As stands, the free martial/exotic weapon is the only mechanism by which the kensai actually makes a choice in weapons.
The Kensai can make loads of choices in weapons. Their impact however depends on class choice.
For instance a Human Kensai whose chosen katana has his focused weapon can still use a club to smash a skeleton. He hits at par because he's proficient in it. He does not get to use any of his special chosen weapon tricks, but it doesn't matter as it was just a stupid little skeleton. He can still spelltrike with the club if he wants to.
An Elven Kensai whose chosen club as his focus weapon wants to wield an elven curved blade. He's not proficient with it because he does not have full martial weapon proficiency, having given that up to take the archetype. He can't choose the curve blade as his focus weapon because he made that choice for it to be a club. The elf however still has his race-given proficiencies with longbow, sword, and rapier. He can't spell combat with his curved blade that he's taking a -4 to hit, not because of non-profiency, but because it's a two handed weapon.
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What's worse is you're saying that if I were an Elf and chose Rapier, I would lose that class benefit. You are taking away class benefits.Does an elf fighter lose class benefits?
That is a fair point. He's pointing out that since the Elven Weapon Familiarity gives them Rapiers, that they can't select Rapiers for that chosen martial or exotic proficiency.
Yeah, I think I'm flipping my stance. This Kensai extra weapon proficency is clearly not intented to prevent races from specializing in their racial weapons.
What's worse is you're saying that if I were an Elf and chose Rapier, I would lose that class benefit. You are taking away class benefits.
The "class benefit" is doing funky tricks with a weapon of choice. You're still getting it with that rapier. It simply happens that the elven racial proficiency is overlapping the kensai chosen weapon proficiency which happens to be a rapier for this character.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A kensai is proficient in simple weapons and in a single martial or exotic melee weapon of his choice. A kensai is not proficient with armor or shields and suffers normal arcane spell failure chance when casting magus spells while armored.
Canny Defense (Ex): At 1st level, when a kensai is wielding his chosen weapon, he gains the canny defense ability. This is identical to the duelist prestige class ability of the same name (Core Rulebook 382), save that his chosen weapon may be of any type.
Weapon Focus (Ex): At 1st level, a kensai gains Weapon Focus with his chosen weapon as a bonus feat.
Perfect Strike (Ex): At 4th level, when a kensai hits with his chosen weapon, he can spend 1 point from his arcane pool in order to maximize his weapon damage. Don't roll for damage—the weapon deals maximum damage. This affects only the weapon's base damage dice, not additional damage from sneak attack, magical weapon properties, spellstrike, or critical hits.
It makes no sense to limit them to a Martial/Exotic, the whole thing is worded poorly, beginning with them referencing an ability from another class when the ability itself didn't have a type limitation, aswell as the the 9th lvl ability Critical Perfection (Ex) and 20th lvl capstone Weapon Mastery (Ex) both mention your "favored" weapon, while all other mention your "chosen" weapon, by RAW you don't get you 9th or 20th lvl ability from that.
There isn't a lot of consistency in its own wording, heck, unless there was an update I missed it still has deadly follow-up, and precise prowess as suggested arcana to pick and they don't even exist, and it hasn't been fixed in 5 years?
Please use RAI Martial, Exotic, AND Simple weapons can be your chosen/favored weapon.
It makes no sense to limit them to a Martial/Exotic, the whole thing is worded poorly, beginning with them referencing an ability from another class when the ability itself didn't have a type limitation, aswell as the the 9th lvl ability Critical Perfection (Ex) and 20th lvl capstone Weapon Mastery (Ex) both mention your "favored" weapon, while all other mention your "chosen" weapon, by RAW you don't get you 9th or 20th lvl ability from that.
There isn't a lot of consistency in its own wording, heck, unless there was an update I missed it still has deadly follow-up, and precise prowess as suggested arcana to pick and they don't even exist, and it hasn't been fixed in 5 years?
Please use RAI Martial, Exotic, AND Simple weapons can be your chosen/favored weapon.
I'm not sure what the folks starting this thread are pushing for.
1.Allowance that the chosen weapon can be simple. I'm pretty sure that's there, Again unless you were choosing an archetype like the Staff Magus, I'm not sure why anyone would WANT to.
2.If a Kensai chooses a simple weapon as their chosen weapon, they still want to choose a martial or exotic proficiency. And that, I don't get at all.
one awesome note is if kensai's can pick ranged weapons then you could be a kensai eldritch archer.
RAI and plain English does suggest it was meant by the designers to be a melee weapon, but of course playing by RAI can be dicey and what seemed clear to one person could really be completely different to another.
I'm reminded of a time when someone from the Pathfinder team clarified that the shadowstaff artifact didn't actually make one incorporeal, and only provided a AC and Ref save boost, rather meh for an artifact.
Overall I think people argue for it being anything because it makes it more interesting and isn't, from my view, particularly game breaking, but of course what is considered game breaking by the devs is rather different, at least given the FAQ history -- but don't you mind that, we need to make sure the martial-caster disparity lives on, it's a class thing after all.
Anyone have any experience in a PFS game of this actually coming up? For me in home games it's come up and it was an easy choice to say yeah, whatever you want is fine with me, cause an kensai eldritch archer sounds cool to me (as previously mentioned).
Throwing a light or one-handed weapon is a standard action, while throwing a two-handed weapon is a fullround action. Regardless of the type of weapon, such an attack scores a threat only on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a critical hit.Obviously, here "type" is referring to light, one-handed, or two-handed weapons.
In this case, I don't get the feeling that "type" is being used as a keyword, so it's probably safe to ignore that usage.
This, however, might be harder to dismiss:
AKLYS PRICE 5 GP
TYPE exoticPick a weapon, any weapon, and type is used for exotic, ammunition, martial, or simple.
I don't know if that counts, but it is an official usage of the word (in bold and all caps, no less) when referring to simple, martial, or exotic.
Muddying the waters further, we have the CRB:
Type: Weapons are classified according to the type of damage they deal: B for bludgeoning, P for piercing, or S for slashing. Some monsters may be resistant or immune to attacks from certain types of weapons.
Which, again, is the only place someone put the word "Type" in bold print followed by a colon and a description.
So type could mean anything. I still think, in context, the thing that makes the most sense is "any type, not just light or one-handed piercing weapons," but that's just one guy's opinion.
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"I love the smell of obtuseness in the morning!"
Choose a martial or exotic melee weapon. You become proficient in it and get a bunch of Magus features when using that weapon.
Do you want to select a simple weapon? You CAN'T. Done
Reasons: because it's RAW and because it's stupid, and for once rules are protecting the player from making stupid decisions. Want to become Mr Caveman? Get and Earthbreaker and refluff it as a big, heavy, ironwood club.
This is a role playing game, not reality. You can't set up an experiment to test how things actually work. You are REQUIRED to have a bare minimum amount of imagination and brain elasticity to play it.
Or, in a home game, ask your GM, since most reasonable GM's do not play by strict RAW and would not have a problem with you choosing a simple weapon if that's what you want.
Pick a weapon, any weapon, and type is used for exotic, ammunition, martial, or simple.
I don't know if that counts, but it is an official usage of the word (in bold and all caps, no less) when referring to simple, martial, or exotic.
Type means Blunt/Piercing/Slashing.
This is the type referred to by most of the duelist class abilities, from which Canny Defense was borrowed.
Simple/Martial/Exotic are categories.
Gonna mark this one as the next reason some of the FaQ'd questions from years back still aren't answered.
But things like the bardic masterpieces that have been around a couple of years will get missed again.
They were never going to be answered.
Look I'm not picking a side here. But I think both sides need to realize something.
Nothing on either side is backed by RAW...fully.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A kensai is proficient in simple weapons and in a single martial or exotic melee weapon of his choice. A kensai is not proficient with armor or shields and suffers normal arcane spell failure chance when casting magus spells while armored.
Using this while it would seem to be the RAI still isn't very clear by RAW.
Everyone saying this is how the "chosen"/"favored" weapon is picked is inferring that claim. It isn't what the rules say but seems the most likely.
Another viewpoint seems to be fixed on: Canny Defense and Weapon Focus.I can see the viewpoint on this one as well.
Canny Defense from duelist is reliant on using a melee weapon. So for the Kensai to mention: "save that his chosen weapon may be of any type." is strange to say the least.
It's also not crazy for a person to think that they could pick the "chosen" using Weapon Focus.
Either way both sides need to use a small bit of inference to reach there claim. So arguing at this point is not helping and personally attacks and snide comments don't help either.
Just use the FAQ and hope it gets answered.
But things like the bardic masterpieces that have been around a couple of years will get missed again.They were never going to be answered.
Which would probably bother me less if we didn't keep getting told that at least in part they base if off number of request. But here lately it does seem like to get an FAQ you need to be hotly contested, low hanging fruit, or something that might possibly be a little "OP" even if its farther down on hit numbers.
