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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5526654" data-attributes="member: 3400">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.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. 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.</blockquote>

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