D&D General Miniatures shouldn't be edition-dependent (a Fire Giant size rant)

[teitan]

Aside from edition changes, I have posited this before actually, the minis don't even accurately reflect their size categories accurately anyway. The move to squares for measurement on the grid, with a medium being one square and a large being FOUR squares resulted in some awkward looking minis on bases. People discussed this back when 3.5 came out, like how a horse went from 2 squares long and 1 wide to 2 x 2 in a square shape. Have to fill that base and giants all became GINORMOUS as an example. The Hill Giant mini is 2x the size of classic minis that scaled well with 25mm and even 28mm scale minis to, while technically 16' tall, to positively dwarfing all medium creatures. I have the wizkids Hill Giant and he is about 4mm too tall. He's about 3 minis tall and at 16' should be 2ish tall.

What I have found is Reaper comes closer to the sizes listed in the various MM before 5e and are affordably priced. I have their fire giant warrior and he also has that look of 4e giants, the dark dwarf look. My wife painted their female frost giant and she was dwarfed by my wizkids frost giant. The wizkids minis are so easy to paint though. I don't worry about the bases matching up with "squares" and sometimes ponder going gridless for non dungeon encounters anyways. It seemed, even in 3e, kind of ehhhhhh.

Now for my money you can not beat, I mean NEVER, EVER, beat Otherworld Miniatures and how well they have scaled their metal miniatures line across the whole range. They look classic, they are beautifully sculpted and proportioned. They are 28mm and fun to paint. Their Pig Faced Orcs are the best and they even have some Drow Minis based on Erol Otus drawings from Vault of the Drow including the priestess from the cover with her snake whip in hand. Unlike Reaper the female minis don't look and feel fragile. Their dragons also scale properly like Reaper's dragons. They are expensive but wonderful classic aesthetic high quality minis.

 

[see]

Actually, giants are the only creatures in 5e that do get stated heights:

From the 5e MM:
View attachment 130957

Huh, that's what I get for reading the text rather than looking at the pictures.

 

[see]

the size categories have minimum measurements.

What page in what book are they given? The size categories charts on p.191 of the PHB and p.6 of the Monster Manual do not; they give the dimensions of the creature's "space", and a creature's space is explicitly "not an expression of physical dimensions".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What page in what book are they given? The size categories charts on p.191 of the PHB and p.6 of the Monster Manual do not; they give the dimensions of the creature's "space", and a creature's space is explicitly "not an expression of physical dimensions".

Right, but the creature has to be bigger than the point where large becomes huge.

 

[Stormonu]

minis for giants and dragons have been all over the place - I have a Ral Partha 80's Fire Giant that's maybe twice the size of a human mini (a little less than 2") compared to a 5E frost giant that's over 6" tall. Which is nothing compared to the grenadier 80's red dragon vs. the 3E Gargantuan red dragon!

You bought the minis, it's be a shame not to use them. If they're that much of a problem, just use a properly sized token as rules is obviously more important than image, for you.

 

[dave2008]

With some money I got for Christmas, I decided I would expand my collection of miniatures for D&D games.

I realized I never used giants in my D&D games, because I had no minis for them. So, I hunted around online at various mini stores and ordered some official hill giant, stone giant, frost giant, and fire giant minis (among other things), as giants I thought I might use in the games I run, if I had proper minis for them.

They came in the mail yesterday. I was generally pleased with all of them. . .but the fire giant seemed off. He was size huge, not large like the rest. I remember my giant sizes decently well even though I hadn't used them in game, and thought that only cloud and storm giants are "huge", so it seemed strange. I double-checked the SRD, and sure enough, it's size large.

I was left baffled as to how an official D&D miniature of a major D&D creature could get something as basic as it's size wrong, just outright wrong.

Then I decided to go look at 5e, and sure enough, WotC had changed fire giants from size large to size huge. I looked again, and it seems they changed ALL the giants from large to huge, and I just got lucky by 3e-era giant minis for the rest of them. As I run and play 3.5e, this means the huge fire giant I got is unusable and inappropriate for my game. I'm frustrated at spending the money on the mini, and I'm angry at WotC for arbitrarily changing the size of a creature like that, thus creating minis that are edition dependent.

So, now I'm looking for a size large (not huge) fire giant mini, one presumably made during the era when 3.x was the current officially supported edition, and maybe I can re-gift this 5e fire giant to someone that plays 5e, because it's sure not going to get any use at my table.

. . .and I'm also wondering, does WotC just arbitrarily change the size of creatures to encourage players to buy new minis to accommodate? That's what it feels like. How many other creatures went from large to huge, or vice versa, or maybe from medium to large?

Not sure which edition your playing, but in 5e Fire Giants are Huge, not Large. So it works for 5e!

 

[dave2008]

(NB: This has been edited.)

The five original D&D giants' heights, by edition:

Original D&D: Hill 12', Stone 15', Frost 18', Fire 12', Cloud 20'.
Holmes: Hill 12', Stone 14', Frost 16', Fire 12', Cloud 18'.
AD&D 1st: Hill 10.5', Stone 12', Frost 15', Fire 12', Cloud 18'.
B/X, BECMI, and Rules Cyclopedia: Hill 12', Stone 14', Frost 18', Fire 16', Cloud 20'.
AD&D 2nd: Hill 16' (Huge), Stone 18' (Huge), Frost 21' (Huge), Fire 18' (Huge), Cloud 24' (Huge).
D&D 3.x: Hill 10.5' (Large), Stone 12' (Large), Frost 15' (Large), Fire 12' (Large), Cloud 18' (Huge).
D&D 5th: Hill 16' (Huge), Stone 18' (Huge), Frost 21' (Huge), Fire 18' (Huge), Cloud 24' (Huge).

5th edition accordingly reverted giant sizes to where they were in 2e, while 3rd had reverted them to 1e, and nobody's used the original-original sizes since 1977.

(In D&D 4th, actual heights of the giants are not given.)

Before 2nd edition the only size category distinctions were "S" (smaller than human-sized), "M," approximately human-sized (with a 4'-7' guideline), and "L," larger than human-sized.
In 2nd edition, "Large" was 7' to 12', while "Huge" was 12' to 25'.
In 3.x, "Large" was 8'-16', while "Huge" was 16'-32'.
In 4th (I believe) and 5th (as best I can tell), creature size categories are abstract measures of the space they control (matching the 3.5 definitions), but with no body measurements given for the categories.

Is there a particular reason you left off the Storm giant from your ananlysis?

 

[Voadam]

Not sure which edition your playing, but in 5e Fire Giants are Huge, not Large. So it works for 5e!

He says right in that post you quoted.

"As I run and play 3.5e"

 

[wingsandsword]

Not sure which edition your playing, but in 5e Fire Giants are Huge, not Large. So it works for 5e!

I specifically said in my post:

As I run and play 3.5e

That's the whole point.

Seriously, this is getting frustrating, every time I post here about D&D, everyone just assumes I'm talking about 5e. Note this post is NOT tagged for 5e, it was tagged for D&D General. Does anyone even pay attention to post tags anymore?

Is this just a 5e fansite, or is it for all D&D editions, because this is far, FAR from the first time I've tried to talk about D&D and everyone just assumes I'm talking about 5e, or tries to pressure me to switch to 5e.

 

[dave2008]

Actually, giants are the only creatures in 5e that do get stated heights:

From the 5e MM:
View attachment 130957

Not entirely true; fifty feet tall and seventy feet long: