The Power of a Samurai Sword

[gamefreakbsp]

That was beyond pointless...

 

[Helimocopter]

christ, people are getting pissed about this
it's a fucking sword stay calm

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

That's it. I'm sick of all this "Masterwork Bastard Sword" bullshit that's going on in the d20 system right now. Katanas deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.

I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine katana in Japan for 2,400,000 Yen (that's about $20,000) and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now. I can even cut slabs of solid steel with my katana.

Japanese smiths spend years working on a single katana and fold it up to a million times to produce the finest blades known to mankind.

Katanas are thrice as sharp as European swords and thrice as hard for that matter too. Anything a longsword can cut through, a katana can cut through better. I'm pretty sure a katana could easily bisect a knight wearing full plate with a simple vertical slash.

Ever wonder why medieval Europe never bothered conquering Japan? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined Samurai and their katanas of destruction. Even in World War II, American soldiers targeted the men with the katanas first because their killing power was feared and respected.

So what am I saying? Katanas are simply the best sword that the world has ever seen, and thus, require better stats in the d20 system. Here is the stat block I propose for Katanas:

(One-Handed Exotic Weapon)
1d12 Damage
19-20 x4 Crit
+2 to hit and damage
Counts as Masterwork

(Two-Handed Exotic Weapon)
2d10 Damage
17-20 x4 Crit
+5 to hit and damage
Counts as Masterwork

Now that seems a lot more representative of the cutting power of Katanas in real life, don't you think?

I know, I know! I just couldn't not post this.

You do realise that although they were a lot sharper and harder than western swords, katana will fail a bit when it comes to armour-penetration due to the lack of weight and the way it is balanced, so this means that there is no way a samurai could bisect a knight in full-plate (which is much heavier than anything the samurai wore). It also means that katana have not right to a bonus to hit as long as d+d continues to use that daft rule of armour making you harder to hit rather than harder to hurt. I've done some training with both a rapier and a falchion (which is a single-handed weapon), and there is a big difference between what is easy to hit with and what is easy to get through armour with.

 

[Gigaguy64]

Not to criticize, but his form is terrible. Make contact lower down the blade and pull through rather than chop straight down. Remember: Slice not chop. Also, what kind of cheese was it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1x3UJio90U&feature=related

Exactly what I was going to say. Plus, is the sword even sharp? I mean "combat ready" sharp.

Yeah, that's a big question mark. I have a katana, and it's not sharpened. I could get it to a guy to make it sharp, but people are not allowed to buy deadly (as in - sharp edges) weapons or sell them without a license. Buy dull weapons? Sure, no problem.

Plus, get a haircut. And don't use a SLASHING weapon as a cleaver or an axe.

Preach it!
besides, arnt there better things to do with a Katana than cut cheese with it?
Not only is it a Powerful Weapon its a work of art.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

You do realise that although they were a lot sharper and harder than western swords, katana will fail a bit when it comes to armour-penetration due to the lack of weight and the way it is balanced, so this means that there is no way a samurai could bisect a knight in full-plate (which is much heavier than anything the samurai wore). It also means that katana have not right to a bonus to hit as long as d+d continues to use that daft rule of armour making you harder to hit rather than harder to hurt. I've done some training with both a rapier and a falchion (which is a single-handed weapon), and there is a big difference between what is easy to hit with and what is easy to get through armour with.

A~nd number two. I'll just refer you to <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.170444.4652385>this post.

 

[Kyber]

you cut a cheese with a sword, MY GOD YOU ARE AMAZING! (if you dont see the sarcasm there, you are a moron) = )

 

[maninahat]

Huh, huh...this guy cut the cheese...You should have cut something more interesting.

My brother has a couple of Katanas, but then he is a proper martial arts pracitioner.

 

[Cmwissy]

A~nd number two. I'll just refer you to <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.170444.4652385>this post.

Can I just point out that I got the joke and found it hilarious?

 

[Nivag the Owl]

This is silly. You can't just go out and buy a damn genuine (and sharp?) katana. Swords need to be sharpened properly. If it was, you'd not only be able to slice through that cheese, you'd be able to... something easier... through that cheese.

 

[C117]

Not that unexpected. Sure, a katana is sharp and clean to begin with, but after just a few hits it becomes very dull.

 

[TheSeventhLoneWolf]

A samurai sword can split a bullet with some fracture. I'll guess it can cut cheese.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Katanas are very over-rated. Sure, folding steel 1000 times allows it to be incredibly sharp, but incredibly brittle. They're only effective against flesh.

Considering the effort of making one, it's embarrassing that they snap like toys against another sword.

No..?

Folding has nothing to do with how sharp the blade is. Folding is a blacksmithing technique used to evenly distribute the impurities in the terrible (not rare, just terrible) ore they had to work with so that the sword wouldn't suck as much. This would make the sword less brittle not more. God man..

While this is essentially true, it's only good if you fold it relatively few times. If you fold it thousands of times like some people claim, the constant heating and cooling required would indeed make the steel incredibly brittle and unfit for combat.

Wait. Scratch that, reverse it.

Excessive folding of the blade doesn't actually make it more brittle, it makes it softer. Still, the result is a blade not fit for combat, just because it it too soft and unable to hold an edge, not because it gets too brittle like I first claimed. Don't know why I said that... brain fart I guess.

No katana is ever folded more than 10-15 times, but since you double the number of layers with each fold you still end up with thousands of layers (which is exactly the point, of course).

For having the sum of human knowledge at your fingertips, both of you are pretty ignorant about both history and metallurgy.

Iron IS rare in Japan, they've had more gold, historically, than iron, it doesn't matter what quality the ore was, they simply could'nt find enough of it.

As for folding the blade, the entire point of folding the blade wouldn't be to spread impurities evenly, but to spread carbon uniformly through the length of the blade. he secret, though, is the hundreds of folds. This will promote the development of eutectoid steel grain patterns by actually aligning the iron and carbon atoms and increase the cutting edges ductility, a metallurgy word describing both the toughness of the sword, and it's abiliy to be re-worked.

Did none of you weeaboos wonder why they fold the blade the same direction over hundreds of folds? Or why katana aren't double edged? So that the front edge would be more ductile than the back edge, ensuring a blade that could be sharpened yet, not be so brittle as to break whenever it gets shocked by impact.

I highly recommend that both of you whip out some books and stop learning everything from movies.

First of all, I hope that weeaboo comment wasn't aimed at me.

Second, I never said what the actual use of folding the sword was, so I don't see how I could be wrong about something I never said.

Third, folding a blade a hundred times is utterly useless. Even folding it twenty times is pretty pointless. At some point you just start getting diminished returns (a blade only has so much thickness to work with, and folding it hundreds of times makes the individual layers so thin it doesn't affect eh quality of the blade anymore. As I said, I doubt any real katana was ever folded more than 10 to 15 times. And yes, folding the blade was a nice way of spreading the carbon as well as hammering out impurities. But do you know what happens with your precious carbon when you keep heating and folding and hammering the metal? It burns. Every time you go through the process, a little bit of carbon is lost. Lose enough carbon, and the metal becomes too soft, and thus unable to hold an edge properly.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Katanas are very over-rated. Sure, folding steel 1000 times allows it to be incredibly sharp, but incredibly brittle. They're only effective against flesh.

Considering the effort of making one, it's embarrassing that they snap like toys against another sword.

agreed try a Rieper like the ones used in the civil war.

 

[asinann]

Probably doesn't help that he had a modern make stamped metal blade. 440 stainless is crap for weapons, it snaps under much less pressure than a properly forged blade. Stainless steel blades are for decoration, not use.

Protip: You ever find yourself in a swordfight, don't try to parry with your precious katana.

You do understand that the katana was designed specifically to parry right? The curve of the blade allowed smiths to use less metal to get the same strength and the real thing use 2 different levels of hardness on the blade. The sharp part of the blade was made with hard metal to hold the sharpness of the blade while the rest was made of a softer metal so that it would bend and spring back into shape while cutting or parrying. European sword were really not much more than bars of metal with an edge on them that if you struck them in the right place on the blade would snap like twigs (the spines were very poorly made.)