Illustrations for Way of the Samurai (PFRPG)

Next illustration ... the Teppou Bushi (for those wanting to play a gunslinger in Kaidan)

GP

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This one is the Kuge Samurai archetype. The Kuge is a noble born samurai of high station given more diplomacy and courtly skills than the standard samurai and destined for a senior bureaucratic position in Kaidan society. (He starts his samurai class levels two levels later than his base skills.) Although less martially trained than the standard samurai, since Kaidan society leans towards who you are and not what skills you have, the kuge is given higher standing above his peers.

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May I just ask what program you're using for making the vector illustrations?

The same program I use to create my maps, Xara Xtreme Pro 4. Current version is Xara Photo Designer 7, but 4 works fine for me.

GP

Xara is a pretty nifty program, but I've never quite gotten around to working with it. Started out in Adobe back at the office and then somehow found it hard to retrain myself to other programs :S

My first real graphics program was Micrografx Designer which I used from 1.0 to 7.0, however that program is long gone. Corel considered it competition, bought out the Micrografx then folded the software away. I've used plenty of image editing apps from GIMP, Photoshop to Painter, am always used whichever was best for the final purpose. Xara Xtreme is my go to program.

I know that those trained using image editors seem to prefer them, but my opinion is that those people just haven't given the vector app a chance. In reality, what I can create in Xara in 10 minutes would take me an hour or more in Photoshop, and I am quite skilled in Photoshop. Vector is much faster, much easier, much less a memory hog, and everything is 1000 times faster than any image editor. You need to give it a chance, or you'll be stuck in image editing slowness forever...

As rare as it might seem (and it is) there are few examples of women samurai warriors in Japan. Tomoe Gozan is probably the only known female samurai in Japanese history of any fame. This is an illustration of her, and justification for women gamers wanting to play an authentic samurai in Kaidan.

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Hey, learn something new every day, I didn't know there were female samurai! That's awesome :) (And a great illustration)

I didn't know that either. I'll have to look her up just because it's outside the norm and that makes it more interesting to me.

I'll bet if you were an ordinary guy and saw a Samurai woman walking down the street you wouldn't dare talk smack to her :)

Next illustration (I've got 2 more left, after this one) - Ranger (yojimbo archetype).

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