You can use a wielded saber to parry attacks from other monsters made with bladed weapons. There are a few proposals for how this would work:

• Reduce the monster’s to-hit, so it misses more often.
• On some low percentage of attacks that would hit, negate all damage from the attack and produce a message indicating you parried it.

Samurai can wield katanas, wakizashis, and sabers in zero turns.