Today; on Hillariously Impractical Weapons
Bladed tonfas.
Ok, so I won;t bullshit you, when I first saw the concept for weapons like this, back when I was....12 or something, I was like "fuck yeah, blades on a thing!" and I loved it. Now; I'm older, and crankier and more likely to look at something and realize it was meant to remove large chunks of my flesh wholesale. The idea (as far as I can suss out) of a bladed tonfa, or similarily whippy, flippity, swingy-slingy bit of sharp doodad with an askew handle, is that the user can whip it around and switch from a defensive to an offensive stance easily. The problem with this concept is that regular old swords do that. But better. Because yanno; less likely take bits of my abdomen, forearm and elbow with them as they whip around at whatever level of inertia I've put them through. After doing a quick google search of the topic, I found people actually attempting to explain how efficient tonfa swords could be.
Be still my quivering bile duct.
I won't say I haven't say down and designed a character with them; I have. And in hindsight the whole concept of it sucked and I'm a dumbass for thinking of it. I also won't post any of these questions verbatim, but hey most often work like this;
"Why would bladed tonfa not be practical? I hear lots of people say they would only work in fantasy or art, but why?"
The biggest issue is that of simple mechanics. From a mechanical standpoint, the whole length of the tonfa acts as a lever; with the fulcrum resting firmly in your hand; in an axis unfavorable to you unless you have hulk-like strength. This means you are far more limited in your actual options for defensive stances, and your striking options are equally limited; any successful parry would break the momentum you have and you'd be deader than a doornail. The second problem is...well it's inherently dangerous to the wielder. That's just not good. The third problem is, that anything it can do, a regular weapon can do, and can do it a damn sight better. Switching from defensive to offensive (and vice-versa) is so fast in medieval dueling and single combat (in pretty much any region) that they are quite often seen as the same thing. We are talking about a small shift in body stance to reiceive an attack before propelling from that into an attacking stance; whereas with a bladed tonfa, if one were to assume the basic defensive stance is with the longer bladed bits at the forearm to receive blows (above model would result in the removal of much of the skin on the forearm, but we'll assume bracers or mechanical supersoldier robot nazi zombie ninja arms) and that to defend; a deflecting, cross block is used (which is more sensical than a hard block, never go edge to edge, even in hypothesis) then it would take a significant amount of effort and time to switch to a more offensive stance in which the longer blade is facing forward. Even when dual wielding (which is a -lot- harder than it looks, let me tell you) it removes the ability to switch which hand is offensive and which is defensive in any blatant terms. That isn't to say that the shorter blade bit isn't dangerous, but the fact that it has significantly less reach means that it has limited avenues of attack, as well as likely risking leaving large bits of you open for grappling, pommel strikes, and amputation.
Ok, so how can we workshop this up to be a wee bit more likely?
You could possibly wrap the business ends of the tonfa with some metal, and/or stud it (not spikes, just rounded over iron studs; enough to encourage breaking bones). The added heft and concentration of force would mean it could deal rather devastating blows and still be used with regular tonfa techniques. I'd even be willing so say a partial, flanged mace-type end would be -somewhat- practical (still really silly). Maybe (MAYBE) a small spike on the short end would work as well; but you still risk ripping your wrist to shreds as you spin it. If anyone were to have videos of tonfa kata or practical demos of tonfa being used, I'd more likely be able to figure out what would go well; until then I'll just chalk it up to "They didn't have it because it would have sucked," a generic but effective excuse when ti comes to this sort of thing. Be prepared for a part 2, with some doodles of a really old, boring character wielding both his old, and shiny new weapons.
