D&D 5E New Unearthed Arcana Today: Giant Themed Class Options and Feats

A new Unearthed Arcana dropped today, focusing on giant-themed player options. "In today’s Unearthed Arcana, we explore character options related to the magic and majesty of giants. This playtest document presents the Path of the Giant barbarian subclass, the Circle of the Primeval druid subclass, the Runecrafter wizard subclass, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons."

Giant Options | Unearthed Arcana | Dungeons & Dragons

Explore character options related to the magic and majesty of giants! This playtest document presents new subclasses for the barbarian, druid, and wizard, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

New Class options:

• Barbarian: Path of the Giant
• Druid: Circle of the Primeval
• Wizard: Runecrafter Tradition

New Feats:

• Elemental Touched
• Ember of the Fire Giant
• Fury of the Frost Giant
• Guile of the Cloud Giant
• Keeness of the Stone Giant
• Outsized Might
• Rune Carver Apprentice
• Rune Carvwr Adept
• Soul of the Storm Giant
• Vigor of the Hill Giant

WotC's Jeremy Crawford talks Barbarian Path of the Giant here:

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you can say that the majority of EN World posters don't roll, but not necessarily the majority of 5e players. As has been said many times before, we aren't representative of much of anything.

Reddit and DNDBeyond also support the notion that the vast majority of players don't roll.

As for Critical Role, they use a variant on 4d6DtL where if you total less than 70 you re-roll, and it actually seems to be 75 in practice, because I don't think we've ever seen a CR PC with less. The players have also described using other methods of a similarly generous nature. For example, Ashley and Laura have both said it's 4d6DtL re-roll all 1s. That's compatible with the "less than 70", so I assume they do both. Matt Mercer has also said, separately, that it is one stat is set to 16, then 5 rolls of 4d6DtL, which could also be compatible with "less than 70", but that was longer ago.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Dishonesty isn't fun...?

It's not fun because some of my players are dishonester than others.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Reddit and DNDBeyond also support the notion that the vast majority of players don't roll.

Not to mention CRPG implementations.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I guess it is my fault if here we are talking about dinobots in D&D, but we shouldn't bee too surprised if we see a "Transformers: Beast War" version of D&D monsters (displacer beast and company). If an official LEGO-Transformers is real, then we can't say to be totally impossible a playmobil D&D in the future. (How would be playmobil of Witchlight and Spelljammer, and the characters from Dragonlance?).

What about the Zhakaran giants (al-Qadim). There are space for them, and not only for al-Qadim.

* If dinosaurs and prehistoric beast can be tamed, at least with magic means, then we should date about the food has to be eaten everyday and the load they can carry.

 

[James Gasik]

I like some giants, but it's a creature type that's suffered (like dragons and elves) from a lot of subtyping as every distinct biome has to have it's own distinct subrace.

Books like Sandstorm or the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana were full of desert elves and artic gnomes and even aquatic orcs, but funny how there's no jungle humans (man, that would be racist or something!).

As if no species in D&D that isn't human can viably exist in a multitude of biomes, they all must evolve specific adaptations to live in a new locale.

I would like Giants to be used more, they are a classic part of the game, but a book about them specifically? I don't know that it's really going to be all that exciting.

I mean what can you really say about Frost Giants? They are big, they are immune to cold, and their culture is roughly analogous to pop culture Norse. Sometimes they even wear horned helmets!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I mean what can you really say about Frost Giants? They are big, they are immune to cold, and their culture is roughly analogous to pop culture Norse. Sometimes they even wear horned helmets!

And they can have all the same sub-types as humans can, as well as some culturally specific ones.

I did a Frost Giant Rune Knight in my game.

And then they need the animals they ride, and the animals they eat.

 

[James Gasik]

Now, that having been said, some Giants are interesting. I always liked the Cloud Giants, how they are classically depicted as being 50% good and 50% evil, they can walk on clouds and even (somehow) have cloud castles, straight out of Jack and the Beanstalk. Oh, and they think they are superior to all other Giants (save for, begrudgingly, Storm Giants).

Stone Giants have some interesting bits of lore as well, and I recall they were the one Giant race to figure out how to take to the stars in Spelljammer.

But then you get Hill Giants, who are basically jumped up ogres.

 

[Parmandur]

Reddit and DNDBeyond also support the notion that the vast majority of players don't roll.

As for Critical Role, they use a variant on 4d6DtL where if you total less than 70 you re-roll, and it actually seems to be 75 in practice, because I don't think we've ever seen a CR PC with less. The players have also described using other methods of a similarly generous nature. For example, Ashley and Laura have both said it's 4d6DtL re-roll all 1s. That's compatible with the "less than 70", so I assume they do both. Matt Mercer has also said, separately, that it is one stat is set to 16, then 5 rolls of 4d6DtL, which could also be compatible with "less than 70", but that was longer ago.

D&D Beyond stats are 48% rill, and about a quarter each use the Array or Point buy. That's barely a technical majority, but is also a plurality for rolling between the three methods.

 

[Parmandur]

It's not fun because some of my players are dishonester than others.

I haven't really dealt with that, ever. I tend to play with only very close family and friends, whi h may help?

 

[Remathilis]

I haven't really dealt with that, ever. I tend to play with only very close family and friends, whi h may help?

Not necessarily.

For most, cheating on your chargen rolls is a victimless crime. As long as your scores look like they could have been rolled, nobody will know if you changed a 6 to a 13. There was also an assumption that everyone else was editing their rolls similarly, so you didn't want to be that schmuck that kept the 1 on your HP roll when everyone else was in the upper quadrant of their possible HP.