After playing Sekiro, I’ve been in the mood for roleplaying as a Japanese warrior or something like that. There is a samurai profession in the Medieval mod, which is cool, but I wanted a profession that felt like early game instead of starting with such a powerful weapon like the katana. I made my own, and while I was doing that I started getting all kinds of ideas, some of which I’ve implemented and others which are still just ideas. May of these are balance-altering, so I wanted to see what others think.
First of all, this is the profession:
{
"type": "profession",
"ident": "urban_samurai",
"name": "Urban Samurai",
"description": "Every time you were asked to leave the premises because of your katana, you'd fantasize about shutting them up with a swift beheading. Going to the store isn't all that different now, except the last part happens in reality. Well, it would if the katana wasn't made of wood.",
"points": 3,
"skills": { "level": 1, "name": "cutting" },
"items": {
"female": [ "chestwrap" ],
"both": {
"items": [
"kimono",
"haori",
"hakama",
"loincloth",
"tabi_dress",
"geta",
"obi_gi",
"wristwatch",
"cell_phone",
"manual_niten"
],
"entries": [
{ "item": "bokken_inferior", "container-item": "scabbard" }
]
}
}
}
The original concept that this would be a Japan obsessed person, who might start with some combination of the books for Ninjutsu, Niten Ichi-Ryu, the book for crafting Japanese weapons, the book for crafting Japanese armor, and the book for sushi recipes, and a high point cost. But I thought it probably doesn’t make sense for someone to be carrying around all those books. In the end I went with just the niten book, because I guess it’s like his bible. The point score is high solely because of the niten book, which would otherwise cost 3 points as a trait. The fact that he starts with a niten-compatible weapon makes this profession unique. An alternate idea is to start him with the book for crafting the katana instead of the niten book, and subtracting 1 from his point cost.
Currently Niten Ichi-Ryu works with the katana, the bokken, the wakizashi, and the firekatana. It doesn’t work with the katana_fake or the katana_inferior, or the fake/inferior versions of the other items. I thought there’s no reason why we shouldn’t perform the same techniques with those items, so I added all of those variants to Niten Ichi-Ryu. For the sake of consistency, I went ahead and did the same for all martial arts that have weapons with fake and inferior versions. I realize this is a slightly drastic change, so I thought maybe it’s worth talking about. Should inferior and fake versions of weapons have full martial art compatibility? At the very least, I think inferior versions should, since the concept seems to be that they’re mass-produced and/or shoddily made but are more than just for show.
I added inferior and fake versions of the naginata, and added those and the survivor naginata to the spears martial art. And I messed a bit with the stats of fake and inferior versions, generally making them slightly better. The fake weapons are still worse than a makeshift crowbar in terms of stats, but if you have Niten Ichi-Ryu, they may still be worth using. I added 2-4 cutting damage to all versions of the bokken, reasoning that they could definitely leave a nasty shallow cut if drawn across bare skin. I moved the katana and some other weapons out of the tools file and into the melee file, because I don’t see why they should be in the tools file.
I added two new pieces of clothing:
{
"id": "yukata",
"type": "ARMOR",
"name": "yukata",
"description": "A loose, breezy robe secured with a sash. Sometimes worn as summerwear, or at the onsen.",
"weight": 900,
"volume": 12,
"price": 5000,
"to_hit": -5,
"material": [ "cotton" ],
"symbol": "[",
"color": "blue",
"covers": [ "LEGS", "TORSO", "ARMS" ],
"coverage": 80,
"encumbrance": 3,
"storage": 1,
"warmth": 1,
"material_thickness": 1,
"flags": [ "VARSIZE", "FANCY" ]
}
The yukata is just another version of the kimono, it’s mostly worse but the idea is it’s good for staying cool, mostly it’s just flavor.
{
"id": "haori",
"type": "ARMOR",
"name": "haori",
"description": "A loose, flowing jacket with wide sleeves that is often worn unfastened over a kimono. Luxurious.",
"weight": 800,
"volume": 8,
"price": 30000,
"to_hit": -5,
"material": [ "cotton" ],
"symbol": "[",
"color": "green",
"covers": [ "TORSO", "ARMS" ],
"coverage": 60,
"encumbrance": 5,
"warmth": 10,
"material_thickness": 1,
"flags": [ "VARSIZE", "FANCY", "OUTER" ]
}
The haori sits in a niche of an outer wear weapon that has a low encumbrance, which is shared by the new hakama item I added.
I added a new hakama item and renamed the existing hakama item (“hakama_gi” in the files) to “hakama gi”. It’s an outer layer leg wear item, with an unfitted encumbrance of 6. I think the only other outer layer leg armor item is the turnout trousers. In reality hakama can refer to a piece of martial arts garment or a similar garment not used in martial arts.
{
"id": "hakama",
"type": "ARMOR",
"name": "hakama",
"description": "A flowing, pleated garment which can be worn over a kimono.",
"weight": 400,
"volume": 6,
"price": 3000,
"material": [ "cotton" ],
"symbol": "[",
"color": "red",
"covers": [ "LEGS" ],
"coverage": 100,
"encumbrance": 6,
"warmth": 15,
"material_thickness": 1,
"flags": [ "VARSIZE", "OUTER" ]
}
The new hakama and the haori together can be worn on top of a kimono without any layer conflicts. I like that because it reflects the fact that traditional Japanese clothing sometimes involves many intricate layers of clothing. Overall, the set is weak in terms of armor, and has little storage, but has very low encumbrance, and includes two fancy items. I also made some small changes to the hakama_gi and zubon_gi items in order to differentiate them.
I have an idea to add a crafting book with tailoring recipes for Japanese clothing, which I haven’t implemented yet. Another idea is to make some kind of wannabe ninja profession
I haven’t changed the itemgroups yet, either.
I made all of these changes to a local copy of the 0.D version and haven’t got around to doing a merge yet, or putting it on github. For now, I’m just curious what people think.
