billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
I think this bears repeating.
The cost for trying anything other than a straight up attack in many games is higher than the reward thus doing anything other than a straight up attack is almost always a poor choice. Presuming a rational actor, most of the time, simply making a straight up attack is the way to go.
Take a 3e D&D example. If you throw a pot of boiling water on someone, how much damage would it do? d6? D10? It shouldn't hurt much more than a flaming bottle of oil, so, that sounds about right.
So, who in their right mind is ever going to give up their regular attacks just to throw a pot of boiling water on someone? Improvised weapon gives attack penalties and it's going to do a fraction of the damage you would normally do.
Your typical improvised weapon generally does have penalties, yes. But if all the DM can come up with for you is penalties, then he's probably not doing as good a job as he can. For those of us who also played Champions, a standard suggestion was for surprise maneuvers to generate a GM-adjudicated attack bonus. I would consider doing the same in D&D or any other RPG. Or in the case of the boiling water, shift the attack from AC to Touch AC.
But important with the idea of choosing to use an improvised weapon instead of regularly attacking is the idea of necessity. Why throw a pewter tankard at your enemy rather than stab him with your +5 sword of feat-based benefits? Because you don't have your sword with you (or you don't want to completely gut the fool). If the DM is never giving the PCs a reason to use anything other than their fine-tuned benefits, they'll never use anything else. But hang the first PC who draws naked steel in a bar fight and they may sit up and take notice.
People are quick to claim that earlier editions let you do anything you could think of. The problem with that is that earlier editions based damage on a relative scale. Dropping an anvil on someone's head does X damage regardless of who is doing the dropping or who it's being dropped on. Most RPG's, particularly mainstream ones, work this way.
Frankly, I think this is the way it should be. Though I wouldn't be opposed to adding something like SWSE's level-based damage bonus that applies to all attacks. Kind of a nice idea, that one.
So, while you certainly can do anything you can think of, the vast majority of the time, those things at best the same as what you normally do. If I swing from the chandelier and attack someone, how much more damage do I have to do in order to make it worth it?
I'm taking a penalty to the attack (most of the time in most systems) for trying this, so, in order to make it worth it, I have to do signficantly more damage and/or gain significant effects. Maybe when I swing from the chandelier, I get to attack everyone in my path.
That's what the 4e D&D solution would be. The damage and/or effects of your stunt would be commensurate with your level. You wouldn't just get +2 to damage because it wouldn't be worth it. You'd get a Burst 1 attack Dex vs AC attack for swinging from the chandelier.
Until your system actively rewards doing things other than standard attacks, it could be as wide open as you want it to be, but, no one's going to take advantage of that because it would be a bad idea to try. Hrm, give up mostly guaranteed lesser damage to try something that has a significantly reduced chance of success and only a moderate improvement over my regular attack.
Most people can do that math pretty well.
This is why I'm not so sure that page 42 and 4e's methodology is as good as people are saying it is. With 4e's "fixing" of the math, the game's not particularly tolerant of PCs attacking with non-prime stats and has some of the same issues with feat/weapon-based bonuses to attacks that won't be available if, for example, the rogue tries to push a table into a pursuing guardsman in an effort to slow him down. If he's an artful dodger type, his attacks will be based on Dex, not Strength (which he's probably dumped since he gets more benefit having a better Con) so a Strength vs Reflex table-shove won't do very well compared to his normal attacks in 4e either.