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Wandering Sword
Wandering swords are often Samurai who have learned the way of the sword through an apprenticeship rather than from a larger organization. Rather than devoting themselves to the protection of a single state or settlement, they travel across the land searching for a worthy cause - whether it is gold, glory, or vengeance.
The Wandering Sword is an archetype for the Samurai alternate class.
Armor and Shield proficiency
Wandering swords tend to travel light and walk a fine line between honed warrior and ascetic. They are not proficient with any armor or shields.
Flexible Allegiance (Ex)
This functions as the Samurai class ability Order except in the following ways: a Wandering Sword must select Ronin/Knight Errant as his order. Beginning at 4th level, if a Wandering Sword is working with another character with the Order class feature towards a common goal (GM's discretion), he may expend one of his uses of the Challenge ability in order to gain the order abilities of their ally. This replaces the Wandering Sword's own order abilities. This change lasts until the Wandering Sword rests and regains the daily uses of his Challenge ability (at which time he may once again expend one use to change his abilities as long as he is still working on a common goal with his ally).
This ability modifies the Samurai's Order ability.
Weapon Expertise (Ex)
A Wandering Sword must select a melee weapon (the Katana, Naginata, or Wakizashi) for the bonuses of this class ability.
This modifies the Weapon Expertise Samurai class ability.
AC Bonus (Ex)
This ability functions the same way as the Monk class ability of the same name. A Wandering Sword also loses this AC bonus for 24 hours if he breaks one of his order's edicts, including those from an order which he is borrowing abilities from.
Beginning at 10th level, a Wandering Sword becomes proficient with light armor, but the max dex penalty applies against this AC bonus as well as his dexterity bonus (tthe total of both bonuses added together).
Ability replaces the Samurai's Mount ability.
Exploit Weakness (Ex)
At 4th level, a Wandering Sword uses his keen senses to strike with precision as well as to avoid being touched by dangerous foes. This ability functions as the Martial Artist (Monk) archetype ability.
This replaces the Mounted Archer Samurai ability.
Advanced Swordplay (Ex)
at 5th level, whenever he gains a feat or bonus feat, a Wandering Sword may select the Deflect Arrows, Crane Style, Crane Wing, or Crane Riposte feat, even if he does not qualify for them (but he must slect Crane Style before Crane Wing, and Crane Wing before Crane Riposte). He may only gain the benefits of these feats when he is weilding the weapon he selected for Weapon Expertise (although he need not have an empty hand as described in Deflect Arrows or Crane Wing so long as he is only weilding his selected weapon).
This ability replaces the Banner class ability.
Fatal Mistake (Ex)
At 15th level, a Wandering Sword who successfully uses Exploit Weakness on an opponent to bypass their DR may ready an action to attack the next creature who makes a melee attack roll against him. For the purposes of this attack, the Wandering Sword's weapon is treated as having the Vorpal magic weapon quality. This also applies to attacks of opportunity made with the Crane Riposte feat as long as the Wandering Sword made a successful Exploit Weakness attempt against that opponent on his last turn. If his weapon already has the Vorpal quality, he instead gains a +4 bonus to confirm the critical.
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So, interesting? Balanced? Easily broken? Unclear? What do you guys think?
My inspiration comes from 7 Samurai, Samurai Jack, Jin from Samurai Champloo, and a bit of real Kendo techniques.
There's a 3PP samurai archetype for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horrro (PFRPG) from Rite Publishing called the Nitojustsu Sensei (2 weapon master) designed to emulate both a Miyamoto Musashi and fit a primarily ronin based warrior. The nitojustsu sensei loses the Order class feature as part of the build. In Kaidan, if a samurai offers protection to a community (instead of a master), he can still maintain his honor, despite being ronin.
I would recommend giving the Wandering Sword the Sword Saint's Iajutsu Strike ability in place of Mount, and give him the Monk AC Bonus (or the Duelist's Canny Defense ability, which would let you keep light armor, but with Wisdom if you'd like) in place of his armor proficiencies (dropping heavy and medium armor).
Something like:
Insightful Defense (Ex): When wearing light or no armor and not using a shield, a wandering sword adds 1 point of Wisdom bonus (if any) per samurai class level as an insight bonus to his Armor Class and CMD while wielding his Weapon Expertise weapon. This bonuses to AC apply even against touch attacks or when the samurai is flat-footed. The sum of this bonus and a wandering sword's Dexterity bonus to AC are limited by his armor's maximum Dexterity bonus.
For Fatal Mistake, I would say that your next attack against the target should be an automatic critical threat. I understand where you are going with adding the Vorpal property, but it seems like an abstract way to go about it. You could also go the route of Exploding Palm from the Monk. I am assuming that Fatal Mistake replaces Greater Banner, and thus should be 14th level?
Otherwise, I really dig the archetype and how it thematically matches your inspiration examples. I really like giving the archetype Exploit Weakness; it fits.
Edit: To mirror what others have said; making an unique order for this archetype, say "Rurouni," makes more sense, but all of the abilities granted by the Ronin Order work perfectly for the archetype/concept. So if anything, just change the name and fluff of the Ronin Order. I still like the ability for this type of character to be able to adopt other Orders as it makes sense from a storytelling perspective.
Flexible Allegiance looks iffy to me. Why do you have to expend a challenge? Would it be an awful thing if he could say, be an order of the cockatrice instead of a ronin? A ronin can have identical edicts to an order of the cockatrice for example.
Weapon Expertise, why can't they use a bow? Is this just to lock them into a particular playstyle? Why is naginata still an option if so? Why not the Nodachi if you want him to be efficient in swords?
Its also weird that their AC is connected to their edicts. What about edicts has to do with your ability to fight? My edict is I don't eat meat, oh no, I have eaten meat! I have lost my ability to defend myself because protein is a grave sin! You might also consider giving them light armor to begin with instead of suddenly doing great with light armor. You might just give them the option to wear armor or not to begin with too, with 2 different stats. The AC also makes the class pretty MAD, because you want wisdom to AC to survive, charisma for your challenge to make it useful at all, and you need those 3 physical stats every other martial wants still. You might consider making the class wholely based on wisdom? Maybe add wisdom to intimidate?
You don't need to swap out a banner to get additional bonus feats, you want to modify bonus feats themselves. You might consider giving them bonus feats at a different rate, maybe starting at 5th, to help if you want to get rid of banner. Additionally, why is only crane style available, and why must you take crane wing if that actually requires a free hand style, while crane riposte and crane style are the two that are highly defensive and don't require free hands. You might consider snake style since it doesn't require a free hand, but is heavy on a sense motive, a wisdom based skill. In the least, snake style and snake sidewind look pretty amazing for someone attempting to be a samurai, staring down their foe, parrying, and then striking down their foe.
The term you're looking for is Rurouni; as in Rurouni Kenshin.
Incorrect assumption. This assumes that the character in question DOES have a proper lineage (if that is indeed a necessary feature of samurai society in the campaign setting), but that their training was from a much smaller school or an apprenticeship under a master, rather than a large-scale training facility that serves a particular lord/state/empire. Think Katsushirō Okamoto instead of Kikuchiuo. The borderline ascetic quality is reflective of someone like Kyūzō. Although he's not poor, he doesn't travel with a lot of armor or gear.
There's a 3PP samurai archetype for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horrro (PFRPG) from Rite Publishing called the Nitojustsu Sensei (2 weapon master) designed to emulate both a Miyamoto Musashi and fit a primarily ronin based warrior. The nitojustsu sensei loses the Order class feature as part of the build. In Kaidan, if a samurai offers protection to a community (instead of a master), he can still maintain his honor, despite being ronin.
This is also going away from the core-concept here. The idea is to create an archetype that doesn't require a whole bunch of gear, and instead incorporates superior instincts to create a strong defense that flows seamlessly with a moderate offense.
I would recommend giving the Wandering Sword the Sword Saint's Iajutsu Strike ability in place of Mount, and give him the Monk AC Bonus (or the Duelist's Canny Defense ability, which would let you keep light armor, but with Wisdom if you'd like) in place of his armor proficiencies (dropping heavy and medium armor).
I actually made this archetype to stand in contrast with the Sword Saint. Wandering Sword is supposed to be a much more calm and defensive build than the Sword Saint.
I chose to model the AC bonus on the Monk's for a couple reasons. 1) I don't want it to have to scale up over time. The WS already has to wait for lvl 4 to use Exploit Weakness, so I want there to be a good reason to invest in a good wisdom score right at 1st level. 2) They would only get the ability to wear light armor at 10th level, which is a comparable scaling-up of this ability when compared to Iaijutsu Strike.
For Fatal Mistake, I would say that your next attack against the target should be an automatic critical threat. I understand where you are going with adding the Vorpal property, but it seems like an abstract way to go about it. You could also go the route of Exploding Palm from the Monk. I am assuming that Fatal Mistake replaces Greater Banner, and thus should be 14th level?
I absolutely meant to put this at 14th level. Fixed.
What is exploding palm? I'm having trouble finding it.
I think I like the idea of the automatic critical threat instead of a vorpal strike. That would make the ability a bit more stable/reliable, and it's also fairly on-par with deadly stroke in regards to difficulty of execution and payoff.
Flexible Allegiance looks iffy to me. Why do you have to expend a challenge? Would it be an awful thing if he could say, be an order of the cockatrice instead of a ronin? A ronin could have identical edicts to an order of the cockatrice for example.
*Could* being the operative term. Normally for a Samurai, switching between orders is a big deal. You can become a ronin at any time without penalty, but you usually have to accomplish something in the name of any other order before you can gain their order abilities (and in the mean-time you have none). The expense of a daily use of Challenge is meant to provide a somewhat adequate price to be paid to use this ability. They also do not gain this ability until they have more than one use of Challenge, so they will still have at least one use left after using Flexible Allegiance.
Weapon Expertise, why can't they use a bow? Is this just to lock them into a particular playstyle? Why is naginata still an option if so? Why not the Nodachi if you want him to be efficient in swords?
The idea is that the WS can use his melee weapon in an active form of defense (parries and the like) as well as to perform feats (deflect arrows, crane style) that would normally require the use of open hands. If you used a bow to deflect a melee attack from a great club, it would probably break (and that's not to mention how cumbersome it would be). From a metagame perspective, yes, this is designed to be a melee-focused archetype. The Naginata is an option while the Nodachi is not because it is not a weapon that the Samurai class may select with the Weapon Expertise class ability.
Its also weird that their AC is connected to their edicts. What about edicts has to do with your ability to fight? My edict is I don't eat meat, oh no, I have eaten meat! I have lost my ability to defend myself because protein is a grave sin! You might also consider giving them light armor to begin with instead of suddenly doing great with light armor.
Getting rid of the edicts thing seems sensible (leaving the challenge ability tied to them). The reason why they gain the ability to use armor later is because, as I stated, it is a reasonable scale-up with the Iaijutsu strike ability. Because this is a powered-up version of the Monk ability of the same name (letting you wear armor at all is kind've a big deal), it makes sense that they should have to wait to gain that ability.
The AC also makes the class pretty MAD, because you want wisdom to AC to survive, charisma for your challenge to make it useful at all, and you need those 3 physical stats every other martial wants still. You might consider making the class wholely based on wisdom? Maybe add wisdom to intimidate?
Challenge is not tied to charisma in any way. Intimidate is also not an essential Samurai ability, and is something that reflects a different "flavor" of samurai than this archetype. Think of Jin from Samurai Champloo. You ever see him try to intimidate someone? Like a Monk, to make an effective WS, you really only need good wis and str, good-to-moderate dex, and moderate con. These can even be balanced out differently in order to customize how you want to utilize the archetype, but I don't think it stretches the character too thin.
You don't need to swap out a banner to get additional bonus feats, you want to modify bonus feats themselves. You might consider giving them bonus feats at a different rate, maybe starting at 5th, to help if you want to get rid of banner. Additionally, why is only crane style available, and why must you take crane wing if that actually requires a free hand style, while crane riposte and crane style are the two that are highly defensive and don't require free hands. You might consider snake style since it doesn't require a free hand, but is heavy on a sense motive, a wisdom based skill. In the least, snake style and snake sidewind look pretty amazing for someone attempting to be a samurai, staring down their foe, parrying, and then striking down their foe.
The reason why Banner, to me, seems to be an adequate trade-off for the ability to choose these feats is that they usually require a significant investment in other feats to acquire, and/or a significant dip into the Monk class itself. This ability also allows you to use these feats with the WS's expertise weapon rather than an unarmed strike.
The reason I went with the Crane style path while not including Snake Style as an option is 3-fold. 1) Snake Style allows your unarmed strikes to deal piercing damage. While it's reasonable enough to allow you to make a piercing attack with a Katana, it's not exactly awesome. 2) The Snake style path is more designed for a class (monk) with a lower BAB progression than skill points. 3) It's more about getting out of the way of attacks with lithe movements rather than an active defense using one's melee abilities, like Crane style.
While it capitalizes on having a high defense, Crane style allows you to boost the AC you have, and then use that active defense to turn on the offense. All in all, Crane style makes more sense flavor-wise, and build-wise.
This also sounds like Ji-zamurai - which are poor farmer samurai, almost the bottom "rank" of a samurai, where castle guards and police officers are the lowest level samurai. Ji-zamurai usually owns a small piece of farmland, and very little in the form of money or actual training. Training is usually done by the living samurai parent or other relative, and not by a formal sword school. It can be expected that their kimono and armor are worn and threadbare.
There are 3 other samurai archetypes (in addition to nitojutsu sensei), 2 other samurai orders (order of the undying emperor and order of the shogun), 2 prestige classes (bugyo and mosa), samurai traits, samurai feats, and rules for creating custom samurai clans based on the GMG stat-block - all part of Way of the Samurai (PFRPG), in addition to a full write up on Bushido, when seppuku can be avoided with honor, and a full history and development of the samurai concept.
Revision
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Wandering Sword
Wandering swords are often Samurai who have learned the way of the sword through an apprenticeship or small private school instead of a large training facility for rank-and-file soldiers. Rather than devoting themselves to the service and protection of a lord, state, or settlement, they travel across the land searching for a worthy cause according to their personal code of values - whether it is gold, glory, or vengeance.
The Wandering Sword is an archetype for the Samurai alternate class.
Armor and Shield proficiency
Wandering swords tend to travel light and walk a fine line between honed warrior and ascetic. They are not proficient with any armor or shields.
Flexible Allegiance (Ex)
This functions as the Samurai class ability Order except in the following ways: a Wandering Sword must select Ronin/Knight Errant as his order. Beginning at 4th level, if a Wandering Sword is working with another character with the Order class feature, he may expend one of his uses of the Challenge ability at the beginning of that day in order to gain the order abilities of his ally. This replaces the Wandering Sword's own order abilities, but he must abide by his Ronin edicts as well as the edicts of his ally's order. This change lasts until the Wandering Sword rests and regains the daily uses of his Challenge ability (at which time he may once again expend one use to change his abilities as long as he is still working on a common goal with his ally).
This ability modifies the Samurai's Order ability.
Weapon Expertise (Ex)
A Wandering Sword must select a melee weapon (the Katana, Naginata, or Wakizashi) for the bonuses of this class ability.
This modifies the Weapon Expertise Samurai class ability.
AC Bonus (Ex)
This ability functions the same way as the Monk class ability of the same name. Beginning at 10th level, a Wandering Sword becomes proficient with light armor, but the max dex penalty applies against this AC bonus as well as his dexterity bonus (the total of both bonuses added together).
Ability replaces the Samurai's Mount ability.
Exploit Weakness (Ex)
At 4th level, a Wandering Sword uses his keen senses to strike with precision as well as to avoid being touched by dangerous foes. This ability functions as the Martial Artist (Monk) archetype ability.
This replaces the Mounted Archer Samurai ability.
Advanced Swordplay (Ex)
at 5th level, whenever he gains a feat or bonus feat, a Wandering Sword may select the Deflect Arrows, Crane Style, Crane Wing, or Crane Riposte feat, even if he does not qualify for them (but he must slect Crane Style before Crane Wing, and Crane Wing before Crane Riposte). He may only gain the benefits of these feats when he is weilding the weapon he selected for Weapon Expertise (although he need not have an empty hand as described in Deflect Arrows or Crane Wing so long as he is only weilding his selected weapon).
This ability replaces the Banner class ability.
Fatal Mistake (Ex)
At 14th level, a Wandering Sword who successfully uses Exploit Weakness on an opponent to bypass their DR may ready an action to attack the next creature who makes a melee attack roll against him. This attack is resolved after the opponent's attack, but if the Wandering Sword's attack succeeds it is an automatic critical threat. This also applies to attacks of opportunity made with the Crane Riposte feat as long as the Wandering Sword made a successful Exploit Weakness attempt against that opponent on his last turn.
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Edits: 1) "Flexible Allegiance" must be used at the beginning of the day, and the WS is required to follow the edicts of that order. 2) "AC Bonus" is not lost when the WS violates his edicts. 3) "Advanced Swordplay" description cleaned up. 4) "Fatal Mistake" now provides an automatic critical threat on a successful attack rather than a vorpal strike. 5) Revised description for (hopefully) more accurate flavor.
Challenge is not tied to charisma in any way
Depends on your order. At a glance the samurai and cavalier are not, but once you look into the orders charisma is their mental statistic of choice. Though there is one that is based off wisdom/intelligence. Its optional, but you might consider it.
Think of Jin from Samurai Champloo. You ever see him try to intimidate someone?
Yes, actually I'm pretty sure I have. The cold stare of those snake eyes. Intimidate isn't just yelling 'Rawr!', is that's cold steely stare. That's one of the iconic parts of a showdown, that's part of the 3.5 and PF Iajutsu, be it that stare or that roaring Kiyap.
While it capitalizes on having a high defense, Crane style allows you to boost the AC you have, and then use that active defense to turn on the offense. All in all, Crane style makes more sense flavor-wise, and build-wise.
If you absolutely have to use crane style, you might consider adding a caveat that your allowed to use Crane Wing while wielding your weapon but not having to have a free hand. As written you lockdown the player into using the weapon, which means you can never actually benefit if your wielding a two handed weapon unless you have three hands.
The Naginata is an option while the Nodachi is not because it is not a weapon that the Samurai class may select with the Weapon Expertise class ability.
I knew that, however a nodachi is effectively a two handed katana in game and a large katana irl, while a naginata is a polearm used for infantry if I remember right. I would think it wouldn't be a bad option at least.
Depends on your order. At a glance the samurai and cavalier are not, but once you look into the orders charisma is their mental statistic of choice. Though there is one that is based off wisdom/intelligence. Its optional, but you might consider it.
Welp, the default order of the WS is Ronin, which doesn't rely on charisma. Their other abilities somewhat rely on wisdom. Having the ability to change your order abilities gives you the option to emulate the abilities of an ally if it seems worthwhile. If you're going with this archetype, wis > cha.
Yes, actually I'm pretty sure I have. The cold stare of those snake eyes. Intimidate isn't just yelling 'Rawr!', is that's cold steely stare. That's one of the iconic parts of a showdown, that's part of the 3.5 and PF Iajutsu, be it that stare or that roaring Kiyap.
It always looked to me like he was staring someone down to size them up, but that might just be a difference of opinion. None of the Seven Samurai ever relied on intimidation/stare-downs. Although it's a common thing found in Samurai, it's just not a relevant feature of *this* archetype. A shaken opponent is more likely to fail an attack roll (making better use of Crane Riposte), but not necessary.
If you absolutely have to use crane style, you might consider adding a caveat that your allowed to use Crane Wing while wielding your weapon but not having to have a free hand. As written you lockdown the player into using the weapon, which means you can never actually benefit if your wielding a two handed weapon unless you have three hands.
It's totally in there: "He may only gain the benefits of these feats when he is wielding the weapon he selected for Weapon Expertise (although he need not have an empty hand as described in Deflect Arrows or Crane Wing so long as he is only wielding his selected weapon)."
... a nodachi is effectively a two handed katana in game and a large katana irl, while a naginata is a polearm used for infantry if I remember right. I would think it wouldn't be a bad option at least.
Not really. It's not what the greatsword is to the longsword. The blade is about the same size (if not a little longer) with an extended handle. It's primarily used by militia against mounted foes. It's a slightly less nuanced weapon, and only really good for hacking.
The Naginata has it's own martial art associated with it (Naginatajutsu). More recently it has become a weapon and a style used primarily by women, but Samurai wielding a Naginata was a force to be reckoned with. It's like a more heavily curved Wakizashi blade on a pole that could not only be used for slashing, but hooking and tripping.
Honestly the Nodachi isn't a bad weapon, but the fighting styles associated with it are not nearly as sophisticated.
What is exploding palm? I'm having trouble finding it.
My apologies, it is called Quivering Palm. Monk class ability, level 15. It is essentially a death attack with an at-will trigger switch instead of instant death.
My apologies, it is called Quivering Palm. Monk class ability, level 15. It is essentially a death attack with an at-will trigger switch instead of instant death.
Gotcha. Thought maybe there was a modified version of it from an archetype or something.
Not really. It's not what the greatsword is to the longsword. The blade is about the same size (if not a little longer) with an extended handle. It's primarily used by militia against mounted foes. It's a slightly less nuanced weapon, and only really good for hacking.
This is mostly true. Indeed the real purpose of the nodaichi was for hacking mounted opponents, as the nodaicho could cut clean through a warrior and his mount with a single blow (not that you could easily replicate the mechanics of such as single shot and death blow in PF.) The nodaichi was an infantry samurai weapon, as it was too unwieldy to use while mounted. However, swords were never a "militia" weapon as blades were primarily restricted to samurai as a secondary weapon (with both katana and wakizashi). The naginata and in some cases a spear was the primary melee weapon of the militia (ashigaru).
During the mongol invasions of Japan sent by Kublai Khan during the Kamakura Era (under the first ruling Minamoto shogun) in 1274, the nodaichi was used extensively by samurai. Because many of the battles were occuring in the western forests, the extra long blade proved disadvantageous in that environment. Thus the nodaichi fell out of favor for general use after that time.
The primary weapons of war for both samurai and ashigaru was always ranged weapons, from the yumi bow for the early part of their history, with the arquebus displacing bow from about 1580 onwards.
Only after the start of the Tokugawa Era (1603 - 1868) did the katana rise symbolically to represent the samurai, because war was pretty much eliminated under Tokugawa rulership and the sword became a symbol of the warrior as a badge or right of the social elite (and no longer a weapon of war).
Upon further review, I see no reason why the Snake Style feats should not be an option for this archetype. It's a way of still using a lot of the features built into the archetype but in a decidedly more offensive way. Options > rails.
Consider it done.