Pathfinder 1E Are giants too strong?

[Jester David]

They're eight or twenty seven times the mass of your average human. I'm okay that they're not just 3 points stronger

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

If you are really concerned about this, giving giants a larger racial bonus to accuracy when throwing rocks would let them pummel parties from a distance.

Besides which, I'm thinking your referring to the classic case of 1e as you experienced it. In 1e as I experienced it, giants were among the more feared opponents precisely because their ability to hit wasn't just based on HD, but they got bonuses to hit from their strength - making them one of the few foes that could challenge a PC in melee once you got better than 0 AC. Frost giants got +4 to hit and +9 to damage when using weapons in all the 1e games I played.

Those are house rules.

Don't forget, the Monster Manual wasn't really a 1E product. It was designed more for OD&D which is why you see some odd things in there such as type VI demons having 8+8 hit dice making them weaker than type IV and even type III demons. It makes some sense, however, in OD&D where they used d12s for hit dice.

Similarly, the giant strength bonuses hadn't been codified by the time it was released which is why you see damage ranges ranging from 2d8 for hill giants to 6d6 (IIRC) for storm giants rather than what 2E did which was to adjust weapon damage and then add the Strength bonus to damage.

However, once the DMG was released and it became apparent what the Strength damage bonus would be because of the girdles of giant strength I know some 1E DMs then adjusted giant damage accordingly. But it was definitely a house rule. (A similar thing happened with ogres once gauntlets of ogre power were revealed to give a +6 bonus to damage.)

Of course, Monster Manual II became the beginning of the monster arms race with a number of monsters starting to receive Strength damage bonuses, a trend that actually started when the monsters first appeared in S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

 

[Kramodlog]

Do you think giants' strength scores are too high? For example a fog giant has a strength score of 35 it is a huge giant. If you reduce the giant by two size categories it's strength drops by 4 leaving a rather robust 31 on a medium sized creature. Are they simply inflated to make them threatening for higher level characters. Should giants be retooled to face lower level heroes? Does this just reflect changes that have occurred when the level range for all characters is 1-20 or higher? Monsters must be scattered, sometimes rather thinly, across all these levels.

If you want a low level giant, the Ubue from the Tome of Horrors is pretty cool.

In a Indian flavor campaign, just give it elephant heads (without the extra attacks) to make it some sort of usurping "god" PCs can deal with to save a village.

 

[Celebrim]

Those are house rules.

I've never played a game of 1e that wasn't. The organic nature of the rules, the somewhat chaotic organization of the rules, the lack of complete explanations, and the sometimes incoherent nature of the rules themselves meant everyone was playing what they liked or understood.

By the time I get into 1e AD&D, the PH, DMG and Dieties & Demigods have all been released. Looking at the rules collection as a whole, it was easy to see (or at least believe) that giants had a particular strength and that beings with that strength received a bonus on to hit and damage when using weapons. This approach was back compatible with the reading implied strength for humanoid tribal leaders in the 1e MM that had bonuses to hit and damage when using weapons, was compatible with the entries in the Dieties & Demigods, and largely forward compatible with what we would later read in MM2 and what 2e would do.

We didn't believe we were using a house rule, and wouldn't have believed it if you'd tried to explain it. We would have at most believed that at the time the MM was published, the rules for 1e AD&D weren't clear and that it didn't work that way in earlier play.

First edition was great for rules arguments.

 

[Werebat]

Not sure what happened to my earlier reply, but here goes again.

In 3E, there was a feat somewhere that basically allowed you to use your Strength mod to hit with ranged attacks provided they were with thrown weapons.

IMC, I give all giants this feat, swapping out one of their others. It solves the problem of giants' threat at range being abysmal for their CR.

 

[Werebat]

Not sure what happened to my earlier reply, but here goes again.

In 3E, there was a feat somewhere that basically allowed you to use your Strength mod to hit with ranged attacks provided they were with thrown weapons.

IMC, I give all giants this feat, swapping out one of their others. It solves the problem of giants' threat at range being abysmal for their CR.

 

[ImperatorK]

It's called Brutal Throw and it's in Complete Adventurer.

 

[billd91]

Not sure what happened to my earlier reply, but here goes again.

In 3E, there was a feat somewhere that basically allowed you to use your Strength mod to hit with ranged attacks provided they were with thrown weapons.

IMC, I give all giants this feat, swapping out one of their others. It solves the problem of giants' threat at range being abysmal for their CR.

In fact, it does fix the issue and it was about time. That's why I commented about stat modifiers affecting things smartly. That option, or even better, having the effect baked in to giant scale attacks with the rules without needing a feat should have been included from the beginning when someone noticed the difference between melee and ranged attacks for giants compared to earlier editions.

 

[Werebat]

It's called Brutal Throw and it's in Complete Adventurer.

Yes, and it has a sister feat, Power Throw, which is also great for giants (in PF we could essentially retool it to be more in line with PF Power Attack).

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I've never played a game of 1e that wasn't. The organic nature of the rules, the somewhat chaotic organization of the rules, the lack of complete explanations, and the sometimes incoherent nature of the rules themselves meant everyone was playing what they liked or understood.(snip) First edition was great for rules arguments.

Oh yeah, I agree with every bit of that.

I wasn't dissing the use of house rules: the simple fact is that AD&D was essentially unplayable without house rules for the reasons you mention.

One of the reasons I used to laugh at Gary's horrible "there is only one true way to play AD&D"-editorials in Dragon was that the most apt response to his ravings was, "Hey, Gary, have you ever tried to play the games you wrote as written? Doesn't work, mate."