Why would a frost giant have a frost weapon?

[Narfellus]

magic stuff

I totally agree with Gez. I don't see really why some people are making a big deal out of this. If you had a clan of frost giants wielding shocking, flaming burst sonic vorpal axes, your players would be laughing (until they died) but the point is that it would be an artificial attempt to counter the player's defenses. Now, it would work in a limited sense, if maybe one or two frost giants carried such power and magical artillery, but for the most part they all have frost magic because that's what their environment and magic provides. If the frost ITSELF is too mundane for you, try to spice it up: How about a Creeping Chill (slows move rate/paralysis), Frigid Wind Gust, Crystalizing Blast, etc etc. Just make the stuff up! That's what the designers do. That's what any DM worth his salt does too! (hey, Liquefying Salt Blast; melts ICE subtype!)

 

[Numion]

I guess the occassional albino red dragon living in an ice cave is ok, or occassional frost giant with flame weapon .. but frost giants systematically using flame weapons to throw adventurers off?

 

[DMH]

DMH posted a blanket statement claiming characters couldn't possibly wield the giants' weapons.

No, I did not. I said a dickens of a time. Dickens as in difficult. As I said before I thought they were huge and medium sized beings do indeed have a difficult time wielding weapons that are huge. Difficult, but not impossible.

I mentioned this thread to a friend and he responded how he would (maybe will) give them electrical weapon abilities. His reasoning was the improved conduction of dry air to electricity. I like it, but I would rather tailor them to their enemies and food supply. If lightning blast weapons make the most sense, then I would use them.

 

[Jolly Giant]

I really don't find that to be true: The most reasonable (rules-ready) arguement I've read here is that as COLD creatures, they (a) fear fire creatures, and would want to be well-protected against them (extra damage cold weapon v. fire creature) or (b) hate and war with fire creatures (extra damage cold weapon v. fire creature).

...

Are you really looking for a reason, or simply wanting to point out that you think the designers did a poor\lazy job?

...

cold is abundant, it's easier to forge due to subtype

1) Frost creatures and fire creatures fear and war against each other? That's news to me! They must have very easy access to teleportation magic then...

2) I'm not really looking for an answer here, it was more of a retorical question. I really just wanted to point out something that to me seemed funny and a little silly. I'm quite amazed by the amount of replies I got and quite amused bu how eager people are to defend what I was critizing. Obviously I can't have made myself very clear in my original post; I'm sorry about that.

3) Cold weapons are easier to forge in a cold climate? It's been a while since I last read the exact wording of the Craft Magic Arms & Armor feat, but I could have sworn it din't say anything about that. Is this new in 3.5?

 

[Jolly Giant]

Oh, so all your NPC's with magic items have the appropriate item creation feats? Or did you run a seperate session just for the NPC's in which they acquired those things? Did you make your NPC spellcasters pay for what they scribed in their spell books?

And it must really have taken a lot of play time to get that wizard up to 17th level, just so you could let your players take him out in two lucky rounds. Bet that sucked.

And of course your NPC's never die, because another NPC will just haul them to the temple and get them rezzed (and pay the money and XP cost, of course).

Did you roll all the stats for your NPCs, or just give them uber-stats like I'm sure your players have?

What a crock. Stop trolling here and go back to playing Diablo. Clearly the concepts of nuance, creativity and story-telling that are such a large part of RPGs are beyond you. Stick to something where you can just google all the hints and cheats you need to get by.

When I started reading your post, I quickly decided to answer you. Then, as I read on and you were getting ruder and ruder and getting further and further away from the point, I decided you just weren't worth it. Finally I ended up presenting your entire post as a quote, just to let people see what a <expletive deleted by Eric's grandma> you are...

 

[Jolly Giant]

Why would a dwarf use a dwarven waraxe and wear dwarven plate? Duh, because he's, like, totally a DWARF!

Next time you'll ask why earth elementals speak Terran, while Undercommon would be much better for them. Or something like that.

Frost giants with frost weapons and frost spells is classical.

Why are red dragons immune to fire? I mean, that's stupid, that doesn't protect them from their most frequent enemies the silver dragons. Why do they breath fire? That's stupid, that doesn't let them harm their broodlings during the competition of the formative years.

Dude, did you not read mt original post??? White dragons and winter wolves breath frost because they are magical cold creatures and this is a natural part of who they are. A frostgiant's axe, on the other hand, is not a part of the giant.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Frankly, I find the entire basis of this thread to be almost a moot point.

Not because the question is a bad one, mind you. But because it seems to have been asked under the assumption that every decision the designers made must be based on hard mechanics.

That's a nonsense assumption of the highest order. Lots of design decisions are made for flavor reasons. Paladins don't multiclass easily? Orcs have light sensitivity? Wizards through fireballs but not soundballs? Cold creatures often use cold weapons? Not one of these decisions was made for "balance" or "mechanical" reasons. That doesn't make them all bad, it just makes them subject to opinion.

Personally, I've seen a lot of good reasons in this thread for why frost giants would use frost weapons. The fact that they're all flavor-based doesn't bother me in the slightest. If that doesn't work for your campaign, by all means, change it. But to claim that decisions based on flavor are automatically lazy or poor decisions is not only patently false, it's insulting to everyone who's ever worked on this game.

 

[Jolly Giant]

Classically, the most common opponent of frost giants are fire giants. Frost giants living on the icy surface, fire giants in the volcanic caves below. So they should use weapons that can be used effectively against fire giants. They do!

I try to keep my game world a bit more realistic then that. The image of a permanent layer of ice on top of an active volcano just doesn't sit that well with me...

 

[green slime]

I try to keep my game world a bit more realistic then that. The image of a permanent layer of ice on top of an active volcano just doesn't sit that well with me...

Wow. Well, aren't you just the cat's pyjamas! You do come across with a holier-than-thou attitude.

Volcanoes can and do exist in cold climates. Nobody, nobody suggested a permanent ice layer covering an active volcano. Gez stated "above", merely impling the climate of the surrounding terrain in which the volcano lies. Volcanos can lie dormant for years, yet the heat underground will still be there. Hot, poisonous gases may escape on occasion, yet they won't enough to change the local climate.

 

[Henry]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

One moderator has already asked people to stop the bickering and personal attacks. It's been continuing since then, and getting worse, no less.

Let's please be civil in our responses one toward another, or we're going to have to close this thread.

Thank you.