Layer Knives for 2300AD

In S.M.Stirling's Draka series of novels, he introduces a great mono-bladed weapon: the "Layer Knife", and its zero-g cousin the "Cutter
Bar". I have added both to my campaign, as a partial replacement/alternative description for mono-bladed weapons.

A Layer Knife is typically a double-edged blade as long as the wielder's forearm ( approximately 18 inches / 45 cm long), and made of a sandwich of thin-film diamond between fillers of density-enhanced steel.  It can only be manufactured in orbit ( requires zero-g conditions).

In the fourth book, a medical examiner describes its wounds as:

"The tissue damage from the knife is as weird as the rest of it.  It was Razor sharp, scalpel sharp.  There are cut hairs on those bodies; it didn't haggle or chop, it just sliced through hair and skin and clothing, plus the odd gold chain.  And it stayed that sharp while it went slamming through major bones, sharp and completely rigid.  A thin blade, Henry, not a tanto knife or a machete.  From the marks on the bones, about as wide as a fingernail at the most." -- from the novel "Drakon" by S.M.Stirling, 1996.

The Cutter Bar is a slightly longer version of the weapon adapted for zero-g use.  Where the Layer Knife has a smooth edge, the Cutter Bar has a serrated-edge ( "teeth like a saw").  The "teeth" are angled/point back towards the handle.  It is still razor sharp enough to cut on a forward-stabbing motion, but the angle of the teeth optimizes it for a pulling-back-towards-you stroke.  It is very hard to pull yourself towards someone in a zero-g fight, but it is very simple, once you have grabbed a hold of a victim and laid the knife against them, to push off from them ( or they flee away from you), causing the blade to bite.

In 2300AD terms, I just double the damage ( DPV) of the standard melee blades, so I can have various sizes, and charge outrageous prices -- also quite illegal for civilians.

It is very very dangerous for the wielder also, so I go straight to 2300AD's Failure Table [ DG p 43] if a 1 is rolled "to hit" or "to parry", and let the user's limbs fall as they may.

This weapon is another instance were I use the optional damage severity rules, often with an additional negative valued ( an even more severe wound, usually 1 or 2 points more) modifier, based on the to hit roll, wound location, etc.

My players, who run American Marine characters, both love and fear these weapons.

P.S. If you like alternate history novels, this series of books is great; you love to hate the Drakans.

Premise: British loyalists flee the American Colonies at the end of the Revolutionary War, land and take over/absorb the South African Colony.  A fascist slave-holding state emerges, the Draka.  They gobble up Africa, and WW2 is fought 20 years earlier in this alternate history ( first novel "Marching through Georgia" - south west USSR, not USA).

The next novel covers the free-world sponsored resistance movement in Draka controlled Europe ( "Under the Yoke").

The third book covers a cold war/space race to the outer planets of our solar system spanning the 1940s to 1990s ( in "Stone Dogs").  It even has genetic engineered warriors from semi-uplifted baboon stock.

The fourth book ( "Drakon") which was published in 1996, deals with one female Draka coming through a spacial/temporal rift to our Earth, in 1995, and the results.

In 1999, the first three books were re-released in one large hardbound book ( "The Domination").