Underpowered: Samurai (3.5E)

The samurai has been ranked by very smart people as perhaps the least-powerful PC class in D&D 3.5. Apparently it’s on par with the expert, the adept, and other NPC classes. I think it’s common knowledge that non-spellcasting classes are generally less powerful than spellcasting classes, but is the samurai really that bad?

Well, let’s compare it to the fighter. Both have full BAB progression. Both have good Fortitude saves. Both have d10 Hit Dice. Both have two skill points per level, and both have Craft, Intimidate, and Ride as class skills; the fighter also has Handle Animal and the mobility skills (Climb, Jump, and Swim), while the samurai has Concentration, Diplomacy, Knowledge (history), Knowledge (nobility and royalty), and Sense Motive. It’s clear that at its base the samurai is a fighter with a little less of a focus on adventuring and a little more on interaction.

The skills tell another story though. The fighter’s skills are Strength-based (and Handle Animal, which makes sense with Ride), and most fighters are good at Strength. The samurai’s skills are more varied, with one Charisma-based, one Wis based, two Int-based, and Concentration (which the class has no way to use, so I expect it’s only there to help samurai qualify for the kensai prestige class later in the book). This lack of focus makes it harder to really excel at skills, and a samurai will probably have to choose between interaction and knowledge.

But nobody plays fighters for the skill points, do they? The real focus is on the eleven bonus feats. Samurai also happen to have eleven abilities they gain over time. So how do they stack up?

• Daisho proficiency: A bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose. All samurai get Exotic Weapon Proficiency (katana) at L1. In general, getting a bonus feat is not as good as choosing a bonus feat, since it limits character options and power. So this is a bit worse than a fighter.
• Two swords as one: A bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose and it only works in certain situations, but the character gets to ignore prerequisites. That’s usually pretty balanced (and the ranger is based on it), but the restriction here is greater. So the samurai just barely loses out here.
• Kiai smite: It’s like a paladin’s smite, which is better than a feat. But the samurai’s smite damage is drastically lower at almost every level (Cha mod vs. class level) and the samurai gets it less frequently than a paladin. We’ll call it a wash.
• Iaijutsu master: Another bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose, and it comes with an extra restriction. Worse than a feat.
• Staredown: +4 to Intimidate, better than a feat (Skill Focus) but the player doesn’t get to choose it. The text also says that the samurai “can demoralize an opponent”, which characters can already do. It’s like a class power that says “you can jump”. We’ll call this even again, but I’m not fully convinced.
• Improved Initiative: A bonus feat that the player doesn’t get to choose.
• Mass staredown: This is the first time the samurai gets something unique. This is level 10. So it’s a win, but it shouldn’t have taken this long to let one.
• Improved two swords as one: It’s like two swords as one, above. But while a ranger gets the equivalent of this ability at L6, the samurai has to wait until L11. So this is a loss.
• Improved staredown: The ability to reduce demoralization from a standard action to a move action, not unlike what Improved Feint does for feinting. So it’s like getting a feat, but you don’t get to choose it, but it’s also not available as a normal feat. I feel like I’m being too down on the samurai, so I’ll do it a kindness and call this “break-even.”
• Greater two swords as one: Same as improved two swords as one, right down to getting it five levels after the ranger. Similar loss.
• Frightful presence: The samurai’s capstone ability, this can grant a long-standing penalty (often as long as the entire fight) to every opponent in the battle. But it’s a penalty that doesn’t stack with the staredown, which is what the samurai has been doing since L6, so it’s not too ridiculous. Even though high-level NPCs and monsters are completely immune to it, we’ll say this is better.

By my reckoning, the samurai gets two abilities better than a fighter’s bonus feats, three that are about as good, and six that are worse. The ones that are better aren’t much better, so it’s looking pretty dim.

But it actually gets worse than that. All of the samurai’s staredown abilities are based on the Intimidate skill, so taking max ranks in it is as good as necessary. Without it, the samurai loses its signature ability, and with it, the samurai gets one fewer of its already-sparse skill points. A non-human samurai with Int 8 essentially gets no skill points at all. And since the paladin’s staredown, kiai smite, and frightful presence are all based on Charisma, a samurai is running low on places to put its low stat rolls.

And a note about the power of staredown. Say you’re a samurai. To make an opponent shaken for one round, your Intimidate check has to beat the opponent’s modified level check (d20 + Hit Dice + Wis mod). Let’s ignore for a second that I don’t like comparing rolls (especially d20 rolls) as a resolution mechanic. If you always fight equivalent-level NPCs, you come out slightly ahead, because your ranks in Intimidate should be three higher than the opponent’s level and your Cha should be about the same as their Wis. But monsters usually have more Hit Dice than a player and this difference increases at higher CRs, so staredown’s usability drops against them as you level. And mindless creatures are immune to it wholesale, as are any creatures immune to mind-affecting abilities or fear.

Which gives us a class that looks like a fighter, but it needs to split its ability scores more, its abilities aren’t as good as bonus feats, and its only unique ability (staredown) rarely works and isn’t synergistic with its other key ability (two-weapon fighting). Yeah, I’d call that worse than a fighter.

I actually like the samurai from Oriental Adventures better. It’s like a fighter, but with good Will saves, four skill points per level, and the ability to enhance their swords. The tradeoff (besides, I guess, shield and heavy armor proficiency) is that their bonus feats must come from a series of lists based on their clan; a crab samurai can get the Power Attack tree as bonus feats but not the Combat Expertise tree, for example. I think that if you like the samurai, that’s not a bad place to go. But it loses a lot in the fun factor. It’s basically the fighter but a little better, and all the flavor is in the feat selection (you know, like a fighter). It also doesn’t have the 3.5 samurai’s key mechanic, the staredown. So I think we can do something in between to make the samurai both powerful and interesting.

First let’s deal with the bonus feats. Instead of giving one hard-coded progression, let’s give the player a choice of progressions. They’re still hard-coded, yes, but we don’t want to take too much away from the fighter by duplicating its abilities. The clans from Oriental Adventures have some good ideas on theming, so let’s steal them wholesale. This replaces the abilities gained at the listed levels:

* – Feel free to use any big scary weapon here; the greatclub is a Core placeholder. I suggest a greataxe that does bludgeoning damage (a greathammer), or a tetsubo if you want to change it to Exotic Weapon Proficiency instead.

All of these feats are either in Core or Complete Warrior. That’s intentional.

Note that the dragon clan duplicates the samurai’s old feat list. The goal isn’t to invalidate the old samurai, just give it more choices and power. If somebody really wants to play the katana-and-wakizashi samurai, they should retain that option. But also note that the feats no longer requires the katana-and-wakizashi combo. There’s no reason a dragon samurai couldn’t dual-wield hammers or picks or axes or even katanas.

Now, the staredown. The big issues I have with this are that it takes forever to get going, it relies on opposed rolls, it grants a penalty many creatures ignore, and the results only last one round. There’s nothing I can do about the opposed rolls because that’s how demoralizing works. But the rest:

So now staredown is more meaningful at L6 than it is for other characters, something the original samurai lacked, and the penalty’s duration is potentially increased. At L10 creatures are no longer immune to the samurai’s staredown, and at L14 the usability increases further. The samurai’s unique mechanic is actually worth using, and he can try it once or twice in a fight rather than spending the whole combat maintaining his enemies’ penalties.

I also recommend increasing the skill points to 4 per level and adding Climb, Jump, Perform, and Swim to the samurai’s class list. This lets them be as mobile as the fighter and plays to the cultured flavor of samurai while giving him the skill points to spend on it. No longer is an Int 8 samurai locked out of skills altogether (I suppose an Int 4 samurai still is, but that’s the territory of Int 4 so I don’t think I’m too worried about that). I’d love to do something about kiai smite, but it can stay as it is. Don’t want to change everything.

With that, we have a class with more options, more flavor, and more power than the original samurai. I know this isn’t enough to bring it up to the level of a spellcasting class, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal is to make the samurai into a class that people want to play rather than a class that people only view to make fun of the art, and I think that’s what we did.

I’d list the whole class here or provide a link to an HTML version, but I’d rather not duplicate all that Wizards material. You print out this blog post and stick it in your (legitimate, hardcover) copy of Complete Warrior if you’re that worried about having it all in one place.