Giants: How big should they be in an a Fantasy RPG?

[Agent Oracle]

I just think most people get freaked out by true differences in size.

I mean, look at it this way: Have you ever stood beside a real-life professional basketball player?

They average at about 7 feet tall, just below a "large" creature.

This is the best image i could find of a large human: this guy is 8'4".

now, put him in rough hide armor, suddenly you have a short hill giant, who is still "large".

Go stand next to your doorframe and measure the difference between your head and the top. It's probably a good foot of clearance.

this guy has to bend over to enter all buildings.

Ahh, here's Robert Wadlow, tallest person in history (poor guy, he was painfully shy about his size... and women adored him. He never married.)

he died young because of heart problems brought on by his enormous size. he was 8'11" when this photo was taken.

 

[Wolfwood2]

My real problem is that giants (12 HD+ Giant-type beings) are the same size category as ogres (4 HD Giant-type beings) or trolls (6 HD Giant-type beings). This seems a bit wonky to me, since were one to think of hill giants as, say, advanced ogres, they certainly would NOT be Large-sized.

See, what this says to me is that giants have maybe too many hitdice. Why should they get 12+ just from racial hitdice when they are, as you point out, not that big? What I'd prefer is to quietly strip them of some of their hitdice, a much more invisible change to the game. Cut hill giants down to 6 HD and follow from there.

This way giants will get a lot more of their power from class levels, just like smaller humanoids. I think this is more appropriate and allows a lot more room to customize giants with class levels without giving them ridiculous amount of hitdice.

 

[Garnfellow]

See, what this says to me is that giants have maybe too many hitdice. Why should they get 12+ just from racial hitdice when they are, as you point out, not that big? What I'd prefer is to quietly strip them of some of their hitdice, a much more invisible change to the game. Cut hill giants down to 6 HD and follow from there.

This way giants will get a lot more of their power from class levels, just like smaller humanoids. I think this is more appropriate and allows a lot more room to customize giants with class levels without giving them ridiculous amount of hitdice.

Daniel R. Collins had a similiar notion a few years ago and built regressed versions of the true giants, moving them back to their 1st edition HD. I updated his work to 3.5 and posted it on my website:

• Hill Giant
• Stone Giant
• Frost Giant
• Fire Giant
• Cloud Giant
• Cloud Giant

I'm using these stripped down versions in my homebrew conversion of G1, G2, and G3 and so far I've been pretty happy with the results.

 

[werk]

Here at Wendy's a Classic Triple w/ Cheese is 970 calories. To reach the previously posted calorie total, that giant would need to eat 48.324742 Classic Triples w/ Cheese. In case you're wondering, that's 36.243558 lbs. of hamburger meat. Eating this much meat every day would require a very large cow population from which each giant in the tribe could draw their daily sustenance.

Why wouldn't giants have giant cows and giant cheeseburgers?

Fantasy ecology, do you really want to go that route?

 

[frankthedm]

Fantasy ecology, do you really want to go that route?

Why not? Orcas, elephants and sperm whales are supported by the current earth. T-rex and even bigger herbivores were supported a long time ago.

As for D&D ecologies being predator heavy that is just because the predators pursue and hunt perceived prey. {also the DM is expected to throws challenges at the party, not peaceful herbivores.] The PCs find those peaceful herbivores on survival checks of 10 and up.

Get along in the wild. Move up to one-half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10.

 

[Conaill]

All these giants, and not one giant blue ox to be found in the MM...

 

[woodelf]

As for D&D ecologies being predator heavy that is just because the predators pursue and hunt perceived prey. {also the DM is expected to throws challenges at the party, not peaceful herbivores.] The PCs find those peaceful herbivores on survival checks of 10 and up.

In the real world, many more people are injured by wild herbivores than by wild carnivores. In general, herbivores are the most dangerous wild animals--carnivores tend to only attack when (1) they're hungry and (2) they're sure they can win (and they're rarely sure they can win against people, who aren't generally on their "recognized prey" list). Herbivores tend to attack whenever you get too close and they can't run away, or are feeling ornery. The fact that herbivores tend to be less intelligent than carnivores contributes to this--they're less good at distinguishing legitimate threats from merely-unknown situations. Hippos, rhinos, elk, bison--these are the animals you never want to tangle with.

Not entirely sure how all this translates to a world full of fantastic creatures and primitive humanoids and plants that will eat a horse, however.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I love those reduced-HD giants. Really smooths out the ogre-hill giant curve.

 

[sniffles]

I've always been uncomfortable with the concept of giants in the Huge category. It begins to strain my willing suspension of disbelief, especially if you then assume that the same world containing these Huge giants also contains substantial numbers of other Huge creatures. I don't expect the ecology of a fantasy world to conform exactly to real-world ecology, but I find Large giants quite impressive enough!

 

[frankthedm]

Daniel R. Collins had a similiar notion a few years ago and built regressed versions of the true giants, moving them back to their 1st edition HD. I updated his work to 3.5 and posted it on my website:

• Hill Giant
• Stone Giant
• Frost Giant
• Fire Giant
• Cloud Giant
• Cloud Giant

I'm using these stripped down versions in my homebrew conversion of G1, G2, and G3 and so far I've been pretty happy with the results.

Those seem much more fitting for thier HP / HD / sizes.