# Daggers and Knives
*The Fantasy Armory, Eighty Melee and Thrown Weapons for Exodus NDS. Source: https://exodusnds.com/sourcebooks/fantasy-armory/daggers-and-knives*
Knives are the cheapest weapons in the book and, together with the fist weapons in Chapter 4, the only ones a character can carry everywhere. They buy access rather than damage: through a gate, past a guard, into a room where weapons are not permitted.
Four qualities carry the family. **Concealable** hides the weapon. **Pierce** finds the gap that a knife's small damage could not otherwise exploit. **Bleed** keeps a shallow wound working after the exchange. **Fragile** is what the cheapest entries trade away to be cheap.
Damage is **3** throughout, the lowest tier in the book. No knife here threatens an armoured opponent.
**Skill:** All entries use Light Melee. At tables using a single undifferentiated Melee skill, use Melee throughout.
##### Shiv
Shank, Prison Knife, Sharpened File, Improvised Blade
+1
3
Engaged
0
Light Melee
20
Common
Thrusting
Concealable 2, Inaccurate 1, Fragile 2
A ground-down spoon, a sharpened file, a shard of pot bound in rag. It hides better than anything else in the book and it is not built to survive the fight it starts.
*Fragile 2: this weapon breaks outright on a Calamity.*
##### Knife
Belt Knife, Seax, Bowie Knife, Puukko, Kaiken
+1
3
Engaged
1
Light Melee
40
Common
Thrusting, Cutting
—
An eating knife, a belt knife, a tool that happens to cut people. Almost every character owns one and it is almost never the reason a fight goes well.
##### Dagger
Dirk, Kris, Tanto, Jambiya, Poignard
+1
3
Engaged
1
Light Melee
70
Common
Thrusting, Cutting
Pierce 1, Concealable 1
Purpose-built for fighting rather than for work. The narrow point is what separates it from a knife, and Pierce is what that point buys.
##### Stiletto
Misericorde, Rondel Dagger, Stylet, Bodkin
+1
2
Engaged
1
Light Melee
90
Restricted
Thrusting
Concealable 2, Pierce 1, Fragile 1
No edge at all, only a point. It goes through a seam in a jack or a gap in a visor, and it goes through nothing else. Crit 2 is the lowest in the family and the reason people carry one.
##### Punch Dagger
Katar, Push Dagger, Jamadhar, Trench Knife
+1
3
Engaged
1
Light Melee
80
Restricted
Thrusting
Pierce 2, Concealable 1, Awkward 1
The blade sits perpendicular to a transverse grip, so the whole arm drives it. Pierce 2 is the best armour penetration available at this weight. It cannot parry, and it is clumsy the moment the fight becomes a grapple.
##### Serrated Knife
Flensing Knife, Gutting Knife, Sawback Blade, Skinning Knife
+1
3
Engaged
1
Light Melee
70
Restricted
Cutting
Bleed 1, Vicious 1
A flensing or gutting blade, toothed along the back. It does not kill quickly. It makes the wound keep working after the exchange has moved on, and it forces someone to spend an action on treatment.
##### Main-Gauche
Sai, Jitte, Parrying Dagger, Left-Hand Dagger, Swordbreaker
+1
3
Engaged
1
Light Melee
90
Military
Thrusting, Cutting
Defensive 1, Disarming 1
A left-hand blade with a heavy guard and forward-swept quillons, built to catch and bind rather than to kill. Carried opposite a rapier by anyone who expects to be fenced at rather than swarmed.
