Should most characters be proficient with Improvised Weapons?

[heavyfuel]

In every game I've played - including previous editions - I've never seen Improvised Weapons (IW) being used, pretty much ever. I think it happened maybe 3 times in 20+ years of playing.

There are multiple reasons for that, but - without a doubt - the main one is that there's an explicit penalty to using them, namely, non-proficiency. If a character is disarmed - a rare occurrence in 5e - it is considerably better to use either a backup weapon or to find a proper weapon than to use an IW. Whenever a new player wants to improvise, you have to kill their buzz and say "Okay, but you'll attack with only +3 instead of +6" and they all go "Oh... nevermind then".

There would still be plenty of penalties associated with IW:
- 1d4 damage, the lowest damage of any weapon
- No weapon property like Light or Reach (although I can see DMs allowing them)
- Non magical
- No +X bonuses you might have with your regular weapon
- No Feats you can use with your regular weapon (GWM/SS/PAM)

So you wouldn't have everyone being Jackie Chan, because most characters would still much prefer to use their main weapon most of the time, but they might try to use some IW in specific cases.

And it's not every character. I think classes that are proficient with only Simple weapons shouldn't also be proficient with IW.

I think allowing IW would benefit everyone with a more dynamic gameplay. What say you, members of the playground?Are there any unforeseen side effects to this? Is it a good rule? Is it a bad rule? If so, why?

[Psyren]

Your rule is fine but it's also not necessarily needed - per PHB 147-148, improvised weapons that are similar enough to actual weapons can be treated as that weapon including damage and using proficiency bonus without needing a feat (note that the 1d4 is only for things "that bear no resemblance to a weapon," it's not a universal drawback), so for example a ripped off table leg can be treated as a club by anyone proficient with clubs and a farmer's pitchfork could be used like a trident or spear for example. It's logical for the characters too - a rogue in a fight is more likely to break a bottle and stab someone's vitals with it than they are to reach for a mop, and this rule encourages that kind of tactical consideration of their surroundings and the items at hand while saving on a feat.

[clash]

Most characters are already proficient with improved if they resemble a weapon the character is proficient with.

"Often, an Improvised Weapon is similar to an actual weapon and can be treated as such. For example, a table leg is akin to a club. At the GM’s option, a character proficient with a weapon can use a similar object as if it were that weapon and use his or her Proficiency Bonus."

This is the rule. The exception is below

"An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon deals 1d4 damage"

I think most dms just don't run improvised weapons right. If your attacking with a chair leg and proficient with clubs, you are proficient and it is a light weapon like the club. If it's a table leg than it might even do 1d8 damage of the great club. If you attack with a chair then you aren't proficient. Most of the time though characters will be proficient with whatever they use as improvised weapons.

Ninja'd

[heavyfuel]

I know about this rule, but I'm talking "actual" IW, not weapons that are similar enough to regular weapons :smallbiggrin:

[clash]

What kind of objects are players trying to use as weapons?

The rule is fine mechanically but narratively it makes sense to me that if you are trained with daggers your going to have an easier time hitting someone with a dagger than a mug. Particularly when that someone is armored or agile.

[Psyren]

I know about this rule, but I'm talking "actual" IW, not weapons that are similar enough to regular weapons :smallbiggrin:

I did answer that:


Your rule is fine

Just saying that speaking personally, I prefer not to apply a houserule when one isn't needed. Your rule adds the convenience of the player not needing to search for a sufficiently weaponlike IW, but you could argue that needing to find an object that plays into your character's strengths is part of the fun.

[PhantomSoul]

Just saying that speaking personally, I prefer not to apply a houserule when one isn't needed. Your rule adds the convenience of the player not needing to search for a sufficiently weaponlike IW, but you could argue that needing to find an object that plays into your character's strengths is part of the fun.

And I would! :)

[Durazno]

Blanket proficiency with improvised weapons feels odd to me because the whole thing that makes it "improvised" is that it's an object that isn't a weapon, so why would you have trained with it?

[PhantomSoul]

Blanket proficiency with improvised weapons feels odd to me because the whole thing that makes it "improvised" is that it's an object that isn't a weapon, so why would you have trained with it?

And why not just get proficiency with all weapons! (This is mostly non-serious; the damage is different and there are other properties, but it does seem slightly strange)

[Snails]

That Improvised Weapons suck is only a problem if your adventurers are attacked by Hill Giant assassins while you are stripped naked in bed with professional "entertainers" (who are Rogues who were hired to slip your weapons out the window).

They are supposed to suck. They are the things you used to fight off the peasants who have mistaken you strangers for the demon worshippers kidnapping the local children, trap the PCs in the tavern while wielding farm implements, and then light the building on fire for good measure. It is kind of classy to make your argument with a chair (+3 to hit, 1d4 bludgeoning) against the farmer with a pitchfork (+1 to hit, 1d4 piercing), rather than a magical greatsword (+8 to hit, 2d6+5 slashing).

As others have pointed out, if the fight is really dangerous, spend an Action to fashion a proper club from a table leg so you can employ your proficiency bonus in future rounds.

[Snails]

Blanket proficiency with improvised weapons feels odd to me because the whole thing that makes it "improvised" is that it's an object that isn't a weapon, so why would you have trained with it?

Seems like something that would make for a silly but flavorful benefit of a PC background. I could also imagine a Proficiency With All Weapons Including Improvised Weapons feat.

[ender241]

I think the Drunken Master Monk is the subclass that should've gotten blanket improvised weapon proficiency. Probably even treating improvised weapons as monk weapons. I mean, that class is the Jackie Chan class. I think WotC missed the mark a little on that one.

[Willie the Duck]

In every game I've played - including previous editions - I've never seen Improvised Weapons (IW) being used, pretty much ever. I think it happened maybe 3 times in 20+ years of playing.
There are multiple reasons for that, but - without a doubt - the main one is that there's an explicit penalty to using them, namely, non-proficiency. If a character is disarmed - a rare occurrence in 5e - it is considerably better to use either a backup weapon or to find a proper weapon than to use an IW.

Fundamentally, I would agree. Back when you had to pick each weapon individually for proficiency, this applied to using real weapon in which you weren't proficient most of the time as well. The issue being that the penalty is too great to spend rounds in combat* subjecting yourself to attack to get in the meager combat output you would be outputting with the improvised weapon unless you genuinely had no other option. 5e has exacerbated the issue a bit in that each character has a specified attribute they tend to use for combat rolls (and balanced combat to that expectation) and best not to find yourself in a position to have to use another (ex: rogues like finesse weapons and ranged, and probably would spend rounds trying to leverage that rather than swinging a make-shift club).
*especially melee, and especially for the classes where not having multiple backups (and/or gauntlets, depending on edition) is at all reasonable.

Regardless, I don't think changing the improvised weapon rules will really solve this, as the ease of carrying backups, easy drawing weapons, and having all sorts of other combat options will overwhelm this change in all but a few situations (the proverbial 'you wake up in a jail cell/on a desert island' storyline, which every DM really gets to pull about once per table of players).

[KorvinStarmast]

I think the Drunken Master Monk is the subclass that should've gotten blanket improvised weapon proficiency. Probably even treating improvised weapons as monk weapons. I mean, that class is the Jackie Chan class. I think WotC missed the mark a little on that one. I'll +1 this.

Regardless, I don't think changing the improvised weapon rules will really solve this, as the ease of carrying backups, easy drawing weapons, and having all sorts of other combat options will overwhelm this change in all but a few situations (the proverbial 'you wake up in a jail cell/on a desert island' storyline, which every DM really gets to pull about once per table of players). The OP's proposedd 'rule' is {yet another} case of fiddling for no value added.

for heavyfuel: the overall genre is swords and sorcery, not bread boards and sorcery. :smallsmile:

[Psyren]

Regardless, I don't think changing the improvised weapon rules will really solve this, as the ease of carrying backups, easy drawing weapons, and having all sorts of other combat options will overwhelm this change in all but a few situations (the proverbial 'you wake up in a jail cell/on a desert island' storyline, which every DM really gets to pull about once per table of players).

Adding value to improvised weapons doesn't have to mean waking up on a desert island or in jail. Other options include:

1) The PCs are in an area / attending an event that required their weapons to be temporarily confiscated or left outside - e.g. a high-society banquet or meeting the king when assassins burst in.
2) The PCs are up against foes who are remarkably adept at disarming or sundering their weapons. (These maneuvers don't explicitly exist in 5e, but can easily be Improvised Contests.)
3) The improvised weapons themselves might be more effective than what the PCs thought to pack. If you have no silver weapons for instance, that fancy silver candlestick on the table might be a better bet against the approaching werewolf.

If someone (like the OP) wants improvised weapons to be used more, creating situations where improvised weapons make sense as a solution is the way to go.

[Willie the Duck]

Adding value to improvised weapons doesn't have to mean waking up on a desert island or in jail. Other options include:

1) The PCs are in an area / attending an event that required their weapons to be temporarily confiscated or left outside - e.g. a high-society banquet or meeting the king when assassins burst in.
2) The PCs are up against foes who are remarkably adept at disarming or sundering their weapons. (These maneuvers don't explicitly exist in 5e, but can easily be Improvised Contests.)
3) The improvised weapons themselves might be more effective than what the PCs thought to pack. If you have no silver weapons for instance, that fancy silver candlestick on the table might be a better bet against the approaching werewolf.

If someone (like the OP) wants improvised weapons to be used more, creating situations where improvised weapons make sense as a solution is the way to go.

I suppose I could have included the term 'such as' in my example, but I was intending a wider set of scenarios that just those two. But the point remains, while I think all of these scenarios do show up to a lessor or greater extent (and can be fun in the right doses), there is a practical limit to how many you can throw them at the PCs, in total, before the response is 'what's going on, why do you want us fighting with frying pans and chair legs all the time?' I mean, obviously if you do and your players don't eventually tire of it (or, conversely, all pick monks now that they aren't terrible*), more power to you, but I don't in general think 'making X fun by making not-X unreliable/annoying/bad' will work any better than it did for AD&D-spellcasting or the 3e monk/sorcerer*. The in-game instances of social occasions, werewolves when you don't have silver (or combat cantrips, I guess), and so on (tavern brawls where drawing a blade changes the charge against you) should come up organically, and without an eye towards incentivizing a PC build style.
*sorcerer because their non-existent spellbook could not be targeted.

And that's the other bit. If the OP wants this playstyle done more often, they should check with their players. There are already a couple of ways the PCs can do this thing -- monks and tavern brawler feat. They are just opt-in. If the Players haven't been going to this well, it should be asked of them whether this is their fantasy as much as the OP DM's. That at least is where I'd start. After that, yes definitely one should make a system where doing the thing is plausible and rewarding (Tavern Brawler could probably be boosted a bit, for instance).

[Snails]

3) The improvised weapons themselves might be more effective than what the PCs thought to pack. If you have no silver weapons for instance, that fancy silver candlestick on the table might be a better bet against the approaching werewolf.

At the handwaving theory level, this idea makes some sense. At a practical level, 5e narrowed the circumstances such things could be meaningful by (A) (almost) always allowing half damage (rather zero damage) for the wrong kind of weapon, (B) making the normal weapons bland compared to each other. Special advantages for non-weapons fit poorly in this context.

If you are attacked by werewolves at a formal dinner, there could be a pair of silver swords over the mantelpiece owned by Great Gramp Halvelvn The Ratslayer. Or use a silver knife from the table.

[Leon]

If someone isn't going to do a action because they only get a +3 instead of a +6 then they were not really committed to doing that action improvised or not.

Last time i used a Improvised weapon it was with a Level 1 Wizard in a 3.5e campaign and despite the high chance that it would end badly for that 4 hp character it was a thematically cool thing to do (Diving* charge down a flight of stairs with a chair to take out a Skeleton) *If not for having wings i'd not have done the diving charge part but still would have gone in with the chair