Interesting. A bit of a departure from depictions in earlier editions. Much more nature oriented...seems they're playing up the fey aspect based on the Celtic origins of the race.
Interesting wording on Hidden Step, though. It makes you invisible "...until you attack, make a damage roll, or force someone to make a saving throw." This is different from all other invisibility effects. I wonder why.
Why put in a race that diverges so significantly from the original other than to pander to nostalgia? Why not create new races or utilise the plethora of other available options if they want to fill a book?
Firbolg have been 10 ft. tall since 1e and in every other edition. They've always been of a large size and, in fact, one of their special abilities has always been to shrink down a size. It's really just absurd to shoehorn them into a medium build so that they'll be a playable race.
So why have it as a playable race at all then? There are hundreds of other races they could've chosen to make playable. There was no burning need to have firbolgs be a playable race. But to make them one, they had to so radically alter them from their well known and established lineage that they no longer resemble the original which makes the entire exercise pointless other than to play upon nostalgia. They could've simply called it some other thing and made it an entirely new race if they were that keen on introducing another goliath-like race.It allows for firbolgs to actually fit in with the standard adventuring party.
And people laughed when I suggested Firbolgs would fit in better as a player race as compared to Goliaths.
Interesting. A bit of a departure from depictions in earlier editions. Much more nature oriented...seems they're playing up the fey aspect based on the Celtic origins of the race.
Even though they can speak Giant, the write-up indicates that they are humanoids. This leaves me wondering if they still mainly worship Hiatea or not. (I have a player who now wants to ditch his existing PC and make a firbolg druid, so I have to think about these things.)
It does. However, I think if we ever see one in monster statblock form, it'll say "medium humanoid (firbolg)" at the top.They are a sort of a humanoid-giant-fey mixture, if that makes any sense lol...
Yeah, I'm just thinking it would be kind of weird for them to not have their own god(s). I have to think about it for my own homebrew world. Do I want them to worship their own god(s)? If yes, should it be the giant pantheon? Or a pantheon of their own? Or should I have them worship the same pantheon as the wood elves? (In my campaign, high elves and eladrin are agnostic at best, as they believe gods to be little more than children's stories. Also, no one knows if any of the gods are real, and there are no clerics or paladins to "prove" their existence.)The "classes" section there just mentions "nature gods" in general. As Hiatea is a nature god, so it wouldn't seem out of place for her to be one of the main deities firbolg clerics would worship.
That would be cool.This has gotten me wondering, will we see some info on the various gods/pantheons of the "featured" creatures? Even if it were just charts and quick run-downs like in SCAG, it would be something nice to see...
Honestly Firbolg looked very generic in past editions. 4E was the only one where I felt they had some flavor, even though that flavor was "White pupils, Raven-Queen worshipping Wild Hunters". Everywhere else they were just tall vikingsThe art took me by surprise, as it looks nothing like the firbolg from 2E, which is the only one I'm familiar with. Luckily, I have no attachment to the firbolg's previous incarnations, and I actually think this looks pretty good.
It seems the Firbolgs have murdered the Voadkyn and taken their flavour and abilities. The Voadkyn were always the smallest giant-kin, the "elvish" giant-kin and the ones with the most "druidic" outlook. They even took the Voadkyn's pointy ears.
I do think that this version of the Firbolg has a more consistent design, and I guess the "strong human" niche is already being filled by the Goliath. It would be nice to have a race that can enlarge itself that doesn't have the baggage of the duergar though.
[/FONT]But yeah, these are Voadkyn, and they seem to be a more popular version of the Voadkyn given the positive response that this design seems to be having. Everyone always seemed to hate the Voadkyn before.