Curious Objects: Mighty Thews! Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Girdles and Potions of Giant Strength

Super-strength is a staple of fantasy and sci-fi. Whether it's superheroes, power armor, or magic items. It is literally a power fantasy. There's a reason Shazam/Captain Marvel was more a more popular title than Superman back in the early days of both comics. Billy Batson was a normal kid who got superpowers. Clark was born with them and had always had them. If you weren't the last son of a dying planet, you were out of luck on wearing a big "S" on your chest.

In BX, there are three main ways a character boosts their strength via magic (other than Wish spells or the like).

First we'll look at the one I've probably seen most often in play: The Gauntlets of Ogre Power. At first glance, it seems quite simple. It boosts you to an 18 strength. Closer reading shows it's a little bit more than that. First off, instead of the normal unarmed attack damage of 1d2 + STR adjustments, the wearer deals 1d4 with a +3 to hit only (not damage). It's an interesting choice by Moldvay and I assume a game balancing one. 1-4 damage vs 4-5 seems reasonable enough.

The other difference between the wearer and a character with a natural 18 strength is encumbrance. By the book, there is no strength-based adjustment to how much weight a character can carry. The wearer of the gauntlets gets +1000cn ENC "without being encumbered." (B50) That's a pretty sweet deal if the encumbrance rules are being used. It basically means they can lug an extra 100 pounds of gear or treasure without being additionally slowed. 

Next up we have the Girdle of Giant Strength. Very probably inspired by Megingjörð, Thor's mythological belt of strength. In some ways the girdle is simpler than the gauntlets. It lets the wearer attack as a Hill Giant, a 8HD creature (unless they're already better at combat than that) and do 2d8 damage, unless variable weapon damage is used (which, honestly, is probably 90% of the time), then damage is simply doubled. There are no rules for increased strength bonuses or carrying capacity, just potentially better to-hits and double damage. DMs are free to tweak this, of course.

 

Last we have the Potion of Giant Strength. Which is very similar to the belt, except it is temporary and boosts the imbiber to Frost Giant levels. This translates to chunking small boulders up to 200' and dealing 3d6 damage with them (not too shabby!) and also doing x2 damage in melee. The potion specifically states it will not combine effects with the gauntlets or the girdle. I could see drinking the potion during a siege and hurling boulders at the attacking forces, or at the parapets if I were outside the walls!

I've mostly seen the gauntlets show up in games. The last homebrew campaign that I ran, a bugbear chieftain had a pair and gave the party a fairly hard time before finally dropping. The melee fighter was beyond thrilled to discover the gloves. He and the cleric wrangled occasionally about who should wear them. Fun times! I would also offer some latitude on how the strength effects could manifest by using the ability check system (roll under your score on a d20) to let the fighter show off a little. But beyond that, he was just a strong human with a slightly tougher punch and more encumbrance.

I honestly don't see the "giant strength" items being too unbalancing in play, either. The potion wears off and the girdle is for the most part, simple combat buffs. Though I wouldn't let a normal person win an arm-wrestling contest against the character!