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I agree. Personally, I thought the initial release of ultimate combat looked pretty solid and hope the final product sticks pretty closely with the playtest version of all three classes. I trust the judgement of Paizo's developers and designers. They have a pretty good crew. Minor balance tweaks, if any, are all that should be needed.
The politest thing I can say to this canard is it belongs in the same round file as knights in armor needing to be winched up onto horses. As a student of history, everything I have read or seen on the matter indicates that I'm correct. Even Discovery or some other channel had a show debunking the myth that knights were wielding sharpened bastard swords and claymores a few years ago. The notion that you can hack all day at a guy in plate or wielding a shield and then go cut tomatoes like in some steak knife commercial is ridiculous. The edge of the blade was still maybe half a centimeter in width or less, and you could easily hack through armor or a limb with one through because you're still applying a lot of force to a small area. But they weren't sharpened. Blades designed more to cut cloth, flesh, or fibers like say a scimitar, or cutlass (or a katana) are a different matter, of course.
The Katana is fine doing bastard sword damage. I hope Paizo doesn't change it. Just because the numbers are the same doesn't mean the weapons are, the weapons are completely different, but when you look at it from a stat perspective, the numbers even out. For example, European blades are big and heavy. They do damage based more on the mass side of the force equation. In fact, the blades themselves weren't edged at all, they were blunted and designed to hammer into armor wielding opponents and shields without chipping or shattering. The katana was designed more to shear through unarmored flesh, bone, or to cut through the lighter Japanese armor of the period. From a balance perspective, the effect of wielding a katana against a setting appropriate opponent will be just as effective damage wise as a bastard sword would be against a euro-centric opponent wearing metal armor. So should a plate wearing foe get a minor DR bonus or something against a katana? You could make a case for that. But conversely, against an unarmored foe, the katana is a far more dangerous weapon than a bastard sword. So if Paizo does do something like reduce the damage to d8, then I think the katana should get something like double strength damage vs. any opponent or monster not wearing metal armor to compensate. Otherwise, just keeping the stats the same as bastard sword stats is a fair compromise. |
