D&D 5E Let's Read: Volo's Monsters

[Demetrios1453]

The main thing that this entry makes me wonder is what a Fire Giant with brains but not brawn would look like; some kind of a fire wizard? If we ever get an Alchemist or Artificer class then I would imagine a Fire Giant could be given abilities from it to make a pretty interesting entry.

Check out my Fire Giant Pyromancer in the elite giants thread for the answer to that - although they are sorcerers with high CHA, it would take only minimal adaptation to change them to wizards with a high INT instead.

As for fire giant combat, in that thread we discuss how dreadnoughts, pyromancers, and regular fire giants could coordinate to simply murder invasion parties (and being a lawful evil race, they would probably have plans set up to do so). Add in a fire giant duke, and things become even more difficult for a group...

 

[Charles Rampant]

The Frost Giants are what I think of as the archetypical giants - they have a strong viking theme, they like raiding humanoids, they come in big viking longships to cause misery, and you can in general kill them without entering morally questionable areas. The Frost Giant Everlasting One takes this theme to its logical conclusion, as we get a Frost Giant who is the strongest and most vicious of them all, mainly thanks to the corrupting influence of Vaprak, the Troll god.

The picture for the Everlasting One is pleasingly gnarly. The multitude of heads is handled pretty well, and the detail on the Giant’s equipment and arms is great and really ties into an anglo-saxon / norse aesthetic. It definitely looks deranged and mutated, something you’d not want to meet on the tundra.

The Everlasting Ones are basically the Frost Giants who, unable to rise up their might-focused Ordning alone, turn to the Troll God Vaprak, who makes them strong and regenerating. This means that the Everlasting One, given a substantial boost over their fellows by this blessing, can easily claim chieftian status over their tribe. But Vaprak is a fickle god, and his blessings can easily turn to mutation and obvious deformities, which will cause the tribe to eject the Everlasting One; it seems that worshipping Vaprak is a deeply Maug thing to do, and carries intense shame accordingly.

In Ancient Greek and Roman religious, the shame and criminality of one person could be felt to bring moral pollution to the community. The decision to drive someone out, and require them to seek atonement from the Gods by means of difficult pilgrimages and whatnot, was based on a desire to limit a community’s exposure to that pollution, and to expunge that already accrued. In other words, having a murderer in your midst was actually negative for everyone in the eyes of the gods. When I read of these Maug Frost Giants being cast out, that is what I think of; the pollution that comes upon the tribe. There is definitely some room to work with these ideas, for example with the players having to interact with a suddenly hyperactive tribe of Frost Giants who are trying to expunge their communal shame by feats of strength and warfare - a situation that can only be resolved by hunting down and eliminating the Everlasting One who started it all.

The Everlasting One can be used as a boss upgrade for a normal Frost Giant encounter, but I think that your players might be a touch confused by the fact that suddenly a Frost Giant is regenerating HP loss and growing heads and whatnot; you’d want to telegraph it somehow. They can also serve as lone encounters, or as the centre of a debased cult to Vaprak, populated by some of these, some Trolls, and some mutated Humanoids (like Grimlocks, which have a cannibalistic theme as well). I think that there is a lot of room to use them, but other than the Vaprak cult they are not going to be hugely different from a normal Frost Giant to your players, unless you really delve deep into the Maug and Mott concepts, taking a social approach to a not-very-social group of Giants.

The combat stats for the Everlasting One are brutally simple: it is an upgraded Frost Giant that can do extra damage and be resistant to enemy damage by using a barbarian Rage ability, and it can regenerate 10hp a round if not affected by Fire or Acid. That makes them quite susceptible to Remorhages, now that I think about it, but otherwise I guess those damage types are rare among winter themed monsters. Interestingly, the extra heads here seems to be the same as for the Ettin - granting advantage on certain skills and saving throws - suggesting that this trait has been made deliberately standard across the game. I don’t remember if the DMG has it listed on the big racial abilities table. The Everlasting One works exactly like a normal Frost Giant otherwise, so you won’t have any complications to worry about.

Final opinion: a solid and interesting Giant variant, but one that will benefit from being separated out from its Frost Giant fellows in some way. The strength of the Giant chassis shows here, where relatively minor changes make a very scary looking opponent indeed.

 

[Bitbrain]

What I really like about the everlasting one is how it returns the idea of the six-headed trolls from the Norse creation myth (didn't they emerge from Ymir's feet or something?) back into the ranks of the frost giants.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I used an everlasting one as an "unbeatable champion" for some challenges I was doing. The party barbarian went toe to toe with him and got wrecked. Which, was kind of the point (they aren't unwinnable challenges if you can beat them all easily)

Between the regen and the damage reduction these guys are incredibly tough, and they hit incredibly hard.

I like the idea of this single "man-eating" giant that devours those he deems strong enough to continue increasing his power, and taking this position of a fey court champion so he can constantly fight to prove his strength.

 

[Leatherhead]

The Everlasting One gives a good opportunity to inject some chaos into the middle of a Frost giant encounter. In fact, the PC's could be used to help dispose of an Everlasting one who is ruing over the tribe, giving some interesting giant-on-giant battle action. Though they would be wise to expect some treachery from their newfound "allies" as soon as the old chief is deposed.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The theme of gluttony is not one that appears much in the D&D monster corpus, at least as far as I know, but the Hill Giants do an admirable job of exploring that niche single-handedly. One of their methods for doing so are the Mouth of Grolantor, a starved and mad Hill Giant that serves as divine object, a demonstration of the destructive power of famine, and terrifying weapon of war.

The Mouth of Grolantor has a great picture in Volo’s. Standing in the midst of a pumpkin, uh, orchard(?!), it is furiously tossing handfuls of them into its mouth, while its chains and distended belly swing wildly. There is something really mesmerising about the pattern of colours on the belly, which is the focal point of the image: it’s tough to look away.

These guys are usually kept chained up by the tribe. They enter this parlous state after eating something that disagrees with them, and vomiting a lot; during the sickness, a ‘Priest of Grolantor’ examines the bile, which sounds a lot of fun for everyone involved. If the unfortunate Hill Giant doesn’t recover from the illness, the tribe deems it a message from Grolantor and they keep it chained up and starved. The way that they regard the Mouth as a divine object of veneration, not a person, is pretty interesting, but I think that you’d struggle to use it meaningfully in a game unless your players stop to talk to the Hill Giants, and I suspect that they rarely will.

As the Mouth is a divine object, it doesn’t get to go outside and play like the other Hill Giants. Instead it is kept chained up indoors, and only released in times of desperation or war, which I think is by far the most likely way for your players to meet one - as a line of defence in a Hill Giant Steadding like Grudd Haug. They sometimes also escape from their captivity and go on killing sprees, another possible method of introducing one - and giving the players an interesting way to meet Hill Giants who are only interested in recapturing the Mouth, not fighting them.

In combat, the Mouth is a pretty simple critter. This edition is generally pretty keen to avoid lots of bookkeeping for the DM, with powers that recharge randomly at the start of a turn, rather than in ‘1d4 rounds’. Part of that drive is the use of random tables, seen on Beholders and now here. Each turn, the DM rolls a dice, and sees what the Mouth does. The table’s main function here is to see whether the Mouth or its opponents have advantage on attacks, and it also ensures that it is hard to know whether it’ll split its attacks or focus on one individual. The damage output can be pretty heavy for that level - 9d8+15 with advantage - so you can expect the party to dislike this fellow immensely. It is immune to the Confusion spell, which is a nice touch, and it has a decent number of hit points.

I think that this guy will be a complete blast to use in melee, and I’m tempted to steal the table for other random monsters - Slaadi, for example - as it seems like it would add a lot of fun to the game.

 

[Leatherhead]

The Mouth of Grolantor strikes me more as a natural disaster than proper creature encounter. As such, consider pitting it against very low level characters as something to run away from. Say one comes into a small farming community set up around a local bar that adventurers are want to gather in. The Mouth starts eating stuff everywhere, then smells Ma Gannie's Famous Meat Pies being cooked in the Bar's kitchen, and then smashes a direct line to the delectable dishes. Low Level PC's being horribly outmatched by the giants voracity and brute strength must run away or find other means to subdue the creature, perhaps by drugging it or using the nearby kegs of ale to get it drunk enough to pass out.

One change I would make is having the Mouth gain hit points when it eats something, and adding eating stuff to the random action chart, or maybe as a bonus action. This thing should be chowing down like it's going out of style.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The Stone Giant Dreamwalker is an example of a Giant who stands outside the Ordning - an outcast - yet is respected by other Giants for its wisdom and knowledge. Mad wanderers, these Giants wander the surface world, attaching random objects to themselves, and acting as agents of chaos in the dreamworld.

The image for the Dreamwalker in Volo’s is not very good, unfortunately. The pose and general stance of the Dreamwalker is rather confused, and the limbs seem to have an odd proportion. There isn’t much sense of scale or place, and the objects embedded in the skin just look odd. Unfortunately, I’d say that this is the least interesting of the Giant pictures in the book.

With the Dreamwalker, we have a good opportunity for the players to meet a Stone Giant without descending into the Underdark, and to let you play with the idea of a mad wanderer who doesn’t care for consequences but who possesses great knowledge of geography. That could be a lot of fun as a recurring NPC, someone that they meet early on in the adventure and who can offer nuggets of information about the plot of your campaign - but wrapped up in nonsense. A Dreamwalker would also be an excellent method for you to give the players a way to approach the local Giants in a non-confrontational manner. However, the Dreamwalker doesn’t really work in combination with other Stone Giants that well - since she lives where they do not.

The Dreamwalker statblock is very light on knowledge - low Int and Wis, no Skills worth mentioning - despite the flavour text suggesting that they are respected by other Stone Giants for their insight. I’d definitely add a bunch of appropriate skills to the statblock, at least in your mind, if using one as a recurring NPC. Remember that Stone Giants live the best part of a millennium, plenty of time to learn plot-convenient skills!

The Dreamwalker has basically one big trick in combat: it charms those nearby, then uses an action on its turn to petrify a charmed individual and attach them to its skin. I’ve found Charm to be very underwhelming as a monster power - a Paladin of Devotion just shuts it down instantly - so don’t be surprised if this doesn’t work at all. Otherwise, you’ve got a basic Giant chassis - two club attacks, one rock toss, lots of hit points, etc.


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[Bitbrain]

As soon as I saw the artwork for the dreamwalker, I had the idea that the unusual body proportions were because that is how the dreamwalkers are perceived by the other stone Giants, due to living above ground for too long.

in essence, the other stone Giants regard dreamwalkers as being aberrant, ​and so it physically becomes such.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm okay with the charm aspect of it being easy enough for a prepared party to counter because the rest of it is brutal.

DC 17 con save makes it one of the hardest to resist petrification effects in the game, while giving only a single saving throw makes it one of the deadliest. Combine that with the fact that the charm effect is automatic in an aura means the fight can quickly spiral out of control for a party that is ill-prepared to face a Dreamwalker.


It could be interesting by the way, to have a Dreamwalker who is using this petrification and ability to fuse objects to their body to make themselves a walking piece of artistic expression. Grafting and creating entire scenes onto their limbs or back. And the only way to remove any of those people or items is by killing the giant itself, who is respectably tough in their own right, and may have garnered a following of creatures who are in awe of it's artistic expression, or simply are beasts following it along for free food as the giant demolishes a town in search of more material for it's project.