[MA/HT] Innocuous Improvised Weapons

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

Maglight flashlights used to be very popular around here. I own two of the six-cell kinds. It's metal, and can be easily used as a club. I wouldn't want to parry a real sword with it, but otherwise it should be fine. I even have aftermarket ends on the back designed to break though a car window if necessary. In a book I'm writing, the main character is using one when he's walking some girls home from a party. Though he hands it to somebody else before the danger starts.

The six-cell Maglites are almost certainly Axe/Mace and might even count as SMALL ROUND MACE, i.e. be Unbalanced if you hit someone with it full-force. Even well-balanced large Maglites are probably KNOBBED CLUBs rather than using Shortsword skill.

What kind of flashlight, if any, might use Knife skill, i.e. be used with the same skill as a SHORT BATON?

Does a SHORT BATON need to be comparatively long and narrow, like a knife or half a or pool cue, or could you maybe use the Knife skill with a flashlight about the length and weight of a knife-sized machete?

If someone who is very good at using a machete with the Knife skill (i.e. a Falchion-ized LONG KNIFE) were to carry some kind of innocuous object that allowed him to use the same technique, what would that object be?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

A stainless steel reusable straw

You know, I was skeptical, but getting one out and punching the end through a thick box and swinging it hard against a post without apparently damaging it, it's clearly got some attack potential and probably could parry at least a couple times. I have to admit this really is an innocuous object you could carry in a pocket anywhere these days that is at least marginally useful, though I doubt it's any better than a screwdriver, which isn't a particularly suspicious item either.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Does a SHORT BATON need to be comparatively long and narrow, like a knife or half a or pool cue, or could you maybe use the Knife skill with a flashlight about the length and weight of a knife-sized machete?

I'd say if you can drop it through the ring of your closed fingers, it's less than 2 feet long, and it's balanced somewhere near the middle, it's probably a fine baton. A flashlight that didn't flare out at the lens end seems fair enough, and there are lots of vintage steel tube industrial and railroad flashlights that will probably do OK if you want to avoid the modern "tactical" look.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by malloyd

You know, I was skeptical, but getting one out and punching the end through a thick box and swinging it hard against a post without apparently damaging it, it's clearly got some attack potential and probably could parry at least a couple times. I have to admit this really is an innocuous object you could carry in a pocket anywhere these days that is at least marginally useful, though I doubt it's any better than a screwdriver, which isn't a particularly suspicious item either.

At least one person has died from having one driven into her head in a fall.

[DangerousThing]

They also make titanium sporks (I bought a pair from Amazon, along with my titanium straws. I've been told that titanium doesn't effect the taste of food like steel does.

I've seen metal pen lights that should make an acceptable weapon. The problem with truly improvised weapons is that many of them won't stand up for very long. Of course, most fights don't usually last that long.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I was hoping to nail down something with SHORT BATON stats that could be kept in a pocket and couldn't really be called a weapon. Best idea I've got so far is a flashlight that has the right shape and balance. Does anyone know of a specific flashlight model that would use the SHORT BATON stats?"

Most of the Mag-Lite brand flashlights have aluminum cases which make them tough enough to use as weapons. Similar brands should be readily available world-wide.

If you're wanting something that's truly extensible, but which can be (sort of) telescoped to fit into a (large) pocket, a collapsible camera monopod might be just heavy enough to work. Ditto for a heavily-built extensible selfie-stick.

Back in the day (early TL7), telescoping radio antennas were just heavy enough that they could be used as improvised stilettos or light batons.

An old style folding wooden measuring stick could be partially unfolded to make it into a baton - as long as the wood and the joints held. It could easily be made to fit into a pocket and might even be innocuous enough to make it through a security screen where the inspectors know what they're doing.

Drivers of heavy trucks can easily justify a short "tire thumper," or "tire club" used to determine whether truck tires are properly inflated. It is a billy club in all but name.

Of course, truly professional and cynical security officers are trained to think of just about anything as a weapon, even if it takes a cinematic ninja to use the item to inflict any real damage. In the U.S., airport screeners even confiscated nail clippers for a while!

Unless it's slightly unusual, doesn't seem to have any hard edges (either visually or on an x-ray), and instinctively puts the inspector at ease (e.g., a soft kid's toy, but not anything which might seem like prison contraband), they'll at least ask to take a closer look at it.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I think those are too light to be useful parrying tools. Even by the rules. Parrying something more than 7 times its weight breaks the parrying tool on greater than a 6 in 6 chance and doesn't count as a parry. An unsharpened pencil I have here weighs in at 4.5 grams on my postal scale, 7 times that is 31.5 grams, or 0.070 lbs. You could attempt a thrust/imp stop thrust with a sharpened pencil, but you won't be parrying anything significant with it

You probably could parry *once*, but it would be broken much like a glass bottle.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by malloyd

If you are a woman from the right culture or ethnic group, hair sticks have a bit of a tradition too - some of them probably rate the wooden stake statistics off the shelf, never mind a disguised weapon version.

Victorian and Edwardian ladies wore hat pins in order to keep the elaborate hair styles and hats of the day in place. They're freakin' lethal, consisting of a 8-12" long, thick wire spike with a decorative finial on the end. Useless for parrying, but capable of inflicting real (pi-) damage with a hard thrust to the torso or vitals.

[Daigoro]

Another option, if it fits Icelander's criteria, is to have something like a hollowed out laptop case sitting on his passenger seat, with whatever actual weapons he prefers to use kept inside.

[Polydamas]

The good thing about an actual baton for a car weapon is that there are lots of excuses to have a 12-15" wooden (ok, select coppiced ash carefully dried) stick in your car. "Oh, I use that to prop the lid of our garage freezer open, I must have dumped it in the car after the last grocery run."

A mallet would be a good choice for the knobbed club as a car weapon, again "I was fencing my yard and it fell out of the bin when I was unloading supplies, I had been meaning to put it away for days."

In the old country and the new country, weapon carriage laws are all about intent. If you want to wait outside a bar with a heavy object, you can't tell the police officer that "its not a weapon officer, just a baseball bat."