Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 3220299" data-attributes="member: 926">Katana do not have special properties over and above European swords.  They need no special rules.  They are swords of a certain length, and that length is covered under bastard swrd.  They are well made, but no more well made than the best European style swords.  Thus, masterwork.  The reason Japanese swords were made of folded steel is because Japanese iron is junk, and they had to be folded and hammered to get the impurities out.  It didn't do anything for the sword other than that.  The lamination techniques, multiple layers of differently hardened iron and steel, gave a Katana its strength, but this technique was used in Europe as well.  The Vikings a variation of it before it was done in Japan.  Since Japan had such bad iron, when they made swords they made them as well as they possibly could, and then they started a fetish about them because they were so hard to make right.  In Europe, where there was more good iron and there weren't a class of people considering their souls and honor to be bound up in their swords, they weren't so obsessive about getting it right, so they made good swords, crappy swords, and average swords. Katana have just had a better PR department.  A very well made 3.5 foot sword is a very well made 3.5 foot sword, no matter where it comes from.  There is no need for a higher crit range or higher crit multiplier.  Just as an aside, if you look at any European swordfighting manuals you'd be amazed at how they used almost the exact same stances for longsword as the Japanese used for katana.  Look some manuals up.  It's fascinating.(medieval longswords were what are called bastard swords in D&D, and used two hands just like most users of katana.  D&D longswords are actually arming swords.)</blockquote>

Verification