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 Post subject: Ninja, Ninja, who's got the Ninja?
PostPosted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:07 am 
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I've always been of the opinion that ninja should be a base class. It's a real-world concept, and it for sure fulfills everything that the standard classes have- except, of course, that it's from Japan. With the Asian derived monk in 3ed, however, there was no damned reason not to have the ninja in the PHB- except, I guess, that they can always sell us a ninja later.

The real problem is that we end up with a damned LOT of ninjas.

Ninjas as prestige classes:
1- Ninja of the Crescent Moon - Sword and Fist (3.0)
2- Ninja Spy - Oriental Adventures (3.0)
3- Shadowsun Ninja - 9Swords (3.5)

Ninjas as base classes:
1- Ninja - Complete Adventurer (3.5)

Prestige classes that could be interpreted partially as ninjas:
1- Assassin - DMG (3.5)
2- Ghost Faced Killer - Complete Adventurer (3.5)
3- Enlightened Fist - Complete Arcane (3.5)
4- Thief-Acrobat - Complete Arcane (3.5)
5- Nightsong Infiltrator - Complete Adventurer (3.5)
6- Nightsong Enforcer - Complete Adventure (3.5)

Base classes that could be interpreted partially as ninjas:
1- Rogue (PHB)
2- Monk (PHB)
3- Ranger (PHB)
4- Scout - Complete Adventurer (3.5)
5- Swordsage - 9Swords (3.5)


Mechanically, the swordsage makes the *most powerful* ninja, hands down. But then, the swordsage obsoletes all the 3/4 BAB guys pretty much, just as the warblade and the crusader obsolete the warrior, paladin, ranger, barbarian and all the "crap" based on them.

NONE of the classes listed have a mechanical setup for use of "ninja weapons", "ninja tools", or other special items like this, something that the Dragon magazine 1ed ninja had a bit of. Most have no resources: the ninja base class has a ki pool, and some of the others get a small set of spells.

The rogue deliberately has a flavor of trickery, but not of magic. He's probably best built to use a bow. I didn't find suggestions of "build a rogue to be a ninja" to be all that convincing when 3.0 first came out, and today I still don't. Ninja shouldn't be a poorly optimized rogue, it should be it's own thing. Rogues have some skills that are decidedly not ninja-like. They also have sneak attack as a combat system. Sneak attack seems a little odd, as it's really about having an ally- outnumbering your target. That doesn't seem to have the ninja flavor to it. The rogue class is also pretty lame in combat, compared to many others.

Monk can kind of be squished into ninja. The monk emphasizes unarmed damage, however, and it's built specifically to be hard to multiclass if you want to not press that advantage. The shadow sun ninja and the ninja of the crescent moon both expect monk leadins. Monks have a LOT of flavorful abilities and tricks- but they are very much monk flavored. The monk class is not great in combat, but I'd say it's pretty acceptable in a campaign (like mine or Zem's) where there are signifigantly more above average scores, and higher point totals in general, as the monk grows with all of his stats more than most characters.

The Ninja base class has a ki pool, which basically counts the number of times per day he can do supernatural things. The pool is level/2+Wis_mod. By second level, he can spend ki to Ghost Step- a swift action that makes the ninja *invisible*, for one round. So a common use of this would be to Ghost Step at the start of your turn, do a full attack, with the opponent being flatfooted to all the attacks (because you are invisible), so you get your Surprise Attack damage. Surprise Attack is just a worse version of Sneak Attack- it works all the times Sneak Attack does, except that you can't get it for flanking. It still has all the bullshit limitations that sneak attack does. In any event, your round ends, and you enjoy your invisibility until the start of your next turn, when it fades. You could also use being invisible to find a nice place to make a Hide check, and hang out in some shadows. The ninja class is pleasing because it actually has a supernatural resource, and gives the ninja some magic stuff. It's still a d6 class based on the template of the rogue- a bunch of skill points, the expectation that you'll find traps. However, at least the ninja would be able to stand toe to toe with a fighter, by virtue of being invisible the entire time. If the fighter can see invisibility. Or has blind fight, which pretty much makes him immune to Surprise Attack. Or is a barbarian. Or can't be criticalled. Or or or. You eventually get some other keen tricks, such as going ethereal, or gaining displacement for one round instead of, or in addition too, the invisibility. The ninja gets poisons too, yay!

The Scout could, if changed in flavor, be called a ninja. He gets tricks for moving, but overall, it's not a super close fit.

The Ranger is the farthest fit I could come up with- since the Ranger's animal companion is often something mostly used to scout, and he can specialize in two-weapon fighting (thematically this is often favored for ninja, even though it has no historical basis). He also maintains a full BaB, along with decent enough skills to be good at hiding. I doubt a Ranger built to look like a ninja would be that optimal, however.

The prestige classes pretty much all demand that you take a bunch of minuses to hit by leaving one 3/4 BAB class when you shouldn't be leaving a 3/4 BAB class. Do the abilities make up for this? As printed in Sword and Fist, the Ninja of the Crescent moon definitely does- you get monk saves (you started as a monk), and fighter BAB, and some cool abilities. Except they erratad all this away, because they accidentally printed a pretty good ninja.

Several of the prestige classes get the Ranger's "Hide in Plain Sight" ability, without the wilderness restriction. This is give the ninja a chance to dissappear by using the skill points he's put stuff in (versus fading from view with a ki pool).

Some emphasize acrobatics or specialized forms of stealth. The shadow-sun ninja is probably rightfully viewed as a damned weak choice in a book of brokenly powerful dudes, but that doesn't make him terrible in general- though he does get a crappy BAB. His concept is that he can sort of build up light or dark energy, and unleash it on his foes. He's required to be good, and his play with the shadowy stuff can really fuck him over if he's not careful. The problem is that since he's just a 10 level prestige class with abilities that come to him at each level that are appropriate for a character of that level (but would be crappy if you came into the class later), so he starts out ok-ish and then falls a bit behind. But, he does have a maneuver progression, so, that's something.

The Assassin is evil by default, and belongs to group of people that kill folks for money- usually. The evil part is listed as always in the DMG. But, he's clearly the magical advancement of the rogue class- and has a lot of similarities to the FFI take on ninja (3.0 borrowed some mechanics from FFI, from prestige classes to the workings of "hybrids", as well as the sorcerer casting, which is implemented exactly like the 8 bit game). If you change him a bit, I think he might be one of your best ninja choices- he gets tricky spells, invisibility and improved invisibility (I assume even Zem wouldn't bump up the levels for a class that only gets 4 levels of spells over 10 class levels), and he uses the existing spell based system to do it, instead of anything janky. The assassin gets poison use, and a death attack which can be used to open combat. He also gets a continued progression of sneak attack. His spell list is actually augmented by the Complete Series, and by other books- apparently someone would look through and decide something would be ok as an assassin spell. I think your biggest regret as a level 10 assassin / level 5 rogue or ninja is, gosh I wish there were 5 more levels of this class.

The Nightsong guys are not ninjas at all in the book, but their abilities could be used to define a ninja prestige class or two pretty easily, especially if the clan has more warrior-typed ninjas with pure stealth-focussed ninjas.

The Ghost Faced Killer is also not related to ninjas- their plot is pretty silly. Their mechanics seem to be based on the ninja base class, however, and expect you to be coming into it from a fighter direction, so you could get a martial focussed character with some of the same abilities that the ninja based class has. If you are ok cherry picking powers based pretty much on sounding like a ninja instead of kicking the most A.

The "Enlightened Fist" is a monk/mage who can cast some spells by punching things. He's a pretty good class, actually, because, you know, he gets wizard spells. He suffers from a crappy attack bonus early, but presumably could fit in is a ninja if someone is of the opinion that ninjas are mostly about the magic. He doesn't natively have any ninja flavor, however.

The ninja that I created for my games as a base class is based on the monk- he gets special abilities as he levels, and can choose to some degree which order he gets his special abilities in, and which ones he takes.


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 Post subject: Re: Ninja, Ninja, who's got the Ninja?
PostPosted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 10:43 am 
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I will point out that 4ed has been out for a long time now, and has the following classes:

Cleric
Fighter
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Warlock
Warlord
Wizard

The PHB2 came out and added:

Avenger
Barbarian
Bard
Druid
Invoker
Shaman
Sorcerer
Warden

The PHB3 came out and added:

Ardent
Battlemind
Monk
Psion
Runepriest
Seeker

STILL NO NINJA

The Seeker, Battlemind, Ardent, Avenger, and Invoker don't have real world or even ingame basis. You'll probably not see them in the future, and no one knows what the hell they are.

Still no ninja!

Why is the ninja so hard?


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 Post subject: Re: Ninja, Ninja, who's got the Ninja?
PostPosted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 11:25 am 
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You just want to run around in your jammies.



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 Post subject: Re: Ninja, Ninja, who's got the Ninja?
PostPosted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 1:12 pm 
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Zem wrote:
You just want to run around in your jammies.

And have the ability to hide in plain sight in front of a white wall in his black jammies.



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 Post subject: Re: Ninja, Ninja, who's got the Ninja?
PostPosted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 2:57 pm 
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By the way, 4th edition is irrelevant. It's some other game. I mean, it's really gay so I'd assume they would have the ninja, but either way it doesn't really matter.



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 Post subject: Re: Ninja, Ninja, who's got the Ninja?
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 9:53 am 
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1st edition had the ninja in a Dragon Magazine. He was mostly an NPC class, but if you stripped away the obvious wierd shit he was pretty flavorful for a 1st edition class. Then he was put into the Oriental Adventures, but only as some strange dual-class thing- as a ninja, you had a fake class, and your ninja class, and the idea was that not even your fellow adventurers knew you were a ninja. It was mechanically bizarre and not very strong.

2ed had a ninja handbook, which did a pretty good job at talking about ninjas at least. They were pretty clearly a weak as shit class, because they were a give-and-take version of the thief, itself a weak as shit class. IIRC, their big trick over the thief was to be able to use a slightly better weapon. Certainly they didn't have any magic powers. There was a "kit" you could take that gave you some truly wretched casting at the cost of your hit points and your ability to hit shit.

3ed has a zillion ninjas, as detailed above. Because they couldn't just put a fucking ninja on paper at the start, it's been the subject of a bunch of prestige classes and one very bizarre base class, and then superceded by the swordsage.


It's just so dumb. I mean, ninja is one of the few thematic things that existed in real life, while still being legendary. It has more claim to exist than half the classes in the PHB.


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You just want to run around in your jammies.


THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT

Quote:
And have the ability to hide in plain sight in front of a white wall in his black jammies.


Interestingly, the assassin has this ability (the wall does have to have a shadow, however). I think the assassin is closest to a ninja, out of all the material presented in the Wizards stuff.


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 Post subject: Re: Ninja, Ninja, who's got the Ninja?
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 10:07 am 
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And while 4ed is a different game, and not one I'm particularly interested in, I'm not getting many reports that it is bad. However, some of what people are claiming they like about it is transient ("I don't need as many books" I hear less often now that they have three fucking players handbooks and then expansion "option" books that I didn't bring up).

Mechanically, I am not very impressed with the system. While they managed to avoid the pitfalls caused by actual Dungeons and Dragons, they did this by moving to a system where every attack is resolved as follows:

1- Roll to hit. To do this, you roll 1d20 and add your relevant ability score and half your level. For a fighter, this is strength. For a wizard, it is int. For a rogue, it is Dex. You are trying to hit one of four targets, depending on the ability: AC, Will, Fort, or Refl. These four target scores are calculated similarly and go one for ever two levels.
2- If you hit, your ability has an amount of base damage that it does. This could be based on your weapon damage, or it could be written down if a spell. Add to that your relevant modifer.
3- If you miss, sometimes you get something anyway.

Ok, so first thing you should notice is that this mechanic is basically the "roll to hit" mechanic. And your abilities are either daily, per encounter, or at will, meaning you have "cooldowns" to use. The wizard calls these "spells" and in theory needs a spell book as a prop (but the spellbook just magically keeps up with what you have- if you chose to lose a spell in exchange for another one while you level, one magically erases itself and the other appears, and having access to a library of spellbooks does nothing at all). Basically, everyone has a couple "memorized spells" that all resolve using the to-hit-roll method.

About as different as it can get. It doesn't try to model a fight either. No bones are thrown to realism.


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