The_Normal_Anomaly's page

I second the falchion for straight fighter after level 10. . .

Just posting relevant stats, as nodachi was mentioned. The nodachi is the better weapon in every relevant way. The nodachi is even still martial. It is basically the elven curve blade, but better as I doubt you will be using finesse.

Falchion 75 gp 2d4 18–20/×2 8 lbs. S No Special
link

Nodachi 60 gp 1d10 18–20/×2 8 lbs. S or P brace
link

@Majesticmoose
You didn't read up high enough in the description. It is at the end of that top chunk of writing, right before your long quote from sword saint. It is in the same location relatively that all of the special conditions on the archetypes are located.

As to the one-handed element

Sword Saint
"The following benefits apply only when a sword saint is using a sword and carrying nothing in his other hand."
Free-hand fighter
"His fighting school benefits only apply when he is using a one-handed weapon and carrying nothing in his other hand."
In the case of the free-hand fighter, if this wording did not mean that you must be one handing your weapon, you could use a one-handed weapon in two hands for all abilities other than singleton, which I believe goes against intent, if not outright writing.

It is not written in the class ability section but at the end of the fluff explaining the class it mentions: The following benefits apply only when a sword saint is using a sword and carrying nothing in his other hand.

So RAI it is not meant for 2h or TWF and only with swords.

You can't iaijutsu strike two-handed or with two weapons. However, after that first big hit, you are a regular samurai and should start two-handing your weapon or can draw your second sword. RAI here is only concerned with iaijutsu strike, and well it is a one-handed attack. Intent does not say that the sword saint needs to be one-handed only after his iaijutsu strike.

I was just being an idiot, thinking back to the Oriental Adventures iaijutsu rules. Back when you could longspear and double-bladed sword (only with one end of course) iaijutsu strike and there was no off-hand note.

Yeah, nothing in the off hand, you would have to put the two-handed weapon away then you could iaijutsu strike. Still don't NEED to drop swords. I always advocate sheathing weapons instead of dropping them if possible. I still like the idea of transitioning into two-weapon fighting because of the challenge bonus damage. Quick draw the wakizashi after you get done with your main attack.

Replacing sleep with coffee does not always end well.

God, and in the same post where I even pointed out the one handed thing. I almost should be banned.

@Boggard
I don't think it is super powered overall, hence "conditionally awesome". I like it enough to possible give it a shot at some point. I love the draw-strike-kill theme, just it is something here that must be carefully used to get maximum benefit from each challenge and iaijutsu strike.

As to the one-handed element
Sword Saint
"The following benefits apply only when a sword saint is using a sword and carrying nothing in his other hand."
Free-hand fighter
"His fighting school benefits only apply when he is using a one-handed weapon and carrying nothing in his other hand."
In the case of the free-hand fighter, if this wording did not mean that you must be one handing your weapon, you could use a one-handed weapon in two hands for all abilities other than singleton, which I believe goes against intent, if not outright writing.

With regards to drawing the weapon as part of the iaijutsu strike, I have also come to the position that the ability draws the weapon.

After making an iaijutsu strike, a sword saint takes a –4 penalty to his AC until his next turn, but his weapon is now drawn and he may continually to fight normally."

Alright, this line is what has lead me to divine intent regarding the issue. If it assumed that you used the "Draw or Sheathe a Weapon" action, it would have been a foregone conclusion that your weapon was out and you could fight normally. Since it directly states it, I would say that it does indeed draw the weapon. I might say it could have been worded a little more directly without changing the amount of page space it took up. My bad all around on that one.

I would also have to agree that switch hitting after your foe has closed the distance or attacking and then taking a move action the previous round to sheath your katana would work because it merely states that you have to choose this attack option after you have targeted a foe with your challenge ability but before you attack that targeted foe...the previous round he was just an ordinary foe...this round he is your targeted foe of your challenge which meets the requirement of Iaijutsu Strike. To me that all just makes sense.

Honestly this is the interpretation that I would probably run at my table if someone wanted to use this. It would just take too much flexability away from the ability to read it harshly. It is already a small difficulty to perform, I need not make it an even greater difficulty by not allowing him to use it if he attacked prior to the challenge. It also sidesteps problems like "If it does not begin with the challenge, can I not Iaijutsu Strike this man this evening if I shot an arrow at this man in the morning? It does not state how long I must wait since I attacked him before I can attempt to iaijutsu strike him." The challenge criteria offers a much easier to deal with time-frame.

What if you carried two swords?

Move in and attack, then drop sword 1. Challenge and iaijutsu strike rd 2?

Not sure what you are trying to get at here. Assuming that we use the challenge as basis for time regarding iaijutsu's "cannot attack before the iaijutsu strike" then you could fight him normally with your whatever weapon, then just hold it in one hand, declare your challenge, draw your wakizashi or katana for an iaijutsu strike, then drop or return the sword to the sheath and continue to fight with your first weapon. There is no overt need to drop swords. Honestly could be an interesting idea for a two weapon fighter if he were to fight with his katana two-handed, then challenge and draw his wakizashi for suprise iaijutsu damage and continue the fight Musashi style.

I wish they'd read all of the class they were modifying when they created this alternative. At least one of the alternative features replaces something that does not exist and its closest approximate feature comes in a level later.

Furthermore, I might be remembering it wrong, but I believe I remember myself being disappointed that it didn't replace all of the Samurai's mount-related features. Most of them, sure, but you still get this one ability that you're never going to use and no, you can't replace it either.
. . .

If they missed one, I can't find it. As for the mistaken ability, it looks like they were thinking Cavalier’s Charge, which would be third level. Regardless, it is fairly clear that for the samurai they intended it to replace mounted archery. I suppose there is nothing saying that the replacement abilities cannot come at different levels than the one they replace anyway. Not a terrible ruling if you were to move it to the "correct" level regardless.

. . .

Finally, it's a serviceable alternative to putting up with a mount, but it only works with one-handed weapons. Not enough. They could have done better.
. . .

I might ask what is wrong exactly with the one-handed (and light) weapons within the context of this one ability? All things considered I see that like complaining about the one-handed fighter being one-handed. This is the exact motion of which you are doing with the iaijutsu strike For the impatient this is the cleanest example from the video with none of the explanation. Fantasy game, sure is. I never want to see someone doing this with a pike or halberd. The five foot long greatsword and nodachi are also fairly inappropriate for this. The samurai gets free one-handed proficiency with the katana, which is arguably one of the best one-handed weapon out there. Your damage is coming from power attack, challenge, and iaijutsu for this strike. The base weapon is practically irrelevant, just with Brutal Slash making either a 18-20 or x4 weapon look a little stronger.

. . .

They have to have realized that people might want to play a quadrupedal Cavalier (or Samurai, for that matter). Therefore, either they intend for Centaurs riding horses to be allowed, or they included alternatives so that quadrupedal races aren't at a disadvantage when they select this class or alternate class.

I should hope that they do offer some suggestions for alternate abilities with the new characters that are very much more incomparable with mounted combat. They would have to prevent penalizing knights of these races for no particularly good reason.

That said, all classes including samurai and cavaliers (both I will call "knight" at times) are basically taking PFS play into account where you will not have quadrupeds characters at all. Both of them are classes about mounted combat, with the samurai being a more infantry take. Regardless, if you have a people who have no mounted combat, I doubt they would have mounted combat classes. If they do not have a feudal structure to boot, they are less likely to have knights. Within the game setting both of these classes are the products of humanoid society. Not that I am going to seriously sit here and say that it would be correct to just shaft the quadrupeds, but there is a case to be made that thematically it is not required to give them a replacement ability.
The game should take into account many different play styles, but it will probably be assumed that if you do something well outside of PFS guidelines, it is up to you to make fixes as needed.

Thanks for the links Maxximilius. That gives me at least a decent idea regarding intent.

Perhaps the issue of archetype/alternate class interactions merits its own thread? Just wanting to avoid the risk of a thread jacking. Should more research be needed in that regard, it would get appropriate attention in another thread.
Past that, in my looking none of the cavalier archetypes really matter terribly much for this anyway. The number of different orders could affect it though, and attention may be merited with the relation to the cavalier orders, which are very much open game for the samurai.

Iaijutsu seems deadly when combined with Quick Draw.

. . .

Thank you for writing this, it actually points something out to me that is super important. Quick draw is not only deadly, it is required prior to level three.

If you don't take quick draw, you cannot take the full round action to do the swing because you cannot draw the weapon as part of the attack, and the weapon must be in the sheath at the beginning of the turn you use iaijutsu strike! You would have to draw your weapon the round prior in order to take a full attack, but then your weapon will not have started the turn in the sheath! *Insane laugh* At level three, you get Weapon Expertise (Ex) and are thereafter able to draw your selected weapon as a free action, thus resolving the problem. And creating another . . .

My goodness . . .

. . .

EDIT: Could it be used with a Greatsword or other two-hander?

No, but any one-handed or light sword will work for reasons detailed farther down, but you won't get the fighter feats with most of those other weapons because of Weapon Expertise being an important part of the samurai class. Your practically optimal options are katana or wakizashi, with katana being the better choice overall.

Aelryinth wrote:

There is no restriction on the ability for one handed weapons. Technically, you could do it with a tetsubo.

===Aelryinth

And you can put that tetsubo or whatever in any magical scabbard that is not exclusively for blade weapons.

It must be a sword by RAW from the opening text . . .

"The following benefits apply only when a sword saint is using a sword and carrying nothing in his other hand."

"A sword saint can perform a lightning quick iaijutsu strike against the target of his challenge to inflict devastating wounds while drawing his sword."

And further, the note about nothing being in the other hand, the exact same wording used on the one-handed fighter archetype to prevent two-handing, seems to indicate that you get no two-handed power attack on the iaijutsu strike either. I was mistaken earlier when I figured that in. I suppose that at least you are not forced to one-hand after the iaijutsu strike.

This just keeps getting better as I keep reading it.

I would like to say that iconic iaijutsu strike is indeed one handed, and my goodness sanity would force me to house rule out naginata and tetsubo iaijutsu. Sure some iaijutsu works two handed, but the most iconic form that this is going for is one handed and I am fine with that. I don't want to be seeing nodachi and greatsword and double bladed sword draw strikes. So overall, kudos on clamping down on the Oriental Adventures nonsense of trying to see who can make the most absurd draw-strike character. The whole thing could use a revision, but context wise it is a lot tighter to theme.

<Edit: Fixed some self-contradiction and added even more text, in addition to some formatting revision.>

Note: I know it never says that it must be a katana, but we all know it is meant for taishou Katana-sama. So instead of saying sword I will say katana.

I like it, though will probably house-rule that weapon expertise can sheathe a chosen weapon as a free action too so that the setting up the the iajutsu-strike-starts-with-weapon-sheathed part isn't such a giant action-economy time waster.

If you are going to do that, you may as well just write out the whole bit of forcing it to be sheathed first instead. Cut out the middleman, save yourself some time and fix the real "problem". Indeed, that would functionally be the better plan, as it prevents players from asking if they can also free action sheath to prevent disarms and sunders and all kinds of other nonsense that could come up. I give it ten minutes before you have to houserule how many times in a round Katana-sama can draw and sheath his blade.

What are you gonna do? Rd1, Challenge BBEG, move in and smack for big damage. He hits you back. Rd 2 full attack.

Or
Challenge bad guy. Walk up and do nothing or use Antagonise to get him to come to you. Either way RD1= 0 damage.
Rd 2 iautsu strike.

Not a terrible assessment, but missing one component. You can challenge immediately prior actually making the iaijutsu strike, as challenge is a swift action. Depending on your reading of the rules, if you have the confidence you could even fight the enemy for a few rounds, then the round before you make the iaijutsu strike you do this.

Because it is the cheapest +7 Armor bonus one can get? Really that is the only reason to pick it out of the other heavy armors. Other than that, you got random loot and this was in it and you were looking for some heavy armor, but didn't have any. Oh, because it is cheapest, it is the fastest to produce if you need to make some from scratch and are on a short schedule.

Reading above posts. I need to post faster. Regardless, these are indicative of the answers you will get.

*deleted a weird double-post.*

Iai strike
Get free bonus damage, provided that you challenge your opponent and this full round action from the sheath must be your first attack against the opponent. Can only be used against the target once a day, and you can only make one iai swing per challenge. In return you suck up a bad AC penalty. Cool, conditionally awesome, but lackluster overall.
Gets better at level 10, but really it just makes it easier to perform. The structural problems of its very limited use are still present

Best thing about this is that it helps prevent the constantly sheathing nonsense that was the Oriental Adventures Iaijutsu Master. This is just the spiritual follow up to that prestige.

Never was a fan of "Draw sword = Moar power" which is this in a nutshell.

Brutal Slash
They didn't want to say that you automatically confirm threats on iai strikes, but that is basically what they are shooting for here. With the +2 from weapon expertise and +4 for the critical focus you probably are going to take, you win at confirmation.

Terrifying Iaijutsu
Shaken condition helps offset your AC penalty, and help cause saves to fail against your critical feats and abilities.

Roaring Iaijutsu
"lol whut?"
I dislike the thematic that my sword strike is so loud that it deafens everyone within 30ft. Though loud noises are selective and as such only enemies are effected. Regardless, it is a nifty area of effect debuff.

Overall.
It should have gotten the weapon master's weapon training, maybe borrow some other abilities from it and/or the kensai magus. As is, you give up the mount and all of the tactical advantage that it brings (when you can use it, of course) and you also lose the ability to prevent TPK through the party being routed by fear effects or compulsion/dominate taking over people. All of this is given up to let you take a shot at hitting the upper end of spike damage/debuff potential. With critical mastery, you can be looking at potentially dealing four debuffs at one time. Deafened, shaken, exhausted, stunned for example. Follow up with warrior order Strike True if you have it for a fifth condition like blind (and if you failed to critical before, probably will here). Within two turns you can nullify one combatant. Add to that the damage dealt from weapon spec+two handed power attack+challenge+iai strike damage and you have a master spiker. In a world with the printed variant called shot rules, this guy gets even more fatal. Same goes if using massive damage rules.

If using the ronin order instead, then chosen destiny gives him a 100% certain chance of hitting, and threatening with one iaijutsu strike. Without master gives him a virtual automatic confirmation with regard to a naturally threatening iaijutsu strike.

Balanced?

Pickelhaube (Helmet Spike)
+10gp, +5 lb., Exotic two-handed melee piercing weapon, 1d8, 20/x3
Added to armor, treated as being wielded with two hands even though it requires no hands to use.

If not, what would you change?

Ookay, my answer will be threefold.

Point 1: This

Point 2:

Yeah, to be correctly balanced you would be looking at either a 1d8/x2 or 1d6/x3 without your two-handed thing (THT) I personally weigh the THT as two regular special abilites due the odd nature of it and how combat effective it makes it compared against the spikes. To get your THT chucked in there with the undisarmable characteristic of the armor spike, you basically are looking at 1d3 20/x2 (I support the 1d3 one more than others) or if you are feeling generous or somehow nerf the THT then 1d4 20/x2.

(Make the thing disarmable and keep the THT, my suggestion is 1d6 20/x2)

Next for regular balance, it must be more expensive for being exotic in almost all cases (ignore the kama)
Just ballpark the cost at +75 gp. It should probably be at least 50 gp.

Point three:
Look up the barbazu beard weapon. This is very much more what a helmet spike would work like.

Final notes
It is over the power curve. The THT is an odd mechanic, one that I frankly dislike. I might almost say to add a note like "does not work for feats and such" to kinda be in line with the raiper's finesse tradeoff of no two handed benefit. Honestly, with the 1d3 20/x2 with your THT mechanic in place might not be the worst thing on earth, and I would be okay with the thing more fully if it was made unable to power attack. Overall though, as presently written it is too much in general.

By the way, where is that trait called "sword scion"?

Didn´t see it before and couldn´t find it.

Here is the relevant info

A quote from my incredibly long-winded posts about katana and finesse, in which I break down at least one possible (but IMO decently described) philosophy for the application of finesse.

Basically if you gain real appreciable benefit from two-handing the weapon, it isn't within the guidelines for weapon finesse. Weapon finesse is a component of a weapon's construction in the case of combat effective weapons (ala rapier) or else gets to be a broad option for light sidearms and a number of small, easily weaponized tools.

As for the quarterstaff and spears, I suspect that a finessable selection of either would be doable (balanced against the curve blade in concept, as much as I dislike the weapon's concept). Just drop down the damage dice one step, add finesse and have fun. The printed spear and quarterstaff are more of the anglo-saxon thick, hefty oak implements rather than the lighter flexible bamboo spears or thin rattan staffs that come to mind for finesse.

Further, to the OP

Just like other quick and stabbing weapons (and yes, you can 'stab' with a quarterstaff), spears and staves benefit just as much from lightning-fast strikes and stabs as from brute strength, and are as much a finesse weapon as a dagger or rapier. Now, not all spears should be finesse (a boar spear or lance is just too heavy and awkward to be an 'accurate' weapon), but short and regular spears (and maybe even longspears) definately should be finesse-able.

Finesse is not giving you lightning fast attacks, it is just letting you use your "agility in melee combat, as opposed to brute strength" or otherwise put, it is making your "agility, reflexes, and balance" replace your "muscle and physical power" for the purpose of landing melee attacks that can deal damage, though still not as effectively as pure "physical power" in that you will have less damage. More or less, you are now aiming around armor rather than powering through it.

I might ask why the boar spear is too ungainly to be used finesse, but the longspear (A.K.A. The Pike) would. That boar spear probably is more agile than a full sized pike.

@ cranewings

I will restate the main thrust of my personal offering to this. What will determine how women warriors are armed and how they fight is purely a social construct with only the barest nod to physical differences.
So consider the social circumstances of wherever your female fighters are operating in.

If there is zero social stigma regarding women training as combatants in the same way that men have no social stigma, then you will get them as a whole just choosing one of the most effective weapon for their circumstances and getting good with it. If they just need to defend themselves from thugs, daggers. Soldiers get pole arms and maces and swords etc.

In a vacuum, without deeply ingrained social forces having ever affected the circumstances, a woman would be able to make a dandy boxer against a man. Whatever differences are present from sex, they are many magnitudes less important than who is the better fighter.

Basically just write them up however you like, but don't expect it to be really grounded in gender. Just go ahead and don't give them power attack and cleave. If you are asking what is realistic, well . . . power attack is what warriors would do, regardless of gender.

A tiny reach weapon would only have a reach of 5 ft, not 10ft.

For all practical purposes agreed. Truth be told, I was remembering a time that I used a small longspear in 3.5 to cheese out a reach weapon duelist. That is why I had that idea at all. Granted, you can do some mental backflips and get it to work from the text, but common sense rules my honest thinking here. I was just trying to give some kind of idea regarding this. Basically it was an off the cuff "You deal with sucky stats, you get exactly what you want RAW(ish)"

Otherwise best I can say is just invent an exotic weapon version of Guisarme. Two/three choices then, depending on importance of strength to the character.

Make it exotic.
Then pick one of the following.
A: Add the finesse line AND no bonus damage from two-handing line from the rapier.
B: Lower the damage to 1d6 and just add finesse, but leave the strength to damage from two-handing alone.
C: Say to yourself that all of the APG and UC weapons overall are better than their basic counterparts, with no tradeoff (Darn all those little odd bonuses making it more difficult to juggle weapon comparison). Just add finesse and be done with it.

I've heard the term "Elven Thinblade" thrown around a couple times. Is there any mention of it in a pathfinder setting, or was it lost in the transfer between 3.5 and pathfinder as the cutless was?

The fluff is certainly copyrighted. In fact, I always got the impression that the weapon was more about the fluff than anything else.

The statistics of essentially any weapon without some crazy specific rule tacked on can be gained independently. I mean, just playing musical numbers from the base equipment list lends the following.

Really, all the thinblade is was this type of thing with some special elven social fluff. If you want it for society play, good luck, otherwise just add it or something like it back in.

1. First a general question: Is there a finessable polearm reach weapon?

Or a reach weapon at all except the whip?

Perhaps something like this:

Ji/Ge Dagger-Axe

with the trip weapon quality?

Or a staff weapon like a quarterstaff, but maybe longer, finessable?

I´m thinking on something like monkey kung fu style with this weapon, where you use it to lunge and jump and trip around you.
The character in question would be a 3/4 BAB DEX.

2. Then another question:
With the upcoming pirate stuff, what would or could serve as a cutlass?
And should it also be finessable?

Tiny size Guisarme. Kinda a crappy solution because it has a built in -4 for being the wrong size, but you get a finesseable reach pole arm with trip. Sure, it deals 1d4 and it is dumb, but that is the main way you get to do it, outside some special magic. If you were willing to fight with that penalty, I would let you get the reach on it.

Cutlass is a scimitar, possibly just add the one-handed rule from the rapier and finesse. Scimitar is the generic saber the game offers, so I would tend to work from that.
Otherwise, I second the slashing shortsword.

I allow charge attacks to be resolved with vital strike feats. I was looking at a build I was working on for a mounted character, and the lance and spirited charge feats multiply damage on a charge. How would you rule this interacts with the vital strike damage? does only the base damage get multiplied on the charge from these abilities, or would the vital strike damage as well?

You do not multiply extra damage dice from vital strike. Not opinion, you never multiply damage dice other than the original base dice. Basically just tack the bonus roll on after you do the spirited charge damage.

Edit: I found the rule

Multiplying Damage: Sometimes you multiply damage by some factor, such as on a critical hit. Roll the damage (with all modifiers) multiple times and total the results.

Note: When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage. So if you are asked to double the damage twice, the end result is three times the normal damage.

Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon's normal damage are never multiplied.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/combat.html#multiplying-damage

Also, the author of this thread might not be aware of this, but your character's gender doesn't have to match their sex. You can have a female barbarian who is a man's man personality-wise, or you can have a male elven wizard who thinks she is the most beautiful girl at the ball.

Somewhere along the lines (At least here in Americaland) the terms gender and sex got turned into the same word. Some dictionaries even back up the lack of distinction.

English is a grand fiasco.

I got thinking about this reading the "Character Gender / Game Play" thread. If I were going for realism in a setting, what sort of fighting can women excel in to a point where they can kill men and monsters?

. . .

You know what, for some reason I was inclined to stay away from the thread, but I think I know now how to give a decent enough example to deal with the OP. I will just give some notes, as I am inclined to actually read the full article. It is fairly well done, overall. Certainly some hearsay and possible bias is in there, but better than a lot of similar writings. I will add italics and bold for emphasis of ideas I find particularly relevant. Mabey add some links inside too.

What do we gather from this. From the OP's "realism" women would be primarily geared for self-defense. Spears and bows for defense of the community and themselves, a last resort knife to either kill an enemy or oneself to prevent rape. There is your real-world realism.

Really, it all is a social issue. Does the society say that greatsword fighting is womens work, then that land will probably have produced some fine greatsword using women. If there is a social class of women expected to take a level of warrior, they will produce more female warriors of skill.

Really though, in a larger context, spears and bows is what EVERYONE . . . EVERYWHERE took to doing. Massed arrow volleys and reach weapons in clusters are the best way for about any regular group of low end npcs to deal with men and monsters alike.

@ cranewings
*cough*CalledShotRules*cough*

That is what he is talking about.

Near as I can tell, called shots don't become really super effective until you have at least the chance to deal 50 damage and get that "devastating" effect. Other than that, get yourself a high threat range weapon (I suggest hijacking the stats for a khukri and just calling it a stiletto. It fits within the weapon statistic precedent for this to be okay. Next get it keened or get improved crit) Also, you do not want to make more than one called shot in a round. That -5 is on top of your regular downgrade in following attack. If you want your multiple called shots with the two called shot feats, you are looking at a +6/+1 becoming a +8/-9. That is bad.

Aim for the chest first, then vitals, then heart or neck as you get better attack bonuses. Your goal is to inflict bleed conditions or raw stat damage Put simple, you want to hit and the really good targets make you miss attacks a lot. Hold off on them until later in level or you get to flank a flat-footed unarmed man without armor.

I'll give you the short version. Heavy armor lets you soak a lot of hits, but you get hit more often. So you can ignore commoners with daggers, but you are more likely to get hit. So if something deals a boatload of damage, you are in more danger. It was fun, but heavy armor looks worse and worse when you get into late game. If an enemy can deal 50 damage and you stop eight, it is not really a cool trade. AC pays off better when the damage numbers start to get high. Monsters with high damage full attacks will flatten you. Against common, low end enemies and monsters it rocks.

A link to a related thread

They already get the AC from the armour to compensate. DR3 for plate doesnt sound like much but a) It adds up - thats one of the reasons the Invulnerable Rager is so popular b) Its E6, the maximum amount of HD is 6. Too high a DB makes it too effective.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/variants/armorAsDamageRed uction.html

You do not get the AC from armor under the rule being bantered about. The full balance of AC that would ordinarily be gained instead becomes DR. As such, you are trading the ability to avoid damage for the ability to negate a portion of damage. Also, as DR is no help against energy damage it is in part a little more dangerous as you can be hit more easily with some energy effects. Rogues also see a huge increase in damage output, as their strikes will be landing far and away more frequently than normal.

Well, lets see. How many other brushes can I beat/stab people to death with? I mean, it is a calligraphy brush that deals damage and counts as a weapon. It is seven kinds of "not a real combat weapon" but at the same time, using this thing for calligraphy is just one of those "I am always prepared to fight" things. Kind of like keeping a club on hand when bathing.

Other than that, Ravingdork is right. Just take any weapon, and look at its eastern counterpart and it will be better, even if they deign to make it cost an exotic feat to use. I kid, I kid, about everything other than the nodachi/greatsword, and tetsubo/greatclub.

On page 134 of UC, a little sidebar mentions 3 eastern weapons that are equivalent to standard weapons found in the Core Rulebook. Two of these weapons, the daikyu and the hankyu, are the equivalents of the longbow and shortbow, respectively. Does anybody out there know, whether they are a developer or an eastern weaponry buff, if these weapons have composite counterparts?

Yeah, composite version is legit here.

Teh Wikipedias (Scholarly no, but serviceable for now)
"Traditionally made Japanese yumi are also laminated long bows, made from strips of wood: the core of the bow is bamboo, the back and belly are bamboo or hardwood and hardwood strips are laminated to the bows sides to prevent twisting." It might not be horn and sinew, but composite it is.

For that matter, frankly, the lot of the Japanese bows would be composite, even if they are +0 strength rating. So looking at more expensive bows as a whole for a little bonus on range.

Regular longbow and short bow are self-bows. Just shaped staves of wood with a string on them. Composite generally is lacquered with multiple materials present. These meet that requirement.

to put it shorter, just because they don't have the same name, the might not stack depending on your GM.

At the risk of dickery, I will try to clarify my post.

If sneak stab actually replaced sneak attack, then I would fully agree, however the sneak stab mechanic does not do that.

The core element is sneak attack as per rogue.

Dice are further granted through the assassin class, as per rogue.

There is no distinction rules-wise between sneak attack gained from either source.

Sneak stab does not replace or remove sneak attack. The ability works alongside sneak attack and modifies damage done by the existing sneak attack ability. Therefore, sneak attack damage pooled from multiple sources does indeed still function as per sneak stab guidelines.

When I play female characters however, since I am not female, it actually requires me to engage in the roleplaying aspect of the game more fully since they can't very well be an avatar of my male self.

Maybe it's a personal failing on my part, but I just find that I'm able to breathe life into the character as a separate being more naturally when they are not the same gender as me.

*In all honesty, I am talking about men playing as women. Had a female player once, and her characters were consistently slutty bards. As such, she will not be used

I have seen it work quite differently depending on who is playing the opposite gender*. For instance, one fellow actually went out of his way to play the most bland character he could. I suspect it was not out of some negative view of women, just not knowing what to do. The lot of my gaming group will essentially only play out a female character as far as to describe a possible mate, and even then they are fairly asexual.

I do remember at one time running a female character and it was almost impossible for the guys to keep the pronouns right. After that got sorted out, I still remember probably the most gender specific point being during the incarceration of a guy. (d20 modern, police/swat type theme) Rape was threatened against my character, and in response the party felt keen to *ahem* deprive him of civil liberties. Really though, in my groups the goal seems to be to treat the female party member as one of the guys.

A small ramble on this follows to a degree possibly off topic. As such, shoved in spoilers.

So, I have a question, I am building a knifemaster assassin (I know, its for fun) and Im wondering, the Knifemaster gets the d8's for sneak attack, does that apply to any multiclass with Sneak attack too? or are theirs still d6's.

Say... Elf rogue 5 assassin 1, Would his sneak attack with a dagger be 4d8, or 3d8 +1d6?

Quote the Assassin

Quote the knifemaster
Sneak Stab (Ex): A knife master focuses her ability to deal sneak attack damage with daggers and similar weapons to such a degree that she can deal more sneak attack damage with those weapons at the expense of sneak attacks with other weapons. When she makes a sneak attack with a dagger, kerambit, kukri, punching daggers, starknife, or swordbreaker dagger (Advanced Player's Guide 178), she uses d8s to roll sneak attack damage instead of d6s. For sneak attacks with all other weapons, she uses d4s instead of d6s. This ability is identical in all other ways to sneak attack, and supplements that ability.

Reading the above, you get sneak attack dice as normal, and it gets filtered through sneak stab which modifies the damage dice. So your assassin sneak attack follows the sneak stab rules, as does sneak attack from any source.

Knife master rogue mixed with Cad fighter? Either that or swap out the Cad variant for the Brawler variant. As far as level, don't know as I would take him all the way out to level 20. He is a pretty hardcore dude, but hardly breaking into the extreme power present at 20. At level 20 your martial types are cutting through iron doors without need of magical gear. As a ballpark I would probably camp him around level 10 as a high guess.
Just remember that a lot of his awesome comes from fighting in the dark. Miss chances really skew combat in your favor if you can ignore the dark and they cannot.

nice ideas all.

I like the idea that pierce gets a minimum to get through. also really like the idea of finess weapons lowering the DR bassed on their attack.

[. . .]

I am looking at a few ideas but what i think i will do is apply rules for blunts, pierce, light slash (swords) and heavy slash (axes)

I will try to make them simple and easy to remember but different enough to encourage players to focus on one type or another as a prefference.

light slash for example will probably be the baseline. all is normal.

pierce will have a system of penetrating armor.

blunt will have a system of overcoming armor with raw str bonus damage.

and axes will possibly work more like blunts than swords.

Sorry for the Wall Of Text behavior that I have. Just some other ideas

It takes a super heavy duty slashing weapon to deal with basically any armor made of metal. You basically are trying to club someone to death by slashing at them in their armor. Depending on the armor certainly, you would have to aim slashes at open points in the armor, as you will not be slicing through mail, metal lamellar or the king of them all, plate. Greatswords would be in the class of weapon to possibly get some kind of killing blow through some kind of armor. Plate is basically invincible. Put another way, the armor will be fine even if the blow kills the wearer. To try to blade through metal armor basically needs something supernatural, be it magic swords or metahuman strength.
Put another way, if you deal damage with a common slashing weapon against plate armor or mail, it will be non-lethal. With the great sword, it gets to deal lethal damage if damage gets through at all.
Leather armor pretty much gets hacked through fairly well in comparison, and would not negate attacks to so strong a degree.

Piercing attacks become the solution to armor largely because they can be more accurately guided into the weak points in armor, in the case of thrusting with swords, or else being so much more strongly able to penetrate plate and punch through mail in the case of picks and spears. Greatswords are quite devastating thrusting weapons, essentially filling the role of can opener. In this class of weapon, I would almost say depending on the weapon it can either ignore a portion of the DR or get the option to treat the armor as AC again and deal full damage through the armor. A spear might punch through the armor, a "rapier" will need to get thrust into the armpit or some other lightly armored area. Without authority, I suspect a lot of combat axes do fit into this category, as axes for war are very much thinner than felling axes. Something thicker like a tree felling axe might be treated closer to the below.

Bludgeoning weapons just shock right through whatever you are wearing. Leather is not terribly helpful against a mace. A mail coif will not keep your skull from getting cracked open. Bracers will not prevent your forearms from being shattered. Against bludgeoning one needs padding. A certain degree of padding is assumed in about every kind of armor, but really it is quite hard to negate a strong war hammer strike.

Youtube resources of interest.
Arrow penetration vs. plate armor

Dealing with armor in melee. Notice the individual half-swording to penetrate the plate.

[. . .]

I am wondering how things work for they hybrids. in other words how this effects heavy armor users and how it effects heavy dodge users seems pretty clear... but how does it effect those that wear medium armor and get say +3 dex bonus and DR3. do they tend to fall below the curve or rise above it?

Well, look at it this way. He is able to shug off the mild amount of damage he takes from regular strikes, while still retaining the ability to occasionally avoid all damage. Mr. Fullplate infantry does not stand much chance against a lancer with spirited charge. Mr. Medium Armor has a much better shot of not getting penetrated by a lance. Hefty armor allows longer lifespan against low end attacks at the expense of ability to avoid those extreme damage attacks. Medium armor is a good compromise for an adventurer. Also bear in mind touch attacks. Mr. Fullplate may rethink his life after being the target of disintegrate.

I have some experience running d20 modern under the raw Armor as DR (A/DR) with the class scaling AC bonus. Notes on the results.

It can create a different feeling to how the game operated. It was very interesting having the armored guy basically being immune to low end weaponry. Grenades and spells and the like still ruin his day, but average small arms fire was no longer a potentially fatal threat. One solution to the invulnerability was an reworked rule on armor piercing weaponry that they could deal a certain portion of damage through the armor. In this case, armor piercing bullets were certain to at least deal 2 damage. This constantly ticking up damage did a lot to curb the behavior of attempting to tank a horde of mooks. My own character was a lightly armored grappler and power attack melee combatant. Of note, it quickly became apparent that power attack is even more important here than in regular Armor as AC land.

Options for Pathfinder I might suggest is let pierce a flat minimum through armor, and have blunt do some negation of a portion of armor or else the flat damage through armor. Blunt weapons already as a general rule deal subpar damage, it would be a boon to the class of weapon for it to have some kind of armor penetration. Consider that maces were some of the foremost weapons for dealing with armored combatants.

Looking at it another way, slashing has to deal with full armor, pierce can penetrate mail but struggles with plate, bludgeons care least about what armor you wear. In the case of slashing and pierce, worse armor penetration is the cost you pay for better critical ranges and multipliers. (Ultimate combat eastern weapons Tetsubo breaks the pattern notably.) And lets not forget energy enchants ignore the DR.

As for rules creep, I always found such things fun when implemented well. If the players are game for it, give it a shot. What is the worst that will happen, mid campaign erasing DR and putting it back in AC?

I suspect that you were thinking of the 3.5 wording regarding range inc.

From the Hypertext SRD

"Range Increment
Any attack at less than this distance is not penalized for range. However, each full range increment imposes a cumulative -2 penalty on the attack roll. A thrown weapon has a maximum range of five range increments. A projectile weapon can shoot out to ten range increments."

As others have stated, one can use 10' Range weapons at 10' with no penalty.
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Yeah, the main idea is that thrown weapons are garbage but at least you get to add your str to damage.

Throwing weapons very directly are tiered into good and bad, with most of them being bad. Ordered by Throwing range>Base Damage(where lethal>nonlethal)>Critical>Cost>Weight we get a chart something like this. (I seem to remember reading somewhere that all weapons get thrown one-handed but that could be a 3.5 ruling, so handedness is a non-issue right now.) APG included (Others in parentheses). Best to worst.

Basically, thowing weapons can be decent as long as you get your quickdraw and use Javelins, Spears, or Chakrams. Looking at what is in the low range thrown catagory, totem spear and below, those are simply not great weapons in general. For lack of a better way to describe it, they suck and were meant to suck. Shuriken is the only low end throwing weapon to really stand up to combat use . . . by monk flurry only. For everyone else, shuriken are just there to save you the quickdraw but are virtually not worth taking the proficencey. Those low end thrown weapons for the most part are just there so you can have the threat of a ranged attack, so you can say "I might hit you with this junk I am holding." Either that or to give an extra attack to characters who otherwise would not get to attack.

(Aside)We kinda like to think of shuriken as awesome weapons, but you basically are just throwing thin five-inch nails at people. The club is a more threatening weapon really 90% of the time. Brick or small metal disk. If I happen to have on a leather jerkin I would probably be protected from the tiny metal disk, but that brick will still crack some ribs.

The barbarian probably gets the best milage out of thrown weapons (big suprise) because of the automatic str-to-damage they offer, allowing him to kick butt at a short distance regardless of if he could actually move to the target (like flying stuff). Damage output still strongly favors melee, like always.

We had an encounter in a 10'x10' bedroom... and half the party had to wait in the hall... It was KIND of insane ;)

Sounds like my kind of encounter.

Really though, there are a handful of notes about terrrain that could be applicable here.

"Phalanx Fighting (Ex): At 3rd level, when a phalanx soldier wields a shield, he can use any polearm or spear of his size as a one-handed weapon. This ability replaces armor training 1."

Keep in mind it isn't just a spear. He could have a glaive or halberd if he wanted as a one-handed weapon. For the best synergy with brace, longspear even works. So it isn't like it is just the spear alone.

But that´s now RAW, RAW is two slighty different/over-lapping sets of criteria for when 2H dmg bonus is applied, that is worded such that 2H Category weapons always gain the damage bonus no matter how they are wielded.

Mounted lancers will be overjoyed.

Fun an relevant thread link time!
Help Me Construct a Smart Fighter
and a direct link to my post where I call out most of the terrain modifiers.
Self-promotion

Lessee here.

I think the rest of your questions would be more or less self-explanitory. Just a fun thought though, for an all mounted team, Mounted Archery is good if you have the room to make use of it.

In my own games at some point we started playing less like superheroes and more like commandos so cover and lighting became more important. A casterless party can work for some campaign styles, and provided you make an effort of it you can take on greater threats without ever even placing yourself into real danger many times depending on what you are attacking. Making use of concealment keeps you safe from many diffrent attacks, and cover is great for helping your survive fireballs and things like that. Smart terrain use is probably strong enough to be worth a few magic items by itself.

Because I am a total nerd without restraint, this may become another LONG POST. I understand that you are doing your own gameworld, but I will probably still use relevant terms to claymore. You started it.

Templates are your friend. Near as I can tell the full range of martial classes (and some limited use of magic ones) could be represented by the various Claymores, so I would not suggest that you restrict them to all being one class.

Okay, given those, there are a few diffrent alternatives possible with just these. If you are going to keep it all low-end without any awakened beings or voracious eaters, the advanced template does what you are looking for, as well as starting pumped up a few levels from Organization training. Using the quick rules, you get a +2 to skill checks, attack rolls, damage rolls, +4 to AC making you naturally more durable, and +2 more hp per level. Sounds like the exact makings of a super soldier project to me.

If you are looking for something more complex and high powered. Give everyone two to five (pick one based on power level of game) free outsider hit-dice. Even a couple hit-dice of outsider can make them soundly better than many humans and able to take on monsters that their aparrent class level would not suggest they do. When they awaken but don't go darkside, slap the advanced template on them. When they go voracious eater, have some fun mixing and matching with that. Templates of interest . . .

Okay. Claymore was a low magic world for the most part. They were still fighting mid to high magic monsters. Claymores get rage to compensate. All of them. Probably give them a +10 ft movement speed as well as some really minor fast healing (1 per minute) that bumps up during rage (1 per round). As for rage, if you wanted it, you can rage past your limit in the day, just start making willsaves vs. going darkside. It is a bad thing to rage past your limit, like having a frenzied beserker in the party.

Last bit. Having left all of the classes available, we still have all of the claymores as possible characters without having to reinvent the wheel to put talents back into the game to give them their signature things. Deneve gets to be the two-weapon warrior fighter/barbaran. Irene gets to be the weapon master fighter/(small dip)rogue. You get the idea. Almost all of them would probably be two-handed fighters by default.

Good luck with you efforts and thanks if you read that rambling.

You ever have one of those instances where you can't think of a good houserule a guy used in game?(Yo, if you read this man, you already knew how I felt.)

d20 Modern.
Moved to the Star Wars vitality/wounds system. If you are not familiar, I would give it a look some time. I happen to like the system, but this needs to be understood for moving forward.

All of our skills were rewritten (Go Go Super Action DM Custom Sheet!) so that broad, unrelated skills were tied together. Did you know that Driving a car, riding a horse, and piloting a helicopter are really all the same? Almost all the wisdom based skills were left alone for some reason.

Instead of doing skill points, he did "trained points" which I am told were like 4th edition. Putting a rank into the skill got you a flat +5 to the skill, and you can spend a second point for a +3 for a total of +8 base. You can only put a point into a class skill, the other skills were just banned for you unless you multiclass. Everyone had almost every one of his super condensed class skills trained at least. I just grabbed languages after I filled up every remotely useful skill I could. Indeed I had more points than I had skills to put them in.

Half-Level to EVERYTHING. To saves, to AC, to all skill checks, to initiative, to everything but attack rolls. d20 Modern has a class bonus to AC, so this half-level was added on top of that. d20 Modern has very few full attack bonus progression classes, so attack rolls tend to be lower naturally than D&D. He didn't seem to understand what I meant when I said that it would kill high level play, because AC and Saves would have rocketed for everyone, even leveld mooks, well above anything that checks against them like attack rolls and explosion Reflex saves. (As a side note, because of this Two-weapon fighting and grapple was king. Winning relied on putting out more attack rolls than the other guy, so twf was a big help. Grapple, provided you hit the touch attack, let you ignore the stupid high AC.)

(Ended up having level one and two kids being better roboticists and physicists than life long professors.)

Changed the Armor as DR that comes with the vitality/wounds system. He made it so that armor DR applied to your vitality instead of your wounds.

No critical confirmation. If you rolled a threat, it is an auto-hit, auto-critical. The damage goes directly to the wound points instead of being multiplied (as per normal v/w), which are equal to your Con score. The DR that is supposed to save your wounds was not there because of the previous rule. As most firearms are doing between 2d6 to 2d10 damage, you can see how it essentially became a bit of an instant death machine when fighting large numbers of people.

So with all of the above, let me paint a picture of a combat. Five orcs with shotguns against the three man party. Both sides have an obscene AC compared to the present attack bonuses because of that half-level and class bonus to AC. As both sides have DR too from their armor, what hits that do land are less harsh. One player got hit with a crit and falls into the negatives, from almost full hp to two stabilization rolls till perma dead. Essentially, continue the combat untill one side criticals everyone on the other side. It made for exceedinly long, stupid combat. With the half-level to saves, grenades were not even a good option to shorten the fight.

Another rule, one that has a more subtle effect on the game. Had went into a building to disarm a bomb with a timer on it. The bomb went off mid combat, and I was tracking my six second rounds. I was all "WTH MAN?" and he responded that rounds were now 30 seconds to make combat "more cinematic." No other adjustmet was made to the rounds, so you move the same speed in 30 seconds that you do in six, and you attack the same number of times that you do in six.

Did I mention that half of this came out during the middle of a session?

Forum monster ate my post. This is the annoyed second draft.

ok maybe not the last one but it got your attention

soo been reading the stuff on guns and the whole ignoreing armor within so many feet. soo heres my idea how to work them.
Have armor hardness apply as DR for bullets instead of adding to ac. only problem i see here is fullplate (and reinforced steel armoers) will kill gun damage. still it should fit if you think about it steel plates would slow down the little lead ball as its trying to shred your soft humany skin. leather would do next to nothing but still shave off a point or 2.

Using that reasoning, Armor is DR against essentially all attacks. The whole point with giving guns the touch attack was to make them suck less than crossbows.

I am going to assume that you mean give the Armor's AC bonus as DR against firearms. If you indeed mean its hardness, then fullplate would be a DR 10 armor, as it is steel.

hmm alternativly you could have the AC bonus work as DR aginst guns instead then dragons nat armor would be a b#!!+ to penetrate. then give the gun figther the feats to help (penetrating shot or something) or maybe Armor peirceing ammo cut hardness in half or reduce it by a certain amount. so it would be like thouch attack then the heavy armor softens the blow like how bullet proof vests work. seems realistic at least. you could also add an ability to hit regular AC and call it something like "shoot at the squishy part". for when you aim at the dragons eye or soft underbelly where that one scale is missing.

Well, that dragon natural armor number goes up a little stronger than the gunslinger's damage. Sure the gunslinger has some tricks, but at a certain point dragons will just be immune to the gunslinger as they will be unable to deal any kind of real damage. Think instead "Does a bow using fighter have this problem?"

Making the gunslinger take a feat to attack normal AC is actually pointing to crossbows being better than guns against high armor foes.

alternativly you could bump up weapon damage for guns so theyd be able to peirce armor better course that means unarmored folks gonna get tore up so better hope that ac is up there^^

Armor is a function of AC. Damage has nothing to do with armor directly in the rules. Higher damage, by how much?

To the OP: No leadership needed. Leadership gets you some automatic trust, where you can purchase a person without this feat insured trust. If you have the coin, you can get yourself a slave. If they will be 100% cooperative is the real question. As others have said, they would be fairly reluctant at an order like "Kill the dragon"

Please do not let me derail this excellent and suprisingly level-headed mature discussion. Just an interesting observation regarding slavery in-game.

From the Advanced Races stuffs, it looks like humans could potentially be the best slavers or traders.

"Eye for Talent: Humans have great intuition for hidden potential. They gain a +2 bonus on Sense Motive checks. In addition, when they acquire an animal companion, bonded mount, cohort, or familiar, that creature gains a +2 bonus to one ability score of the character's choice. This racial trait replaces the bonus feat racial trait."

Although this does not give a bonus on general people selected, the simple implication that humans have a natural capacity for judging and selecting prime creatures has interesting implications. When looking for that loyal slave cohort, some humans just have an innate ability to judge the slaves in this way and will essentially make better selections than other races. It is a very unusual ability.
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As for getting a slave to act as you request, I suggest diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate with a healthy dose of sense motive. Lets see, I am trying to envision some rough guidelines for this stuff. Sure, it will be complex but after all going out to make a purchase is potentially a whole session of gameplay, or even several sessions.

The following is both rough and rambling. Ignore it and you will be no worse for having not read this. I probably have included some deeply offensive idea I am totally unaware of in the effort to wrap some rules up or make something a little more, playable.

Ninjas using a katana is ICONIC to a ninja, like wizards using staves or gunslingers using *gasp* guns. How many ninja references have you seen where they do not use katanas?

Few. That's how many.

Gunslinger is a weapon master. No duh it is a gun class.

Should Elves get automatic proficiency with longswords? Do all elves train with longswords? Every single one, ever? I guess so!

Yep, they all do. Something about them fencing and shooting bows all the time while growing up. Thing is that is like twenty years of fencing and bow shooting. I am sure a few do not get it, God knows the forlorn shouldn't. And if I remember right they have some manditory Switzerland-like militia service to make sure they know their sword and bow. As it stands it is the DMs job to yank that from characters that should not have it, but more than 99% of elf characters probably should get it.

Does it matter that it can be wielded with one or two hands? It may be a design decision, but what has it yielded? Honestly, you CAN wield a rapier (or any light finessable weapon) with two hands, you just don't get 1.5x STR, just 1x.

Yes, and the rapier is a special case of a weapon that gets very little benefit from the second hand because of its design. Call it a design trade that allows for finesse in a weapon that happens to not be garbage. The katana bears no mark of this trade-off particular.

You can use Weapon Finesse with an Aldori Dueling Sword, Elven Curved Blade AND a Spiked Chain they are all two handed weapons. The ADS exists already and can be used in one or two hands at normal effect. Not seeing any advantage the prototype katana has here...

Sir, without seeking to offend, I question your powers of observation.

The aldori dueling sword is a 1d8 19-20/x2 one-handed that no class is directly proficent with (read: everyone has to waste the exotic feat, even the fighter variant built for the weapon) that takes an exotic weapon proficencey before you can use weapon finesse with it. Before weapon finesse it is treated as a regular longsword for the purpose of feats. The exotic weapon prof simply allows for the finesse to apply. The katana is 1d8 18-20/x2 one-handed exotic/two-handed martial which is, well, an advantage. Past that two classes will be starting with full proficencey in this weapon.
The katana is better than the aldori dueling sword in damage.

The elven curve blade is overly strong and is, next to the falcata, the best exotic weapon just because of the 1d10 18-20/x2. Elves only get the thing for martial. The katana's two-handed use is just martial, as is correct, and is available to everyone without the need to spend a feat. Not all characters who use one would always, or even frequently, care to burn the exotic weapon prof to get the one-handed use at no penalty. Add to that the ability to use one-handed at all makes it very much more versatile. For example . . .

Damage: You can inflict damage to your target equal to your unarmed strike, a natural attack, or an attack made with armor spikes or a light or one-handed weapon. This damage can be either lethal or nonlethal.

You can not grapple with a spiked chain or elven curve blade.

The spiked chain has lower overall damage output because of it being a 2d4 x2 two-handed weapon. In addition, no class is proficent with it.

I'd be fine with it only being 1x on str if used in two hands as long as it got weapon finesse. But if they decided to write it like the Aldori Dueling Sword I'd be fine.

I ask how that makes even remote sense that such a blade would not gain 1.5 str to damage when two-handed. The katana is not a big exotic rapier. It is a slightly larger saber. It should follow the conventions of such and it has been shown already that even without finesse, the katana is virtually the best sword on the market. The vast majority of its use precludes the notion that the second hand was never important to the katana.

I think the point is that some people don't want it to just be about the numbers and for it to be a "Strength-based class" alone. When creating a character like this, I would want to make something different than a standard cavalier or fighter. That's kinda the point, otherwise I'd just play those base classes instead of this archetype/alternate class.

These classes should feel unique.

Should, and do not. That was not the design goal. The design goal was to make a monk+fighter = gunslinger, monk+rogue = ninja, and cavalier+figher = samurai. These classes are basically meant as prepackaged multiclasses with a few unique abilities to hide that they are just multiclass classes. So what we have from the ninja is a rogue with extra superpowers but less ability to find traps. The cavalier loses most of the mount stuff in favor of getting fighter feats with one weapon and that resolve stuff. These classes, by definition here, are not unique as they essentially just steal mechanics from other classes to work.

Adding finesse to the katana solves none of these problems.

The base classes are in general much better fitting samurai and ninja concepts. Ninja is a job and samurai is a hereditary title. Just because you do not have the class does not mean you can not be a samurai or ninja. The weapon master fighter can make a rockin' katana ronin. The spy rogue is a dandy ninja.

Seems a good plan, and it is good to make use of the Swordlord's boon to fighting defensively. As soon as that feature kicks in, you have no reason to not fight defensively.

Am I missing something? I do not see where the Aldori Dueling Sword qualifies as a duelist weapon. Certainly the flavor makes sense, but I am not seeing how that works in RAW. You would still get the int to AC, the enhanced mobility, improved reaction, grace. As riposte needs a parry which requires the piercing weapon, it is out along with precise strike.

Another thought, with power attack and furious focus, one may see a bump up in their overall damage output. As you rely on taking attack penalties to live, negating an attack penalty for damage could be a nice thing.

And well, yeah. You are just a lame monk at some point. It is the trap of finesse, no armor fighters. Mabey if you fight a lot of other finesse, no armor fighters nobody will notice.

My argument for finesse is that the two classes we especially want to see running around with Katannas should be DEXy. The ninja argument is obvious, but I realize the DEXy samurai is a little contentious, so let me explain: Samurais wear medium and light armor. Also the legendary if historically rare Samurai concept that players are most likely play is the high initiative, musashi-esque speed duelist.

No argument about ninjas being dexterity based. With their sneak attack delivering most of their damage they have little need for strength as it ties to damage. Weapon finesse makes perfect sense in that event, as they then can load all of their combat ability on dexterity. Sneak attack is precision strikes, and it is sneak attack that invalidates strength's necessity as a combat score.

Samurai wear heavy armor. The playtest gives them the proficencey in heavy armor, and samurai armor would likely be somewhere around scale on the light end and banded mail on the heavy end. However, I suspect that they will do as Oriental Adventures did and just rename the fullplate as O-yoroi and went from there.

Certainly the skilled ronin duelist is an awesome character concept. The rule of cool is with this one. I do not argue this. The issue I take is the requirement of weapon finesse for this character concept to work. Dexterity already governs initiative and unarmored AC, and with improved initiative the benefits are even more pronounced. My argument is not that this character type is bad but rather than weapon finesse has nothing to do with it. If we modeled our duelist as a rogue, which is not 100% out of the realm of possibility, you do indeed get a melee combatant focused on killing men with precision strikes and no reliance of his strength.

This still ignores the fact that finesse is a quality of the weapon, and the katana has no qualities in line with a finesse weapon.

The balance issue mentioned above is that all other things being equal, adding finesse is an additional bonus that makes this power creep over other weapons(specifically the bastard sword). Now I don't see this entering into it with the bastard sword, because characters who are likely to be contemplating bastard sword vs. katana are not going to be your weapon finesse types. I can see the argument that it isn't fair to put the dexterity combatant on equal melee footing as the str combatant, but to do that, the dexterity combatant has to burn a feat on fighting 1 handed after he's already burnt a feat on weapon finesse.

First part to get it out of the way, the samurai and ninja indeed do have full exotic katana proficiency as written in the playetest.

Well, yes, adding finesse by necessity does make it beyond a bastard sword on some level. I am unsure who will be thinking between bastard sword and katana for any strong game reason to begin with. Also, if finesse is part of a weapon it will be for the weapon, one-handed or two-handed in virtually all cases and would not require the exotic feat. Also, the dexterity combatant is worse off than the strength one in another important area: damage. This issue is even more pronounced if the strength fighter is using a two-handed weapon with power attack and the finesse fighter can neither two-hand with finesse or else is unable to use power attack. There is the added problem that if the weapon finesse guy is keeping up with his strength to keep a competitive damage, weapon finesse will really have been a basically wasted feat.

Since he probably has a higher dex than str because he is a skill focused and feat deprived class like a rogue or bard, a feat tax is a lot more painful for him. Even if he is a less feat deprived dex warrior like a switch-hitting ranged-to-melee ranger, he's still burning 2 feats on the katanna to be about equal to a STR based ranger who spent 1 feat on the bastard sword... only the STR ranger can do something fun with his extra feat and he's doing more damage because his STR is good. Not seeing how weapon finesse has any significant effect on how the katanna would stack up against the bastard sword.

The ranger has incentive to have a good strength too for ranged, as the composite bow is almost a requirement for ranged damage. And it is important to note that in general, the ranger is not a good combatant. Outside of fighting his favored enemy, he is about on par with an NPC warrior that gets a few more feats, with a few cool spells and a killer pet. The ranger though benefits best from having a good dex and strength at the same time. Weapon finesse is not for him as the returns will be really small to non-existant. Think of it like this, the ranger is shooting for a 15 dex and 15 str to keep is ranged and melee damage up at the same time. A lot of rogue concepts are the 20 dex 8 str character because they don't care about str bonus to damage when they have sneak attack. For that character, weapon finesse is a must.

The significant of the finesse effect is the very nature of balancing a weapon against another weapon, then just adding more stuff after getting it set to be in line with the other item. And I will further restate, the katana has nothing in common with the line of finesse weapons. Finesse has something to do with the weapon's manufacture and design being such that strength is less important to its use. Shame to say that the katana does rely on your, as the text calls strength, "muscle and physical power" for the majority of its effect. The case for the rapier being able to rely more on dex, or "agility, reflexes, and balance" as the text puts it, is a much easier case to make. Certainly dex is important to combat with both, but that potential for agility and reflex being used to attack are way more heavily represented with the rapier's construction than the katana.

I find your argument a bit lacking, a Katana has a hilt to smash people in the face. I did not say a word about Bludgeoning damage. However, a very common technique with a katana is to thrust or slash, while many, many other swords were designed more in favor of the slashing (broadsword, scimitar) and others primarily for the piercing (rapier).

Forgive me if I am reading too much into your words. The hand-and-a-half swords had not uncommon techniques where the combatant actually held the object by the blade and struck with the cross-guard, using the sword as a mace and the cross-guard had often times been built to accommodate this type of use. And certainly the common half-sword technique to penetrate armor, as well as conventional thrusts from a regular grip would count as meriting piercing damage. I certainly agree that the katana should be slashing and piercing. To keep in following with the game though the katana should be slashing as this is the primary use of the blade and follows its prestigious curved blade status. If the katana were to get the piercing damage, I would very much like to see similar additions placed on the other weapons that certainly could merit the modification.

Again, the katana should be finessable. The idea behind many katana schools is precision, speed, accuracy. All these things lead to the kill and all these things rely on Dexterity. Strength is important as well, but a well placed strike is more desirable than the strongest strike.

This I can more clearly share my differing opinion on.

Perhaps you didn't see that I wrote that Musashi developed an adaptive combat style. I didn't want to get into a debate about the finer points of Musashi, but we can if you wish. I simply wanted to point out that it was not uncommon to train to wield the katana properly in one hand as well as two.

Agreed, no need for this to become another derailed katana thread.

I have seen very, very few other instances that so blatantly call for this attention to fatal detail and the awareness of the killing strike. There is no defense, there is delayed offense. This is probably because Musashi himself engaged in multi-opponent combat regularly. And he we would have taken improved initiative.

That quote from Musashi, while having deep implications in the real world, means only one thing in game terms. He is saying "Attack, and do so at a high bonus. Kill your opponent, that is the best way to defend yourself. Attack and do not spend turns tripping or disarming or other nonsense that does not deal damage." And in game, this is correct 99% of the time.

As neither of us are katana masters I don't think we can come to any meaningful conclusion. However, I will say that I think Dexterity has a much larger role than you attribute and I doubt power attack comes into play often, if at all, when referring to the katana.

As we are both people of sound reasoning capability we have no need to be masters of the katana for this issue. We are just talking about the mechanical aspect of the representation of the weapon in an abstract game. A game with which many here are quite familiar with, if not all masters. Anyone with the power to use sound reasoning has the ability to offer valid input.

At the risk of redundancy I do hold my stance that accurate killing blows come from the strength stat in-game. The term dexterity is a good descriptor, but in this case the strength stat is the exact physical function needed as described in the book. Even with this in mind, dexterity is still essentially a God stat to any physical character with the wide range of things it does. Also, as I noted the lack of distinction the game makes between raw mongo-smash damage and a focused, well-placed attack; power attack is totally appropriate to model an attack aimed to kill. Look at the deadly aim feat for ranged attacks, where the exact same mechanic is used to describe an attack of uncanny precision. Added to that, a melee character without power attack will almost invariably fall behind one that does with regards to overall damage output which surely is not wanted. With this in mind I am curious why you say that power attack would not be used.

You only need to make the strike with the force necessary to win.

In stark contrast with real-life, the game makes such killing strikes virtually impossible to predict after a certain level, and also makes single strike kills impossible events after a certain point in the power curve provided you fight worthy threats on each count. The only time when you can know with a strong degree of certainty the outcome of your strike to be fatal is when fighting very much lower level opponents, or else yourself being still low level fighting other low levels. Against such low threats, why not just one-hand?

Pursuing retribution is not being a proactive agent of good or seeking out threats, it's finding people who you don't like and doing bad things to them regardless of the threat they now present.

I certainly admit that my post is not a comprehensive, philosophy based argument on morality. Although I do like to dabble, the game does not care about the finer points of ethics and morality. With a fairly hard stick I just applied the simplistic ethics and morality the game presents. The result is a simplistic response, and one that fits into the arrangement the game poses. My own views on the morality of his character are irrelevant. At its base, good in the game is trying to be a good guy which he fulfills. If his concept were instead being delusional in thinking that he is doing good when in fact he is sating some deep seated bloodlust or psychopathic tendency, then it would be evil because he is actually doing it for the wrong reasons. It is this measure of wanting to do good and the simplistic acceptance of that fact which lets the frequently violent and self-centered heroes not be branded as evil sociopaths.

My general measure is the in game effects weighed against character concept. This character sounds like a guy that would fall prey to Dictum and Blasphemy and Smite Good. He should probably ping on the Detect Good and Detect Chaos meter. It sounds like he would not gain negative levels for holding a holy sword, but would if he held an axiomatic one.

As to the intriguing example of Batman, a deeply flawed individual with multiple facets. The argument can and has been made for any alignment combination. NG or LG would be my hat on that one. The game would probably cast The Punisher as CG. Yes, the essential difference is that one is willing to work with the authorities and their laws and the other is not. Both are good for the trying to make things better for others. It is stupid and arbitrary, but that is how the alignment axis rolls.

Edit: Darn, too slow. Sorry to see you exit the conversation as your last post indicated. Might have liked to hear your thoughts regarding this. Well, Cassia, my main point is that your reasoning is not flawed. Rather, the game's reasoning is flawed on a deep level regarding the issue. That is the source of that irony. And for better or worse, it is that deeply flawed reasoning in the system that is relevent as a game mechanic.

Lets see now.

Now the way I envision the character is one who seeks to right the wrongs he perceives, without regard for any rule or authority anyone might claim for themselves to that end.

Acts on his own moral compass instead of the law, ignores societal norms, and is proactive in making things better. Chaotic good.

I see this character as taking out his own view of justice, karma, or the like, on those he believes are guilty.

He sounds reckless, which fits the chaotic part, is willing to take risks to meet good ends, that is good. As long as his view of "justice, karma, or the like" is generally trying to stay within that idea of doing good, this is chaotic good.

Say a murderer gets off easy, or is released on a technicality. He has no problem killing them, or doing things that don't lead to their death directly, if he thinks they deserve it.

That dude killed someone and was not punished. It is good to want to see him made unable to hurt more people, even if his death is part of that. Sure, the chance exists that someone might be innocent or he was more justified than a deranged murderer and I expect your character will use some better judgement in this case. Still, sounds like good-natured vigilante work intended to make the world better. Chaotic good. You respect life in that you are protecting the whole of the community through your acts.

To him, the ends do justify the means. If it will ultimately bring about better

You are not a paladin, this is indeed acceptable behavior for a good character. Even more so for a chaotic good character.

He does help people and takes on causes, but a large part of his alignment is made up of pursuing retribution on those who cause the wrongs.

Being a proactive agent of good, seeking to find and deal with threats, is not an evil act.

He doesn't trust easily, and the benefit of the doubt is given sparingly until they prove themselves one way or the other.

That is more a character quirk than an alignment issue.

He has the best intentions. He wants to make the world better by sticking it to those who make it worse (in his mind, they don't deserve kindness, benevolence, or mercy)..whether they're corrupt, or they are murderers. When he takes action to stick it to them, he feels no remorse or pity if they've earned it, in his opinion.

Again, you are not a paladin. The very idea that you want to do good makes you good in this case. Chaotic Neutral doesn't really care to help others as that alignment is written. Neutral in general is the "I like good but don't have the desire to go further the cause of good at my own expense. Good is good and I am glad other people are willing to do good for me." You aren't evil because, once again, you want to do good. You don't kill people because you love blood or are trying to trick people into letting their guard down. You don't kill for sport or just to make your own life easier. In his heart, good is his active aim for no other reason than furthering the cause of good.

So would you say he's Chaotic Good? He's comfortable with morally gray, but in a sense twists it to his own point of view.

Congrats, you have made a definition Chaotic Good character. You and chaotic good are best buddies now. Read the definition of chaotic good and tell me where the violation could be?

To clarify further.
The chaotic element seems agreed.

Chaotic neutral does not care overly about others. He does. He wants to help and protect people for the sake of making the world better. That is CG not CN.

Chaotic evil is killing unpredictably for fun. This is not the case.

Count this as one vote for keeping the d20 Modern massive damage rules. Non-lethal massive damage was extra fun and made the boxer a legit character concept right along with the martial artist. Lethal massive damage did well to remind players to treat gun weilding eneimes as threats and to remind them that cover is good.

there is a prestige class in the seeker of secrets book that is called Student of war. You might look at it. You can find it on the SRD online.

+1 and I will do one better and provide a link to said srd.

Presenting the Student of War

1. The katana should be a Slashing and a Piercing weapon. After all the tip of the katana was pointed, similar to that of a spear so that it could be used to punch through thick armors if the need arose.

While true that it has a point, I seem to recall a number of other weapons that do not exactly get every damage type they are possible of.

2. The katana should be finessable. While the katana was traditionally wielded with two hands, Miyamoto Musashi developed a revolutionary and adaptive combat style - the "Two Swords" - that utilized the katana in one hand so the other could perform various other actions (including wielding a wakizashi). This style favored precise killing strikes to defeat opponents quickly.

Mushashi developed Niten-Ichi-ryu, a style that was geared to the kind of combat he faced, lone duel encounters and at largest small skirmishes. The case can be made that the techniques would be applicable in warfare, however that is a hard sell. The general title of two-sword style has to do with it teaching a lot of single katana, and single wakazashi movements with a token handful of two-sword movements. It is not that is was totally two-weapon fighting focused. In general terms, the style he taught would represent a particular set of feats taken.

This style favored precise killing strikes to defeat opponents quickly.

I defy you to find a style that does not claim to rely on precise killing strikes. I know there are some, but usually anyone claiming to do something other than "kill my enemy quickly with as few strikes as possible" does not last to long. I do not know a sword school that would say "ignore the vitals and just swing at the organless meat" or "no need to swing at the head, just cut them without discretion, it will be just as good as putting metal in their brain." Under this logic, once again, the bastard sword needs to get finesse too because they did something more fancy than just mongo-smash. This "precision" is taking weapon focus, using power attack to get fatal strikes, and *gasp* having an acceptable strength for a melee combatant. Strength is what governs your blade control and how deftly you can move your blade. In other words, dexterity is your bodily ability to react to incoming hurt and strength governs all of your outgoing hurt. Strength does all of it, even the fancy little blade movements you are thinking of. Weapon finesse does not mean that you fight with more grace, it means that you fight in such a way to make your weak strength less of a disability in an activity that is very strength dependant. How much grace and technique you fight with is totally up to you when describing your character's actions.

The Katana/finessable question could/should be solved with a 'fighting school' feat. For example, give it the prerequisites of EWP (Katana), Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (Katana) maybe Weapon Specialization (Katana) and then allow it to give a shield bonus (+1 or +2) when used two handed, and finessable. I think my saraph is going to go the Martial weapon 1d8 18-20/X2, EWP to use one handed route myself.

The greatsword is far more deserving of this, as well as most of the weapons with an actual signifcant defensive guard of some kind, however none of these get such a bonus. The Aldori Dueling Sword did have a feat that did something like that, but it was like a level 12 fighter feat I think. Regardless, I do not like the idea of making a sword as protective as even a light shield. Perhaps if it were limited to defending oneself in melee only it would make better sense, and it were able to apply to the rest of the weapons that common sense says you can block with. I can hear it now "But what about those guys who cut arrows out of the air, it should apply to ranged attacks too." Look at what those people do. If you want to ready an attack to strike an arrow (AC 20-25?), I am fine with that. Otherwise, no, your blade is not a good defensive item in this case.

The sword, no matter what, is not a shield. If you need an AC boost, get combat expertise or fight defensivley. Having a slightly lower AC in general is how the two-handed fighter pays for the immense amount of extra damage he deals.

Also, why do you seem to think that the wakazashi is one handed only and would need the exotic to use two handed? Like the katana, it is used two-handed 90% of the time for the simple reason that it is silly to choose to deal less damage when you could do more damage. Wakizashi fits the scimitar stats perfectly.

I was looking to buy my special japanese stick, so i can trip people, this is what I found.

On another note, the finesse part of the katana could be a ninja trick, or a feat or a samurai class feature. (something along the lines of dervish dance, which i think is broken)

But if you really think about it, what samurai isn't going to have a really decent strength? an old yoda one?

Hanbo Link

If you find dervish dance broken, why suggest it? Given my above, you can guess my own feelings regarding the feat. It is a little insane to allow one stat to govern almost 100% of combat, I do not know why we need to have the samurai, possibly the strongest melee combatant released, to gain this edge. The rogue is in much more need of something like that.

And don't forget, age penalties hit dex just as hard as str.

I know the fomula of 'martial two handed/exotic one handed finessable' is more powerful than the 'martial two handed/exotic one handed' of the bastard sword, but is it really that big of a creep?

Well, look at it like this. 1d8 18-20/x2 two-handed with exotic one-handed is directly in line with what one would expect of the katana as a curved bastard sword or hand-and-a-half saber. If the bastard sword got some other ability on the exotic weapon proficencey, lets say Brace for the sake of the argument, it would make sense mechanically for the katana to get some special ability on the exotic end. However, as it stands the katana getting one-handed finesse puts it beyond the total bastard sword package is it matched against. Part of my agument is that this potential creep, while probably not game destroying, would make no sense and is totally needless. The katana and the finesse feat have about as much to do with each other as the hanbo and trip. Ability addition should be more thought out than that.

Unless they directly call out the katana design as having been handed to men by some god or fey creature, no way does it get finesse. It already rocks. As it stands "Elves made it" is the only reason why the curve blade gets finesse. It has nothing to do with the weapon, it is just that Elves made it. Lack of the finesse feature does not mean you cannot fight with deft movments. There seems to be some notion that only finesse weapons can have any grace, which is simply a false idea. Finesse does not mean graceful, it means that the weapon relies so little on strength to work that it can be irrelevant to the weapon. That is not the katana.

And is 1d8/18-20x2 that much more powerful than 1d10/19-20x2? I'm seriously asking, as I don't know the numbers. I prefer the 18-20x2 because a) it's a trait common on curved blades in pathfinder and I like curved blades and b) I like rolling crits, so I'll trade damage for it.

Someone else has broken down the weapon DPR quite well, and I direct you to that post here. It is from a falcata thread but the numbers are valid. Essentially compare the bastard sword two-handed to the falchion.

Basically here is the principle to look for: the diffrence in base damage is 1(one) point in favor of the bastard sword using my suggested katana for comparison. However, that point of damage is irrelevant as the game progresses and you accumulate more and more flat bonuses to damage that are multiplied on a critical. The samurai will gain an extreme benefit from this due to being able to take fighter feats for the weapon and the challenge class feature adding his level to damage, as this damage can be multiplied on a critical. This will likely make a high threat range even stronger in their hands than the provided example. Basically, the one point of damage is not important compared to the magnified chance to multiply all the bonuses to damage you posess. As the game progresses, almost regardless of base damage the x4 and 18-20/x2 weapons very much will come out ahead of the 19-20/x2 and x3 weapons. The x4 does better than the 18-20 weapon when attacking targets that can only be hit with a 19 or 20 roll as part of that threat range is ignored. The same issue exists with improved critical with each. With the 15-20/x2, the average damage starts to go down more quickly when a 16 or higher is needed to hit because of the threat range being cut down by a very high AC. As that type of "Can only hit less than 25% of the time" AC is very rare, this benefit of the scythe is ignored in favor of using the falchion for regular combat. Having a VERY much stronger chance to apply one of the critical hit feats is the benefit of the high threat range and is one of the big reasons why it is more desirable than an x4.

I hope that answers that.

It is with that in mind that I have declared the katana to be the better sword in the long run.