Dark Sun Giant PC Race (Built as a Medium Creature)... thoughts?

[Cyber-Dave]

@Jester David

Thank you! I needed feedback of that sort. The ribbon abilities are ribbons. I'm aware. they are just there, for the most part, to appropriately flavour the race. I like your idea for giant's endurance. I also like your idea for giant's strength. The speed is to allow a medium half-giant to, with a move, be able to reach the same square as a large half-giant. The large half-giant only has a move speed of 30 feet, but because it fills up a 10-by-10 foot space, it ends up reaching up to 35 squares away (if counting from the farthest rather than the closest square it occupies). I agree that a player will probably not be able to remember all aspects of the personality... I figured, "who cares." By giving them all of the traits, bonds, flaws, and ideals, the player could try and emulate any given aspect when an approriate situation inspired the player. Since those rules are only used to inspire role-playing and occasionally grant inspiriation by DM feat, I figured it doesn't matter much one way or the other, no?

 

[Cyber-Dave]

So, as of right now, this is what the half-giant looks like:

Medium Half-Giant
Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score increases by 2. Your Constitution score increases by 2.
Size: You stand between 9 and 10 feet tall and can weigh close to 1,000 pounds. Your size is medium, but you tower over other medium humanoids. Many of your non-player character peers are actually of large size, standing up to 12 feet tall, and weighing up to 1,600 pounds. You must eat and drink 4 times the quantity of rations required by other medium sized creatures.
Speed: Your base land speed is 35 feet.
Giant’s Endurance: You have one more Hit Die than normal: a d12. Your hit points are not affected by this die, but it can be used to regain hit points when resting as per normal.
Giant’s Strength: You have advantage when making Strength checks to break an object. Additionally, you deal double damage to objects and structures.
Hybrid Nature: You have two creature types: humanoid and giant. You can be affected by a game effect that works on either of your creature types.
Large Grappler: You are considered to be large for the purposes of grappling.
Long-Limbed: When you make a melee attack on your turn, your reach for it is 5 feet greater than normal.
Mercurial Nature: The magic that allows human and giant blood to coexist leaves the half-giant’s personality naturally unhinged. As a result, you suffer disadvantage on any saves versus charm-based effects. In order to counterbalance this mercurial disability, half-giants will often attach themselves to the personality of a friend or mentor, mimicking their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws in order to somewhat reorient their own persona. During a long rest, you may choose one member of your party to mimic. Until your next long rest, you take on their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws as well as your own.
Powerful Build. You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.

Please note, this race is currently supposed to be more powerful than a standard PC race. The goal is for the race to be as strong as a normal race + one free racial feat (from Xanathar's Guide). As of right now, my elves, halflings, half-elves, dwarves, and mul are balanced against standard PC races. Each of those races is given one free racial feat (from Xanathar's Guide) at 1st level. The thri-kreen and the half-giant are a little stronger and are supposed to be balanced in a manner that incorporates the power of that free feat.

 

[WaterRabbit]

You are giving the race all of the advantage of being large without the downsides. Just make it a large creature and then you automatically have a whole host of problems. Otherwise, you definitely need to get rid of Reach, that alone makes this build one I would never allow at a table.

 

[Coroc]

I do not like it. I would make them giants give them +2 Str and +2 Co.

Also up the hit dice category one step

They should get advantage on Str checks.

They should have 35 ft base speed that one I agree.

Keep the alignment shift along 1 axis that's better than the mentor stuff, bec. to use the mentor stuff you gotta have one.

Agree with the doubled carrying capacity.

They can use normal weapons one handed, if they got special 2h weapons made for them the damage goes up 1 category

Here come the disadvantages:

They need 4x water and food (agree with that, and the water thing can be a huge disad in DS)

Their equip costs 4 times as much, if tailored for them.

Many structures made for medium humanoids require them to crawl or cower giving them a -2 on all rolls.

They get disadvantage on charisma saves.

That should be balanced.

 

[Cyber-Dave]

You are giving the race all of the advantage of being large without the downsides. Just make it a large creature and then you automatically have a whole host of problems. Otherwise, you definitely need to get rid of Reach, that alone makes this build one I would never allow at a table.

...no offence WaterRabbit, but that comment tells me that you don't understand the game's inner workings or balance. A lot of the comments in this thread (and I am speaking to criticism) have been helpful. It was too much like a Goliath. It is more powerful than a normal PC race (and I had to find a way to balance that without taking away features from this race). So on and so forth. You just claimed, however, that it has all the advantages with none of the disadvantages or a large creature, and you seem to believe that reach is the element of a large sized race that makes it impossible to balance. Neither claim is true (and they are not the reasons that the devs have given us for never creating a creature that is permanently large in size).

There are two features of large-sized creatures that have created a "design infraction" around creatures that are permanently large in size. 1) Larger weapon damage dice. There is no real way to balance double melee weapon damage dice on a race. 2) The effect of large size on AoE effects centered on a caster. The devs also don't like what large size does in terms of a creature's ability to single single-handedly block wide hallways in dungeons or the difficulty that large PCs have when interacting with smaller-scale buildings. Those are the elements of large size I am trying to avoid. As for reach, it has already been given to a medium PC race. So has powerful build. Likewise, "Large Grappler" is inline with features currently granted by existing feats. I appreciate the time you took to give me feedback, but in this case, I strongly disagree with it.