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It would be a huge mistake for any new class to be better at scouting ahead than a rogue or a ranger. This is, at heart, a pretty classical fantasy RPG. It would be very confusing and counter intuitive for “sneaky” to be the niche of a non-core class, and especially not the rogue.
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I know it doesn't exactly help the discussion, but I always thought a fencer swashbuckler with a sorcerer dedication would make an incredible ninja.
Most people think about swashbucklers as flashy braggards, the opposite of the ninja DNA, but it just depends on how you play it - the chassis is actually very solid for a ninja-like character.
- DEX-based ? Check.
- Focused on confusing opponents during the fight ? Check (fencer)
- Good at stealth ? Take it, you're dex-based.
- Good at acrobatics and deception ? They're bound to be legendary
With the sorcerer (shadow) dedication, you'll add some staples from anime (mirror image or blur, invisibility...) as well as some solid focus spells.
So here's my take at a Ninja with what already exists.
Ancient Elf (Shadow sorcerer dedication) Swashbuckler (fencer) (level 10)
STR 0 DEX 4 CON 1 WIS 1 INT 0 CHA 3
1 - Nimble Elf, Goading Feint. Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Intimidation, Medicine, Occultism, Stealth, Thievery
2 - Elegant buckler, Slippery Prey
3 - Acrobatics and Deception to expert. Fleet, Lie to me
4 - Basic Bloodline spell (dim the light). Quick Disguise
5 - Stealth to expert, STR 0 DEX 4+, CON 2 WIS 2 INT 0 CHA 4, Elven instincts
6 - Basic Sorcerer expertise, Backup Disguise
7 - Acrobatics and deception to master, Breath control, Kip Up
8 - Bleeding Finisher, Slippery Secrets
9 - Elf Step, Stealth to master
10 - Buckler Dance, Swift Sneak, STR 0 DEX 5 CON 3 WIS 3 INT 0 CHA 4+
Spells: Flashy Disappearance, Mirror Image, Wooden Double
So what do we have here in comparison to the usual image of the ninja ?
- We're master in stealth, acrobatics and deception so we can basically enter any compound through infiltration, lies and bribes.
- We're hard to pin down (slippery prey), are great at disguises (quick disguise, backup disguise), our thoughts cannot be read (slippery secrets) and we're good at detecting lies (lie to me). We can also stop breathing for a long time (Breath control) and do all kinds of acrobatic stunts (cat fall, kip up).
- Our usual combat routine is creating a diversion or feinting and then striking to make the opponent bleed to death which feels very ninja-ish.
- We're damn fast (55 feet with panache, without factoring equipment)
- If needed, we can turn invisible, create clones or avoid a hit using a wooden double.
- I wanted to take a shadow spell with Dim the Light but ended up short, that's a bummer.
To me, that looks like a great way to play a ninja. Just say your rapier is a ninjato, your buckler is a metal bar tied to your forearm, and you're all set.
(By the way, apart from the obvious RP angle, this is a pretty strong character).
I'm not saying we cannot homebrew a ninja class, but it would need to be around this power budget.
Wait, now I want to play it :o
Edit: you can also go Smokeworker Hobgoblin and use smokesticks.
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It would be a huge mistake for any new class to be better at scouting ahead than a rogue or a ranger. This is, at heart, a pretty classical fantasy RPG. It would be very confusing and counter intuitive for “sneaky” to be the niche of a non-core class, and especially not the rogue.
I don't think the current rogue/ranger actually do a good job of scouting ahead. Like, against the Perception of a boss monster, you might at best have 50% odds of not getting spotted. And if you do get spotted you've probably made the situation worse tactically, than if you didn't scout at all.
Also, the ninja needs *something* that other classes don't have. And sneaking and infiltration is pretty much the essence of what ninjas are about.
My take is that the rogue *says* they're about stealth, but actually they're very much about flanking/gang up. Those are waaay more efficient ways to trigger sneak attack than continuously spending actions trying to get stealth going.
And rangers are not that much about stealth either; they're about focusing on one particular enemy. Perhaps with some tracking thrown in, while you're trying to deduce what kind of creature you're about to face next. Not a whole lot of the ranger's combat plan is based on stealth.
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We've been having arguments about whether wizard's talking raven familiar is stealing the rogue's niche since D&D 3.0.
Flying out of reach of a lot of enemies, and looking like a natural animal is such a vast advantage in many scouting situations that it's only the extreme vagueness of what PF2 familiars can do on their own that's stopping them from completely outclassing rogues for scouting. Well, that and door handles in dungeons.
Scouting is basically broken right now. Just purely by the numbers, it doesn't work; boss monster perception is too high.
But that's why I think there's design space for a class that has special abilities that let it do so. If the ninja is really able to ghost into a place, get into rooms without alerting everyone by opening doors, and able to get advance intel without alerting bosses, that's a class-defining ability right there.
Then in combat, give them a completely different way of fighting dirty than rogues. Don't give them anything that looks like sneak attack. Flanking should be no better for a ninja than it is for most other martials; nice, but not the thing that turns your engine on.
They're going to need some kind of damage booster to be reasonable, since we kinda imagine ninjas fighting with weapons that usually don't have really big damage dice, and we've already given away dex to damage to rogues. But maybe ninjas are more defensive/slippery than high damage; hard to pin down in melee. So more on the side of defense-heavy classes like monks and champions than on hard hitters like rogues and thaumaturges.
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I keep coming back to the idea of an archtype as the best way to make ninja happen.
Give it feat access to alchemy and basic spellcasting, and tracking. A core unifying feature can be few focus spells that are on theme for ninja and expert stealth and you have everything you need. As a class it falls over itself trying to distinguish out from rogue. And the ideas so far as a class make it try to be too many things at once. Its as if all the ninja trooes are being combined instead of looking at each trope as its own kind of ninja.
Want to be the stealth assassin ninja? Be a rogue and get the ninja archtype.
Want to be the ninjitsu master? Be a wizard with the ninja archtype.
Want to be a hybrid? Go magus with the ninja archtype.
Want to be a ninja scout? Go ranger with the ninja archtype
Blue_frog’s swashninja is pretty ninja as it is but if there was a onestop shop archtype to get the casting and alchemy stuff while upping stealth and adding some ninja focus spells it could make things easier.
Maybe a caster that specializes in spells attached to throwing weapons? Stealth and tracking can be attached to feat trees.
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Well, given this thread is in the Homebrew section, there seems little point in *not* aiming for a full class. Unless you make an archetype that is fundamentally more interesting and more…meaty than 95% of Paizo’s PF2R archetypes you might as well not bother. It will feel anemic and underwhelming mechanically/options wise and just not really allow for the breadth of storied themes.
I do see the attraction in being able to slap an archetype onto various chassis (martial, scout, caster) to create various “ninja” tropes, but ultimately a full bodied class with different avenues/streams will necessarily be a better and more thorough final result. The “kineticist” approach, utilising “Arts” would be a huge space to explore.
Because there are a lot of media representations of spellcasting ninja that people want to play? Not even tool use or advanced tactics but straight up mysticism and magic?
A mystic does not need to be a ninja at all right? Or have any martial ability for that matter.
When I think of the most iconic representations of ninja they are swift martials, stealthy, and only dabble in magic to further enable stealth and fighting.Wouldn’t you agree the more magic based you make them and less martial the less represented that kind of ninja is out there?
Like you would see ninjitsu master style of ninjas but they are often the most experienced characters, more likely a low experience representation of a ninja has maybe only a few mystical tricks.
So I think maybe thats another angle to look at this. What does a ninja look like at low level vs high level?
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It probably is a good idea for folks imagining a mystic, spell casting class to look at the shadow sorcerer and figure out what it is not doing that you want another class to do and what getting those things would cost.
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Because there are a lot of media representations of spellcasting ninja that people want to play? Not even tool use or advanced tactics but straight up mysticism and magic?A mystic does not need to be a ninja at all right? Or have any martial ability for that matter.
But a mystic ninja needs to be…mystic. I don’t think anyone in this thread is focussing on what a mystic does or how ninja-like they are.
When I think of the most iconic representations of ninja they are swift martials, stealthy, and only dabble in magic to further enable stealth and fighting.
Ok. But that is not the only ninja folks are seeing.
Wouldn’t you agree the more magic based you make them and less martial the less represented that kind of ninja is out there?
Probably. But that is not the only ninja folks are seeing.
Like you would see ninjitsu master style of ninjas but they are often the most experienced characters, more likely a low experience representation of a ninja has maybe only a few mystical tricks.
That is definitely one way of looking at the concept.
So I think maybe thats another angle to look at this. What does a ninja look like at low level vs high level?
Depends on what kind of ninja you are looking at.
Basically, I get that *you* think it might be pretty simple to work out using these points, but they aren’t really taking into account the varied portrayals or even imaginations expressed here. And I get that one class can’t fulfill *every* fantasy, but there is a lot of scope to create a chassis that works for a bunch of them - either through Commander style lessons or Arts, Kineticist whatevertheyares or even just….feats. Even in PF2R.
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I keep coming back to the idea of an archtype as the best way to make ninja happen.
Give it feat access to alchemy and basic spellcasting, and tracking. A core unifying feature can be few focus spells that are on theme for ninja and expert stealth and you have everything you need. As a class it falls over itself trying to distinguish out from rogue. And the ideas so far as a class make it try to be too many things at once. Its as if all the ninja trooes are being combined instead of looking at each trope as its own kind of ninja.
Want to be the stealth assassin ninja? Be a rogue and get the ninja archtype.
Want to be the ninjitsu master? Be a wizard with the ninja archtype.
Want to be a hybrid? Go magus with the ninja archtype.
Want to be a ninja scout? Go ranger with the ninja archtype
Blue_frog’s swashninja is pretty ninja as it is but if there was a onestop shop archtype to get the casting and alchemy stuff while upping stealth and adding some ninja focus spells it could make things easier.
I agree that it should be an archetype.
Part of me thinks that turning Shadowdancer into a Level 2 archetype, with the earlier levels adding the sorts of things we have been talking about would be the way to go, since pretty much everything in Shadowdancer could also be part of a ninja's skillset, and linking the Ninja to the Shadow plane (Umbral plane?) could be part of the explanation for the advanced stealth abilities.
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Coming back to this thread after a little while, my observations are:
And that last part I think is telling, because even for offshoot classes like the Investigator or Swashbuckler, their "thing" is pretty easily identifiable. It seems like the desire here isn't necessarily to have a class of character that does something really specific that's iconic to ninjas but that can't be done now, so much as have some package called "the Ninja" that sits somewhere in PF2e and does a bunch of things that's expected of it, regardless of whether or not those things already exist.
FWIW, I still do think a lot of what's being asked for could be resolved through feats and a spellcaster archetype. Being more effective while hidden sounds like a feat opportunity, as does more movement speed, whereas several spells already cover ninjutsu-style abilities like Wooden Double. I also wouldn't knock those asking for non-magical ninjas, as the originals IRL were infiltrators and spies, and it's only following a later period in Japan's history that they were mythologized with more magical powers. The Sengoku-era ninja with proficiency in espionage and infiltration sounds right up the Rogue's alley, and the post-Meiji era version sounds like something that could work particularly well with an improved Eldritch Trickster racket.
I agree that a strong lack of consensus about what a Ninja is as a class concept is probably the biggest problem with this becoming a class. My issue with envisioning Jutsu/Jitsu as a class mechanic is that it is too big of a concept to be locked into just one class. It is an idea that feels much closer to “feat” than to a specific thing that only one class gets access to. This already feels like it is going to be a huge problem for me with the Runesmith class, where a really cool idea to base a very large part of the game around gets locked into just one little area of the game where it doesn’t interact well with anything else. I have also been feeling this about the exemplar a little bit, and kinda wonder if some folks mystic ninja isn’t just some kind of exemplar type of character with different narratives wrapped around Ikons.
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I feel like I need to be specific here - ninja was a term that was invented in the Meiji era, and postfactually assigned to the Sengoku people (largely samurai) that fit the mold (like the Sanada Ten Braves or Goemon)... and at the same time ascribing them all those magical powers. So while technically there existed a person named Sasuke or Goemon who did infiltration and espionage during the Sengoku, the ninja Sasuke and Goemon always had the magic powers. It's like how there probably was a King Arthur who wore Roman era armour, used Roman era weapons and prayed to the local gods but when people say King Arthur they mean the plate armour wearing, magic greatsword wielding seeker of the Holy Grail... because King Arthur is primarily defined by the French (late) medieval works.
As I understand it, the term "shinobi", which is the one most commonly used to refer to ninja, predates the Meiji era by centuries. Even in modern Japanese media, depictions of ninja are diverse and don't always include magic, which is why it may be inadvisable to foist magic upon anyone wanting to play a ninja -- and why it may be better to give assorted ninja-flavored options to players, rather than some preset package that none of us have managed to define and that is unlikely to satisfy everyone.
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I think the reason a lot of characters in various Japanese media read as "ninja" is the same reason a lot of characters in, say, a Shaw Bros. movie read as "monks." Which is to say a lot of times when you're interested in telling a story set in a specific genre it's useful to have the various participants in the action be, in a sense, peers so we at least view them through the same lens.
Which is not how a "class-based roleplaying game" works. Not only is it important that the Rogue and the Cleric are differently competent, but it's seen as important that the Cleric can't do Rogue stuff better than the Rogue can or vice versa.
So I think it's a useful tool, when viewing outside media to think "how can I implement this in Pathfinder" to instead look at that medium through a Pathfinder lens first. Like it should be clear that outside of gimmick games, a PF party is almost never "all one class" so insofar as you have a party in the thing you're adapting they probably also should not all have one class.
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A quick point to the best of my momentary research and memory, the ninja was popularized in media (namely theatre) about 200-300 years after they were most active--which creates a nice parallel with the stock knight tropes, which did the same but in books. The theatre ninja very much consistently had 'sorcerous powers' and popularized the idea of wearing black uniforms (because stagehands wore black, and therefore the ninja could strike while 'invisible').
Meanwhile, im given to understand that the word Ninja (忍者) is a shortened, altered version of shinobi no mono (忍びの者) - you may notice the same kanji show up in both terms. The difference in pronunciation is because ninja uses the onyomi (or Chinese) pronunciation, and shinobi no mono uses the kunyomi (native) pronunciation. Its a bit like if you imagine that "water" and "hydro" were variations of the same word; one more likely to be used in compound words and one more likely to be used alone, but they refer generally to the same thing
Either way, 忍び refers to the act of sneaking or enduring something, while 者 is a way of saying 'person' that often shows up in the names of professions (geisha, for example; the "ja" in ninja is a modified "sha" syllable). In short, the word Ninja can probably be most actually translated as "stealthy person" which the understanding that it is used to refer to historical and folklorical agents.
That said, I dont think trying to divine a class by means of tracing its etymology back to prove what it really was is of any particular utility here. Even if I thought thr class should be named Ninja, we would be better served by finding what character/class fantasy we want the ninja to fulfill, and unfortunately "a ninja" is not a single character fantasy, but 15 in a trench coat. Of course, if you look at folkloric knights, I feel like it might be fair to say the Champion hardly embodies every idea of what the knight has meant over history, either.
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In any case, my support for the magical ninja is because its a class fantasy (regardless what we name it) that I feel isnt expressed in Pathfinder yet--a stealthy magical assassin--and because it might be interesting to see what a third wavecaster class looks like. Its not as though wavecasters get no martial skill, either, so in my mind, they would best be able to express the idea of a katana/kunai/shuriken-wielding assassin with a grab bag of magical tricks... with hopefully a core mechanic that bridges any other gaps in the fantasy with focus spells and maybe precision damage or whatever works.
It is more interesting to me to capture the FFXIV and folklorical ninjas, perhaps also the Naruto ninja, than it is to try to make another rogue that can be a folkloric magical ninja when we could just be making Rogue feats that add what it doesnt already do--which is be a stealthy, blade-wielding assassin who can strike from the shadows for massive damage and fight using trickery.
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Another trick with historical modeling for a Ninja class is that a lot of the “what defines a Ninja” attributes are tied specifically to economic and political class in ways that PF2 doesn’t emulate all that well. There are some places where it happens (PF2 monk in some ways), but doing it again, largely along the same lines doesn’t feel useful or something that can be applied to a class that could spring up out of anywhere in Golarion.
I think maybe it could come across as some kind of guerrilla concept that is broad enough - class trained to utilize unconventional tactics, weapons and abilities to win against foes with superior power/force/equipment…but that is a real challenging road to walk for a single character in a party, AND it is kind of the default position parties tend to find themselves in narratively, even if it is not typically the case mechanically.
Like, if firebrands were less braggarts, they could almost fill this role, so maybe a new Faction, with multiple linked feats and archetypes and equipment is kind of the best route for this, rather than a set specific class or archetype. Like if the Bellflower network turned into a full faction dedicated to the destruction of the house of Thrune (or maybe even Hell) and its influences across Golarion, and expanded way beyond being about halflings specifically, I could see room for a faction to cover most of what people want to fit in this class space.
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I would think a remastered Eldritch Trickster class archetype, with full bounded casting, would be most of the way to being a ninja. Though I'm not sure what would have to be sacrificed for that.
Stuff about a guerrilla faction
Although, thinking about this more, with Starfinder coming over to the same general rules, and thus maybe the subsystem of infiltration coming into more focus and development...
It seems like an infiltration rule book could be in the works down the pipe, especially since the world will be experiencing a lot of war, but there are only so many good multiplayer party stories to tell with Army battles. If that were the case then there could be room for both a martial focused infiltrator and a Mage infiltrator class with a lot of support feats for similar styles of play with other classes.
I think a basic problem with "stealth or assassination" as a theme is that Pathfinder structurally doesn't really support "we sneakily dispatch the enemies without conflict so that we don't have to fight them." We already give people unrealistic amounts of HP so that combat has a back and forth and the PCs aren't going to be taken out instantly so the enemies aren't either. Certainly there are lots of fun games where you sneak around and take out enemies without conflict, but I don't think PF2 is set up to enable that fantasy.
The other thing is we already have classes where "sneaky" is a core part of their kit, and it would feel bad if we suddenly added someone else who is sneakier.
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I think a basic problem with "stealth or assassination" as a theme is that Pathfinder structurally doesn't really support "we sneakily dispatch the enemies without conflict so that we don't have to fight them." We already give people unrealistic amounts of HP so that combat has a back and forth and the PCs aren't going to be taken out instantly so the enemies aren't either. Certainly there are lots of fun games where you sneak around and take out enemies without conflict, but I don't think PF2 is set up to enable that fantasy.
The other thing is we already have classes where "sneaky" is a core part of their kit, and it would feel bad if we suddenly added someone else who is sneakier.
Well, I don’t think assassination, beyond specific campaigns where the whole party builds for it, needs to be a full class and not an archetype, but I disagree that infiltration and defeating enemies without fighting them are inherently bad adventure design. The key is not trying to run those kinds of encounters as combat encounters, and making sure there is more than one skill that just solves the encounter that everyone has to be good at. PF2 adventure writers have been doing a ton of this in both APs and PFS scenarios. I think we’ll also see a lot more of this in Starfinder as well so I think it is possible for adventures to feature more encounters that can either be fought or won by other means.
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Okay, coming back at the "Mystic Ninja" concept... like... that's just Naruto, the least ninja ninjas in media.
Historical Ninja are so much cooler BECAUSE none of it was magic, or ancient dynasties. They started as peasants who fought back with what humble tools they had (which is why I objected to katana and wakizashi, those are the tools of the nobles).
THAT SAID, I agree my take is not the only one
and in a world of magic, magic would be one more tool a lot of Ninja would use. but I would see it as a base class being martial (with majbe the scroll trickster feat built in) and having feat trees that lead to more and more magic. Or maybe a subclass devoted to magic, letting them automatically archetype into a casting class.
Okay, coming back at the "Mystic Ninja" concept... like... that's just Naruto, the least ninja ninjas in media.
Historical Ninja are so much cooler BECAUSE none of it was magic, or ancient dynasties. They started as peasants who fought back with what humble tools they had (which is why I objected to katana and wakizashi, those are the tools of the nobles).
... Besides the fact that ninjas were in fact codified as using magic, through folklore tales and stage shows as mentioned, most of the iconic shinobis were, in fact, of the military caste (samurais, in other words) themselves. Naruto is actually really accurate as to what ninjas are.
I mean, this thread consistently shows what I said, that Paizo can't make a culturally respectful ninja, because the english speaking RPG community has this concept of a ninja divorced from its Japanese roots (the 3.5e ninja class flat out says they just borrowed the name for a sneaky class that uses some magic which has no relation to the real one) and that also is something that's already covered mostly by existing classes so we keep ding-donging between 'we need a sneaky class that can optionally use some magic but not as a key thing' and 'we already have an existing sneaky class, if you just want to add magic it's called a spellcasting archetype'.
I've written two whole ninja outlines here and we still end up at 'in order to respect 70s action film ninja, we need to recreate the rogue but like slightly different'.
There is also representation in video games that have ninja. In most ninja are martials first. These are a few I remember playing.
Ninja Gaiden nintendo - warrior first, attack basic is throwing stars lots of climbing walls and flippingFinal fantasy tactics - dual wielding and throwing no magic
Tenchu Stealth assassin - no magic, depicts normal humans
Ogrebattle - the advanced ninja class had magic
Brigandine - minor magic use
Suikoden - everyone can use runes some ninja come with ones that do an attack, not magic
Dead or Alive - ninja do use magic to disappear in the wind after a fight
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I think if you want to make a character that has an "officially called Ninja" class or archetype, that should be compatible with both the magically themed ninja and the more historical nonmagical ninja.
On the other hand, if we're looking for mechanical niches that seem big enough to build something in, the best so far looks like a much more magical cousin to the rogue. The eldritch trickster racket appealed to a lot of people but mechanically it was kinda shaky - didn't play well with other things like ancient elf, took several levels to get online, and sneak attacking with spells didn't really keep up with sneak attacking with weapons anyway, since your proficiencies lagged behind. But the idea of a more magical roguelike character got a lot of people excited.
The ninja does a lot of the same stuff as a rogue. Walking through walls, all that sneak attack stuff and so on. We don't like two classes that feel like they're poaching each others' stuff too much. But the ninja would do too much different to fit it all into a racket. So I'm coming around to the idea that you could it with:
- A rogue class archetype that locks you into a specific racket (eldritch trickster 2.0) and sacrifices some of the regular class features.
- Spends some budget on making sure spell-based sneak attack actually keeps up well across later levels (fixing the to-hit accuracy and action cost, and difficulty with using ranged sneak attack spells).
- Has some skill-archetype feats similar to Runelord 2.0, so you can "graduate" relatively early.
- Is designed to be a good entry class for "other country, but sorta ninja" archetypes like Lion Blade and Red Mantis Assassin.
- Overall, the class-archetype isn't too tuned to a specific culture. It might be called "ninja" or it could actually be "eldritch trickster".
You can then pair that with making one or two specifically Tian flavored archetypes that focus on more local-culture adaptations, sort of the local counterpart to the Lion Blades/Red Mantis. Some sponsors of ninja clans could be:
- old Minkai anti-Oni resistance movements
- Oni with local informers/infiltrators
- Golden League Xun assassins
- Way of the Kirin vigilantes
The point of these archetypes is that (1) they're very compatible with the Trickster 2.0 rogue, but not locked in totally, similar to how fighters and rangers also make good Red Mantis characters and Lion Blade plays fine with bards too. And (2) that these are the very very culturally oriented archetypes oozing with local flavor.