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Let's say you have a 10 foot pit with a small (inches) ledge on either side. With 4 10 foot poles you could cross. Put 1 pole at an angle from near side to mid-left and 1 from mid-left to far side. Then lash 2 poles straight from near to far over those angled poles.
PHB 1e pg 19 Character Classes Table II: Armor and Weapons Permitted: *** "Characters under 5' height cannot employ the longbow or any weapon over 12' in length. Those under 100 pounds of body weight cannot use the heavy crossbow or pole arms in excess of 200 gold piece weight equivalent, including two-handed swords."
"Each application will last for 9-12 rounds on a hand-held weapon," Since it does not damage hand-held weapons, the impact must be on the target, not on the weapon. This tells me that a monk's fists would not be damaged.
In DMG p60, shows probabilities of hearing based on race from 10% to 20%. "Keen-eared individuals will gain a bonus of 1 or 2 in 20 (5% or 10%). Use chance of hearing noise to determine if a character is keen-eared."
For reference, PHB prices a single arrow at 2sp. A silver arrow is 1gp. So 10 times the price for silver. A PHB dagger is 2GP. Unearthed Arcana has a +1 dagger GP Sale Value set at 500 gp. So 250 times the price for magic. Another weapon to consider is cold iron which causes double damage on ghasts or damage on night hags.