D&D General Belts of Giant Strength?

[James Gasik]

Except that a Flame Tongue doing +2d6 fire damage trades off accuracy, as it is not a +3 weapon with +3 to attack and +3 damage. Versus lower AC opponents, yes the Flame Tongue is very good. Versus higher AC opponents, or those with Fire Resistance which is not uncommon, the benefit is not so good.

AC pretty much caps out at 20 for monsters, right? My highest level character was an archer with a +1 bow, 20 dex, and fighting style for something like +12 to hit and on-demand advantage for at least one shot a turn, and that's without factoring in if I got a buff or Bardic inspiration or something. Fought an adult blue in Storm King's Thunder with an AC of 19 and the Cleric, who couldn't get close enough to do much else, just threw up Bless to help with the party accuracy and saves, and with +1d4 to hit from a lousy first level spell, I didn't miss once (+19 with advantage, +14.5 for my second attack). So I don't really see accuracy as a problem.

Maybe if you have to put up with disadvantage, but most things have pretty reasonable AC's and advantage is pretty easy to get in the game. YMMV, of course, but being able to hit things has rarely been a problem that I've seen in 5e.

Now, if, in your games, you strive to keep numbers sane and you don't let people have belts of strength and +3 weapons and your players stick to fairly normal characters, that's fine, but I'm pretty used to my players rarely missing as it is, so I really don't see how a little more accuracy for a melee warrior would be an issue.

 

[James Gasik]

I like the boosting items, though like you if they are playing a warrior and choose to go 8 strength and replace it with a belt or gauntlets then I'd likely veto that, they should at least have a decent beginning strength with the belt being "found" during their adventuring career.

Though nothing stops someone from being a Dex based Fighter with a relatively low Strength using bows or rapiers and suddenly switching tactics if they did find gauntlets of ogre power.

 

[Lanefan]

Someone around here house-ruled their belts of giant strength to give bonuses, they shared them a month or two back... anyway, yeah I agree with the idea of disliking the "set strength" items, because a player may try to "build" for finding them. The GM is put in the position of either catering to the player's build and rewarding their dump-statting, or saying "well you may find it, you may not" and then the player's unhappy with their character until they find such an item.

The bolded, all day long; and if the player's unhappy because of having gambled and lost, tough tooties.

 

[Tessarael]

One of the questions is whether it is a long term campaign where characters can craft or have key magic items made for them. If you suffer the drawbacks or a min/max build with some weak areas and later improve it, that is not unreasonable. But I would be less okay with that for a character starting at high levels.

I had a Dexterity-based Barbarian with a Circlet of Intelligence to get Intelligence 13, as I had been struggling with roleplaying a low Intelligence Barbarian. That worked fine, and was not a power-gaming option. That character multi-classed with Rogue at higher levels, decent build but tricky to get working quite right.

 

[Ancalagon]

this perhaps is a good moment to mention an "experiment" I'm doing in a campaign.

I made a barbarian (world tree), level 5, and the GM was quite generous with starter items. I had this sudden notion and decided to take all 3 stat boosters (amulet of health, headband of intellect, belt of hill giant strength). My lowest stat is wisdom at 14. We've only played 2 sessions in this campaign so far, but it's kind of fun to play a character with high stats in almost everything, very flexible.

It also means that my attunement slots are filled already, so I think it's not that unbalanced. Who knows if I'll ever find a better belt?

 

[cbwjm]

Though nothing stops someone from being a Dex based Fighter with a relatively low Strength using bows or rapiers and suddenly switching tactics if they did find gauntlets of ogre power.

True, but in this case where you're starting at high level, it seems a bit power gamey. Fine if you want to do that, but I think I'd require some investment in strength.

 

[Horwath]

True, but in this case where you're starting at high level, it seems a bit power gamey. Fine if you want to do that, but I think I'd require some investment in strength.

you can always say that feats require natural ability score if you want to pick them.

 

[Minigiant]

for this simple reason, I have changed the "ability" items.

belt of giant STR, various types.

+2 STR(max +2) or 14 STR, whatever is higher
+4 STR(max +4) or 16 STR, whatever is higher
+6 STR(max +6) or 18 STR, whatever is higher

I did similar but made a high set value if you have 18 STR or more.

Belt	Strength	Strength if attuned with 18+ Str	Rarity
Hill	21	25	Rare
Frost	23	27	Very Rare
Stone	23	27	Very Rare
Fire	25	29	Very Rare
Cloud	27	31	Legendary
Storm	29	33	Legendary

 

[aco175]

I might just let things go if the game had only a few more sessions and the player brought something in. I do not think the effort in limiting things would be worth the arguments.

If I was giving out one of these in an ongoing campaign, I think I would have a + to STR like others mentioned above.

I noticed a cloak of displacement mentioned above. I found this to be a bigger problem in a campaign than the other items mentioned. The fighter would hardly get hit to the point that the player thought about changing the item to be something more like 1/rest or even day for 1d6 rounds.

 

[James Gasik]

Actually, having seen a Fighter with a Cloak of Displacement in actual play- not so much. We were playing Storm King's Thunder. He had an AC of 19 thanks to plate and fighting style. When we went up against Fire Giants, he decided to wade into battle, thinking he was invincible.

Fire Giants have +11 to hit and make 2 attacks per turn with their greatswords. Since they hit him on an 8, disadvantage didn't matter too much. He went down hard.

I think magic armor would have served him better. Granted, it's nearly impossible to score a critical on a character with a cloak, but adamantine armor also exists, and when things start hitting for 6d6+7, you kind of need some kind of crit insurance, lol.