D&D General How do you use giants in your game?

[Shades of Eternity]

Just saw this

Giants are neat but are underplayed in the world of gaming. they are almost like mecha that they are unfeasible. Even in my Hodgepocalypse I stick to giant animals over giant humanoids. So based on your own favorites and experiences, how do you use giants in the game of your choice?

 

[aco175]

Giants might lead ogres or a group of orcs simply because they are larger. They might not be smarter, but tend to send in the others before they get into a fight. A bit like Magneto's quote; "In chess, the pawns go first." They can be controlled though by a powerful person or larger giant, so it is not unreasonable for them to guard a wizard's place or gather to a king of giants.

They like taking things since they are larger. A giant passing through a land might just take a cow since they can, knowing the farmers will not challenge them.

Generally lazy and does not mind working for others if they have a higher place in the pack. It might be easy work to stand behind the bandits on the road and just snarl while tapping his club in his hand.

 

[ezo]

Giants are another race, like any other (just not playable as PCs).

"Good giants" might form alliances with other good folk, but often are so rare and removed from most civilizations this is not common. Stone giants sometimes fall into this group as being more common than good Cloud giants and Storm giants, both of which are significantly rarer.

"Evil giants" act as you would expect. Leading weaker creatures because they can bully them, taking what isn't theirs for the same reason, seeking to enslave their lessers.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I absolutely love megafauna, especially repackaging ones from perhistory so no problems there, but giant humanoids are in a wierd uncanny valley where they are very familiar but very comparatively mundane and difficult to use due to their defining characteristic.

I think my base premise if I ever use them for my own work is that they are essentially titan-lite, the direct descendents of the gods/primorials and even the landscape itself when they get big enough.

although there is something to be said for monte cook's world where the giants are the stewards of the land and immature giants are viable player characters.

edit: should they be fought like KAIJU, where they are multiple pockets of hit points due to different locations doing different things?

 

[kigmatzomat]

I have a couple of giant approaches.

• some kind of spontaneously occurring variant of a smaller creature (the way orogs are born to orcs) that are in small number and don't breed true. Maybe goblin->hobgoblin->bugbear->troll->hill giant. Works out for goblinoid armies to wind up with a couple giants mixed in.
• Giants live in areas that are inhospitable to lesser creatures but they find pleasant. E.g. fire giants - volcanic & extremely hot deserts, frost giants arctic or high altitude glaciers, cloud giants high altitudes. Add some prey creature they prefer (salamanders, rhemorhaz, rocs) so they have little reason to leave. Which means the only ones in the "lesser lands" are exiles.
• Giants have conquered some region and rule in a Mongol-type system, migrating from across their territory through the year as they consume the tribute (and reinforce the power/authority of the giants when fifty of them stride over the horizon). Due to relatively low birth rates and/or long adolescence they can't readily expand their numbers to the point they could expand territory so other kingdoms try to not think about them.

 

[Laurefindel]

As I tend to dial down to a 6 or 7 what I often feel D&D has cranked to 11, I often reduce the size of giants.

An 8-foot dude weighting close to a ton and wielding the equivalent of a 10-inch diameter baseball bat should be f*****g terrifying, there is no need to go all the way to 15-20 feet, nevermind 25-50 feet tall! Making them smaller helps me fit them better on an ecological and geopolitical scale, and hand-to-hand fighting against giants seems more believable than trying to kill with a sword something you can't conceivably hit above the knee.

I have similar feelings in modern or sci-fi RPG when someone is asked to go against a tank with a handgun. At this point the game (usually) shifts to putting the handgun away and try to lure the tank into a ditch or bog, or finding vulnerabilities, or crippling it's weapon etc; and you know that one solid hit is likely to kill you. In other words, you don't just keep firing at it until it explodes (though video games do that...). I'd expect a similar approach in D&D with giants 25+ feet tall; one true hit of it's sword should cut you in half, and it's likely to shrug anything you're gonna throw at it. So you need to find a way to bring it down, prevent it from running you over (or running away), and attack vulnerable points.

A 25-foot tall (or more) giant battle like this can be fun, just like battling a tank with nothing but a handgun, but it's something you'd bring once, maybe twice in a campaign. Downsizing giants allows me to to play the skirmish game without having to shift to a different battle paradigm and without stretching my willing suspension of disbelieve too too thin.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just saw this

Giants are neat but are underplayed in the world of gaming. they are almost like mecha that they are unfeasible. Even in my Hodgepocalypse I stick to giant animals over giant humanoids. So based on your own favorites and experiences, how do you use giants in the game of your choice?

I very rarely use giants in D&D-style gaming (more rare even than dragons for me). When I do, it tends to be in ogre-like roles, or I go to the other end and use them like titans and demigods (the storm giant fills this role. Anything in between can be handled with size M or L humanoids as far as I'm concerned.

In case you're curious, my favored creature types are humanoids, undead, constructs, aberrations, and beasts (in that order).

 

[Shades of Eternity]

One of my most favorite interpretations of giants doesn't come from Dungeons and Dragons, but from Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game: Mount Nimro. Review of Mount Nimro - RPGnet RPG Game Index

They are organized into clans based on subspecies and a pecking order where it's almost a last stand where they almost appear to be noble, until you realize they really are monsters with a healthy does of self fulling prophacy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Extraterrestrial Invaders.

They avoided the last time the world ended by going to the moon and terraforming it and driving the natives underground and offworld. Now they're sending scouts to see if it's a good time to come back...

 

[RoughCoronet0]

Giants of my world are the creations of the Ancient Primordials that created the physical world before losing in the war against the Gods and were banished to the Elemental Chaos. They were once united against the Gods and their creations, but overtime after the Creator Wars certain giant species changed allegiance, such as the Hill Giants, Death Giants, and many of the giant-kin. They tend to live in isolated groups and fight amongst themselves due to each species having a different interpretation of their creator's wishes and the giant hierarchy.