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Aloha everyone!
I am in my 3rd draft of the iconic Samurai, a martial archetype for the D&D 5th edition fighter.
I have posted this both on facebook and Google+, but I know we have a whole other community here. If you are so inclined, I would love to hear some more feedback. If you have any questions about the design philosophy, I would be happy to explain that as well.
Enjoy!
EDIT: I am actually hoping to commission a little art and put it up on the DMs Guild as a Pay What you Want. You think it is good enough? I would like to hear that as well!
General: No ribbons in this class (except for features most Samurai will probably never want to use when playing their vision of a Samurai). Ribbons are generally a Good Thing in my opinion, for example I like how the Battle Master gets a tool proficiency and Know Your Enemy (which doesn't have dungeon crawling combat applications most of the time so much as sizing up NPCs)
Stand Strong in a Storm and No Mind have periods in their formatting, and shouldn't.
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Stand Strong in a Storm: Does 5e have fear and fear effects? You probably want to word it more like the Halfling's Brave racial, which safeguards against the Frightened condition.
Iajutsu: Seems fine.
Aikijutsu: Anyone that wants to be a grappler will be jealous of this ability, but when most people think of Samurai they think of cutting people up with a katana (and possibly wakizashi,or maybe mounted archery), not martial arts. For those players, this cool grappling power will be essentially a ribbon.
Samurai's Challenge: Using it as an action hurts. Not sure if that's a price I'd pay for on-demand Goading Attack (from the Battle Master), without the Attack itself. You could even lose concentration on it before the challenged creature's next turn comes up, which would definitely be a feelbad.
5e abilities that recover on short rest also recover on long rest, and that's usually included in the wording.
No Mind: I definitely expected Mind Blank here, not Haste. The EK can do Haste 2/day at this level, and 2/short rest usually means every encounter, so this is pretty powerful.
Might of King Susano: Pretty cool capstone.
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Thanks, Alchemy! I agree about the ribbons, and I love them too, but I didn't just want to bite the Battlemaster, because I really love both of those for the Samurai. I also do not feel this will be good for every variation of the Samurai. The inspiration for this largely came from the Hagakure and some historical stories, with a little bit of movie magic.
Stand Strong in a Storm: Does 5e have fear and fear effects? You probably want to word it more like the Halfling's Brave racial, which safeguards against the Frightened condition.
Good point. I didn't think about that. I will reword that.
Aikijutsu: Anyone that wants to be a grappler will be jealous of this ability, but when most people think of Samurai they think of cutting people up with a katana (and possibly wakizashi,or maybe mounted archery), not martial arts. For those players, this cool grappling power will be essentially a ribbon.
That is sort of the effect that I was going for here. This ability will rarely come into play, unless the player puts himself in that position. (Though a good DM may set something up so that it will come into play.) I will emphasize that this is not an archetype for someone that optimizes his or her character. This WAS a large part of a Samurai's training though, and also allows the unarmored (Kenshin-style) Samurai moments without a dip into monk.
Samurai's Challenge: Using it as an action hurts. Not sure if that's a price I'd pay for on-demand Goading Attack (from the Battle Master), without the Attack itself. You could even lose concentration on it before the challenged creature's next turn comes up, which would definitely be a feelbad.
5e abilities that recover on short rest also recover on long rest, and that's usually included in the wording.
Robert Adducci from Adventurers League suggested maybe using maneuver dice for the Aikijutsu, which I am hesitant to do. I wasn't happy with the archetypes they made for the Unearthed Arcana article, because they gave maneuver dice to everyone and it felt uninspired. That being said, if I did do that, I could see giving Goading Attack as the Samurai's Challenge, but it would feel a little underwhelming as a 10th level ability. Do you have any suggestions?
No Mind: I definitely expected Mind Blank here, not Haste. The EK can do Haste 2/day at this level, and 2/short rest usually means every encounter, so this is pretty powerful.
This was the inspiration that I was using for No Mind.
Thanks again! Do you have any ideas for a good ribbon? I was thinking proficiency in an artisan's toolkit (Calligrapher) or something. But I would like something along the same vein as the Know your Enemy...
Yeah, the Battle Master does a pretty good job of emulating a Samurai.
Aikijutsu is a dissonance point for me, but I can see where you're coming from on it.
For the Challenge, you could make it a bonus action from the start, but have it bind the Samurai to the same conditions (disadvantage to attack anyone outside the challenge). If the challenge is ended (by losing concentration or one of the participants dying), the Samurai can't re-challenge the same creature until after a short or long rest.
For a ribbon, you could give them some sort of Honorsense. Interact with someone for 1min, get an idea of their guiding principles and advantage to Insight checks against them.
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Yeah, the Battle Master does a pretty good job of emulating a Samurai.
But as we said before, everyone has a different version of a samurai in their mind.
For the Challenge, you could make it a bonus action from the start, but have it bind the Samurai to the same conditions (disadvantage to attack anyone outside the challenge). If the challenge is ended (by losing concentration or one of the participants dying), the Samurai can't re-challenge the same creature until after a short or long rest.
I like that turn of the Challenge. If we do that, though, will it be at will then? The samurai may then challenge someone else and again and again as long as it is not the same person? I will have to playtest that. Thankfully, I have someone to playtest that soon. They are only 4th level, but I will come up with a way for him to have a taste of future levels... ;)
For a ribbon, you could give them some sort of Honorsense. Interact with someone for 1min, get an idea of their guiding principles and advantage to Insight checks against them.
I do like this. Let me see what I can come up with.
DMG has rules for Honor ability scores, saving throws, etc.
Maybe an option to attack an opponent's Honor score instead of its AC?
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I like Aikijutsu, but I feel like it should be divorced from the grapple rules since it does not really grapple, per se. Let it be something that just does what it does without calling it a grapple.
Having taken Aikido, I feel that at least the disarm and the joint lock would definitely require a Grapple check. However, to reflect that it is about using your opponent's momentum against them, we could make it a mental Ability check, but I don't know what to use. Wisdom? That would reduce the effectiveness of the check in most cases, but would reflect the increased effectiveness as the fighter increases in age.
Interesting.
The level 18 ability is very strong. Too strong. Especially since it grants heroism.
Didn't think about that. Two concentration spells overlayed might be too much. Okay, what if I tone it back and instead grant advantage on Constitution checks made to maintain concentration?
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Okay, here is version 4. I cut the power level down a bit and to Petty Alchemist's suggestion about ribbons. I did a variation of the Battlemaster's Know Your Enemy that involved the idea of being able to "read" the Honor of the target (inspired by Smilodan's suggestion) and have an optional use of the Honor score from the DMG.
Then I removed the heroism from the capstone No Mind ability and felt that the Akijutsu ability was too complicated and the grapple aspect should be available to anyone, so I modified it to focus on one waza or technique called tenkan. This was inspired by Lorathorn's comments.
Thank you all. I will playtest this version, and I am pretty happy with it. It is more in line with other archetypes now.
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I deliberately created the setting to take advantage of the general Eastern belief in benevolent dragons, then here comes this cult from the West that recruits the commonfolk and takes advantage of the fact that they think their cause is just!
Ultimately it is turning to be less about the Cult of the Dragon and more about the PCs and their journey of self-discovery, as it should be!
Aloha!
Good to see some free samurai the 5th stuff. ;)
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Very neat. I wish I could be a fly on the wall.
I think the guy playing the samurai is getting discouraged, because he keeps getting thrashed. I have to set up a scene where he gets to straight up duel a villain where he doesn't out-and-out get trounced...
I think I am going to have him have a chambara scene as well, to try and build up his morale a bit before the next boss fight.
They are just about to hit 5th level and I think I am going to have a training montage before they get there. Maybe even pass out some special abilities that they can learn.