I did a forum search, read through several threads that skirted about what I want to know, but nothing serious - lots of joking about using odd, off the wall stuff.
What I want to know is, if you take catch off-guard and pick up something that looks like an odd chair leg off the bar room floor in the midst of a huge brawl that is secretly a club dropped by a drunken brawler, and you happen to not be proficient in clubs for whatever reason (it's a hypothetical, work with me), would you still be able to use it in melee as a club without penalty because of catch off-guard?
What about arrows? Can those be used? A longbow? Slingstones (in a closed fist, like a hammer-y thing)?
I think this would be a really cool feat for a switch-hitter ranger to take for when stuff gets close. And I just saw The Avengers, of course, so I want to be tripping people adjacent to me and shooting them while they're down. :D
Generally, Improvised Weapons are objects not crafted to be weapons.
Improvised Weapons and Catch Off-Guard could use some clarification.
For instance, Improvised Weapons says you are nonproficient with it and take a -4 penalty on attack rolls made with that object. As written, it looks like there's a -4 penalty on top of the non-proficiency penalty. I suspect the -4 was supposed to reiterate the penalty for non-proficiency.
Catch Off-Guard says "You do not suffer any penalties for using an improvised melee weapon." I suspect that was supposed to only apply to the -4 penalty an improvised weapon normally grants (backed up by the "Normal: You take a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with an improvised weapon." clause). However, as written, it could be taken to mean any penalties, like those from Two-Weapon Fighting, or Fighting Defensively. That's clearly not the intent, but it could use a bit of tweak on the wording.
What Grick said on all counts.
I suggest house-ruling it to whatever makes sense for you, unless you're in PFS, in which case, good luck?
Keep in mind that even if you do allow use of a weapon as an improvised weapon, it may not be as effective. Improvising a club will probably still do club damage (I mean . . . it's a club), but a morningstar might also do club damage if the wielder doesn't know how to hold the thing properly, and an arrow. . . . Not terribly effective as a melee weapon. Maybe a dagger, maybe even just 1d3 piercing. Your brawler is probably better off picking up the entire chair and fighting with it.
I wasn't even considering non-proficiency penalties on top of improvisational penalties... hmmm.
But I'm thinking more along the lines of whacking goblins with a longbow, or similarly tripping enemies with the weapon. It's improvised, but the object IS a weapon, just not used in the correct context.
EDIT: I COULD houserule it, and I would, but everyone in my group DMs on occasion, so we like to have somewhat of a consensus on these things, and getting crowd-sourced rulings helps us make decisions. If popular opinion is that something like this would upset game balance, I probably wouldn't do it.
I don't think the intent was to stack the improvised penalty with a 'non-proficiency' penalty, because there is no "weapon proficiency: chair" attainable with a feat. The items in question are by definition not weapons so lacking a 'weapon proficiency' seems tragically redundant.
I would feel safe assuming that the -4 in question is the penalty for using this frying pan as a weapon, and certain feats and class features eliminate the penalty.
To answer what I assume is Foghammer's sub-textual question, "no, you do not get to benefit from the catch off guard feat when you pick up an enemy's magic exotic weapon, merely because you are non-proficient"
If you were to try, any weapon you 'accidently' pick up functions as a chair leg for game purposes.
If beating someone to death with their longbow is what you are after, I'd encourage it, but I wouldn't let you do so more effectively if it happened to be a +1 longbow.
Nah, wouldn't try to munchkin it. Mostly looking to make the build so that he can defend himself against targets that make it to melee range and to be able to trip with a weapon. Improvised stuff not getting enhancement bonuses is expected.
Though I suppose that I could just take improved unarmed strike if I wanted to do that. I just like the flavor of using the bow better.
Sorry... after lurking here for awhile, I tend to assume the worst.
