Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons has mechanics for improvised weapons, but none for improvised armor. I can have Gog the Ogre beat a first-level character nearly to death with a fish he pulls from a stream dealing 1d4+4 bludgeoning damage with each blow. But if I want to give him a makeshift form of scale mail crafted from the dented bucklers and kite shields of vanquished foes, I have to stray into “you’re the DM. You can do whatever you want” territory. So unsatisfying.

If you’re wondering, for Gog’s shirt of shields, I’m just going give him the +2 bonus to his armor class that he would receive if he carried a shield. Simple. Direct. Problem solved. So put the phone down. There’s no need to bother Jeremy Crawford with my ruling.

While I’m dressing up ol’ Gog in something more than a loin cloth and a scowl, how else can I make this ogre pop of the page as a memorable monster?

I saw this on Reddit the other day and hooboy, I was like “my version of Gog definitely needs to be adorned with a homemade necklace crafted from a flayed human face stretched in the shape of a pentagram across a round iron ring.” Skulls as shoulder pads and a femur jammed through an ogre’s septum are so passe.

If you think about what an earring is, sure. It’s jewelry. But it’s also a sharpened piece of metal you jam through the fleshy part of your ear, right? So why not have ol’ Gog jam a jeweled dagger through one of his earlobes? It’s too small for him to use, but it’s a nice bit of bling otherwise. Why wouldn’t an ogre staring down at the pulped head of a victim look at the gold or silver or gemstone embedded in the earlobe of his victim and think “I could make something like that work.” Wait, do people still say bling?

So I’ve played with how Gog the Ogre looks. What else can I do with him?

When I think “ogre,” the last thing I think is hygiene. I mean, he doesn’t smell like a ghast or anything like that. You have to work at that. BUT, it’s not a stretch to set the scene by announcing to your table that as Gog charges toward the party, his stench precedes him. If Gog successfully grapples the party’s meat shield to drag him to the edge of an escarpment to toss him off it, perhaps the character’s caught in a headlock where he’s getting a face full of Gog’s armpit along the way, ripe as roadkill in Texas. In August.

Yes, I know. Gog likely won’t survive more than 3 or 4 rounds of combat. He’s just an ogre. But he can still be a memorable villain in your telling of Lost Mine of Phandelver, just by painting a more interesting picture of him in the minds of the players at your table.

(It’s good to be back. Life got a little busy for a couple of weeks)

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