Improvised Weapons: the Perfect Combination of Story-Telling and Power-Gaming

Improvised Weapon is one of my favorite skills in Victoriana. To have a brawler reach for a pint of beer and smash it onto his opponent’s head, to fend off an attack using a wicker basket as a shield, or to trap an opponent by entangling their head around the rungs of a ladder evokes a perfect tone of pulpy adventure.

One of my players clicked with this skill from the beginning of session one. It’s the only combat skill he has points in, and he begins every fight looking by for a weapon.

I love the creativity and improvisation that goes into his fights because of this skill, but there are a couple of tricks he and I use to give his combat a bit of color.

 

Ineffective Weapons

The biggest downside to Improvised weapons is that almost all of them are not designed to be used as a weapon or do damage. Some construction tools or farm implements aside, these objects have mundane uses that impede their martial abilities.

Hard to Use Weapons

Boat anchor chains, 40 feet long bamboo poles, and a potato would all be harder to use effectively as a damage dealing weapon than say, a chair leg, a sack of rice, or a broken bottle.

These unwieldy or simply ineffective hand weapons would all have black dice added to their wielder’s attack dice pool to all attacks. They just are not very good.

Try to keep the black dice penalties to the attack roll lower than the damage dice of the weapon. The goal of these rules is flavor, not penalizing the players for picking up an interesting weapon.

For example, if a character picked up a rolled up carpet to slam into his opponent, the carpet is heavy and bulky so the Gamemaster gives the character 4 black dice to attack rolls. However since the carpet is heavy and bulky, the Gamemaster should give it at least 5 dice of damage, maybe more.

Low Damage Dealing Weapons

Another possibility is that a weapon could be simple to use but be terrible at damage dealing. If the weapon isn’t very effective, it could even have black dice in the damage pool.

A stale baguette wielded by a terrific brawler would still have some trouble hurting his opponent. He might get a great swing in and send them flying or the baguette could crumble to breadcrumbs instead.

Baguette- damage (3 dice, 3 black dice)

An especially ineffective weapon could have only black dice.

Think of a towel. A towel could be used to fend off attacks, and catch an opponent’s weapon, but when a character beats their opponent’s attack roll, they will most likely not be able to damage them with it. The best they could hope for is a stinging sensation and maybe a rash.

Towel- damage (4 black dice)

I would not recommend adding these penalties at the same time. Remember your player took this skill to be cool and do cool stuff. Let them have some fun with this.

Alternate Uses

Not all Improvised weapons are a club or a have a sharp edge. Crafty players know how to use their surroundings to do more than simple damage.

Shield

The halfling chimney sweep grabs a broken street cleaner broom and shoves it right into the intimidating horseman’s face.

The eldren mage grabs a wooden plank from the walkway and cowers behind it.

The human drunkard pulls the lid off of the barrel and intercepts the diving ratman’s knife.

Trashcan lids, baskets, and simple wooden boards are all common items that could be used to defensively fend off an attack.

There are two ways to simulate this in game mechanics. If the character is simply using the improvised weapon as a shield, give the character’s attacker a few black dice on their attacks. In this case using the Improvised Shield would not be an action for the Character, it’s simply a passive difficulty for their attacker.

The second way for improvised shielding to work is for the character to treat its Improvised Weapon skill as a Dodge Skill for the round, and counter roll the Attacker’s attack dice as an action each combat round.  Every success on the Character’s Improvised Weapon roll counters a success on the opposing attack roll.

This could be a bit too powerful, but if the character is really using their environment smartly a reward is due.

Remember too, these items are most likely not made to take repeated blows from a sword, or shots from a gun, and may only last a few rounds in the right conditions (AKA if you need to take the toy away, just break it).

Grapple

The scallywag orc sights a ladder leaning against a nearby wall, and pushes it towards the approaching sewer ghouls, tripping and entangling their noisome mass.

The dwarven civil engineer dashes into the forest of hanging laundry lines, waits for his pursuer to catch up and craftily tangles them in the lines.

The gnome entrepreneur dexterously wraps his towel around the dagger hand of the assassin that ruined his soak in the tub and doesn’t let go.

Some objects are more effectively used to keep your opponent pinned down. To use an improvised weapon in this way,  a character does a grapple check as normal, but using Improvised Weapon + Strength instead of Fisticuffs + Strength. Depending on the circumstances the Gamemaster may not allow a Crush attack to do damage due to the awkwardness of the weapon’s hold on the opponent.  The opponent would be able to break free as normal, although again the Gamemaster may add some black dice to their escape attempt depending on the weapon.

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Distraction

The halfling cook tosses a handful of potent spices in the thugs face.

The foxman thief slams a full bedpan on his pursuer’s head.

The human costermonger tips a barrel of fish over, spilling its contents all around his attacker’s feet.

The Victorian world is full of dangerous everyday items, and lots of greasy surfaces. There is no end of objects which could be used to give a black dice penalty to a target’s skill rolls for a few rounds, with a successful Improvise Weapon Roll. The extra success on the attack (ordinarily used as a damage bonus) could be the efficiency of their distraction in black dice or the number of rounds the target is afflicted.

In some cases, a Resolve or Constitution check might give the target some chance of ignoring the distraction.

GM Suggestion

The Word Improvise is right there in the name. When a player states their action is look for a weapon, feel free to let the player come up with the possibilities. You have a veto on anything too crazy or inappropriate.
That frees the Gamemaster to focus on the fight, and lets the player have fun coming up with objects to use.