How have you made giants more interesting?

[Storm Raven]

Since 2e, I have special rules for large giants.

The ole bug stomp attack - giants can stomp medium and smaller creatures.

Improvised Weapon: Medium Creature - large giants can grab medium or smaller creatures and used them like cudgels. My players are terrified of giants since usually one or more of them is beat unconcious or to death by be used as a weapon to lay the smack down on another character. Damage as Large Club + strength modifers. Damage applies to both characters (the club and the club-ee )

Fore!! - giants can used their weapons to hurl medium or smaller creatures away with their blows. Slam attacks does damage and can hurl a small creature 2d6 x 10 feet away (and falling damage) and medium creatures 1d6 x 10 feet away.

The FFG book Giant Lore has a number of giant oriented feats that have effects like these - including one that I find humorous allowing giants to attack smaller opponent by simply falling over on top of them.

However, in my campaign, I am tying giants to the elements even more closely, to the point of applying the terran template to hill giants, and so on. They are essentially tied to the four elements of nature, in most cases reflecting the "dark" side of elemental nature.

 

[FnordBear]

I'm probably in the minority with my setting. I do not particularly like giants as presented so I chucked them all together. In thier place I use Half-Giants from expanded psionics handbook for my giants and add any appropriate template for things like fire giants, stone giants, etc.

That said half-giants (Called simply giants in my setting) have a once powerful and advanced culture found mostly in the jungles but have now degenerated to barbarism.

 

[Rothe]

The biggest thing I do: give them an actual society. Have giants more than just big guys in caves barely scratching out an existance while they wait to get killed by some adventurer.

The Against the Giants series sort of touched on this, but only just. Give some real thought to where and how they live, what they eat, how they dress, how they meet material needs given their huge size. What do they use, if anything, for labor animals? What would their social customs be? What would be their natural enemies or concerns? All that sort of thing.

...

Same here. I also provide a history and geneaology as it were. All very non-published stuff since I came up with it before anything was published. I generally only use three types, Earth, Frost and Fire Giants. Earth Ginats being a mutant offshoot of neanderthals, and Frost and Fire giants descending from Titans and then using much of the Nordic mythology on giants. With a slight twist that Frost and Fire giants were once fast friends until rivalry over the lovely titaness Gerd started their fued.

Mechanically, giants just don't throw rocks IMC. Well the Earth Giants do as they are basically at a neolithic technology base, and I give them big bonus to hit with rocks. Frost Giants throw large axes, also getiing big bonus to hit, and Fire Giants large spears, again with a big bonus to hit. Forst and Fire Giants thus get longer ranges for throwing and at least the same damage as throwing a plain old rock. Powerful Frost and Fire Giants, leaders, also get inherent ice and fire magic abilities respectively.

 

[Quartz]

I'm wondering if Giant should be a template rather than a race.

 

[Nifft]

There is only one race of Giants. They are magical bio-engineers who tinker with life itself. They are few in number, and live to a great age.

They have a strict caste system, including warriors (Frost and Fire), artisans (Stone), priests (Cloud) and vizier (Storm). There are also degenerates (Hill) and slaves (Ogres) and failed experiments (Fomorian).

Perhaps they are responsible for dire animals, rocs, and giant eagles & owls.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Rothe]

There is only one race of Giants. They are magical bio-engineers who tinker with life itself. They are few in number, and live to a great age.

They have a strict caste system, including warriors (Frost and Fire), artisans (Stone), priests (Cloud) and vizier (Storm). There are also degenerates (Hill) and slaves (Ogres) and failed experiments (Fomorian).

Perhaps they are responsible for dire animals, rocs, and giant eagles & owls.

Cheers, -- N

Cool Stuff!

 

[WayneLigon]

Right now, Giants are shaping up to be the major evil race in the current campaign. They are all the descendents of titans (themselves almost totally evil), and were the chief shock troops in the ancient wars. Giants are responsible for the creation of dwarves and gnomes, whom they used as slaves or as skilled workers; almost every bit of forgecraft dwarves know, they learned or stole from the giants.

Giants as a whole are somewhat smarter and wiser than their baseline M&M entry. Cloud giants and storm giants are very rare and almost entirely evil. The various types of giants are fairly united, with the Fire Giants being the most powerful and prominant of the normal types.

Only stone giants have a possible relationship with humans, being both neutral and less likely to want human lands for their own; they are also the most mystically inclined of the true giants. If I decide to use the Arcana unearthed Giant race, or Goliaths, then they will be the result of human/stone giant matings in the distant past.

 

[Storyteller01]

We use the entomanothrope template from the WotC site. Definitely creepy to see a huge Giant turn into a Gargantuan Scorpion...

 

[StormBreaker]

In my world all giants are descended from a single society that used a cast system. Hill Giants were the commoners and farmers. Stone Giants were miners and engineers. Frost Giants served as the warriors of giant society. Fire Giants were part of the upper class, being artisans, shock troops and officers of the giant war machine. Cloud Giants served as the merchant cast as they would float between giant cities and deliver goods in their cloud castles. Storm Giants were the nobles of giant society, masters of magic and the elements. Titans and Fomorians came later. What are found today are the isolated and barbaric remains of their once great world spanning civilization.

 

[Sejs]

There is only one race of Giants. They are magical bio-engineers who tinker with life itself. They are few in number, and live to a great age.

They have a strict caste system, including warriors (Frost and Fire), artisans (Stone), priests (Cloud) and vizier (Storm). There are also degenerates (Hill) and slaves (Ogres) and failed experiments (Fomorian).

Perhaps they are responsible for dire animals, rocs, and giant eagles & owls.

Cheers, -- N

Yoink!

Tuck that one away for a later game.

Thanks, Nifft!