Hi
We noticed in our group that you need a melee weapon to threat another creature, but since my wizard only carries a crossbow he can't threat.
As a response I said that he just use the crossbow as an improvised weapon in melee, as far as we can see you DO threat with an improvised weapon. It does however seem rather cheezy.
Today my GM came with the counterargument that if you can use an crossbow as an improvised weapon, you can also use a belt or your boots, AND if you look under the improvised weapon description it says nothing about needing to wield your improvised weapon in your hands, so you could by RAW make an attack with you belt while its holding your pants up, or with your boots while they are on your feet, and thus you would always be considered armed.
Clearly this is not the intention with the rules, we are however a bit unsure what was intended.
my best bet is that the intention is that you can in fact use everything as an improvised weapon, but if the improvised weapon is worse than an unarmed strike, you provoke attack of oppertunity and you do not threat. If it is better, you do not provoke attack of oppertunity, and you threat with it.
Have we missed some rules in the book? - or do you guys have a better suggestion?
Another idea we just got, which we like better is the following:
You cannot threat with a weapon you are not proficient with.
An improvised weapon has to be better than your unarmed strike to avoid giving attacks of oppertunity.
Why no melee weapon? Is it a roleplaying thing?