I think this is the correct take. If someone says the game ONLY needs samurai and ninja to represent asian cultures, thats a problem. But I think most people in this subreddit would be immensely pleased to have options spanning way more cultures.
we sadly dont. and funnily enough a samurai archetype would fit seamlessly for it, while being actually in touch with what samurais were in a period of time IRL
We kind of do with the Cavalier archetype. Cavalier's Charge allows you to command your companion to stride twice and you can strike during this action. The requirements to strike are that the target has to be in the weapon's reach or in its first Range Increment, which would allow for a pretty mobile horse archer playstyle (especially if you use the riding drake. Drive by arrow shootings at 45 feet per stride action (not including bonuses)).
I've seen people pull that off pretty well with a mounted monk.
Horse Archer feels compelling in any game format. Hell, that's even how I played that Kingdom Come game when it came out (never tried the expansion though after finding out about them having and keeping the racist guy on the team, so I don't know if the strat still worked there).
That is doable as long as you only want one of them to be a full animal companion capable of combat. The other can just be a normal animal, a familiar, or a pet as per the pet feat. Though I think that mostly works if the horse is the animal companion and the bird is secondary.
Yes, but then the falcon can't attack. I suppose you could have a heavily GM- Fiat home brew where you jury rig the Sprite feat that nets you a rideable familiar to make it slower horse instead of a corgi, and then have the falcon animal companion?
Or if you are a caster and you are happy with having the falcon be all about delivering touch spells. Use the Needle darts cantrip and flavor it as a bow?
You could make it so that one is an animal companion and one is a Beast Eidolon. Unfortunately, getting a permanently large (rideable) companion or a permanently flying one are locked behind higher level feats
I think there is a later feat that allows two companions to be out, but they split the amount of actions that one companion would get [https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1909](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1909)
Here's a few options I can think of off the top of my head:
* Ranger with a bird companion and cavalier archetype (alternatively a horse companion and beastmaster for the bird). Same can apply for a druid, since they can also et animal companions.
* Summoner with a beast eidolon (and steed form or flight feats) to replace the ranger features above. I don't think eidolons get affected by the "one at a time" companion rule, but I could be wrong.
* If the bird of prey is smaller and less of a combatant, then any class with a familiar would also work.
Homie in Extinction Curse went for multiple animal companions. There was a bit more overhead on figuring out which ones would/could be used in a given situation, but they enjoyed playing that way and the companions were usually pretty helpful (especially when the murder owl got a streak of hot dice).
I just want to be able to make a typical wuxia hero- an unarmored, sword-wielding, mobile fighter with a greater or lesser degree of mystical abilities, depending on how I build them. Monk almost scratches that itch, but the weapon selection ruins it.
I think we’re exiting the first stage of the argument.
It was very knee-jerk reaction, but now level heads are coming in speaking what is really important.
The issue isn’t whether we have Samurai/Ninja.
We got a wonderful buffet of fantastic things to try and explore, that writers made from something close to their hearts, for many of us to experience!
I’m sure once more of us get the books (which god do I need to pray to to get it faster), we’ll be able to speak more loudly about that main point (more content! Not just select content!)
>But I think most people in this subreddit would be immensely pleased to have options spanning way more cultures.
If they came out and said that they were making character options based on the historic warriors of Cambodia, or Myanmar, or Jordon, or whatever else, my reaction would probably be "I have no idea what that is, and I'm excited to learn".
I know nothing about any historical warriors from *any* of those places, or a great many other places for that matter, but I'd be very curious to discover them.
And if we're talking about non-Asian cultures, then I'd love to see some Mesoamerican warriors, taking inspiration from the Inca, the Mayans, or the Aztecs. Or going even further south, and taking inspiration from the cultures of South America. Africa and India alone have *so many* cultures that could inspire classes, archetypes, backgrounds, and more.
And that's ignoring the various kinds of Polynesian cultures, or the American/Australian First Nation, or Russia, or Greece, Rome, Egypt, or even going all the way back to *Mesopotamia* and taking inspiration from the likes of Gilgamesh.
The world is *so big,* with so many different places to draw inspiration from.
> Australian First Nation
That’s me, and I thought it was pretty cool that one of the most popular homebrew books for 13th Age included options for using a spear or javelin as a ranger, specifically for playing tribal hunters
Ooh, that sounds awesome!
I'm reminded of a Dungeons & Dragons 5e homebrew I saw once that took inspiration from the Dreaming to make a Sorcerer bloodline. I went and [found it](https://new.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/p9skel/myths_and_folklore_collection_v12_play_new/) as well, just because I could.
I'll admit, I'm not sure how "offensive" their take is on it, as I'm not nearly as well read on things like the Dreaming as I'd like to be (am Australian, but not First Nation). But if you're curious, there it is.
Honestly, I don't think is that unpopular of an opinion at all... for people who have actually read the Tian Xia world guide already, that is. ~~If only mine would ship faster.~~
I've seen some people say to completly strip out cultural annotations and influences from classes and archtypes and in the future and make them all blank slates and I kinda feel like that's worse lol
That's not worse, that's impossible. As in it fundamentally can't be done.
What is possible is to strip out all the cultural connotations that aren't a part of your natural base assumptions, or in other words to remove all culture other than your own. To you, it might look like all cultural connotations have been removed, but only because you don't see your own culture as culture, but just as "normal stuff", in the same way that you don't hear your own accent.
The way to fight against cultural stereotypes and exoticism is to do the work, research the culture(s) in question, and inject more, and more genuine, culture into game.
Given that I can create a samurai, or jaguar warrior, or kadungganan – or more to the point a warrior of Nirmathas, or Geb, or Kelesh – with a fighter, I seem to have inadvertently done the thing you told me was fundamentally unpossible.
But if you want to explain why you think such a class is racist, I'm open to listen.
How is that a refutation of anything the person you were replying to said? First of all, you aren't the designer of the game, and they were talking about stripping out culture from the design of the game. And second, you \*added in\* culture, the exact opposite of what they said was impossible.
I mean fighter is intentionally so generic that you can argue that any martial class is just fighter with extra flavor. I'm in agreement on samurai specifically, but just add flavor to fighter is a dogshit argument on general. People want classes because they think it'd be cool to have more mechanical differentiation. If we didn't have champion would you be telling people that want Paladin that they should just play fighter with cleric dedication?
Well it's a good thing I'm not making that argument in general. Pathfinder is not OSR. I get that. But the key in my mind is _mechanical_ differentiation, and a somewhat more diffuse idea I call _conceptual_ differentiation, i.e. the class's unique thing. Once you get into _cultural_ differentiation, I think the class is getting into trouble.
I think it's messier than you're trying to depict. I think it's harder to separate cultural identity with mechanical identity sometimes. I didn't pick champion out of a hat in my prior example, I picked it because culturally it has similarities to the common depiction of a fantasy samurai, and it absolutely has cultural baggage built inherently into its mechanics.
I'm not saying that people who don't think it's necessary are bad, but there's been a lot of interesting ideas thrown around on what people would like to see from both of them. I'd definitely be interested in some of the ideas for archetypes that involved sword stances for example.
I think the only real positive in this situation is the posts from people from a variety of cultures sharing stuff that they'd like to see brought in from their culture.
> I picked [Champion] because... it absolutely has cultural baggage built inherently into its mechanics.
I don't see that, but maybe I'm missing something. The divine basis for the class and the code they adhere to certainly have a (pseudo-)historical grounding in the Western world, but in abstracting both of those I don't know that there's much cultural baggage, if any, left.
If you can build a samurai with a Champion just as capably as a knight, then it's detached from culture in exactly the way I prefer it to be. Let me make those connections through my character, and let me make them in Golarion, is what I ask!
The champion is essentially 2es take on Paladin, whose aesthetics heavily borrow from crusaders. If you can't see the problematic elements of a class whose themes take from a series of real world conflicts that still have ramifications to this day in race relations. I'd argue champion is even worse about it because it's explicitly about being the zealous follower of a God. And I'm not saying i want champion removed, I love the class. I just want to point out that you have a blind spot in what you'd consider having a culture attached.
I don't know who's actually calling for that.
Do you know who fucking loves Samurai? Actual Japanese authors and directors. How many anime series that take place on a whole different planet and feature a katana badass?
I think what some people are missing is that I don't think the main mod here is worried about racism towards people of Japanese descent (either in Japan or in other countries), he seems to find the popularity of Japanese pop culture offensive to all other people of Asian descent.
Oh, oh! I have a story about this. I spent the summer in Tokyo right before covid. I got to do some traveling during the weekends. I want to say first that Japan focuses on foreign tourism mostly in Tokyo and Kyoto, with tiny pockets of it in very, very famous other spots. Otherwise? Japan is heavily local tourism-based. Prefectures pride themselves on specializing in things and Japanese people love "this thing from this place that is good at it" concepts.
I went to visit Sendai, which is quite a large city, nearly as big as like Hiroshima and Kyoto. I wanted to visit not just to see another place in the country, but because I like Masamune Date, as portrayed in video games and animes, and he's from Sendai. There's a castle historical spot there with his statue on the outskirts of the city, so it seemed like a fun little excuse to see more places, even if its a little silly.
Except uhhh, when I got there, it seemed I kept finding all sorts of Date-related chibi drawn characters and motifs in places all over the city. Random shops. Signs. Not like, just near the castle, or to direct you to that. No, like, an accepted mascot, except you know, the drawings aren't all the same. They just have his distinctive crescent moon helmet and eyepatch. Which like, I'm not entirely sure is even 100% historically accurate, but it's the "image" of Date they've decided on over video games, movies, and anime. (Much like Nobunaga kinda looks the same over these media, and is usually also some how evil or demonic lol).
Japan loves samurai. They love ninjas. They love anything they have decided is Japan, because it's part of the reason why they think Japan is so unique and great. If you play a lot of video games made by Japanese devs, you see they just will not avoid putting something from their culture in a game, even small, compared to western devs who might not do that.
>When you dive too far down your own asshole trying to avoid racism, you just find more racism.
You find racism? All I've ever found deep in there is my colon.
Yup. I've said it before and I'll say it again, flavor and mechanics should mutually flow from each other, and have a strong conceptual identity for where both are coming from. Not in the sense of a literal "where" as in location, but a strong and defined identity of "what the hell is this and why does it do what it does".
From there, players have the freedom to slot in alternative flavor.
That being said, fighter or champion are valid things to substitute for a formal samurai class, and i personally think that this game has so many options that they can often step on each other's toes and feel redundant and excessive.
"Alternative Flavour" isn't easy for everyone. That's the thing. Working from a Blank Slate and building IN flavour is easy, manually having to walk through a class like Monk and take out every cultural reference utilized in the mechanical and flavour descriptions and replace them with your own in order to make the class fit a concept like "Boxer" isn't an easy task. Focus Abilities being called "Ki 'X'" Stances having names like "Crane", "Gorilla", "Dragon", and having mechanics that reflect those names, these are not easy things to re-contextualize.
Imo having a class called Samurai or Ninja kind of innately ties flavor to the mechanics. Like I'm all for them adding new options to fill a unique design space, but whatever mechanics they did have would be applicable to more than just Japanese-styled characters, so such options would have to be more generic.
You aren't listening to my argument. My point is that there wouldn't be a Samurai. You could have like some sort of "oathbound" archetype that might help you make a samurai, but it would also work for any other character that follows a specific code and not carry the baggage that comes with being called a Samurai.
So, they want us to cut out Barbarian, bard and druid,too, uh? And monk, of course.
Not to mention cut out all illustration, as they are naturally using aesthetics from a certain culture, unless they are all naked.
To be fair, you could go the opposite direction and draw things that are so beyond human comprehension that they physically can't be influenced by human culture.
I would LOVE Monk made more generic. I want to make a Barroom Boxer or other form of Unarmed Martial Arts. Barbarian is less necessary, most cultures have a version of a "Barbarian" that more or less fits what that class represents. Bard, could be retooled as "Storyteller" a Cultural Agnostic term that fits the concept. Druid, could be widened to "Primalist", one who works with nature, and given a wider set of abilities with Shape-shifting just being one of the "Subclasses".
Look deep enough and you can make an argument for anything.
Sorcerer is all about inheritance and bloodline, you could easily make a case for it glorifying eugenics and dynasties. But also its not like that exact topic hasn't been a part of fantasy literature since the genre was invented.
Yup. And personally, I'd love to see more versions of "Storyteller" than generically horny musician. Force people to think and maybe make some Skalds or Griots. And more versions of Monk, like a Bare-Knuckle Boxer.
I think I disagree, I think that class "flavour" can can have some serious issues in terms of role play . Currently if you want to be a samurai loads of the martial classes would fit quite well depending on what kind of samurai you wanted to play, it as soon as you add a samurai class people that want the flavour of samurai get funneled into that class even if they don't mesh with how the class feels to play.
If we look at another way; one of the big issues with the age old "casters don't feel right" debate is that new players join the game/community with a different perception of what a wizard is, pick up that class and realise that wizards Excell at controlling combat via buffs and debuffs rather than being really good at nuking a goblin off the map. They player should have chosen the kineticst, but because the flavour of wizard distracted them they ended up having a bad time (and then complain that wizards suck to all of us) if instead of "wizard" the class was "controller" or ranged striker or whatever word that could be used to describe classes without pre-subscribing flavour it would be more acceptable and easier for people to play the funny butch wizard that does "spells" by hitting things with his muscles,
So personally I do t have a leg In the race over whether or not the words like samurai are culturally sensitive, I do think that in the eventual p3e it would be awesome to have classes that don't pre-subscribe a flavour of the class
I think this is actually a pretty interesting point! I definitely would lean towards the idea of something that clearly pulls from and represents a certain fantasy, like a "Sword Saint" for instance is a perfect encapsulation of a lot of samurai tropes without invoking the name samurai, but can be potentially flavored to other things. I think the tropes are really what people realistically want, and I think leaning into chanbara for cool mechanics or fantasy expressions is simply a win win all around.
YES! ***THANK YOU!*** This is my BIGGEST horse in this whole thing. Mostly because "Monk" for example, is SO PRE-LOADED that it doesn't work well for making something as simple as a Boxer.
The funny thing is lots of classes as they are now are the closest we've gotten to blank slates in a DnD-inspired d20 while still being mechanically deep and flavourful. There are some that are a bit culture coded - gunslinger is very much a Hollywood cowboy, while some exemplar feats borrow direct from certain RL cultural mythologies, monk obviously does draw from a lot of East Asian martial arts both in real life influence and pop culture tropes etc. - but really the people who say you can build a serviceable ninja with rogue or samurai with fighter are mostly correct.
The question is twofold in what else is there to strip, and then how do you go about adding meaningful cultural references without making it offensive or baked into class identity. And it's interesting because the latter has already been answered in the form of dedication archetypes thst focus on certain cultures and regional styles; mostly relating to Golarion and found in setting heavy books like Lost Omens and APs, but you could easily do the same for those other influences and make them setting/cultural specific to hone in in the elements a base class can't without making it too culturally locked in
The former however is the issue. Like one of the examples that has been brought up a lot is the monk, but the monk is a very cool class in PF2e that a lot of people like. Do we get rid of it wholesale or turn it into a generic martial artist with the Asian codification removed? What gets removed in the process? Will it still be the same class mechanically or will it lose out things people like about it?
I feel these are the questions and the focus of them that isn't getting addressed in these criticisms.
That's me.
Which is not to say I don't want a class to have a unique concept. I definitely do! But I want to play in _Golarion,_ not the real world. The sooner I can leave the real-world map behind (or, more correctly in this case, the pop culture tropes that are like garish ads around the edge of the real-world map), the sooner I can get around to imagining and exploring the _territory._ I want to make a character, not a caricature.
That doesn't work.
We use real world heuristics to inform our expectations.
Unless you go full Gloomhaven and rename every class, even the mundanes, their own new archetypes, it doesn't play well.
> That doesn't work.
To the contrary, for me it works the best.
> We use real world heuristics
Sure:
- Fighter. Has real-world connotations. Not bogged down with cultural annotations and influences. I can do a lot with this class.
- Investigator. Has real-world connotations. Not bogged down with cultural annotations and influences. I can do a lot with this class.
- Magus. Literally nothing like it in the real world. But it fulfills a certain genre of sword fantasy and integrates perfectly with Pathfinder's magic system. I can work with this class.
- Thaumaturge. Totally gonzo class, way off the old D&D roster. I see a lot of cultural influences, but none too familiar or particular. I think it's got a flavor of its own. I can work with this class.
These are fine. I can imagine them in all parts of Golarion with the cultures that are _in_ Golarion. I don't want any more than this.
> Unless you go full Gloomhaven and rename every class
Don't threaten me with a good time. 😎 Let me introduce you to my friends: Jack, Nano, and Glaive.
Have to admit, I need some help following you here.
Investigator, ok you have Holmes and Poirot.
Magus, Persian priest? I need a little help following this one.
Thaumaturge, not sure that's the flavor they meant. More like an occultist using all sorts of"relics" to empower them. Similar to hellboy.
Investigator: Holmes and Poirot – but also Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher, Monk, that monk in _Name of the Rose,_ Lee Chang the Crown Prince of Joseon, and scads of Call of Cthulhu wash-ups. 😆
This would require a very high effort vs a lower result in audience reception.
And i am the kind of GM that creates custom settings and invent factions and names from zero. But i know it's different for a generalistic fantasy RPG like PF2 and its setting.
> This would require very high effort vs a lower result in audience reception
I just got through telling you I can work with what we have. I am not demanding a change.
And I don't give a fig about audience reception. I am telling you what _I_ want out of the game.
You can homebrew the settings as you like, but this will influence you and your table.
I am just saying why Paizo is still going by the way they took years ago. Generalistic setting with some kind of inspiration from the real world.
I was perfectly able to suss out the path Paizo took and why.
And I can tell you, you don't have to gloss much of the World Guide to grok that it is not precisely the path y'all think it is.
I’m glad you brought up the Numenera classes, because reading you post reminded me of how much I *HATE* systems with completely generic some-assembly-required class systems. I couldn’t play Numenera for more than half a dozen sessions because of how bare-bones it felt. I agree with the above-poster. Archetypes for everything we’ve ever heard of, even if it’s redundant, not IKEA classes.
And yet, every Pathfinder class is firmly in the some-assembly-required camp. That's what all those feats are for!
Numenéra has all sorts of ways to do flavor too – it just doesn't bake it into the "type" system as much. And they did end up adding some types over time.
And all this is beside my main point: I like classes with a concept and flavor. I don't need or want them to be tied to strict cultural touchpoints.
But you *are* playing in Golarion, which has always been a parallel of earth and its cultures, unabashedly. If you want to take that out, you don't want to play in Golarion.
No, it is _not_ a parallel. It is a funhouse mirror. The more we try to make it specifically like Earth, the more we damage it, and the more useless it becomes for my kind of high fantasy.
Golarion is not only a parallel to Earth, but most of the time even the continents and nations themselves are positioned similar how their equivalent IRL would be on the map.
I mean, do I really have to answer when your question is ill-fated?
Though besides that, Absalom would be the equivalent of Constantinople in our world. Both are (or were in Constantinople's case) the main hubs of their respective worlds which serve as transit points between one or more continents (Europe and Asia for Constantinople; Avistan, Casmaron, and Garund for Absalom). I'd even say this likely was made on purpose since Emperor Constantine was one of the early catholic emperors and Absalom as a word has its roots in judeo-christian tradition.
Is it really? Is Emperor Constantine running the place? Are there so-called Judeo-Christian churches in the streets?
And how about Otari, that little fishing village right down the coast? You think that's a Byzantine village?
You are arguing that the very thing the people who created it for is damaging to it. That's nonsense. It's like asking why greyhawk isn't instead a cyberpunk setting, or why games like Final Fantasy aren't FPSs instead, and that being RPGs damages them.
You want Golarion to be something it isn't, you would be better off seeking another world to use in your game, or making your own. The thing you want is fine to want, but Golarion isn't it
This is not what I'm arguing, and I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth or tell me to leave.
This is all quite beside my original point about classes, btw.
Given that I've played happily in this setting for years, and never had a problem with it until you told me I did, I wish you and everyone who upvoted you could see how dismissive and insulting you are being.
I enjoy the fact that there's an entire gaming source book for a region that reads entirely like an atlas and contains very little gameplay. It does, however, make us want more.
I'll say this: debating if Samurai is a harmful stereotype when we have the Barbarian since forever is at best, dishonest.
Barbarian is literally a harmful stereotype created by an opressive regime to humiliate, disenfranchise and dehumanize people.
The word comes from "person who speaks nonsense". It's half a step from creating a class based on Native Amercians and calling it the Savage.
The only difference is that, unlike Native Americans, "Barbarians" don't exist anymore to be hurt by these stereotypes, so we say it's ok.
Well, friends, I hate to say it to you, Samurai and Ninja don't exist anymore either.
Oh, but Japanese people, who are descended from Samurai still exist!
True, but I dare say that europeans do too.
And dom't get me started on how weird monk already is.
So let me be clear: OP is right. We are already using fantastic versions of real world groups and cultures. There's no sense in complaining about adding more. We should add from many diferent groups, not just japanese. But also japanese.
And on that note, aren't the fantasized ideas everyone has for a "Samurai and Ninja" RP kinda in the same veign as people that do "Wild Western" RPs? Like yeah it's loosely based off a historic point of the world, but we're not saying the real world was **actually** like that.
Or just high fantasy in general? They're European / Americanized folk stories, so when is it appropriation on the other side?
Can I call the aesthetic a type of "punk" and then it be okay? Like, in this campaign we're Steampunk, next is Western-Punk, and then we could do Nihon-Punk? Is that enough to imply loose aesthetic influences without trying to be offensive?
Idk, this is the stuff that keeps me up at night!
I think where the Samurai and Ninja diverge from your other examples is that in a lot of settings that try to introduce and Asia equivalent, those archetypes suck the air out of the room. For a long time depictions of fantastical Asia has been viewed through a Japanese lens that ignores the rest of the continent, and representing the idea of Asian characters in those two classes and the monk, which is limiting in a way that other classes by default aren't.
The wild west is different for reasons I've been thinking about recently. Firstly because the idea of what America is isn't so singularly overwhelmed by the concept of the cowboy. But secondly because, somewhat uniquely, America doesn't have a lot of other stuff to it that can easily fit into a fantasy setting, hell we can even see that including guns feels too far for a lot of people anyway. America is a very young country, it has less fantastical heritage to pull from that's uniquely its own. Not none, but less than most regions.
I see your point.
In that case then, should someone decide to do a Nihon-Punk aesthetic, you're saying everything should be reflavored to fit the theme?
I'm not going to lie, I don't personally know enough about ancient Japan to even suggest names for the other classes as an example.
In my head, when I think of fantasy samurai and ninja I don't assume the character to be Asian, but I do understand the kind of warrior they are by their title. In this sense, is there a better name to fit these classes to generalize them more?
Are there other examples of specific groups of people from other ancient civilizations that we could use to counter-compare? Or what else could we include in the setting to better represent / honor the people we've chosen to represent?
Firstly, I'm not a fan of just adding punk to the end of a name since punk is meant to have an actual meaning and implications for a setting in and of itself. And I think he fact you can't think of another name for a class kind of illustrates the issue with Asian representation in rpgs getting so frequently limited to samurai, ninja and monk.
If you're specifically going for a fantastical representation of Japan specifically, I think re flavoring to match the setting makes sense. But as far as better names for the classes to make them more general, then genuinely I think fighter and rogue do the job fine. I don't know what people would want from samurai and ninja mechanically that pf2e doesn't already provide. If you want something more magical, then magus is also an option I'd take.
As for equivalents from other cultures, I'm not sure if there's really a fantasy archetype other than the Knight that's quite as ubiquitous in rpgs. Even then, you hardly ever have the Knight presented in as stereotypical and culturally specific a way as samurai and ninjas.
I was honestly very surprised, when 2e came out, that with Paizo's drive to be more equitable, that the class wasn't renamed to berserker or something. I do think the trope of the barbarian being an angry indigenous person is not a good trope to continue.
Specially eggregious when you noticed that THE barbarian, Conan, is notning like this.
Heck, if you would like to play as conan the barbarian, a Fighter with a rogue dedication is more up his speed.
Not that I dislike the class as is, give me a dragon warrion and I'm almost always in, but it's funny how "equitable" clearly doesn't count for that stereotype.
Berserker is worse... The concept of Barbarian isn't linked to any particular Culture, most societies that formed Settlements had a word for those who did not, and the ones that attacked their settlements, and were particularly hard to kill, generally were not spoken of in positive terms. (Now, depending on who is doing the settling, why, and how they treated those nomadic peoples of the area prior or in return, there is more nuanced discussion to be had, but that's not really relevant to discussing the general tropes the word invokes.) Berserkers are inherently Norse.
Nah, If it sounds, looks and plays cool, I'm full on with it
The thing is that it's quite hard to name the Barbarian without being offensive to someone.
Maybe just call it Warrior, but that's a bit on generic - and honestly should be the name of the Fighter, but that's a debate for another time.
A bit different. I would argue.
Although I firmly believe there is nothing racist about a samurai class, I tend to agree that it can very easily fit into the existing classes. It just need a feat support or two for flavor and fighting style.
Berserkers aren't only rooted in Nordic culture. But berserkers are pretty much already existing within the pop culture zeitgeist that is separate from it's roots. e.g. Fate Stay Night, Fire Emblem, etc.
The same is true for barbarians at least within the ttrpg community so I don't really think it is a problem so long as people know it's history.
Samurais and Ninja's are more culturally tied to Japan. Which isn't really a problem, but as we've witnessed recently, is problematized by some.
Fate Stay Night and Fire Emblem are also referencing that old Norse tradition. If "Existing in the cultural zeitgeist" is the bar then Barbarian is fine - Conan has been around for 100 years or something.
The real reason Paizo might chamge the names of classes in a hypothetical 3e is to differentiate themselves from DnD more - nothing to do with trying to find flavorful evocative names that somehow have no cultural baggage tied to them.
I like how your examples of Berserker being fine is because they've already been used in other pop culture properties, but adding Samurai to a pop culture property is somehow different. Especially when your examples are of Japanese origin.
It isn't different because its japanese its different because berserkers are further removed from their culture of origin in pop culture.
Also, I disagree on the samurai being a standalone class on the basis of its presumed mechanics in the design spsce, not cultural origin.
But still if its okay for one thing because its involved in pop culture already its a bit disingenuous to then say "but this other thing can't be moved into pop culture." Like there is some date line where its not okay anymore.
And besides, Samurai are already pretty heavily in pop culture. I'd argue they are just as much as Berserkers.
That's not what I said though.
I never said they aren't 'in popculture'. I said Samurai's are always 'Japanese' or 'Eastern". They are always aesthetically referential to Japan in pop culture and even naming convention.
Unlike berserkers. While there are plenty of 'Northmen' berserkers that borrows it's aesthetics from it's Nordic inspiration. There are plenty that don't such Fate's Berserkers which can be anyone from anywhere and Fire Emblems berserkers which are more narratively and aesthetically tied to banditry and the most powerful class of axe users.
They were called berserkers? I think berserk is a norse word for bear clothes or clothed in bear pelt. The concept of mad warrior is not just a norse thing i agree.
A samurai would be more similar to an Einherjar as concept maybe? Been a while since i read up on norse mythology.
>A samurai would be more similar to an Einherjar as concept maybe?
Only if the samurai in question is dead.
(The einherjar were the spirits of the dead feasting and training for Ragnarok in Valhalla, and in game terms, members of all classes would be represented, so long as they died valiantly in battle. There's really no easy analogue for the samurai in pre-Christian Scandinavia or in its mythology.)
A fantasy barbarian is more like Conan, a fantasy Samurai can range from someone who looks like a real Samurai, to someone like Auron or Gilgamesh. I'm not really seeing how either of those are offensive or reductionist.
On behalf of all the wheel idiots out there, I'm sorry if my illiterate rage machine RP offended you.
If someone thought all Americans were cowboys, you probably wouldn't be offended per se, you'd probably just think it was slightly weird depending on how weird the other person is making it. Wanting to be a cowboy "because it's cool" is unlikely to bother someone, as descendants of actual cowboys are still alive.
Barbarian was a term applied to all non-Romans while they expanded. Was it used to dehumanize? Absolutely. But we are talking about over a millennium ago and literally describes any other civilization that came into contact with the Roman Empire. It’s generic and not the problem you’re making it out to be.
“Samurai” may not walk around in armor anymore, but blade martial arts are still practiced in Japan. Ninjas are a trope from Kabuki theatre. The point of this discussion is Japanese culture has more to offer than “samurai and ninjas” and that constantly treating these as some exotic new class is reinforcing the opposite idea.
We are trying to get the average person to see more than just martial artists from a distant land
What's worth noting, and this is the difference, "Barbarian" as a concept doesn't come from any one culture and isn't in reference to any one culture. Cultures ALL over the world have used terms that relate the same conceptual concept that "Barbarian" represents. A Hulking, Hard to Kill, and Deadly Brute from outside of your settlement that is extremely aggressive, raids your settlements, and doesn't negotiate. TBH, if the Class was called "Berserker" and used Nordic terms for all its abilities, you might have a case because those terms specifically originate from Nordic culture. And Adding EVERY version of a concept like "Fighter" will rapidly A) Make Fighter less appealing, and B) Pre-Load every Class with a Flavour Onus that drives the RP of that Class and disincentives people from use the Class in builds that "aren't" that Flavour. You can make "Fighter" into DOZENS of differently flavoured Character Concepts, Monk can't even be a BARE-KNUCKLE BOXER.
I remember seeing an interview where someone from Paizo, I think it was Erik Mona, mentioned that the name should have probably been "Berserker".
He made no comments on whether the name would be changed in any future edition, likely because he didn't want to mention a PF3 at all even in theory, but the problematic nature of the name is known to them.
Eh, barbarian also has some mechanical issues that aren't representation related. It's core feature is that they go into a hyperviolent fugue state. It's glamorizing a pretty horrifying mental illness.
No one should care about using ninja and samurai. After all Japan is busy using medieval European Knights and stuff for their fantasy adventures. Just look at final fantasy 16.
Not sure if this can help, besides learning a bit of new words and aesthetic.
Consider that even in RPGs people usually know very little about knights or man at arms, and they were considered standard in a lot of western rpgs.
The point is doing that but with quality.
Incredibly fucking based. This is the best possible take. Inclusivity means opening up the playing field for *more* ideas and cultural touchstones, not *less.* This would be a great way for those archetypes and stories to reach a wider array of people, in the same way that anime exposed so many people to a great many Japanese tropes and their mythology.
I'd love to see more from other world cultures as well. Get some central American Jaguar Warriors in there (or you could have it be genericized to 'Warrior' with the concept being that of any first-nations style warrior- lightly armored, skilled at arms, with interesting tools or traditions like 'counting coup' or the earning of a mask or headdress). Indian subcontinent *shastrashāstra* or yogis, warriors with specialized throwing knives from sub-Saharan Africa, harpoon-hunters skilled in traversing frozen waters from the north...
Representation matters.
Is the concern that tropes and stereotypes being blindly reproduced could hurt people valid? Yes. Is the the potential hurt bigger than the factual erasure of anything other than classical Western-European medieval cultural influences? Heck no.
The argument is as silly as saying we shouldn't have any women in our games because of hurtful stereotypes or no queer people.
Bring it on. All the cultural richness of humanity. Yes, there will be missteps and sometimes we will mess up but that can be a dialogue. You can't be learning without making mistakes. I am stoked about my fantasy games becoming broader and more culturally rich and more people finding themselves represented in them.
I think the thing to remember is that classes are meant to be broad archetypesthat you can flavour in whatever way you want outside of mechanics, pigeonholing a class into a particular cultural icon is something that probably not going to happen
Right? I was blessed enough to live a few years in the Philippines and, though I’m not Filipino myself, it gave me a lot of appreciation for the culture and their history. I’d love to see an archetype for Arnis as a martial art so I can use two bamboo sticks, or even a “Bahala Na!” fighter feat where you jump and stab down with two swords at once (even though iirc that school of Arnis with that name is pretty contemporary and I think developed in the US by a Filipino American, but still… it’d be fun! And does have some roots in the traditional two sword style).
And it isn’t lost on me that I, as a white guy who only temporarily experienced the culture, could turn this desire into a problematic reduction of the culture. That’s not what I want, I truly want to have fun exploring something that I saw which was really neat and impressive and unique and underrepresented in media imo.
And sure, I can mechanically pull off these ideas myself. But I think there is something special in having a specific archetype, *written preferably by a member of the culture it is representing* being a clearly named and available icon of this so as to be able to let people unfamiliar do some research and learn about these fascinating histories and cultures. Heck, the discussion on this sub lately is the reason I learned about Chinese butterfly swords, so it can lean into learning things.
So yeah, samurai, ninja, I see why they are popular and I understand they can be problematic esp if they are the only representations. So let’s not make them the only ones! I’d love to see some variety that is done respectfully, which I believe is how Paizo leans too
Have a Japanese friend I have been trying to in pf2e since he has played 1e and he doesn't like how dumbed down 5e DND is. He's been reading the comments and he is like dude is this hobby just infected by people that dislike the Japanese people just like they constantly bitch about whites. The guy managed to become a anthropologist so the guy likes learning about the history and cultures of other people. He honestly was looking forward to the Tian Xia setting book and players guide.
I agree as not asian but native american I'd love some archetype for fighter based on our combat style. As long as everything is done respectfully I am happy to see my culture get representation.
Is Tian Xia supposed to represent Japanese culture, or multiple East Asian cultures? Or is it just a mishmash of all of them? In my mind it would be great to depict Tian Xia as a continent with multiple interrelated cultures and pull elements from each of these. As a person with ties to Chinese culture (although I am not Chinese myself) it does get tiring to see Japan subbing in for Asian culture in general, especially because Samurai and Ninja have been done to death and really aren’t that different than existing subclasses. I’d love to see some historical Chinese, Korean and Southeast Asian influence- there is a tremendous variety in those cultures and lots of cool shit.
"No! Teriyaki does not come from China!"
The book is actually quite good. There are influences from a wide variety of cultures, including Vietnam and Thailand.
Oh, and ghosts. Ghosts everywhere.
I'm no expert but I have seen names and upcoming ancestries that are distinctly south east asian. There are like 25 regions that all seem very distinct politically, culturally, aesthetically etc
Is a samurai just a way of role-playing a fighter?
Just be honorable even if your system of honour is messed up.
Or is that the issue it's racist to act the negative aspects of the samurai culture?
I don't want the bloat of pathfinder 1e of a billion archetypes. Their scope being what it is and focusing instead on making good classes that can fulfill the ideas of these characters works much better.
Perhaps it's simply where I'm coming from with this. I love japan and Japan's mythologized history, growing up half japanese in Hawaii, my grandpa would raise me and my brother on old vhs of Chanbara films, and there was the obvious draw of Japanese pop culture. When I got into pathfinder, and realized i could in fact play a Samurai, I was thrilled. But then I looked over the class and it was not that great, with all kinds of features I did not want, and not fulfilling the fantasy of being a light robed sword user who just blew into town. Slayer and Swashbucker with the Aldori sword archetype would end up being closer to what I wanted.
Then comes 5e, and oh it has a Samurai and a Kensei subclass, and then I play them, and realize the problem of playing a fighter or monk in a system that thinks martials being mid is peak game design. Sadly, Bladesinger and Sword Bard would be by go to for anime swordsman style of play. However, it did make me begin to realize how not that difficult it was to just make a "samurai" with the tools given.
Come pathfinder 2e, and I've learned much more about Japan by now. I can appreciate why the samurai in 1e had a focus on mounted combat now. I now understand just how vast the differences between samurai were, that those referred to by my love of them in the Tokugawa era were radically different from those of the warring states period. This so also when I've come to appreciate other Asian and Pacific cultures and their traditions outside of just glamorizing Japan's.
And, well, pathfinder 2e just let's me do what I want, and there's nothing I feel like they could give me in a samurai archetype or class that wouldn't just be a shallow repackaging of stuff we already got. My chanbara fantasy stuff has the duelist and aldori sword lord archetypes to get there, along with picking any class I want to fulfill that flavor, whether it's swashbuckler for the cunning and clever types, rogue or ranger for the underhanded manipulative vagabond ala yojimbos nameless protagonist, fighter for that martial god of the blade, and even the ability to make a gun toting samurai with Gunslinger, leaning hard into fantastical depictions with the Drifter or fully commit to using muskets as a sniper.
Additionally, if I wanted to make a Tadakatsu Honda or Benkei type, Fighter does a good job of it practically out of the box, especially now with the remaster feat changes that fighter got. Hell, I can even pick cavalier and go into bows, and be a mounted Archer with a Yari spear for when I dismount like a Samurai of the warring states.
That's not even scratching how playing someone like Guan Yu with all the rad as hell two handed weapon feats and getting to use recall knowledge from hitting someone to lean more into an intelligent tactical fighter. Or even just going with Korean Joseon era swordsmanship with two weapon fighting feats or again, two handed weapons or just a mix of these feats and archery to represent the martial mastery of another group of people, on and on it goes.
And I feel like the approach you propose would be trading a vast ocean of options for a bunch of tiny lagoons, with 1 or two new feats and a bunch of cannibalized feats from the fighter, for little to no reason to do so. I want to experience and learn more as well, this guide opens a plethora of character ideas I am eager to use. But I'm also practical enough and have seen enough archetypes to know that what you're asking for is just not going to be healthy for the game at all.
There's no reason to exclude Samurai / Japanese when you have a bunch of white portrayals from different countries like Gladiators, Vikings, and Knights.
To say that "Having Samurai is racist, all the classes and archetypes need to be historically white" is ironic.
And as far as having other cultures portrayed well, they only need to be portrayed as well as the white Gladiators, Vikings, etc are. Non-white cultures should not have a higher barrier for entry.
Likewise, saying "They shouldn't have Samurai unless they also release one archetype or class for every country" is crazy. That's just setting an unnecessarily high barrier for entry that no TTRPG has. And again, having it only be classically white cultures to equally exclude all non-whites is absolutely not the answer.
Honestly, one of the only games that I've seen with this sort of pan-inclusion was actually *For Honor*.
Knights (Continental Europe)
Vikings (Northern Europe)
Samurai (Japan)
Wu Lin (China)
Outlanders (including Egypt, Arabia, and Central America)
Not comprehensive, and outside of the 2 European and 2 East Asian, there's *not much* representation, but it's there.
There is still the character guide coming later this year, it will probably have options for those things. People are reading a guide for GMs and getting mad it's not full of player options. Paizo isn't WotC, some books are going to be mostly for GMs, some are going to be mostly for players. This is a good thing.
All these complaints about fictional-fantastical-unbelievable archetypes comes off as disingenuous, slack-tivism, and virtue signaling.
As much as Cowboys, Pirates, and Knights are used in Eastern/European media or entertainment rings real damn hollow when someone with a spine made of jelly tries to lecture others about "harmful stereotypes." Really? Words and pixels too much for you to handle cupcake?
It's amazing how someone can be both condescending and pretentious in one breath and think they're the hero.
We should be celebrating our differences, using them as inspiration to create stupid silly shit that isn't real, and have a blast with it. I'm looking at you Metal Gear, Cowboy Bebop, Record of Lodoss War, & Elden Ring.
But if someone is going to stand on their soap box Japan is the biggest offender of perpetuating the idea of katanas cutting anything and ninja magic: Naruto, Rurouni Kenshin, Final Fantasy, Sekiro, and so on and so forth. The list of anime and games created by Japanese that focus on a Samurais or Ninjas or both is in no short supply.
It's fun to pretend you god damn weirdos. No one is being harmed. No one with a brain thinks the whole of east Asia is Japanese only. FFS.
We are human, we aren't here for a long time just a good time.
Roleplay is not activism knuckle draggers, stop being pathetic and do better.
The question is "what could it give that does not already exist in a class or archetype?" like for instance a samurai class or archetype. What would it give thats not just fighter with japanese flavor? Are ninjas not just japanese rouges? The most i could see there is unique climbing abilities and a split off of the assassin archetype.
What do you think of Archetypes like Archer, Two weapon warrior or Mauler? Those generally dont bring much unique to the table either - they just make a specific theme more available to all classes.
Yes, and what would samurai give that those don't? Archer specializes and bows, two weapon warrior gives two weapon fighting, duelist gives one weapon, Mauler gives two handed. What would samurai give?
Personally I want a bunch of stances similar to what monks have for unarmed applied to weapons. I value flavor a ton, so I dont care much if some of the monk feats are similar to fighter feats or similar. However, even if all they did was grab a bunch of existing rogue, ranger and fighter feats and put them into an archetype called "Samurai" for new players to grab a thematic bundle I think that would be a net positive.
I'm don't agree with any of these ideas about 'cultural appropriation' and I think RPG supplements are and ought to be free to take inspiration from whatever historical or cultural source they want but has it occurred to you that if you really want to learn these things then a Pathfinder sourcebook may be the wrong book to look at?
I think this is the correct take. If someone says the game ONLY needs samurai and ninja to represent asian cultures, thats a problem. But I think most people in this subreddit would be immensely pleased to have options spanning way more cultures.
I now kinda want to make a Mongolian falconer. Can I have two animal companions?
That makes me curious, do we have a Horse Archery archetype? That could be a neat thing to play.
we sadly dont. and funnily enough a samurai archetype would fit seamlessly for it, while being actually in touch with what samurais were in a period of time IRL
We kind of do with the Cavalier archetype. Cavalier's Charge allows you to command your companion to stride twice and you can strike during this action. The requirements to strike are that the target has to be in the weapon's reach or in its first Range Increment, which would allow for a pretty mobile horse archer playstyle (especially if you use the riding drake. Drive by arrow shootings at 45 feet per stride action (not including bonuses)).
Oh right!, I forgot about how cool their bows are, I still think the most fascinating weapon they had was the Nagamaki.
yeah, for a good long while they were essentially elite ranged cavalry that had a katana as a sidearm and a shorter katana as a side side arm
I've seen people pull that off pretty well with a mounted monk. Horse Archer feels compelling in any game format. Hell, that's even how I played that Kingdom Come game when it came out (never tried the expansion though after finding out about them having and keeping the racist guy on the team, so I don't know if the strat still worked there).
Cavalier Ranger can get pretty decent at drive-by attacks.
That sounds really fun, man I wish I was in an active game.
Not "active" at the same time, but the beastmaster archetype can get multiple companions then swap out which is active
Dang, I wanna deploy my bird from horseback.
That is doable as long as you only want one of them to be a full animal companion capable of combat. The other can just be a normal animal, a familiar, or a pet as per the pet feat. Though I think that mostly works if the horse is the animal companion and the bird is secondary.
Can I have one animal companion and one archetype that gains a familiar?
Yes, but then the falcon can't attack. I suppose you could have a heavily GM- Fiat home brew where you jury rig the Sprite feat that nets you a rideable familiar to make it slower horse instead of a corgi, and then have the falcon animal companion? Or if you are a caster and you are happy with having the falcon be all about delivering touch spells. Use the Needle darts cantrip and flavor it as a bow?
You could make it so that one is an animal companion and one is a Beast Eidolon. Unfortunately, getting a permanently large (rideable) companion or a permanently flying one are locked behind higher level feats
I think there is a later feat that allows two companions to be out, but they split the amount of actions that one companion would get [https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1909](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1909)
Beastmaster arch lets you have more than one. Not at the same time. Ranger or druid lets you start with one.
Here's a few options I can think of off the top of my head: * Ranger with a bird companion and cavalier archetype (alternatively a horse companion and beastmaster for the bird). Same can apply for a druid, since they can also et animal companions. * Summoner with a beast eidolon (and steed form or flight feats) to replace the ranger features above. I don't think eidolons get affected by the "one at a time" companion rule, but I could be wrong. * If the bird of prey is smaller and less of a combatant, then any class with a familiar would also work.
Homie in Extinction Curse went for multiple animal companions. There was a bit more overhead on figuring out which ones would/could be used in a given situation, but they enjoyed playing that way and the companions were usually pretty helpful (especially when the murder owl got a streak of hot dice).
Beastmaster is the Archetype for you!
Wouldn't that be a familar + animal companion?
a ranger with the chevalier, and or beastmaster, dedication, could kinda do it, but only 1 companion could be "active" at once.
I just want to be able to make a typical wuxia hero- an unarmored, sword-wielding, mobile fighter with a greater or lesser degree of mystical abilities, depending on how I build them. Monk almost scratches that itch, but the weapon selection ruins it.
Exemplar might be exactly that when it comes out
My biggest annoyance with the Mwangi guide was the absence of actual player options.
They're all in the character guide coming out!
I haven't seen a Mwangi Expanse Character Guide announced - a quick Google isn't getting me anything. Do you have any info on this?
Oh sorry I'm an idiot for some reason I thought we were still talking TX.
All good, I was excited for a minute lol
I think we’re exiting the first stage of the argument. It was very knee-jerk reaction, but now level heads are coming in speaking what is really important. The issue isn’t whether we have Samurai/Ninja. We got a wonderful buffet of fantastic things to try and explore, that writers made from something close to their hearts, for many of us to experience! I’m sure once more of us get the books (which god do I need to pray to to get it faster), we’ll be able to speak more loudly about that main point (more content! Not just select content!)
>But I think most people in this subreddit would be immensely pleased to have options spanning way more cultures. If they came out and said that they were making character options based on the historic warriors of Cambodia, or Myanmar, or Jordon, or whatever else, my reaction would probably be "I have no idea what that is, and I'm excited to learn". I know nothing about any historical warriors from *any* of those places, or a great many other places for that matter, but I'd be very curious to discover them. And if we're talking about non-Asian cultures, then I'd love to see some Mesoamerican warriors, taking inspiration from the Inca, the Mayans, or the Aztecs. Or going even further south, and taking inspiration from the cultures of South America. Africa and India alone have *so many* cultures that could inspire classes, archetypes, backgrounds, and more. And that's ignoring the various kinds of Polynesian cultures, or the American/Australian First Nation, or Russia, or Greece, Rome, Egypt, or even going all the way back to *Mesopotamia* and taking inspiration from the likes of Gilgamesh. The world is *so big,* with so many different places to draw inspiration from.
> Australian First Nation That’s me, and I thought it was pretty cool that one of the most popular homebrew books for 13th Age included options for using a spear or javelin as a ranger, specifically for playing tribal hunters
Ooh, that sounds awesome! I'm reminded of a Dungeons & Dragons 5e homebrew I saw once that took inspiration from the Dreaming to make a Sorcerer bloodline. I went and [found it](https://new.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/p9skel/myths_and_folklore_collection_v12_play_new/) as well, just because I could. I'll admit, I'm not sure how "offensive" their take is on it, as I'm not nearly as well read on things like the Dreaming as I'd like to be (am Australian, but not First Nation). But if you're curious, there it is.
Onmyoji was one of my favorite archetypes in we, I would love to see it as a class archetype for maybe animist
I demand Filipino/Indonesia (FMA/silat based) dagger/knife fighter dedication now.
Honestly, I don't think is that unpopular of an opinion at all... for people who have actually read the Tian Xia world guide already, that is. ~~If only mine would ship faster.~~
I've seen some people say to completly strip out cultural annotations and influences from classes and archtypes and in the future and make them all blank slates and I kinda feel like that's worse lol
That's not worse, that's impossible. As in it fundamentally can't be done. What is possible is to strip out all the cultural connotations that aren't a part of your natural base assumptions, or in other words to remove all culture other than your own. To you, it might look like all cultural connotations have been removed, but only because you don't see your own culture as culture, but just as "normal stuff", in the same way that you don't hear your own accent. The way to fight against cultural stereotypes and exoticism is to do the work, research the culture(s) in question, and inject more, and more genuine, culture into game.
Given that I can create a samurai, or jaguar warrior, or kadungganan – or more to the point a warrior of Nirmathas, or Geb, or Kelesh – with a fighter, I seem to have inadvertently done the thing you told me was fundamentally unpossible. But if you want to explain why you think such a class is racist, I'm open to listen.
How is that a refutation of anything the person you were replying to said? First of all, you aren't the designer of the game, and they were talking about stripping out culture from the design of the game. And second, you \*added in\* culture, the exact opposite of what they said was impossible.
I mean fighter is intentionally so generic that you can argue that any martial class is just fighter with extra flavor. I'm in agreement on samurai specifically, but just add flavor to fighter is a dogshit argument on general. People want classes because they think it'd be cool to have more mechanical differentiation. If we didn't have champion would you be telling people that want Paladin that they should just play fighter with cleric dedication?
Well it's a good thing I'm not making that argument in general. Pathfinder is not OSR. I get that. But the key in my mind is _mechanical_ differentiation, and a somewhat more diffuse idea I call _conceptual_ differentiation, i.e. the class's unique thing. Once you get into _cultural_ differentiation, I think the class is getting into trouble.
I think it's messier than you're trying to depict. I think it's harder to separate cultural identity with mechanical identity sometimes. I didn't pick champion out of a hat in my prior example, I picked it because culturally it has similarities to the common depiction of a fantasy samurai, and it absolutely has cultural baggage built inherently into its mechanics. I'm not saying that people who don't think it's necessary are bad, but there's been a lot of interesting ideas thrown around on what people would like to see from both of them. I'd definitely be interested in some of the ideas for archetypes that involved sword stances for example. I think the only real positive in this situation is the posts from people from a variety of cultures sharing stuff that they'd like to see brought in from their culture.
> I picked [Champion] because... it absolutely has cultural baggage built inherently into its mechanics. I don't see that, but maybe I'm missing something. The divine basis for the class and the code they adhere to certainly have a (pseudo-)historical grounding in the Western world, but in abstracting both of those I don't know that there's much cultural baggage, if any, left. If you can build a samurai with a Champion just as capably as a knight, then it's detached from culture in exactly the way I prefer it to be. Let me make those connections through my character, and let me make them in Golarion, is what I ask!
The champion is essentially 2es take on Paladin, whose aesthetics heavily borrow from crusaders. If you can't see the problematic elements of a class whose themes take from a series of real world conflicts that still have ramifications to this day in race relations. I'd argue champion is even worse about it because it's explicitly about being the zealous follower of a God. And I'm not saying i want champion removed, I love the class. I just want to point out that you have a blind spot in what you'd consider having a culture attached.
You may have done it, but have you done it well?
That wasn't what was asked. But yes. Is it fun to play? If so, job done. With a bit of imagination a lot of things become possible.
Saying Japanese tropes just flat out *aren't* allowed feels like erasure.
I don't know who's actually calling for that. Do you know who fucking loves Samurai? Actual Japanese authors and directors. How many anime series that take place on a whole different planet and feature a katana badass?
I think what some people are missing is that I don't think the main mod here is worried about racism towards people of Japanese descent (either in Japan or in other countries), he seems to find the popularity of Japanese pop culture offensive to all other people of Asian descent.
Clearly we need to be worried about the most terrifying of all Asian fandoms: BTS stans.
You are... not wrong.
Ok, so what archetype is that?
I just don't see how it can be put into the game. It's too powerful.
Boy Band Bard?
… I want this.
Oh, oh! I have a story about this. I spent the summer in Tokyo right before covid. I got to do some traveling during the weekends. I want to say first that Japan focuses on foreign tourism mostly in Tokyo and Kyoto, with tiny pockets of it in very, very famous other spots. Otherwise? Japan is heavily local tourism-based. Prefectures pride themselves on specializing in things and Japanese people love "this thing from this place that is good at it" concepts. I went to visit Sendai, which is quite a large city, nearly as big as like Hiroshima and Kyoto. I wanted to visit not just to see another place in the country, but because I like Masamune Date, as portrayed in video games and animes, and he's from Sendai. There's a castle historical spot there with his statue on the outskirts of the city, so it seemed like a fun little excuse to see more places, even if its a little silly. Except uhhh, when I got there, it seemed I kept finding all sorts of Date-related chibi drawn characters and motifs in places all over the city. Random shops. Signs. Not like, just near the castle, or to direct you to that. No, like, an accepted mascot, except you know, the drawings aren't all the same. They just have his distinctive crescent moon helmet and eyepatch. Which like, I'm not entirely sure is even 100% historically accurate, but it's the "image" of Date they've decided on over video games, movies, and anime. (Much like Nobunaga kinda looks the same over these media, and is usually also some how evil or demonic lol). Japan loves samurai. They love ninjas. They love anything they have decided is Japan, because it's part of the reason why they think Japan is so unique and great. If you play a lot of video games made by Japanese devs, you see they just will not avoid putting something from their culture in a game, even small, compared to western devs who might not do that.
We all think Date Masamune and Nobunaga look the way they do because of video games made by actual Japanese people.
Horseshoe theory hard at work. When you dive too far down your own asshole trying to avoid racism, you just find more racism.
>When you dive too far down your own asshole trying to avoid racism, you just find more racism. You find racism? All I've ever found deep in there is my colon.
Keep looking, you’ll know when you find the prostate
The prostate is racist, got it.
Correct, yes
Yup. I've said it before and I'll say it again, flavor and mechanics should mutually flow from each other, and have a strong conceptual identity for where both are coming from. Not in the sense of a literal "where" as in location, but a strong and defined identity of "what the hell is this and why does it do what it does". From there, players have the freedom to slot in alternative flavor. That being said, fighter or champion are valid things to substitute for a formal samurai class, and i personally think that this game has so many options that they can often step on each other's toes and feel redundant and excessive.
"Alternative Flavour" isn't easy for everyone. That's the thing. Working from a Blank Slate and building IN flavour is easy, manually having to walk through a class like Monk and take out every cultural reference utilized in the mechanical and flavour descriptions and replace them with your own in order to make the class fit a concept like "Boxer" isn't an easy task. Focus Abilities being called "Ki 'X'" Stances having names like "Crane", "Gorilla", "Dragon", and having mechanics that reflect those names, these are not easy things to re-contextualize.
Imo having a class called Samurai or Ninja kind of innately ties flavor to the mechanics. Like I'm all for them adding new options to fill a unique design space, but whatever mechanics they did have would be applicable to more than just Japanese-styled characters, so such options would have to be more generic.
Right! What if I want to use those Samurai Abilities to make a classical Chivilric Knight.
You aren't listening to my argument. My point is that there wouldn't be a Samurai. You could have like some sort of "oathbound" archetype that might help you make a samurai, but it would also work for any other character that follows a specific code and not carry the baggage that comes with being called a Samurai.
You misunderstand! I'm agreeing with you, lol.
Oh damn I did misunderstand lol
All good! Easy mistake to make, I edited the post afterwards with an "!" instead of a "." to make the tone a bit more clear.
So, they want us to cut out Barbarian, bard and druid,too, uh? And monk, of course. Not to mention cut out all illustration, as they are naturally using aesthetics from a certain culture, unless they are all naked.
Of course you can have art. But it must all depict perfectly culturally and ethnically agnostic people. Like the Greendale Human Being.
To be fair, you could go the opposite direction and draw things that are so beyond human comprehension that they physically can't be influenced by human culture.
I feel like that last suggestion is a different kind of book :) it would probably sell ok though.
Book of Erotic Fantasy update for Pathfinder 2e?
I would LOVE Monk made more generic. I want to make a Barroom Boxer or other form of Unarmed Martial Arts. Barbarian is less necessary, most cultures have a version of a "Barbarian" that more or less fits what that class represents. Bard, could be retooled as "Storyteller" a Cultural Agnostic term that fits the concept. Druid, could be widened to "Primalist", one who works with nature, and given a wider set of abilities with Shape-shifting just being one of the "Subclasses".
Isn't that removing half of the classes at this point?
Everyone except Rogue.
And fighter, but yeah
Look deep enough and you can make an argument for anything. Sorcerer is all about inheritance and bloodline, you could easily make a case for it glorifying eugenics and dynasties. But also its not like that exact topic hasn't been a part of fantasy literature since the genre was invented.
You're assuming they'd be "Removed", when really the most is that they'd be rethemed to be more generic, Storyteller, Primalist, Pugilist, etc.
It was meant as a hyperbole, but you're right
Yup. And personally, I'd love to see more versions of "Storyteller" than generically horny musician. Force people to think and maybe make some Skalds or Griots. And more versions of Monk, like a Bare-Knuckle Boxer.
I think I disagree, I think that class "flavour" can can have some serious issues in terms of role play . Currently if you want to be a samurai loads of the martial classes would fit quite well depending on what kind of samurai you wanted to play, it as soon as you add a samurai class people that want the flavour of samurai get funneled into that class even if they don't mesh with how the class feels to play. If we look at another way; one of the big issues with the age old "casters don't feel right" debate is that new players join the game/community with a different perception of what a wizard is, pick up that class and realise that wizards Excell at controlling combat via buffs and debuffs rather than being really good at nuking a goblin off the map. They player should have chosen the kineticst, but because the flavour of wizard distracted them they ended up having a bad time (and then complain that wizards suck to all of us) if instead of "wizard" the class was "controller" or ranged striker or whatever word that could be used to describe classes without pre-subscribing flavour it would be more acceptable and easier for people to play the funny butch wizard that does "spells" by hitting things with his muscles, So personally I do t have a leg In the race over whether or not the words like samurai are culturally sensitive, I do think that in the eventual p3e it would be awesome to have classes that don't pre-subscribe a flavour of the class
I think this is actually a pretty interesting point! I definitely would lean towards the idea of something that clearly pulls from and represents a certain fantasy, like a "Sword Saint" for instance is a perfect encapsulation of a lot of samurai tropes without invoking the name samurai, but can be potentially flavored to other things. I think the tropes are really what people realistically want, and I think leaning into chanbara for cool mechanics or fantasy expressions is simply a win win all around.
YES! ***THANK YOU!*** This is my BIGGEST horse in this whole thing. Mostly because "Monk" for example, is SO PRE-LOADED that it doesn't work well for making something as simple as a Boxer.
That's just another way to homogenize entertainment.
100%
The funny thing is lots of classes as they are now are the closest we've gotten to blank slates in a DnD-inspired d20 while still being mechanically deep and flavourful. There are some that are a bit culture coded - gunslinger is very much a Hollywood cowboy, while some exemplar feats borrow direct from certain RL cultural mythologies, monk obviously does draw from a lot of East Asian martial arts both in real life influence and pop culture tropes etc. - but really the people who say you can build a serviceable ninja with rogue or samurai with fighter are mostly correct. The question is twofold in what else is there to strip, and then how do you go about adding meaningful cultural references without making it offensive or baked into class identity. And it's interesting because the latter has already been answered in the form of dedication archetypes thst focus on certain cultures and regional styles; mostly relating to Golarion and found in setting heavy books like Lost Omens and APs, but you could easily do the same for those other influences and make them setting/cultural specific to hone in in the elements a base class can't without making it too culturally locked in The former however is the issue. Like one of the examples that has been brought up a lot is the monk, but the monk is a very cool class in PF2e that a lot of people like. Do we get rid of it wholesale or turn it into a generic martial artist with the Asian codification removed? What gets removed in the process? Will it still be the same class mechanically or will it lose out things people like about it? I feel these are the questions and the focus of them that isn't getting addressed in these criticisms.
Separating mechanic and story is not bad. For example there are different sources of magic power: innate, ambient, given, borrowed, and stolen.
That's me. Which is not to say I don't want a class to have a unique concept. I definitely do! But I want to play in _Golarion,_ not the real world. The sooner I can leave the real-world map behind (or, more correctly in this case, the pop culture tropes that are like garish ads around the edge of the real-world map), the sooner I can get around to imagining and exploring the _territory._ I want to make a character, not a caricature.
That doesn't work. We use real world heuristics to inform our expectations. Unless you go full Gloomhaven and rename every class, even the mundanes, their own new archetypes, it doesn't play well.
> That doesn't work. To the contrary, for me it works the best. > We use real world heuristics Sure: - Fighter. Has real-world connotations. Not bogged down with cultural annotations and influences. I can do a lot with this class. - Investigator. Has real-world connotations. Not bogged down with cultural annotations and influences. I can do a lot with this class. - Magus. Literally nothing like it in the real world. But it fulfills a certain genre of sword fantasy and integrates perfectly with Pathfinder's magic system. I can work with this class. - Thaumaturge. Totally gonzo class, way off the old D&D roster. I see a lot of cultural influences, but none too familiar or particular. I think it's got a flavor of its own. I can work with this class. These are fine. I can imagine them in all parts of Golarion with the cultures that are _in_ Golarion. I don't want any more than this. > Unless you go full Gloomhaven and rename every class Don't threaten me with a good time. 😎 Let me introduce you to my friends: Jack, Nano, and Glaive.
Invistigor is absolutely filled with cultural influences. A Magus is a Persian priest and thaumaturgy is a Christian miracle worker.
Have to admit, I need some help following you here. Investigator, ok you have Holmes and Poirot. Magus, Persian priest? I need a little help following this one. Thaumaturge, not sure that's the flavor they meant. More like an occultist using all sorts of"relics" to empower them. Similar to hellboy.
Investigator: Holmes and Poirot – but also Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher, Monk, that monk in _Name of the Rose,_ Lee Chang the Crown Prince of Joseon, and scads of Call of Cthulhu wash-ups. 😆
What?! This is getting crazy. Why are you doing this?
This would require a very high effort vs a lower result in audience reception. And i am the kind of GM that creates custom settings and invent factions and names from zero. But i know it's different for a generalistic fantasy RPG like PF2 and its setting.
> This would require very high effort vs a lower result in audience reception I just got through telling you I can work with what we have. I am not demanding a change. And I don't give a fig about audience reception. I am telling you what _I_ want out of the game.
You can homebrew the settings as you like, but this will influence you and your table. I am just saying why Paizo is still going by the way they took years ago. Generalistic setting with some kind of inspiration from the real world.
I was perfectly able to suss out the path Paizo took and why. And I can tell you, you don't have to gloss much of the World Guide to grok that it is not precisely the path y'all think it is.
Sorry i don't understand.
I’m glad you brought up the Numenera classes, because reading you post reminded me of how much I *HATE* systems with completely generic some-assembly-required class systems. I couldn’t play Numenera for more than half a dozen sessions because of how bare-bones it felt. I agree with the above-poster. Archetypes for everything we’ve ever heard of, even if it’s redundant, not IKEA classes.
And yet, every Pathfinder class is firmly in the some-assembly-required camp. That's what all those feats are for! Numenéra has all sorts of ways to do flavor too – it just doesn't bake it into the "type" system as much. And they did end up adding some types over time. And all this is beside my main point: I like classes with a concept and flavor. I don't need or want them to be tied to strict cultural touchpoints.
But you *are* playing in Golarion, which has always been a parallel of earth and its cultures, unabashedly. If you want to take that out, you don't want to play in Golarion.
No, it is _not_ a parallel. It is a funhouse mirror. The more we try to make it specifically like Earth, the more we damage it, and the more useless it becomes for my kind of high fantasy.
Golarion is not only a parallel to Earth, but most of the time even the continents and nations themselves are positioned similar how their equivalent IRL would be on the map.
Mm hmm. Tell me: what real-world country is Absalom located in?
I mean, do I really have to answer when your question is ill-fated? Though besides that, Absalom would be the equivalent of Constantinople in our world. Both are (or were in Constantinople's case) the main hubs of their respective worlds which serve as transit points between one or more continents (Europe and Asia for Constantinople; Avistan, Casmaron, and Garund for Absalom). I'd even say this likely was made on purpose since Emperor Constantine was one of the early catholic emperors and Absalom as a word has its roots in judeo-christian tradition.
Is it really? Is Emperor Constantine running the place? Are there so-called Judeo-Christian churches in the streets? And how about Otari, that little fishing village right down the coast? You think that's a Byzantine village?
Well, it seems I was right in saying it was meaningless to answer you. Luckily the downvotes have spoken already.
You challenged my contention that Golarion is a funhouse mirror. I'm sorry you feel the need to insult me when I show you exactly what I mean.
You are arguing that the very thing the people who created it for is damaging to it. That's nonsense. It's like asking why greyhawk isn't instead a cyberpunk setting, or why games like Final Fantasy aren't FPSs instead, and that being RPGs damages them. You want Golarion to be something it isn't, you would be better off seeking another world to use in your game, or making your own. The thing you want is fine to want, but Golarion isn't it
This is not what I'm arguing, and I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth or tell me to leave. This is all quite beside my original point about classes, btw.
"God I wish this chocolate tasted like steak" "Well, you may want to eat a steak instead" "Don't tell me what the fuck to do" Alright mate
Given that I've played happily in this setting for years, and never had a problem with it until you told me I did, I wish you and everyone who upvoted you could see how dismissive and insulting you are being.
Seriously, the same can be said about Mwangi. It's criminal how little material there is about it.
I enjoy the fact that there's an entire gaming source book for a region that reads entirely like an atlas and contains very little gameplay. It does, however, make us want more.
I need another tian xia ap And another mwangi expanse ap Or actually, a shorter adventure works too. Like a 3 level book is fine
I think we can all agree we need more everything!
I'll say this: debating if Samurai is a harmful stereotype when we have the Barbarian since forever is at best, dishonest. Barbarian is literally a harmful stereotype created by an opressive regime to humiliate, disenfranchise and dehumanize people. The word comes from "person who speaks nonsense". It's half a step from creating a class based on Native Amercians and calling it the Savage. The only difference is that, unlike Native Americans, "Barbarians" don't exist anymore to be hurt by these stereotypes, so we say it's ok. Well, friends, I hate to say it to you, Samurai and Ninja don't exist anymore either. Oh, but Japanese people, who are descended from Samurai still exist! True, but I dare say that europeans do too. And dom't get me started on how weird monk already is. So let me be clear: OP is right. We are already using fantastic versions of real world groups and cultures. There's no sense in complaining about adding more. We should add from many diferent groups, not just japanese. But also japanese.
And on that note, aren't the fantasized ideas everyone has for a "Samurai and Ninja" RP kinda in the same veign as people that do "Wild Western" RPs? Like yeah it's loosely based off a historic point of the world, but we're not saying the real world was **actually** like that. Or just high fantasy in general? They're European / Americanized folk stories, so when is it appropriation on the other side? Can I call the aesthetic a type of "punk" and then it be okay? Like, in this campaign we're Steampunk, next is Western-Punk, and then we could do Nihon-Punk? Is that enough to imply loose aesthetic influences without trying to be offensive? Idk, this is the stuff that keeps me up at night!
I think where the Samurai and Ninja diverge from your other examples is that in a lot of settings that try to introduce and Asia equivalent, those archetypes suck the air out of the room. For a long time depictions of fantastical Asia has been viewed through a Japanese lens that ignores the rest of the continent, and representing the idea of Asian characters in those two classes and the monk, which is limiting in a way that other classes by default aren't. The wild west is different for reasons I've been thinking about recently. Firstly because the idea of what America is isn't so singularly overwhelmed by the concept of the cowboy. But secondly because, somewhat uniquely, America doesn't have a lot of other stuff to it that can easily fit into a fantasy setting, hell we can even see that including guns feels too far for a lot of people anyway. America is a very young country, it has less fantastical heritage to pull from that's uniquely its own. Not none, but less than most regions.
I see your point. In that case then, should someone decide to do a Nihon-Punk aesthetic, you're saying everything should be reflavored to fit the theme? I'm not going to lie, I don't personally know enough about ancient Japan to even suggest names for the other classes as an example. In my head, when I think of fantasy samurai and ninja I don't assume the character to be Asian, but I do understand the kind of warrior they are by their title. In this sense, is there a better name to fit these classes to generalize them more? Are there other examples of specific groups of people from other ancient civilizations that we could use to counter-compare? Or what else could we include in the setting to better represent / honor the people we've chosen to represent?
Firstly, I'm not a fan of just adding punk to the end of a name since punk is meant to have an actual meaning and implications for a setting in and of itself. And I think he fact you can't think of another name for a class kind of illustrates the issue with Asian representation in rpgs getting so frequently limited to samurai, ninja and monk. If you're specifically going for a fantastical representation of Japan specifically, I think re flavoring to match the setting makes sense. But as far as better names for the classes to make them more general, then genuinely I think fighter and rogue do the job fine. I don't know what people would want from samurai and ninja mechanically that pf2e doesn't already provide. If you want something more magical, then magus is also an option I'd take. As for equivalents from other cultures, I'm not sure if there's really a fantasy archetype other than the Knight that's quite as ubiquitous in rpgs. Even then, you hardly ever have the Knight presented in as stereotypical and culturally specific a way as samurai and ninjas.
I was honestly very surprised, when 2e came out, that with Paizo's drive to be more equitable, that the class wasn't renamed to berserker or something. I do think the trope of the barbarian being an angry indigenous person is not a good trope to continue.
Actually, from what I heard that was the intention, but they didn't want to confuse people.
Specially eggregious when you noticed that THE barbarian, Conan, is notning like this. Heck, if you would like to play as conan the barbarian, a Fighter with a rogue dedication is more up his speed. Not that I dislike the class as is, give me a dragon warrion and I'm almost always in, but it's funny how "equitable" clearly doesn't count for that stereotype.
Guys let's rename the class to "wheel idiot."
Berserker is worse... The concept of Barbarian isn't linked to any particular Culture, most societies that formed Settlements had a word for those who did not, and the ones that attacked their settlements, and were particularly hard to kill, generally were not spoken of in positive terms. (Now, depending on who is doing the settling, why, and how they treated those nomadic peoples of the area prior or in return, there is more nuanced discussion to be had, but that's not really relevant to discussing the general tropes the word invokes.) Berserkers are inherently Norse.
You're going to be really disappointed when pf 3e comes out and they decide to do a few name tweaks. Probably in like 10 more years or so lol.
Nah, If it sounds, looks and plays cool, I'm full on with it The thing is that it's quite hard to name the Barbarian without being offensive to someone. Maybe just call it Warrior, but that's a bit on generic - and honestly should be the name of the Fighter, but that's a debate for another time.
Berserker sounds like a cool alternative.
Berserker is the exact situation as the samurai, but for norse people, tho
A bit different. I would argue. Although I firmly believe there is nothing racist about a samurai class, I tend to agree that it can very easily fit into the existing classes. It just need a feat support or two for flavor and fighting style. Berserkers aren't only rooted in Nordic culture. But berserkers are pretty much already existing within the pop culture zeitgeist that is separate from it's roots. e.g. Fate Stay Night, Fire Emblem, etc. The same is true for barbarians at least within the ttrpg community so I don't really think it is a problem so long as people know it's history. Samurais and Ninja's are more culturally tied to Japan. Which isn't really a problem, but as we've witnessed recently, is problematized by some.
Fate Stay Night and Fire Emblem are also referencing that old Norse tradition. If "Existing in the cultural zeitgeist" is the bar then Barbarian is fine - Conan has been around for 100 years or something. The real reason Paizo might chamge the names of classes in a hypothetical 3e is to differentiate themselves from DnD more - nothing to do with trying to find flavorful evocative names that somehow have no cultural baggage tied to them.
I like how your examples of Berserker being fine is because they've already been used in other pop culture properties, but adding Samurai to a pop culture property is somehow different. Especially when your examples are of Japanese origin.
It isn't different because its japanese its different because berserkers are further removed from their culture of origin in pop culture. Also, I disagree on the samurai being a standalone class on the basis of its presumed mechanics in the design spsce, not cultural origin.
But still if its okay for one thing because its involved in pop culture already its a bit disingenuous to then say "but this other thing can't be moved into pop culture." Like there is some date line where its not okay anymore. And besides, Samurai are already pretty heavily in pop culture. I'd argue they are just as much as Berserkers.
That's not what I said though. I never said they aren't 'in popculture'. I said Samurai's are always 'Japanese' or 'Eastern". They are always aesthetically referential to Japan in pop culture and even naming convention. Unlike berserkers. While there are plenty of 'Northmen' berserkers that borrows it's aesthetics from it's Nordic inspiration. There are plenty that don't such Fate's Berserkers which can be anyone from anywhere and Fire Emblems berserkers which are more narratively and aesthetically tied to banditry and the most powerful class of axe users.
There were other non-Scandinavian people called berserkers too. The whirling dervishes of the Middle East come to mind.
They were called berserkers? I think berserk is a norse word for bear clothes or clothed in bear pelt. The concept of mad warrior is not just a norse thing i agree. A samurai would be more similar to an Einherjar as concept maybe? Been a while since i read up on norse mythology.
>A samurai would be more similar to an Einherjar as concept maybe? Only if the samurai in question is dead. (The einherjar were the spirits of the dead feasting and training for Ragnarok in Valhalla, and in game terms, members of all classes would be represented, so long as they died valiantly in battle. There's really no easy analogue for the samurai in pre-Christian Scandinavia or in its mythology.)
Yeah Huscarl would probably been the closest Norse equivalent to Samurai.
I think we might consider them berserkers now. I doubt that word was used then.
You can offend people by trying not to offend people, so check out :D
Titan might be an alright rename for Barbarians.
The race of primordial gods from Greek mythology? I don't see that working.
A fantasy barbarian is more like Conan, a fantasy Samurai can range from someone who looks like a real Samurai, to someone like Auron or Gilgamesh. I'm not really seeing how either of those are offensive or reductionist. On behalf of all the wheel idiots out there, I'm sorry if my illiterate rage machine RP offended you. If someone thought all Americans were cowboys, you probably wouldn't be offended per se, you'd probably just think it was slightly weird depending on how weird the other person is making it. Wanting to be a cowboy "because it's cool" is unlikely to bother someone, as descendants of actual cowboys are still alive.
How does a Samurai make Gilgamesh?
Barbarian was a term applied to all non-Romans while they expanded. Was it used to dehumanize? Absolutely. But we are talking about over a millennium ago and literally describes any other civilization that came into contact with the Roman Empire. It’s generic and not the problem you’re making it out to be. “Samurai” may not walk around in armor anymore, but blade martial arts are still practiced in Japan. Ninjas are a trope from Kabuki theatre. The point of this discussion is Japanese culture has more to offer than “samurai and ninjas” and that constantly treating these as some exotic new class is reinforcing the opposite idea. We are trying to get the average person to see more than just martial artists from a distant land
What's worth noting, and this is the difference, "Barbarian" as a concept doesn't come from any one culture and isn't in reference to any one culture. Cultures ALL over the world have used terms that relate the same conceptual concept that "Barbarian" represents. A Hulking, Hard to Kill, and Deadly Brute from outside of your settlement that is extremely aggressive, raids your settlements, and doesn't negotiate. TBH, if the Class was called "Berserker" and used Nordic terms for all its abilities, you might have a case because those terms specifically originate from Nordic culture. And Adding EVERY version of a concept like "Fighter" will rapidly A) Make Fighter less appealing, and B) Pre-Load every Class with a Flavour Onus that drives the RP of that Class and disincentives people from use the Class in builds that "aren't" that Flavour. You can make "Fighter" into DOZENS of differently flavoured Character Concepts, Monk can't even be a BARE-KNUCKLE BOXER.
I remember seeing an interview where someone from Paizo, I think it was Erik Mona, mentioned that the name should have probably been "Berserker". He made no comments on whether the name would be changed in any future edition, likely because he didn't want to mention a PF3 at all even in theory, but the problematic nature of the name is known to them.
Eh, barbarian also has some mechanical issues that aren't representation related. It's core feature is that they go into a hyperviolent fugue state. It's glamorizing a pretty horrifying mental illness.
No one should care about using ninja and samurai. After all Japan is busy using medieval European Knights and stuff for their fantasy adventures. Just look at final fantasy 16.
Not sure if this can help, besides learning a bit of new words and aesthetic. Consider that even in RPGs people usually know very little about knights or man at arms, and they were considered standard in a lot of western rpgs. The point is doing that but with quality.
[EVERYONE!!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3ywuv8lJMs)
A FIGHT? COUNT ME IN.
HEHE, PILE ON! HEHE, PILE ON! HEHE, PILE ON! HEHE, PILE ON!
Incredibly fucking based. This is the best possible take. Inclusivity means opening up the playing field for *more* ideas and cultural touchstones, not *less.* This would be a great way for those archetypes and stories to reach a wider array of people, in the same way that anime exposed so many people to a great many Japanese tropes and their mythology.
I'd love to see more from other world cultures as well. Get some central American Jaguar Warriors in there (or you could have it be genericized to 'Warrior' with the concept being that of any first-nations style warrior- lightly armored, skilled at arms, with interesting tools or traditions like 'counting coup' or the earning of a mask or headdress). Indian subcontinent *shastrashāstra* or yogis, warriors with specialized throwing knives from sub-Saharan Africa, harpoon-hunters skilled in traversing frozen waters from the north...
*Tian Xia Character Guide* is a coming in August. That’s the place to look for mechanical options.
Representation matters. Is the concern that tropes and stereotypes being blindly reproduced could hurt people valid? Yes. Is the the potential hurt bigger than the factual erasure of anything other than classical Western-European medieval cultural influences? Heck no. The argument is as silly as saying we shouldn't have any women in our games because of hurtful stereotypes or no queer people. Bring it on. All the cultural richness of humanity. Yes, there will be missteps and sometimes we will mess up but that can be a dialogue. You can't be learning without making mistakes. I am stoked about my fantasy games becoming broader and more culturally rich and more people finding themselves represented in them.
Smash Bros Ultimate: Tian Xia Edition EVERYONE IS HERE!
I think the thing to remember is that classes are meant to be broad archetypesthat you can flavour in whatever way you want outside of mechanics, pigeonholing a class into a particular cultural icon is something that probably not going to happen
Right? I was blessed enough to live a few years in the Philippines and, though I’m not Filipino myself, it gave me a lot of appreciation for the culture and their history. I’d love to see an archetype for Arnis as a martial art so I can use two bamboo sticks, or even a “Bahala Na!” fighter feat where you jump and stab down with two swords at once (even though iirc that school of Arnis with that name is pretty contemporary and I think developed in the US by a Filipino American, but still… it’d be fun! And does have some roots in the traditional two sword style). And it isn’t lost on me that I, as a white guy who only temporarily experienced the culture, could turn this desire into a problematic reduction of the culture. That’s not what I want, I truly want to have fun exploring something that I saw which was really neat and impressive and unique and underrepresented in media imo. And sure, I can mechanically pull off these ideas myself. But I think there is something special in having a specific archetype, *written preferably by a member of the culture it is representing* being a clearly named and available icon of this so as to be able to let people unfamiliar do some research and learn about these fascinating histories and cultures. Heck, the discussion on this sub lately is the reason I learned about Chinese butterfly swords, so it can lean into learning things. So yeah, samurai, ninja, I see why they are popular and I understand they can be problematic esp if they are the only representations. So let’s not make them the only ones! I’d love to see some variety that is done respectfully, which I believe is how Paizo leans too
Fully mounted Mongolian warrior riding different creature types? Sign me up
Have a Japanese friend I have been trying to in pf2e since he has played 1e and he doesn't like how dumbed down 5e DND is. He's been reading the comments and he is like dude is this hobby just infected by people that dislike the Japanese people just like they constantly bitch about whites. The guy managed to become a anthropologist so the guy likes learning about the history and cultures of other people. He honestly was looking forward to the Tian Xia setting book and players guide.
I agree as not asian but native american I'd love some archetype for fighter based on our combat style. As long as everything is done respectfully I am happy to see my culture get representation.
Is Tian Xia supposed to represent Japanese culture, or multiple East Asian cultures? Or is it just a mishmash of all of them? In my mind it would be great to depict Tian Xia as a continent with multiple interrelated cultures and pull elements from each of these. As a person with ties to Chinese culture (although I am not Chinese myself) it does get tiring to see Japan subbing in for Asian culture in general, especially because Samurai and Ninja have been done to death and really aren’t that different than existing subclasses. I’d love to see some historical Chinese, Korean and Southeast Asian influence- there is a tremendous variety in those cultures and lots of cool shit.
"No! Teriyaki does not come from China!" The book is actually quite good. There are influences from a wide variety of cultures, including Vietnam and Thailand. Oh, and ghosts. Ghosts everywhere.
Yeah, it seems really good and maybe the best East Asian inspired book for a d20 system I've seen. I think a lot of care and respect was put into it.
That’s awesome.
I'm no expert but I have seen names and upcoming ancestries that are distinctly south east asian. There are like 25 regions that all seem very distinct politically, culturally, aesthetically etc
Is a samurai just a way of role-playing a fighter? Just be honorable even if your system of honour is messed up. Or is that the issue it's racist to act the negative aspects of the samurai culture?
I don't want the bloat of pathfinder 1e of a billion archetypes. Their scope being what it is and focusing instead on making good classes that can fulfill the ideas of these characters works much better. Perhaps it's simply where I'm coming from with this. I love japan and Japan's mythologized history, growing up half japanese in Hawaii, my grandpa would raise me and my brother on old vhs of Chanbara films, and there was the obvious draw of Japanese pop culture. When I got into pathfinder, and realized i could in fact play a Samurai, I was thrilled. But then I looked over the class and it was not that great, with all kinds of features I did not want, and not fulfilling the fantasy of being a light robed sword user who just blew into town. Slayer and Swashbucker with the Aldori sword archetype would end up being closer to what I wanted. Then comes 5e, and oh it has a Samurai and a Kensei subclass, and then I play them, and realize the problem of playing a fighter or monk in a system that thinks martials being mid is peak game design. Sadly, Bladesinger and Sword Bard would be by go to for anime swordsman style of play. However, it did make me begin to realize how not that difficult it was to just make a "samurai" with the tools given. Come pathfinder 2e, and I've learned much more about Japan by now. I can appreciate why the samurai in 1e had a focus on mounted combat now. I now understand just how vast the differences between samurai were, that those referred to by my love of them in the Tokugawa era were radically different from those of the warring states period. This so also when I've come to appreciate other Asian and Pacific cultures and their traditions outside of just glamorizing Japan's. And, well, pathfinder 2e just let's me do what I want, and there's nothing I feel like they could give me in a samurai archetype or class that wouldn't just be a shallow repackaging of stuff we already got. My chanbara fantasy stuff has the duelist and aldori sword lord archetypes to get there, along with picking any class I want to fulfill that flavor, whether it's swashbuckler for the cunning and clever types, rogue or ranger for the underhanded manipulative vagabond ala yojimbos nameless protagonist, fighter for that martial god of the blade, and even the ability to make a gun toting samurai with Gunslinger, leaning hard into fantastical depictions with the Drifter or fully commit to using muskets as a sniper. Additionally, if I wanted to make a Tadakatsu Honda or Benkei type, Fighter does a good job of it practically out of the box, especially now with the remaster feat changes that fighter got. Hell, I can even pick cavalier and go into bows, and be a mounted Archer with a Yari spear for when I dismount like a Samurai of the warring states. That's not even scratching how playing someone like Guan Yu with all the rad as hell two handed weapon feats and getting to use recall knowledge from hitting someone to lean more into an intelligent tactical fighter. Or even just going with Korean Joseon era swordsmanship with two weapon fighting feats or again, two handed weapons or just a mix of these feats and archery to represent the martial mastery of another group of people, on and on it goes. And I feel like the approach you propose would be trading a vast ocean of options for a bunch of tiny lagoons, with 1 or two new feats and a bunch of cannibalized feats from the fighter, for little to no reason to do so. I want to experience and learn more as well, this guide opens a plethora of character ideas I am eager to use. But I'm also practical enough and have seen enough archetypes to know that what you're asking for is just not going to be healthy for the game at all.
There's no reason to exclude Samurai / Japanese when you have a bunch of white portrayals from different countries like Gladiators, Vikings, and Knights. To say that "Having Samurai is racist, all the classes and archetypes need to be historically white" is ironic. And as far as having other cultures portrayed well, they only need to be portrayed as well as the white Gladiators, Vikings, etc are. Non-white cultures should not have a higher barrier for entry. Likewise, saying "They shouldn't have Samurai unless they also release one archetype or class for every country" is crazy. That's just setting an unnecessarily high barrier for entry that no TTRPG has. And again, having it only be classically white cultures to equally exclude all non-whites is absolutely not the answer.
Best repost this on r/chillpathfinder2e before you loose the ability to copy/paste after the post gets locked and deleted.
Honestly, one of the only games that I've seen with this sort of pan-inclusion was actually *For Honor*. Knights (Continental Europe) Vikings (Northern Europe) Samurai (Japan) Wu Lin (China) Outlanders (including Egypt, Arabia, and Central America) Not comprehensive, and outside of the 2 European and 2 East Asian, there's *not much* representation, but it's there.
Then until they're officially added, add everything. Go nuts. I've invented and homebrewed classes, and if i can do it anyone can.
There is still the character guide coming later this year, it will probably have options for those things. People are reading a guide for GMs and getting mad it's not full of player options. Paizo isn't WotC, some books are going to be mostly for GMs, some are going to be mostly for players. This is a good thing.
The overturned sukgung has done more for my desire to learn about Korean warfare than anything else has or likely ever will.
Two Words: WINGED HUSSARS...
All these complaints about fictional-fantastical-unbelievable archetypes comes off as disingenuous, slack-tivism, and virtue signaling. As much as Cowboys, Pirates, and Knights are used in Eastern/European media or entertainment rings real damn hollow when someone with a spine made of jelly tries to lecture others about "harmful stereotypes." Really? Words and pixels too much for you to handle cupcake? It's amazing how someone can be both condescending and pretentious in one breath and think they're the hero. We should be celebrating our differences, using them as inspiration to create stupid silly shit that isn't real, and have a blast with it. I'm looking at you Metal Gear, Cowboy Bebop, Record of Lodoss War, & Elden Ring. But if someone is going to stand on their soap box Japan is the biggest offender of perpetuating the idea of katanas cutting anything and ninja magic: Naruto, Rurouni Kenshin, Final Fantasy, Sekiro, and so on and so forth. The list of anime and games created by Japanese that focus on a Samurais or Ninjas or both is in no short supply. It's fun to pretend you god damn weirdos. No one is being harmed. No one with a brain thinks the whole of east Asia is Japanese only. FFS. We are human, we aren't here for a long time just a good time. Roleplay is not activism knuckle draggers, stop being pathetic and do better.
1e Pathfinder became untenable because of options bloat. 2e is well on its way to the same fate.
The question is "what could it give that does not already exist in a class or archetype?" like for instance a samurai class or archetype. What would it give thats not just fighter with japanese flavor? Are ninjas not just japanese rouges? The most i could see there is unique climbing abilities and a split off of the assassin archetype.
What do you think of Archetypes like Archer, Two weapon warrior or Mauler? Those generally dont bring much unique to the table either - they just make a specific theme more available to all classes.
Yes, and what would samurai give that those don't? Archer specializes and bows, two weapon warrior gives two weapon fighting, duelist gives one weapon, Mauler gives two handed. What would samurai give?
Personally I want a bunch of stances similar to what monks have for unarmed applied to weapons. I value flavor a ton, so I dont care much if some of the monk feats are similar to fighter feats or similar. However, even if all they did was grab a bunch of existing rogue, ranger and fighter feats and put them into an archetype called "Samurai" for new players to grab a thematic bundle I think that would be a net positive.
I'm don't agree with any of these ideas about 'cultural appropriation' and I think RPG supplements are and ought to be free to take inspiration from whatever historical or cultural source they want but has it occurred to you that if you really want to learn these things then a Pathfinder sourcebook may be the wrong book to look at?
I want these posts to stop.
They would stop if the mods weren't actively ignoring the subreddit.
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The ninjas threatened him with One Thousand Years of Death jutsu
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