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Someone recently pointed out in a game that picking up a thick stick in the woods to use as a club counted as an "improvised weapon." While I understand the logic, what the heck is the "club" simple weapon? You can say it's a wooden weapon with a specifically built grip, and that would make sense to me but for one thing: there's no COST associated with a club. If a club is a worked craft, there should be a cost assigned, however cheap. No one is going to be carving out clubs as weapons and just dropping them off in a general store for miserly adventurers to use. If there's no cost associated, I have to assume there's no skill involved in its production, at which point, any branch picked up in the woods can become a club, not an improvised weapon. Thoughts?
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The answer- a club is that same stick, but given the bit of whittling that allows it to be easier to hold onto. Maybe some worn out cloth added on for wrapping.
Thus why it is a 0 gp weapon- you don't need much skill to make one, just a tiny bit of time. You can see examples of the makeshift nature of many of these kinds of clubs by googling 'trench clubs' (a weapon born of the close quarters of WWI, leading many soldiers to make their own clubs).
Of course, it is possible to make a club with skill- that is what a masterwork club (0+300 gp) is. Otherwise... it hardly matters, it is a mass of wood that is vaguely balanced and fitted to be held. It hardly matters if it is slightly more smoothed and pretty.
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Still seems weird to me. If it takes any skill at all (like a craft check), there should be a cost involved. People aren't just performing skill checks for free and then leaving weapons somewhere to be picked up. Even if it's 1 sp, or 5 cp, it should be worth SOMETHING. And if it's not worth anything, then it shouldn't be something that even requires a check to do.
I understand it's a dumb thing to pick on and I can just houserule either a marginal cost or that any heavy stick is a club with no penalty, but for consistency, I'd prefer it be one or the other. Skilled production is not free, and Unskilled production doesn't require a skill check.
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Pretty much every improvised thing works like a club, sometimes with the fragile quality. Books, chairs, lamps, brooms, shoes, those things you used to put shoes on, the thing that holds the thing that puts shoes on and everyone's favourite: mugs of ale. Those items are typically negligible in cost so people don't follow them; that said, what would you do with more than 1 or 2 clubs?
Unless you get the 'Razor Sharp Chair Leg' feat. Which is the best name of any feat. I'd love to make a min/max improvised weapon character, the difficulty is overcoming DR so make sure you always have good aligned sacks of potatoes and silver umbrellas stand lying around.
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Still seems weird to me. If it takes any skill at all (like a craft check), there should be a cost involved. People aren't just performing skill checks for free and then leaving weapons somewhere to be picked up. Even if it's 1 sp, or 5 cp, it should be worth SOMETHING. And if it's not worth anything, then it shouldn't be something that even requires a check to do.
I understand it's a dumb thing to pick on and I can just houserule either a marginal cost or that any heavy stick is a club with no penalty, but for consistency, I'd prefer it be one or the other. Skilled production is not free, and Unskilled production doesn't require a skill check.
I think the logic here is 'anyone with a knife could go into the woods, pick a good limb (because it is a widely available material), and just whittle it a bit'. Because who would bother spending money on something you could make in 15 minutes yourself? Why go out to the trouble of buying a sandwich when you get the exact same product and you have the bread and ham already in your house?
This view of course excludes beautifully carved art pieces or wonderfully balanced (masterwork) clubs. Nope, this is just a crude bludgeon here.
Most other weapons include at least some degree of metal (or larger wooden pieces that might need more expertise to pick out and work with). Ergo, you have notable material costs and labor costs (since you need a proper smith and forge). But a club could be made from any piece of scrap wood that is of decent quality and size.
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Still seems weird to me. If it takes any skill at all (like a craft check), there should be a cost involved. People aren't just performing skill checks for free and then leaving weapons somewhere to be picked up. Even if it's 1 sp, or 5 cp, it should be worth SOMETHING. And if it's not worth anything, then it shouldn't be something that even requires a check to do.
I understand it's a dumb thing to pick on and I can just houserule either a marginal cost or that any heavy stick is a club with no penalty, but for consistency, I'd prefer it be one or the other. Skilled production is not free, and Unskilled production doesn't require a skill check.
I think the logic here is 'anyone with a knife could go into the woods, pick a good limb (because it is a widely available material), and just whittle it a bit'. Because who would bother spending money on something you could make in 15 minutes yourself? Why go out to the trouble of buying a sandwich when you get the exact same product and you have the bread and ham already in your house?
That comparison doesn't fly. Sandwich stores sell their stuff for money.
Clubs are bought for no money.
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No clubs are obtained for no money, not bought. The rules list them as costing 0gp because you can make or find one easily if you spend enough time to make an uneducated craft check. Looking around an area with wood...construction area, trash area, wooded area...for a bit will get you a usable club with a check. Without the check you have done the same thing but either in a rush, or you weren't knowledgeable on the harder woods, or you picked a badly shaped piece of wood that slips in the hand or is difficult to swing because the balance is crap. If you want to buy a fancier one in a store that is pretty then you can, and the DM can assign a cost or the PC can say "I want a nicer club, something that has a leather wrapped handle and some carvings on it" for 1+GP depending on their desire for fanciness. I constantly have people in my group asking for custom weapons that are less than masterwork but better then minimalist. They tell me how much they want to spend and what they want it to look like and I tell them if it's possible at that price.
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The real annoyance is that, with a really stupidly exact interpretation of RAW it takes a full week to make a club. Since the cost is zero, and the speed at which you complete an item is based on how much your check result x DC, you could state that there are no multiples of zero, thus your check cannot equal any multiple of the cost, so it takes the default week of work.
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I think the logic here is 'anyone with a knife could go into the woods, pick a good limb (because it is a widely available material), and just whittle it a bit'. Because who would bother spending money on something you could make in 15 minutes yourself? Why go out to the trouble of buying a sandwich when you get the exact same product and you have the bread and ham already in your house?
That comparison doesn't fly. Sandwich stores sell their stuff for money.
Clubs are bought for no money.
Yes, which is why I added elements of 'exact same product' and 'effort to get out of the house when you have the ingredients right in front of you'.
It is frankly hard to make a comparison. Our consumerist society has others make everything for you, and do every act. So it is actually hard to find good comparisons anymore. We could have 50 years ago, but not today.
Hell, I can't even say 'why buy water for a dollar when you can get it from the tap' anymore.
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I think the logic here is 'anyone with a knife could go into the woods, pick a good limb (because it is a widely available material), and just whittle it a bit'. Because who would bother spending money on something you could make in 15 minutes yourself? Why go out to the trouble of buying a sandwich when you get the exact same product and you have the bread and ham already in your house?
That comparison doesn't fly. Sandwich stores sell their stuff for money.
Clubs are bought for no money.Yes, which is why I added elements of 'exact same product' and 'effort to get out of the house when you have the ingredients right in front of you'.
It is frankly hard to make a comparison. Our consumerist society has others make everything for you, and do every act. So it is actually hard to find good comparisons anymore. We could have 50 years ago, but not today.
Hell, I can't even say 'why buy water for a dollar when you can get it from the tap' anymore.
True, in America, the difference is all the chemicals they put in the water like Fluorine they put in their. It is not a good thing to drink (they figured while you drink you'd shine your teeth, but forgot drinking Fluorine in large quanities is unsafe.)
Then there is a bit of arsenic...|
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I think the logic here is 'anyone with a knife could go into the woods, pick a good limb (because it is a widely available material), and just whittle it a bit'. Because who would bother spending money on something you could make in 15 minutes yourself? Why go out to the trouble of buying a sandwich when you get the exact same product and you have the bread and ham already in your house?
That comparison doesn't fly. Sandwich stores sell their stuff for money.
Clubs are bought for no money.Yes, which is why I added elements of 'exact same product' and 'effort to get out of the house when you have the ingredients right in front of you'.
It is frankly hard to make a comparison. Our consumerist society has others make everything for you, and do every act. So it is actually hard to find good comparisons anymore. We could have 50 years ago, but not today.
Hell, I can't even say 'why buy water for a dollar when you can get it from the tap' anymore.
True, in America, the difference is all the chemicals they put in the water like Fluorine they put in their. It is not a good thing to drink (they figured while you drink you'd shine your teeth, but forgot drinking Fluorine in large quanities is unsafe.)
Then there is a bit of arsenic...
It's not fluorine, it's fluoride. Yes it's an anion of fluorine, but it's a different animal. And there is nothing wrong with fluoridated water. You'd have to drink 3.25 gallons of fluoridated water a day to approach the daily recommended limit for fluoride. And it isn't to "shine your teeth," it's to prevent tooth decay.
EDUT: As a further aside, most bottled water is municipal water anyway...so buying bottled doesn't generally make it any different than getting it from the tap, you're purely paying for the bottle.
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True, in America, the difference is all the chemicals they put in the water like Fluorine they put in their. It is not a good thing to drink (they figured while you drink you'd shine your teeth, but forgot drinking Fluorine in large quanities is unsafe.)
Then there is a bit of arsenic...
The stuff they intentionally put in the water is fine- that has been studied enough to make sure it is safe and worthwhile (ignoring the conspiracy theories). The only areas that typically NEED bottled water on a regular basis are those with bad piping or getting water from wells that are suffering some ecological effect (such as from fracking, or maybe there is radioactive chemicals).
For most of America, they are paying a few thousand times more than the water is worth. Heck, even if you judge it just from the bottle (which would have similar shipping costs anyway, since they would have the same volume even if empty), I can't imagine it costs more than $0.10 on the dollar.
By all rights, people should be able to just get a nice reusable bottle and refill it at a water fountain or the like for zero costs after the initial purchase. Despite this, bottled water is a $100,000,000,000 industry worldwide.
Sorry if this is a tangent, but it does fit into a similar 'why pay for it when you could just get it yourself' theme as the club.
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Poison:
Fluorine
DC2 fort save 1/round
A mildly saltly substance, this save must be made if you eat raw raddishes or a dill pickle. Failure to save gives you the sickened condition for one round, if you repeatedly fail this save for whatever reason you take 1 point of Con damage.
I came into this thread to state that a the simpliest method to this problem is to pick up a stick, ask your wizard friend if it's a club, they give the thumbs up, and now you have a club.
But apparently we're talking about fluoride? Okie doke.
Poison:
Fluorine
DC2 fort save 1/round
A mildly saltly substance, this save must be made if you eat raw raddishes or a dill pickle. Failure to save gives you the sickened condition for one round, if you repeatedly fail this save for whatever reason you take 1 point of Con damage.
I will now force-feed dill pickles to my enemies under threat of a slowly accumulating possibility of rolling a natural 1 and having the DC increase by 2 for the next pickle I feed them.
An alchemist can make an unusually deadly dill pickle, and can even poison you with vaporized dill pickles.
:D thanks for that link, OotS can be absolutely awesome.