Dark Sun 4th ed...halfGiants, run as ogres?

[Silverblade The Ench]

No idea on how 4th ed will actually handle monster characters, but, I was thinking ....(dangerous, bad, dirty habit I know )

For those of us who love Dark Sun, and hate the way half giants were handled in official 3.5 WOTC material (lol total joke of a race, jeesh!), why not run them in 4th ed as ogres, that seems pretty reasonable, just add the alignment variance etc
?

ie, this is a hint to those brainy folk who can whip up race/classes quick, so that when 4th ed is released, smart folk can help dumber folk *cough cough*, by writing up Dark Sun half-giants from standard 4th ed rules.

 

[StarFyre]

hmm

We have a half giant that we did custom for 3.5E since the 3.5E version was junk.

haven't updated for 4E yet but will do so and post here....

Sanjay

 

[Sashi]

How about Dragonborn as Half Giants? Re-cast the breath weapon as the stomp power, with type-less damage and a reduced die size and change some of the more "dragony" racial feats to be more half-giant feats.

 

[vagabundo]

Here are two links to some Dark Sun discussions on this forum. Cannot remember if there was any discussion on half giants, but there is some good stuff in there.


http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=215526

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=223921

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Sashi,
no, I hated 3rd ed's official WOTC halfgiants, lol, they weren't even "Large"!

Athasian Halfgiants have got to be Large size, very tough, but dumb. Folk are scared of them

 

[Shroomy]

Since I think the problems with the 3.5e half-giant stem from the need to keep the LA down, in theory, it should be easier to craft a 4e half-giant. I mean, in 3.5e, the minotaur is a Large creature with a LA of +2 (and an ECL of at least nine if you don't use a Savage Species type progression), but in 4e, they are playable right out of the box (though lacking racial feats).

 

[Spatula]

The playable minotaur is size Medium - a "civilized" minotaur, where the Large ones are savages, in the new fluff.

There's no rules for playable ogres, or any non-Medium/Small non-humanoid race. Honestly I'm a bit stumped as to how you're supposed to handle that sort of thing in 4e without violating basic design principles (no penalties for races).

Half-giants should be Large, should have lots of strength & constitution. They should be stronger than other strong races. In 2e they had massive stat penalties to make up for their benefits. In 4e, that sort of thing is apparently taboo, which makes me think the 4e half-giant is going to look a lot like the 3e half-giant - an okay race but obviously very different from what a race with that name should be.

This was my thought on the race, using stat penalties:
Ability Scores: +4 Str, +4 Con, -4 Int, -2 Cha?
Size: Large
Speed: 6 squares?
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common
Reach: 2 squares

Threatening Reach Half-giant Racial Power
The long reach of your weapons keeps your enemies at bay.
Encounter
Immeadiate Interrupt Personal
Trigger: An enemy leaves a square that you can reach with your basic melee attack, or makes a ranged or area attack from such a square.
Effect: You can make a melee opportunity attack against that enemy.

Note that in 4e, reach doesn't normally apply to opportunity attacks, except for monsters with a special property. Also, Large size is a bit of a penalty in that you can't fit into some spaces without squeezing.

Additional thought: start the half-giant out at +2 str/con. Have racial feats that give it boosts to melee damage or hp/surges, that emulate the effects of higher str/con scores.

 

[Shroomy]

Didn't know that about minotaurs, thanks for pointing that out.

However, I think you could build a half-giant using 4e design principles if you centered all of its racial abilities around being Large and gave them +2 Strength and +2 Constitution. How exactly you would do that, I don't know.

 

[Korgoth]

If they don't have to be large, could you run them as bugbears? (they can be taller than bugbears if you like, but from what I heard leaked about the bugbear stats it doesn't sound too bad)

 

[Shroomy]

Additional thought: start the half-giant out at +2 str/con. Have racial feats that give it boosts to melee damage or hp/surges, that emulate the effects of higher str/con scores.

Good idea!