D&D 3E/3.5 The 3.5 sai - a piercing and/or bludgeoning weapon?

[Klaatu B. Nikto]

I think a tonfa was originally used as a policeman's nightstick.

Seriously tho, at the time commoners couldn't carry weapons for self defense. Hence martial arts like karate, which used common 'harmless' farming implements as weapons. Thus the kama came from a sickle, the tonfa from a handle, nunchaku from a grain flail and the staff from um... a staff so the sai derived from a 'hand rake' doesn't seem too far off.

Heck the Brazilian martial art capoeira (sp?) looks like a dance because the slaves that created it disguised it as such. The hands were kept chained so its more footwork with handstands, etc. I think savate (French kickboxing sort of) evolved from a bit from fencing. It was either a Buddhist or Buddha himself that played a major role in Shaolin temples learning martial arts. Etc, etc.

I still don't think that sais should be dual damage type. However, for a little extra, the sai can be altered so it's piercing instead. Otherwise, just houserule it so it does piercing damage on a critical hit.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Checked my old Combat and Tactics book and its Bludgeoning in there. Just thought it was an interesting aside.

 

[Zhure]

Iku Rex/Zhure, care to cite any source? All the martial artists I talked to said that the sai was originally a gardening implement. The "forger's tongs" thing is new to me, too, but it's also possible. Are you also arguing against the 'chucks as originally being rice flails, too, and the tonfa as originally being, shoot, I forget, the handle or something on a mill?

Personally, in my opinion and from my research as a martial artist, the "adapted from tools" theory holds more water for me than the "forged specifically as a weapon" theory.

I don't have a specific cite, other than recollection and reading a lot. (I read a note regarding that fact awhile back, but couldn't locate the original site again.) Note I'm not declaring definitely that a sai was never a gardening tool, nor derived from one, I just find it suspect. I put forward my personal opinion that it was always a truncheon and any stories about it's origin to the contrary are fabrications. I could well be wrong and we'll never know. Let me re-emphasize it's just a theory.

At the time when these weapons were being used, anything that could be definitively classified as a weapon would have gotten the peasent carrying them killed. It was to their advantage to use things that had real purposes, so that they could say, "What, me, inciting unrest? No, I'm just carrying my gardening tools back home."

Beyond the legal stuff, they just didn't have the resources to go around designing weapons on the spot. Most martial arts weapons were adapted from common household items because that's all they had, and if the local samurai decided to play "test the sword on the peasant", the peasant's gardening tools were all he had to defend himself with.

Besides, the sai, while good against a sword, is nowhere near as good as, say, A SWORD (speaking as someone who's used both against both). If I had the resources to design a weapon from scratch, I'd make the epitome of weapondom -- a sword -- not a small club with hooks that could sort of defend against a sword okay if you had the right training.

Actually, the peasants would've hardly been using sai in the first place, that was a noble's weapon in Ryukyu and it was probably imported from China. Very similar weapons appeared in China long before the sai appeared in Okinawa. There was a lot of cross-pollination of "kung fu" and the martial arts of Okinawa. A lot of the other weapons we associate with modern kobudo (nunchaku are derived from rice flails, etc) are indeed peasant weapons but I don't believe the sai is a peasant derived weapon. Nobles often carried them concealed in their kimono sleeves.

The sai is really effective against a staff, but the size and shape of the yoku lend themselves to catching a round object, like an arm or a staff, far better than a sword.

This site (http://www.karate.org.yu/Sai jutsu.htm) reflects what I think is a fairly accurate picture. Again - my opinion. The author makes a nice case for the sai's use in historical Ryukyu as a concealed weapon.

Greg

 

[Zhure]

The argument that a staff could be shoved into someone is a stretch in my opinion, because the end of a staff doesn't end in a point, it doesn't decrease in size along its length. Also, the nature of a staff, being that it is so large/long and yet has no good pointy tip shows that it was used how we all know it to be used, as a bashing/bludgeoning weapon. A sai, smaller, the size of a good large dagger or short sword follows that it could much more easily be made to jab at people.

Tellerve

Actually, a rakushukabo (sp? stupid foreign terms), the archetypical six-foot Japanese stave, tends to taper toward the ends quite significantly. But I agree it isn't a piercing weapon.
Greg

 

[Zhure]

I think a tonfa was originally used as a policeman's nightstick.
...

Heck the Brazilian martial art capoeira (sp?) looks like a dance because the slaves that created it disguised it as such. The hands were kept chained so its more footwork with handstands, etc. I think savate (French kickboxing sort of) evolved from a bit from fencing. It was either a Buddhist or Buddha himself that played a major role in Shaolin temples learning martial arts. Etc, etc.

Capoeria was derived from an Angolan combat style - according to legend - and indeed has many handstands attributed to being useable while manacled. A similar adaptive technique of hiding training in dance was done in the Phillipines for the moro-moro dance, concealing the tjakalele fencing (which derived into modern Escrima and Kali) movements from the Conquistadores.

Savate has a really hard to follow history. There was an old French navy tradition of "the boot," using a punishment wherein the offender would be kicked around by superior officers wearing felt slippers. (The felt was to keep from slipping on wet decks.) Sometime between the 1600's and the 1800's, it became far more formalized and blended with some streetfighting, fencing techniques and imported martial arts (again, from sailors travelling to the "Orient" -I have a great copy of an original print somewhere detailing the 'techniques of savate' printed around the late 1800's where each takedown/takeout maneuver ended with an explanation of using "jujutsu" to finish off the opponent) to evolve into a more complete martial art system. The majority of savateurs were probably killed during WW1 and WW2, and the art had to be virtually re-invented in the late 1940's into it's modern form. Savate's most interesting thing IMO is the 'unchambered sidekick' where the knee isn't cocked for the kick, just throwing the foot out really fast.

/ramble
Greg