Editing Samurai (section)

=== Pathfinder ===
[[File:Hayato.jpg|right|300px]]
Later, under the quasi-D&D system of [[Pathfinder]], the samurai class became a tweaked variant of the [[Cavalier]] class, which, in addition to making sense (the cavalier class is basically a mounted [[knight]], and samurai were basically the Japanese equivalent) also makes them mechanically playable. Samurai shares the Cavalier's bizzare lack of Knowledge (Nobility) as a class skill. Like their parent class, Samurai are [[Tier System|Tier 5]] (Tier 4 with some archetypes) since they're really not that good at anything but mounted combat, which terrain often prevents. Despite this, the pregen was actually one of the best, and easily the strongest melee one till [[Bloodrager]] and [[Warpriest]] came out, since he used a two-handed weapon with power attack (compared to using [[Barbarian|an oversized weapon with penalty to hit]], [[Fighter|two weapon fighting]], [[Paladin|sword and board]] or [[Cavalier|forgetting to take Power Attack]]) and came with three of the most useful skills in the game (Perception, Diplomacy, Sense Motive).

Cavalier was already fairly weak on support, and Samurai got less than that. It has a grand total of seven archetypes (four of which were released in 2018, the system's final full year of support), and none of the Cavalier ones are compatible. This is the fewest of any class since while [[Ninja]] technically gets less, it can use good number of [[Rogue]] archetypes.
*Sword Saint: More in line with the traditional fantasy samurai, who forgoes his mounted class features for lightning-quick draw-fighting and other melee powers that let him [[awesome|cause a sonic boom every time he quick-draws someone to death]], but this comes too late to be useful.
*Yojimbo: A very minor and trades some offensive abilities for defensive ones, without doing anything to really make that defense viable.
*Sovereign Blade: Trade your mount for a +2 to saves, your rare challenge uses for some energy resistance, and your bonus feats for a lame SLA. It came in Legacy of Dragons, which is considered one of the worst books ever published crunch-wise.
*Brawling Blademaster: An archetype that tries to accomplish many things at once and accomplishes none of them, a lot like the CW Samurai. Non-light armor is traded for a ''very'' small bonus to AC that doesn't make up for it, a feature that would help two-weapon fighting is traded for two-weapon fighting as a bonus feat. Mount is traded for a monk's unarmed fighting.
*Ironbound Sword: Trades quick draw for the ability to make non-lethal attacks without penalty. Banner for the ability to make a few attacks a day that force the enemy to save or be instantly knocked out and (much later) improved disarming that fixes the main problem with disarming by letting you disarm natural attacks (you dislocate their joints and force them to give up attacking for a turn to fix that). Overall the trades are perfectly acceptable, but nothing more. Would be awesome if the disarm ability came before 14th level.
*Ward Speaker: In exchange for the limited resolve ability and a 1-minute ritual between uses the Samurai can pick from one of five sets of bonuses, some of which are pretty good and one of which does most of what you'd spend resolve on anyways. Compatible with Warrior Poet.
*Warrior Poet: Actually pretty decent. In exchange for medium and heavy armor, they gain charisma (to a max of samurai level) to AC when unarmored. In exchange for mount, weapon expertise, banner and mounted archery they get free weapon finesse (that can be applied to extra weapon types), one from a list of bonus abilities (many of which are actually decent), and always on half level to damage on attacks made with weapon finesse. What makes this archetype particularly well executed is it was printed with the Order of the Songbird, which supports these abilities.