Like Gunslinger, but about Samurais.
Mount: I'm not a big fan of the Samurai being an "alternate cavalier." Especially since there seems to be some shoe-horning to make it both be a cavalier and be different enough for anyone to cave. As a Cavalier class alternative, I guess it makes sense to have a Mount. But in general, the class isn't very "mount"y and I think it could benefit from a split between mounted combat and unmounted combat specialization.
Weapon Expertise: Couple issues here. It is stated it stacks with Fighter levels but doesn't specify whether or not Samurai levels count as Fighter levels for the purpose of meeting pre-requisites for use with Weapon Expertise weapons. I really think they could do more with this. Like make the Samurai a weapon's expert (perhaps an alternative to a mounted combatant), as they level, they get better with their chosen Asian weaponry?
Mounted Archer: This is really the second issue to Weapon Expertise. Why have mounted archery? A longbow may not even be your chosen weapon to be an expert with, so this just looks thrown in here. This was part of the problem with the 3.5 Knight – no one could decide if it was mounted combatant or not and that hurt when giving it abilities.
Banner: What slot does a Banner take up? Maybe this is covered somewhere and I just don't know.
Most of the rest of the class is more flavor than anything else. I suppose it's good for fighting a dragon or lich to the death while the rest of the party runs like ninnies.
It would be nice if challenge penalties and bonuses increased in a manner to make them relevant throughout the life of the Samurai (as short as it shall be). There is no general benefit to declaring a challenge until 12th level and then it is dismissible. And it is mostly just an NPC class ability, especially the Ronin Challenge “bonus.”
EDIT: Minor changes.
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Mount: I'm not a big fan of the Samurai being an "alternate cavalier." Especially since there seems to be some shoe-horning to make it both be a cavalier and be different enough for anyone to cave. As a Cavalier class alternative, I guess it makes sense to have a Mount. But in general, the class isn't very "mount"y and I think it could benefit from a split between mounted combat and unmounted combat specialization.
Samurai, much like Western knights, were the only mounted combatants in Japanese military actions, because, much like Western knights, they were the only ones who could actually afford to keep a personal horse (especially one that didn't do anything except carry its rider in combat).
See also "The Way of Horse and Bow," which - depending on which era you're looking at and which sources you rely on - was either a substantial part of samurai culture, the only thing that defined a samurai, or one piece of the martial training that samurai theoretically went through.
Mounted Archer: This is really the second issue to Weapon Expertise. Why have mounted archery? A longbow may not even be your chosen weapon to be an expert with, so this just looks thrown in here. This was part of the problem with the 3.5 Knight – no one could decide if it was mounted combatant or not and that hurt when giving it abilities.
The Way of Horse and Bow is probably behind this as well.
Weapon Expertise
The weapon selection represents real world samurai and not one found in a fantasy setting. An example is I can see a human samurai picking up a katana, but I do not see a half-orc (as odd as it may be) to choose it as his preferred signature weapon, being that their race gives them free proficiencies with the falcion, great axe, and orc double axe. I think the benefits from that ability should extend to racial proficiencies.
Samurai were historically archers AND swordsmen, weren't they? I can reconcile that with historic data, however, I dislike forcing mounts on players who would rather not deal with the micromanagement, and the GM hand-waving it doesn't help, because then it is just a dead class feature.
Being a cavalier variant, I can't argue with the mount thing a lot. I like the cavalier well enough, even if I'm not a big fan of mounts and mounted combat. I just wish there was an alternative (maybe a sidebar in Ult. Combat that lets you swap out any cavalier mount for something else).
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Some means of weapon empowerment (similar to the paladin's bonded weapon or the magus' weapon enhancements from the arcane pool) as an alternate ability has been suggested a couple of times, and would be well-suited to a game that wanted to emphasize the so-called "cult of the katana" that a lot of fantasy samurai settings focus on.
All in all, though, I think you'll find taking the horse out of a class whose name means "horseman" isn't going to be that easy.
All in all, though, I think you'll find taking the horse out of a class whose name means "horseman" isn't going to be that easy.
I feel like the heart of the Cavalier is the challenge ability and the orders. True, the name says one thing, but if a player chose to, I believe the class could be played from 1-20 without ever setting buttocks on a mount. The bulk of the class's features do not revolve around the mount. I think the name Cavalier was chosen because "Knight" is WotC property (Complete Warrior?).
What's in a name anyway? The Magus is a martial caster, but magi in the traditional sense were nothing but wise-men or some such. Persian word.
Also, I feel like there's a lot of katana hate, which isn't necessarily unwarranted, but I think it's causing mass hysteria as well. I don't think a "weapon bond" feature would feed the "cult" so much as provide a fluff way for a samurai PC to keep a favored weapon (which is logical for the class, as the family daisho was important), and a crunch way for the player to justify keeping the thing.
I hope there will be a Courtier Samurai Order (+ an Archer Order) as well as the two that have been written up so far.
"Cavalier" means horseman. Samurai means retainer, making it more akin to the English word "knight."
A variant Class Feature replacing the Mount, available for BOTH Cavaliers and Samurai seems something eminently reasonable to see in Ultimate Combat. Just sayin`...