Firbolgs - A PC Race From VOLO'S GUIDE TO MONSTERS

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.

 

[Herobizkit]

Giant gnomes who pretend to be elves to fit in.

*grump*

More elf love for the Forgotten Realms.

Aside: the evil counterpart to Firbolgs were Verbeegs which, after some laughable pun humour, don't amount to anything much.

 

[pukunui]

Looks like there will be deity discussion in the book. After reading the fully Polygon article, it states that the kobold deities will be fully covered. I would assume that will go for any of the other "featured" monster types as well...

Yeah, I saw that! Hopefully there will be some mention of firbolg deities too.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

honestly, reminds me a lot of the The Twilight Giants trilogy if Tavis would have had a profound affect on the Firbolg culture.

I kinda approve.

The Twilight Giants trilogy was a fun read.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Yeah, I saw that! Hopefully there will be some mention of firbolg deities too.

Even if they don't go into more detail than what we've seen in the firbolg section, Hiatea should get coverage in the giant section. It would be annoying if the connection isn't specifically spelled out in one section or the other, but that's hardly a fatal issue.

 

[Azzy]

Meh.

 

[gyor]

I have to strongly disagree there. The Firbolg were very distinct. They were outside the ordning and kept their own style of organisation which kept them secret, safe and separate from the other races. They also had distinct abilities of polymorphing and swatting missiles aside and wielding their own oversized weapons, and normal-sized two-handed weapons in one hand. They were fey-adjacent rather than actual fey. They were more like oversized dwarves in character and demeanour than they were ogres, especially given their high intelligence and wisdom. They were also quite agile and stealthy.

And now? Now they're just another warped, shoe-horned in, fun-sized player race with no real resemblance to the 40 years of history behind them.

I had forgotten about the Voadkyn though. If they'd called this race Voadkyn, I'd have no problem with it and would in fact be quite happy with that. I'll probably just call them Voadkyn at my tables. But calling them firbolg when they're really nothing like firbolg, I think, is just a bit silly and unnecessary.

I agree with you, they just renamed the Voadkyn Firbolgs becauese Firbolg has better name recognition, but its a Voadkyn so I wonder how they're going to explain why they called it Firbolg.

 

[gyor]

Looking at the page, it appears to be the 2nd or 3rd page in the Firbolg racial section given that it starts off with names at the top if we go by how the PHB did races.

 

[Selvarin]

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.

Some of us really don't care for goliaths, so having more fitting options is nice.

Just like some may not care for dragonborn but wouldn't mind playing a 'lizardfolk' character.


In any event it won't kill us if the larger types get reorganized.

 

[One_Shots]

That "40 years of history" line doesn't seem appropriate. They were pretty underused prior to 1995's Giantcraft. And pretty ignored since.

Please speak for yourself instead of all of D&D for the last 40 years.

 

[Jester David]

Please speak for yourself instead of all of D&D for the last 40 years.

You mean the 33 year history, as firbolgs didn't appear until the Monster Manual II published in 1983, along with the fomorian and verbeeg.
Between the galeb dur and gibbering mouther.

After that, they were in the Monstrous Compendium Volume Two in 2nd Edition and the MM2 in both 3rd and 4th editions. I can't see many mentions apart from the Complete Book of Humanoids and Giantcraft.
(Assuming you could 4e during that 33-year period, as the firbolg were hunters of the feywild and associated with the Wild Hunt. And had none of the abilities you mention, instead having a faerie fire variant as the signature power.)

So I stand by my statement of "underused" and "ignored".