A Samurai Experience

[Horpner Sneed]

After bagging on Samurai in the discussion about Bishops, I decided to give Samurai a another chance while testing out several different builds at once. So I'm running a party on Expert difficulty containing a Bishop, a Ninja, and four Samurai.

The first thing to report is how much fun this has been. In order to get as many Lightning Strikes as possible I stand and throw spells for several rounds in a row at the start of every combat. Two of the Samurai are going for Powercast skill, but even the dabblers have enough mana to participate in these barrages. After this is done, everyone goes into melee and stays there. Casting spells in streaks has worked: Lightning Strikes are a regular occurrence.

The second thing to report is that I'm growing to really enjoy Expert difficulty. I didn't see the point at first. Missing sucks! Half my spells don't work! But as the character says, "I think I'm improving!" Expert difficulty provides unpleasant surprises sometimes--recently four Higardi Rogues stood at thrown range and crushed my Hit Points in a way I didn't think was possible--thanks to my inexperience on Expert. But even the unpleasant surprises can be fun. I'm partway through Trynton, and when I opened the Pagoda I was confronted with an Oak Elder and a Willow Elder, with 442 and 384 hit points respectively, backed up by Blinding Wasps. Considering how poor my melee continues to be it was an extremely satisfying victory.

The builds, in party order.

1. A Powercast Bishop focusing on Divinity and Psionics. I knew my job would be easier if I went Wizardry/Divinity instead, but I didn't want to steal the thunder of my Samurai. This character is also leaving Alchemy to the next character.

2. A Powercast Ninja for Locks & Traps, Alchemy, Staff & Wand, and Thrown. Using all hybrids gives the Ninja a chance to not be as far behind in levels as usual. Playing without Locks & Traps skill in the party would make this character stronger--say with a Ranger, Alchemist, or second Bishop--but I didn't want to try too many new things at once. But on it's face this is a perfect application of Ninja--this party arguably needs everything the Ninja can do. Ninjas are mediocre at L&T thanks to item restrictions. Maybe there's some Ninja-only item that will help, eventually.

3. A Human Powercast Samurai pumping STR and DEX equally with the remaining 3 attribute points at level up. The two spell-casters are also the tanks, forgoing Dual Wield for shields. This Human gets to use Bloodlust, an unfair advantage over the others, at least initially. Tanks left center.

4. A Dracon Powercast Samurai pumping only STR with the remaining 3 points. This character is, at level 9, somewhat crappier than the Human in every way. For example, the Human has 2 attacks and 2 swings already, and better magic. But in the end the Dracon may catch up and surpass the Human. They should probably swap weapons now that the Human has "natural" bonus attacks/swings. Using Enchanted Broadsword and Heater Shield. Tanks right center.

5. A traditional Dracon Dual Wield Samarai, pumping STR/DEX. Not much to say about this one, though at level 9 he'd have 2 attacks with a higher attack rating if he weren't DW. Given the troubling things we know about Dual Wield once CC and WPN skill is high, I'd love to put down the butter knife already. But for science, he's staying DW as long as I can stand it. I plan to edit an extra Enchanted Butter Knife into the party at the appropriate time, a small cheat for the sake of comparison.

6. A classic old-fashioned Felpurr Samurai pumping DEX/SPD/SEN. This was designed specifically to test the idea that this specific build will grow skills faster. Interestingly, it does work, though not how I expected. This character has higher CC and DW skill than character 5 by nearly 10 points each, but a Sword skill that's basically the same. If CC and DW were good skills, this would be a win, but unfortunately they stink compared to Sword, and the character has forgone STR for the tradeoff. So far, thumbs down! But if extra attacks and swings pulls ahead of character 5, as it should, who knows what might happen later.

Skills and Kills

Sam# CC  DW Sword Wizardry Kills
3    43  9  70    37       96
4    35  7  65    38       75
5    39  38 70    18       65
6    47  46 68    18       59

More bad news for DW as it does build your weapons skill faster, but just barely. But time will tell--there may be a phase of the game where it wins, particularly with the DEX/SPD/SEN build. Perhaps a straight DEX/SPD build would be stronger.

Bloodlust is better than any build above, proven out here. Itemization is at least a strong a factor as the most carefully chosen build. A straight-up stronger factor when good items can't be found, so for a Fighter who tries to build SPD and use daggers.

The Powercast Samurai should fall behind in melee capability eventually as their spells become strong and more tempting.

Let me know of any feedback or other ideas for playing Samurai--if you have enough of them, why not try your own "Samurai Experience". There are probably many other ways to allocate those last two character slots, for example.

[vysionier]

Good work! What a good idea to compare side by side like that!
My current samurai is a mook str/dex build, lvl 10, dual wielding has 2 main hand attacks with demon slayer/bane whatever it’s called and a regular wakizashi. Not at my computer at the moment, so I’ll put my stats out in a while. He’s in a pretty magic heavy low melee party rn with

a dwarf fighter dual mace, str/vit, dex,

a mook bard, bow, sword+board str/dex/sen

a hobbit gadgeteer Omni and sword/dagger, dex/sen, str/vit.

A gnome alchemist int/dex, vit/str quarterstaff plus sling plus item throwing.

A faerie Bishop wiz/div, psi, alch. Int/spd, sen/vit.

Edit: samurai has lvl 10, 45cc, 43 DW, 33 critical strike somehow, I’ve never put a point in it I swear! 82 sword, 33 staff and wand. Wizardry 39, 0fire, 6water, 17 air, 3earth, 8 mental, 16 divine. I did a lazy magic training with him, no grinding. Just 3 points into wizardry and use.

Party kills: fighter: 114,
Samurai: 80
Bard: 100
Gadgeteer: 76
Alchemist: 161
Bishop: 96
Samurai should start doing better when wizardry gets better, and now that I *just* got a better weapon that that enchanted katana, lol.

[Mardoin69]

The problems will come late mid game and the end game probably. I like Samurai myself and you CAN make them work for the right party.....they just lack a little behind in the melee dpr like ya say. It's fun experimenting with things like this though. Glad you posted this tidbit. thx

Edit: Also, curious about your Ninja.....what race did you use...Faery?

[Horpner Sneed]

I ran the numbers and all my characters are right around the moment of receiving their first extra attack, but only one actually getting the advantage, since the DW penalty is holding the other two back. It's good to see by your example that won't last long. The penalty to attacks and swings of DW is not known.

[Horpner Sneed]

I'm using a Hobbit, and going for Powercast, which will come at level 12. Though this Ninja is doing everything, he's mainly intended to function as an alchemy caster with Locks & Traps. I will be equipping the Staff of Doom right around the time thrown weapons become irrelevant and Powercast takes off. Thrown was used for early game auto-damage and to build the skill for using bombs and powders, but I'll be abandoning it.

[vysionier]

Originally posted by Horpner Sneed:

I ran the numbers and all my characters are right around the moment of receiving their first extra attack, but only one actually getting the advantage, since the DW penalty is holding the other two back. It's good to see by your example that won't last long. The penalty to attacks and swings of DW is not known.

My weapon skills got a big boost from a lot of metallic slimes I ran into when I went back into the monastery. Although the battles didn’t take very long at all!! My fighter and gadgeteer kept knocking them out left and right. The knockout bonus from the fighters class plus the enchanted mace bonus really stacks well even in expert!

[vysionier]

Here you go: for dual wield stats! https://steamcommunity.com/app/245450/discussions/0/3288067088088880993/#c3288067088091680299

[Horpner Sneed]

Sweet! Thank you.

[biogoo]

Originally posted by Mardoin69:

The problems will come late mid game and the end game probably.

They should not.
The party has 5 more or less reasonably effective physical damage dealers. Even if no RPCs get recruited, this is enough.
There was a post few years back where I "introduced" the 2.5 fighter theory :D According to it, any party capable to do physical damage equivalent to 2.5 fighters is perfectly fine for an enjoyable playthrough, provided it has access to all the importnat spells, which this party has.

[Horpner Sneed]

At level 10 the Samurai Cuisinart Experience is coming into existence.

[Mardoin69]

Originally posted by biogoo:

Originally posted by Mardoin69:

The problems will come late mid game and the end game probably.

They should not.
The party has 5 more or less reasonably effective physical damage dealers. Even if no RPCs get recruited, this is enough.
There was a post few years back where I "introduced" the 2.5 fighter theory :D According to it, any party capable to do physical damage equivalent to 2.5 fighters is perfectly fine for an enjoyable playthrough, provided it has access to all the importnat spells, which this party has.

I've been inspired to run with a Samurai. I normally like to go for races that are going to excel at whichever magic a hybrid fighter will do but, in this case....not so much. Going with a Dracon Samurai cuz it's going to be mostly focused on being a fighter and mage spells will just be nice range toss now n then for fun. At character creation, the Dracon does very well for points as a Samurai too....which is nice.

[mpnorman10]

I love this experiment. Side by side comparisons like that are powerful. If you persist it will be of interest all through your game.

In the late middle game sometime the usefulness of your attack AOE spells should start to fall off for the non-Power-Cast Samurai. This is expected to also happen, although later, for your Power Cast Samurai due to the 4 Caster Level penalty built into hybrid characters in this game.

For specialist casters the effectiveness against moderately high (100-125) resistances is there for enemies up to about 5 levels above the caster level of the Specialist Casters. By the time the enemies are 10 levels above the caster level of the Specialist Caster the effectiveness drops way, way down.

I would expect this to be observed with a 4 level shift in the Samurai Casters with Power Cast and would be very interested in what you observe. I would expect enemies about their level or a bit higher if there is a Fire vulnerability to be strongly impacted by AOE fire spells, but for foes about 5 to 6 levels or more above the Samurai Level with decent resistance to be mostly unaffected. Looking forward to any observations you continue to make.

[Horpner Sneed]

I plan to focus the DW Samurai mostly on melee and ranged in the end game, and the Powercast Samurai mostly on magic and melee. Since the MPD Alchemist and Priest end up with reasonable melee, the Powercast Samurai should as well. The reason it is even in question is that I plan to cast a lot of spells with them. It seems unlikely that the DW Samarai spells will still be relevant, but hopefully their contribution with magic will be non-zero.

[Zergs]

I love this experiment. Looking forward to updates.

[peddroelm]

lightning strike only works with MH sword at most 1 per combat turn ..
So .. Mook Samurai with extended range 2H sword >> all the other samurai types ?

[vysionier]

Originally posted by peddroelm:

lightning strike only works with MH sword at most 1 per combat turn ..
So .. Mook Samurai with extended range 2H sword >> all the other samurai types ?

In theory yeah, but wouldn’t you run out of stamina and become unconscious every time? Giant sword weights 35 lbs. that’s some crazy stamina drain!