Hi everyone ! I'm currently building a technician with my GM but I'm asking for aid on another thread in this forum, hopefully I can finish it soon with the aid of my GM and this Forum. The topic of this thread is that I would like to create a second character (since I'm new, I would like to build several characters to understand better the game system and the classes).

My idea came up while I was watching a manga of samurais, so my idea was to create a wandering samurai, an easy going guy that for one reason or another travels the land (maybe something bad happened to him) , selling his services and training to improve his swordplay.

The question now comes as in what class would better suit to create a samurai? I was thinking of giving him a special sword that is both a sword and an umbrella (kinda like a bamboo sword/umbrella) so maybe double weapon could be involved.

Any ideas or suggestions? also any help on the Ki techniques it should have?

Samurai are best known as Warriors, Acrobatic Warriors or Technicians if you ask me.

also, for your umbrella sword, all you really need to do is make the scabbard into the hilt of the umbrella and you're good, nothing special.

I totally agree with Raybras. Most samurai are Acrobatic Warriors. The character should choose a Martial Art as "base weapon" and then katana (or No Dachi) as second weapon (wakizashi, spear, and longbow should also be on the way, though). It depends on the "fighting style". Of course also warriors and even weapon master can work just fine for "heavy build" samurai (especially if you want it to wear armor), but Acrobatic Warrior is what gets you closer to the archetype samurai, especially the wandering one, which won't be probably wearing any armor and will be relying on a more "free" fighting style, than the typical feudal-dojo samurai. Technician is the alternative if you're going to make a technique based samurai. Using official rules, these are the feasible choices, but really also Paladin or Dark Paladin could be used to build socially oriented samurai (a samurai daimyo, for example, could easily be from one such class).

Warrior tends to work well for most samurai. As was stated, most of the fighter archtype classes can fit, even a ranger or shadow.

I looked at a samurai weapon module: katana, bow, lance, wakizashi, nodachi for a converted Oriental Adventures campaign, but most players don't want to dump that much DP on being more broad in weapon possibilities.

Unless you're te weaponmaster variant samurai, which oly costs 25 dp instead

If you chose to make a Weaponmaster samurai, I'd keep the weaponmaster class for just a few levels (just in time to buy a few modules for reduced DP cost and gain enough Wear Armor to wear a tanko without suffering any penalty), then switch to warrior for the increased MK and lowered Ki/Accumulation cost.

Still, Acrobatic Warrior/Technician should definitely work better, on my opinion.

Alas, things that would fit a Samurai pretty well, like the skill Etiquette, were intoduced after the main book, so no class has them as bonuses. An Acrobatic Warrior with Etiquette bonuses instead of Sleight of Hand or Jump would be awesome.

Yea, I'm definitely going for an acrobat warrior for this idea, but I also wanted to give him 1 or 2 Ki techniques, I had the idea of a fast drawing sword type of samurai. Any ideas on what type of Ki techniques should I try to go for?

So an Iaido master? you can start by grabbing the module, or else you can make techniques that raise Init and reduce the "draw weapon" penalty. just examples

Francho said:

I'm playing such a character. Buy the "Iaijutsu" module and the "Yuuse Battojutsu" Ars Magnus from Dominus Exxet. As for techniques, there is a disadvantage that requires you to have your weapon sheated for at least one round before you use that technique. Talk to your GM and convince him that this requirement is satisfied in the first round of combat, since your katana was probably sheated for a long time before then. For technique bonuses… +initiative, + attack and -precision penalties would fit such a character. The latter might not be the best choice if you want to buy the "Libra" Impossible Weapon, which might be a really good idea, after all +10 initiative and precision on your katana is great.

One more word about "Yuuse Battojutsu". I really like the style of it, but all in all, I think this Ars Magnus is rather useless. It requires a great amount of setup to be useful.

If you want to play the Samurai Acrobatic Warrior type, wou might want to ask your GM to agree about the following changes to secondary abilities of the class:

+10 Composure instead of Jump, +10 Etiquette instead of Sleight of Hand

Will do !!! thanks a lot for the feedback and all the help ! I'm just getting into the Anima world and I'm enjoying it a lot despite the fact that I still don't get all of the rules and other manuals and such. Will post again if another question comes into mind !