"slash" and kenjutsu, BnF2?

[Tellerve]

I wondered about this the first time I saw it. Slash that is, as one of the martial art manuvers. As the description says you try and disembowel or sever a limb. What do you normally try and do?

But what got me more thinking was if you had your samurai guy, have him get into kenjutsu, so his sword does now 2d8 (instead of 2d6). Then of course pick up slash...'cause you wanna sever limbs. Now you're doing 4d6 per slice. Not to mention you'd probably pick up a couple weapon masteries, for +1 to hit and +1 damage, and a +1 threat range. Top that off with the new weapon master PrC and specialization, another +2 damage. Yesh, 4d6+3...not counting melee smash from Strong talents, or just generally any strength extra.

Was this intended, or slipped through? Was it an attempt to show that katanas are very dangerous in the right hands? I seems to just be a whole lot of power in one stroke, but maybe I'm the only one.

All in all, I think just taking out "thrust" and "slash" could work, or maybe making them less capable of being used every attack, maybe just once a round. Even so, they'd still be pretty amazingly powerful.

Tellerve

 

[Vigilance]

Well the damage doesn't raise to 4d6, it raises to the next die size, Im not sure where you got the 4d6 from.

So when you take Kenjutsu you go to 2d8, and then Slash raises that to 2d10.

The effect of Kenjutsu on the katana's damage is probably the most consistent balance quibble I hear about the BNF books.

It's a fair amount of damage to be sure, but you have spent 3 feats (Exotic Weapon prof, Kenjutsu, Slash), in order to do 2d10 points of damage on a melee attack.

Looking through the core rules weapon list I see the Barret Light 50, the Browning BPS, the HK G3, the Remington 700, and the Winchester 94 which all do the same damage at substantial ranges.

In playtest what I found was that it was overall balanced. Sure you can hack someone up real good if you're close to them.

But if someone is 300 feet away with a Winchester, or successfully performs a disarm maneuver, you've just wasted 3 feats.

Also I think if you compare the damage per feat its very balanced.

Burst Fire is three feats into a chain and deals out more damage at range.

Spirited Charge also does more damage with a lance and comparable damage with any other weapon.

So yes 2d10+3 is a lot of damage, but I think it's relatively balanced. Just don't get close to the guy

Chuck

 

[Tellerve]

Yeah, so last night when I was going to bed after posting this I remembered that instead of thinking clearly and moving from 2d8 to 2d10, I instead did the "make damage dice bigger" as if the weapon got bigger from dnd. Which works for 2d6 going to 2d8. But then a d8 goes to 2d6, hence where I got the 4d6. In short, I goofed.

So yeah, 2d10 is better, and I agree it is several feats to get that and I can imagine that you playtested it enough to get some good feedback. This all must've stemed from me reading "slash" and thinking it somewhat funny and that the description seemed to be what you'd normally try and do with a slashing weapon.

Thanks for the clarification anyways

Tellerve

 

[Vigilance]

Hey no problem

The damage a katana-master can do is one of the most-often sited "holy ****" elements in the book and many people believe it's unbalanced.

In general, in my opinion as someone who has "lived" this this system in his campaign for a couple of years, I think people see the damage, which is very substantial (weapon or open-hand), realize (rightly) that it means you could waste someone pretty quickly with a decent full attack, and then take the next logical step to "broken".

However what most of those people fail to realize is that BNF also gives you some substantial new ways to defend yourself from HTH (the blocking feats).

So if you don't avail yourself of any of the defense you can get wasted really quickly. What I like about the system is precisely that- a completely offensive-oriented character tends to get wasted by the character with 1 attack maneuver and 2 blocking maneuvers.

Chuck

 

[takyris]

Cool on the clarification, Chuck -- and yeah, you're totally right that 3 specialized feats to get 2d10 damage isn't out of line. Allowing that in a game might unbalance things, but only if only one PC is using feats from your book -- or if the PCs are but none of the NPCs are. As long as the playing field is level, it looks like you've put enough balancing stuff in there that nobody wins all the time.

Of course, I'm still irked by the katana damage to begin with, but that's not you. That's the old Core-Book folks.

 

[Vigilance]

Yeah there's a Japanophilia aspect to the Katana's statistics. The assumption seems to be that Japanese soldiers in the middle ages used these beautiful one of a kind blades while European soldiers in the middle ages took a hunk of raw steel, stuck it in a fire, then stuck that red hot piece in a bucket, and went to fight in their armor they could see out of or move in.

And they couldn't mount their horses in their armor either. *whetever*

I really got an eye-opening in my research for Excalibur, in which I read about the training of would be knights. They basically put them through basic training- climb a fence... cross the muddy ditch... mount and dismount a horse quickly... *in full armor*.

So Im pretty sure the stats placing the Katan as the best... sword... evar... are way wrong. But I have a policy to "agree but add". It's sort of like Reagan's "trust but verify". I try to add options to the rules, not go back and rewrite them.*

Chuck

*Whenever possible.

 

[Vigilance]

Also for the record... slash can be taken with ANY sword, not just the Katana. However the effects of the feat are magnified since the Katana already does more damage.

However you could make a longsword style that raised the damage to 1d10, and then take the slash feat to raise it to 1d12. You just still wont be as cool as the guy with the Katana lol (see above for my take on Japanophilia).

Chuck

 

[takyris]

Yeah, pretty much what you said. I got the chance to go to St. Petersburg a few years back and get a great tour of the Hermitage. Their armory was gorgeous, beautiful. Not their treasury armory, mind you -- although that was fantastic as well (swords with pure amber hilts, swords with photo-quality cameos on the hilts, swords a hundred thousand dollars worth of inlay or diamonds, all that good stuff -- but their "this is what you fought with" armory. There were some gorgeous weapons there, high-quality blades that weren't just cleavers.

It was honestly like looking at my dad's golf clubs. Dad has this extremely expensive set of clubs he bought mostly for show and uses when he wants his picture taken. And then he's got the clubs he plays with. And they're not as pretty -- no amber inlay or buttercream finish or anything -- but they're still fantastically made and have great lines. I saw a falchion -- or at least, a large curved sword that seemed to read "falchion" -- that had a line-art picture of a small town etched thinly into the blade with the same level of detail that you'd get in a good inkline drawing -- shadows and everything. This wasn't a decorative sword. This was somebody's work sword. But it was still a beautiful piece of art, and it looked as well taken care of as any WORK katana would have been -- as opposed to the fabulous sword that sits on the pillow all day looking good, which is in a class by itself.

Also saw a few gun-swords that were pretty awesome on that trip. I'd love to see a good writeup of those. A flamberge rapier with a pistol built into the hilt, and a longer sword (a big longsword or maybe a hand-and-a-half) with a longer pistol attached to it as well. Gorgeous craftsmanship.

 

[takyris]

Actually, the one good counter to a lot of the "katanas are the best in the world, any katana is better than any other sword" stuff comes from the rapier people. During the period when the rapier was coming from "long sword with narrow blade meant to pierce heavy armor" to "elegant fashionable weapon carried by nobles and worn for duels only", it went through a period of being expensive as heck (like a katana) and immensely competitive, craftsmanship-wise (like a katana). It's a different-enough weapon, too, that you can talk a lot of shop, with katana people saying "He can't block us, we'd kill him with one slice" and rapier people saying "Er, but we'd have stabbed you ten times before you could do that." Seems to be pretty much the ultimate slashing versus piercing argument out there.

In my games, I pretty much make the katana into a bastard sword. It's still possibly the most powerful one-handed melee weapon out there, but a weapon-user could still conceivably choose to use some other weapon without being labelled an idiot.

 

[Vigilance]

Right, Rapiers get a lot of "publicity" as well.

However, having handled a few well crafted long and 2H swords in my day, I have to say they are just as well made. Weapons so finely balanced you dont feel the weight, and they just *want* to cut.

If you just let gravity take a finely made longsword is just wants to slice. Not unwieldy or ungraceful in the slightest. And a well made 2H is a ridiculousy fine weapon of mayhem.

Chuck