Blocking With A Hand

[Savage]

Another issue that came up today at our practice.

When thrusting at my opponent's stomach, they pushed the blade down and to the side, avoiding the hit. I am pretty sure this is illegal, since the hand (arm) is disabled when it makes contact with the striking surface and therefore further manipulation of that weapon with the hand is illegal.

Which made me wonder about these two alternate situations:

1) What if my opponent had slapped the blade away instead of pushing it? I'm imagining an initial contact that is forceful enough to move the blade aside.

2) What if the hand was resting on or became pinned between the tip and the body?

I realize this isn't probably critical stuff to know, as this sort of thing doesn't seem to come up much, but I've been wondering about it all day and I'd appreciate some input from people with more knowledge.

Edit: Thanks for the replies everyone. What I'm hearing is that in a situation where someone would rather lose the arm than take a hit to the torso, they could legally slap the blade away, losing the arm in a sacrifice block. Right?

[Cyric]

Unless the person's hand comes in contact with non striking surface, such as haft padding, they should take an arm. i would say that a person trying to slap the flat of a sword should still take an arm for both playability and realism reasons.

[Sir Par]

Flat/Haft slapping is totatlly legit. However if they strike ANY part of the striking surface they need to take the relevant damage. If the hand gets pinned between body and weapon its still just an arm hit as long as a second swing was not initiated.

[Soo Ma Tai]

I was always told you couldn't slap flats because it's too hard to tell if you touched the striking surface...playability and all that. Never had an issue with hafts/courtesy padding though.

[Kage]

Edit: Thanks for the replies everyone. What I'm hearing is that in a situation where someone would rather lose the arm than take a hit to the torso, they could legally slap the blade away, losing the arm in a sacrifice block. Right?

Correct

[bo1]

yep, you brush that shot away and take the arm as damage. upside you are alive, down side you are down an arm. happens a ton in single blue tourneys.