Samurai or Ninja

dont sanurais have powers?

many “ninja’s” were “samurai”- the difference being- the samurai order had their specific “honorable” duties but many were members of secret groups, and would conduct assassinations when the need arose. plus as mysterywolf stated- “ronin” or samurai without a leader could be conscripted to carry out assassinations as well. a good modern example of this would be a police officer turned vigilante when the need arose. japan was more or less a tightly closed society back in the day, so more or less- the only skilled warriors were the samurai, and the skills would be utilized as ninja in the shadowy, dark manner needed to take out your rivals quietly and preserve everyones honor. the weapons are a different story, the ninja would use a straight katana with a square “tsuba” (handguard) as opposed to the oval one used on many curved katana. the proliferation of assassination finally led to the banning of all square tsuba’s on katanas because the ninja would utilize the square tsuba to scale a protective wall by having a cord attached to their “saya” (scabbard)- when they were chased they would sheath their sword- place it against the obstacle, step onto the square tsuba, and get over the barrier- then pulling on the cord to retrieve their weapon. ninja utilized anything that would be lethal- blowguns, throwing darts, etc. whereas the samurai had bows, naginatas, katanas, wakisashi’s, (more traditional weapons).

Samurais and ninjas have different outfits, weapons, and purposes from each other, although they are both considered warriors.

This should give you an idea of their code of conduct:

Ninja as a group first began to be written about in 15th century feudal Japan. Conflicts between the clans of daimyo had established guerrilla warfare and assassination as a valuable alternative to frontal assault. Since Bushidō, the samurai code, forbade such tactics as dishonorable, a daimyo could not expect his own troops to perform the tasks required; thus, he had to buy or broker the assistance of ninja to perform selective strikes, espionage, assassination, and infiltration of enemy strongholds.

You can read more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja