samurai build help

[Amdy_vill]

so I want to play a bugbear Samurai. but not the subclass, more the historical idea of a samurai. soI got some goals and some ideas. my goals are simple. Samurai used Guns, Katanas (longswords), longbows, and glaves. so I want to be good at each in combat. samurai also used mounts. so I got to be good at that.

this is may though. lv 20 fighter battle master.

Feats: Dual Wielder, Mounted Combatant, Polearm Master, Sentinel, Sharpshooter, Firearm Specialist, and Fighting Initiate: great weapon master.

[Unoriginal]

so I want to play a bugbear Samurai. but not the subclass, more the historical idea of a samurai. soI got some goals and some ideas. my goals are simple. Samurai used Guns, Katanas (longswords), longbows, and glaves. so I want to be good at each in combat. samurai also used mounts. so I got to be good at that.

this is may though. lv 20 fighter battle master.

Feats: Dual Wielder, Mounted Combatant, Polearm Master, Sentinel, Sharpshooter, Firearm Specialist, and Fighting Initiate: great weapon master.

You don't need Fighting Initiate: gwm as a Fighter.

Dual Wielding gives you nothing mechanically or thematically.

In your place I would consider taking Polearm Master or Sentinel, but not both.

[Hytheter]

Well first of all, firearm specialist isn't a real feat. It's Matt Mercer homebrew.

Personally I think you're spreading yourself too thin. If you take that many feats, you won't be boosting your ability scores at all, so you'll be stuck with your starting strength and dexterity. And you need both of those, because you'll be invested into both strength weapons (longsord, glaive) and dexterity weapons (bows, firearms).

You'll also quickly realise that you have redundancies in each - there's no real point in using a longsword when you have polearm master, and there's little use in using both firearms and bows. Just because historical samurai were known to use all of these weapons, doesn't mean they were absolute masters of every one or that they carried all four around at once. What I'd suggest is choosing either melee or ranged as your primary focus and then using the other as a backup option.

For example, if you want to focus on melee you'll be picking between the longsword and the glaive. Focus your attention on your preferred weapon and don't waste feats on the other. You can still use bows or firearms, but they'll be your backup weapon for when you're too far away, so don't waste feats on them either. Now you can actually spare some ASIs to get your strength up.

[Waazraath]

I agree with the sentiments above. "Being good" with all these weapons is imo already taken care of if you have both proficiency and the relevant ability stat (both decent str and dex in your case, I'd say 14 at the least). You also can use your maneuvers with all these weapons.

So you're good with them - as for feat selection, I'd pick one style to specialize in, which makes you 'more than good' when wielding that specific weapon. So either Polearm master (optionally with Great Weapon Master or Sentinel), or Sharp Shooter, or Gunner (from Tasha's, it's the official gun feat), etc. Dual wielder I'd skip, because it's plain worse than PAM, but also because even with it you are hampering yourself if you play the katana + wakazashi samurai style - it mainly supports using two 1d8 weapon, and without it you can use two 1d6 weapons, there is no feat or combination that supports a 1d6 and a 1d8 weapon in 5e (which is too bad tbh). Also grab the fighting style that fits what you want to do best, and you're done.

Without obliging yourself to take all these feats you mention and by specializing in one style, you can raise both dex and str to 18, later 20, thus really being pretty good with all these weapons.

Having said that, I think Battle Master fits perfectly for the historical samurai, better than the subclass, so good pick.

[Kurt Kurageous]

PAM or Sentinel combined with your +5 natural reach plus weapons reach sounds crazy good. Hit full force 15' away?!!?

Given it's a family thing, how does a bugbear rise socially? Not like traditional samurai were open to outsiders/non-Japanese. Outrageously, what if the strongest race in the world (or a significant part of it) WAS the goblinoids?

5e MM practically slaps you in the face with "Hobgoblins are the feudal Japanese" and VGtM seals it. So by extension perhaps goblins are their slaves, standing in for the historical gaijin (Chinese/Korean/etc.). I'm not sure where bugbears fit in this mashup (Samoan?!!?), but given their abilities as scouts they certainly could get the attention of the leader of a house or a general. And a big guy who fights well is hard to overlook. He would never be accepted as a leader, and be very unlikely to become a shogun.

You are also likely giving away the bugbear's stealth and darkvision. Samurai rarely planned to attack at night (but it did happen). You are closer to a ninja than samurai.

[Unoriginal]

Given it's a family thing, how does a bugbear rise socially? Not like traditional samurai were open to outsiders/non-Japanese.

A Bugbear family could be samurai. And sometime outsiders still became retainers or members of the court of Japanese warlords, like Yasuke or William Adams.



5e MM practically slaps you in the face with "Hobgoblins are the feudal Japanese" and VGtM seals it.

It's more they're inspired by a mash-up of various imperialit civilisations, heavily fictionalized, but aren't any of them. You can find influences of (kind of the theme-park version of, some would say) Antiquity Sparta, Imperial Rome, Crusades-era Europe, Khan-era Mongol realms, Three-Kingdoms China, and Sengoku-era Japan in how the Hobgoblins are, among other things, but they're still neither of those and are in fact their own thing.

[anamiac]

Samurai used Guns
Japan was an early adopter of guns (1543) in a very big way, but they gave them to the rank and file infantry, not the elite soldiers. Samurai would not use a gun in battle, although if they wanted to go hunting with one or use one for target practice, that was fine and didn't offend their honor in any way. Bows, katanas and glaives were common.

That being said, there were probably exceptions the rule, especially as we started getting into the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

[Unoriginal]

Japan was an early adopter of guns (1543) in a very big way, but they gave them to the rank and file infantry, not the elite soldiers. Samurai would not use a gun in battle, although if they wanted to go hunting with one or use one for target practice, that was fine and didn't offend their honor in any way. Bows, katanas and glaives were common.

That being said, there were probably exceptions the rule, especially as we started getting into the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Sengoku/Invasion of Korea Samurai would use guns. If they stopped using guns, it's mosrly because they shifted from battlefield to administrative roles (same way as how the katana became their emblematic weapon despite how Samurai used them as side-arms during wars).

[Kurt Kurageous]

Sengoku/Invasion of Korea Samurai would use guns. If they stopped using guns, it's mosrly because they shifted from battlefield to administrative roles (same way as how the katana became their emblematic weapon despite how Samurai used them as side-arms during wars).

IIRC the samurai used guns during the korean invasion because they viewed their opponents unworthy of bushido, thus it didn't matter how you killed them.

[Dienekes]

Japan was an early adopter of guns (1543) in a very big way, but they gave them to the rank and file infantry, not the elite soldiers. Samurai would not use a gun in battle, although if they wanted to go hunting with one or use one for target practice, that was fine and didn't offend their honor in any way. Bows, katanas and glaives were common.

That being said, there were probably exceptions the rule, especially as we started getting into the eighteenth and nineteenth century.


IIRC the samurai used guns during the korean invasion because they viewed their opponents unworthy of bushido, thus it didn't matter how you killed them.

My understanding is this is a myth about samurai that got pushed backwards through time. Documentation seems to indicate that some daimyo, such as Oda Nobunaga and Takeda Shingen did have their samurai use guns in battle. Not just their ashigaru. The use of firearms by the samurai was then continuously used throughout the invasion of Korea, because of course it was. It was then after that invasion failed, that Ieyashu tried to enforce the myth of samurai honorbound conservative discipline, and guns started to be relegated away from the samurai for anything but recreational purposes.

Which makes sense really. If you're trying to create a peaceful unified kingdom under your control, it's generally best if the most useful modern weapons weren't in the hands of our political rivals.

But anyway, about the topic.

5e really favors focusing on one combat strategy and using that as much as possible, rather than switching between gun, bow, spear, and sword where it would have been historically appropriate. I'd suggest focusing on either bow or spear, forgetting mounts completely unless you can get your DM to provide some animals that won't die in the first round of combat, and then using your Battlemaster maneuvers to portray your advanced combat skill with general weaponry.

[JLandan]

Its always seemed to me that Kensai was a better samurai then Samurai. Multiclassed with Battlemaster would be close to what the OP was looking for, and would ease up on the need for so many feats.

[Hytheter]

Its always seemed to me that Kensai was a better samurai then Samurai. Multiclassed with Battlemaster would be close to what the OP was looking for, and would ease up on the need for so many feats.

Kensei*

Given OP is going somewhat historical, I don't see monk being a good fit. Samurai wore armour (and distinctive armour at that) which is obviously antithetical to playing a monk.

[JLandan]

Kensei*

Given OP is going somewhat historical, I don't see monk being a good fit. Samurai wore armour (and distinctive armour at that) which is obviously antithetical to playing a monk.

While an armored monk is suboptimal, I wouldn't say its antithetical. A samurai could arguably be described as an armored martial artist.

What a monk loses while armored can be mitigated by other things. The armor itself makes up for the loss of Unarmored Defense.

Loss of Martial Arts can be partly made up with Unarmed Fighting style from the Fighter features or with the Tavern Brawler feat to get the better damage die. The loss of Dex rather than Str for monk weapons is only a hit if your Dex is higher than Str by enough to matter. The unarmed strike bonus action is a total loss, but Flurry of Blows is still viable with a spent ki point.

Loss of Unarmored Movement is a total loss. Personally, I don't think it's that great of a loss.

All other Monk features are not lost.

Nothing is lost in Kensei features. The unarmed strike part of Agile Parry is made up for in the same way as Martial Arts. Nothing else is contingent on wearing no armor.

IMO an armored Monk is quite viable, especially when paired with some Fighter levels.