Strongarm Bracers?

[Ogrork the Mighty]

From the Magic Item Compendium, page 138. They say the wearer is treated as one size category larger than normal, so a human can wield Medium or Large weapons.

I understand that kicks up the damage dice. But does this item also grant additional reach? In my case I have a human armed with a glaive and need to know if the reach increases from 10 feet to 15 feet.

From the SRD:

A reach weapon is a melee weapon that allows its wielder to strike at targets that aren’t adjacent to him or her. Most reach double the wielder’s natural reach, meaning that a typical Small or Medium wielder of such a weapon can attack a creature 10 feet away, but not a creature in an adjacent square. A typical Large character wielding a reach weapon of the appropriate size can attack a creature 15 or 20 feet away, but not adjacent creatures or creatures up to 10 feet away.

 

[Dandu]

I believe so.

Edit: hm, evidently not.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Reach is a function of body size not weapon size: although a weapon smaller than you doesn't grant reach.

Do they treat you as large or let you wield larger weapons?

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

"When wearing strongarm bracers, you can wield weapons as if you were one size category larger than normal."

Doesn't stack with the powerful build trait.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It's like powerful build, so much so that it doesn't stack. Powerful Build says nothing about increasing reach. Strong Arm Bracers do nothing to increase your reach.

 

[jefgorbach]

IMO the bracers merely provide the arm strength needed to wield weapons as if you were a being one size larger ... they do NOT lengthen your arms so your reach remains per normal unless the larger weapon has a longer reach than your normally capable of.

 

[Magesmiley]

I wrestled with this one for awhile myself, searching through a lot of rulebooks before finally concluding that the rules didn't contain any special rules about how a mis-sized reach weapon affects a character's reach.

For creatures small and larger, wielding a reach weapon doubles your reach.

And this makes total sense when you're wielding the correct sized reach weapon. On the other hand it doesn't make sense when wielding a mis-sized weapon. An ogre with a medium sized glaive for example, which he can wield one-handed. Should this grant him as much reach as a large one? The case you cited was another one. Don't get me started on the half-ogre dual wielding a pair of medium-sized spiked chains.

So the house rules that I ended up using was that a reach weapon adds an additional amount of reach equal to the reach of a tall creature of its size, both to the closest and furthest creature the wielder can can hit. So for example, my ogre with the medium-sized glaive could hit stuff 10 or 15 feet away in my game.

Tiny and smaller creatures are another can of worms for reach weapons that I'm not about to touch today.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The other thing is that it's only a 6000 gp item so granting both greater damage dice and reach seems a little excessive.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, yeah. Even if I had no RAW grounding, I'd be vehemently against them giving reach because it'd be BROOOOOOOOOKEN!

Look at the Greatreach Bracers from the same book. Tell me why an item that gives constant reach (and pretend it doesn't even give you the damage benefit for a moment) for 6000 gp is balanced. I frankly don't think there should even be a onstant +5 reach item, I wouldn't want it to exist. But if it did, it should cost tens of thousands of gold pieces, I'd think.