Wakizashi and Ninjato type of damage (to stick to reality)

CodeKiller

Hello,

Small talk about the type of damage.

I think the type of damage should be both slashing.
My POV : it was a mistake from the beginning, you cannot seriously thing about stabbing someone with a 22 inches blade... which "piercing" implies.
If the main type is piercing it means that most of the attacks is jabbing, not slashing, which is stupid for this kind of blade (even real knife fight implies slashing and not only jabbing as jabbing is dangerous for the one who attacks as it leaves you defenseless the time of the move).

The Ninjato is the same kind of weapon except that it should have been used by "ninja" (and 2 at the same times).

Have a nice fight.

Grond0

With the odd exception, weapons in AD&D only do one type of damage and that seems reasonable to help keep complexity down.

While long swords (such as a katana) can be used for thrusting as well as cutting, that's not their primary purpose, so the decision was taken to classify those as slashing weapons. Conversely, while short swords (such as a wakizashi or ninjato) would certainly be used for slashing as well, their primary function was for thrusting and hence they were classified as piercing weapons.

The actual length of weapons has varied greatly in different times and places. Hence one person's 'short sword' could be significantly longer than another person's 'long sword'. The Roman gladius would be the stereo-typical short sword, although that measured up to 26 inches long. AD&D standardised by classing any sword that was typically less than 24 inches long as a short sword - the classification of wakizashi and ninjato as piercing weapons just follows this pattern.

Dev6

Because having another weapon that does slashing damage would be oh so useful... Not like we already have 90% of all weapons doing it.