[Bug] Thrown and Improvised Weapons

[RuneMeisterKris]

So I made a character named Idaho Jones who throws potatoes to attack enemies. As a result, I have stumbled across a few bugs and/or missing elements of this style of combat which are worth addressing for the future in order to more properly align with 5e rules regarding such things.

The Saga of Idaho Jones, Potatomancer

Idaho Jones is a Halfling Ranger who practices Potatomancy, the art of handling and combating enemies with potatoes. I settled on Ranger because, as I detail below, a rogue's sneak attack does not apply to potatoes. I had assumed that Hunter's Mark would, but as I also detail below this is not the case either at this point in time. But I digress... on to the bugs and suggestions:

First and foremost, it seems there is no Thrown property on any weapons/items right now. I don't know if that was ever an option on the docket, but I wanted to point it out as it means that throwing stuff is completely skewed in weird ways. As I mentioned, Idaho Jones is a Potatomancer who utilizes potatoes in combat. Throwing a potato gets an attack bonus derived from Proficiency and Dexterity and does a flat 1d4 damage. The attack bonus is in line with standard improvised weapon stats in 5e, but shouldn't the damage gain a bonus based on strength (since potatoes don't have finesse to use dex)? This means that, due to the lack of the Thrown property, throwing a potato is mechanically the exact same as throwing a dagger. It does the same damage, with the same attack bonus, and neither are effected by Sneak Attack or Hunter's Mark. Both the Dagger and the Potato DO get advantage on the roll from True Strike, which implies that they are supposed to be counted as weapon attacks and thus should be beholden to Sneak Attack (potentially, depending on the weapon/item and Finesse), Hunter's Mark, and any other similar effect.

If you throw a larger item or weapon or person, the attack role should be based on Strength because of the lack of Finesse on the object, however it is still derived from Dexterity regardless of what is thrown. Damage seems to give a +1 bonus based on weight, but that applies to everything from a thrown Spear to a thrown party member or crate. Comments on a Reddit post about Idaho Jones say that people dealt up to 8 Damage by throwing chests on enemies, however it is possible that they were confusing damage dealt to the chest on impact, which frequently is larger than damage dealt to the target (vulnerability), but this is tough to confirm as there is currently no dice damage breakdown on the thrown object or person, just the target. Again, throwing these larger objects is not affected by Strength bonus for damage, unless you count the extra damage for them being bigger items as the bonus, which is a bit odd. This would mean that, currently, the more mechanically friendly build is a strength based thrower who chucks treasure chests, rather than a dexterous knife throwing rogue, which I think we would all agree is a more typical archetype.

In conclusion, Potatomancy could use some work by the team so that the mechanics can better match both the RAW and RAI. Including the Throw action is great, and has the potential to open up so many build opportunities for people to play, but it is an element of the game that still needs some tweaking. Idaho Jones is only level 2-3 right now, so he has a lot more work ahead of him to fully flesh out the logistics and mysteries of Potatomancy, so if anything else arises in the future, I'll be sure to update. Thanks for bearing with the long read.