[RPG] Can you pick up and use an enethe as an improvised weapon

dnd-5egrappleimprovised-weaponry

Assuming you can grapple and lift both enemies, if you attack one enemy with the other, I assume this would be considered an improvised attack. Would this only be 1d4 damage to [Enemy B] in the following scenario or would the rules of Improvised Weapons allow for a higher damage die?

  1. [Enemy A] and [Enemy B] are both Grappled by [Player] who is physically capable of lifting one enemy.
  2. [Player] uses the Attack action to use Enemy A as an improvised weapon to hit Enemy B.

Does the scenario change at all if [Player] is capable of lifting both enemies and wanted to smash them together like a pair of cymbals as an attack? Would both enemies take damage, or would [Player] be required to announce one of them as the weapon and the other as the target?

Best Answer

Quoting from the 5e SRD's section on improvised weapons:

Sometimes characters don't have their weapons and have to attack with whatever is at hand. An improvised weapon includes any object you can wield in one or two hands, such as broken glass, a table leg, a frying pan, a wagon wheel, or a dead goblin. Often, an improvised weapon is similar to an actual weapon and can be treated as such. For example, a table leg is akin to a club. At the GM's option, a character proficient with a weapon can use a similar object as if it were that weapon and use his or her proficiency bonus.

An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon deals 1d4 damage (the GM assigns a damage type appropriate to the object). If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, or throws a melee weapon that does not have the thrown property, it also deals 1d4 damage. An improvised thrown weapon has a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet.

You'll note that improvised weapons are described as "objects". And the closest example to what you're trying to use is "a dead goblin". With that in mind I'd rule that if the enemy is alive and actively resisting you can't use them as a weapon, even if they're grappled, because being grappled doesn't do anything close to making someone "an object".

If for some reason they're not able to resist (i.e. they're dead, they're unconscious, they're paralyzed, etc.) then sure, Enemy A is now an improvised weapon who does 1d4 damage.