Basic Trope: One member of the party in skilled in fighting using something that wouldn't normally be seen as a weapon.
- Straight: Alice fights with a hockey stick.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice fights with a stash of hockey pucks, badminton racks, golf clubs and such...
- Alternately, Alice's stick alone allows them to beat hordes of enemies armed with actual weapons.
- She uses something that shouldn't be a weapon by any train of logic (like soap bubbles).
- Alice fights using a toothpick. Not many, just one.
- Alice fights with a stick (a regular stick, like from a tree or campfire) that she strategically whittled down to make into a sword. Stabbing bad guys and giving them splinters.
- Downplayed: Alice uses kitchen knives, when combat knives are available.
- Alice uses a toothpick as a secondary weapon to prick people's fingers in order to distract them. When they break, she reveals that she has an entire box of them.
- Justified:
- Her hockey stick accidentally came in contact with Green Rocks and now has magical powers making it more deadly in combat than any actual weapon.
- Alice is a Professional Killer, and she thinks using daily life objects for assassination is easier to cover up her acts.
- Alice was caught off guard by her enemies and didn't have time to acquire a proper weapon.
- Inverted: Alice uses a mace to play hockey.
- Subverted: Alternatively: Alice's weapon of choice isn't actually a hockey stick, she just used it as an Improvised Weapon due to its similarity to something she is skilled with.
- Double Subverted: Alternatively: After so long using the hockey stick, she's gotten rusty with her actual weapon, and ends up just sticking with the hockey stick.
- Parodied: Alice's hockey stick is basically an Infinity +1 Sword with the ability to take down Cthulhu.
- Exaggerated #5, except Alice knights people with the "sword" when they comment on how long it must have taken.
- Zig Zagged:
- The usefulness of Alice's hockey stick-fu changes wildly on many occasions.
- (Continuing from Double Subverted) Alice starts using her old weapon again, trading skill for raw power.
- Averted: Alice has training in sword combat and is very good with a blade.
- Enforced: "Let's give this character a weird weapon to make them more unique."
- Lampshaded: "You fight using that?"
- Invoked: Alice is a multidisciplined fighter, carrying a hockey stick among her various other weapons.
- Exploited: Dr. Evulz purposefully destroys everything that could be used as a weapon to leave Alice completely helpless.
- Defied: Alice is given the opportunity to choose her weapon. The hockey stick is available, but she passes it over for a sword.
- Discussed: "Just watch: she's totally gonna kick his ass with that hockey stick."
- Conversed: "How long do you think it takes to master hockey stick-fu?"
- Deconstructed: Alice is being attacked and uses a hockey stick to defend herself. It is ineffective and her attacker overpowers her.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice is fighting an enemy who is vulnerable to the type of wood used in hockey sticks.
- Alice was using the weapon in a way it was ineffective. With proper knowledge of what kinds of attacks are best applied where, the borderline improvised weapon becomes as lethal as any "normal" weapon.
- Played For Laughs: Alice uses any item in reach from chairs to water bottles to the water inside those water bottles, and no, she isn't a waterbender.
Fight your way back to Improbable Weapon User using your folding chair.
