Class Feature Friday: Knight Errant/Ronin (Cavalier/Samurai Order)
Some classes that have built-in customization options or archetypes have a sort of anti-option, the universalist wizard choosing not to specialize, the heretic inquisitor, and so on. Today we’ll be looking a bit at an option for both cavalier and samurai that defies the notion of an order, choosing to forge their own path.
Like many options, however, it’s a bit more complicated than that when we take the cultural significance into play.
For a cavalier, being a knight errant means being a wandering knight, someone who eschews courtly intrigue or pre-proscribed chivalrous ideals for finding adventure and forming their own beliefs about what chivalry is and where their place in the world is. They might seem irresponsible or be suspected of being vagabonds that just happen to wear armor, but generally they are afforded as much respect as their actions merit. Theirs is a tale of leaving behind their world to explore, though actual real-world knight-errants were likely few and far between, as many were landed nobles who had to manage their territory and defend it from greedy neighbors.
Ronin, however, are a very different beast, because of how very differently honor is viewed in regards to samurai compared to knights. Samurai were less nobility, and more skilled warriors serving under said nobility, ready to defend them with their lives and defeat their enemies.
Modern fiction romanticizes the ronin as the noble loner that comes to the aid of others despite the prejudice against them, but in the real world, ronin was one of the worst things you could end up being in terms of cultural hierarchy. Since Samurai honor revolves a lot on how one’s death serves one’s master, a masterless samurai, either by way of surviving their lord’s death, failing to die in their stead, and other such things was considered to be on par with a stray dog or other undesirable hanger-on of society. Most of this bigotry was enforced by the caste system at the time, with servants of feudal lords treating them as mongrels, and spreading the idea of their lack of honor.
Perhaps now all those times you’ve seen a ronin character who is otherwise good and kind take on a hard edge when dealing with matters of payment for their services make sense now, as many prospective employers might decide to not pay. They were, however, able to find work as mercenary guards or hired muscle.
Regardless to what degree this is true in your setting, both classes with this lack of an order are used to surviving on their own without support, so their abilities focus on self-sufficiency. Furthermore, in order to gain some structure to their lives, these figures take personal tenets for their own individual code of honor, their beliefs forming their own order, rather than the expectations of others.
Whether they are wandering warriors seeking honor and adventure in facing off against others, or vagabonds all to familiar with fending off those who see them as an enemy or vermin, the real strength of their challenge comes from when they themselves are challenged first, driving them to be more accurate and more agile when facing off against such foes.
Knowing they can rarely trust others to come to their aid, they also have the tenacity to fight back against mental control, as well as stay alive when knocked unconscious.
With no master or others to fall back on for guidance, these warriors act with surprising surety, able to summon for their will to keep standing despite their injuries, strike true, or act under pressure.
This will also makes it harder to put them under controlling effects in the first place, and they can summon absolute clarity at a key moment to succeed perfectly at a task.
In the hands of a cavalier, this “order” makes for a durable and self-reliant character, though they perhaps lack the support options of other orders. For a samurai, however, this order can make them a complete juggernaut, granting rerolls and recovery from effects beyond what their resolve ability offers. Allies will rarely have to worry about a character with this order being taken out of a fight, which puts a little less pressure on the support characters. I’d recommend building knight errants for mounted combat, since you’ll be less likely to be supporting allies, (though you could still build for that too), while the ronin should probably be built like a tank, with defensive feats in mind.
The exact reason why these figures wander varies from person to person, not just by which class you are using this order with. A samurai might have been disowned by their lord, rather than not died to restore their honor, or have made the difficult decision to decide their lord was not worthy of their devotion. Meanwhile, a knight errant might be on their quest for a number of reasons beyond seeking adventure. They might be exiles in their own right, or have been dishonorably kicked out of a previous order. They might even be ex-nobles who have lost everything beyond the swords on their hips and the armor on their backs.
Though raised as a knight by her father, Oriva never felt like she fit in as a half-elf among humans, though she took to the calling of mounted combat and chivalry easily enough. As such, she left home to try and find herself, becoming a knight errant.
A gremlin infestation has overtaken the village, led by a cruel grimple called Toe-taker. The elder hesitates to hire the adventurers to take care of the problem, though, for they travel with a ronin, whom they see as just as bad as the wicked fey.
The rise of the new shogunate has given rise to a multitude of ronin, as individual noble houses are either slaughtered to silence opposition, or the samurai quit their positions in protest of the shogun’s dishonorable warmongering ways. Many have become bandits, but perhaps a strong leader might forge them into an army capable of fighting back against the shogun’s forces.