Special Conversion Thread: Finishing off giants and their kin

[freyar]

Check out post #185 and the updated homebrews entry. It's already written as a breath weapon there.

 

[Shade]

Updated. I fixed the "becmoe", too.

Do you think that we should create a feat for Bosk Giants that allows them to stretch their stomach and gain a third spit attack? That might be useful for PCs or NPCs that advance a bit.

I don't think we need to do so. In fact, I think there already is a feat that allows an extra use of an x/day breath weapon out there somewhere.

Organization: Solitary, pair, or village (7-13 plus one x-th level leader plus 7-13 infants and juveniles)?

Treasure: Standard coins; double goods; standard items (like cloud and storm giants)?

CR 10? They seem on par with fire giants, and not as good as CR 11 cloud giants.

Favored class: fighter?

 

[freyar]

Umm, 4th or 5th level leader? Maybe specify the leader is a fighter.

CR 10 and favored class fighter sound reasonable.

 

[Shade]

Updated.

While I don't want to stat out juveniles and infants, would it be acceptable to state "treat infants as ogres and juveniles as hill giants"? Or should we just handwave the young and list them as "noncombants" like most other giants?

 

[Big Mac]

Check out post #185 and the updated homebrews entry. It's already written as a breath weapon there.

I didn't see the last page of posts when I posted that.

I don't think we need to do so. In fact, I think there already is a feat that allows an extra use of an x/day breath weapon out there somewhere.

I'll be looking that up, when I play one of these as a PC.

Organization: Solitary, pair, or village (7-13 plus one x-th level leader plus 7-13 infants and juveniles)?

That looks good, but should probably include "a raiding party of X giants" in there somewhere. (I initially thought these would all be adults, but maybe a juvenile giant has to help capture or kill a humanoid to pass into adulthood.) The original stats had the number appearing as "1-3", so how about a raiding party of 3 being made up of two adults and one juvenile who is coming of age?

Treasure: Standard coins; double goods; standard items (like cloud and storm giants)?

I don't see coins being very common on Chislev. The giants of Chislev are the most "civilised" societies on the world and they are not very well organised.

We also have evidence from the dragons that coins are very uncommon on Chislev:

Unlike dragon's hordes on other worlds throughout the spheres, the treasures of green and black dragons of Chislev are with few exceptions, simple. In fact, the dragons of Krynn would consider their Chislev brothers poor. Chislev dragon hordes consist of crude metal and bone jewlery made by swamp and bosk giants, primitive humans and demihumans and the wooden carvings of hill giant artisians.

I also don't think you should let them steal metal items from humanoids:

The Shou Lung explorers tried repeatedly to educate these pockets of humans and demi-humans. The explorers were met with superstition and fear, and the tools they offered were quickly disgarded. Intent upon "saving" these people, the Shou Lung explorers captured two of each type of people - dwarves, humans, elves, and kender - and took them off of Chislev where they could be trained. Years later the people were returned to the world, but there is no evidence that these individuals have changed the lifestyle of the tribes of the planet.

But we do know they buy/trade with swamp giants to get wooden items:

The swamp giants are known for crafting wooden bowls, dishes, and other objects that the bosk covert.

I suggest: dropping (or drastically reducing) the coins*. Keep quantity of goods, but make them the sort of thing that can be made using stone axes, flint tools and that sort of level of technology. I think that all bosk giants should have a wooden drinking bowl (that they use for drinking the swamp water) a wooden dish, a wooden spoon, a flint knife, tools needed to skin the hides off of animals. They should also have meat from animals and maybe occasionally a live animal or slave tied up in a hide bag.

* = If there are any coins they should really be made by hill giants or swamp giants and there should be no gold coins, as that would fit in better with the money on Krynn. I'd be tempted to give the hill giants wooden coins carved from special trees, similar to the Ironwood trees on page 114 of DLCS.

CR 10? They seem on par with fire giants, and not as good as CR 11 cloud giants.

The main thing to compare them with is hill giants. We also need to fit them in with the (as yet unconverted) swamp giants.

Favored class: fighter?

These guys don't bother to use ranged weapons (apart from their own spit) because they prefer to rush in and pummel their foes. I'd say that the barbarian class was much closer to their culture than fighter is.

 

[Big Mac]

Umm, 4th or 5th level leader? Maybe specify the leader is a fighter.

The level sounds right, although I would have gone for a barbarian leader or a Zeboim worshiping ranger leader with humans as a racial enemy.

While I don't want to stat out juveniles and infants, would it be acceptable to state "treat infants as ogres and juveniles as hill giants"? Or should we just handwave the young and list them as "noncombants" like most other giants?

Didn't we have another monster recently, that did this? We know that infants and juveniles fight alongside adults if PCs enter a village, so I think that the handwaving isn't the option to take.

 

[freyar]

Switching the leader and favored class to barbarian works for me and probably does make more sense.

I'm also ok with dropping coins and specifying non-metal goods.

I like the idea of saying that infants have ogre stats and juveniles have hill giant stats. Adding a raiding party of 3-4 giants and 1-2 juveniles also appeals.

 

[Shade]

Thanks for the additional information on Chislev. That was quite useful.

Updated.

Do we want to give the infants and juveniles swamp spit? If so, it's easy enough...just lower the DC based on HD and Con of hill giant/ogre, and probably reduce the damage to 2d8 for juveniles and 1d8 for infants.

Any idea on how long these things live? If not, I'd recommend slightly longer than hill giants (200 years).

 

[Big Mac]

Thanks for the additional information on Chislev. That was quite useful.

No problem. I've felt like a passenger on a lot of the conversions, so it is nice to be able to contribute something useful from time to time.

Do we want to give the infants and juveniles swamp spit? If so, it's easy enough...just lower the DC based on HD and Con of hill giant/ogre, and probably reduce the damage to 2d8 for juveniles and 1d8 for infants.

Sounds good to me.

Any idea on how long these things live? If not, I'd recommend slightly longer than hill giants (200 years).

I can't find anything about bosk giant ages, but they have a swamp giant NPC (called Sully Gatherer-Clan) who is 90 years old (he became king at 60 and has been king for three decades). He is described as well into middle age for a swamp giant.

 

[freyar]

Would adding the swamp spit to hill giants and ogres be worth a CR bump? I might suggest only adding it to juveniles, actually, partly to avoid this problem (it's less of an increase to a hill giant than an ogre).

Sounds like about 150-180 yrs.