Nice class design. The Samurai class captures a lot of what I like about the samurai.
Mounted combat: check.
One on one battle capability: check.
Mounted archery: check.
Flavor: check.
By flavor I mean abilities like resolve. I like that the samurai can focus on enduring a fight to the death. That gives the feel like The 47 Ronin who were determined to avenge their fallen master.
The mounted capability is much like the historical samurai with the necessary Pathfinder balancing to make a mount survive.
The swordsmanship of most samurai movies.
And the leadership of say The Seven Samurai. The banner on the roof and the leadership of Kanbe Shimada and his right-hand man.
Nice design.
I built a Samurai NPC (14th level) for the next gaming session and is awesome.
He's able to reroll (or use a similar mechanic) up to 11 times/day, less if uses his resolve to negate critical hits.
Gains damage reduction 4/- when challenging and hid rerollable saves are improved versus fear and compulsions by a +4 and + 2 respectively.
If the designers wanted a stalwart warrior who refuses to surrender, even to magic or to death.. they got it right.
Moreover, the PC has 7 skills/level by now.
In a social scenario, he can use order abilities and resolves to reroll them. Similar things in combat for things like acrobatics (even if it strikes his durability). Well rounded, I like it a lot.
we are a big fan of 'chinks in the armor' types and so we love the ronin.
It's a great character class and we are having alot of fun with it.
I confess, I love it too. Its truly a beastly and unyielding class, and yet strangely I don't feel too over powered playing it. I just feel beastly and unyielding. XD
It's funny is exactly something the fighter needed: A kick a$$ ability in and out of combat.