# Giants: How big should they be in an a Fantasy RPG?



## frankthedm (May 17, 2006)

Previous title:Giants: Should Hill, Stone, Frost and Fire giants be Huge instead of Large?






Giant: The word hold a lot of imagery. Most of it barely applies to the giants PC will fight most often. Out of all the MM ‘true’ giants, only the strongest and most magical, Cloud and Storm giants are huge. The rest, while bigger than humans, are not significantly larger than an ogre or troll. While the desire to have most giants fit into dungeons is understandable, a large non classed biped having 130 to 150 HP feels just off to me. To then say it is a “Giant” makes it worse.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG121.jpg
I doubt I am the only one who feels this way, a few times I have noticed D&D artists drawing giants as much larger than the MM calls for… 
http://paizo.com/image/product/catalog/TSR/TSR82133_500.jpeg
http://www.waynereynolds.com/Misc1A/8.jpg
http://www.waynereynolds.com/Misc1A/12.jpg

Also wotc does now seem to be making giants more giants 'giant', the MM3’s Eldritch and Death giants are both huge and the MM2 mountain giant is colossal.


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## Ilium (May 17, 2006)

I'll take them as they are.  I like a range of sizes.  Howeve,r there's no reason magic-using giants wouldn't invent "Enlarge Giant" spells.


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## Henry (May 17, 2006)

Large is Large enough to me; after all, that's Eight to Sixteen feet to play with! Anyone who is six feet tall is going to see a 15 foot giant as three times his size, pretty much; visions of that can really evoke some terrifying thoughts.


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## Sejs (May 17, 2006)

They're fine as-is for my tastes.  Large runs the gamut from barely-large (ogres) to nearly-huge (giants), much in the same way medium has its own range, dwarves to goliaths.  

As it stands, giants hit _hard_.  Go toe to toe with one and you're in deep kimchee.  Last thing we need is them getting any stronger, heh.


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## MoogleEmpMog (May 17, 2006)

Giants are fine as-is.  A 16-ft.-tall fire giant is close to three times the height of an average human and twice the height of an average ogre.  I would like to see racial paragon classes allowing the lesser giants to BECOME huge, however (or to acquire Powerful Build); I picture some lesser giants growing enough to qualify, but not all.


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## ColonelHardisson (May 17, 2006)

MoogleEmpMog said:
			
		

> I would like to see racial paragon classes allowing the lesser giants to BECOME huge




That is a great idea. I love it when someone uses something that is already available to handle a concept.


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## Felon (May 17, 2006)

Certainly don't see the problem with giants being--large is pretty big! 

I do wish it were possible to advance giants as monsters so their size could increase. But you have to advance them by class.


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## Nyaricus (May 17, 2006)

In my homebrew, I am using monster progressions ala Savage Species (with a lot of changes, of course ) to make giants grow as they go up in level/experience. They start as medium, fairly quickly make it to large and then after a great while they get to be huge. This hasn't been playtested yet (and is really only a rough draft), but most of the levels are stat boosts for giants. Basically, I will eventually be doing this for any playable "monster" in my campiagn setting, so that they don't have to start at level 15, or whatever (not fun for a level 1 game, anyways )

So, I do use huge giants. While large size is that, it's just not what I see giants as. The Fire Giants (second last) picture by Wayne Reynolds is about the size (if a bit shorter and less stocky) that my campaigns giants would be.


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## Klaus (May 18, 2006)

ColonelHardisson said:
			
		

> That is a great idea. I love it when someone uses something that is already available to handle a concept.



 And to your left we see the Giant Paragon prestige class from Arcana Evolved.

http://www.enworld.org/Pozas/Pictures/Illustration/titanic_battle.jpg


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## Tonguez (May 18, 2006)

IMC there is only one species of Normal Giant* who are large sized and range from 10 - 12ft. In Giant society staus is determined by height and power and all giants advance by gaining HP Height and first elemental powers (Stone, Frost, Fire, Storm, Cloud), then Huge size and then Legendary Status.

16ft Giants are few and Huge giants are legendary figures who may even be worshipped as minor dieties

(*Normal Giant does not include Sea Giant, Ogre, Troll or Hag which are all considered different species)


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## Tonguez (May 18, 2006)

Also is it me or does anyone else think that giants are drawn too thin/narow and should be protrayed as being broader overall (sort of like the frost giant pick)


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## Kunimatyu (May 18, 2006)

There's a template in Advanced Bestiary called Jotunblood, for the Huge effect you're describing.


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## Sejs (May 18, 2006)

Tonguez said:
			
		

> Also is it me or does anyone else think that giants are drawn too thin/narow and should be protrayed as being broader overall (sort of like the frost giant pick)




Depends on which half of my brain you ask.  One half says "Giants! Yeah! Big in every way!".  The other half says "Thin kinda makes sense.  Keeping something that big really well-fed would be tough, let alone a whole group of 'em."


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## Graf (May 18, 2006)

Felon said:
			
		

> But you have to advance them by class.



Absolutley.
If I found you were violating any of the sacred rules(tm) I would call for you to be taken away personally.


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## Li Shenron (May 18, 2006)

The bigger the scarier! I've never thought about increasing the MM giants' size, but why not trying that sometimes? There are of course Huge and Gargantuan giants already, but there's really little reason why Frost & Fire should be smaller than Storm & Cloud an not viceversa.

There are however some difficulties in using too-large monsters, because you have to accomodate their environment, at least if you want it to make most sense as possible.

Indeed I agree that the best would have been to have advancement by HD/size. IMO when writing the MM the designers had in mind that each monster should be suggested for either advancement (HD or class level) but not both. So they might have automatically thought that if they had written a HD advancement it would have meant "you shouldn't apply class levels to this". Class levels is still the most appropriate advancement for Giants, but really they could be advanced in both ways.


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## Matafuego (May 18, 2006)

MoogleEmpMog said:
			
		

> I would like to see racial paragon classes allowing the lesser giants to BECOME huge, however (or to acquire Powerful Build)




Actually that is a GREAT idea.
I like my giants as they are in the MM and I'm even allowing some of them to become PCs (after the culmination of certain campaign points where there is already a Fire Giant Wizard PC).
I think they are big (and bigger) enough but some paragon growing in size would be great.

We had dragons, undeads, aberrations...
When is the Book of Giants coming out?
Giantcraft? Was that the name in the FR?

Lucas


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## Hussar (May 18, 2006)

The real problem with huge giants is just that - they're huge.  You need such immense spaces to use them in.  A huge base is 3x3.  That means if you have an encounter with 4 giants, you need a bloody immense room to do it in.  Makes mapping a real pain.

Besides, 15 feet tall is big.


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## Quasqueton (May 18, 2006)

Looking at that image in the OP, how does the human deal a the lethal (killing) blow to the Huge giant? He can't hit above the giant's thigh.

This concept has always been a mental stumbling block for me.

Quasqueton


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## D'karr (May 18, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> Looking at that image in the OP, how does the human deal a the lethal (killing) blow to the Huge giant? He can't hit above the giant's thigh.
> 
> This concept has always been a mental stumbling block for me.
> 
> Quasqueton




When the Big, Tall Giant leans down to beat the puny human, the human stabs him in the groin.  Worst pain there is...   LOL


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## Dog Moon (May 18, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> Looking at that image in the OP, how does the human deal a the lethal (killing) blow to the Huge giant? He can't hit above the giant's thigh.
> 
> This concept has always been a mental stumbling block for me.
> 
> Quasqueton




That's kind of the problem I always had, but I figure if nothing else, just chop off their legs at the knees or ankles and then when they can't move except at a crawl and they're lying down on the ground, finish it off.


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## NexH (May 18, 2006)

Tonguez said:
			
		

> Also is it me or does anyone else think that giants are drawn too thin/narow and should be protrayed as being broader overall (sort of like the frost giant pick)




Indeed; most of the time they look better that way, and that broader form seems better fit to support their weight.


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## RangerWickett (May 18, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> Looking at that image in the OP, how does the human deal a the lethal (killing) blow to the Huge giant? He can't hit above the giant's thigh.
> 
> This concept has always been a mental stumbling block for me.
> 
> Quasqueton




Someone needs to play Shadows of the Colossus. Even in your first battle, you jump onto the giant's leg, stab him in the calf to bring him down, then climb up onto his belt, up his back, and finally onto his head, where you stab him repeatedly until he falls. You're a skinny little guy, and this critter is at least colossal.


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## diaglo (May 18, 2006)

none of the above.


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## Nifft (May 18, 2006)

Why would Huge giants fight little tiny Humans with such large weapons? Wouldn't a flyswatter be more effective?

Imagine the reflex DC...

 -- N


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## Henry (May 18, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> Looking at that image in the OP, how does the human deal a the lethal (killing) blow to the Huge giant? He can't hit above the giant's thigh.




I can visualize it - I would imagine them to have femoral arteries, same as humans do, plus hamstrings, calf tendons, and (I just looked it up) a half-dozen other major blood lines that would  somebody up very nicely.


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## lukelightning (May 18, 2006)

I think maybe fire and frost giants should be huge.


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## heirodule (May 18, 2006)

The same issue comes up fighting the tarrasque. 

See the silly Lidda sticking the rapier into the shoulder? Somehow I don't think that's really doing 10d6 sneak to the tarrasque. What vital organs are 1 foot deep in a 10 foot diameter shoulder?





rapiers also need a weapon vs AC adjustment


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## Henry (May 18, 2006)

heirodule said:
			
		

> What vital organs are 1 foot deep in a 10 foot diameter shoulder?





Well, to be fair, it doesn't exactly look like they're winning.


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## Quasqueton (May 18, 2006)

> The same issue comes up fighting the tarrasque.



Yeah. There are two size categories above Huge, so the mental stumbling block just gets harder to get past.


> Somehow I don't think that's really doing 10d6 sneak to the tarrasque.



Well, that's only 35 damage (average) on the tarrasque's 858 hit points. That's like 4 damage against 100 hit points; just a pin prick, like depicted in the image.


> Well, to be fair, it doesn't exactly look like they're winning.



In that picture, they are not trying to win -- they are trying to destroy the wand of orcus by throwing it in the tarrasque's mouth. (Context from the book that image appeared in.)

Quasqueton


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## Psychic Warrior (May 18, 2006)

I leave the giant sizes pretty much alone.  If I want a huge giant I'll use a huge type.  Besides how can your frost giants rider their mastadons if they're huge?!


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## KB9JMQ (May 18, 2006)

I pretty much leave them alone. They are pretty big already.


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## werk (May 18, 2006)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Besides, 15 feet tall is big.




People keep mentioning the extreme high end of 'large' as if that is how big they are.

Going from the MM:
Hill 10.5
Frost 15
Fire 12
Stone 12
Cloud 18
Storm 21

SO of the giants being discussed, only one is at the high end of large, while the hill giant is barely large.

I vote bigger.  Whether than means changing 'large' to include larger creatures, or making them huge.


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## Nebulous (May 18, 2006)

I leave sizes alone, and simply upgrade if i need to. i'm very excited about the new huge set though. The formorian giant from way back is still one of my favorites. Man, that was a wicked battle...


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## Henry (May 18, 2006)

werk said:
			
		

> People keep mentioning the extreme high end of 'large' as if that is how big they are.
> 
> Going from the MM:
> Hill 10.5
> ...




So every one of the hill giants your PCs meet are 10 and a 1/2 feet tall? Just like humans, the giants in my campaigns are 9 feet, 10 feet, even 12 feet, and some occasionally 13 or 14 feet tall! (Giants have giants among their number, I imagine, just like human beings!) 

Even presuming average height, to me, someone 11 feet tall (10.5 or so) is ENORMOUS. They dwarf their opponents. I'm almost six feet tall; the room I type this from is 10 feet up to the drop ceiling. A foot beyond that, imagining a creature of that size and bulk, and portraying that to the players, will be pretty daunting in itself. That's why I don't mind their size, and if I want something taller, I just make them so. I like having a wide range to choose from.


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## werk (May 18, 2006)

Henry said:
			
		

> So every one of the hill giants your PCs meet are 10 and a 1/2 feet tall? Just like humans, the giants in my campaigns are 9 feet, 10 feet, even 12 feet, and some occasionally 13 or 14 feet tall! (Giants have giants among their number, I imagine, just like human beings!)
> 
> Even presuming average height, to me, someone 11 feet tall (10.5 or so) is ENORMOUS. They dwarf their opponents. I'm almost six feet tall; the room I type this from is 10 feet up to the drop ceiling. A foot beyond that, imagining a creature of that size and bulk, and portraying that to the players, will be pretty daunting in itself. That's why I don't mind their size, and if I want something taller, I just make them so. I like having a wide range to choose from.




Average means average, so not only are some bigger, but they are also smaller.  So that means if you have 14 foot tall hill giants, you should also have 6 foot tall ones, right?

Yes, we can play with the numbers all we want, but my point was that everyone is modifying them upwards, which seems to suggest that the averages are too low in most people's opinion...even unconciously.  

11 feet tall is not enormous, it is large.  Barely bigger than human sized technically and relatively.  Put a bulette up against that hill giant, and now he is the small one, despite them having the same challenge rating.

There are already a lot of large creatures to daunt the PCs with, giants should be giant.


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## frankthedm (May 18, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> Looking at that image in the OP, how does the human deal a the lethal (killing) blow to the Huge giant? He can't hit above the giant's thigh.
> 
> This concept has always been a mental stumbling block for me.



Unless the characters have some crazy damage output, it takes a lot of hits to drop a giant, if PCs do 25 damage per hit on the average, a 149 HP fiire giant will take 6 blows to drop.

_As the giant is reeling from one blow to his leg, another strike causes him to lurch forward in pain, a third blow nearly brings him to his knees, two more solid slashes cut into some vital areas,. The giant regains his stance, swings his weapon again and again on his tiny foes, but blood loss and shock are about to do him in. One last solid blow to his legs tips the scale and plunges him into blackness. A heartbeat later one of his murderers drives a great sword into his neck._


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## Arnwyn (May 18, 2006)

I noticed at least one person voted for all 4 choices. Nice one, *Jaws*.


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## Sejs (May 18, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> Looking at that image in the OP, how does the human deal a the lethal (killing) blow to the Huge giant? He can't hit above the giant's thigh.
> 
> This concept has always been a mental stumbling block for me.



  As Henry said - that femoral artery's looking awfully inviting.  Let Mr. Huge have his blood supply drop out of him like a coffee cup with the bottom cut off.  A few choice hits to the legs, and that giant's not going anywhere but down.



			
				Qasqueton said:
			
		

> In that picture, they are not trying to win -- they are trying to destroy the wand of orcus by throwing it in the tarrasque's mouth. (Context from the book that image appeared in.)



 Yeah I never did quite understand that one.  Getting the Tarrasque to eat something is hard now?  

I mean seriously.  Wrap the wand in bacon then leave it somewhere convienant and the situation will take care of itself!


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## Rogue765 (May 18, 2006)

I've always thought that giants should be... Gigantic.

But I guess that would just be silly.


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## Umbran (May 18, 2006)

werk said:
			
		

> Yes, we can play with the numbers all we want, but my point was that everyone is modifying them upwards, which seems to suggest that the averages are too low in most people's opinion...even unconciously.
> 
> 11 feet tall is not enormous, it is large.  Barely bigger than human sized technically and relatively.




Maybe people think the averages are too low.  But maybe that's because they've got little grasp of how big these sizes are.  Rarely are we put up against something mobile that large, so we lack perspective.

Consider your words above.  11 feet is barely bigger than human sized, relatively?  Dude, it's nearly _twice_ the height of your average Joe.  Double "barely bigger"?


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## Henry (May 18, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

> I mean seriously.  Wrap the wand in bacon then leave it somewhere convienant and the situation will take care of itself!




The image of the Wand of Orcus blanketed in Hormel, sitting out in an open plain with a sign saying, _"Free Food!"_ like a Road Runner Cartoon, just had me laughing till I cried a little bit.


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## lukelightning (May 18, 2006)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Consider your words above.  11 feet is barely bigger than human sized, relatively?  Dude, it's nearly _twice_ the height of your average Joe.  Double "barely bigger"?




Well 11 feet is just one foot more than 10 feet, which is virtually 9 feet, and 9 is close to 8, and 8 isn't much more than 7 relatively speaking and 7 and 6 are close neighbors.  So they are pretty much the same size as humans.


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## Henry (May 18, 2006)

lukelightning said:
			
		

> Well 11 feet is just one foot more than 10 feet, which is virtually 9 feet, and 9 is close to 8, and 8 isn't much more than 7 relatively speaking and 7 and 6 are close neighbors.  So they are pretty much the same size as humans.




That reminds me, I have to go pick up my stretch limo after work -- excuse me, I mean my Volkswagen.


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## werk (May 18, 2006)

lukelightning said:
			
		

> Well 11 feet is just one foot more than 10 feet, which is virtually 9 feet, and 9 is close to 8, and 8 isn't much more than 7 relatively speaking and 7 and 6 are close neighbors.  So they are pretty much the same size as humans.




Everyone is so real world literal.  Large is only one step bigger than medium, that's what I'm saying...game terms.  Huge would be much bigger, and up, and up.

No, 6 feet taller is not much compared to 20 feet.  That's where the 'relatively' comes in.

So, say you have your 6' human, which is also the high end of their height,
And you have a large hill giant, 10.5 feet.
So that one step in size won 3.5 feet.

Compare a medium to a huge.
Compare a small to a large.

Use your imagination rather than your tape measure


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## ColonelHardisson (May 18, 2006)

Rogue765 said:
			
		

> I've always thought that giants should be... Gigantic.




They seem to fluctuate in size in folklore and myth, from "giants" of about 8 feet tall to redwood-tall and bigger. Ogres seem to fit the bill for the ones not _too_ much bigger than man-size, and then they range up to the mountain giant (in Monster Manual II), which really seems to be about the size many seem to want. Toss titans into the mix, and you really have a pretty wide variety of giants to choose from.


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## ruleslawyer (May 19, 2006)

My real problem is that giants (12 HD+ Giant-type beings) are the same size category as ogres (4 HD Giant-type beings) or trolls (6 HD Giant-type beings). This seems a bit wonky to me, since were one to think of hill giants as, say, advanced ogres, they certainly would NOT be Large-sized. 

Here's a question. What would happen if you increased the hill giant's size to Huge, gave it +4 Str (essentially making the stats identical to those of an "advanced ogre," were there such a thing) and then scaled the other giants up from there? 

Well, to answer my own question, you increase the thing's attack rolls by +1 and give it 3d8+12 damage (+6 damage overall) with a Huge greatclub. Hmm. Probably worth a +1 CR bump. 

Or we could say that +14 Str (the hill giant's Str modifier) is okay for a Huge creature and leave the hill giant's ability scores as they are while still raising its size to Huge. That bumps the damage by +4.5 at the cost of a -1 to attack rolls, which is probably not a high enough net benefit to warrant a CR increase, especially with the -1 AC as well.


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## elforcelf (May 19, 2006)

In lots of tales and in marvel comics giants are 100 feet tall.


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## Conaill (May 19, 2006)

We actually had a discussion about this very topic over in General Monster Talk not too long ago. I think it got lost in The Great Wipe of 2006, but IIRC the general consensus was that, yeah, WotC should have made the Giants larger in the first place. These are definitely *not* your traditional giants from mythology or fairy tales.

Personally, I think Huge is a reasonable default size for Giants, with perhaps just as many Giant races smaller (i.e. Large - maybe call them half-giants?) or larger than that.

To at least partially rectify the situation, we've drawn up "traditional" Gargantuan Giant - one that might not be out of place in a "Jack and the Beanstalk" scenario, for example. It's essentially somewhere in between the Large Hill Giant and the Collosal Mountain Giant.

Note that we're also currently working on a Giant by Poll project - also Gargantuan, but that's pretty much where all similarity stops...


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## Gez (May 19, 2006)

Traditionnal giants often have no fixed height. For example, Gargantua himself was at one point of his adventures able to enter a (normal human) courtroom to participate to a trial, and at another time, the narrator enter in his mouth and discover a whole nation of men living around Gargantua's teeth.

Sometimes, it's glossed over (as in the epic of Gargantua), the giant merely has whatever size is appropriate at this point of the story. Other times it's actually a plot device (like the Ogre in Puss-in-Boots who takes on the size and shape of a mouse on a dare from the devious cat).


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## BryonD (May 19, 2006)

There have been other discussions about how the majority of D&D games seem to run at below Level 12 or so.  Bumping the giants up to huge would move them out of many games.

That, combined with the apparent acceptance of the current sizes by a majority and the availability of much larger giants, makes me think the current design is the best option.

I personally like ogres and trolls in the 7 - 9 ft ranges and giants starting at around 10 and working up.


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## TheAuldGrump (May 19, 2006)

For my own game world giants get bigger over time - they never stop growing. I gather that to an extent Arcana Evolved takes a similar approach with the PC race of giants.

I don't use the giants from the MM as is, but I do use them as a starting point. So a young adult Frost Giant would be pretty much as described in the MM, but an older and more experienced giant might be a full size category larger, with the ability score modifiers to match.

The Auld Grump


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## woodelph (May 19, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

> Depends on which half of my brain you ask.  One half says "Giants! Yeah! Big in every way!".  The other half says "Thin kinda makes sense.  Keeping something that big really well-fed would be tough, let alone a whole group of 'em."




Shouldn't the half of your brain that's being realistic remember the square-cube law, and point out that there's a reason elephants and horses look nothing alike? 

Anyway, as for how big giants should be: i once put together a to-scale collage of all the races for my Spelljammer campaign (you know, like the race illos in the PH). It doesn't take all that much bigger to be really impressive. Go watch The Princess Bride, particularly the fight scene between Fezzik and Wesley. And then consider that Andre was "only" 7'4" and around 500# at that time. Scale that up to 10', and it's already pretty scary to stand next to. Go stand next to the elephant at the zoo, and just feel the massiveness. Then picture it rearing up and swing a [small] tree at you.

I don't think there's any _need_ to biggify giants--just bring home to the players how big they already are. That said, yeah, i like my giants bigger. But not because it's necessary.


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## Vuron (May 20, 2006)

If you want versimilitude the heights at current are just fine. Keep in mind that say doubling height mean a much more than a doubling of weight.

For example the frost giant is probably the closest in physical proportions to a healthy human. Let's say a healthy 6' male human averages 200 lbs. A Frost Giant  of 15' should weigh rough 3,125 lbs. If the Frost Giant is moderately active that means the giant needs to eat roughly 46,875 calories a day. That means the frost giant needs to eat the equivalent of 46 triple meat whataburgers a day 

A Cloud Giant should weigh roughly 5,400 pounds and needs to eat 81,000 calories a day.

Storm Giants would top the chart at 8,575 pounds and needs to eat 128,625 calories a day.

Granted with the more magical giants they might get some of thier nutrition through magic means but if you figure a frost giant tribe would require a truly insane amount of food in a given year.

Huge and Gargantuan Giants just become ridiculous.


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## Kunimatyu (May 20, 2006)

Vuron said:
			
		

> If you want versimilitude the heights at current are just fine. Keep in mind that say doubling height mean a much more than a doubling of weight.
> 
> For example the frost giant is probably the closest in physical proportions to a healthy human. Let's say a healthy 6' male human averages 200 lbs. A Frost Giant  of 15' should weigh rough 3,125 lbs. If the Frost Giant is moderately active that means the giant needs to eat roughly 46,875 calories a day. That means the frost giant needs to eat the equivalent of 46 triple meat whataburgers a day
> 
> ...




Isn't this why giants come into contact with human settlements, ie. eating all the cattle and/or villagers?


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## genshou (May 20, 2006)

Here at Wendy's a Classic Triple w/ Cheese is 970 calories.  To reach the previously posted calorie total, that giant would need to eat 48.324742 Classic Triples w/ Cheese.  In case you're wondering, that's 36.243558 lbs. of hamburger meat.  Eating this much meat every day would require a very large cow population from which each giant in the tribe could draw their daily sustenance.  For this reason, I seldom have more than three adult giants in one group.  They tend to dominate the region they are in, because only a dragon possesses similar power and innovation.


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## woodelf (May 20, 2006)

Vuron said:
			
		

> If you want versimilitude the heights at current are just fine. Keep in mind that say doubling height mean a much more than a doubling of weight.
> 
> For example the frost giant is probably the closest in physical proportions to a healthy human. Let's say a healthy 6' male human averages 200 lbs. A Frost Giant  of 15' should weigh rough 3,125 lbs. If the Frost Giant is moderately active that means the giant needs to eat roughly 46,875 calories a day. That means the frost giant needs to eat the equivalent of 46 triple meat whataburgers a day
> 
> ...




Calorie intake doesn't scale proportionately with mass--it doesn't even come close. The bigger the creature, the fewer calories needed in proportion to their mass. Another example of the square-cube law (in this case, the decreasing surface area in proportion to the volume). As an extreme example, it has been proposed that the largest dinosaurs--the brontosaurs and so forth--were "mesothermic"--that is, that while they had a fundamentally cold-blooded metabolism, their sheer bulk gave them a steady metabolic temperature, so they behaved essentially like a warm-blooded animal.

That said, most D&D ecologies are fundamentally broken, with *way* too many predators for the number of prey animals around. I wouldn't start analyzing the food consumption of large monsters too closely.

Oh, on the 'how big is big' front, check out this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gheorghe_Muresan, and note how the 7'7" Gheorghe positively dwarfs the 6' Tim, with them both in basically the same pose. Now try and imagine someone 10' tall similarly dwarfing Gheorghe--and put that guy next to Tim. 10' is already pretty impressive.


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## Conaill (May 21, 2006)

woodelf said:
			
		

> Vuron said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



In general, metabolic rate scales roughly as the 3/4 power of mass (Kleiber's law, see also here and here).

So for our 3.125 lb Frost Giant, his metabolism would be only 7.9 times higher than a 200 lb human, or requiring 11,788 calories per day (12 triple meat whataburgers).

The 5,400 lb Cloud Giant would have a metabolic rate 11.8 times higher than a human, or 17,767 calories per day.

The 8,575 lb Storm Giant' s metabolic rate would be 16.8 times higher than a human, or 25,133 calories per day (25 triple meat whataburgers).

Doesn't look nearly so bad now. Any area that could sustain a band of 17 cattle cattle thieves could just as easily sustain a Storm Giant. And that's assuming they're pure meat eaters, and don't grow their own food.


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## hastur_nz (May 22, 2006)

I like the sizes as they are; the problem I have is the excessive HD. Compared to an Ogre, a Hill Giant is just too tough when it's not really that much bigger.  

In my game, I strip 4 HD off each Giant, which takes them back to the way they were in 1st edition (old-timers may remember how they added about 4 HD to each giant in 2nd edition because they were not tough enough compared to 2nd edition adventurers especially fighters - in my opinion, 3rd edition fixed this problem by giving monsters feats etc, hence my re-tooling of them). Not a big change, but bridges the gap between Ogre and Hill Giant, and lets you run a few more at a time against your players. I then reduce their CR by 1.  I ran an extensive "play test" of this by running my own conversion of G1-3 (cut-down a bit, but not a lot, to allow us to finish it in our life-times). I just added a few class levels to the important giants. It worked out pretty well, and lots of giants got slaughtered (and a number of PC's died, some multiple times).


----------



## hong (May 22, 2006)

werk said:
			
		

> Compare a medium to a huge.
> Compare a small to a large.
> 
> Use your imagination rather than your tape measure




I bet you say that to all the girls.


----------



## genshou (May 22, 2006)

hong said:
			
		

> I bet you say that to all the girls.



I'm debating whether I should burst out laughing or beat you with the hongstick.

In the end, I'd rather laugh


----------



## Agent Oracle (May 22, 2006)

I just think most people get freaked out by true differences in size.

I mean, look at it this way: Have you ever stood beside a real-life professional basketball player?

They average at about 7 feet tall, just below a "large" creature.

This is the best image i could find of a large human: this guy is 8'4".







now, put him in rough hide armor, suddenly you have a short hill giant, who is still "large".

Go stand next to your doorframe and measure the difference between your head and the top.  It's probably a good foot of clearance.

this guy has to bend over to enter all buildings.

Ahh, here's Robert Wadlow, tallest person in history (poor guy, he was painfully shy about his size... and women adored him.  He never married.)






he died young because of heart problems brought on by his enormous size.  he was 8'11" when this photo was taken.


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## Wolfwood2 (May 22, 2006)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> My real problem is that giants (12 HD+ Giant-type beings) are the same size category as ogres (4 HD Giant-type beings) or trolls (6 HD Giant-type beings). This seems a bit wonky to me, since were one to think of hill giants as, say, advanced ogres, they certainly would NOT be Large-sized.




See, what this says to me is that giants have maybe too many hitdice.  Why should they get 12+ just from racial hitdice when they are, as you point out, not that big?  What I'd prefer is to quietly strip them of some of their hitdice, a much more invisible change to the game.  Cut hill giants down to 6 HD and follow from there.

This way giants will get a lot more of their power from class levels, just like smaller humanoids.  I think this is more appropriate and allows a lot more room to customize giants with class levels without giving them ridiculous amount of hitdice.


----------



## Garnfellow (May 22, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> See, what this says to me is that giants have maybe too many hitdice.  Why should they get 12+ just from racial hitdice when they are, as you point out, not that big?  What I'd prefer is to quietly strip them of some of their hitdice, a much more invisible change to the game.  Cut hill giants down to 6 HD and follow from there.
> 
> This way giants will get a lot more of their power from class levels, just like smaller humanoids.  I think this is more appropriate and allows a lot more room to customize giants with class levels without giving them ridiculous amount of hitdice.




Daniel R. Collins had a similiar notion a few years ago and built regressed versions of the true giants, moving them back to their 1st edition HD. I updated his work to 3.5 and posted it on my website:


Hill Giant
Stone Giant
Frost Giant
Fire Giant
Cloud Giant
Cloud Giant

I'm using these stripped down versions in my homebrew conversion of G1, G2, and G3 and so far I've been pretty happy with the results.


----------



## werk (May 22, 2006)

genshou said:
			
		

> Here at Wendy's a Classic Triple w/ Cheese is 970 calories.  To reach the previously posted calorie total, that giant would need to eat 48.324742 Classic Triples w/ Cheese.  In case you're wondering, that's 36.243558 lbs. of hamburger meat.  Eating this much meat every day would require a very large cow population from which each giant in the tribe could draw their daily sustenance.




Why wouldn't giants have giant cows and giant cheeseburgers?

Fantasy ecology, do you really want to go that route?


----------



## frankthedm (May 22, 2006)

werk said:
			
		

> Fantasy ecology, do you really want to go that route?



Why not? Orcas, elephants and sperm whales are supported by the current earth. T-rex and even bigger herbivores were supported a long time ago.

As for D&D ecologies being predator heavy that is just because the predators pursue and hunt perceived prey. {also the DM is expected to throws _challenges_ at the party, not peaceful herbivores.] The PCs find those peaceful herbivores on survival checks of _10 and up_. 

*Get along in the wild.* Move up to one-half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10.


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## Conaill (May 22, 2006)

All these giants, and not one giant blue ox to be found in the MM...


----------



## woodelf (May 22, 2006)

frankthedm said:
			
		

> As for D&D ecologies being predator heavy that is just because the predators pursue and hunt perceived prey. {also the DM is expected to throws _challenges_ at the party, not peaceful herbivores.] The PCs find those peaceful herbivores on survival checks of _10 and up_.




In the real world, many more people are injured by wild herbivores than by wild carnivores. In general, herbivores are the most dangerous wild animals--carnivores tend to only attack when (1) they're hungry and (2) they're sure they can win (and they're rarely sure they can win against people, who aren't generally on their "recognized prey" list). Herbivores tend to attack whenever you get too close and they can't run away, or are feeling ornery. The fact that herbivores tend to be less intelligent than carnivores contributes to this--they're less good at distinguishing legitimate threats from merely-unknown situations. Hippos, rhinos, elk, bison--these are the animals you never want to tangle with.

Not entirely sure how all this translates to a world full of fantastic creatures and primitive humanoids and plants that will eat a horse, however.


----------



## MoogleEmpMog (May 22, 2006)

I love those reduced-HD giants.  Really smooths out the ogre-hill giant curve.


----------



## sniffles (May 22, 2006)

I've always been uncomfortable with the concept of giants in the Huge category. It begins to strain my willing suspension of disbelief, especially if you then assume that the same world containing these Huge giants also contains substantial numbers of other Huge creatures. I don't expect the ecology of a fantasy world to conform exactly to real-world ecology, but I find Large giants quite impressive enough!


----------



## frankthedm (May 24, 2006)

Garnfellow said:
			
		

> Daniel R. Collins had a similiar notion a few years ago and built regressed versions of the true giants, moving them back to their 1st edition HD. I updated his work to 3.5 and posted it on my website:
> 
> 
> Hill Giant
> ...



Those seem much more fitting for thier HP / HD / sizes.


----------



## Garnfellow (May 24, 2006)

frankthedm said:
			
		

> Those seem much more fitting for thier HP / HD / sizes.




That was one of Dan's original insights -- true giants fall way, way outside the monster creation guidelines:



			
				Daniel R. Collins said:
			
		

> The Giants from the Monster Manual do not comply with the HD ranges in Mr. Williams' [Dragon magazine article, "How to Create a Monster."] All true giants have HD above the range indicated for the Giant type (hill, stone, frost, and fire all have at least triple the listed HD range); so do ettins, ogre mages, and trolls. Ogres are the only giant-type to comply with the Giant HD ranges from the article (and they have the absolute maximum). Note that if one (a) used the suggested "smooth" HD progression, and (b) returned giants to the HD they had in 1st Ed. AD&D (prior to a +50% increase), then they would in fact, in the majority of cases, fall into the proper ranges.




Me, I think lower HD giants are a better design choice primarily because it gives the DM much more room to add character classes, templates, and other cool tools. Racial HD are almost always a suboptimal choice next to class levels, which offer far more interesting and powerful abilities.


----------



## genshou (May 25, 2006)

I checked the monster design perameters from v5 of *Upper Krust*'s work for the Immortals Handbook, and according to that the minimum hit die for a Large creature is 4, and the minimum for a Huge creature is 8.  For stocky/bulky creatures a x1.5 multiplier is recommended.  Also, the following text is what caused me to remember the document:


			
				v5.pdf said:
			
		

> NB. There is some inconsistency between these rules and the Giant
> Type. Whilst Ogres; Ogre Magi and Trolls (treat hunched as stocky)
> adhere to these rules; Ettins and Giants deviate considerably. In fact
> given giants equally incongrous strength bonus you could be forgiven
> for thinking they were initially designed to be double the listed size.



So, I would either increase size or decrease hit dice on many of the giants.


----------



## Felon (May 25, 2006)

Meh. Giants are large enough that they're worthy opponents. Not so large that the idea of a human attacking one with a sword isn't ridiculous. 

Sorry, I just get ludicrous images of the characters from "Land of the Giants" trying to take down one of their pursuers with those makeshift axes made out matchsticks with a rasorblade tied to one end. 

"Ooooo, I'll give your wingtips such a thrashing!"


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## Conaill (May 25, 2006)

Felon said:
			
		

> Meh. Giants are large enough that they're worthy opponents. Not so large that the idea of a human attacking one with a sword isn't ridiculous.



As opposed to, say, attacking a Collosal red dragon with a sword? 

There's plenty of other Huge and larger creatures in D&D which are considered acceptable opponents for a party armed at least in part with melee weapons. Sure, you woudn't want to attack that Colossoal red dragon with *only* a sword. But I don't think a Huge or larger giant would make for a "ridiculous" encounter...


----------



## pogre (May 26, 2006)

Good lord man! What are you trying to do - make me re-base all of my figs?

And this, from a fellow miniatures enthusiast even!


----------



## frankthedm (May 26, 2006)

pogre said:
			
		

> Good lord man! What are you trying to do - make me re-base all of my figs?
> 
> And this, from a fellow miniatures enthusiast even!



Heavens no, I want you, and the players' minis, to _base_ some action figures! 





Besides, a huge add-on base is not hard to do. See the stone giant construction details.


----------



## frankthedm (Jun 12, 2006)

And another artist votes for huge*, this time on the new Dragon magazine. [click for larger image]


 

http://paizo.com/dragon/products/issues/2006/345

*Or at least tries to make it look that way by using a Gnome or Halfling. Her sword blade does look a lot like a historical short sword in the hand of a smaller race. Given the artist also does not oversize the giants weapon as most do, I suspect the off sizing of her weapon was intentional.


----------



## JoeGKushner (Jun 12, 2006)

Henry said:
			
		

> Large is Large enough to me; after all, that's Eight to Sixteen feet to play with! Anyone who is six feet tall is going to see a 15 foot giant as three times his size, pretty much; visions of that can really evoke some terrifying thoughts.




One of the biggest problems with the miniatures  thus far is that they have a great inconsistancy when it comes to showing the size of giants, trolls, and ogres as their sizes bounce all over the place due to having to fit on a certain sized base with zero variance.


----------



## Ilium (Jun 12, 2006)

JoeGKushner said:
			
		

> One of the biggest problems with the miniatures  thus far is that they have a great inconsistancy when it comes to showing the size of giants, trolls, and ogres as their sizes bounce all over the place due to having to fit on a certain sized base with zero variance.



 The minis are notorious for having wonky sizes for everybody.  I'm not a big minis collector, but I have halflings, dwarves and humans that overlap each other in size.

I remember seeing a picture of two different "Lidda" minis that didn't even look like the same species.


----------



## frankthedm (Jun 12, 2006)

JoeGKushner said:
			
		

> One of the biggest problems with the miniatures  thus far is that they have a great inconsistancy when it comes to showing the size of giants, trolls, and ogres as their sizes bounce all over the place due to having to fit on a certain sized base with zero variance.



I actually think way too many metal minis had their feet spread wide apart*. I think that screws with basing conventions more often than the actual sizes of figures. Heck one good thing to come out on mini companies making their own wargames is that those minis tend to fit better onto appropriate sized bases without busting and re-sculpting limbs.

*this one takes the cake
http://www.whiterose.org/dr.elmo/GSMC/Reserve/Frost Giant-Front.JPG


----------



## JoeGKushner (Jun 12, 2006)

frankthedm said:
			
		

> I actually think way too many metal minis had their feet spread wide apart*. I think that screws with basing conventions more often than the actual sizes of figures. Heck one good thing to come out on mini companies making their own wargames is that those minis tend to fit better onto appropriate sized bases without busting and re-sculpting limbs.
> 
> *this one takes the cake
> http://www.whiterose.org/dr.elmo/GSMC/Reserve/Frost Giant-Front.JPG




But at the same time, if you're not careful and do too much standing up, all of your non-humanoid races start looking like humanoids such as the various dragons coming out of the WoTC miniature piles.

And that's a nice paint job on the old Grendaier frost giant.


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## frankthedm (Jun 12, 2006)

JoeGKushner said:
			
		

> But at the same time, if you're not careful and do too much standing up, all of your non-humanoid races start looking like humanoids such as the various dragons coming out of the WoTC miniature piles.



I agree with you on dragons. Dragons definitely should be on all fours, one claw raised or in-flight. I also like cavalry bases and facing rules when it comes to dragons.







> And that's a nice paint job on the old Grendaier frost giant.



 Yes it is, it was the first image of that fig I found in google.


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## monboesen (Jun 12, 2006)

I definately don't want giants bigger. In fact I would like monsters to be smaller and only the most extreme going beyond size large.

This is due to the already mentioned problem of "how do you actually kill such a large creature with what in relative size is a toothpick" and the related other problem "how do you really survive even one hit from a creature with a mass and strenght of several magnitudes larger than yours".

Just look at those fire giants in the picture linked in the first post. One swing of those weapons that connect and you should be a goner. Even if you are not cut in half the impact will kill you right away (looks like the damn things bicep weighs more than most humans).

Therefore I prefer monsters of medium and large sizes and no bigger.


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## zypherillius (Jun 12, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

> They're fine as-is for my tastes.  Large runs the gamut from barely-large (ogres) to nearly-huge (giants), much in the same way medium has its own range, dwarves to goliaths.
> 
> As it stands, giants hit _hard_.  Go toe to toe with one and you're in deep kimchee.  Last thing we need is them getting any stronger, heh.




thats all wed need, a <insert name giant> with a 15 foot reach


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## frankthedm (Jun 12, 2006)

zypherillius said:
			
		

> thats all wed need, a <insert name giant> with a 15 foot reach



Shoot the thing while you go for cover using _shot on the run_. Use your _mobility_! *Tumble* on in there! The _Enlarged_ fighter weilds his _reach_ weapon. You have plenty of ways to fight the foe, use them! 

Anyhow, someone requested a *Babe*?



			
				Conaill said:
			
		

> All these giants, and not one giant blue ox to be found in the MM...



Big blue ox
[sblock=Big blue ox]*	Size/Type:	*	Huge Animal
*	Hit Dice:	*	16d8+137 (217 hp) 209 HP if PCs Roll for HP as per RAW after level 1 
*	Initiative:	*	-1
*	Speed:	*	30 ft. (6 squares)
*	Armor Class:	*	18 (-2 size, -1 Dex, +11 natural), touch 7, flat-footed 18
*	Base Attack/Grapple:	*	+12/+30
*	Attack:	*	Gore +20 melee (3d8+15 19-20 x 2 crit)
*	Full Attack:	*	Gore +20 melee (3d8+15 19-20 x 2 crit)
*	Space/Reach:	*	15 ft./10 ft.
*	Special Attacks:	*	Powerful charge, trample 2d12+15
*	Special Qualities:	*	Low-light vision, scent
*	Saves:	*	Fort +17, Ref +9, Will 8
*	Abilities:	*	Str 30, Dex 9, Con 25, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 7
*	Skills:	*	Listen +13, Spot +12
*	Feats:	*	Alertness, Iron will, Improved toughness, improved natural attack [horns] Improved critical[ horns] Weapon focus.
*	Environment:	*	North American wilderness
*	Organization:	*	Solitary or with Paul
*	Challenge Rating:	*	10 {Changed from triceratops’s 9 for raising to high int animal and better feat selection] 
*	Treasure:	*	See myths
*	Alignment:	*	See myths
*	Advancement:	*	17-32 HD (Huge); 33-48 HD (Gargantuan)
Combat
Powerful Charge (Ex)
When Babe, the big blue ox charges, its gore attack deals 6d8+20 points of damage, the threat range remains the same, 19-20 x2. 
Trample (Ex)
Reflex half DC 28. The save DC is Strength-based.[/Sblock]


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## Sejs (Jun 13, 2006)

> Shoot the thing while you go for cover using shot on the run. Use your mobility! Tumble on in there! The Enlarged fighter weilds his reach weapon. You have plenty of ways to fight the foe, use them!



  Adding on to the list: Tower Shield.  Assume cover and move on in.


Nice Babe, by the way.


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## Christian (Jun 14, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

> Adding on to the list: Tower Shield.  Assume cover and move on in.




Yeah, but you can't attack on the turn you use the TS for total cover. Then, on its turn, the giant moves back 10-15' and sunders your tower shield. You won't even get an AoO, because you didn't threaten when the movement was made ...

(OK, technically that doesn't work, because a sunder attack is a type of attack on the wielder of the shield/weapon being sundered, and you can't make an attack against an opponent who has total cover relative to you. All hail the invincible tower shield!  )


----------



## catsclaw227 (Jun 14, 2006)

Christian said:
			
		

> OK, technically that doesn't work, because a sunder attack is a type of attack on the wielder of the shield/weapon being sundered, and you can't make an attack against an opponent who has total cover relative to you. All hail the invincible tower shield!




OK.. off topic here a moment... I read this one other time and prayed to the RPG gods that this got errata'd.  Does anyone know about this?  You can't sunder a huge shield sitting in front of you because you can't make the attack against the wielder?  This is like some twisted Escher rule.

Back on topic.  The pics in the OP do suggest that the giants are bigger in the mind's eye of the artists, though there have been some good points about keeping the giants at Large.  I might have a giant BBEG be an advanced one, but otherwise keep the general population at Large.


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## frankthedm (Jun 14, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

> Adding on to the list: Tower Shield.  Assume cover and move on in.
> 
> 
> Nice Babe, by the way.



Thank you, here is another...

[Sblock]Big Bad blue ox
*	Size/Type:	*	Huge Animal
*	Hit Dice:	*	32d8 +256 [416 HP]
*	Initiative:	*	+1
*	Speed:	*	30 ft. (6 squares)
*	Armor Class:	*	20 (-2 size, +1 Dex, +11 natural), touch 7, flat-footed 18
*	Base Attack/Grapple:	*	+24/+42
*	Attack:	*	Gore +32 melee (2d8+15 19-20 x 2 crit)
*	Full Attack:	*	Gore +32 melee (2d8+15 19-20 x 2 crit)
*	Space/Reach:	*	15 ft./10 ft.
*	Special Attacks:	*	Powerful charge, trample 2d12+15
*	Special Qualities:	*	Fast heal 3, Low-light vision, scent
*	Saves:	*	Fort +26, Ref +19, Will +17
*	Abilities:	*	Str 30, Dex 12***, Con 26*, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 7
*	Skills:	*	Listen +19, Spot +18
*	Feats:	*	Iron will[1], Weapon focus[3]. Power Attack[6], Cleave[[8] Improved critical[ gore][12] Combat reflexes[15] Great cleave[18], Epic will [21], Overwhelming critical [+1d6 damage on a crit][24], Devastating critical[27] gore critical hit kills if DC 36 fort save, Fast heal 3[30]
*	Environment:	*	North American wilderness
*	Organization:	*	Solitary or with Paul
*	Challenge Rating:	*	15.333 rounded up to 16 maybe higher
*	Treasure:	*	See myths
*	Alignment:	*	See myths
*	Advancement:	*	33-48 HD (Gargantuan)
Combat

*Powerful Charge (Ex)*
When Babe, the big bad blue ox charges, its gore attack deals 4d8+20 points of damage, the threat range remains the same, 19-20 x2. 

*Overwhelming and devastating critical (Ex)*
When Babe, critically hits a foe with his gore, the critical hit deals an additional 1d6 damage and kills the victim if DC 36 fort save is failed.

*Trample (Ex)*
Reflex half DC 36. The save DC is Strength-based.[/Sblock]


----------



## Christian (Jun 14, 2006)

catsclaw227 said:
			
		

> OK.. off topic here a moment... I read this one other time and prayed to the RPG gods that this got errata'd.




Geez, I was just making a joke. Some things are too obvious to require errata, aren't they?


----------



## catsclaw227 (Jun 14, 2006)

Christian said:
			
		

> Geez, I was just making a joke. Some things are too obvious to require errata, aren't they?




I agree, but you never know!  When you have people quoting RAW as the end all to D&D gaming then I bet there are players that would try to take advantage of it.


----------



## frankthedm (Jul 3, 2006)

Christian said:
			
		

> Geez, I was just making a joke. Some things are too obvious to require errata, aren't they?



Some people cling to literal wordings for every advantage they can.


----------



## WizarDru (Jul 3, 2006)

catsclaw227 said:
			
		

> OK.. off topic here a moment... I read this one other time and prayed to the RPG gods that this got errata'd.  Does anyone know about this?  You can't sunder a huge shield sitting in front of you because you can't make the attack against the wielder?  This is like some twisted Escher rule.




If that were what the rules said, it would be pretty goofy.  However, they don't say that, so we're square.  The target of the Sunder doesn't have total cover...the target of the sunder is providing total cover to someone else.  In fact, the defender takes a -2 on the Sunder check because he's using a tower shield, effectively making it EASIER to initiate a sunder.  Of course, it's also much harder than a normal shield, so it balances out.


----------



## Endur (Jul 3, 2006)

Personally, as a GM, when I get the chance to pick between a Huge Giant and a Large Giant, I always pick the Huge Giant.  Half-Ogres, Ogres, and powerful build medium creatures are all sort of large ... but huge is different.  When you place a Huge mini  on the table, all of the player's eyes bug out.

My Efreeti like using their enlarge self spell to make themselves look bigger too.


----------



## Conaill (Jul 3, 2006)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> The target of the Sunder doesn't have total cover...the target of the sunder is providing total cover to someone else.  In fact, the defender takes a -2 on the Sunder check because he's using a tower shield, effectively making it EASIER to initiate a sunder.



That would be the common-sense interpretation, right. But not exactly what the RAW says...

Shield, Tower: "you can instead use it as total cover, though you must give up your attacks to do so."

Total Cover: "You can’t make an attack against a target that has total cover."

Sunder: "Step 1 Attack of Opportunity. You provoke an attack of opportunity from *the target* whose weapon or shield you are trying to sunder."

It's pretty clear that "the target" of the Sunder is the person holding the item. And that person has full cover, so cannot be targeted by a Sunder. Just like you can't sunder the sword of someone who is hiding behind a wall. D&D doesn't really have any special rule sto say what happens when you have full cover but your equipment doesn't - even if it's the equipment that actually provides the cover.


Of course, and _sane_ DM will agree that a tower shield should be open to a Sunder. (In fact, the guy cowering behind the tower shield shouldn't even get an AoO, because the attacker is considered to have full cover as well.) The D&D FAQ doesn't cover this explicitly, however, there is this interesting passage under Grapple and Snatch Attacks:







			
				D&D FAQ said:
			
		

> Grapple and Snatch Attacks: Total cover from a tower shield blocks such attacks (the foe just can’t get hold of you). *The foe could, however grab the shield*.



Screw the RAW. I'd much rather use common sense!


----------



## frankthedm (Jul 12, 2006)

Endur said:
			
		

> Personally, as a GM, when I get the chance to pick between a Huge Giant and a Large Giant, I always pick the Huge Giant.  Half-Ogres, Ogres, and powerful build medium creatures are all sort of large ... but huge is different.  When you place a Huge mini  on the table, all of the player's eyes bug out.








Now that's a Giant!







> My Efreeti like using their enlarge self spell to make themselves look bigger too.



Efreeti are the only ones who have that "Enlarge Monster" trick in all of the core rules.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 12, 2006)

Conaill said:
			
		

> It's pretty clear that "the target" of the Sunder is the person holding the item. And that person has full cover, so cannot be targeted by a Sunder. Just like you can't sunder the sword of someone who is hiding behind a wall. D&D doesn't really have any special rule sto say what happens when you have full cover but your equipment doesn't - even if it's the equipment that actually provides the cover.




I'd say the target has a choice - either they are willing to move the shield to help protect it, or they aren't.  In the former case, sunder is possible.  In the latter case, the shield is effectively "unattended", and the appropriate rules apply.


----------



## Felix (Jul 12, 2006)

I like giants the way they are... with one exception.

Stone Giants. I dig the idea that these guys don't go around reproducing like usual giants, but instead are only somewhat removed from an elemental. So they are born from rock, don't reproduce, don't have any real society, and don't ever really stop growing.

And the best Stone Giant _ever_?

"They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they? I always thought that's what they were..."


----------



## Raduin711 (Aug 22, 2007)

In my campaign world, based off of norse mythology, giants actually come from another plane where... what do you know... everything is bigger.  Thus eliminating that troublesome question of... how does it eat?

Evil giants occasionally leave Jotunheim to go to Midgard where they can pick on things smaller than they are.


----------



## Delta (Aug 22, 2007)

Dangit, here I am participating in the thread resurrection.

I recently house-ruled that my Hill and Stone Giants are Large, everybody else Huge.


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## JoeGKushner (Aug 22, 2007)

Henry said:
			
		

> Large is Large enough to me; after all, that's Eight to Sixteen feet to play with! Anyone who is six feet tall is going to see a 15 foot giant as three times his size, pretty much; visions of that can really evoke some terrifying thoughts.





Now if only the people doing the miniatures could get that down.

I've seen hill giants ranging from ogre size to should be ounted on a huge base.


----------



## frankthedm (Aug 22, 2007)

JoeGKushner said:
			
		

> Now if only the people doing the miniatures could get that down.
> 
> I've seen hill giants ranging from ogre size to should be mounted on a huge base.



Even some of the sculptors agree with me giants should be bigger than thier 1E sizes.   

Though you are right, the 3E Box set hill giant was huge more or less. The DDM hill giant was smaller than the harbinger ogre IIRC. 

The Hill giant barbarian was a nice size IMHO.

Reaper wise, I have two of blorg mudstump, though that newer Popeye'd Armed hill giant was not my cup of tea.


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## Aeric (Aug 22, 2007)

It always bugged me that ogres and hill giants were the same size.  Giants should be giant!  I also feel that dragons should be bigger.  Anything smaller than Huge should be a baby.

As for the argument against fighting toe-to-toe with a giant, that's something that shouldn't be happening anyways.  Ranged attacks and mobility, those should be how giants are downed.  And magic.  Enlarging the fighter is always fun.  Or HR it so that the giant takes X amount of damage before his legs are so messed up that he either goes down on one knee or falls on his bum, in either case providing medium-sized adventurers access to his vitals.


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## pawsplay (Aug 22, 2007)

Anything over fifteen feet it getting out of the realm of a Big Dude with a Big Sword and into the realm of ancient mythology. I'd like hill giants to be something thirty or forty ordinary soldiers might have a chance of taking down, not something that can jump over a castle wall and pull down the main tower with its bare hands.


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## Delta (Aug 22, 2007)

Aeric said:
			
		

> It always bugged me that ogres and hill giants were the same size.  Giants should be giant!  I also feel that dragons should be bigger.  Anything smaller than Huge should be a baby.




And that's the other thing I house-ruled at the same time. In 3E it has the additional advantage of fixing the fact that giant and dragon hit dice are all out of sync with the guidelines of size-per-hit-dice. For me, the first dragon age category is Large, anything after that Huge (didn't change hit dice, just attacks; for giants I increased size & decreased hit dice back to 1E levels at the same time).

Agree with Frank about the barabarian hill giant mini, I just picked one up last week, actually.


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## JoeBlank (Aug 22, 2007)

I love that some of these old threads are coming back to life.

Large is fine by me for most giants. After all, the Biblical Goliath was only an estimated 6.5 to 9.5 feet tall.


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## Wolfwood2 (Aug 22, 2007)

Here's an interesting bit of experience.  At GenCon, they had a "life size" statue of a troll.  As near as I can tell it was built to the same dimensions as in the MM, but standing next to it, it felt BIG.

You don't realize how big a humanoid nine feet tall is until it's towering over you.  Those hands looked like they could wrap clear around my head like a baseball, and those fangs looked like they would hardly slow down tearing my flesh.  I felt like a toddler standing next to it.

After being next to that troll, I am fully prepared to call a guy ten feet tall a giant.

Now I agree that giants have too many racial hitdice, but that should be fixed by reducing the racial hitdice, not embiggening the giants.   It's more fun when you can stack 'em with class levels.


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## frankthedm (Oct 16, 2007)

[imagel]http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/RulesComp_Gallery/110232.jpg[/imagel]
______________________________
_*QUOTE=Wolfwood2* 
Those hands looked like they could wrap clear around my head like a baseball, and those fangs looked like they would hardly slow down tearing my flesh.  I felt like a toddler standing next to it._
_________________________________

That is how a human should feel next to any monster. A giant should be big enough to wrap it's hand around your body, not just your head


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## FunkBGR (Oct 16, 2007)

Am I the only person that thinks all monster types should run the gamut of sizes? Where my small or smaller GIANTS?!?!?!


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## Nifft (Oct 16, 2007)

FunkBGR said:
			
		

> Am I the only person that thinks all monster types should run the gamut of sizes? Where my small or smaller GIANTS?!?!?!



Right here.

Cheers, -- N


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## Desdichado (Oct 16, 2007)

frankthedm said:
			
		

> I doubt I am the only one who feels this way, a few times I have noticed D&D artists drawing giants as much larger than the MM calls for…
> http://www.waynereynolds.com/Misc1A/8.jpg
> http://www.waynereynolds.com/Misc1A/12.jpg



Well, I should point out that those two pictures are NOT in his D&D gallery, but in his fantasy gallery, so that's not a compelling argument.  Technically I suppose you can't say for sure that those are D&D fire and frost giants.

Then again, I don't know who commissioned those pieces.  They might have been third party d20 stuff.


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## Klaus (Oct 16, 2007)

Hey, I totally forgot about this thread when I made my giant vs. sidhe painting:


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## HeavenShallBurn (Oct 16, 2007)

Aeric said:
			
		

> It always bugged me that ogres and hill giants were the same size.  Giants should be giant!  I also feel that dragons should be bigger.  Anything smaller than Huge should be a baby.



If you look at the dimensions given dragons are oversized for their mechanical size categories.  For example "Large" true dragons are actually 31ft long.  They're actually pushing the top end of Huge for size.  Thus I have adjusted all dragons one size category upward to account for this.

And as far as giants go I'm somewhere in the middle.  I don't think a lot of people realize just how big 12ft or 15ft actually is due to the lack of anything to compare themselves against for scale.  But on the other hand I treat giants somewhat differently.  I pull 4 hit dice from the top to bring their HP back more in line with earlier editions.  The MM1 large giants as written I basically interpret as "teenage" giants who don't have their full growth, I advance them by HD up into Huge where appropriate.


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## Hussar (Oct 16, 2007)

Honestly, the biggest problem with going to huge giants is mapping.  A 3x3 base just eats up SO much room.  Four or five huge creatures in the same room means that the room has to be immense.  This leads to really, really boring maps where you have vast swaths of empty space.


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## sniffles (Oct 16, 2007)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> Here's an interesting bit of experience.  At GenCon, they had a "life size" statue of a troll.  As near as I can tell it was built to the same dimensions as in the MM, but standing next to it, it felt BIG.
> 
> You don't realize how big a humanoid nine feet tall is until it's towering over you.  Those hands looked like they could wrap clear around my head like a baseball, and those fangs looked like they would hardly slow down tearing my flesh.  I felt like a toddler standing next to it.
> 
> After being next to that troll, I am fully prepared to call a guy ten feet tall a giant.



Precisely! 

I have an ongoing disagreement with a friend of mine who really likes giants to be enormous - 30 ft. tall or more. He likes his dragons hundreds of feet long. But there's a point at which for me not only does that strain my suspension of disbelief, as I said way back on page one, but it also means that they're just too overwhelmingly large to even be a challenge for an adventuring group.

A challenge should be something that you have some hope of winning, however small that hope is. Fighting a 50' giant is hopeless. He could flick you into a mountainside like you'd flick a booger off your fingertip.


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## Klaus (Oct 17, 2007)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Honestly, the biggest problem with going to huge giants is mapping.  A 3x3 base just eats up SO much room.  Four or five huge creatures in the same room means that the room has to be immense.  This leads to really, really boring maps where you have vast swaths of empty space.



 Not necessarily. If the PCs are in the giant's lair, there are countless common implements that are HUGE, so a pair of boots lying on the floor may provide cover/concealment, and require a move action to bypass (like a fallen log), etc, etc.

Think of Mickey, Goofy and Donald climbing the giant beanstalk to get the Golden Harp.


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## Psion (Oct 17, 2007)

Kunimatyu said:
			
		

> There's a template in Advanced Bestiary called Jotunblood, for the Huge effect you're describing.




I was just swinging by to mention that one.


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## Sabathius42 (Oct 17, 2007)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Honestly, the biggest problem with going to huge giants is mapping.  A 3x3 base just eats up SO much room.  Four or five huge creatures in the same room means that the room has to be immense.  This leads to really, really boring maps where you have vast swaths of empty space.




You could also just change your scale in giant-prone areas to have one square equal 15'.  Treat the giants as medium and the PCs as Tiny.

DS


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## TheAuldGrump (Oct 18, 2007)

Kunimatyu said:
			
		

> There's a template in Advanced Bestiary called Jotunblood, for the Huge effect you're describing.



My favorite template in the whole book. I like what was done with Hill giants in particular.

The Auld Grump


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## Hussar (Oct 19, 2007)

Sabathius42 said:
			
		

> You could also just change your scale in giant-prone areas to have one square equal 15'.  Treat the giants as medium and the PCs as Tiny.
> 
> DS




That's WAY too much of a pain in the butt.  The game is based on a particular scale and messing with that scale just for one creature type is a bad idea IMO.

As far as boots and stuff to make the room more tactically interesting, that's not really my point.  4 Huge creatures need rooms about 60x60 (12x12) squares to be able to have enough room for 4-6 PC's and the creatures.  At a minimum, you cannot go below 30x30.  That means that your battle map and your tabletop better be pretty darn big to handle combats.  

It's the physical issues that become a problem.  It's fine for dragons and a few other creatures because most huge and bigger creatures aren't fighting in groups.  But, a group of fire giants isn't all that out of left field.  It's a pretty reasonable encounter.  A dungeon with, say, 16 fire giants, would need to be extremely big - all corridors are 15 feet wide, all rooms are massive.  

The cartography would have an awful lot of blank space for something like that.  All IMO of course.


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## Klaus (Oct 19, 2007)

Hussar said:
			
		

> That's WAY too much of a pain in the butt.  The game is based on a particular scale and messing with that scale just for one creature type is a bad idea IMO.
> 
> As far as boots and stuff to make the room more tactically interesting, that's not really my point.  4 Huge creatures need rooms about 60x60 (12x12) squares to be able to have enough room for 4-6 PC's and the creatures.  At a minimum, you cannot go below 30x30.  That means that your battle map and your tabletop better be pretty darn big to handle combats.
> 
> ...



 The game is based on 1 inch = 5 feet. Change the relation and presto!, it's done.

For instance, just change it to be 0.5 inch = 5 feet, and print out a grid with the appropriate marking, and you're done.


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## frankthedm (Sep 26, 2012)

It took a half a decade and an entire edition, but wotc is upgrading giants in size.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum)


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## Corathon (Sep 26, 2012)

Wow, old thread - and I'm not going to read it all, so maybe I'll just be repeating what someone else wrote already...

IMO, the assumption that all large creatures are about the same size, despite their being a factor of 2 range in sizes (and thus about 8 in weights) leads to the idea that large giants aren't significantly bigger than an ogre or a troll. In "reality" a 9' ogre is a runt compared to a 15' frost giant.


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## Yora (Sep 26, 2012)

I think they were already a big too large in 3rd Edition. We're not just talking about height, but also about mass.
A creature that is 12 feet high is eight times as big as a human. And given their proportions, you get closer to twelve times. That's massive.

At 22 feet, you're at about four times the height of the average human or elf and also at about 90 times the mass. About the mass of two grown african elephants. Humans would be reaching just to their knees. That's waaaay too big.

http://wrathofzombie.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/storm-giant.jpg
In this picture, the fire giant is about 10 feet tall and the frost giant maybe 13. That storm giant is about 18 feet. As the size for the smallest giants, that's way too much.


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## Matrix Sorcica (Sep 27, 2012)

I let the size of my miniatures decide.


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## delericho (Sep 28, 2012)

Ogres should probably stand around 8-9 feet tall.

The smallest true giants, then, should stand around 10-11 feet tall. And, indeed, most giants should be in the Large scale (or whatever the 5e equivalent is), as these tend to be the most useful in play.

However, I see no reason to have any upper limit at all - if the DM doesn't want giants at 22 feet (or whatever), it's simple enough for him simply not to use them.


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## Yora (Sep 28, 2012)

Just for reference: These are about 12 feet.

At 20 feet, we're talking more about something like this.


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## DnD_Dad (Sep 28, 2012)

If you want a huge giant why not use a Titan?


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## am181d (Sep 28, 2012)

The giants in faerie tales are generally big enough to hold someone in their hand. Maybe 60 feet?

It seems to me like the biggest giants (the Cloud and Storm giants) should be that big, but I understand that this is not a commonly held belief.

Thankfully, the universe invented He-Man action figures, so I don't explicitly NEED miniatures.


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## frankthedm (Oct 2, 2012)

Yora said:


> Just for reference: At 20 feet, we're talking more about something like this.



OK! Now we are talking. That is a what a typical D&D giant ought to be IMHO. No weird skin tones, no bizzare bodytype and big enough that you _might_ be eye level to it's kneecap. Maybe he's a bit too cut and defined, but fantasy art is no stranger to fanservice. 

On the other hand the current warhammer giant's lankyness kinda fits for a older giant with atrophying muscles and a large ale gut.







Note: I'd say it looks closer to 25'+, if the victim is around 6'.







DnD_Dad said:


> If you want a huge giant why not use a Titan?



{3.5 Thinking}Because players should not need to be near epic levels just to fight a huge giant. Nor should a bunch of spell like abilities be a prerequisite for a giant to be huge.


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## Yora (Oct 2, 2012)

frankthedm said:


> {3.5 Thinking}Because players should not need to be near epic levels just to fight a huge giant. Nor should a bunch of spell like abilities be a prerequisite for a giant to be huge.



Even though I don't want huge giants in my game, the reasoning behind this is flawless. Having to wait for the high levels to be able to have some things in the game is the main problem with the d20 games. Which is the biggest change 5th Edition has made so far.
So probably it's best to have both available and pick those that are right for any given campaign.


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## frankthedm (Oct 2, 2012)

Yora said:


> Even though I don't want huge giants in my game, the reasoning behind this is flawless. Having to wait for the high levels to be able to have some things in the game is the main problem with the d20 games.





> You must spread some Experience points around before giving it to Yora again.



Agree. I especially feel there should be more enormous foes {Gargantuan / Colossal] for PCs to fight, even at lower levels. When I saw the cover of Dungeon 124 which had the default PCs fighting enormous worms on the cover, it raised my hopes since the first Age of Worms adventure was supposed to be a low level adventure. 

_"Holy crap, low level PCs fighting gargantuan burrowing worms! How the hell did 3.5 pull this off without being an auto TPK?"_






 Instead that cover was just a teaser of things to come.


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## Celebrim (Oct 2, 2012)

Personally, I'm quite happy with the classic MM giants both in size and flavor. 

In art, giants are often depicted as rising to heights heights of 400' or even 800'.  Even smallish giants are generally depicted as being 60' or more in height, although one thing is certain is that how big a giant is often changes from scene to scene as scale is seldom an important concept in such stories.  But its really hard to maintain a degree of grittiness when you have giants of that scale.  You are going to veer either from a faerie tale feel, where versimiltude means adherence entirely to literary convention only, or else to some sort of Dragonball-Z/God of War like epicness where versimiltude again means adherence solely to a set of literary conventions.  Neither produces a world that is particularly easy to believe in on inspection.

Instead of focusing on the height of a giant, I think it is more important to focus on the weight of a giant.  A 24' high giant weighs about 16000 pounds, and a 30' high giant weighs nearly double that.  These are incredibly big creatures.  Even a 12' high giant is going to weigh 2000 pounds or more.   For those that think such creatures small, don't look at a painting, use your imagination to picture one in a room with you, stooping over, enormous and space filling.  Next time you are standing next to a seven foot tall man, imagine one as a center gaurding an NBA blackboard, his shaggy head extending to the top of it, the hand of his upraised arm a good 4-5' above the blackboard, and some atheletic 'giant of a man' like Lebron James flying up to try to dunk on him but only rising to the lane filling wall of his chest - a childlike figure next to this massive creature.  Giants are plenty big.  Pictures do not do them justice.

Common giants - like the D&D Hill Giant - are of a good size to integrate into the ecology and social order of your fantasy world without blowing away belief.  The bigger giants, 16-24' range, are of a good size to represent the transition point between the mortal and the divine.  These are the huge scions of the gods from ancient days before men ruled.  Descendents of demigods with immortal blood from a time when the Gods first looked on the Genie and found them comely and desirable.  Anything bigger than that, and you are now in the world of the divine immortal challenges which man with his petty strength dare not face unless he is practically a demigod himself.

I really don't like the impulse that leads people to think that Dragons need to be the size of Godzilla to be interesting.  I personally feel it is a failure of imagination.  It's an impulse that I think comes from always viewing the world of play in the third person, looking down at it rather than standing in it.  If players (and DM's) could truly view the world in the first person, I think that they'd realize that D&D monsters are plenty big enough


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## Celebrim (Oct 2, 2012)

frankthedm said:


> Agree. I especially feel there should be more enormous foes {Gargantuan / Colossal] for PCs to fight, even at lower levels. When I saw the cover of Dungeon 124 which had the default PCs fighting enormous worms on the cover, it raised my hopes since the first Age of Worms adventure was supposed to be a low level adventure.




The problem with that is simply: "Where do you go from there?"  If at low level you are already capable of fighting colossal creatures, then how to increase the scope, theme, and magnitude of the action as you level up?  Either you are going to have to move on to truly trans-collosal creatures, which to be quite frank, I doubt people can truly grasp the magnitude or implications thereof, or else you are going to keep the same creatures but simply give them bigger numbers.  I think it very important that bigger numbers usually describe a creature of greater actual in game magnitude.  If not, you move to a World of Warcraft style universe where the 'bears' don't get bigger, they just get bigger and bigger numbers.  It feels arbitrary and anticlimatic, and it seriously raises the question of why do you want a game which involves levelling at all?  If you want a game where 'at low level' you are facing things of great magnitude, perhaps you'd be better off with a game with no levels, no leveling, and assumes everyone starts off as something already superheroic?  What is the point in having graduations in skill and prowess if they don't over time alter the viewpoint of the playes?  Why level up if the game isn't going to change as a result of it?

D&D does an amazingly good job of representing everything from a lowly apprentice to a mighty archmage, from a common soldier to a sword swinging caped fantasy superhero, from a common street pickpocket to a legendary thief.  If you really don't want to have the lower range of those archetypes available, if you don't find low level play enherently interesting, then perhaps you should avoid the low levels entirely and start at 10th level.   Don't invalidate that play just because you want something different from you game.

One problem any system is going to encounter is what to do to represent the extreme ends of the system.  D&D has this as the 'house cat problem', where it has traditionally been hard to capture the degree of difference between a wasp, a rat, a cat, and the cat's human owner because it's hard to have fractions of 1 in the system.  If you squeeze giants down into the low levels as well, then the problem only gets worse.  Not only will the cat be a danger to the farmer with his hoe, but puss-n-boots will need not trick the giant into turning into a mouse either.  The 8 pound cat will simply scratch to death the 2000 pound giant, with no cunning required.


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## Yora (Oct 2, 2012)

There's a rather famous drawing of norse giants from the 1910s which I think has them at a size that completely sufficient to make them giants.

Link

And they just barely make it into the Large size category for D&D.


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## Neonchameleon (Oct 2, 2012)

I'm in the 8' tall is an ogre camp.  Giants start at 10'-12' - if it ain't ten foot it's not an ordinary adult giant but that's all giants need at a minimum.  On the other hand, the sky's the limit.  Literally.  Why cut down anyone else's fun?


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## Celebrim (Oct 2, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I'm in the 8' tall is an ogre camp.  Giants start at 10'-12' - if it ain't ten foot it's not an ordinary adult giant but that's all giants need at a minimum.  On the other hand, the sky's the limit.  Literally.  Why cut down anyone else's fun?




I agree that people ought to be able to paint giants however they want.  If they want hill giants to be 25' tall without adjusting the stats, then that is their business.  

But the problem for me is that that there is some continuity breaks in the mechanics of you take that to the extreme.  D&D traditionally (by that I mean back in 1e) handled size very poorly from a realism stand point.  In 3e, there was an attempt to make size matter, which on the whole I'm happy with, but the system does have some realism problems (like most systems) for things below Tiny and larger than Huge.  Even (maybe especially) if we assume the fantasy giant with fantasy musculuture, at some point I for one start asking, "How is a 6' human really threatening this creature with its little teeny sword?  How does a human expect to survive being stomped on by a creature that weighs 40,000 pounds, much less hit by an axe weighing multiple tons?"  

And the 3e scale even ends at around 40'.  Unless you start creating rules for transcollosal creatures, you don't have a lot of difference between something that is 40' high and weighs 50,000 pounds, and something 400' high that weighs 5 million pounds.  At some point you have to say, "Wait a minute, this creatures skin is 5' thick stone.  It's wearing a shoe made of iron that is 2' thick, and the creature is so heavy that that iron plate crumples and moves like stiff cloth, and a 6' tall creature can't even reach it's ankle.  How in the world is a sword, even a magical one, even a threat?  Better yet, why is the wasp swarm I conjured even doing damage?  And it's got a 40' long foot a 200' long stride, and exerts about 6000-10000 pounds of force per square foot just when its standing on you.  The game can't even model how this thing moves, much less combat with it."

We just don't have rules for even modelling that in the game.  You could create them, and they might make for an interesting game/scenario but they aren't something that the game attempts to model in any fashion.  If you want to get into that sort of scale, you are basically on your own.


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## Desdichado (Oct 2, 2012)

Wow, do people really care that much specifically about the size of their giants?  Maybe I'm really missing something special here, but I've never really used giants.  At all.  I find them completely uninteresting.  Making them bigger doesn't make them more interesting, it just makes them more preposterous.

Yes, I'm well aware of the literary, folkloric and even mythological roots of giants, and hence their inclusion in the game. Given that, the only thing that seems surprising is the biophysics lectures that some of these posts produce.  If the antecedents of the monster type are fairytales and mythology, then trying to calculate the mass or weight of a giant and use that to put biomechanical limitations on what you'll accept seems to be spectacularly missing the point.

Plus, the recent(ish) discovery of increasingly larger and larger dinosaurs like Argentinasuaurs, Bruhathkayosaurus, Sauroposeidon, Futalognkosaurus, or the ever elusive Amphicoelias continue to demonstrate that we're generally too conservative when coming up with these biomechanical limitations anyway.  :shrug:


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## Celebrim (Oct 2, 2012)

Hobo said:


> If the antecedents of the monster type are fairytales and mythology, then trying to calculate the mass or weight of a giant and use that to put biomechanical limitations on what you'll accept seems to be spectacularly missing the point.




Including I would think you, because there has been very little discussion of the biomechanical limitations of large creatures in this thread.  The vast majority of opinions have either been stated as opinions, or if the opinion has been based on some criticism then the tendency has been to criticize very large creatures internally to the assumptions of the game.

That is, the bulk of objections to 'huge' giants have been based on things like the difficulty and cost of obtaining minatures, the difficulties such large creatures place in mapping or the use of battle mats, the failure of such creatures to conform to the games internal guidelines with regard to HD, the unsuitableness of huge giants for use at lower levels, the difficulty in imagining combat between humans and such massive creatures, the presence of illustrated giants on the smaller end of the scale, and so forth.  The closest we came to a discussion of biomechanics, was a discussion of the impact of huge creatures on the ecology, which ended up with the comparitively uncontested assumption that the ecology could probably handle them.  The most common opinion seems to be simply that there doesn't seem to be a compelling need for anything larger than what we have at present, but you are welcome to it if you want it.

My own litany of numbers had nothing to do with biomechanical limitations, and everything to do with having or not having rules that produced outcomes that conformed to casual expectations of how creatures on vastly different scales interact.  I'm perfectly content conceptually with a walking mountain in a fantasy setting, but not with running a combat with one in terms of trading blows round by round and chipping away at a few hundred (or thousand) hit points using attacks scaled for a medium-sized creature.



> Plus, the recent(ish) discovery of increasingly larger and larger dinosaurs like Argentinasuaurs, Bruhathkayosaurus, Sauroposeidon, Futalognkosaurus, or the ever elusive Amphicoelias continue to demonstrate that we're generally too conservative when coming up with these biomechanical limitations anyway.  :shrug:




If you confine yourself to the well attested examples, a 24' tall biped with a frame like a stocky human still ends up being a really big creature.


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## Desdichado (Oct 2, 2012)

Y'know, I specifically did _not_ respond to you personally, because there was a rash in the last page or two on biomechanical discussion, as well as some earlier stuff here and there throughout the thread.  I'm not missing the point.  Nor am I responding to anything specifically that you said.  I'm making my own point, perhaps as a related tangent to the discussion in general.  There's really no call to get defensive.


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## Ed_Laprade (Oct 2, 2012)

Yora said:


> There's a rather famous drawing of norse giants from the 1910s which I think has them at a size that completely sufficient to make them giants.
> 
> Link
> 
> And they just barely make it into the Large size category for D&D.



Ah, but is she a Human or a goddess? If, as seems likely, she's a goddess, then she's probably a lot bigger than a normal Human. Bearing in mind, of course, that the gods were usually able to change their size (and often shape) at will.


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## Celebrim (Oct 2, 2012)

Hobo said:


> Y'know, I specifically did _not_ respond to you personally, because there was a rash in the last page or two on biomechanical discussion, as well as some earlier stuff here and there throughout the thread.  I'm not missing the point.  Nor am I responding to anything specifically that you said.  I'm making my own point, perhaps as a related tangent to the discussion in general.  There's really no call to get defensive.




I went looking for this 'rash in the last page or two' that bothers you so much specifically to try to understand who you were responding to and why.  I didn't see it.  I just went and checked again, and I still didn't see it.  Everyone that I saw that mentioned size or weight specifically mentioned problems other than biomechanics.  Ergo, I assumed you'd decided to tell everyone 'this is a badwrongfun discussion and you shouldn't engage in it'. 



> Wow, do people really care that much specifically about the size of their giants? Maybe I'm really missing something special here, but I've never really used giants. At all. I find them completely uninteresting. Making them bigger doesn't make them more interesting, it just makes them more preposterous.




Answers:

1) Yes, apparantly they do.  Do you really care that much that they care?
2) Maybe.  Use them and tell us how it goes.
3) If you don't use them, why does this thread interest you?

But, ok perhaps I'm spectacularly missing the point; I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.  Please explain what point you were trying to make when you said:



> Wow, do people really care that much specifically about the size of their giants? Maybe I'm really missing something special here, but I've never really used giants. At all. I find them completely uninteresting. Making them bigger doesn't make them more interesting, it just makes them more preposterous.




Did you intend for someone to convince you your opinion of giants was wrong?  I don't get it.  Also, please explain what in this thread you were arguing against when you went off on this rant:



> Yes, I'm well aware of the literary, folkloric and even mythological roots of giants, and hence their inclusion in the game. Given that, the only thing that seems surprising is the biophysics lectures that some of these posts produce. If the antecedents of the monster type are fairytales and mythology, then trying to calculate the mass or weight of a giant and use that to put biomechanical limitations on what you'll accept seems to be spectacularly missing the point.
> 
> Plus, the recent(ish) discovery of increasingly larger and larger dinosaurs like Argentinasuaurs, Bruhathkayosaurus, Sauroposeidon, Futalognkosaurus, or the ever elusive Amphicoelias continue to demonstrate that we're generally too conservative when coming up with these biomechanical limitations anyway. :shrug:




I mean, that could be truly said to be a point tangental to the discussion but why then present this point as if it was a refutation of something pertinent to the discussion?  You seem to be the one that thinks 'bigger = more preposterous'.  How so?  What are you arguing against anyway?  It just seemed to me you were somewhere between responding to some other thread than the one I had just read and willfully misrespresenting other peoples opinions in order to launch on your  biomechanics discussion. :shrug:


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## Desdichado (Oct 2, 2012)

Dude, give it a rest.  You're trying to pick a fight with me when I specifically tried to deflect your obvious intentions.

I skimmed around in the thread before responding.  I saw complaints about biomechanical considerations.  Although I specifically disavowed responding directly to you, if you must know, your post was an example of at least one such post.  But I'm not specifically responding to it.  I'm not going to go find specifically which posts I saw.  That's just silly.  Asking me to do it is dumb.

Surely you can simply disagree with me without trying to turn it into a debate?


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## Celebrim (Oct 3, 2012)

Hobo said:


> I quickly skimmed around in the thread before responding.  I saw complaints that I thought were about biomechanical considerations.  So I hauled out a pre-canned formulic argument without putting much thought in it, made some disparging insinuations, belittled the thread, and berated the thead posters for spectacularly missing the point.  Now I must spin and deflect by saying that anyone that called me on it is being silly and dumb.




Fixed for you.


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## Umbran (Oct 3, 2012)

Well, someone here won't be posting in the thread any more.  Please, folks, follow Wheaton's Rule.  Thanks.


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## frankthedm (Oct 3, 2012)

Hussar said:


> A dungeon with, say, 16 fire giants, would need to be extremely big - all corridors are 15 feet wide, all rooms are massive.



I'll admit that in my view of giants, they are more likely to be encountered above ground unless in their own strongholds. And that brings up issues of the spot skill and encounter distance...


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## Desdichado (Oct 3, 2012)

Ed_Laprade said:


> Ah, but is she a Human or a goddess? If, as seems likely, she's a goddess, then she's probably a lot bigger than a normal Human. Bearing in mind, of course, that the gods were usually able to change their size (and often shape) at will.



I've read an awful lot of Norse mythology over the years (and other mythology too) and I don't ever remember _ever_ hearing anything about the Aesir changing their size.

Then again, exactly how big the jotunns were supposed to be is hardly very clear either.  Lots of times, they're characterized as if they're more or less the same size as the gods, and lots of times they seem like super-fantastical Godzilla-sized behemoths.  Context doesn't seem very helpful in pinning down an answer there.


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## Desdichado (Oct 3, 2012)

Also; sorry for the quick non-topic post, but I must be spectactularly non-clued in or something.  I vaguely recognize the fact that there's some guy named Will Wheaton who played a minor role in some TV show a few years back and is a gamer.  But I have no idea what his rule is supposed to be.


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## Umbran (Oct 3, 2012)

Hobo said:


> Also; sorry for the quick non-topic post, but I must be spectactularly non-clued in or something.  I vaguely recognize the fact that there's some guy named Will Wheaton who played a minor role in some TV show a few years back and is a gamer.  But I have no idea what his rule is supposed to be.




Google is your friend:

Wheaton's Law | Know Your Meme

This is exceptionally in-line with EN World's rules, so we often use it as another way of explaining them.


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## Desdichado (Oct 3, 2012)

Heh.  Well, except for the fact that it uses profanity, of course, which is not in line with the ENWorld rules at all.  Anyway, non-topic aside over.  Thanks.


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## diaglo (Oct 4, 2012)

Hobo said:


> Heh.  Well, except for the fact that it uses profanity, of course, which is not in line with the ENWorld rules at all.  Anyway, non-topic aside over.  Thanks.




qfmft.

never heard of it before.


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## Hussar (Oct 4, 2012)

frankthedm said:


> I'll admit that in my view of giants, they are more likely to be encountered above ground unless in their own strongholds. And that brings up issues of the spot skill and encounter distance...




Well, it's kinda potato, potahto.  If they're in their own strongholds, and giants are huge, then that stronghold is going to be ridiculously large.  Think of how big the Against the Giants maps would have to be if giants were actually huge sized.  Or colossal :yikes:

It's all good if you treat giants kind of like dragons where you're only going to have one or maybe two in a given scenario.  But if giants are more social, then it gets ridiculously big and quite difficult to actually run the adventures if you use a battlemap.  Imagine an encounter with half a dozen huge giants - your battlemap would be huge.


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