Samurai Development Thread

[kablizzy]

For all discussion relating to the Samurai. 

Ability	Description	Range	Effect	Speed	JP
Whispering Blade	Calls upon the spirit of the sky to drive enemies insane. Success: 100% (Hit Rate) 15% (Berserk) System: Inflicts 70% Wind damage and small chance to cause Berserk. Requires a Katana.	1	1	Now	100
Hayate	Strengthen your focus on your enemy's next movement. Success: 100% System: M-Ev by 15% until next turn.	0	1	Now	150
Asura	Calling upon the ancient spirits within his blade, the Samurai commands them to assault his foes. Success: 100% System: Deals non-elemental damage to adjacent foes, equal to 70% of Attack command.	0	2	Now	250
Kusarigama	A weapon attached to a chain used to disarm opponents and drag them closer. Success: 100% (Hit Rate) 50% (Pull) 10% (Disarm) System: Attack command. 50% chance of pulling the target into adjacent tile, 10% chance of Disarming target.	2	1	Now	300
Magicide	Use your ki to weaken the spirit. Success: 100% (Hit Rate) 50% (-1 MA) System: Attack command. Inflicts 50% damage.	3	1	Now	350
Dispatch	Strike the foe in a way to disrupt his focus and lower his guard. Success: 100% (Hit Rate) System: Inflicts 70% Magical damage. Ignores M-EV.	1	1	Now	450
Purifying Breeze	A technique that releases the spirit in the user's katana, bestowing the protection of its effervescent life force. Success: 100% (Heal) 25% (Protect) 75% (Shell) Effect: Heal, Protect, Shell Quote: "Innocent sword, slash evils and protect! Purifying Breeze!". System: Heals user equal to 20% of max HP.	1	3	Now	500
Tempest	Performs a flowing, 4-strike combo while floating gracefully among enemies. Success: 100% System: Four attacks divided at random between the number of opponents, each at 20% strength, +5% for each target beyond the first (Four targets would mean each attack is at 40% strength)	1	2	Now	600
Ethereal Embrace	A technique that releases the spirit in the user's katana, bestowing physical healing and increased speed. Effect: Regen, Haste Quote: "Sword of fury, inject power! Ethereal Embrace!" System: Casts Regen and Haste on user.	1	3	Now	700

3400

Reaction

Name	Description	Trigger	JP
Meatbone Slash	Deal damage equal to own maximum HP when critically wounded.	Critical	500
Spelleater	Focus on the spirit of the blade, protecting the Samurai from mystical harm. System: Reduces magical healing and magical damage by [P-Ev]%. P-EV is set to 0% until the Samurai's next turn.	Magical Attack	700

1200
Support

Name	Description	JP
Equip Katana	Equip Katana, regardless of job.	400
Death Strike	Increases Critical Strike chance on 'Attack' command.	550

950
Movement

Name	Description	JP
Swim	Swim through and even act in deep water.	300

300

JP: 5850 / 5450

[Schwerpunkt]

15,000 JP and 22 skills is a bit much.

So, the very first question is the obvious one: what, exactly, is the Samurai doing? What is his role? Of the entire POJ list, there are only two classes that have shields -- Lancer and Knight -- and therefore can make effective traditional tanks (not counting evasion tanks). I would like to see the Samurai have an auxiliary tanking role -- specifically tanking spells, since we only have one other class that can conceivably do that (Spellsword).

Now, a few broad strokes.
- The drawing slash thing is extremely romanticized. Not only did samurai in armor not carry their swords in that manner (to make it work, the blade has to be facing upwards in the scabbard, which makes drawing in armor kind of awkward), it's merely one of a dozen different weapon skills the samurai would have mastered. Restricting the samurai to the Iaido is like restricting the Knight to fighting with an arming sword.

- Making the samurai juggle katanas is just weird. Samurai went into battle carrying the weapons they felt would be practical to them. That typically would mean carrying different weapon types of different lengths (which is why the typical portrait of a samurai shows him carrying a katana and a wakizashi -- similar weapons with very distinct purposes). I seriously doubt there were samurai that went through their armory in the morning and said "today I'll carry the red 44", the blue 41", and the pink 42" -- just in case I'm in a super-specific situation where I need a very specific blade length." C'mon.

- I would like to see the class based primarily around the samurai's traditional weapons instead of the silly notion that the samurai is carrying a dozen swords around in his pack.

Now, abilities I think the samurai should have. I'll let you fiddle with names.

Tier I
1. The Draw-Cut, because people will expect to see it. Probably something like 90% accuracy, 120% damage, +5% to crit chance.
2. Some sort of disarm based around the kusarigama being thrown at the enemy. Probably around a 70% chance to disarm someone for two turns. Since the kusarigama is attached to a chain, being able to reach to someone two tiles away is feasible.
3. A sword spirit attack, probably dealing something like 70% damage to everyone within two tiles.

Tier II
4. A combination kusarigama and katana attack. Specifically, it pulls the target (who is exactly 2 tiles away) to you and then attacks him for regular damage.
5. A ranged attack involving the yumi (bow) that does not actually require the samurai equip a bow (because that would make this class a mess). The attack would probably reach out 3-6 tiles and hit for ~80% damage. This exists primarily to hit targets who are out of range. It may be possible to apply a Hemorrhage effect to this attack to improve viability.
6. Another sword spirit skill. This one would apply Shell and restore about two thirds the health that the sword spirit from the above tier damages.

Tier III
7. Tempest, because it sounds awesome.
8. A ranged taunt, based around the kabura-ya (a whistling arrow). This would allow the Samurai to apply Provoke to casters, making them better at eating spells.
9. Ethereal Embrace as this tier's spirit ability.

The above skill list basically gives the samurai a strong (but localized) aoe capability, a decent one-on-one dps ability, the ability to disarm an enemy or pull him in and smack him with a sword (provided, y'know, he's exactly 2 tiles away), and two beneficial sword spirit actions to give him some flexibility (and Shell, which he totally needs). Additionally, to actually differentiate katanas from swords, they'll have crappy P-Ev but high M-Ev.

For Reaction, I like Meatbone Slash (a lot more than Tiger Strike, in fact). It'd probably need a new name (I'm kind of partial to something with 'vengeance' in the name), though.

I do not, however, like Blade Grasp, which was horrifically overpowered in FFT. Being able to just flat out negate an enemy's physical attack with regularity isn't kosher. I'd rather see something that plays on the ancestral spirit note, possibly giving a (low) chance of negating spell damage.

I'm okay with the rest, but I'd cut Two Hands. I don't think it's going to be necessary -- most classes are going to be using both hands without it. And it's kind of silly to use Two Hands with a crossbow or any items from the MOJ tree. Seriously, how silly would it be to Two Hands a book?

[Blizz_Work]

I'll reply a bit more in-depth tonight, but really good ideas, although I don't care much about historical accuracy or carrying capacity as much here, I think draw-cut was more meant as a supplementary Ability based upon the Draw Out skills. Of which I'm not 100% tied to.

[sunspawn]

How about taking a page from real life and giving the samurai bows and something to do with them? Just a general idea.

[Schwerpunkt]

Yeah, that was my intent behind giving him 5 weapon-derived abilites, 4 of which came from weapons that weren't katanas. Samurai were fairly versatile fighters, just like knights were, so it makes sense for their skillset to reflect that.

Apr 26, 2013 14:52:58 GMT -6 Blizz_Work said:

I'll reply a bit more in-depth tonight, but really good ideas, although I don't care much about historical accuracy or carrying capacity as much here, I think draw-cut was more meant as a supplementary Ability based upon the Draw Out skills. Of which I'm not 100% tied to.

It was kind of hard to tell what you were going for. I suppose I was ranting a bit about popular culture (or at least the weeaboos), too.

[Blizz_Toilet]

Oh, maybe I never made it clear what I was doing with these - These initial builds I'm posting aren't my suggestions - half of these abilities, I don't like. I'm basically compiling FFT abilities, HoI abilities, and going through other FF games and grabbing abilities that would thematically work. Then, I go through my old Master Class builds, look at the current HoI Master build for that class, and look for anything cool / maybe worth salvaging or making work. I fully expect us to add, cut, and edit every ability in these lists. So, if you see anything in these posts, its mostly because its either FF canon, cool conceptually, or worth mentioning as a direction to maybe go with the class. These are the opposite of set in stone, so if you see an ability with a name you dislike, or one that would be better weaker or stronger, feel free to edit and suggest other ways for that skill to work, 'cause these are very, very rough ideas and definitely nowhere near complete or good.

[Ilium]

I had an interesting idea on how to handle draw cut pretty creatively. I will keep this short, just gauging everyone's opinions. First, we balance Katanas a bit differently. Lower Attack and Evade, however we add an element to each or most of the individual weapons. Fire, Lightning, Ice, Wind, Water, Earth, etc.. So each particular sword will have its strengths and weaknesses when going into battle.

Take for instance you have a Lightning-element katana going into battle with a bunch of monsters weak to Water. If you just so happened to have the Water katana, Draw-Cut on the enemy and hit him for big damage. Or if they are resistant to Lightning, Draw-Cut out to a sword that would do normal damage.

This way, both the Samurai and the ability Draw-Cut would be able to grow and evolve in a unique way. The more katanas you collect, the stronger Draw-Cut becomes, and the more versatile the Samurai becomes. Also we introduce a new way to represent katanas in the game, different than all the other stabby weapons.

I could see Samurai's being used as tanks. I am not against the idea of allowing them shields either. Samurai's in FFXI were said to first be envisioned as "parry" tanks, so perhaps we could explore the idea of an evade tank?

[Blizz_Walmart]

That's a pretty cool idea, too. I think ninja still have the market on evade, but these are all definitely things to look into. I'm mobile right now, I should be home in an hour or so to throw out a couple new class threads and comment more in-depth.

[Ilium]

Apr 26, 2013 19:05:44 GMT -6 Blizz_Walmart said:

That's a pretty cool idea, too. I think ninja still have the market on evade, but these are all definitely things to look into. I'm mobile right now, I should be home in an hour or so to throw out a couple new class threads and comment more in-depth.

Oh yeah, evade would definitely be more prevalent in Ninja and Thief. Maybe just sprinkle in a little evade here and there, maybe a little more magick evade, more than what the Knight and Lancer would get.

[Blizz_Mcdonalds]

Also, are we just allowing classes to equip weapons with 2 hands? I suppose that makes some sense. Also, same with equip change? I figured you go into battle with just what you have on you, but spending a turn to put your sword away and draw your gun sounds reasonable.

[Ilium]

Yeah having equip change be an action like that universally for all classes would be a good idea. I would imagine we would use the traditional two 'arm' slots for weaponry. Speaking of 2 hands, Dual Wield might pose some issues with my suggestion for Draw-Cut. Maybe restricting Draw-Cut while Dual Wield is applied.

[Schwerpunkt]

Kablizzy and his silly names.

On the subject of samurai swords having elements: this sounds interesting until you realize that you either need to have about five times as many katanas as any other weapon or you get into a situation where you start trading away physical power (and probably FP, since it seems like we're going in that direction) in favor of elemental attacks.

There's also the over-emphasis on Iaido, which is just one fraction of what a well-trained samurai would have been capable of doing. This bothers me, because we're effectively stereotyping an entire caste of warriors without really getting anything useful or new out of it (or even for the sake of simplifying an exceptionally complex language/culture, which is what I did with Ordallia).

Basically, we'd be turning the Samurai into a carbon copy of HoI's Rune Knight. And I think we know how well that turned out.

Shields, by the way, are a non-starter. The Japanese simply didn't use them. Remember, the samurai caste revolved very heavily around horse archer and fighting with extremely long swords (the nodaichi, for instance, is basically a katana long enough to use while mounted). From there it gradually expanded to include other stuff, but always things that were useful either personal defense (like the wakizashi, since you couldn't really use a katana in enclosed spaces) or while mounted (like the various polearm weapons). Shields didn't really work with that fit because samurai weren't supposed to be nigh-unkillable freight trains like their Western counterparts.




As far as Two-Handed goes, I don't like it. It sounds like an interesting idea, but it really doesn't work with historical martial arts (sort of like 'dual wielding,' which is largely a thing popularized by the same people who gave us vikings with horns on their helmets -- poets and pseudo-historians in the 18th century). There is a very big difference between fighting with a longsword and fighting with a longsword and shield. All those things I listed for the Knight in that early draft came directly from the German school of dueling, which was built entirely around using a longsword (or sometimes a bastard sword) with two hands. That school is nothing at all like one in which you're fighting with just a single sword (a recurring theme of the Spanish/Italian/French schools, which cropped up later). The reason the rapier exists, for instance, is because fine control of a longsword with one hand was lacking -- so smiths made the blade a lot lighter, and a bit smaller, and then famous martial artists built a school around exploiting that. And nothing they wrote about really works if you try to wield a rapier with two hands. It's just clunky and doesn't work with the maneuvers.

Even getting past all of that, Two-Handed as an ability is just kind of out there. Who does it benefit, exactly? All of the really high-damage physical classes -- the Knight, Lancer, Ninja, Samurai -- are going to wind up using both hands by default. The Monk doesn't use a weapon, so it doesn't apply to him. That leaves Squire (which we're probably cutting), Thief (which doesn't really work because knives don't have meaningful damage), and I don't think we have anyone left after this. So you potentially create a skill that only applies to the Thief. If we extend it to the MOJs, most of them use staves and will never use physical attacks -- exceptions being the Oracle, with their super-useful rods, and the Mediator. Of the HOJs, the Spellsword is going to be after FP more so than WP and so doesn't get much out of it, the Geomancer might get it, and I think that's basically it for classes that potentially benefit it.

So, really, do we want to add Two-Handed to the game for the Oracle who spams rod attacks, the Mediator who shoots people, the Thief that doesn't have the common sense God gave to a mouse, and the Geomancer, who probably isn't doing many physical attacks anyway? I don't see the point. And to top it off, it'd make balancing prestige classes a lot harder. So would Dual Wield, in fact.

I'm really in favor of just axing Two-Handed entirely. It doesn't give us much (especially to the pure POJs, who already use both hands). Instead, it just sort of complicates balancing prestige classes. Similarly, I'd be in favor of cutting Dual Wield, but we haven't gotten to that topic yet.

[kablizzy]

I didn't realize we were giving the ability to dual-wield to classes by default. If that's so, I guess we can go ahead and cut that. Kind of a silly ability anyway. Still haven't had time to expound on this. Will do ASAP.

[Schwerpunkt]

I didn't mean those classes were getting dual wield by default (although Ninja almost certainly will) -- I meant that they didn't have empty hands. The Knight, for example, will carry a sword and shield or a really big sword; neither load out leaves room for Two-Handed (besides, claymores get it by default). Lancers are similar in that they'll always have their hands full.

And in both cases, my suggestion in the new weapon type thread (which neither you nor Ilium responded to! >=[), basically has the Knight and Lancer getting Two-Handed for a specific weapon class anyway (note: the Lancer could 'Two-Hand' most spears in FFT by default; there were only a few one-handed spears, primarily really early in the tree).

[Ilium]

Apr 27, 2013 1:40:24 GMT -6 Schwerpunkt said:

Kablizzy and his silly names.

On the subject of samurai swords having elements: this sounds interesting until you realize that you either need to have about five times as many katanas as any other weapon or you get into a situation where you start trading away physical power (and probably FP, since it seems like we're going in that direction) in favor of elemental attacks.

There's also the over-emphasis on Iaido, which is just one fraction of what a well-trained samurai would have been capable of doing. This bothers me, because we're effectively stereotyping an entire caste of warriors without really getting anything useful or new out of it (or even for the sake of simplifying an exceptionally complex language/culture, which is what I did with Ordallia).

Basically, we'd be turning the Samurai into a carbon copy of HoI's Rune Knight. And I think we know how well that turned out.

Well there are 9 recurring elements in Final Fantasy, and 10 Katana's available to the player in War of the Lions. So that works out nicely to include in one generic base Katana, and nine more with elements if we so choose. Also, that was part of the point of slightly reducing physical power in return for the access to elements. It would just be an alternative to what we have already with weapons, carbon copies of the same 'spend more gil, get more attack' formula, and it would help characterize the Samurai class distinctly. By the way, what is FP?

I'm also not sure how much we want to lift directly from historical precedence, with any of these classes. I mean, Samurai in Tactics call out spirits from their weapons to deal area damage. I would have to say that is enough of a departure from historical warriors in its own right.

And on the point of the Rune Knight comparison, I would have to say they both deal with elements from Final Fantasy but that is where the similarities end. My Draw-Cut would depend entirely on that player's current inventory. They would not be able to choose which element to attack with right from the get go, with their first ability (like Rune Knight). If we chose to add further elemental attacks to Samurai beyond 'elemental Draw-Cut', that would be our own prerogative. Only by the mid to late-game would the player realistically have accumulated enough weaponry to unleash several different elemental attacks in one combat, which is probably how the Rune Knight should have been balanced, if it were to be ever considered a base class in the first place.

On the topic of of adding more elemental attacks to Samurai beyond Draw-Cut, we could limit the element to whichever one is ascribed to your current katana. So let's say you Draw-Cut to a fire element katana. If we included any other abilities that had an element, they would all be Fire element attacks until you Draw-Cut into a different element. So for a few rounds we could have a Fire-Samurai roaming the battlefield, or a Holy Samurai, etc.. Again this would all be dependant on what kind of katana's you use. The journey to accumulate gil for Samurai players would be just as important as gil and exp, so that they would be able to expand their elemental effectiveness.

Of course this is all just an idea I came up with to help differentiate
the Samurai class from the other stabby classes. We don't have to
develop in this direction at all.

Shields, by the way, are a non-starter. The Japanese simply didn't use them. Remember, the samurai caste revolved very heavily around horse archer and fighting with extremely long swords (the nodaichi, for instance, is basically a katana long enough to use while mounted). From there it gradually expanded to include other stuff, but always things that were useful either personal defense (like the wakizashi, since you couldn't really use a katana in enclosed spaces) or while mounted (like the various polearm weapons). Shields didn't really work with that fit because samurai weren't supposed to be nigh-unkillable freight trains like their Western counterparts.

Regardless of historical precedence, Samurai have commonly had access to shields throughout the Final Fantasy series (not Tactics however). But this really isn't an issue, we don't have to include shields in our Samurai build if we don't have to.

As far as Two-Handed goes, I don't like it. It sounds like an interesting idea, but it really doesn't work with historical martial arts (sort of like 'dual wielding,' which is largely a thing popularized by the same people who gave us vikings with horns on their helmets -- poets and pseudo-historians in the 18th century). There is a very big difference between fighting with a longsword and fighting with a longsword and shield. All those things I listed for the Knight in that early draft came directly from the German school of dueling, which was built entirely around using a longsword (or sometimes a bastard sword) with two hands. That school is nothing at all like one in which you're fighting with just a single sword (a recurring theme of the Spanish/Italian/French schools, which cropped up later). The reason the rapier exists, for instance, is because fine control of a longsword with one hand was lacking -- so smiths made the blade a lot lighter, and a bit smaller, and then famous martial artists built a school around exploiting that. And nothing they wrote about really works if you try to wield a rapier with two hands. It's just clunky and doesn't work with the maneuvers.

Even getting past all of that, Two-Handed as an ability is just kind of out there. Who does it benefit, exactly? All of the really high-damage physical classes -- the Knight, Lancer, Ninja, Samurai -- are going to wind up using both hands by default. The Monk doesn't use a weapon, so it doesn't apply to him. That leaves Squire (which we're probably cutting), Thief (which doesn't really work because knives don't have meaningful damage), and I don't think we have anyone left after this. So you potentially create a skill that only applies to the Thief. If we extend it to the MOJs, most of them use staves and will never use physical attacks -- exceptions being the Oracle, with their super-useful rods, and the Mediator. Of the HOJs, the Spellsword is going to be after FP more so than WP and so doesn't get much out of it, the Geomancer might get it, and I think that's basically it for classes that potentially benefit it.

So, really, do we want to add Two-Handed to the game for the Oracle who spams rod attacks, the Mediator who shoots people, the Thief that doesn't have the common sense God gave to a mouse, and the Geomancer, who probably isn't doing many physical attacks anyway? I don't see the point. And to top it off, it'd make balancing prestige classes a lot harder. So would Dual Wield, in fact.

I'm really in favor of just axing Two-Handed entirely. It doesn't give us much (especially to the pure POJs, who already use both hands). Instead, it just sort of complicates balancing prestige classes. Similarly, I'd be in favor of cutting Dual Wield, but we haven't gotten to that topic yet.

Again disregarding historical precedence, I believe there is at least room for the ability in the game. We could rename it and give it different a description but keep the ability. Call it Familiarity, and describe it as the Samurai having an innate connection with his weapon, being able to produce more damage. I mean yeah, a Lancer is going to use both hands for his weapon. I'm not sure if the developers thought the Lancer would just poke and prod the enemy until it learned Two Hands, at which point it magically decided there was more benefit to using both hands. Or perhaps, we limit the ability to only weapons that are handled with one hand as it is. The trade off would be the inability to equip shields, which would go back to being a benefit of allowing Samurai to equip shields in the first place. I just like the ability as a support option, from my own personal experience with Tactics.