D&D General Comparing Giant Sizes

Anders Johnson, a Swedish artist over on ArtStation, has an awesome image in which he compares the relative sizes of various D&D giants.

 

[Koloth]

As a DM I used to struggle with the fantasy of human-sized melee fights against huge and above sized giants. Whomever in this thread pointed out how after the giant gets a bit over two or three times a human's size it's hard to reach any of its vital organs with melee weapons has a good point. Most other huge sized creatures aren't humanoid shaped; they're quadrupeds or beings with even more legs than that, which move parallel to the ground and keep their bellies close to players.

For a character who lands more than one hit in melee per round, I could see it as they hit somewhere on the giant's legs that cause it to buckle into a crouch, and the second hit finds the giant's kidney or heart or something, but unless we're doing a literal achilles heel it's a bit hard to imagine a rogue sneak attacking a giant's shins and killing it (femoral artery?).

As one who played a number of thieves in the D&D and later AD&D times, this issue of sneak attack vs giant came up more then once. IIRC, one GM said it didn't work and a different GM went with "The attack severed the ankle and the giant falls over helpless and bleeds out." while a third one figured all HP are part of the giant's total and hit location doesn't matter - if the sneak damage exceeds the giant's total HP, it is game over for the giant.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

As one who played a number of thieves in the D&D and later AD&D times, this issue of sneak attack vs giant came up more then once. IIRC, one GM said it didn't work and a different GM went with "The attack severed the ankle and the giant falls over helpless and bleeds out." while a third one figured all HP are part of the giant's total and hit location doesn't matter - if the sneak damage exceeds the giant's total HP, it is game over for the giant.

My default is just to say "you reduced the monster to 0 HP, describe how you kill it", and in retrospect most times we've killed a giant it's been with magic or a ranged attack, but I do remember a rogue in one game saying "IDK are giants like stegosauruses they got brains in their calves I stab their medulla gastrocnemius or whatever"

 

[Umbran]

I think it's always a mistake to assume older humans were less sophisticated and intelligent than us.

Sure. But when confronted with elephant skulls, they imagined cyclops.

If you look at the iconography of St. George slaying his dragon, or really ancient iconography about dragons generally, the ancients were imagining as dragons animals on the scale of pythons, crocodiles, wild boars, or the like.

Yes, but those depictions are impacted significantly by the medium and art style of the time, which was not known for hyper-realism. St George is the larger figure, because he's a saint.

Like, really, a dragon smaller than a man is terrorizing the countryside? Please.

Fafnir as a dragon was so large that Sigurd had to dig a pit larger than a man, and the dragon was big enough to be sure to cover the pit to be struck from below.

Also, the roc could carry away an elephant. Rumplestiltskin could spin straw into gold, and there were people who could walk on land as humans, but don a skin and be a seal or a swan.

Unreality does not begin with modern fantasy.

Is it believable that there is some draconic creature now extinct on the scale of a crocodile, python, wild board, or even elephant?

Humans have been encountering dinosaur bones and skulls since before we had language. But they didn't know those bones were millions of years old.