Improvised Weapons
Though I’ve never seen one in play, I have no doubt that there are builds out there specialized in improvised weapons. Stone giant rock throwers spring to mind, which raises a rather interesting question. If you’ve got an improvised weapon specialist in the party, how do you give them weapon upgrades? Is there such a thing as a masterwork rock? What would a +1 T-bone steak even look like? More importantly, how would it taste?
The mind boggles.
Of course, specialty builds are something of a corner case. In my experience, improvised weapons tend to come up in two places: jailbreaks and barroom brawls. That’s because the players will be deprived of their gear in the former and will (probably) want to avoid killing innocent bar patrons in the latter. In both scenarios, however, I think it pays to plan out exactly what’s in the room.
You see, if it’s at all possible, players will default to using what’s on their character sheet. They’ve been trained over countless hours of play to look at their weapon slot first and their stored gear second. If there’s nothing useful in either location, it’s all too easy to resort to “unarmed strike.” Meanwhile there are dozens of chair legs, broken beer bottles, and antlered moose heads hanging in your typical bar. There are manacles, prison shanks, and shoelace garrotes in your typical prison. These are the kinds of weapons we all imagine when we picture cinematic brawls, but they tend to get forgotten in practice. That’s why I say to make those objects as visible as possible.
Next time you want the terrain to become a weapon rack, try this: Instead of relying on verbal description, take a minute to create some tokens. Drop a few sticky-note ceiling fans or fire pokers onto the battle mat. The idea is to give your improvised weapons presence. That means in the physical world (thanks, tokens!) and in the game world. Pencil in a few quick stats on the reverse side of those sticky notes, and suddenly those items have in-game weight. Maybe that fire poker does some extra fire damage. Maybe the tavern cat is a specialized throwing weapon. Railing kills, defenestrations, and roaring hearth fires can all get the same treatment. All it takes is a little prep work for the possibilities of an imaginary space to come alive. You don’t have to overdo it. Even one or two interactive features should be enough to make a combat memorable. But unless you communicate those options, it doesn’t matter how cool the cheese wheel shield or the mop bucket bear trap are in theory. They’ll just get ignored in practice.
So what do you say, Handbookians? What’s the best improvised weapon you ever laid hands on? Was it an unexpected kitchen implement? A fellow party member? Or maybe it was just a useful part of the environment? Tell us all about your favorite masterwork rocks down in the comments!
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Looks like Monk’s trying to steak a claim as the ultimate vampire-slayer. Or maybe this has nothing to do with ego, and monk in fact has some beef with this guy.
Regardless, the fact that this is one of the first times vampires have appeared in this comic leads me to believe this will be a very rare encounter.
Their sense of style is remarkably consistent: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/interrogation
In keeping with the previous comic, I believe that the best improvised weapon is an NPC; it acts as both a weapon and a shield!
I only wish that this comic had come up a in a few weeks; a have an encounter planned for the party. Named, ogre wielding giant crossbows, firing hobgoblins into tactical positions and/enemies.
I expect a full report (and full rules)!
If you play Pathfinder, conside the combo of a grapple-barbarian, the Body Bludgeon rage power, and the Throw Anything feat, followed by Ricochet Shot. Body Bludgeon lets you use pinned enemies as improvised weapons. Throw Anything lets you throw improvised weapons. Adding Ricochet Shot makes thrown improvised weapons bounce back to you so you can throw them again.
Awesomeness ensues.
I feel like body bludgeon wants you to use your enemies as melee weapons. Damned if that’s what the ability says though. Full speed ahead to awesome town!
As for non-sentient improvised weapons… I think my least favourite was when the DM dropped a falling city on us. My favourite is likely Gerald the Potato, a potato that looked like it had a face. Somehow, the party paladin got attached to it. While they were low-level, before they bought ranged weapons, the paladin would hurl Gerald if necessary, then be out of the fight for the next few rounds as he searched for wherever the potato ended up. Later on, before he was eventually smashed to smithereens, Gerald retired, having a throne room built specifically for him (raiding dragon hoards is fun) and being given a headband of intellect.
…got a bit off track there, but the moral? of the story is: potatoes are both great and terrible improvised weapons.
Yeesh. What did you do to deserve getting hit by a city? Read the module? Touch the DM’s dice? Cancel at the last minute before the BBEG fight?
Pathfinder has the “Gloves of Improvised Might”, which are essentially an Amulet of Mighty Fists, but for Improvised Weapons and using the Gloves slot.
I like that. The appeal to me is getting to pick up whatever whenever. The gloves make it possible. Hell, between you and Kyleran I might actually build a character. 🙂
In Pathfinder, there’s the Shikigami Style feat chain.
As a Level 1 Human Fighter (or Master of Many Styles Monk), you can take Catch Off-Guard (no penalty for improvised weapons), Shikigami Style (improvised weapon deals damage as 1 size larger for each Shikigami feat you have), and Shikigami Mimicry (can take -2 on attack roll to give the weapon some properties). You’re wielding a Sledgehammer, which is treated as an improvised Earthbreaker (2h hammer, 2d6 damage, x3 crit). With the 2 size increases, you’re doing 4d6 damage. Get an Enlarge Person, and you’re doing 6d6 damage. Plus the usual x1.5 Strength for a 2-handed weapon. At level 1.
Unfortunately, the final feat in the chain has 5 ranks of Use Magic Device as a prereq, otherwise we could take that at level 2. Instead, it will have to wait until level 5. Shikigami Manipulation lets us treat a magic item improvised weapon as having a +X Enchantment bonus, where X is 1/4 of the item’s Caster Level. It’s also a Shikigami feat, so another +Size. The recommended item is the Anytool, which is CL9, costs 250 gold, and can transform into any mundane tool. Such as a Sledgehammer, treated as a +2 weapon. Still under enlarge person, we now do 8d6+2 base damage.
Or, if we need a +4 weapon, say to bypass certain types of DR (+4 bypases Cold Iron, Silver, Adamantine), a Metamagic Rod of Merciful Spell costs 1500 gold and can be treated as a +4 Club. Clubs are base 1d6, so +3 Size makes it 3d6+4, 4d6+4 if under enlarge person.
Now how do we fit in the vital strike chain…?
Easily. You have to be level 6 to take Vital Strike. By that point, a Human Fighter will have 8 feats. 4 from the Shikigami feat chain + Vital strike still leaves us with 3 unassigned feats. I tried making a quick build of this, and ran into the problem that I had too many feat slots that I didn’t know what to do with.
Plenty of room for equipment tricks….
I’ve told the story of the Anima: Beyond Fantasy fighter using the table before, that build was actually a Weaponmaster (the i use a lot of weapons class) that specifically had the proficiency with improvised weapons for those shenanigans. I’ve also seen a Drunken Monk build in Eberron that became a vampire slaying monster when the Artificer stacked Holy and Undead bane on the monk’s drinking stein (which he could Flurry of blows, because 3.5 monk.) Still to this day the fastest Vampire poof I’ve seen. The case could be made for dead body, when in that same Eberron game I suggested we throw an Ettin body over a ledge to see if the Gargoyle down below was the decorative kind or the kill you as you climb down kind. Everyone laughed until the GM muttered “rolling a reflex save” under his breath.
Not a case of improvised weapons per se, but a friend did make a GM lament giving him an Admantine Pick-axe by refusing to use doors ever again. “No one traps the wall beside the door” he boasted, and would pick his way through the wall if we dallied at any door. It worked well until my rogue decided to call his bluff and said we would do things his way. By the fourth door, the GM made him roll fortitude checks against exhaustion.
Steven Universe has ruined me. Now every time I think of D&D vampires “poofing,” I imagine their fangs dropping to the ground and small American children being like, “Bubble it!”
Looks like Count Stroganoff is minced meat this time.
That was evil… :p
Hey now, Colin started grinding out puns this time, your beef is with him!
What a bunch of bologna!
i remember it well, it was one of my first RPG adventure to be completed, it was a 3rd editiong game, party was about level 6, and we were in the presence of the boss.
we were losing hp points very fast, and at last round we were all incapacitated or dead, all but our bard, which was called “Mu” and was a very poor halfling bard
he fumbled the previous round, so he was also without a weapon
the GM goes: “ok, so, last action, with your hp next smash will kill you, what you do?”
Mu: “i try to hurl my big copper pan to the monster, to hit him”
GM: “..oh, yes, your pan, i see, you are not proficient in exotic weapons are you?”
Mu: “nope”
GM: “lets make it a special roll, d20 plus dex, since is a big pan it does 1d4 damage if it hits”
Mu: “20”
GM: “?? what?? OK, it hits…”
Mu: “rolling for damages… 4”
GM: …….
party: ……
Mu: “? so?”
GM: “the monster receive your really big pan on the head and crumbles on the floor…. without life”
Mu: ??????????????????????
GM: it had 3 hp
party: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
and then from that point onwards every other adventures that we played at some point was given the “cameo” treatment and some NPC retold us the tale of Mu the bards and the myght copper pan….
I know that sound. That sound is the reason I strap on my adventurin’ boots in the morning. 🙂
Besides the obvious Shijigami Style feat chain, SoM also offers the Barroom sphere, who has half of its focus on using improvised weapons (the other half being drinking). With the barroom sphere, you can make improvised shields, purposefully break items to deal additional damage, give improvised weapons special weapon qualities (such as trip or disarm), etc.
Well yeah, but then I’d have to use Spheres of Power. And no one has ever taken the time to explain why it’s the best thing ever to me. 😛
We were trying to hunt pirates as a side quest for Tomb of Annihilation, so we were looking for ways of dealing with ships. Our barbarian ended up grabbing what would become his preferred back up weapon whenever he had an excuse to use it later: a ship’s anchor with a few hundred feet of rope attached.
Suffice to say that between the Minotaur breaking in through the side of the ship at a full charge and the Bugbear smashing his way onto the main deck with an anchor, the pirates had no idea what to do about us anymore.
I’d tie a cape to the bow. Toro!
My Paladin wasn’t fond of improvised weapons, but he was fond of using the environment. Whether it was shoving people off of peaks, shoving people into fires (He actually got a surprising amount of mileage from that one), suplexing people off balconies, or one time shoving someone into a pool of psychic pain juice. (He didn’t know what it was at the time so he felt really bad aboot it.) Athletics opens up so many options.
Environmental cleverness was the key to his plan to circumvent Acererak’s phylactery.
Spoilers for Tomb of Annihilation >! So an NPC we had rescued from a Mirror of Life Trapping (My second plan to capture Acererak that sadly failed when hags broke it) mentioned that if we went any lower we would hit lava. The big final boss room was a floor down. My genre senses tingled and told me that meant that the final battle would have lava. My Paladin saw himself as something of a Hannibal/ (A Team, not cannibalism) Ender/Captain Kirk/Parson Gotti figure. He knew killing a lich was pointless, and could also reasonably infer that if Acererak was treating this like a game with all his hints that his phylactery wouldn’t be here. As such he had to find a way to stop Acererak once and for all without smashing his phylactery. His team included a Dao he had rescued from the dungeon and a Evoker. His plan was to shove Acererak into the lava, then solidify it with Cone of Cold at which point the Dao could fly down, Stone Shape out the part Acererak was trapped in before it melts again.
Entombed in solid stone he can’t move or speak so he can’t cast. As a Lich he can’t suffocate or starve so death won’t get him out. He can’t even sleep, so he can’t dream. All he can do is think aboot how much he hates me. !<
How do you go about identifying opportunities for environmental cleverness? Do GMs or printed adventures ever use tricks to point them out for you?
“This is the room. There’s a fire in the middle.” You’re at the top of a x foot spire” This room has a pool in the middle. “50 feet beneath the catwalks is lava”.
Surely Monk is matching Vampire’s meat?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aj5G9efFqU0
I’ve used improvised weapons extensively in both Pathfinder and 5e. There’s a rogue archetype in Pathfinder called the Makeshift Scrapper, which is exclusively improvised weapons, and there’s a feat tree where you can Sneak Attack people without flanking them, provided that they’re unarmed and you have an improvised weapon, so there’s at least one build where you kick someone’s sword out of their hand and brain them with a pineapple. It’s nature’s morningstar, you know.
In 5e, the best homebrew, Pugilist, is about beating people up with fists and improvised weapons. Also STR-based whips, funnily enough. They get a monk-style unarmed strike improvement, but it also applies to improvised weapons, so eventually that haunch of meat does 1d12 per hit.
Huh. I wonder if it would be worth going rogue for that archetype instead of fighter for the Shikigami Style vital striker we were talking about further up the page.
From Godbound – Lexicon of the Throne:
Murder word, lesser gifts, A Knife in the Dark:
Everything is a weapon in your hands. Anything you use to harm
another counts as a 1d10 magical weapon with a maximum range of
200 feet. If you attack a surprised target, the attack automatically hits
for maximum damage. Any creature killed by this gift dies in perfect
silence, if you so wish.
Paperclips, stamps, pieces of paper, actual weapons too. A murder godbound is great, i even roleplayed the teacup of death from The Chronicles of Riddick. The best part is: “Anything you use to harm another” is a fairly broad category. How i love that single gift 🙂
I was wondering if Chronicles of Riddick would come up in this thread. You do not disappoint. 🙂
I really like that scene, reenacting it was a honor my companions only realized they lost when i have done it already.
Once during a game one of my companions used a Impala 67 as improvised weapon. My pc didn’t see that one coming… in more than one meaning 🙁
If you’re just looking for ways to do it, Scion 2E ‘s Warrior Calling does actually have “Teacup of Death” as a Knack that allows you to use improvised items as if they were weapons, even choosing your own tags.
“Death by Teacup” actually, but yes. Reading about it, they, Death by Teacup and A Knife in the Dark are more or less the same. Apparently game designers have been see certain movie 🙂
Shikigami Style + Sledge Hammer + Vital Strike + ??? = Profit!
Just make sure you have some items that give your Sledge Hammer properties, i.e.: Amulet of Improved Improvised Weapon or Bracers of Maluable Metal.
I actually have a Shikigami Style sledge hammer user in Society. Richard “the Sledge” Hammers.
How many d6s are you rolling?
One time, my players came across a laboratory in an abandoned castle where they discovered an otherworldly, silvery octopus creature that resisted everything but gold. Luckily, there was a whole wall of golden gear right next to them… none of which was an actual weapon. Cue the party going to town on the monster with tiny golden surgical knives and needles.
Despite hints that they’ll be seeing more of these monsters they haven’t stocked up on any gold weapons yet, so I expect more of these shenanigans in the future.
I’m a little sad about surgical knives and needles. I was expecting flatware and and candelabra and crown-based headbutting!
Not mine, but good ol’ Ravongdork made Bumi Mei Fong to be the ultimate rock chucker https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p5wm&page=54?Ravingdorks-Crazy-Character-Emporium#2667
I’m glad hurler barbarians made it into the discussion. It’s one of those “huh, neat” things the first time you see it in the book, and I for one have never come back to it. Good to know someone has!
A very long tassle on a blanket.
I strangled a guy to death.
I’d say he deserved it, even if my character only did it because she’s a greedy idiot.
Ima need a picture of this tassel to accurately gauge the silliness of this anecdote.
As I’ve said before, if Open Hand Monk is gonna be a Gnome (Gnome Monk is a weird pairing) you gotta give him a hat. Preferably one of those rice paddy hats.
Not technically improvised weapons, but my Telekineticist “Annabelle the Gravity Gourmet” has a side job as a chef/baker, and goes all food fight on her enemies. As we near the endgame my telekinetic blasts are dealing like 9d8+50ish damage, which means I can throw a pie in someone’s face for about 90 damage.
I said a similar pun too in my last session when I fought my nemesis “The Saute’d Chef”. I said “Prepare to Meat your Baker”
Pies. Why did it have to be pies?
https://i.redd.it/ksg1p768kjt11.png
right-clicks
selects ‘search image on tineye’ from menu
https://www.deviantart.com/tricksywizard/gallery/
In Mage: the Awakening, I had a Free Council Moros who specialized in improvised weapons. There’s a fighting style that lets you scoop up an item from the environment and use it as a weapon, with weapon bonus equal to the lower of its Size and Durability, and you could use its Structure as armour. There was also a Matter spell that would increase the Durability and Structure of an item. Put those together, and he was regularly dual wielding discarded Coke bottles and pizza boxes that were harder than steel. His shadow name was Scavenger, and he worked at Reverse Garbage, a shop that reclaimed discarded items to make useful or artistic stuff.
Every time someone describes Mage I’m like, “Damn. I really need to give that one a try.” It always sounded like a lot of work to me though, inventing all those spells and whatnot.
What, no mention of the tavern brawler feat from 5E? It gives you proficiency in improvised weapons and makes you better at punching things.
Well if I mentioned every little feat, we wouldn’t get to have any fun in the comments now, would we?
Back in 3.5 I played a Goliath built around Grappling and the “Rock Hurling” feat line which also included the feats “Fling Enemy” and “Fling Ally”. The whole character was built around the phrase “Throw a motherfucker at another motherfucker” (pardon my french). As far as martial characters go, the ability to affect positioning is important in the games I play, so being able to throw an enemy away from a caster is a godsend.
Heh. I only ever heard of “fling ally” on account of the amazing art. Good to know that there’s more in the feat line.
Shikigami-Style Sledge Hammer, Nuff said.
Have you by chance watched or read John Dies At The End? It not only has some great somewhat improvised weapons (a boombox playing Whitesnake, a baseball bat with a bible duck-taped around the end), but it also has a monster made of assorted frozen meat who uses that exact line!
There are only so many meat puns in the world….
I have in fact read the book a few years back (and the sequel!) but I’ve yet to see the film. Is it worth a watch?
That’s sort of a tough a question. Obviously, it isn’t as good as the book, and they leave a bunch of stuff out, but it’s still a lot of fun and has Paul Giamatti as Arnie Blondstone. I really enjoyed, but I saw it before I read the book, so take that with a grain of salt.
You say you’ve read the sequel, have you read the third book?
The gonzo fun of the first book was largely absent in the second. I didn’t especially want to go on.
Why, was it a return to form?
My most impressive came from the first time I ran a Pathfinder game (only the second or third time I’d run any kind of anything).
It was far from the first session, but I’d basically joined the group only for the DM to go “I need some time to work ahead on stuff. Here’s a module followed by an Adventure Path, you’re DM now.”
So I was doing my best, trying to edit modules that weren’t quite the right level for a party of munchkins on the fly. The AP in question was Kingmaker, and the party were walking into the very first encounter at already level 10+. I’d decided the bandits should be tougher then they had been, but that the early few encounters should be cakewalk for the party and so not leveled the baddies up enough to be a real challenge.
So the PCs are asked for help, told the bandits are coming the next day, the bandits aren’t expecting resistance, and I describe the old fort the PCs are to defend. There are four old disused catapults set up on each corner of the fort, but each would take a week to refurbish. The party’s discussing what to do, when the one who’s the biggest roleplayer says “wait, I have an idea!”
Given this was the player who managed to earn the title of ‘Avatar of Chaos’ in the last Epic campaign he’d been in, and whose character alignment was best described as ‘Chaotic Chaotic’ in place of ‘Chaotic Nuetral’ I really should’ve known that was bad news.
The wizard used Make Whole to repair two of the catapults, the sorcerer summoned a pair of Earth elementals who could do Move Earth as spell-like abilities. The players then had the earth elementals dig out a pit beneath the fort’s primary gate, move the catapults down there side by side, and placed a large flat platform on top of the catapults, along with a layer of dirt, so the bandits wouldn’t notice anything off about the ground.
When the bandits arrived the next day, the party waited out of site as they walked into the fort… And then triggered the catapults when all six were standing on the platform.
Since the platforms were makeshift and not directed I had to roll for random scattering, looked up range of a catapult, translated the possible ranges into falling damage, and since they were being launched into a lightly wooded area random rolled for if any of them hit trees.
None of the bandits survived, although two of them did skid quite a bit and left very impressive furrows.
The cherry on top was that I then had to roll for if any of their equipment survived, and the leader was carrying four jars of alchemist’s fire. So you can imagine my player’s reactions when I described these various gruesome impacts and deaths… And then the leader of the bandits bursting into flames a moment later after landing.
I’d prefer it if players at my table would avoid beating their meat doing the game.
My current Pathfinder Improvised Weapon build is as follows:
2 Levels far strike monk.
3 levels scrollmaster wizard.
Catch off-guard, Shikigami Style, Mimicry, and Manipulation, with possible Throw anything (depending on race).
This allows you to take a SLEDGE, for 1gp, and hit for 6d6 in melee. As a full round action, you can throw it for 6d6 up to 50 feet.
Now, let’s say you want to stab someone with a wand? This turns into a +1-+5 2d6 damage weapon (for 1500 gp, an exlipsed or merciful wand is a +4 GreatSword!).
Throw in 2nd level spells, and evasion, and pretty good all round saves? Yes, please. Now I can Enlarge Person myself for 8d6 base damage. No, I won’t have the HP of a fighter. But I will be doing my part in any combat between ranged spells, ranged thrown improvised weapons, and melee hammer from hades.
ps. this build also allows for crossbow bolts to be used as special material weapons early on: a 61gp (610 for a set of 10 in society) adamantine (/ silvered / cold iron are cheaper) weapon that does 2d6. Yep.
I’m always intrigued by new uses for scrollmaster. This one is going in my “build notes” folder. Cheers!
Wand is 2d6, Rod would be 3d6, sorry. But easily, Shikigami with spells, imho, is better than going the fighter route, though unchained rogue helps with the vital tree earlier (10th/11th) AND let’s you cap out at +11 BAB. The nice things about the wizard build is also that if you go magical knack trait, (and of course surprise weapon), you’re not losing any caster levels, just some spell levels. Also, once you hit 7th, you can pick up a +4 (+3 AC) defender in an 8th level scroll, take an extra attack, and hope you never hit with it. That let’s you stack fighting defensively, wis bonus, dex bonus, shield, mage armor, and the defender (for only 3k!). With Evasion, of course. Not quite as nice as full plate? Well, 3+2+2+4+4+3 = 28 AC pretty easily. And it’s also 24 touch AC, way better than full plate.
*unchained monk… also, you would need to dip another full BAB class and give you the +11 BAB. But you still get 9th level spell access.
Historically, the word meat means the edible parts. Using it for plants is also valid.