Ninja
Awesome disguised individuals who are the anti-samurai. Like rogues, but with more style.
In ancient Japan, they served as spies and assassins. Some worked for particular noble families, like sneaky samurai, while others were basically covert-organizations-for-hire. They used disguise, deceit, and general trickiness to steal secrets and treasures, and they developed unexpected new modes of combat such as juujitsu (unarmed fighting) and "peasant" weapons like the sai (originally a rice planting tool) and the kusari-gama (which looks like a rice-harvesting sickle, but has a long weighted chain with hardened links on the other end that can break bones and disarm).
Over time, they became feared. The primitive and superstitious people began to believe that ninjas were more than just dangerous spies and masters of disguise. They attributed magical powers to them, like the ability to shapeshift, conjure fire, turn invisible, control animals, and even mate with the spirits to give birth to monstrous half-human creatures. Because having the world simultaneously so terrified of you that it would pay a premium for your services and so hilariously wrong about the nature of your methods that actually countering you was hard was incredible for business, the secretive clans weren't exactly in a hurry to go debunking these folktales.
Ninja usually dressed like whoever they were disguised as at the time, since everyone stares at the guy in black pajamas. The iconic image of the head-scarf and robe clad "ninja" is actually an outgrowth of a clever bit of Japanese stagecraft.
Usually, in traditional Japanese theater, there is no "backdrop" set, just a black felt curtain and stagehands manage the other sets and props while covered head-to-toe in black clothing. You may think this is distracting, but after a while, the audience is just trained to ignore them, the way you ignore that a stage is just a set and the actors only carrying props when you watch a play. One incredibly clever playwright took note of the fact that the audience was trained to ignore these hands, and came up with a brilliant idea. When the script called for a ninja to assassinate a character, one of the stagehands would suddenly mock-stab them, leading to many double-takes and shat bricks on the audience's part. As with all good ideas, it was quickly appropriated by billions of talentless hacks who used it all the time, until the idea of the black-stage-gear-clad ninja was embedded deep into the public consciousness, simply because people always take their cues on what's real or unreal from fiction.
The move from decentralized feudal period to a centralized military dicatorship, however, dealt a heavy blow to the ninja's business, since, after all, a peaceful isolationist nation had much less need for their abilities, and the end of the shogunate and the modernization of Japan in the nineteenth century broke them for good, since their methods had grown dated with the passing years. Still, they remain in the public imagination, and in the hearts and minds of all fans of Japanese culture and history, weeaboo and non-weeaboo alike.
As a result, like the samurai, any traditional game with an ancient-Japan-proxy (read: all of them) has got ninja in it somewhere. Let's take a look.
Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition
...Yeah, I'm not actually that familiar with 3 and 3.5. Help a brother out?
Pathfinder
The ninja is basically a rogue/monk. They trade in the rogue's unique skillmonkey powers, like disarming magical traps, for "ninja tricks," which, like the monk's special powers, use up a ki pool. Also, they are perfectly capable of outdamaging the fuck out of rogues, given the nasty things they can do with projectiles and poison, on top of their sharing the rogue's backstabbery. They also get passive bonuses to their stealth tests the longer they've been in stealth, leading to hilarious shenanigans.
They also make a scrumptious dip class for monks and vice-versa, since their mixed martial arts passive abilities let their class levels stack for abilities, and the monk's flurry of blows explicitly works for all those ninja projectiles. Combine with the "ninja trick" that lets them double the number of projectiles they throw for a ki point, then combine that with poison... you get the idea. Hope the DM didn't let you get ahold of drow venom.
In other words, Pathfinder ninjas are awesome.
| The Classes of Pathfinder 1st Edition | |
|---|---|
| Core Classes: | Barbarian - Bard - Cleric - Druid - Fighter - Monk Paladin - Ranger - Rogue - Sorcerer - Wizard |
| Advanced Player's Guide: |
Alchemist - Antipaladin - Cavalier Inquisitor - Oracle - Summoner - Witch |
| Advanced Class Guide: |
Arcanist - Bloodrager - Brawler - Hunter - Investigator Shaman - Skald - Slayer - Swashbuckler - Warpriest |
| Occult Adventures: |
Kineticist - Medium - Mesmerist Occultist - Psychic - Spiritualist |
| Ultimate X: | Gunslinger - Magus - Ninja - Samurai - Shifter - Vigilante |
Legend of the Five Rings
Only two of the Clans in Rokugan have ninja on the payroll (well, technically, only the Spider have ninja, the Scorpion are very insistent that they have shinobi). Ninja are technically regarded as somewhat mythical: actively talking about ninja like they exist in a court setting will lose you honor and result in lots of scorn and ridicule from the stuffed-shirt courtier. In practice, most will acknowledge they exist, so don't hesitate to tell people in more-private and less-open settings.
Scorpion shinobi are, hilariously, probably the most level-headed and moral people in their crazy clan of manipulative assholes and anti-heroes. They actually start out running the Gauntlet, a series of tests that involve dressing like a "traditional" black-pajamas ninja and essentially running interference, attracting lots of attention while the actual ninja that's probably been posing as a manservant or courtesan for months does the necessary sabotage/wetwork/spycraft/etc. Those who survive get to learn to be REAL operatives.
The ninja of the corrupted Spider Clan are... less theoretically-benign. They're ordinary people who have traded away bits and pieces of themselves to the Shadow Dragon, a manifestation of the Lying Darkness whose malign power seeks to consume the world. They're probably better at outright assassination than Scorpion shinobi, since their powers are practically supernatural instead of just realistically good, but they often have very little personality or initiative of their own. It makes them good at not being noticed, or at pretending to be other people, but when the mask slips, they won't have the skills to talk their way out. Scorpion ninja can be good at lots of things, but most Spider ninja know only how to kill and steal.