Epic Destinies and Earth Giants

[Wormwood]

I like the world to stay a dangerous place and high level not meaning comic book superhero. Guess I should be shopping around for a different game if I ever want to play something truly epic.

Or, you just stop playing at 20th level.

 

[Zil]

You got to be kidding me, right? Norse and Greek mythology != Great Wheel. A thousand curses on planescape for shoehorning the Greeks et al into the Great Wheel.

Of course you don't need the Great Wheel. But at least within the Great Wheel you had the mythological origins of the Frost and Fire Giants and the Titans represented in some way. The underpinnings were all there. With the new cosmology, you have none of that in any way. The new cosmology reminds me of a somewhat lame law/chaos cosmology (Moorcock, Cooper or Zelazny have all done it better). But even with Moorcock, when he portrayed giants in his eternal champion cycle you could still see their mythological roots (in this case Celtic origins in the stories I'm thinking of). I don't see anything at all in these new giants other than making them quasi-elementals with an ancient allegiance to the primordial elemental lords.

By the way, the Great Wheel predated Planescape by many, many years so I think your curses are misdirected.

As for the epic destinies, I actually like that they didn't go for "bigger numbers". The fact that an archmage can use any daily power every 5 minutes isn't epic enough? Can you imagine the sheer awe on younger mages when they start practising their once daily meteor swarms and the headmaster calmly walks in and starts throwing meteor swarms EVERY 5 MINUTES?

I misunderstood you. I thought you were referring to something else specific to the giants.

 

[Korgoth]

I'm still miffed that they're holding back Frost Giants for MM2. First of all, they were the stars of G2, one of the first modules published, and second (and more importantly), they go along with Fire Giants as important figures in Norse Myth. And if D&D is about any one thing, that thing is Vikings.

This "Death Giant" sounds like a poser. I want my Viking giants.

 

[Zil]

I'm actually curious as to what you look for in an epic game. On the one hand, you don't like the "wahoo" nature of the PCs, but on the other hand you want the giants et al to be monstrously stronger than the PCs...

Yet, when I think Epic, I think Heracles kicking the crap out of giants, Beowulf ripping off grendels arms etc...

At epic level, your fighter should be able to lay a smackdown on giants WITHOUT the use of magic. Just plain pure badass skill.

Skill, yes. Comic book strength and dex no. Your fighter should be a formidable swordsmen able to strike critical blows, hamstring the giants or whatnot. He should not dance on his nose or arm wrestle him. And if a giant lands a blow, it should hurt, throw him around, etc. The fighter just has the staying power and _skill_ to overcome. but without it turning into a comic book feel. Magic is optional. I actually prefer lower magic games as well, but I can go either way depending in what the players are expecting.

 

[Jack99]

I'd ask for Mod action, but I can't follow my own paragraph there to figure out who to report.

Yourself for doubting the awesomeness of 4e?

 

[Serensius]

I'm still miffed that they're holding back Frost Giants for MM2. First of all, they were the stars of G2, one of the first modules published, and second (and more importantly), they go along with Fire Giants as important figures in Norse Myth. And if D&D is about any one thing, that thing is Vikings.

This "Death Giant" sounds like a poser. I want my Viking giants.

QFT.

 

[Voss]

This "Death Giant" sounds like a poser. I want my Viking giants.

Yeah, I was worried when they started going on about the death and eldritch giants. Those things were horrible and uninteresting. Frost and Fire are where its at.

 

[Kishin]

Hilarious.

Earth Shock is a classic Shaman spell from WoW.

Little surprised by the choice of name, but the WoW version is a lightning blast that interrupts spells. I'm pretty sure the Earth Titan isn't hurling lightning.

And for my usual anti-4Eism:
Epic Destiny fluff highly situational and disruptive if the game is not build around the idea of epic quests,

Blah blah, just ignore it. Seriously, how do people get worked up over fluff like this? It takes hardly any effort to gloss over its existence.

 

[Kishin]

Hilarious.

Earth Shock is a classic Shaman spell from WoW.

Little surprised by the choice of name, but the WoW version is a lightning blast that interrupts spells. I'm pretty sure the Earth Titan isn't hurling lightning.

And for my usual anti-4Eism:
Epic Destiny fluff highly situational and disruptive if the game is not build around the idea of epic quests,

Blah blah, just ignore it. Seriously, how do people get worked up over fluff like this? It takes hardly any effort to gloss over its existence.

I will agree though, there was nothing too mechanically interesting about the Archmage.

I'm still miffed that they're holding back Frost Giants for MM2. First of all, they were the stars of G2, one of the first modules published, and second (and more importantly), they go along with Fire Giants as important figures in Norse Myth. And if D&D is about any one thing, that thing is Vikings.

Nono, D&D is about dragons. Heavy metal is about Vikings.

 

[Zil]

The Norse giants, Jotun, were created by Ymir in Ginnungagap. Ymir and Ginnungagap map pretty closely to primordials and the Elemental Chaos.

Do they? I hope you're right, but so far I haven't seen any hint of that in the new cosmology. What they posted today made them sound like quasi-elementals, not of the lineage of Norse giants. Maybe when they do the Manual of the Planes things will fit together better for me.