D&D General Comparing Giant Sizes

Anders Johnson, a Swedish artist over on ArtStation, has an awesome image in which he compares the relative sizes of various D&D giants.

 

[thealmightyn]

If you try to table-up some of the epic sized suggestions here, you'd have the recent Baldurs Gate "miniature" statue versus normal sized miniatures. Makes the oliphants from LOTR puny in comparison.

The only idea I have around the LOTR oliphants is what was depicted in the movie, whether that was accurate to the books or not, and those oliphants would be roughly the size of the Walking Statue of Waterdeep miniature in terms of scale.

Seriously. I'm looking at my statue right now and screen captures from the movies. Pretty much the same height give or take a few feet.

 

[thealmightyn]

I imagine that Stone and Storm might be pleased by these comparisons to a degreebut I don’t envy you when the Fire and Cloud’s hear what you compared them to!!

To be fair, fire giants of the past several editions have essentially been designed as proportionately similar to dwarves, and it matches the defined culture of them being obsessed with the forge, living in nature's forges, as it were.

 

[thealmightyn]

just standing next to each other in their squares on the battle mat and swinging their swords at one another

That's where the DM's (and hopefully the players') creativity and theater of the mind kicks into play.

 

[thealmightyn]

With his assassinate feature, he can kill a hill giant by himself in a single round. Scary when you think of the size difference...

What level are they...?

 

[thealmightyn]

Um, how is it dumb for the Giant prioritize going after the Lore Bard, when said bard is the PC with the lightest armor (and therefore easiest to hit), has the lowest hit points (and therefore is the easiest to kill), and is using his inspiration each turn to help his allies fight better?

I would say that the giant may be overly smart in some ways if he knows what the bard is actually doing.

In any case, I would never have my party face off against a single giant... unless it was one of these: https://live.staticflickr.com/8336/8130679977_d8d165bd34_b.jpg

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I found the size of 3e giants disappointing, so I noticed and was happy with the 5e versions right away. (Note, the scale silhouettes in the MM do show fire giants with dwarf proportions).

Actually, I'm very much into visualizing creatures, and I tend to place a human sized figure to scale with monsters so I can see how they look. I tend to be irritated when designers make sloppy dimensions by just throwing out numbers and not actually depicting it visually (for themselves at least). But if you really want to mess up something to set me off, mess up dragons. It's the stuff with tails people tend to massively screw up. The 3e Draconomicon actually did a really good job with it's dimensions on not overestimating the impact of a tail on actual size of a creature. If you are ever describing the size of some sort of dragon or quadruped, always go nose to base of tail, not tip of tail. People (and particularly people just making up these numbers) seem incapable of understanding just how small a dragon (or similar) that is 20' to tip of tail is. A large horse is bigger.

I also like to give visuals to players when they first encounter this sort of thing.

 

[Hatmatter]

I look at those sizes, and think of the usual depictions seen for Jack and the Beanstalk - in which Jack is lucky if he comes up to the giant's knee, and rather often only comes up to the giant's ankle. That mythic referent leaves me needing giants that are 3 to 4 times the height of a man, as seen in these images, not two to three times man-sized, which is what you seem to prefer..

That's how I look at it also. I like mythic creatures of vast proportion that seem to match some folktales, mythology, and legends. Some myths have their giants even larger, with certain mountains being identified as the sleeping -- or even dead -- body of a giant. Particularly for cloud giants and storm giants, I like the huge scale b/c being remote and vast works with living in the sky. I like how in Tokien's The Two Towers, the characters never even see the giants who are throwing boulders, they are so remote. Also, the larger scale seems to work well within D&D mythology where the giants have a mutual enmity with dragons...it presents them as more of a threat to dragons.

Nevertheless, to each his or her own and, as Celebrim mentioned, size is among the easiest adjustments to make. In the end, the size of monsters and what creatures are in a game world are going to be decisions that the Dungeon Master will make. I could note that just as Thanos and Hulk exhibit one scale used in Marvel, Galactus, Giant Man, and the Celestial that had the skull that became Nowhere exhibit other scales. In the end, I think the question amounts to little more than individual preference.

 

[Mirtek]

That's where the DM's (and hopefully the players') creativity and theater of the mind kicks into play.

But how would you narrate that for the ToM without the giant looking like an idiot?

 

[Lanefan]

5E ..... has nothing at all to do with "real and gritty."

Sad.

 

[dave2008]

The only idea I have around the LOTR oliphants is what was depicted in the movie, whether that was accurate to the books or not, and those oliphants would be roughly the size of the Walking Statue of Waterdeep miniature in terms of scale.

In the books they are basically elephants. Which, historically, where pretty devastating themselves when trained for war.