D&D 5E (2014) Making Goliaths More Mechanically Appealing

[Fenris-77]

Cloud Giants (Goliaths) are like Trolls in Earthdawn. Sky pirates who leap out of the ships and fall to the ground.

I'm hoping there's something in between points A and B there. Like a parachute...

 

[Don Durito]

I'm hoping

I'm hoping there's something in between points A and B there. Like a parachute...

They'd don't need such soft civilised devices.

(Just give them access to Featherfall once a day).

 

[Fenris-77]

They'd don't need such soft civilised devices.

(Just give them access to Featherfall once a day).

I wasn't thinking of them, that's natural selection at work, but of all those poor farmers who have to try and clean giant guts out of their slate roofing. You might think a giant would crush the house but they build 'em to last in giant rain country.

 

[Don Durito]

I wasn't thinking of them, that's natural selection at work, but of all those poor farmers who have to try and clean giant guts out of their slate roofing. You might think a giant would crush the house but they build 'em to last in giant rain country.

Keeps the family going through many a bad harvest season.

 

[Fenris-77]

Keeps the family going through many a bad harvest season.

Giant for breakfast, giant for lunch and cor dunnit look like giant for supper.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

IMC the goliaths in the book are just one subrace, the exile goliaths. There are also enclave goliaths. I'm away from my notes, but they're something like...

• +2 Str, +1 Int, +1 Cha
• proficient in History instead of Athletics
• Prodigious Memory (replaces Stone's Endurance): If you prepare spells, you can prepare one extra spell. If you know spells, you know one extra spell. If you have another feature that lets you select abilities from a list, such as battlemaster maneuvers, you can select one extra ability. If you have multiple features that could benefit from Prodigious Memory, pick just one.

Obviously they're very different culturally than the exiles, so they may not be the solution to the problem of this thread, but if you're like me and you think part of the problem is just that the core goliaths are a bit bland in flavor, maybe they are.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

LOL...Paul... doc in effect was asking for suggestions regarding his chicken kiev recipe and you essentially told him to start from scratch with lamb.

If Goliaths where Chicken Kiev, you might have a point, but Goliaths are boiled chicken with no salt - bland, flavourless and obvious. You take away their boring game mechanic and there is nothing left apart from an inappropriate name.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Goliaths are basically where the principle of having all creatures be medium or small thematically breaks down. People play them because they want to play a really big character, often as much for RP as any mechanical advantage, but WotC didn't really give them any mechanical support for their prodigious size beyond the common and boring "Powerful Build".

I love stones endurance; "you hit me, but your puny weapons are no match for Goliath skin" is badass, and just saying you can use it once per minute, or your constitution modifier number of times, or three times per short rest, or whatever would probably be enough to make the Goliath more mechanically competitive. But I think what I'd really like is something that played on their size. It's a shame perhaps that Bugbears snagged the extra reach as that would work well. Perhaps something with an extra d4 of melee damage in keeping with the enlarge/ reduce spell's approach to size. Presumably this would require being limited use because, while I'm not sure an extra 2.5 damage on average would really be as powerful as it might seem at first blush, the DPR fixations of the powergamer would make it seem way to powerful in the popular imagination.

I'd also just consider making them count as a large creature for some purposes. This obviously changes their relationship to a lot of game mechanics though. It would be an interesting experiment for a player and DM who were both onboard.

 

[Don Durito]

I'd also just consider making them count as a large creature for some purposes. This obviously changes their relationship to a lot of game mechanics though. It would be an interesting experiment for a player and DM who were both onboard.

I would definitely consider having them be considered large for purposes of grappling and shoves.

I'd probably give them something like Feat of Strength 1/day. You may attempt a feat of strength that would normally be considered impossible such as lifting a heavily laden wagon, picking up and throwing a horse, or snapping a chain and manacles through brute force. However, I can't really see something like this making into into an official rule as it's so dependent on GM judgement call.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think what I’ll propose to my group is;

*Stone’s Endurance 2/Rest

*Increase short range for thrown weapons by Strength Score, and long range by twice that. Gain proficiency in improvised range weapons.

*add 5 ft to speed, jump distance, and jump height.

I want to give them the ability to count a grappled or willing creature as a thrown weapon, with small or smaller creatures having the full thrown weapon range, but medium is like...10/30, but that would be too much. Maybe a feat?