What traits should a Shotel have?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'm interested in doing some light homebrew to update the shotel from its 1e incarnation to the modern Pathfinder, and am wondering just what collection of statistics and traits to put on it so it's balanced against other weapons.

While it is an "exotic weapon" by 1e's rules, I don't think that necessarily correlates to it being an Advanced weapon, since some of the weapons in that same category, like the katana, are now classified as Martial weapons. But mostly I'm hoping to make the shotel martial for accessibility reasons, because as it stands there's no good reason to take an Advanced sword unless you're a tengu, a Fighter, or a tengu Fighter.

The next question is the specific traits. Backstabber is likely essential, given the purpose OF the shotel was to reach around an opponent's shield to stab them on vulnerable spots like the kidneys or lungs. Most weapons with that trait are also some combination of Agile and or Finesse, like the Dogslicer or Fighting Fan, and accordingly do lower damage than the 1e shotel's 1d8, which I assume would push it over the line into Advanced weapon status. The Dogslicer does appear to be one of the closest equivalents to the shotel, along with the Lion Scythe. But the Lion Scythe unfortunately is a Knife class weapon, whereas the shotel is undeniably a type of Sword like the Dogslicer.

In addition, should Versatile S be considered as a trait? While the 1e stats only have the shotel do piercing damage, real-life shotels did have a cutting edge, usually on the inner curve of the blade, making it function a lot like the sickle it evolved from. But again, that may be overdoing it.

So I'm kind of lost as to how to gauge the number of stats to make the shotel balanced and I worry that to most accurately represent the weapon it'd HAVE to be advanced, meaning it'd be an inefficient weapon in the hands of a Rogue, a warpriest Cleric or a Magus. Any advice you homebrew gurus out there might have would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

[MEATSHED]

I will note that nothing really gives backstabber beyond the designers wanting to give it backstabber, the arbalist has it and it's just a crossbow, the dogslicer is just like a big knife and flails don't have it despite also doing the reach around shields thing.

[Jerdane]

I wouldn't call myself a homebrew guru, but I'm not sure Backstabber would be needed to represent getting around someone's shield. It only works when the enemy is flatfooted, so it seems like it would better fit weapons that you use after sneaking up on an enemy, while the shotel seems like a weapon specifically designed for fighting face to face (well, face to shield). Perhaps its ability to slip around shields could be represented with Finesse to show that the wielder can use their dexterity to slip around a shield and really hit home? Or perhaps Deadly or Fatal to show that when it gets past their defenses it really skewers them? You could try and homebrew a new trait for things that get around shields of course; maybe if you attack someone who is using Raise a Shield, Parry, or some similar ability to increase it AC, the weapon ignores the increase? I have no idea if that's balanced since most weapon traits seem to give bonuses to damage rolls rather than attack roles, but on the other hand this would only trigger in fairly uncommon circumstances. Alternatively, maybe have it ignore Shield Block and similar abilities?

If that's not appealing, then looking at that wiki page it says that the shotel was good for ripping riders off of horses, which kind of says Trip to me. The other swords that have the Trip trait are the khopesh and temple sword (both martial 1d8 slashing) and the hook sword (advanced 1d6 slashing with disarm, parry, and twin). So, the shotel could carve itself out a niche as the only sword with the trip trait and piercing damage. It probably doesn't need versatile S in order to be historically accurate; the khopesh is described as having "a pointed tip, allowing it to be swung like a handaxe or thrust like a short sword" and yet doesn't have versatile P. Also, like you say, giving it versatile S would probably eat into its trait budget.

For balance, I don't know exactly how the budget works for weapons either (though I assume that Trip, Grapple, Shove and Disarm all have roughly the same value), so it's probably safest to just swap out traits from an existing weapon. If you want it to have Deadly, you could just take the rapier and swap in Trip for Disarm, resulting in 1d6P, Trip, Finesse, and Deadly d8 (but no Agile, presumably because Deadly is really nasty), while if you do want Agile, maybe take the Tengu Gale Blade and swap in Trip for Disarm and piercing for slashing to get 1d6P, Agile, Trip, and Finesse, whatever matches your vision for it!

[vegetalss4]

A good starting point might be the analysis in this forum post by Pronate analysing how existing weapons are balanced and their guide linked therein.

It boils down to some math about baseline damage and number of traits, as well as not all traits being equal.
Now this isn't perfect, and the systems have some limitations but it's a start, particularly if combined with the discussion in the rest of the thread.
for instance some combination of traits and stats doesn't appear in the game because they might be too much together even if they aren't to high "cost" in general.

It's probably relevant for what you want that the only weapons with both more than 1d6 damage and backstabber are requires two hands. Almost certainly because off-guard isn't that difficult to get and 1d8 is the max damage for a 1 handed weapon martial weapon in general.

For a not-complex version of the weapon I might go with something like the temple sword/khopesh like Jerdane suggest.
Martial sword, 1d8 Piercing damage, 1 hand, trip.

I'd accept the lack of an anti-shield trait from it's curve in much the same way I accept that a flail doesn't get anything like that despite being able to go around a shield with the chain. That is to say, all weapons have ways to avoid shields somewhat and I'd just accept that representing minor differences in how easy they are to use is below the system resolution.

If the shield trait is important to the conversion and I was willing to be a bit more ambitious I might homebrew a special trait.
Here I'd stay away from a to-hit bonus. That's real powerful in this system, even if circumstancially restricted, and outside of the normal weapon design space.

Instead I'd give it extra damage when the target used a shield block reaction (to the wielder not the shield) - probably equal to the number of damage dice (similar to the Razing trait which is also mostly an anti-shield trait in practice but halved since creature HP is more important than object HP).
I'd be OK with letting that stand on a 1-handed martial 1d8 weapon since the circumstance is so relatively narrow.