Improvised weapons are weapons that aren't really intended as such. They are generally inferior in at least one of these ways (often several).
Awkward: -5 or -10 to hit. Generally only useful when you have surprise or are really skilled.
Soft: -5 or -10 to damage.
Fragile: breaks after 2 or just 1 hit/critical miss.
Okay, I was thinking this morning about trying to "top 2" Ironclaw variant I've been nosing about for years now.
Basically, it's an Ironclaw-style mix-and-match dicepool system except that you keep the top two dice and sum them, rather than only keeping the top die.
This gives results from 1 to 24, with the addition of a second die being a big step forward... 1d12 sucks against d12,d4.
Beating the target by 6 is a crit, by 12 is a double-crit, by 18 would be a triple-crit. This has the side-effects that you can't possibly get a crit (minimum target is 1) until you have at least a d8 (average). You can't get a double until you have 2 dice. Triple is incredibly rare and only possible with a d12,d8 or better. It's never likely.
Damage is WasteWorld style (sort of), with the amount you win by being added to a flat damage bonus. Subtract out their armor, if any, if you get the number of HP lost.
Impale crit lets you bypass 1/2 of "full" armor or all of "partial" armor. Not sure how to inflict armor penalties... it could be drop a die, penalize your total result, accumulate fatigue, etc. If penalties, it should only affect certain actions like climbing, jumping, swimming, etc.
An ability's "maximum" is the highest number you can roll. Ranges from 4 to 24, depending on your dice. Sometimes used to qualify for powers?
Regular skills normally get combined with a stat... Restricted skills usually don't and cover psi, purely technical abilities, etc. Low Beasts may get an Intuition stat that actually does apply to several Restricted abilities. I'm not sure if that would be enough, long-term, though. It might be better to just slap an upper limit on die sizes (ie- High Beasts can't get above d8 in psi powers).
Potential Mook rules: all dice limited to d10s, d8s or d6s to produce increasingly incompetent and low-level mooks.
Stat cost doubles after d12, quadruples after 2d12, etc.