Way of the Samurai (PFRPG) PDF (based on
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Now the enemy is arrayed against us. Now the day is at hand when we shall risk everything for our lord and master! For this, we have prepared all the days of our miserable lives. Now you shall learn what it means to be samurai! Fate is in the hands of the gods, our armor is on our breast, success is in our legs! Let us go forward without fear and may our swords find a bloody sheath before we die." —Taira Motomori to his troops at the Battle of the Six Bridges
Rite Publishing Presents: A faction guide for Kaidan and supplement for the samurai style characters designed for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game by Jonathan McAnulty (Curse of the Golden Spear Trilogy, Kobold Quarterly).
This product contains information on:
Samurai: You will find detailed information on samurai in the Kaidan campaign setting of feudal Japanese horror. Along with the nature of samurai clans you could belong to, how you deal with matters of honor and seppuku, your religious beliefs and alignment, and finally your role as a samurai adventurer.
Honor: Detailing its inherent impact on the Kaidan setting and as a mechanic providing a useful scale to measure your samurai's standing in the eyes of your peers.
Traits (9): Add depth to your samurai's background from a Legacy of Steel lending you an ancestral blade, or Practiced Calligraphy bringing your pen and sword in accord.
Gunslinger archetype: Become a teppou bushi and embrace the future of warfare, learning to use gunpowder and lead alongside your steel blades.
Paladin archetype: Choose the way of the yamabushi divine warrior-monk who draws power from the positive aspects of Yomi (the realm of the dead) and the kami.
Ranger archetype: Become a yojimbo, the face of the noble lord throughout the lord's province, traveling about
Samurai archetypes (4): Choose the way of the kuge and be born into a life of wealth, privilege, culture, art, and scholarly pursuits. Choose to disdain other pursuits, and become a nitōjutsu sensei, spending your life perfecting the art of fighting with katana and wakazashi. Choose to champions the natural world, and become a tajiya samurai dedicating your life lives to ridding the world of unnatural creatures. Alternatively, choose the way of the yabusame for while most people equate the samurai with the katana, you know that the true weapon of the samurai is the yumi, or bow.
Samurai Orders (3): Join the Order of the Shogun and swear you loyalty to him, serving to maintain order and fight those traitors who disturb the peace of the nation. Join the Order of Tajiya and learn the techniques useful against a variety of supernatural foes. Alternatively, join the Order of the Undying Emperor and serve in the Imperial court, so you can become a master of etiquette and diplomacy.
Wizard Archetypes: Choose the way of the onmyoji, the legal practitioners of the arcane arts, and become noted for your use of folded paper spell components (origami) and your relationship to the shikigami oni.
Prestige Classes (2): Become a bugyo, and gain a great deal of official authority in service to a daimyo. Alternatively, become a mosa, the elite bodyguard of the nobility, stubbornly refusing to back down, standing resolute, even in the face of overwhelming odds.
Samurai Feats (7): Now let every aspect of your character reflect the outlook of your samurai character weather you are Driven By Honor that continually inspires you to try harder or use Skillful Follow up, to allow your secondary attacks a greater chance of success.
Creating a Samurai Clan: Guidelines and rules for creating customized factions of samurai reflecting the philosophies of its daimyo, the goals of its clan head, the size of the clan, its source of income, and its influence at court.
Kawashi, samurai town: Also within you will find a fully detailed modular location, accompanied by the stellar cartography of Kaidan's creator Michael K. Tumey
Author: Jonathan McAnulty Cover Illustration by John Wigley Cartography by Michael K. Tumey Pages: 48
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I wanted to make sure to give a shout out to Will McCardell (Cheapy around here) who gave substantial help with the archetypes on this book. He had a lot of good ideas and his help made this a better product.
I just noticed this book was something of an orphan as far as categories it has been placed under. Its not even grouped in with the Rite PFRPG material. It should properly be placed in the Rite Kaidan subgroup and perhaps also in the Rite Races and Classes subgroup.
I just noticed this book was something of an orphan as far as categories it has been placed under. Its not even grouped in with the Rite PFRPG material. It should properly be placed in the Rite Kaidan subgroup and perhaps also in the Rite Races and Classes subgroup.
I could be mistaken, but I don't think the Paizo Store (software) allows to place a product in more than one category - a program oddity. #30 Haunts for Kaidan for instance is in the #30 series category and not the Kaidan category. I noticed the category glitch yesterday for Way of the Samurai and contacted Steve about (I think he needs to make the change...)
Edit: Steven knows and he'll get Liz to change it on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday).
Stellar book, awesome bang to buck ratio, great work. The long gestation period of this one seems to have worked in its advantage. :)
Reviewed here, on DTRPG and sent to GMS magazine. Cheers!
Btw.: It's still not listed as PFRPG-compatible or in teh Kaidan-section. Oo
The WGT was plain awesome and just mind-boggling! Almost no sleep, many awesome concerts, dancing like crazy and spending far too much money. I love it and am still kind of ecstatic when I think about it! :) Thanks for asking, btw.!
How useful would you say this would be with Golarion's Dragon Empires?
While there are some aspects of Kaidan mentioned in the background material of this supplement - all Kaidan supplements are designed with the purpose for use outside of, as well as within Kaidan itself.
My goal was to make Kaidan materials authentically Japanese in culture, historical aspects, and folklore. This means use of all our supplements would work well with any other Pathfinder oriental setting, including Dragon Empires of Golarian, especially Minkai.
I always knew some of our customers would be using our material for Golarian, oriental adventures, Kara-Tur, Rokushima Taiyoo (Ravenloft Japan), even "Pathfinderized" Rokugan.
All the archetypes are of established Pathfinder classes, including: gunslinger, paladin, ranger, wizard, and the samurai class.
Some minor editing issues I've run across when reading this. These don't detract from the stellar book, but I figured it'd be best to post them here in case the PDF is ever revised.
Page 32, left column, paragraph 1, line 6. "samurai gang", should probably be "samurai clan"
Page 32, left column, paragraph 1, line 10. "gang qualities" should probably be "clan qualities"
Page 32, right column, paragraph 2, line 6. "gang's alignment" should probably be "clan's alignment"
Page 35, left column, paragraph 5, line 8. "Smuggling Limits" should probably be "Import Limits"
Page 11, left column, paragraph 3, flavour text is not italicized.
Page 16, left column, 5 and 6. Font size is slightly smaller than previous paragraphs.
Page 16, right column, paragraph 1, 2, 3. Font size is slightly smaller than surrounding paragraphs
Page 16, right column, paragraph 2, second bullet point indent does not match rest of the list.
Page 17, all paragraph text. Text appears smaller than text on adjacent pages.
Page 23, right column. All paragraph text is smaller than text in left column.
Page 25, left column, heading for "Origami Caster" and "Shikigami Familiar" are on separate lines and not the same lines followed by a colon like the other class features.
Page 25, table and right column, paragraph 1. Share spells is an ability gained by the Wizard not the familiar according to the descriptive text. I believe it is standard to list this as a wizard/caster class ability and not a familiar ability.
Page 25, right column, "Regeneration", "Ability Increase" " Damage Resistance" headers are not bolded.
Page 28, missing the "Class Features" heading, and the "Weapons and Armor Proficiency". For prestige classes, even if they don't have any new proficiencies, there's normally text to that effect. See Bloatmage prestige class for an example.
Page 29. None of the flavour text for the feats is italicized.
Page 31, right column, paragraph 2. The last three lines appear to be slightly different. I'm not sure if it's just the justification or if it's a different font size or font style.
Page 35. Right column, "Guard Work", "Horses", "Mercenary Work" headers are not italicized like the other headers.
Page 36, right column. Paragraph 1, line 10, 11, 13. Need an extra space following "Jokiko", "Yoshimatako", "Import Limit"
Page 36, right column. Paragraph 2, line 10, 11, 13. Need an extra space following "Ishiobe", "Masaki", "Ishiobe", "Soun", "Import Limit"
Page 36, right column. Paragraph 3, line 10, 11. Need an extra space following "Ichiura", "Yoshisaki", "Masterweaver", "Ichiura", "Samato"
Page 46, right column, paragraph 1, first 2 lines should be deleted as they are repeats.
Page 46, sidebar. I'm guessing the Gaki helm is a cursed item, but it may be a minor artifact. You may or may not want to clarify this.
Class Skills The teppou bushi possesses Knowledge (engineering) as a class skill.
This appears to be a complete replacement of all the normal class skills given to a gunslinger. I believe that the intended wording is something like the following
Modified Class Skills wrote:
Class Skills The teppou bushi adds Knowledge (engineering) as a class skill.
Page 12, right column, 3rd paragraph, line 5. "maximum honor" should be "maximum Honor" as it is referring to the Honor mechanic which is capitalized everywhere else.
Page 16, right column, last paragraph. Bushido Master (Ex) does not have a level requirement, which means that a Yojimbo can use it at level 1. This ability also doesn't replace anything, which means that a Yojimbo gets both Master Hunter and Bushido Master. I'm guessing this ability is supposed to replace Master Hunter at level 20.
Page 17, right column, 1st paragraph. "honor" denoting the Honor mechanic is not capitalized in this paragraph, whereas elsewhere when referring to the Honor mechanic the word "Honor" is capitalized.
I'll wait a few more days, for Caedwyr to find anymore formatting errors, then I'll redo the final layout with the fixes, pass on to Steve and we should get it into the Paizo store and other distribution sites for a free update.
Page 18, right column, paragraph 1. "honor" is used several times in this sentence when it is referring to the "Honor" mechanic. Elsewhere in this book, it appears the convention is to capitalize "Honor" when referring to the mechanic.
Page 19, right column, paragraph 3 and 4. Honor is lower case here. You may want to capitalize it to be consistent, or eliminate some of the capitalizations elsewhere.
For the Onmyoji archetype, the Shikigami Bond class feature grants a Shikigami familiar. What isn't clear, is if the Shikigami familiar only gets the features listed in the pdf, or if it gets all of these features in addition to the standard familiar abilities and rules.
For example, the normal familiar gets a Natural AC adjustment on top of whatever normal AC it has. The Shikigami familiar appears have Natural AC=HD. These may work out to be the same in many cases, but I can also see it working out differently in some cases.
Also, as an aside, the Shikigami Familiar has a "Scry on Shikigami" in the table, but this feature is not listed in the text.
Also, does a Shikigami Familiar get the following abilities given to normal familiars?
Empathic Link (Su): The master has an empathic link with his familiar to a 1 mile distance. The master can communicate empathically with the familiar, but cannot see through its eyes. Because of the link's limited nature, only general emotions can be shared. The master has the same connection to an item or place that his familiar does.
Deliver Touch Spells (Su): If the master is 3rd level or higher, a familiar can deliver touch spells for him. If the master and the familiar are in contact at the time the master casts a touch spell, he can designate his familiar as the “toucher.” The familiar can then deliver the touch spell just as the master would. As usual, if the master casts another spell before the touch is delivered, the touch spell dissipates.
Wicht
Paul Watson
