Strapping oil flask on war hammer.

[Belier]

Imagine a PC preparing for teamwork in a fight. He wants to help the caster with some action economy. During a short rest, he use like 10 feet of rope to strap a clay flask of oil on the blunt side of his war hammer. Then when the battle arise, he strike a target with both hand shattering the oil on impact + 1d10. The caster then use skmething like produce flame to gain an extra 5 fire damage. Would you allow such action economy?

[Willie the Duck]

I would say that the flask is acting like a car's crumple zone, absorbing the impact of the damage. This would act just like using one's action to break the oil flask over someone's head without the war hammer.

[nickl_2000]

It is a little crazy but sure why not. RAW it would probably not work, but I like this kind of stuff and would allow it on my table.

HOWEVER
-You need to pay for the flask and oil and make the attack with disadvantage (since the balance is all off) until it is broken.
-There is a chance if you miss that the flask breaks on the shield or on the ground and doesn't help you
-You need to make a Dex save to avoid having your arm be bound by the rope that is suddenly hanging loosely around your weapon. If you fail you get disadvantage on all attacks until you spend an action untangling yourself

[Armored Walrus]

I'd allow it without all the disadvantages. If they took the time to think ahead like this might as well let it work for a measly 5 damage. In fact, if they missed, but rolled higher than 10+Dex I would say it hit hard enough to break the flask even though it didn't do damage (or higher than 10 against a heavy armor opponent). Seems like the cost in rope and oil - and the necessity to go buy it all the time, would keep this from doing this for every battle, but even if not, who cares if they do an extra five damage on the opening round of every battle from now on?

Only way I would disallow it would be for campaign tone reasons. If I'm going for a super-serious tone, then this is a bit too silly to get in. This is closer to MacGuyver in tone.

Edit: OR, if my campaign was already overrun with players who are constantly looking for edge Rulings to work in their favor. Grant too many of them, and you end up spending your whole session adjudicating, rather than playing - and trying to remember all the different options you've ruled in and how they interact with each other. D&D is already complex enough without that.

[Belier]

Well looking at all the answer the middle would be of an improvised weapon and would deal 1d4 + soaked with oil condition.

May be keep the versatile and grant 1d6 at both hand.

[MadBear]

I'd say either:
- Hammer counts as improvised weapon for the attack (so disadvantage + less damage)
or
- Just disadvantage (it would be clumsier to use)

[EvilAnagram]

I'd say either:
- Hammer counts as improvised weapon for the attack (so disadvantage + less damage)
or
- Just disadvantage (it would be clumsier to use)
I don't really think it needs balancing in this way. After all, they're already putting non-renewable resources into this by spending money on the oil.

[Flashy]

I'd say either:
- Hammer counts as improvised weapon for the attack (so disadvantage + less damage)
or
- Just disadvantage (it would be clumsier to use)

Improvised weapons don’t suffer disadvantage on attack rolls, you just don’t get to add your proficiency bonus unless you have specific features (or the DM feels it’s close enough to a real weapon to allow your proficiency to apply).

[MadBear]

Improvised weapons don’t suffer disadvantage on attack rolls, you just don’t get to add your proficiency bonus unless you have specific features (or the DM feels it’s close enough to a real weapon to allow your proficiency to apply).

I stand corrected. So yeah, just no prof bonus + improvised weapon damage.

[Willie the Duck]

I don't really think it needs balancing in this way. After all, they're already putting non-renewable resources into this by spending money on the oil.

The balancing is for doubling up on action economy. Why ever not do this when attacking with oil?

OTOH, not everything needs to be balanced. Especially if you are rewarding player ingenuity. I think the real question is: is this the player being clever (and thus perhaps deserving reward) or not? I retract my initial reservation and attempt at realism and switch to a tentative yes. It is inventive, and should maybe be rewarded... once or twice. If, at later levels when oil is cheap and maybe the party has encumbrance-solving magic items, I might regret giving them +5 damage for the first attack in every battle.

[DigitalCharlie]

I'd allow it, and take a page from Dungeon World for actually playing it. On their first swing, they have to make some sort of check. There are three possible states: success, success with drawback, and failure. I'd probably make it based on the character — strength/athletics if they'd just use a ton of extra rope and really tie it down, wisdom/survival to tie knots, whatever. DC 20 for an outright success dealing 1d4 extra damage and covering the enemy with oil, DC 10/15+ the flask still shatters on the enemy but also splashes oil on them, below that it shatters on the ground.

And I'd also warn them that certain other circumstances might ignite the oil — like if they're caught in a fireball with the flask on their weapon they may take extra damage.

[Demonslayer666]

Imagine a PC preparing for teamwork in a fight. He wants to help the caster with some action economy. During a short rest, he use like 10 feet of rope to strap a clay flask of oil on the blunt side of his war hammer. Then when the battle arise, he strike a target with both hand shattering the oil on impact + 1d10. The caster then use skmething like produce flame to gain an extra 5 fire damage. Would you allow such action economy?

Without duct tape and only using rope, it would be a very difficult task to secure an item to a weapon and still be able to swing it around effectively without it flying off. Maybe if they used a cloth bag with holes, a leather holster, or a net to hold it in place.

That's a lot of rope, a few feet of twine should be plenty.

For simplification, I'd handwave it and simply say it's fine, but it would have it be a first attack only usage, unless they miss by a lot (hit AC < 10).

[DeTess]

OTOH, not everything needs to be balanced. Especially if you are rewarding player ingenuity. I think the real question is: is this the player being clever (and thus perhaps deserving reward) or not? I retract my initial reservation and attempt at realism and switch to a tentative yes. It is inventive, and should maybe be rewarded... once or twice. If, at later levels when oil is cheap and maybe the party has encumbrance-solving magic items, I might regret giving them +5 damage for the first attack in every battle.

I think by the time money and encumbrance is no longer an issue, their damage will be high enough that +5 damage at the start of a fight isn't that significant.

So yeah, I'd allow this too, and not penalize them for it. Though if you do want to penalize them, keep it simple. Disadvantage or having the weapon count as improvised is fine, having them make 2-3 extra rolls per attack as long as the flask is attached isn't, as it'll slow the game down and confuse them. I'm fairly certain that it's a proverb somewhere on this forum that you 'shouldn't balance something by making it annoying to use'.

I would make it clear to them that you will be judging ingenuity on a case-by-case basis, and that you reserve the right to change your mind. Just because you allowed this doesn't mean you'll allow something else, even if it's similar, and if this does prove to be unbalancing, they should know that you can reserve the ruling and no longer allow it.

[Contrast]

I really don't see this working.

Not for balance reasons just...practicality wise.

A flask of oil is 1lb so we're talking a small milk carton or so. It's worth noting this is already half the stated weight of a warhammer so I'm going to assume whatever we're doing is going to have a significant impact on the balance of the weapon. In order to have much effect I'd probably argue you'd need to use several to get someone coated enough they were likely to ignite. If it were that easy to set people on fire, an alchemist flask wouldn't cost 500 times more than a flask of oil.

You'd need to store in in containers fragile enough that they were easily breakable (and yet still easily attachable to the weapon in such a way that they didn't smash/leak/come loose during normal activity) and they'd need to carry around a supply in their pack somehow without smashing/breaking them.

I'd probably allow this as an immediate solution if they encountered an enemy that was weak to/could only be damaged by fire so the martial gets to contribute or as something to keep one of in their pack 'just in case'. If they wanted to set up to do this at the start of every fight I'd start to question the points above. It only takes your equipment bag exploding once to make it not seem like such a great plan.

[Willie the Duck]

Not for balance reasons just...practicality wise.

Oh, it absolutely doesn't. Medieval oil storage devices aren't like modern day stoppered glass jars or something, rope is not duct tape, and as I said, the breaking jar would act as a force-absorber to the Warhammer blow. This is all rule-of-cool from start to finish.

[Crgaston]

After the first turn, you’d have an oil-soaked burning rope attached to your war hammer...

...Which could be rather awesome, actually.

Edit:
Another thought... since these would likely be ceramic/clay flasks, it’d be easy to have some commissioned in any village with a potter that were flat on one side to match the hammer face and with loop handles on either side to pass the rope through.

Ten feet of rope is WAY overkill. You could use 2’ and unravel it to make twine if you didn’t have some twine already.

[BrainFreeze]

I would just skip the flask and go with soaking the rope in oil. This way you are not trying to break anything other than your opponent's face, and you can still light to rope.