D&D General did giants ever get the spotlight?

[Yora]

Mountain giants were in the 3e MM2.

A book, that in my experience as a huge 3rd edition fanboy back in the day, got almost completely ignored by anyone.
It helped grells rising out of complete obscurity when they later got a chapter in Lords of Madness. But other than that, the only MM2 monster I remember ever getting mentioned was someone writing a famous expansive mythology for ethergaunts.

 

[Mind of tempest]

ethergaunts?

 

[GuyBoy]

There was a memorable encounter with mountain giants in the early stages of the (brilliant) Return to the Tomb of Horrors box set. They rolled huge rocks down a sloping corridor, iirc.

Slightly off topic in terms of giants, but as you mention grells, I remember an encounter with them in a shaft. Lethal. I think it was in Temple of Elemental Evil but I’m not sure.

 

[the Jester]

A book, that in my experience as a huge 3rd edition fanboy back in the day, got almost completely ignored by anyone.
It helped grells rising out of complete obscurity when they later got a chapter in Lords of Madness. But other than that, the only MM2 monster I remember ever getting mentioned was someone writing a famous expansive mythology for ethergaunts.

Ethergaunts were in the Fiend Folio.

But the MM2 had quite an array of cool monsters in it, some conversions, most new. It may have been ignored in your groups, but not in the ones I participated in!

 

[Yora]

ethergaunts?

Exactly...

 

[Voadam]

A book, that in my experience as a huge 3rd edition fanboy back in the day, got almost completely ignored by anyone.

It gave us the 3e Death Knight.

I liked and used the Palrethee demon, a balor that tried for demon lord ascension and was crippled with burning fire for its failure.

I also got good use out of the teratomorph as a weird high level Chaos encounter on the outer planes.

I expect it would have gotten a lot more use if it had made its way into the srd the way Paizo's full Bestiary 2 did.

 

[Nefermandias]

I have somehow heard of the mountain giants it is a shame we lost them.

Mountain giants are really an offshoot of Hill giants. Same as mist giants are to cloud giants.

 

[the Jester]

I also got good use out of the teratomorph as a weird high level Chaos encounter on the outer planes.

Hey, I'm using a few of these in my big chaos apocalypse that I'm running... we ended the last session of my alpha group mid-combat, with one closing in fast. And there are a couple more moving into the city the pcs are trying to save.

EDIT: Next session is tomorrow night, in fact!

 

[Mind of tempest]

Mountain giants are really an offshoot of Hill giants. Same as mist giants are to cloud giants.

are mountain giants smarter than hill giants?

 

[Yora]

are mountain giants smarter than hill giants?

Yes, in 2nd edition, Hill Giants are 12 HD with Int 5-7, and Mountain Giants are 15 HD with Int 8-10.

Though I have to correct my earlier statement about mountain giants, and they appear to only be introduced in 2nd edition. The 1st edition MM only had the six "default" giants like most other editions.