Samurai (job)

The Samurai is a job that appears in various games in the series. Samurai are often depicted wearing traditional Japanese attire. Their weapon of choice is a katana, and they can equip shields and heavy armor as well. Their abilities can vary from game to game, but their signiture abilities is GilToss, which allows them to damage their opponents by throwing money at them, as well as attacks that cut their opponents' HP in half and cause instant death to them. Their stats are physical in nature, and they have very low magic stats.

Notable Samurai include Cyan Garamonde of Final Fantasy VI and Auron of Final Fantasy X. Edge Geraldine of Final Fantasy IV could also be characterized as a Samurai, as he can equip katanas, however, he is more associated with the Ninja class.

Final Fantasy V
The Samurai is one of four classes that is obtained in the Floating Ruins. Its innate attack is GilToss, and it also increases Evasion rate. It has five Levels:
 * 1) SwordSlap: Causes Petrify to one opponent.  This is a command ability.
 * 2) GilToss: Damages all enemies by throwing money.  This is a command ability.
 * 3) Evade: Allows players to randomly evade an enemy's attack.  This is a support ability.
 * 4) Equip Katanas: Allows non-Samurai to equip katanas.
 * 5) Slash: Causes instant death to one opponent.  This is a command ability.

Final Fantasy Tactics
In Final Fantasy Tactics, Samurais use the Draw Out skillset, which summons the spirit of a Katana. The Katana used to perform the attack does not have to be the Katana in the Samurai's hands, but every time a Draw Out is used, the Katana used to perform it may break.

Reaction abilities: Blade Grasp evades attacks based on the unit's Brave. Meatbone Slash does damage equal to Total HP minus Current HP. However, the unit must be in critical to trigger it.

Support abilities: Two Hands gives a damage bonus when wielding a weapon 2-handed. Equip Knife enables a unit to equip a katana regardless of class.

Movement abilities: Walk on Water enables the unit to ignore any penalties on water depth.

Final Fantasy X-2
Samurai appear in Final Fantasy X-2 as a Dress sphere. As normal, they wield two handed swords (which vaguely resemble Katanas), have the throw gil ability, and have a number of unique abilities listed below;
 * Clear Mirror: This is an attack that damages both yourself as well as the enemy.
 * Destroy Evil: This ability allows a samurai to damage MP rather than HP.
 * Stop Motion: A samurai can interupt an enemy's current action with Stop Motion.
 * Awakened Dream: This can Dispel an enemy's status.
 * Light Bullet and Supreme Bullet: Both of these attacks are special ways of doing more damage, Supreme Bullet doing basically the same thing that Light Bullet does to all enemies.
 * Training: This deals damage to enemies based on the number of kills the Samurai has.
 * Iron Cutter and True Iron-Cutter: Both of these are potential death-attacks, True Iron-Cutter attacks more than one foe.
 * Peerless: Increases the probability of hitting and doing more damage.
 * Majestic: The Samurai gains the effect of Protect and Shell
 * Renewal: The Samurai cures herself and eliminates negative status effects.
 * Gale: The Samurai gans the effect of Evasion Up and Haste.
 * SOS Critical: Improves critical chance when the samurai is at low HP.

Final Fantasy XI
In Final Fantasy XI, Samurai appear as one of the advanced jobs available to players who have reached level 30. The quest involved in becoming a samurai starts in the pirate city, Norg. Ultimately, characters much travel to The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah to fight a treant and then return to norg to claim his prize; the right to level up as a samurai.

Samurai in Final Fantasy XI are significantly different than their previous incarnations. They are described as demon killers and they have abilities like Warding Circle that help raise party members resistances to demons.

The real boon of the Samurai, though, is his weapon, the Great Katana, his Store TP ability that allows him to accumulate TP faster than other melee classes and his Meditate ability that will almost instantly give him 100% TP. TP in Final Fantasy XI is used to do Weapon skills and when weapon skills are done in a particular order they will make a Skillchain causing massive damage. Great Katanas are also notable in the game as being easy to make skill chains with so, while the Samurai might not be king of damage, he can be a major force multiplier and a party player.

Changing Role of Samurai
Originally it is thought that Square-Enix designed Samurai to be a tank who avoided damage primarily by use of parries. Parrying in Final Fantasy XI does negate all damage, but the skill extremely hard to get to a high enough level that this would be a viable option. Evidence of this theory is obvious in many of the samurai specific armors having abilities and statistics that would benefit most a tank. Samurai are now used almost exclusively as damage dealers in the game now.