence with TWF or THF or archery. They can further be specialized by doing Leap Attack and Shock Trooper or whatever. They can fear (quite well, perhaps too well, I dunno), and have enough skill points and skills and a high Cha so they can do social stuff.

Right... maybe not tier 3, but a bit over tier 4, I think.

As for the stuff to think about, that's a great point. I mean, making them a PrC. Approaching D&D like level 1's are scrubs and specialize it'd make total sense to start as some generic fighter-type then pick up being a samurai.

In any case, thanks for the response.