Catch Off Guard(exploited for all its worth?)


Rules Questions

The Exchange

3 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

So if I were to take the Catch Off Guard feat(which gains you proficiency with improvised weapons) would I then be able to use any weapon that I lack proficiency in as an improvised weapon while converting its threat range to 20 and x2? What about an inappropriately-sized weapon, could I skirt the penalty to using such an item in the same manner?


I don't think there is an official ruling on this, so it tends to be up to GM interpretation. There was a good thread about this not too long ago that may be useful to you.


Weapons that you are not proficient with and improvised weapons are not the same thing, not even one is a subset of the other.

An improvised weapon is something that it is not designed to be used as a weapon. A fork, a pan, a branch of a tree. Catch Off Guard feat allows you to use these kind of things and the DM is the arbitrary which decides if you can use it and how much damage it does from how looks like. This feat is not designed to never allow you to use anything that can be found in the weapon lists.

Something in a weapon list needs special training in order to use it (spend time using it, balancing it in to your hand,learn the basic moves with it == this is proficiency).


Aris Kosmopoulos wrote:

Weapons that you are not proficient with and improvised weapons are not the same thing, not even one is a subset of the other.

An improvised weapon is something that it is not designed to be used as a weapon. A fork, a pan, a branch of a tree. Catch Off Guard feat allows you to use these kind of things and the DM is the arbitrary which decides if you can use it and how much damage it does from how looks like. This feat is not designed to never allow you to use anything that can be found in the weapon lists.

Something in a weapon list needs special training in order to use it (spend time using it, balancing it in to your hand,learn the basic moves with it == this is proficiency).

Meh if you are holding a great sword by the blade and using it as a club I could see calling that an improvised weapon.


Abraham spalding wrote:
Aris Kosmopoulos wrote:

Weapons that you are not proficient with and improvised weapons are not the same thing, not even one is a subset of the other.

An improvised weapon is something that it is not designed to be used as a weapon. A fork, a pan, a branch of a tree. Catch Off Guard feat allows you to use these kind of things and the DM is the arbitrary which decides if you can use it and how much damage it does from how looks like. This feat is not designed to never allow you to use anything that can be found in the weapon lists.

Something in a weapon list needs special training in order to use it (spend time using it, balancing it in to your hand,learn the basic moves with it == this is proficiency).

Meh if you are holding a great sword by the blade and using it as a club I could see calling that an improvised weapon.

If you have your eyes closed and don't *know* it's a great sword..

..then can you can claim it's an improvised weapon?

Maybe?

The madness...

*shakes fist*


Abraham spalding wrote:
Aris Kosmopoulos wrote:

Weapons that you are not proficient with and improvised weapons are not the same thing, not even one is a subset of the other.

An improvised weapon is something that it is not designed to be used as a weapon. A fork, a pan, a branch of a tree. Catch Off Guard feat allows you to use these kind of things and the DM is the arbitrary which decides if you can use it and how much damage it does from how looks like. This feat is not designed to never allow you to use anything that can be found in the weapon lists.

Something in a weapon list needs special training in order to use it (spend time using it, balancing it in to your hand,learn the basic moves with it == this is proficiency).

Meh if you are holding a great sword by the blade and using it as a club I could see calling that an improvised weapon.

if you are holding a great sword by the blade then you are not using a great sword. Of course it is an improvised weapon but:

1) It doesn't use the great swords damage , the DM decides how much damage it deals
2) It has 20 crit threat and x2 mult
3) It is not affected by masterwork, weapon focus at great sword, weapon spec at greatsword etc.

So actually someone using a greatsword that way is not actually using a greatsword in game mechanics. The weapon list describes the statistics of a proper use of the weapon. In the same way I can use my bow as a baseball bat. At that time I am not using the bow described in the book but an improvised weapon that the only similar statistic it has with the bow is its weight.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

PRD - LINK IS TO YOUR LEFT UNDER 'LINKS'! wrote:


Improvised Weapons: Sometimes objects not crafted to be weapons nonetheless see use in combat. Because such objects are not designed for this use, any creature that uses an improvised weapon in combat is considered to be nonproficient with it and takes a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with that object. To determine the size category and appropriate damage for an improvised weapon, compare its relative size and damage potential to the weapon list to find a reasonable match. An improvised weapon scores a threat on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a critical hit. An improvised thrown weapon has a range increment of 10 feet.

Emphasis mine.

I would say RAW, an improvised weapon cannot be anything originally intended to be a weapon.


DeathQuaker wrote:
PRD - LINK IS TO YOUR LEFT UNDER 'LINKS'! wrote:


Improvised Weapons: Sometimes objects not crafted to be weapons nonetheless see use in combat. Because such objects are not designed for this use, any creature that uses an improvised weapon in combat is considered to be nonproficient with it and takes a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with that object. To determine the size category and appropriate damage for an improvised weapon, compare its relative size and damage potential to the weapon list to find a reasonable match. An improvised weapon scores a threat on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a critical hit. An improvised thrown weapon has a range increment of 10 feet.

Emphasis mine.

I would say RAW, an improvised weapon cannot be anything originally intended to be a weapon.

Break the weapon first!

..when does a Great Sword become a slab of metal with a worked edges and an adjoined wooden protrusion bound in a fibrous material....

O_o

*shakes fist*

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

BenignFacist wrote:
DeathQuaker wrote:
PRD - LINK IS TO YOUR LEFT UNDER 'LINKS'! wrote:


Improvised Weapons: Sometimes objects not crafted to be weapons nonetheless see use in combat. Because such objects are not designed for this use, any creature that uses an improvised weapon in combat is considered to be nonproficient with it and takes a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with that object. To determine the size category and appropriate damage for an improvised weapon, compare its relative size and damage potential to the weapon list to find a reasonable match. An improvised weapon scores a threat on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a critical hit. An improvised thrown weapon has a range increment of 10 feet.

Emphasis mine.

I would say RAW, an improvised weapon cannot be anything originally intended to be a weapon.

Break the weapon first!

..when does a Great Sword become a slab of metal with a worked edges and an adjoined wooden protrusion bound in a fibrous material....

O_o

*shakes fist*

A sword with the "broken" condition is still a sword and still thus an object crafted to be a weapon. The penalties to attack with a weapon with the broken condition are also different from the penalties for attacking with an Improvised Weapon.

I realize you're trying to be silly, but I think the OP had a legit rules question, and I'm trying to be as helpful as I can. Sorry if I'm ruining your fun.


DeathQuaker wrote:
BenignFacist wrote:
DeathQuaker wrote:
PRD - LINK IS TO YOUR LEFT UNDER 'LINKS'! wrote:


Improvised Weapons: Sometimes objects not crafted to be weapons nonetheless see use in combat. Because such objects are not designed for this use, any creature that uses an improvised weapon in combat is considered to be nonproficient with it and takes a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with that object. To determine the size category and appropriate damage for an improvised weapon, compare its relative size and damage potential to the weapon list to find a reasonable match. An improvised weapon scores a threat on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a critical hit. An improvised thrown weapon has a range increment of 10 feet.

Emphasis mine.

I would say RAW, an improvised weapon cannot be anything originally intended to be a weapon.

Break the weapon first!

..when does a Great Sword become a slab of metal with a worked edges and an adjoined wooden protrusion bound in a fibrous material....

O_o

*shakes fist*

A sword with the "broken" condition is still a sword and still thus an object crafted to be a weapon. The penalties to attack with a weapon with the broken condition are also different from the penalties for attacking with an Improvised Weapon.

I realize you're trying to be silly, but I think the OP had a legit rules question, and I'm trying to be as helpful as I can. Sorry if I'm ruining your fun.

O_o I never try to be silly - I succeed with flying colours.

Perhaps my attempts at kick-starting heads is too obtuse:

It's been mentioned before and I'm nodding towards it again that the improvised weapon/Catch Off Guard elements are... very strange.

A sword is simply a shaped set of materials intended to be used in a certain number of ways.

We call something a sword if it the something fulfills a number of requirements that we recognise as characterising a sword.

Now, I'm not gonna argue that the rules aren't very specific with their terminology - that's pretty much the basis of a written rule system. (Take a legal document for example.) An improved weapon is *this*. A weapon is any object that is *this*. Catch Of Guard does this and that but not with this. etc etc.

However, Catch Off Gaurd with an object does X amount of damage. A weapon is an object. It stands to reason that a weapon could be used to to the X amount of damage when used in conjunction with Catch Off Gaurd.

However, the rules clearly define what a weapon is and the feat states that an object crafted as a weapon cannot be used in conjunction with the feat.

This is strange. Simply because it's a case of rules clashing with common sense. (Yes yes, it's a game, wizards, fireballs - realism is bad word yadda yadda...)

The 'if i close my eyes' remark was intended to highlight how a character totally ignorant of a weapon is still automatically classed as being, on some level, familiar with operating said weapon-object and thus not able to make use of the Catch Off-Guard feat.

Which, once again, is fine as per rules but seemingly strange -- I can't personally operate an automatic rifle. However, I cannot use my Catch Off Gaurd feat (which I have, obviously..) with an automatic rifle because it is a weapon-object.

Even tho I'm totally ignorant of the weapon-related properties of an object I still interact with the object as a weapon-object..

Madness...

The 'break it' and attempt to express a great sword in every way without actually saying great sword was another, albeit obtuse way of having a dig at this strange state of play.

Along the same lines is the strangeness of how the improvised weapon related feats never grant the ability to deal lethal damage..

..so, my character can stab you with a dagger - essentially a sharpened wedge of metal - for lethal damage.

..but my character cannot stab you for lethal damage (nor use my Catch Off Guard feat) with an improvised weapon that consists of a sharpened wedge of metal.

Personally, I find that ..weird.

Now, if you don't mind, I have much more silliness to share! :)

*shakes fist*

Dark Archive

Personally, when it comes to weapons as improvised weapons, I like how they handled it in the APG with the monk of the empty hand:

Quote:


A monk of the empty hand treats normal weapons as improvised weapons with the following equivalencies (substituting all of their statistics for the listed weapon): a light weapon functions as a light hammer, a one-handed weapon functions as a club, and a two-handed weapon functions as a quarterstaff. This replaces the normal monk weapon proficiencies.


Happler wrote:

Personally, when it comes to weapons as improvised weapons, I like how they handled it in the APG with the monk of the empty hand:

Quote:


A monk of the empty hand treats normal weapons as improvised weapons with the following equivalencies (substituting all of their statistics for the listed weapon): a light weapon functions as a light hammer, a one-handed weapon functions as a club, and a two-handed weapon functions as a quarterstaff. This replaces the normal monk weapon proficiencies.

Now *that* I like.

Thank you for the heads up Happler .

*shakes fist*


Maybe the whole inability to use a real weapon as an improvised one comes not from you, but from your targets. If somebody comes at you with a longsword, even if he's holding it wrong, you (assuming a reasonably experienced 1st level Warrior, proficient with longswords) know to react to it as a longsword, but if the idiot comes at you with a full dinner set, you don't know what the hell to do then.

Or the reasoning comes from training, most characters who might take Catch Off-Guard would be martially trained and at least familiar with stabby, slashy and smashy things. Using a longsword as an improvised weapon would go against that training, the ground in knowledge and muscle memory that you would have to work against to beat somebody silly with the hilt of that longsword while you hold it by the blade!

None of which accounts for the inept and mostly useless with a weapon wizard or sorcerer. Can't have it all I guess... and if we did, we'd just want more.

Just my 2 coppers.

Dark Archive

This still makes for a fun feat for a rogue. Goes well with the disarm series.

grab a wizards wand (disarm) and stab the snot out of him with it! you get sneak attack (if they are now unarmed) since catch off guard says that they are flat footed to you.


Aris Kosmopoulos wrote:
Abraham spalding wrote:
Aris Kosmopoulos wrote:

Weapons that you are not proficient with and improvised weapons are not the same thing, not even one is a subset of the other.

An improvised weapon is something that it is not designed to be used as a weapon. A fork, a pan, a branch of a tree. Catch Off Guard feat allows you to use these kind of things and the DM is the arbitrary which decides if you can use it and how much damage it does from how looks like. This feat is not designed to never allow you to use anything that can be found in the weapon lists.

Something in a weapon list needs special training in order to use it (spend time using it, balancing it in to your hand,learn the basic moves with it == this is proficiency).

Meh if you are holding a great sword by the blade and using it as a club I could see calling that an improvised weapon.

if you are holding a great sword by the blade then you are not using a great sword. Of course it is an improvised weapon but:

1) It doesn't use the great swords damage , the DM decides how much damage it deals
2) It has 20 crit threat and x2 mult
3) It is not affected by masterwork, weapon focus at great sword, weapon spec at greatsword etc.

So actually someone using a greatsword that way is not actually using a greatsword in game mechanics. The weapon list describes the statistics of a proper use of the weapon. In the same way I can use my bow as a baseball bat. At that time I am not using the bow described in the book but an improvised weapon that the only similar statistic it has with the bow is its weight.

I agree with points 1~3. I would suggest that a magical weapon would still be magical though -- after all it's not like because you are holding and swinging it wrongly that it suddenly isn't magical and loses it's bonuses to hardness and hp.

Technically if we go with "object not designed to be used as a weapon" then we quickly go into a sematics debate. Serious as all get out I've seen someone argue that a gun shouldn't be called a weapon because it's a tool.

Stupidest thing I'd ever seen, but I could use the same basic argument to say an axe isn't a weapon it's designed as a tool and happens to be useful as an improvised means of self defense.

A weapon used in a way that it is not intended to be used should be an improvised weapon (as the aforementioned greatsword held by the blade).

Now when using a weapon in an improvised matter you shouldn't get the base weapon damage, critical range, critical multiplier and maybe not even reach (depending on method of use).

Also there is a difference between using a weapon non-proficiently (getting the weapon's stats but taking a -4 to hit) using a broken weapon (still getting some of the weapon's stats but taking other penalties) and using a weapon (or broken weapon) in a matter that the weapon was never intended for/to be used in.

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