What do Giants eat?

[WayneLigon]

I've had them raising Large versions of normal animals: cows, chickens, pigs, etc. They're not good farmers; at most they might raise mushrooms and other fungus (usually monster varities), or large amounts of tree nuts. Hives with Giant Bees provide honey. They also herd larger animals, like Irish Deer, elk, caribou, moose, buffalo; each one of these animals will feed a giant for a meal at least. Giants will also consume a number of things humans can't use for food: the bones and hooves, the hide, etc. They'll also hunt various Dire animals, especially Dire Bears.

And yeah, they'll eat people, too. A person is generally not enough for them to specifically seek out to eat, but they will if given the chance. Like a human will prefer steak but will eat the occassional squirrel or rabbit.

 

[awayfarer]

I don't see a problem provided they keep to smaller settlements. What do 100,000 city-dwelling humans eat? The average giant settlement probably has much smaller populations, say, fewer than 1,000 and never more than 10,000.

 

[drothgery]

Well how much is an inordinate amount of food?

Let's look at it by weight. I'm going to look at the size Large giants (most of them) because the Huge ones tend to be much more magical and have funky powers, so they could be living on cloud mist or something. Here are the average weights for adult males. Let's assume the average human male is 150 lbs.

Fire Giants - 7,000 lbs (46 times the weight of a human being)

Frost Giants - 2,800 lbs (19 times the weight of a human being)

Hill Giants - 1,100 lbs (7 times the weight of a human being)

Stone Giants - 1,500 lbs (10 times the weight of a human being)

The reason fire giants weigh so much more is that they're basically built like dwarves. Incredibly thick and nearly as wide as they are tall. Anyway, that's a lot of food all right.

Hmm... according to d20srd.com , fire giants and frost giants are the same size, but weight is proportional to volume, not height. A 15' tall humanoid is going to be very heavy, assuming the same mass/volume ratio as an average human.

 

[DragonLancer]

Supersize burgars and fries.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

PCs.

 

[Lockridge]

According to that Buggs Bunny cartoon they have giant crops. Buggs was in heaven when he discovered the giant carrots.

 

[Delta]

Flocks of sheep kept in caves. Don't eat them yourself, they don't like that.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Food

I don't think it's a big deal. They might be 10 times as big as heavy as a human, but there are probably 1000 times as many humans as there are giants.

Size doesn't matter that much, what really matters is numbers.

Just take your average locust. Not a big monster at all. According to this, a locust eats about 0.2g of vegetation per day. A laughable small amount of food, noone'e ever going to miss it. Well, if a whole swarm of locusts completely devastates your crop, you will miss it. Those things can breed quite quickly, too

I guess that that's how giants view humans:
Small, yes, but they're so numerous, and breed like rabbits, a real threat to one's food supply!

 

[Hjorimir]

Characters, the other white meat.

 

[drothgery]

I don't think it's a big deal. They might be 10 times as big as heavy as a human, but there are probably 1000 times as many humans as there are giants.

Except for your roaming barbarian tribes, humans raise crops and livestock; even with quasi-medieval agriculture productivity (with some boost from magic), you can support a fair number of non-farmers that way. The question is if a giant peasant can raise enough food to feed his family, let alone tithe some to the chief. Not sure about that, but odds are the answer is no.