2 frost giants or 3 hill giants?

[Swarmkeeper]

To quantify this a bit, I went out to Kobold Fight Club

For the party, I entered:
3 level 8 PCs
2 level 7 PCs
4 level 2 NPCs (same results whether level 1, 2, or 3)

2 Frost Giants are deemed a Hard encounter with adjusted XP of 7800
3 Hill Giants are deemed a Hard encounter with adjusted XP of 8100

So, by this metric, both are deemed a Hard encounter with a slight edge for difficulty given to the 3 Hill Giants

For funsies:
Adding 1 ice memphit to the enemy mix makes the 2 Frost Giant encounter Deadly (adjusted XP 11,850) while 3 Hill Giants are still just a Hard encounter (adjusted XP 8,250)

So, yeah, there's that.

 

[Ancalagon]

So the fight happened! I went with 3 hill giants.

They were up a slope (half speed movement), throwing boulders at random targets (not well coordinated). The Rogue NPC and the Monk absorbed most of the damage (a level 7 monk can deflect missile on a boulder and reduce damage to almost nothing). The hill giants were over-confident and expected the party to flee - they would be happy to kill 1-2 for food.

In brief, the party used their superior mobility to their advantage. The player playing the paladin retired his character and was playing a battlemaster3/fey warlock 5 (pack of the blade) and used a fly spell. One monk has boots of lying, the full warlock has slippers of climbing, and the other monk is still pretty fast.

They were able to swarm one giant at a time and take it out. Hill giants are pretty good at resisting stunning, but with 2 monks in the party a lot of stun attempts can be made. One was stunned , then the other. The warlock/battlemaster did pretty solid damage too, but caught a boulder in the face for his troubles.

The third giant was polymorphed into a chicken by the full warlock. They were just going to leave it behind but once the flying monk learned how the spell worked, he grabbed the chicken, flew up really high, then punched it. This reverted the chicken to giant form, who then plummeted to its doom (in my game larger creatures take more falling damage - 20d10 in this case). The monk (drunken master) has a complicated relationship with chickens...

One NPC went into the negatives but was saved by our cleric, who was otherwise pretty ineffective. The player is a really good roleplayer but not the best tactical caster.

 

[the Jester]

Thanks for the update!

 

[Mort]

One NPC went into the negatives but was saved by our cleric, who was otherwise pretty ineffective. The player is a really good roleplayer but not the best tactical caster.

Thanks for the update. Sounds like a challenging but not ridiculously challenging encounter - which seems as intended.

The third giant was polymorphed into a chicken by the full warlock. They were just going to leave it behind but once the flying monk learned how the spell worked, he grabbed the chicken, flew up really high, then punched it. This reverted the chicken to giant form, who then plummeted to its doom (in my game larger creatures take more falling damage - 20d10 in this case). The monk (drunken master) has a complicated relationship with chickens...

Because polymorph is a will save it's very effective against these kinds of monsters (hard hitting dumb brutes).

You'd think a con save would be more appropriate for this kind of spell (affects the body directly, little to do with the mind)!

 

[Bacon Bits]

This is a not too serious, "I'm tired help me make up my mind" thread.

The party is traveling through a mountaineous region and will be attacked by giants in the middle of a snow storm. Clearly, frost giants... but then I thought "hmm... does it *have* to be frost giants? What about hill giants?"

Party make up is paladin (ancient, level 8, has a sword of giant slaying), cleric (knowledge, level 8), Sorcerer (Topaz dragon (homebrew) level 8 and 2 monks (both level 7, open fist and drunken master). They also have 4 NPCs hanger ons of some combat capacity (for example, a slightly upgraded thug). This is in 5e incidentally.

So what would be the most challenging fight - 3 hill giants or 2 frost giants? What would be the most fun?

Thanks!

I don't think the choice is between 3 hill giants and 2 frost giants. I think it's between 3 frost giants that have hill giant stats, 2 frost giants that have frost giant stats, or some mixture between the two. Like, no matter what, they should be frost giants regardless of what's under the hood.

For example, you could have 3 "frost giants", except only one of them is a really real frost giant, and the others are sickly or old and so have hill giant stats.