Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6195426" data-attributes="member: 3586">The high strength scores of giants comes down to two of the big failures of 3E design: ability score modifiers for creatures and size modifiers. They both look fine on first glance, but repeated play has shown how horrible they are in play and monster design.The problems come from the cascading effects of ability scores: you give a creature a high strength so it hits more often and does more damage. That's fine, because you tweak the numbers to make those work. Unfortunately, Strength also figures into other aspects of the game: grappling checks. CMD (in Pathfinder). Skill checks. If you're talking about Dex, Con or Wis, they also then feed into defences. And, to make things worse, there was no advice in the monster creation rules as to what reasonable stats were for each CR. So you got things like the Cave Troll in 3E, and people polymorphing into a 9 HD creature with a 29 Strength!Size modifiers on grappling checks are one of my most hated 3Eisms. PF cut them in half, and they're probably still too high. In 3E, if you got grappled by a big creature (likely with a high strength), you couldn't escape except through magic. (Opposed checks mean that small differences in bonus are magnified.)Giants work as long as they get used precisely doing what their main design is (fighting in melee), but badly outside of that.</blockquote>