Benefits of the Sai?

[Stink Bug]

I was comparing weapon stats and while there seems to be a trend in Exotic Weapons being a little better than their Martial equivalents (which themselves are a little better than their Simple equivalents), the Sai doesn't appear to fit the trend. According to the ingame description, burning an exotic feat on the sai will get you a 1d4 weapon with 20(x2) critical range. Thats worse than the Simple dagger, (which every class can use?) at 1d4 with 19-20(x2). Sai's don't even have the solo benefit of being a monk flurry weapon, since the dagger is listed there too. Only benefit i can see is a slight weight reduction. Is there any hidden benefits of the Sai's, or are they just that terrible?

[Trip]

Its free for monks? And they can use it for flurry of blows?

Which you can do with daggers anyway....

It does pierce damage in this game too, when it should at least change to blunt damage.

I have no clue...

[jazzable]

I could imagine in PnP they have some CMD bonus to disarm or something along the line; the sai is designed to catch blades and deflect them, maybe even break them.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Trip:

Its free for monks? And they can use it for flurry of blows?

Which you can do with daggers anyway....

It does pierce damage in this game too, when it should at least change to blunt damage.

I have no clue...

Sai is a monk weapon, Dagger is not (supposed to be).

In tabletop the main advantage of a Sai over other similar weapons is the Disarm feature, which does not exist in this game. 1d4, 20x2 crit, blunt, light, monk, disarm. No other weapon has all of those same traits, but several have better crit and everything except disarm.

[angeltime]

i think the only benefit would be that MC and 3 custom characters can cosplay TMNT, well... of course if you replace katana with dueling sword or something like that

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by fuze:

i think the only benefit would be that MC and 3 custom characters can cosplay TMNT, well... of course if you replace katana with dueling sword or something like that

Masterwork bastard sword anybody?

[Dalaule]

Elven Curve Blade = Katana, without a doubt. It certainly looks the part.

[angeltime]

elven curve blade is two handed weapon, and leo uses dual wield

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Dalaule:

Elven Curve Blade = Katana, without a doubt. It certainly looks the part.

The joke is that regular DND stats katanas as "masterwork bastard swords", so you should be able to do the reverse and substitute a bastard sword for a katana.

[solthusx]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Originally posted by Dalaule:

Elven Curve Blade = Katana, without a doubt. It certainly looks the part.

The joke is that regular DND stats katanas as "masterwork bastard swords", so you should be able to do the reverse and substitute a bastard sword for a katana.

The 'debates' over it back in the original WOTC forums were legendary. Things actually got so heated that the topic was banned from the forums.

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Originally posted by solthusx:

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

The joke is that regular DND stats katanas as "masterwork bastard swords", so you should be able to do the reverse and substitute a bastard sword for a katana.

The 'debates' over it back in the original WOTC forums were legendary. Things actually got so heated that the topic was banned from the forums.

Yeah, Paizo got around that by slapping in an actual katana in the lead up to the start of the Jade Regent Adventure Path (which had the protagonist's travelling to Golarion's equivalent of Asia, specifically to the nation of Minkai which is the world's equivalent of Japan). I think it was in Ultimate Combat alongside the Ninja and Samurai.

An exotic, one-handed sword dealing 1d8 damage, a crit range of 18-20/x2, weighs six pounds, deals slashing damage and has the deadly property ("When you use this weapon to deliver a coup de grace, it gains a +4 bonus to damage when calculating the DC of the Fortitude saving throw to see whether the target of the coup de grace dies from the attack. The bonus is not added to the actual damage of the coup de grace attack.").

Frankly, I think that deadly property was only added in-case someone needed to commit seppuku and had to roll to see how cleanly their second cuts their head off.

EDIT: Oh; and like Bastard Swords, they can be used as a martial weapon (so no need for Exotic Weapon Proficiency) if you wield it with both hands. Which, funnily enough, is the historically-accurate way to wield them (I don't believe historical samurai ever paired katana with shields, probably the only time they would've been used one-handed - excluding certain particular strikes - would've been from horseback where you needed to keep a hand on the reins).

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Shadow88:

Originally posted by solthusx:

The 'debates' over it back in the original WOTC forums were legendary. Things actually got so heated that the topic was banned from the forums.

Yeah, Paizo got around that by slapping in an actual katana in the lead up to the start of the Jade Regent Adventure Path (which had the protagonist's travelling to Golarion's equivalent of Asia, specifically to the nation of Minkai which is the world's equivalent of Japan). I think it was in Ultimate Combat alongside the Ninja and Samurai.

An exotic, one-handed sword dealing 1d8 damage, a crit range of 18-20/x2, weighs six pounds, deals slashing damage and has the deadly property ("When you use this weapon to deliver a coup de grace, it gains a +4 bonus to damage when calculating the DC of the Fortitude saving throw to see whether the target of the coup de grace dies from the attack. The bonus is not added to the actual damage of the coup de grace attack.").

Frankly, I think that deadly property was only added in-case someone needed to commit seppuku and had to roll to see how cleanly their second cuts their head off.

EDIT: Oh; and like Bastard Swords, they can be used as a martial weapon (so no need for Exotic Weapon Proficiency) if you wield it with both hands. Which, funnily enough, is the historically-accurate way to wield them (I don't believe historical samurai ever paired katana with shields, probably the only time they would've been used one-handed - excluding certain particular strikes - would've been from horseback where you needed to keep a hand on the reins).

Dual wielding though. See: Miyamoto Musashi

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Originally posted by Shadow88:

Yeah, Paizo got around that by slapping in an actual katana in the lead up to the start of the Jade Regent Adventure Path (which had the protagonist's travelling to Golarion's equivalent of Asia, specifically to the nation of Minkai which is the world's equivalent of Japan). I think it was in Ultimate Combat alongside the Ninja and Samurai.

An exotic, one-handed sword dealing 1d8 damage, a crit range of 18-20/x2, weighs six pounds, deals slashing damage and has the deadly property ("When you use this weapon to deliver a coup de grace, it gains a +4 bonus to damage when calculating the DC of the Fortitude saving throw to see whether the target of the coup de grace dies from the attack. The bonus is not added to the actual damage of the coup de grace attack.").

Frankly, I think that deadly property was only added in-case someone needed to commit seppuku and had to roll to see how cleanly their second cuts their head off.

EDIT: Oh; and like Bastard Swords, they can be used as a martial weapon (so no need for Exotic Weapon Proficiency) if you wield it with both hands. Which, funnily enough, is the historically-accurate way to wield them (I don't believe historical samurai ever paired katana with shields, probably the only time they would've been used one-handed - excluding certain particular strikes - would've been from horseback where you needed to keep a hand on the reins).

Dual wielding though. See: Miyamoto Musashi

I was speaking generally - Musashi was kind of a special case.

[solthusx]

Originally posted by Shadow88:

Originally posted by solthusx:

The 'debates' over it back in the original WOTC forums were legendary. Things actually got so heated that the topic was banned from the forums.

Yeah, Paizo got around that by slapping in an actual katana in the lead up to the start of the Jade Regent Adventure Path (which had the protagonist's travelling to Golarion's equivalent of Asia, specifically to the nation of Minkai which is the world's equivalent of Japan). I think it was in Ultimate Combat alongside the Ninja and Samurai.

An exotic, one-handed sword dealing 1d8 damage, a crit range of 18-20/x2, weighs six pounds, deals slashing damage and has the deadly property ("When you use this weapon to deliver a coup de grace, it gains a +4 bonus to damage when calculating the DC of the Fortitude saving throw to see whether the target of the coup de grace dies from the attack. The bonus is not added to the actual damage of the coup de grace attack.").

Frankly, I think that deadly property was only added in-case someone needed to commit seppuku and had to roll to see how cleanly their second cuts their head off.

EDIT: Oh; and like Bastard Swords, they can be used as a martial weapon (so no need for Exotic Weapon Proficiency) if you wield it with both hands. Which, funnily enough, is the historically-accurate way to wield them (I don't believe historical samurai ever paired katana with shields, probably the only time they would've been used one-handed - excluding certain particular strikes - would've been from horseback where you needed to keep a hand on the reins).

So the people who argued that katanas should be longswords with a better crit range got what they wanted after all

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Originally posted by solthusx:

So the people who argued that katanas should be longswords with a better crit range got what they wanted after all

Well it was one way to stop all the whinging.

[SpintFX]

OK, gonna dig this one up cus i just gotta... so back to the original question: "Whats the benefits of Sai?"

Got a bit of an answer for you :D

IF you would like to make a monk that uses dexterity instead of strength for atk and dmg bonuses you might wanna multi-class 3 levels in to rogue. This will grant you 2d6 sneak attack, weapon finesse and the lovely Finesse Training.

All of which can be used with your monks unarmed strike, flurries etc. Fantastic!

Now then if you were to notice that the rogue has an archetype called knifemaster which makes that sneakattack a bit better when you use weapons instead of melee. Then you might also wanna grab some two weapon fighting feats...

I know some are saying it dont work but i did do a little 2wf test with a lvl 2 monk and ... got an extra attack in... not to sure about the other 2 weapon fighting feats but hey, more to hit for now :D And 2d8 sneak attack makes my min/max'd heart pound oh so loudly :)

God I still love this fking game :D