D&D General Eldritch Giants --- have they made a 5E appearance yet?

[JPL]

Always liked the look of those guys.

I'm doing a one-shot this weekend where the big bad is a Feydark fomorian (I'm the only guy who really dug the 4th edition Feydark), and something in my head just clicked that the fomorians are just a fallen tribe of eldritch giants.

And now I came up with a further notion that I could rip off the most recent run of Marvel's Eternals, with the Eldritch as the small group of powerful arcanists, with extremely complicated politics and individual agendas, while the Fomorians have these sprawling Feydark kingdoms of purple cyclopses and twisted goblinfolk and whatnot.

And further notion . . . if you needed a PC level race in the mix, maybe the Eldrich are served by families of storm goliaths? It bothers the hell out of me that there's all these new subtypes of goliaths with no associated lore.

 

[Azzy]

Always liked the look of those guys.

I'm doing a one-shot this weekend where the big bad is a Feydark fomorian (I'm the only guy who really dug the 4th edition Feydark), and something in my head just clicked that the fomorians are just a fallen tribe of eldritch giants.

And now I came up with a further notion that I could rip off the most recent run of Marvel's Eternals, with the Eldritch as the small group of powerful arcanists, with extremely complicated politics and individual agendas, while the Fomorians have these sprawling Feydark kingdoms of purple cyclopses and twisted goblinfolk and whatnot.

And further notion . . . if you needed a PC level race in the mix, maybe the Eldrich are served by families of storm goliaths? It bothers the hell out of me that there's all these new subtypes of goliaths with no associated lore.

No, unless they got renames, I haven't seen them in any 5e book that I have. I'm not familiar with 4e or its eldritch giants, so if they got renamed I wouldn't know.

 

[dave2008]

I don't remember if Eldritch giants were 4e's version of Death Giants, but Death Giants are in 5e (from BP:GotG) and there lore seems to fit a fey dark theme:

Death Giants​

Long ago, a large band of cloud giants traveled to the Shadowfell in search of a way to preserve their collapsing empire. Desperate to save themselves and their way of life, they collectively made a bet with the Raven Queen, a mysterious god of death and memory who dwells on that plane. Accounts of that bet and its outcome vary: some say the Raven Queen answered every riddle the giants posed until the giants collapsed from exhaustion, while others describe a series of increasingly improbable events favoring the Raven Queen in every wager. What is certain is that the giants severely underestimated the Raven Queen. When they lost their wager, the Shadowfell became their home, and they have grudgingly served the Raven Queen ever since.

Over time, the Shadowfell transformed these giants; their bodies shriveled, and their complexions took on a deep-purple hue. They became the first death giants, and their descendants haunt the Shadowfell to this day, searching both that plane and the Material Plane for souls that might please their divine queen.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I suspect the "official" 5e version of the eldritch giant is the fomorian noble, introduced in Bigby's Glory of Giants to represent fomorians that opted not to join their brethren for the doomed invasion of the Feywild that got them all cursed by the Fey powers.

I believe they mostly live in the Inner Planes these days.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I really liked the 3E eldritch giants. That said, they feel more like a template to overlay atop another giant than their own thing. Maybe @Nixlord will do something like that in one of his books.

 

[jgsugden]

Officially? No.

Unofficially?

.

Eldritch Giant

ELDRITCH GIANT ELDRITCH GIANTS Standing at an average of twenty-five feet tall, eldritch giants are immediately recognizable as members of the giant species. They are often bulky in form with purple-tinted skin, fair red hair, and eyes which shift in colour between hues of green and purp...

docs.google.com

 

[dave2008]

I suspect the "official" 5e version of the eldritch giant is the fomorian noble, introduced in Bigby's Glory of Giants to represent fomorians that opted not to join their brethren for the doomed invasion of the Feywild that got them all cursed by the Fey powers.

I believe they mostly live in the Inner Planes these days.

You could be correct, they are big spellcasters which it seems Eldritch Giants were as well.

Spoiler: Fomorian Noble

 

[JPL]

I've been letting this ferment in my brain a little bit. It is interesting to make the whole bunch of them chaotic evil by default, both the beautiful ones and the ugly ones.

However, I think I prefer one group that is sort of the 4th ed. Mad Lords of the Feydark, and then another group with more of the eldritch giant vibe where they are neutral (by default) but obsessed with their arcane studies and with the gathering of lore and items of power. Either group, you screw with them at their own peril.

And maybe there are the occasional Feywild fomorians who you can do business with, either because they have something resembling a human concept of sanity, or because they have some kind of fairy tale monster code of behavior that they follow… It may be some sort of rule that seems arbitrary to outsiders, like they can only enslave you for one year and one day, but all seems to make sense to the monsters.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

It is interesting to make the whole bunch of them chaotic evil by default, both the beautiful ones and the ugly ones.

As always, alignment is merely a suggestion.

The only creatures that have their default alignment hard coded are planar outsiders like angels and devils, and even that isn't absolute, given the plethora of examples of fallen celestials and (admittedly far fewer) risen fiends.