D&D General Dragons Versus Giants: A Speculative and Homebrew Explanation For Why They Hate Each Other

[Bitbrain]

we really need a big type of aberration line just for boss battles,

would fire be solar titans?
what would stone and hill even be?
what would storm titans be other than truly terrifying?

Storm giants are the ones who become Sun Titans. They’re basically beefed-up D&D Storm Giant Quintessents with evocation magic and the ability to erupt into blinding light.

Fire giants mature into Brass Titans. If you injure them, their blood splashes onto you and burns you. They have innate transmutation magic and a metal-based telekinetic effect: it’s a recharging Strength save restraining feature they use right before they attack you. The titans gain an aura that deals thunder damage.

There are no stone giants in my games.

Hill giants mature into War Titans. They start out as ettins basically (2 heads, 2 arms), then have four heads and four arms as an adult, six heads and arms as an ancient, before topping out with ten heads and arms as a titan. Hill giants are nothing fancy: aside from the mere sight of them dealing psychic damage to any creature with a certain distance, they exist mostly to beat you to a bloody pulp.

 

[Ancalagon]

Some elements/ideas about this:

1: giants can be made a lot more powerful/interesting by giving them rune magic that rune knights have.

2: Giants are a threat to dragons a way many other powerful monsters aren't because they can throw boulders. The "stay at range and blast them with fire" tactic dragons like will not work if they get barraged with boulders.

 

[Scribe]

Primordials (Elemental Gods) created the Titans who in turn created the Giants. Giants belong to Team Primordials, much like how Dragons belong to Team Gods.

Coming back to this. Did these Titans have Stat blocks?

 

[Voadam]

dragon versus giant.

 

[Bitbrain]

Coming back to this. Did these Titans have Stat blocks?

In fourth edition, yes.

 

[Voadam]

Coming back to this. Did these Titans have Stat blocks?

Yes, in the 4e Monster Manuals from the beginning.

Fire giants were large, Fire Titans were Huge.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Some elements/ideas about this:

1: giants can be made a lot more powerful/interesting by giving them rune magic that rune knights have.

2: Giants are a threat to dragons a way many other powerful monsters aren't because they can throw boulders. The "stay at range and blast them with fire" tactic dragons like will not work if they get barraged with boulders.

or a bigger worse option imagine one with a cannon for example?

 

[Ancalagon]

or a bigger worse option imagine one with a cannon for example?

this is a good point but also a red herring. Anyone with cannons is a treat to dragons, not just giants. Heck, cannons are a threat to giants too, I would say that if anything, they favor mortals.

 

[Voadam]

I am a big fan of the 4e Dawn War cosmology and giants story.

The Elemental Primordials used matter from the Elemental Chaos and created worlds and creatures. Titans were huge elemental creations of specific elemental flavors to serve the Primordials and they made masses of the smaller (large) Giants. I believe Dwarves were an elemental slave race for giants.

Gods were beings of concepts from the Astral plane and they interacted with the created world of the Primordials and the thinking beings on it, Moradin worked on shaping the world and patroned a lot of dwarves for example.

The Dawn War was basically sparked by the Primordials wanting to destroy their creation of the world and use the materials to create a new different one in a creation destruction cycle again and again while the Gods wanted a stable persistent world. War broke out and the Titans and Giants were soldiers for the Primordials while the dwarves rebelled and joined the gods under Moradin.

Io was the Dragon God and Dragons were on the gods side in the war with Dragons being on the power level of Giants and Titans. There is a basis for dragon versus giants historical enmity out of that Dawn War back story.

 

[Mind of tempest]

this is a good point but also a red herring. Anyone with cannons is a treat to dragons, not just giants. Heck, cannons are a threat to giants too, I would say that if anything, they favor mortals.

You're partly right but dragons are fast and cannons are slow a giant can just pick it up and use it like a gun instead of needing to get a lucky hit in.

 

[Voadam]

The Diamond Throne setting of Arcana Evolved was pretty fantastic too.

A whole continent with a Giant dominated empire, humans being one of the subject races of the setting along with Dragon-type people.

Originally the continent was Dragon controlled until they had demon-dragon creations get out of control and drive off the Dragons. The heroic Giants had a treaty of non-interference with the Dragons so they had previously stayed off the continent, but with the dragons gone and the demons rampaging the Giants girded for war and migrated en masse to the continent to drive off the demons and rescue the peoples of the land and succor them under the Giant's rule.

That was the set up for the original Arcana Unearthed. Then there was a return of the Dragons who have a claim to the land and in Arcana Evolved the continent is split between the two big power factions.

I loved having Giants be a current dominant world power instead of just ancient history. The Dragon's return is a good setup for having a Dragon-Giant conflict if you want one.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The Diamond Throne setting of Arcana Evolved was pretty fantastic too.

A whole continent with a Giant dominated empire, humans being one of the subject races of the setting along with Dragon-type people.

Originally the continent was Dragon controlled until they had demon-dragon creations get out of control and drive off the Dragons. The heroic Giants had a treaty of non-interference with the Dragons so they had previously stayed off the continent, but with the dragons gone and the demons rampaging the Giants girded for war and migrated en masse to the continent to drive off the demons and rescue the peoples of the land and succor them under the Giant's rule.

That was the set up for the original Arcana Unearthed. Then there was a return of the Dragons who have a claim to the land and in Arcana Evolved the continent is split between the two big power factions.

I loved having Giants be a current dominant world power instead of just ancient history. The Dragon's return is a good setup for having a Dragon-Giant conflict if you want one.

I think the giants just need a rethink they feel too mundane oddly just us but bigger they need something more mythic for the weaker types.

 

[Voadam]

I think the giants just need a rethink they feel too mundane oddly just us but bigger they need something more mythic for the weaker types.

The Giants in Arcana Unearthed were not D&D's traditional giants. They were their own thing and a PC race that started out a big Medium size and you could take a racial class that through rituals grew bigger, at 3 levels in you were large, and at 5 levels in you were huge. They had a big ritual tradition including a specific two set of rituals for turning themselves into a peace stance or a war stance.

D&D's giants are a lot norse flavored with the fire and frost giants, and a bit traditional Jack the Giantslayer/Beanstalk with brutish hill giants and intelligent Cloud giants. Stone giants seem fairly straight out of the hobbit with games of boulder throwing.

Hill giants are pretty much just bigger ogres following the D&D tradition of similar creatures with different Hit Dice for use at different levels of play. There is a traditional folk lore trope of dumb easily tricked giants who are bigger than what we would consider ogres, so it mostly works. I did like 4e identifying them as earth associated though with their titan type being earth titans.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The Giants in Arcana Unearthed were not D&D's traditional giants. They were their own thing and a PC race that started out a big Medium size and you could take a racial class that through rituals grew bigger, at 3 levels in you were large, and at 5 levels in you were huge. They had a big ritual tradition including a specific two set of rituals for turning themselves into a peace stance or a war stance.

D&D's giants are a lot norse flavored with the fire and frost giants, and a bit traditional Jack the Giantslayer/Beanstalk with brutish hill giants and intelligent Cloud giants. Stone giants seem fairly straight out of the hobbit with games of boulder throwing.

Hill giants are pretty much just bigger ogres following the D&D tradition of similar creatures with different Hit Dice for use at different levels of play. There is a traditional folk lore trope of dumb easily tricked giants who are bigger than what we would consider ogres, so it mostly works. I did like 4e identifying them as earth associated though with their titan type being earth titans.

it is more fire and frost need more powers like just being able to coat themselves in their element as an action.

stone and hill would need further differentiating if hill is just a broken earth elemental force.

storm and air need better differences as well but elemental giants are what I like to at least some extent, they just seem so unimpressive for some reason like they lack a real gimmick beyond size and rock hurling.

 

[SkidAce]

I found the "answer" to all our questions at work today.

hehe...j/k...

 

[Mind of tempest]

were Kraken like giants ever really relevant?