Roleplay reason for kensai going throwing dagger
Arthas
Member Posts: 1,091
I m searching for good roleplay reason for such a choice for my kensai. But it seems to me more a pp choice rather than a justifiable one..
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https://aminoapps.com/c/anime/page/item/guts/ZZtX_IP1dW6Y2EN6LznrkenBoRjqn
Ten Bandits
Or maybe you just worked in the kitchen. A lot.
But really, it's not really any different than any other Kensai. You're a prodigy with some particular weapon. Not as tough as explaining why Gorion might have been raising a Barbarian in a library.
I dare you to try justifying dualwielding flails without bringing up magic.
The limitations are more of a technical nature anyway. Giving your kensai a ranged weapon is an exploit.
But why is there a close-combat specialist (kensai) and a ranged combat specialist (archer), and neither of them are really supposed to use throwing weapons?
Daggers in general get the short end of the stick. They are inferior as backstabbing weapons (even though they are ideal for it) and their damage type is inferior to slashing damage against plate armor (which is ridiculous). Both their niches are taken, and even during the iron crisis, they are useless as backup weapons. You get your first non-breaking magical weapons before you enter the Nashkel mines.
Overall, daggers are only used by hardcore roleplayers and kensai who like to have a ranged option and given their damage bonuses are not too concerned about the smaller damage die.
So yeah, I say you should go for it. Go toe to toe with the evils of the world and challenge them to knife fights. If they pull some two-handed swords on you, ask them if they are compensating for something. And tell them that it is not the size of the blade that matters. The only thing that matters, is your skill.
I tried to find a Japanese-inspired (considering the ken-sai aspect) fighter with daggers.
The practical sided of things: having tons of throwing daggers ready at hand makes getting disarmed but a trivial annoyance.
But terminology aside, I suppose this would fit with the whole ninja/shinobi imagination, since they're usually depicted as unarmored (as opposed to D&D rogues, who wear leather armor - something some samurai also did) and well versed in all manner of throwing weapons, including the dagger-like kunai (though that's believed to have been more tool than weapon). The popular-culture version of the ninja is almost entirely fictitious, of course, but it fits the (equally fictitious) D&D kensai not too badly.
In short, it's not entirely inconceivable a kensai would combine lack of armor with a throwing weapon, and since it's all made up anyway there's little to stop you from justifying it with your own personal spin on the kit. I find it generally works best if you fit class and kit to the character, rather than the other way round - it may not be entirely in line with the rules all the time, but maybe when you're RPing the RP is more important.
I am very fond of the CHA 3 Bard I once made, who was an absolutely repulsive savage from a tribe that happened to have a tradition of hereditary village storyteller and to their great misfortune it fell to the most uncouth (and utterly tone-deaf) brute imaginable. Had WAY more fun playing that than some generic charm-your-pants-off Bard with CHA 18, and let the rules be damned.
So for a Kensai (剣才) (which loosely translates as Genius with Blades) playthrough, any bladed weapon no matter their size should be fair game from a historical perspective. Alas, clubs and other bludgeon weapons are just not lore-friendly and thus a clear "out" for such a character.
Weapons are tools. People choose them because they want to accomplish some task. You don't need some backstory about how your dead wife had a dagger fetish and this is how you honor her or whatever. You just specialized in daggers because you wanted to do what daggers do.
Ken is the generic word for "sword". Anytime someone just refers to some generic sword, that's the word they use. You could specify more with words like katana (刀), and these words are also sometimes used generically, but the number one usage for ken (剣) is simply any kind of sword that's not further specified.
No Japanese would think that kensei (剣聖) refers to someone dealing with blades as in the edge part of a cutting implement/weapon - their first and strongest assumption would be that it's about swords. That's not to say you couldn't then reveal to them that the particular Kensei in question has a very liberal interpretation of what constitutes a "sword" (cue the outrageous anime plot and design), but it would never be taken to refer to blades rather than swords from the get-go. If that was the intention, the term would specify it in some way (e.g. something like 刃の聖人 or whatever).
It's just that the mainstream media, as always, get things royally wrong.
"Katana" can also be used as a generic word for "sword", however it usually refers to Asian/Japanese-style swords and wouldn't normally be used for other kinds of sword. "Ken" doesn't carry that distinction and is simply a generic word for any sword not further specified.
"Ken" is a little special in that its on-yomi is frequently used even if the character stands on its own, while the associated kun-yomi, which is "tsurugi", is now somewhat archaic (mostly associated with the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi 草薙の剣, also called Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi 天叢雲剣, a legendary sword that is one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan).
If you pick any random person off the street in Japan and show them a picture of a (Western) sword and ask them what they'd call this, 99.9% would say "Ken" (剣).