Based on a picture over at enworld, I think that a hopefully improved version of 4e's improvised actions table (page 42) may have made it into the 5e DMG.
When you look at the picture in the link, look to the bottom of the page. In the text as the bottom they use the terms "The Improvising Damage. . . when you do so," "dangerous damage value," and "deadly dam. . . ."
Also, since the images on that page take up so much space, I cannot ignore that they appear to be giving both square-based and hex-based combat rules. I have never run D&D combat on hexes before, but I can immediately see that it would affect such things as the number of foes who can surround a PC (a large creature using squares can be surrounded by 12 medium foes while they can only be surrounded by 9 medium foes in hex-based combat).
While I hope you're right, I get the suspicion that's actually part of the build-a-monster rules. Determine its size, determine its damage classification, etc.
Perhaps... but they're obviously (or, seem to be) offering advice on improvised damage. If it's in the section for creating new monsters, it can still probably be translated into PC improvisations.
Just curious what information does an improvised action table provide or what are we expecting it to provide that doesn't already exist in the players handbook?
Yeah, it doesn't seem very p42-like to me. From my perspective, the essence of p42 is that the outcome of any action depends more on your level than on the nature of the action. This page looks to merely be describing monsters, and how they interact with characters.
MechaPilot wrote:
hunterian7 wrote:
The section is on Improvised Damage and has 2 charts. The first listss different damaging situations that may not come from a monster and what damage it does (i.e. burned by coals or hit by a falling bookcase does 1d10) and another that rates the damage done as a severity of damage to the character based on level (level 1-4 1d10 is a setback, 2d10 is dangerous, 4d10 is deadly). The image above the text in the link isn't tied to any rules and is just there as a reference guide and shows small-gargantuan creatures and how they fill squares and hexes. There's possibly a rule option for grid and hex combat elsewhere that that graphic helps with but it wasn't on the 2 pages near the graphic. They did use hex as the default map metric for overland maps and grid for dungeon maps in the earlier sections of the book that I've gone through so far. The image posted is from the "Running the Game" chapter which covers various rules clarifications and DM-centric tracking and adjudication topics such as tracking conditions, determining area of effect hits without grid combat, improvised damage, and handling monster critical hits when using the average damage number instead of rolling for damage normally.
So now that the DMG is out, is there a 4e style p42?
And what is actually on p42? 
Shasarak wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
Nice! I hope you get a lot of enjoyment of of it and 5e. I'd also like to see rules for playing monster races—hopefully that will be in an expansion at some point.
MechaPilot wrote: