how are samuri?

[Gamerlord]

for my birthday i asked my grandmother for complete warrior and one class that i saw was the samuri...how does it play and is it any good?

[Azerian Kelimon]

It's the worst non NPC class in the game.

[DraPrime]

It's a pretty weak class, especially if you're stuck with a bunch of powergamers. Still, it can be enjoyable if you really act like a samurai. Just don't do seppuku at your first defeat.

[Nebo_]

Forged from fail and suck. The class is the most terrible one ever printed.

[monty]

I've never played one, but absolutely everybody I know that has says it's terrible. Which is why I've never played one.

[Azerian Kelimon]

If you want a samurai, get Oriental Adventures, a 3.0 book, and convert that samurai to 3.5.

[Dragor]

Can someone detail why for me? One of my friends is considering playing one for our upcoming campaign and I'm trying to persuade him not to (based on GiTP reactions).

[Yvian]

I would not call it the worst class, and of course a lot depends on what type of game you play.

Part of the problem is that there are a lot of good feats in CW and I like playing a straight fighter. I mean, one could make an argument that one should play a fighter with the code of a samurai and have a good time and a good class.

[Kurald Galain]

First, realize that the Fighter is the second-weakest class in the Player's Handbook.

Second, realize that the only thing the Fighter has going for him is the bonus feats he gets.

Third, realize that the Samurai is a Fighter, only without the bonus feats.

[tarbrush]

Well, it's like a fighter. Except for the good parts of being a fighter (feats) are replaced with dreadful abilities along the lines of "Well I'm kind of intimidating guv". And the many bad points of fighters are exacerbated because you have no feats to cover your suckitude.

It loses out to NPC casters (I forget the name of the class), comes about even with the NPC warrior and just about outdoes a commoner.

[mostlyharmful]

It is basically the NPC class warrior, with its class features added on. It's class features add up to a set of feats locking the samurai into a very, very subpar build (Two Weapon Fighting) and a lovely "fearsome-gaze" thing which only works versus Mooks that any PC doesn't even think about.

if you're wanting power you're better off (believe it or not) with Expert (choose your skill selection, try UMD!!!), or Adept (sucky casting beats no casting).

If you wan the fluff of the samurai either Oriental adventurers works or take a leaf out of Mikos book and say you're a Samurai while never ever taking this class. Try Paladin3/Fighter2/Whateverxxx. Or any one of a dozen builds knocking around these pages and just have a lord you report to. That's really all samurai meant anyway.

[dman11235]

It's worse than the Adept. The Adept is an NPC class. Yeah. Also, it's terribly designed, almost as bad as the fighter in that aspect. And again, the fighter can do everything it can do, but better. Heck, I could make a beguiler that does a better job at tanking than it does. I believe it's ranked at 1.8 or so out of 10 on the power level, where fighters are about 4.1, and wizards are 9.9.

[Artanis]

Like others have said, there are exactly three classes that are weaker than the Samurai: Commoner, Aristocrat, and Warrior....and it doesn't beat the Warrior by much. ANY other class - including the Adept and even Expert - is stronger.

[DraPrime]

Even though the samurai is a piece of crap with a big sword, don't despair. There is still lots of awesome stuff in CW. The feats are the essence of awesome for any melee character. The prestige classes are also pretty fun. The classes just happen to be the weakest point of the book.

[Nebo_]

The one saving grace of the class is that you can take two levels to get TWF in heavy armour. Why you would want that, I'm not sure. That's it. The rest of the class fails so, so hard.

[Yvian]

Can someone detail why for me? One of my friends is considering playing one for our upcoming campaign and I'm trying to persuade him not to (based on GiTP reactions).

compare a fighter bonus feats to a samurai powers.
bastard swords are o.k., but as a 1st level fighter you can take it as a feat.
TWF is weak, and once again as a 2nd level fighter you can pick it up as a bonus feat.
Kiai Smite is o.k., but not great.
At 5th level he picks up a gimped quick draw. Once again, a fighter could pick that up as a 4th level feat.
At 6th level you get a bonus to intimidate. Not great. a 6th level fighter could pick up something stronger, or find a feat which is almost as good.
At 8th you get imported Initiative, same as the fighter bonus feat.
10th + - More intimidates, more TWF, and more Kiai Strikes. Once again, besides Kiai Strikes a fighter could do just as well.

Fighters are better - having more flexibility - not in terms of honor and such, but in terms of picking up feats that will help them..

[Dragor]

compare a fighter bonus feats to a samurai powers.
bastard swords are o.k., but as a 1st level fighter you can take it as a feat.
TWF is weak, and once again as a 2nd level fighter you can pick it up as a bonus feat.
Kiai Smite is o.k., but not great.
At 5th level he picks up a gimped quick draw. Once again, a fighter could pick that up as a 4th level feat.
At 6th level you get a bonus to intimidate. Not great. a 6th level fighter could pick up something stronger, or find a feat which is almost as good.
At 8th you get imported Initiative, same as the fighter bonus feat.
10th + - More intimidates, more TWF, and more Kiai Strikes. Once again, besides Kiai Strikes a fighter could do just as well.

Fighters are better - having more flexibility - not in terms of honor and such, but in terms of picking up feats that will help them..

Thanks for that.

[Gamerlord]

i see,are the the ohter two base classes any good?

[Azerian Kelimon]

Swashbuckler is excellently flavorful, but teh suxxorz if you don't use Daring Outlaw to combine it with rogue.

The other one was pretty meh, I believe.

[Jack Mann]

Kid, I don't know what browser you have, but I'm sure there's some way to get a spell checker on it. Can you get Google Toolbar? Can you, please?

Swashbuckler has about three levels of awesome, followed by seventeen levels of suck. Unless, of course, you take the Daring Outlaw feat, which lets your swashbuckler levels stack with rogue for sneak attack functionality. Snazzy, that.

Hexblade's a bit subpar. When it came out, they judged armored casting to be pretty powerful, so they kept the other abilities pretty weak. It turned out it wasn't such a big deal, so hexblade needs a bit of boosting. Mike Mearls (the designer) posted a potential fix, though you may want to look at some of the other fixes for the class.

[Gorbash]

It's worse than the Adept. The Adept is an NPC class. Yeah. Also, it's terribly designed, almost as bad as the fighter in that aspect. And again, the fighter can do everything it can do, but better. Heck, I could make a beguiler that does a better job at tanking than it does. I believe it's ranked at 1.8 or so out of 10 on the power level, where fighters are about 4.1, and wizards are 9.9.

Really? Can I get a link to that ranking page?

And concerning samurai... Of course, everything has already been said, not to mention that Samurais actually DIDN'T dual wield (only Miamoto Musashi did), so it isn't even that fluffy.

[Chronos]

It's the worst non NPC class in the game.

I'd say that Samurai is worse than commoner, actually. Commoner does a very good job of filling the role it's supposed to. Samurai also does a very good job of filling the role that Commoner is supposed to.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Play a Fighter with Mounted Combat, Mounted Archery, and an assortment of archery and melee feats instead. Works out much better.

What is with samurai and TWF anyway? The katana is a two-handed sword, like the European longsword. And it wasn't a weapon of war so much as a "gentleman's" weapon in the later eras - spears and bows for battle, thanks - when samurai were no longer just the mounted warrior class, but a low nobility. Even then, something like Musashi's two-sword style was very unusual, and even he didn't usually fight duels with two weapons.

Curiously enough, the 3.0 Master Samurai PrC (Sword & Fist) did incorporate the mounted archery.

[dman11235]

You could get a link if I could find the stupid thing. I've been trying to find it for ages but I can't seem to find it again after the first time.

EDIT: And wouldn't ya know I found it just like that. All it took was a little reverse psychology on the universe. Here. I miss guessed on the classes a bit. Samurai is currently at 1.7, fighter at 3.9, and wizard at 9.6 (a little closer to what I thought it should be). Now, I agree with most of those rankings, but some of them are quite off. The monk, for example, is more powerful than that, and so is the fighter (not by much, I'd say 3.8 and 4.2 respectively). The psion is less powerful than that (about 8.2 probably) and the sorcerer ahead of it at 8.5.

[TheOOB]

Keep in mind, if you take a level 20 samurai and a level 20 warrior, both with greatswords (because the TWF ability acually makes the class worse) with similar eq and feats, they will be pretty evenly matched. The only absolute advantage a samurai has is a higher HD, and a init bonus.

[tyckspoon]

What is with samurai and TWF anyway? The katana is a two-handed sword, like the European longsword. And it wasn't a weapon of war so much as a "gentleman's" weapon in the later eras - spears and bows for battle, thanks - when samurai were no longer just the mounted warrior class, but a low nobility. Even then, something like Musashi's two-sword style was very unusual, and even he didn't usually fight duels with two weapons.

Because the daisho includes two swords even if they were more of a badge of office than weapons meant to be used together, because two swords are cooler than one, and because pop culture knows Musashi as the Japanese swordsman and he famously did practice a dual-wielding style. Similar things give us the mystical assassin ninja with even less historical basis.

[drengnikrafe]

Samuri are pretty bad.
I can say it from this experience: I built a Samuri based off of the OA build, upgraded both of his swords as far as they could go, substituted his Samuri Feats for any feat I wanted to give him, and boosted his stats to unreasonable levels (Hey, he's a Boss Character, I can cheat a little if I want), and he lost a humiliating defeat against a moderately poorly built monk 2 levels lower who had basically nothing in the way of magic equipment.

I'll repeat it in less words for emphasis. I cheated to make the samuri moderately more powerful, and he still lost a battle against a character 2 levels lower with no magic equipment.

[Frosty]

I dunno...I think the Samurai can beat the Truenamer. But it's a pretty tough call which one is weaker.

[Icewalker]

Sounds like it is worth writing up my own for my campaign world.

[tyckspoon]

I'd go with the Truenamer. Despite its problems, it's still using magical effects. That's going to be more useful than a sword in most of D&D, and it should be especially true when the comparison sword-dude is so lame.