I was thinking about a situation in which an orc picks up a broken chair leg and swings it.
in my mind the voice of an annoying player said "improvised weapon, -4 to attack)
which got me wondering what is the difference... and why bother with the neg 4 anyway.
I understand that swingin something awkward like a broom or chair would obviously be improvised... but what about a chairleg... isnt that just a club? your fighting in a furnace and some one grabs a hot poker and swings it at you... would you consider that simple or improvised?
Well I tend to use a little bit of logic behind those decisions.
A chairleg? yeah thats a club, a kitchen knife? yeah that a dagger.
a chair? thats improvised.
so do I...
a part of the reason I post these kinds of questions is to get a feel for how other players may view this.
I have actually had a player who would 'gently' remind me that the RULES say a chair leg is an improvised weapon.
in a post like this I want to juggle the idea and see how other people think about it so that I can understand or counter their points.
Chair legs aren't often shaped well for hands.
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Do a google image search for weapon club, and compare that to what you think a chair leg would look like. I'd say that's the difference.
Having said that, I agree with you that ideally, it'd be nice if there was even a reduced improvised penalty of say -2 to have a kitchen knife or chair leg be an improvised dagger or club.
Just make a halfway house for these things: -2 to hit instead of -4. It's usually pretty obvious if it's balanced for hitting moving things.
I would let a Chair leg and Knife count as a Club and Dagger as they are close enough to where anyone trained in combat can make them work.
Also remember that a club can be made out of anything. Heck, I might allow a Broom to be used as a Quarterstaff.
Hot Poker = Javelin in my mind... They are surprisingly similar in shape.
But a typical chair leg won't be weighty enough to use as a real club. It probably wouldn't have a good grip, and it might not be strong enough. That's why it's not a simple weapon. A kitchen knife is not a dagger. It has no hilt first off, which means if your hand is unarmored, you risk cutting yourself on the blade.
While not all simple weapons are crafted to be weapons (sickle comes to mind), they are for the most part. A chair leg and a kitchen knife would make poor weapons, so they are improvised.
A typical Medieval kitchen knife has an over-hanging blade meaning it doesn't need a hilt. A Club isn't as heavy as people think. It usually weighs less than most Canes do in modern times.
In fact some chair legs would weigh MORE than a Club and their artistic designs would provide pretty a good grip.
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oooohhhh, look at all these wonderful nits we all get to pick at! yay!
The wooden stake never made sense to me. Hold this end. Put this end into the bad vampire guy. Seems pretty simple.
Most "improvised" thrown weapons don't really make sense to me either. If it's light enough to throw and heavy enough to do damage... what's the issue again?
I could see taking a Penalty to throw say a Longsword but a Shortsword... Meh, most are light enough to fly pretty good.
throwing things is pretty difficult.
I mean... even throwing a dagger is very difficult to do except at specific ranges and targets. thus I can understand throwing any non specific throwing weapon (except maybe a rock) to be improvised and difficult.
but I think that nit picking the difference between a chair leg and a club, or a dagger and a knife are silly.
Actually I find Daggers & Tomahawks(Handaxes according to UE) easy to aim and throw.
Tomahawks are easy to throw. they are balanced and designed for it.
Throwing daggers are relatively easy to throw.
But daggers and knives are generally very difficult to combat throw and hit blade first consistently.
I mean if you train on a fixed target at a fixed distance its just a matter of being on target and getting the rotation rate just right then its just muscle memory.
but hitting varying distance means you have to either know how to throw point first (very difficult on an unbalance weapon) or have some other special training.
now i am not saying this is impossible... I am saying that its not SIMPLE thus improvised or requiring proficiency.
Here's why I'd rule a chair leg is an improvised weapon:
Simple chairs (like you'd find in your average tavern) generally have SQUARE LEGS. They're not comfortable in the hand, they're not at all weighted for combat, and they're all around probably the worst possible thing you could pick up off the ground to use as a weapon. And they're generally shorter than a regular legit club.
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I think the difference between a club and any old stick you might pick up is that a club just isn't any old stick you might pick up. A club is a stick with the right size, weight and balance to function as a weapon. Not every stick or piece of wood will have the properties to function as an effective weapon. Can any old stick be a lethal weapon? Sure, but it's not ideal, and I'm okay with not ideal equating to non-proficient, which is still a -4.
As for a kitchen knife vs dagger... I've handled enough daggers to feel a kitchen knife can function as a dagger, and seen enough thrown casually yet effectively in films that as far as I'm concern a knife is a knife is a knife.
But a stick is not a club.
Most chairs I have seen have Legs longer than your typical Club... usually by 2 inches.
Now they might feel a few ounces lighter than a club but that is usually because of the way t tapers. Now the Square shaped legs actually are the weak point as it takes experience with them to find the right grip and you can't do it easily if you have very small hands.
Most modern throwing knives used in competitions actually are shaped like kitchen knives. You are expected to be able to throw them at moving targets and stationary targets.
All you need to be able to throw them is the right grip. Which can be learned accidentally. I am proof of that.
Really?
I'd figure a club to be anywhere from 2-2.5 feet long or maybe even 3 feet (to line up with the max length of a shortsword), and I've rarely, if ever, seen a non-barstool chair with legs that long. They're a 1.5-2 feet at max, especially when you factor in that people in ye olde medieval tymes were a lot shorter than your average person now.
Well, while we're picking nits, let's get in on that situation.
Was a shortsword 3 feet long? Nope. Generally, you wanted your arming sword--the short bladed weapon you use in very close combat when a longsword won't do--to be nice and short, probably around 2 feet max. As for a 3-foot club, that sounds like you're swinging around a baseball bat. I usually imagine the club as being more like a mini-bat: probably a foot and a half in length, maybe two feet. Part of that is definitely from the fact that the rules state you can throw the club, without penalty, at a range of 10 feet. Try throwing a baseball bat that far; it doesn't really work that well.
As for the knife-dagger thing, I'm also in the knife is a knife is a knife camp. You take the sharp part, and put it in the other guy. Sometimes, you can slash with it instead, and rarely (see: cleaver) you can chop. Now, I agree that a kitchen knife is NOT a well-balanced, battle-ready dagger. But in medieval times, the same guy often made both of those. A good craftsman put as much care into his knife as he did into weapons. And, as a matter of fact, the general knife that farmers and craftsmen used in medieval days WAS the go-to self-defense weapon if bandits or marauding knights attacked Ye Olde Toune.
I agree that there's a lot of issue over improvised vs. simple weapons, and the club/quarterstaff thing is something I've been pondering over for some time. Part of the issue is definitely the fact that they're free--this suggests that you can just pick something up off the ground and use it as such, given that it is the appropriate size and general shape. This also creates issues in other ways; what if I want to have a metal club or quarterstaff? What do I do?
Someone referenced the movies; it's important to keep in mind that those are generally not the best examples for realism. The movies tend to show chairs easily breaking over people's heads and the like; in reality, a good heavy chair is more likely to break the person.
In the end, though, can't we all just houserule this?
My final nit to pick here: @ Talynonyx and Azaelas Fayth, the hilt is the overall part of a knife or sword that isn't the blade. You're trying to refer to the guard, which isn't always used. There were plenty of historical swords that didn't make use of guards; some katanas and the dao come to mind.
Picking nits from your picking of nits, a Shortsword is classified as a sword anywhere between 2 and 3 feet long.
Also, it's not at all hard to chuck a baseball bat 10 feet. 30-40 feet (while making sure it lands where you want it)? Sure. but 10's a cinch.
But yeah it's houserule material I guess, since by RAW I believe anything that's not on the weapon page is an improvised weapon.
Personally, fuh me, I likes ta go wit a nice busted pool cue; it's got some good weight to it and I aint gotta do nuttin fancy ta bring it nowheres. My cousin Nunzio do, he enjoys da particulars of a piano wire, citin the ease a transport 'n all. Me? I sez ta each der own...
interestingly enough I dont think there is any historic reference to anything called a short or long sword.
not that it matters, just funny to note.
Also not anything formally called a Greatsword (though I'm sure now I've said this someone will send me a link) but that doesn't stop me from rocking a battle scene with one AM I RIGHT?
If we're meaning "a chunk of wood" when we say a club, it should probably be treated as an improvised weapon and take the -4. Such a crude weapon will have the force of impact diffused over clothing, fat, and muscle (not to mention armor!). You're going to need a very clean hit to actually do more than leave a bruise.
Really, Pathfinder generally doesn't handle a spectrum of non-magical weapon qualities very gracefully. A table-leg is superficially a club, but this is a far cry from something that could be construed as a weapon at a medieval-technology level. I play with the presumption that clubs are nasty instruments with iron spikes to penetrate armor and flesh and a hand-strap to help get a nice clean strike. Compare that to your table-leg, and you should be thankful the system only penalizes you -4.
Well I tend to use a little bit of logic behind those decisions.
A chairleg? yeah thats a club, a kitchen knife? yeah that a dagger.
a chair? thats improvised.
This is pretty much me. If it looks and feels like a club, then it is. A long knife if pretty much a dagger.
I get where the game is coming from in limiting this. You don't want people going too far with it, and deciding anything made from wood is a club, or trying to use your flexibility to mitigate penalties on swords of different types, because game balance sometimes hinges on those differences.
But I think, at least for many of us, there is some negotiable grey area. Clubs are negotiable to me. But then, that might be because none of my players ever takes them for their character's primary weapon. If that changed, and a character was built as a club wielder, then allowing any old character to grab up any old chair leg, might feel to that player like I was gimping him.
So there's always another side to these things, I guess.
Historical Shortsword = Gladius & Some Greek blades classify. The Sica also classifies as a Shortsword.
Not the best of resources. But a Club is pretty much any Bludgeoning Weapon made of Wood or some other material with similar properties.
Dagger, Shortsword, Longsword, Greatsword, & Grandsword
These are all categories of Combat Blades. Strange I know.
Bastard Swords are technically Any weapon that doesn't fit inside the categories requirements. Meaning a Bastard Sword could be smaller than a Longsword but longer than a Shortsword or Longer than a Dagger but smaller than a Shortsword.