I'm curious how these interact.
Splintering Weapon
Your fragile weapon works to your advantage, breaking off fragments in wounds you inflict.
Prerequisite: Base attack bonus +1, proficient with weapon, weapon made of primitive material.
Benefit: Whenever you use a melee or thrown weapon with the fragile weapon feature or similar quality and hit an opponent, you can give your weapon the broken condition to deal that opponent 1d4 points of bleed damage.
And
Disposable Weapon
You ignore the limitations of your equipment, striking harder despite the damage it does to your weapon.
Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +1, proficient with weapon.
Benefit: Whenever you use a melee or thrown weapon with the fragile weapon special quality to score a critical threat against an opponent, you can give your weapon the broken condition to automatically confirm the critical hit.
With:
Catch Off-Guard (Combat)
Foes are surprised by your skilled use of unorthodox and improvised weapons.
Benefit: You do not suffer any penalties for using an improvised melee weapon. Unarmed opponents are flat-footed against any attacks you make with an improvised melee weapon.
Normal: You take a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with an improvised weapon.
Throw Anything (Combat)
You are used to throwing things you have on hand.
Benefit: You do not suffer any penalties for using an improvised ranged weapon. You receive a +1 circumstance bonus on attack rolls made with thrown splash weapons.
Normal: You take a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with an improvised weapon.
[spoiler=Improvised Weapon Mastery]
Improvised Weapon Mastery (Combat)
You can turn nearly any object into a deadly weapon, from a razor-sharp chair leg to a sack of flour.
Prerequisites: Catch Off-Guard or Throw Anything, base attack bonus +8.
Benefit: You do not suffer any penalties for using an improvised weapon. Increase the amount of damage dealt by the improvised weapon by one step (for example, 1d4 becomes 1d6) to a maximum of 1d8 (2d6 if the improvised weapon is two-handed). The improvised weapon has a critical threat range of 19–20, with a critical multiplier of ×2. [\spoiler]
To this end, I quote the relevant text from the PRD.
Emphasis mine... Noticing that Splintering Weapon (as well as Disposable Weapon, but I'm not as interested in that feat) require you to be 'proficient' with a weapon to gain the benefit... By strict reading of RAW I doubt you can use Splintering Weapon with improvised, even if you have the relevant feats... However, I'm curious on your guys opinions on it?...
Edit: To clarify (I'm not all awake here), I'm wondering if you guys think something like this could be considered game breaking, or even just game bending. Personally I think it'd be in the spirit of an improvised weapon being that beer bottle that just got chucked at the back of your head, or a simple stick picked up from the side of the road being used to jab you in the torso. And at rather later levels 1d4 bleed is negligeable.
Stone clubs are free, simple weapons that are also fragile. No need for an improvised weapon. As such, I would say no, it isn't going to break anything to let them work with improvised weapons.
In the strictest interpretation, I don't think you get the benefits of the feat unless you're already proficient with the weapon (such as being proficient with a stone club but wielding it as an improvised weapon for some undetermined reason). However, I see no problem with it. The -4 penalty comes from non-proficiency, while Catch Off Guard removes the penalty. For many GMs (myself included) that would be enough to make a judgment call and say you're considered proficient in the weapon you're improvising.
That being said, those feats sound kind of amusing to use with clubs. I think I may have just come up with a new gimmick for some of my NPCs. Thank you Artemis; my players shall now feel the wrath of NPCs intentionally breaking clubs on them to deal 1d4 bleed damage, or auto-confirm criticals. ^-^
You're not taking any penalties for non-proficiency with the improvised weapons, but it doesn't say that you're proficient. I see a distinction there.
That said, loading up on disposable fragile weapons and dealing bleed damage is a rather fun thing to do with NPCs. I pitted my players against an entire orc tribe based around that strategy (at around level 4). The newer players became familiar with bleed rules very quickly.
It's not really useful for high level PCs though, since magic weapons tend to lose the fragile quality. Perhaps if you add in Quick Draw, so that you can drop your broken dagger immediately after dealing bleed damage and finish your iterative attacks with your flaming longsword...
Sorry to (possible?) necro but I finally have time at the library to reply to some of my stuff!
Thanks for the replies, more or less the thought processes I was running on when I came up with the idea. I will most definitely be using it against any future players I happen to have (I keep getting reserved to DM for my GF and a few of our friends, but no one can agree on a day to game ><).
That being said, those feats sound kind of amusing to use with clubs. I think I may have just come up with a new gimmick for some of my NPCs. Thank you Artemis; my players shall now feel the wrath of NPCs intentionally breaking clubs on them to deal 1d4 bleed damage, or auto-confirm criticals. ^-^
Let them know I apologize, while laughing evilly with the evil mastermind steepling of the hands >D Muwahahah!
Necroing this thread...
Use this strategy with thrown obsidian daggers on a warpriest. Damage per attack goes up as you level, AND you get the bleed effects.