I have this idea of a big-type giant who has kind of adopted a village like it's a miniature set, and treats it like a god game. Maybe he just doesn't speak the same language as the inhabitants and everything they say just sounds like Simlish to him. He could plow their fields, divert water for them, toss monsters into the center of town from time to time., and so on. From his point of view, he's playing a game, trying to get his villagers to level. From their point of view, they're being terrorized by a f>golly
@@Scruffi I will pop a note into my binder to let you know~ I can place a reply to this comment, and you should probably see it. If not, I will see if I can find you on a newer video and ping you that way. Have an awesome day! \o/
I read a book once where the Giants were small during the day and only grew to giant size at night. They would then use this ability to eat unsuspecting travelers after inviting them to stay the night
1. The self edits on language made me a chuckle. 2. Bring your brother in to talk about that concept. Also that name is badass and he's now a character in my campaign. Thanks
You were in common form today. That is to say, your typical "rare" form. Very funny. "Or specifically, in the description that Matt Colville gives of the Corum books because I have not read the Corum books." had me dying. Bravo.
I like the idea of a big giant being landscape for a boss battle. Like as you scale the giant there are smaller creatures that live on it that attack you. There might be tattoos that activate as you come across them that summon creatures and become a certain hostile terrain (lava flows in small streams or tangled and poisoned trees grow from his skin). The climb up the giant becomes almost an adventure in itself.
I like the houserule of making certain giant type enemies (some of them, like trolls or ogres, aren't really big enough that this is an issue) just have resistance to bludgeoning/piercing/slashing attacks that have a range of 5 feet, that are made from ground level. Simply because you can hack at a giant's ankles as much as you want, you're never hitting anything vital. You need either a ranged attack (bows, slings, magic, thrown javelins/handaxes, etc.), or a melee weapon with Reach (lance, pike, halberd, whip, etc.). Although if an attack crits against the giant, make the giant make a Strength saving throw to avoid falling prone, and while prone it loses its resistance (since you can attack more vital locations). Alternatively, a PC could try attacking from a greater height, like by jumping or achieving an elevated position (ledge, hill, _climbing the giant Shadow of the Colossus style,_ etc.). If you want more mechanical tricks to spice up the fight, maybe the giant is so large, their footfalls shake the ground where they stand. Anything standing within five feet of the giant needs to make Strength saving throws to avoid falling prone themselves. This happens whenever the giant moves, or when it uses one of its attacks (in multiattack) to do a stomp. Maybe the giant doesn't consider moving through enemy spaces to be difficult terrain, and instead any smaller creature whose space the giant moves through has to make Strength saves to avoid being damaged and knocked around. Simply because the giant is so big that can stride right through enemy lines. Another point: many giants in the MM can throw rocks as a ranged attack. Consider perhaps that the giant can make this attack with _people._ If it grapples a medium or smaller creature, it can throw them like a rock, dealing damage both to whomever gets hit AND to the person being thrown. That's another thing it can be doing during multiattack: in between hitting people, just pick one up, so they can be thrown later (or simply crushed, if the giant doesn't feel like dedicating a whole action to "throw rock").
An idea I'd love to put in my game someday: a giant has been scouting out local farms and villages (noting defenses and good targets for an impending raid or invasion of his giant kin). In order not to be noticed, he has constructed a windmill-shaped "duck blind". There is a local knight who insists that one of the windmills is really a giant, but everyone think's he's crazy.
A favorite simple mechanical tweak to giants that I like is the ability for them to pick up creatures and throw them at each other. That makes them feel big.
I love the idea of there being different cultures of giants, more than I do the actual mechanical , power and size based thought process (Though this was a great dive into that). I'm very appealed to with the idea of some giants being solitary, intelligent creatures, who happened to have inherited large crops from "The old land" (For me the old land is just the time when giants owned the world), then theres ranger giants, who inherited powerful bows from the old lands, and hunt in forests for both nourishment and sport, while in large communities, and there being warrior giants who inherited sword and sheild from the old lands, and are the only giants still really interested in conquest, and then the giants who inherited magical hammers of forging from the old land, and are capable of making giant sized magic weapons. I just really like the idea of there being more to giants then "Thurgock hit you with big stick".
I think a youtuber named Mrrhexx is really good with his dnd videos about monster lores. He touches on the giants and their deep lore from 1st - 5th editions
There is a legend in my country, a local tale with a good giant. In it, a traveler sets up a camp in the mountains and suddenly hears a rumble and loud noises, the earth is shaking and a loud baritone screaming "DODGE!". Then something monstrous rolls towards him. He dodges and it keeps rolling down. Then a giant runs past him, both disappear into the forest. A few minutes later the giant comes back holding one of the local forest demons, a kind with multiple arms ending in blades, that hunts down humans by rolling down from the mountainside on them. It has it's neck broken and giant is holding it like you would hold a fish or a dead chicken. "Glad I was around or she would have gotten ya." Says the giant, then sits next to the campfire and tries to cook up the monster to eat it.
PLEASE tell me what this is! I googled "forest demon with arm swords" and "giant saves man from demons" and "demon who rolls down hills" and I found absolutely NOTHING. At very least you gotta say what country you're from!
I just want to say that between you, Matts Colville and Mercer, John Wick, Sly Flourish, and every other DM I've learned from, my favorite moments of inspiration have come from you. Thank you
Going to so use that 'called shots on a giant' idea in this weekends game with my 'b' party - they love when I go outside the books, so I think an Army Bone Giant will do nicely. Between you and Matt Colville, my players are feeling the Mercer effect from all the great ideas and presentation. Rock on, much love, and on a side note - you should totally do an innuendo and blooper reel and monetize that sucker. Keep up the great content!
I'm wetting myself because minus a few things this is what i had in mind for the giants in the campaign I am currently DMing and all i was missing was an overall arc to unite the past history of the giant civilization with the current conflict. The idea of having the players unite the provinces to fight a greater evil makes perfect sense for my setting and im literally bouncing with excitement lol thank you so much
Love this! I've got a Rune Giant as a Big Bad in my campaign; when the party first encounters him among his troops, at first the perspective makes them think it's just a guy. Then they get close enough to see that the weird texture of the ground is actually troops.
This video was so inspiring for the campaign I've been running for the past few months. I went from not knowing what giants are like in my campaign to having it fully fleshed out in a way that I really enjoy. Thank you Ms. Kingsmill.
I never thought of hill giants as dumb. I've always thought of them as cruel and lazy - doing the absolute minimum to get by. There's *always* something weaker they can bully into giving them what they want at any given point and there's no point in doing or planning for more than that.
I see where you are coming from thematicly. But stat wise... they dumb, like real dumb. With a intellect of 5 they are lower than then apes, winter wolves, and worgs in the iq department. Best to bump them up a little.
Hahahaha "nutting this stuff out". You know, if you didn't draw attention to it I would have totally assumed it was just a common phrase from elsewhere. Loved the bad dubbing on your swears lol I second meeting your bro in a video. :D
"Nutting" for thinking is uncommon, but familiar enough. From cockney use of "nut" for "head". Which I realise hasn't moved us out of double-entendre territory, but it can't helped. "Use your nut for a change you prannet" for instance. Of course the actual cockney rhyming slang for head is loaf. But loafing means lazing about, which is why nut gets used for the verb form of using your head. Mind you, getting to loafing and loafer from the slang for head implies that thinking can be interpreted as idling, which is perhaps how working class London of earlier times did interpret sitting thinking. Loafing like those toffs in their ivory towers. Words eh?
Feat Colossus Slayer: Once per turn you can target a specific area huge creature with a melee or ranged attack. For this attack the creature gets +5 AC bonus. •Eyes, the creature is blinded until the end of its next turn. •Arms, the creature loses one of it attacks until the end of its next turn. •Legs, the creature land movement speed become 0ft until the end of it's next turn. Must make a Str save DC 20 or be prone. •Gut, the creature cant cast spells or use breath weapons until the end of it's next turn •Wings, the creature loses its fly speed and must land until beginning of its next turn. •Head, the creature make wisdom, charisma, and intelligent checks and save at a disadvantage until the end of its next turn. I'm aware Rangers have an ability but the same name. Perhaps all the affection require saves. I'm just spitballing some stuff here.
Feats aren't a good system to use for something that only applies to certain fights. Any half-smart player will take something they can use all the time instead.
I'd just run that. No need to make it a feat, even if you did, well, I can't speak for your group, but nobody in my group would ever give something so situational a second look
These are nice ideas. I did something similar to what you suggest for your "lesser" giants. One thing I did was use damage threshold for giants to prevent them being wilted down by weak attacks. Which kind of helped me demonstrate why they could be a problem even for units of soldiers and all. So the players need to make sure that every attack is either a called shot on a weak point or a very impactful attack.
I like the idea of the whole thing being one giant misunderstanding (pun intended) and the giants reason for marching upon the lands of mere mortals is out of fear, being driven from its resting place by an "ancient evil". It could be an elder evil, old one... whatever your preferred ender of worlds may be. Perhaps even have the giant be greviously wounded by said creature, creating a literal opening for the heroes to use to enter the titan and strike at its primordial heart with the aforementioned artifacts. Then as the heroes emerge victorious out of the giants mouth (because reasons) and take in the cheers from the many armies, their hearts sink as they see the sun swallowed up as the apocalypse and real campaign has begun. Alternatively, a more humorous prospect could be that it's simply mating season for giants. And while they were next to each other when they went to sleep, unfortunately as ages have passed they now come to find an ocean and many cities between them and their beloved (damn you tectonic plates!). So now in an effort to propagate, the giants inadvertently go to blows with well armed ants. Maybe they should of left a sign stating, "If the world's a rockin', don't come a fighting..." though in all likelihood no one can read giant anymore so they'd be wasting their time.
I kept the DnD Giant Lore; Stone Giants being the Politicians, Fire Giants being Master Adamantine Smiths, but made the Hill Giants just Giant Druidic Farmers. Obviously all of these are atleast 2x the size of those in the MM because, come-on, they're *GIANTS!* Unlike the Lore tho, mine retreated into the mountains where they live in a Norse/Roman Mountain Society.
this is exceptional, it's a pity I've just finished running Storm King's thunder or I would've implemented some of your ideas, maybe have the 5 evil giant leaders be like, twice the size of the normal giants, that'd be epic
Nice idea with the sweep attack. I did something similar, but it was a 15 ft cone where the giant could swing its weapon and sweep everything aside, with a DC 15-18 dexterity saving throw. Also, since Hill Giants are described as voracious eaters that will consume anything, I thought it made sense to give them a bonus action to stuff a grappled creature or carried object into its mouth and start chewing, dealing 2d10+ Str Mod bludgeoning damage per round.
I see something back there on your shelf... Ankylosaurus is my favorite dinosaur. i was super into dinos as a kid and any time I spot my favorite ankylosaurus I get all excited. Thx Dael.
I am running a high level campaign currently centered around a castle owned by one of my players with the last name “Giantbane”. I’ve run games for them from level one and now they have carved out a name for themselves. After finally getting strong enough to slay a giant or two they literally decided to go around advertising themselves as giant slayers. We are having a blast and they are raking in the dough. It’s getting interesting making things more challenging for them. I love some of these ideas!
I love that you used the MCDM Warfare rules. I’m hungry for more juicy warfare units and how it effects the political landscape behind the players story.
Just the other day I thought it would be a cool idea to add a regional effect to giants that made other creatures and things giant around them. So first you'll start seeing giant animals, giant trees etc before you actually reach the giant.
I've been running the same campaign every week for over three years, and I've announced that I need to take a break from it after we finish this arc. I was insistent that someone else DM for a couple months while I get to be a player - but now thanks to you, I'm itching to run a three-shot where seasoned giant slayers have to research, track, and meticulously plan an ambush for a truly deadly giant. Shadow of the Colossus is my favourite game of all time, and I've always longed to translate it to tabletop form and share it with my friends. I'm now determined to make this happen. Thanks for all the ideas and inspiration Dael!
At your mention of a giant wading ashore, I immediately thought of the giant from Time Bandits. And at your mention of powerful artifacts, I immediately thought of trying to gather the three items in AD&D that made you a terror to giants: Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Girdle of Storm Giant Strength, and Hammer of Thunderbolts.
Well hell, you made ME want to run giants, and I always thought giants look superlame in D&D! I would add though that I think there's one thing you missed: Setting up a trap. Attack on Titan had a pretty sweet couple of scenes regarding this concept, but for my Savage Worlds I'm going to introduce some mega-mechs, and while you can destroy a sensor or smth the mech just can't be killed with normal attacks. So how do you kill it? Here's an example (world = post-apocalyptic with structures intact): First you take out some sensors to soften it up, then you lead it towards a valley where you've got a dam rigged with explosives, once they're set off the mech has to struggle with the flooding water and difficult terrain. Immobilized, you draw its attention with sentries set up to shoot at it from the north, as you descend from a skyscraper to the south. Land on its back, open the hatch, and get to work on those circuits. It's more about the planning, dealing with potentially unforeseen difficulties, and running it less as a combat and more like a heist in a movie. Don't restrict yourself to the game being played in real-time, play a mix of "when you were planning" and "now that it's happening", and if the plan is solid and rolls go well just let them OWN the scene. Don't add difficulties just because, let them be total badasses. Now if things go bad however, limbs will be lost, the injuries will be real.
I have always liked the way Norse Giants were portrayed. They seem to range from a little bit bigger than normal people all the way to mountain size. Many were shape shifters, could alter there own size, and could use magic. Look at Utgard-Loki for an example of what I'm talking about. He could make illusions that could trick gods, move his castle around, and make it invisible. He may or may not have been big enough for his glove to be mistaken for a cave (illusions make his size tricky to pin down). I feel like with a bit of the right motivation, he'd make a great BBEG, but is also a great side story as is. Dam, I'm supposed to be taking a break from DM'ing, and now I feel like planning a giant campaign.
I had a raged odd idea for a group of characters in my campaign I’m working on- a coven of hags that are in truth, giants in magical disguises who help the adventurers free a cloud giant noble and eventually free a storm giant queen
This allowed me to expand on a campaign idea I've had milling aroung the back of my head (extra points for guessing my other inspirations.) The gods who have been forgotten or are simply unworshipped slowly shrink. At their peak, they exist as a typical metaphysical god would. They are everywhere and everything. However, as time passes and thier following decreases, they must begin taking form, like the titans you have described. Eventually, they shrink to lesser giant kin and finally they are the size of a mere mortal. Thus, hunting giants is a culture all to itself, similar to a war-driven society.
Interesting. I've played with a campaign-specific origin for giants that's essentially the inverse of what you're describing: rather than giants being races of their own, a giant is what you get when a humanoid tries to attain god-like power in the mortal world by linking their own essence with a natural force/element. The process is rare, forbidden, and increasingly prone to failure the more mighty the giant-type chosen. D&D's true giants successfully bond with dirt, stone, ice, flame, air, or lightning. Titans beat astronomically-high odds and bond with pure energy, becoming truly immortal; shaitans, their evil homebrew counterparts, bond with pure entropy. Ogres are humanoids who swear loyalty to a full giant and are imbued with a bit of their boss's power, including any elemental resistances the true giant has (i.e. frost ogres, fire ogres, storm ogres). Other D&D giantkin are either fey who just happen to be jumbo-sized (firbolgs, fomor), or are the freakish result of the bonding process going horribly wrong (ettins, athach, trolls, etc). Among other things, this disassociates giants' type from both alignment and intelligence, while making it more plausible for them to exist in the world without stripping whole continents bare to feed breeding populations for every type. It also gives them a lot more reason to be involved with non-giants, since they started out that way themselves and may still share interests, loyalties, or even family ties with regular-sized folks. The mythic "human hero marries giant's daughter" trope needn't involve any additional size-shifting magic, here. Giants of particular types do tend to fit their default D&D cultural motifs, but that's because of how and to whom each variety's version of the force/element-bonding ritual tends to become available. Hill giants are rural peasant bullies whom a hag worked the dirt-binding ritual on to cause trouble; stone giants are philosophical sculptors and masons who recruit apprentices; frost giants are barbarian raiders who slew other giants and looted the secret from them; fire giants are warlords, often dwarfs, who bond their blood heirs to the flame, but may also forfeit the secret to those who best them in battle; cloud giants are what you get when a clique of spoiled bored courtiers get ahold of a banned book on air-bonding; storm giants are self-proclaimed protectors who hand-pick a successor, purely because they like them. No titan or shaitan has been created in thousands of years, and it's unclear if any of them even remember their previous time as mortals.
This is an awesomely timed video~ I am currently running a homebrew campaign that involves quite a few giants of various types and styles, so all of this inspiration is a big help! Have an awesome day, friend!
OHhhh. Called shots. Ha that makes more sense. Giving a giant a cold shunt would be rather difficult in battle. GJ and TY. Really enjoying all the ideas.
Came into this thinking it'd be something silly, because I already have my own prejudices about how I like my giants, but you really won me over for some stuff. Especially liked the part about giants being a unit by themselves. I'm thinking a Giant Scout unit could be like 2 of the wild unarmored ones. It'd be interesting to see what a cavalry giant unit would be (giant's using elephants like skates?).
Yaas. I love this. can't wait to use it on my players. I thought of the lesser giant do something like thunder wave or earthquake spell in a 20 or 25 cone. As the ground breaks and cracks as the giant slams its foot down or fist causing the field to change completely and making it hard for the players.
I'm extremely in favor of having them both, in part because having a party take down some giants like they're a mid level baddie is just very empowering and sometimes that's what you want I am extremelly curious to see what you have to say about dragons, specifically as villains and in combat :)
As I listen to this I realize I’ve been more or less doing this within my Pokémon Tabletop United campaign. Medieval setting, giants are massive (I’m introducing their existence by having the players walk through an eye socket of an ancient skull, then realizing this wasn’t just a rock arch as they turn back and see the face), and the setting is heavily inspired by Welsh, Celtic, and Norse. Even use Bretonic for the ancient name of the giants. But the twist? The rapidly spreading empire are using Yveltal (which I believe is based on an eagle in Yygdrisil) to eat the ancient giant bones and spit them back up into a cocoon, filling them with dark magic that the moire uses to raise the ancient race of three eyed giants to do their bidding. Players have a few options they could pursue, one being awakening the ancient golem Pokémon created by the giants. Ancient man used these to fight back and destroy the giants originally. So there’s your ancient artifacts. Ironically one of my players worked Xerneas into her backstory, so there’s some potential for some “chosen ones” Her by Xerneas another by Yveltal. Or of course straight up warfare and gaining political allies or inciting rebellion within the empire. There’s lots more, but hopefully my ideas may spark someone else’s!
Dael, I love your videos, and this one was really good, but I noticed something. You upgraded your Ankylosaur mini on your bookshelf. And i couldn't stop thinking about how much I'd like to have your opinion on how you would run dinosaurs in D&D. I'm a huge dino fan, and I'm looking forward to my players encountering some, but I'm having a hard time finding a reasonable way to intermingle dinos with the high fantasy world I've created. Have you ever used them, and in what context? I'd love to hear your input on this. Thanks, and keep up the good work! You're my favorite D&D/mythology expert on TH-cam! :-D
I made a Giant Ranger for a campaign concept I was working on. They basically patrolled an entire coniferous forest firing huge crossbow bolts with steel wires that people could hook cablecars up to. I forget what the companion was. Giant falcon would be cool.
If you need inspo for creating and running Giant related things, the TG board on 4chan had a cool quest called "A Frost Giant Are Thee" a few years back, should be able to read it on the archive if you dig a bit.
Thank you for articulating what I have felt was wrong with D&D giants since 1st Edition, and for providing ways to spice them up! And you are so engaging to watch :-) Keep up the great work!
During your conversation about giants I started thinking about the cloud, storm and frost gaints, there's alot of different giants you're literally talking about. Though you may already know about but these are some pretty clever ideas that would be great sources of ideas
Cool video with nice ideas. One thing to note about giants and even more so about true Giants is where they fall when they die. They might crush a castle under them or block a river with their carcass. It could also be an interesting adventure to go collect the giantslaying item from the body of the last giant that was killed with it.
Between this video and the trap making video a while back, I feel a little more prepared for something in my homebrew campaign. I've been doing a fairytale campaign and the second portion revolves around Jack and the Beanstalk crossed with the old woman who lived in a shoe. So basically Jack managed to go in and steal some gold and steal a harp but when he came back for the goose (stolen from Mother Goose - a goddess of the light/life domain [yes I tortured myself into making my own fairytale pantheon]), the giant had placed essentially human rat traps. He tosses Jack into a cage and proceeds down into the village leveling it to bits. A single man chased after the giant and managed to coax the giant into stepping on some spears he'd wedged into the ground. The giant rips off his shoe, tossing it aside, checking that there's nothing still attacking his foot. He scoops up the man and brings him back to his cloud castle and tosses him in a cage with Jack. The woman, seeking her husband after him having been away so long doing trades with a neighboring village, finds the discarded shoe. Realizing that he may either be dead or simply taken, she decides to move all of her children there to wait for him to escape. Some of her children argue that it's foolish to wait for a dead man, others of younger ages complain about living in a shoe, but the rest decide to humor her and make the best of things. They turn this shoe into a home as best they can. Meanwhile, up in the castle, the giant has been constructing various traps. Things that may look like convenient bridges to human-sized creatures prove to instead be weighted in such a way that, once standing on one end, the trespassers are dumped into a bucket awaiting collecting later. Those pesky holes in the wall? Put a box up against them where the inside looks like a finely decorated room for the weary traveler to take rest in. Once they step inside, their weight pushes a panel beneath the entryway carpet and a metal door slides shut behind them (kinda just based this off the no-kill mouse hotel things you can buy). I've been toying with the idea of glue traps, of the giant periodically spraying a poisonous gas into the walls and what the DC save would be for that, and some actual giant mouse traps with bags of gold placed upon them rather than a slice of cheese. He even took in a pet flying cat (I made a creature [the Leonino] from Kobold Press larger) in the hopes of her chasing away invaders. The hardest part has been trying to think of a way to do my map. I know the layout of his home, and so I've been placing various holes in the walls behind furniture or knick-knacks that the giant may have missed seeing. I primarily expect the party to stealth through the walls and have this section of the campaign revolve more around disarming traps rather than combat (meaning I've assigned XP for any traps they can possibly defuse). The only true battles they can partake in are against the cat and, eventually, the giant. However it's been really difficult to make a map for the inner walls of a home - it may be more-so something I'll have to make up as I go with inspiration from either The Rescuers Down Under or The Borrowers. Thank you for all your help, Dael! I feel a little more prepared than I did before. 💙
I've run a few fights with giants in BESM, which in its 3rd edition adopted size categories similar to D&D, but with a more open-ended scale (well beyond gargantuan and colossal). Armor reduces damage in that system, and scales with size, so called shots are critical to beating giants. It's a solo Greek myth campaign with my wife playing an archery-based hero, so keeping way, way out of reach is her go-to tactic. But giants are fast, and they throw HUGE things (just not nearly as accurately as her missiles). If one ever gets lucky, it might just one-shot her, so she's terrified of them despite her mad bow skills.
Here's an idea I had a while back for giants. This would be in a scenario involving a powerful dark wizard who almost took over a large part of the world a while back being resurrected. The heroes are trying to convince a giant to help them, because frankly they need the help. The villain is trying to either raise an army of giants or kill a giant and harvest it for spell components or use it in a dark ritual of some sort. So with their first encounter with a giant, the heroes would be in the frozen lands and as they walk through the snow they see a mountain range in the distance. The tallest mountain is so tall, you can't even see the top of it because it reaches all the way up into the clouds. Then that mountain stands up and it becomes clear that it was a giant, sitting down with their head bent down. And then the giant sees something, reaches into the icy cold sea, and pulls out a blue whale - with one hand - and uses a claw or a blade to gut it like a salmon. Just to drive home how fricking HUGE this giant is Also, the giant speaks in earthquakes. Like, their voice is so low that it's easier to feel the vibrations of their voice run through the ground than it is to actually hear them. It's kind of like infrasound, which also works because infrasound has been shown to creep humans out and even been linked to haunted house stories. At first, the giant wouldn't take the threat of the BBEG seriously because they're a GIANT. But helping the heroes? If the heroes are lucky, this is a giant who's friendly enough that their response is "well, can't hurt to help you tiny creatures". If the heroes aren't... combat time. But then another giant is killed by the BBEG. And this is the first obvious difference between my approach and yours, because what I'd go with is that giants HAVE a society, they just don't usually interact with each other unless they've got a reason to. And once word gets out that this insignificant dark wizard has easily killed a giant, word spreads. As a result, we get a meeting between a group of giants that the heroes might be able to listen in on. Some of the giants are freaked out and want to go into hiding, some of the giants want to join forces with the BBEG because hey, clearly this is someone powerful, and we've got a chance to kill stuff for them so why not take it?, and some of the giants want to join forces with the heroes because CLEARLY the BBEG is a huge threat, so it's better to help take the villain out. And if the heroes ARE there to listen in, they might be able to try to persuade the giants to help out. Or it could go horribly wrong and now the BBEG has five whole giants on their side. If the players manage to convince some of the giants to join their side, it would also be a chance for the players to get to know the giant, and get some insights into how giants see the world, humans, even each other.
@@MonarchsFactory It did! I didn't get to see what it entails, but they had a copy at my "Local Board Game Store" Had the same excellent artwork as DoW
I like to use a figure to define the monster, since I have a ton of figures from years of collecting. So one figure is a toy from the Swamp Thing cartoon called Skinman, and he looks like (to me) a Stone Giant Vampire. He's 4 inches tall, so he scales to be about 20 feet in-game, so he's a Large Giant. And when he starts using his Vampire powers to players who expect a plain old Stone Giant, and they freak out, that's what makes me enjoy being a DM
Great news, a few weeks ago this video inspired me to make a campaign themed around giants. (And as i often do, i just...remade giants...i like homebrewing ok? I might put them on a website at some point...)
A thing I love to do is steal words, and most often wrote down a few words in giant and their meaning, so when I speak giant I can implement those words I stole from pathfinder kingmaker the word "Burba". Which I use as Humanoid. Or two legged being. Kinda like the word Kith from PoE.
This is so helpful! I'm literally just about to start a campaign where the BBEG is a 3 headed frost giant. In my world all the different types of Giants are from the different planes (or subplanes) of existence, hill Giants are from the material plane, cloud Giants are from the plane of air etc. My Giants used to be able to freely travel between the planes but after they fought eachother into oblivion they were unable to. On Halloween night, when the boundaries between the planes are thinnest, the three headed frost giant has managed to travel to the material plane and is trying to reclaim the planes for the Giants once again.
The concept you described is very Dragonlance’ish. The giants are the dragons, the artifacts are the dragonlance, and the armies are the armies of the other races (Which in itself is LoTR’ish). I like it, it’s familiar and cuddly!
I think it was Shadiversity who did a video on what types of weapons Giants would use. He settled on armored boots to kick people with and scythes to cut people down like wheat.
The main thing this made me realize is that I have leaned too heavily on the default assumption that anything you fight must have health, take damage, and be able to die from being stabbed too much. Which is way more limiting than I realized.
I'm so glad I put in a Giant threat in my Barbarian region; now the giants are menacing and the barbs are attack on titan slinging giant slayers! Great ideas :D
There was a giant fight in one of the campaigns I ran. One of the things I regretted the most was not allowing the giant to just move through medium and smaller creatures. It’s huge, it should be able to just step over them, ignoring their blades.
Going with the idea that Frost Giants and Fire Giants aren't so much species as they are what that particular giant specializes in, maybe have some giants know magic. Kind of like the giants in fairy tales who could transform themselves or turn invisible. A fire giant could be a giant who makes use of fire magic or spells that help them make their home in a volcanic area. If he's living alone and basically has to rely on his own skills to get food and clothes, utility spells like mending, prestidigitation for cleaning, or the like could be really useful if he wants to own a big fancy giant-sized castle. They'd probably be something like a sorcerer. Getting their spells from a magical bloodline as opposed to rigorous study.
I like the start of the campaign being the characters doing what they do, but then these earthquakes start happening, multiples in rows. The tiny village shakes a tiny bit. as time passes the earthquakes start intensifying. The concept is the giant is fighting and when 3000 tons is dancing on the disco floor, ike if someone kept lifting a destroyer ship and stomp it into the ground. There is no internet, etc, but eventually the party runs into refugees as they flee the decimation
I always love your ideas but often wonder how id fit them into my quite generic dnd world with quite (no offense to them) unimaginative players. But those lesser giants I think could fit replacing the different species
I really like the idea of true giants being so rare that they become actually unique creatures, each one withe their own quirks, M.O. and weak spots. It is an awesome idea for a campaign around them, like the one you propose. Lesser giants' concept is similar to that of the dragons in the monster manual: they are a species with their own culture and echology and interact with smaller races according to their individual character. I think both concepts but I'd rather keep them separated as the existence of lesser giants could dull a bit the effect of a true gigant. Aaaaand, just to let you know: your IG account is @daeldaily... similar but different ;)
I hate this video because I'm already a year into a heavily personalized Storm King's thunder/Tyranny of Dragons campaign and I love this take on the different kind of giants (Surtr the Fire Giant as opposed to Surtr, a fire giant), and it's way too late to shift gears. But I'm definitely going to take some inspiration from this.
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The true DM's dilemma: "This is a great idea, I wish someone else would run it so I can play it!!!!"
Oh god, *this*. Sometimes I wish I could just have clones of myself to play D&D with
Yeah...
Run the game you want to play. It's thr closest you'll ever get and your enthusiasm will make it the best possible experience for your players
“Oh boy here I go, I’m painting another picture! Hold on to your hats.”
- the world’s most confident caricature artist.
Giant: *shows up*
Townsfolk: “Gosh diddly darn!”
The "oh golly" edit. 10/10
"Oh Sh dagnabit"
I have this idea of a big-type giant who has kind of adopted a village like it's a miniature set, and treats it like a god game. Maybe he just doesn't speak the same language as the inhabitants and everything they say just sounds like Simlish to him. He could plow their fields, divert water for them, toss monsters into the center of town from time to time., and so on. From his point of view, he's playing a game, trying to get his villagers to level. From their point of view, they're being terrorized by a f>golly
Heck, that is a really cool idea! Would you mind overly if I used that concept in my home game?
@@brittanyolenick2252 Go for it! I don't know how you'd let me know how it goes, but if you can, I'd love to hear about it ]:)
@@Scruffi I will pop a note into my binder to let you know~ I can place a reply to this comment, and you should probably see it. If not, I will see if I can find you on a newer video and ping you that way. Have an awesome day! \o/
@@brittanyolenick2252 You too! have fun!
I read a book once where the Giants were small during the day and only grew to giant size at night. They would then use this ability to eat unsuspecting travelers after inviting them to stay the night
Beyonders. good books, and the races were awesome
1. The self edits on language made me a chuckle.
2. Bring your brother in to talk about that concept.
Also that name is badass and he's now a character in my campaign. Thanks
I liked the part about the cold shirts.
Took me a second to realize was "cold shirts" was lol, but really nice advice and theory crafting as always!
You were in common form today. That is to say, your typical "rare" form. Very funny. "Or specifically, in the description that Matt Colville gives of the Corum books because I have not read the Corum books." had me dying. Bravo.
I like the idea of a big giant being landscape for a boss battle. Like as you scale the giant there are smaller creatures that live on it that attack you. There might be tattoos that activate as you come across them that summon creatures and become a certain hostile terrain (lava flows in small streams or tangled and poisoned trees grow from his skin). The climb up the giant becomes almost an adventure in itself.
I like the houserule of making certain giant type enemies (some of them, like trolls or ogres, aren't really big enough that this is an issue) just have resistance to bludgeoning/piercing/slashing attacks that have a range of 5 feet, that are made from ground level. Simply because you can hack at a giant's ankles as much as you want, you're never hitting anything vital. You need either a ranged attack (bows, slings, magic, thrown javelins/handaxes, etc.), or a melee weapon with Reach (lance, pike, halberd, whip, etc.). Although if an attack crits against the giant, make the giant make a Strength saving throw to avoid falling prone, and while prone it loses its resistance (since you can attack more vital locations). Alternatively, a PC could try attacking from a greater height, like by jumping or achieving an elevated position (ledge, hill, _climbing the giant Shadow of the Colossus style,_ etc.).
If you want more mechanical tricks to spice up the fight, maybe the giant is so large, their footfalls shake the ground where they stand. Anything standing within five feet of the giant needs to make Strength saving throws to avoid falling prone themselves. This happens whenever the giant moves, or when it uses one of its attacks (in multiattack) to do a stomp. Maybe the giant doesn't consider moving through enemy spaces to be difficult terrain, and instead any smaller creature whose space the giant moves through has to make Strength saves to avoid being damaged and knocked around. Simply because the giant is so big that can stride right through enemy lines.
Another point: many giants in the MM can throw rocks as a ranged attack. Consider perhaps that the giant can make this attack with _people._ If it grapples a medium or smaller creature, it can throw them like a rock, dealing damage both to whomever gets hit AND to the person being thrown. That's another thing it can be doing during multiattack: in between hitting people, just pick one up, so they can be thrown later (or simply crushed, if the giant doesn't feel like dedicating a whole action to "throw rock").
An idea I'd love to put in my game someday: a giant has been scouting out local farms and villages (noting defenses and good targets for an impending raid or invasion of his giant kin). In order not to be noticed, he has constructed a windmill-shaped "duck blind". There is a local knight who insists that one of the windmills is really a giant, but everyone think's he's crazy.
A favorite simple mechanical tweak to giants that I like is the ability for them to pick up creatures and throw them at each other. That makes them feel big.
I love the idea of there being different cultures of giants, more than I do the actual mechanical , power and size based thought process (Though this was a great dive into that). I'm very appealed to with the idea of some giants being solitary, intelligent creatures, who happened to have inherited large crops from "The old land" (For me the old land is just the time when giants owned the world), then theres ranger giants, who inherited powerful bows from the old lands, and hunt in forests for both nourishment and sport, while in large communities, and there being warrior giants who inherited sword and sheild from the old lands, and are the only giants still really interested in conquest, and then the giants who inherited magical hammers of forging from the old land, and are capable of making giant sized magic weapons. I just really like the idea of there being more to giants then "Thurgock hit you with big stick".
I think a youtuber named Mrrhexx is really good with his dnd videos about monster lores. He touches on the giants and their deep lore from 1st - 5th editions
@@ryomaashikaga8798 Oh, I've never heard of them, I'll Check them out!
There is a legend in my country, a local tale with a good giant. In it, a traveler sets up a camp in the mountains and suddenly hears a rumble and loud noises, the earth is shaking and a loud baritone screaming "DODGE!". Then something monstrous rolls towards him. He dodges and it keeps rolling down. Then a giant runs past him, both disappear into the forest. A few minutes later the giant comes back holding one of the local forest demons, a kind with multiple arms ending in blades, that hunts down humans by rolling down from the mountainside on them. It has it's neck broken and giant is holding it like you would hold a fish or a dead chicken. "Glad I was around or she would have gotten ya." Says the giant, then sits next to the campfire and tries to cook up the monster to eat it.
That's so cool, what should I look up to read more about this?
I'd like to know more about this too!
PLEASE tell me what this is! I googled "forest demon with arm swords" and "giant saves man from demons" and "demon who rolls down hills" and I found absolutely NOTHING.
At very least you gotta say what country you're from!
@@natekite7532 Giant is Czuhajster and demon is Powitrula, it's a Slavic legend.
@@IdiotinGlans thank you so much!
Dale, you should have your brother co-host an episode!
I just want to say that between you, Matts Colville and Mercer, John Wick, Sly Flourish, and every other DM I've learned from, my favorite moments of inspiration have come from you. Thank you
Twerking Giants would be terrifying.
Now that's an end-game villain
@@MonarchsFactory There's no escape from the thunderous claps of their cheeks
@@MonarchsFactory
i read it as tweaker giants and thought you were going to make stats for giants on meth
@@TheMariosack So they could cast shatter at will as long as they are twerking? 🤔
10d10 thunder damage every time the cheeks clap
Going to so use that 'called shots on a giant' idea in this weekends game with my 'b' party - they love when I go outside the books, so I think an Army Bone Giant will do nicely. Between you and Matt Colville, my players are feeling the Mercer effect from all the great ideas and presentation. Rock on, much love, and on a side note - you should totally do an innuendo and blooper reel and monetize that sucker. Keep up the great content!
I'm wetting myself because minus a few things this is what i had in mind for the giants in the campaign I am currently DMing and all i was missing was an overall arc to unite the past history of the giant civilization with the current conflict. The idea of having the players unite the provinces to fight a greater evil makes perfect sense for my setting and im literally bouncing with excitement lol thank you so much
Love this! I've got a Rune Giant as a Big Bad in my campaign; when the party first encounters him among his troops, at first the perspective makes them think it's just a guy. Then they get close enough to see that the weird texture of the ground is actually troops.
This video was so inspiring for the campaign I've been running for the past few months. I went from not knowing what giants are like in my campaign to having it fully fleshed out in a way that I really enjoy. Thank you Ms. Kingsmill.
Dael literally just described the plots of the GBA era Fire Emblem games, except with giants.
I read that as "twerking giants" three times in a row.
I MADE A MISTAKE!!
@@MonarchsFactory What? No you didn't, I misread it.
@@RouxAroo666 There are no twerking giants in Ba Sing Se
Haha, I instantly got a message from one of my players about twerking giants as well - I think this one's on me 😂
@@MonarchsFactory I think it's more us wishing it to be real than anything.
I love the quite satisfied look on Dael's face when she returns from her the discussion with her brother.
I never thought of hill giants as dumb. I've always thought of them as cruel and lazy - doing the absolute minimum to get by. There's *always* something weaker they can bully into giving them what they want at any given point and there's no point in doing or planning for more than that.
I see where you are coming from thematicly. But stat wise... they dumb, like real dumb. With a intellect of 5 they are lower than then apes, winter wolves, and worgs in the iq department. Best to bump them up a little.
Hahahaha "nutting this stuff out". You know, if you didn't draw attention to it I would have totally assumed it was just a common phrase from elsewhere.
Loved the bad dubbing on your swears lol
I second meeting your bro in a video. :D
"Nutting" for thinking is uncommon, but familiar enough. From cockney use of "nut" for "head". Which I realise hasn't moved us out of double-entendre territory, but it can't helped. "Use your nut for a change you prannet" for instance. Of course the actual cockney rhyming slang for head is loaf. But loafing means lazing about, which is why nut gets used for the verb form of using your head. Mind you, getting to loafing and loafer from the slang for head implies that thinking can be interpreted as idling, which is perhaps how working class London of earlier times did interpret sitting thinking. Loafing like those toffs in their ivory towers. Words eh?
Love the idea of a singular, massive giant strolling from the deep and picking a mountain as its throne. Brilliant.
Feat Colossus Slayer: Once per turn you can target a specific area huge creature with a melee or ranged attack. For this attack the creature gets +5 AC bonus.
•Eyes, the creature is blinded until the end of its next turn.
•Arms, the creature loses one of it attacks until the end of its next turn.
•Legs, the creature land movement speed become 0ft until the end of it's next turn. Must make a Str save DC 20 or be prone.
•Gut, the creature cant cast spells or use breath weapons until the end of it's next turn
•Wings, the creature loses its fly speed and must land until beginning of its next turn.
•Head, the creature make wisdom, charisma, and intelligent checks and save at a disadvantage until the end of its next turn.
I'm aware Rangers have an ability but the same name. Perhaps all the affection require saves. I'm just spitballing some stuff here.
Feats aren't a good system to use for something that only applies to certain fights. Any half-smart player will take something they can use all the time instead.
I'd just run that. No need to make it a feat, even if you did, well, I can't speak for your group, but nobody in my group would ever give something so situational a second look
maybe include some way to make the debuff last more than a round, like, a crit makes it last longer or something
These are nice ideas. I did something similar to what you suggest for your "lesser" giants. One thing I did was use damage threshold for giants to prevent them being wilted down by weak attacks. Which kind of helped me demonstrate why they could be a problem even for units of soldiers and all. So the players need to make sure that every attack is either a called shot on a weak point or a very impactful attack.
I like the idea of the whole thing being one giant misunderstanding (pun intended) and the giants reason for marching upon the lands of mere mortals is out of fear, being driven from its resting place by an "ancient evil". It could be an elder evil, old one... whatever your preferred ender of worlds may be. Perhaps even have the giant be greviously wounded by said creature, creating a literal opening for the heroes to use to enter the titan and strike at its primordial heart with the aforementioned artifacts. Then as the heroes emerge victorious out of the giants mouth (because reasons) and take in the cheers from the many armies, their hearts sink as they see the sun swallowed up as the apocalypse and real campaign has begun.
Alternatively, a more humorous prospect could be that it's simply mating season for giants. And while they were next to each other when they went to sleep, unfortunately as ages have passed they now come to find an ocean and many cities between them and their beloved (damn you tectonic plates!). So now in an effort to propagate, the giants inadvertently go to blows with well armed ants. Maybe they should of left a sign stating, "If the world's a rockin', don't come a fighting..." though in all likelihood no one can read giant anymore so they'd be wasting their time.
I kept the DnD Giant Lore; Stone Giants being the Politicians, Fire Giants being Master Adamantine Smiths, but made the Hill Giants just Giant Druidic Farmers. Obviously all of these are atleast 2x the size of those in the MM because, come-on, they're *GIANTS!*
Unlike the Lore tho, mine retreated into the mountains where they live in a Norse/Roman Mountain Society.
this is exceptional, it's a pity I've just finished running Storm King's thunder or I would've implemented some of your ideas, maybe have the 5 evil giant leaders be like, twice the size of the normal giants, that'd be epic
Very interesting ideas, as always, you are a gift to this community!
Nice idea with the sweep attack. I did something similar, but it was a 15 ft cone where the giant could swing its weapon and sweep everything aside, with a DC 15-18 dexterity saving throw.
Also, since Hill Giants are described as voracious eaters that will consume anything, I thought it made sense to give them a bonus action to stuff a grappled creature or carried object into its mouth and start chewing, dealing 2d10+ Str Mod bludgeoning damage per round.
Thank you so much for this Dael. This has given me so many great ideas for my homebrews.
Your ideas are fantastic. I needed a channel like this.
I see something back there on your shelf... Ankylosaurus is my favorite dinosaur. i was super into dinos as a kid and any time I spot my favorite ankylosaurus I get all excited. Thx Dael.
I am running a high level campaign currently centered around a castle owned by one of my players with the last name “Giantbane”. I’ve run games for them from level one and now they have carved out a name for themselves. After finally getting strong enough to slay a giant or two they literally decided to go around advertising themselves as giant slayers. We are having a blast and they are raking in the dough. It’s getting interesting making things more challenging for them. I love some of these ideas!
I love that you used the MCDM Warfare rules. I’m hungry for more juicy warfare units and how it effects the political landscape behind the players story.
Just the other day I thought it would be a cool idea to add a regional effect to giants that made other creatures and things giant around them. So first you'll start seeing giant animals, giant trees etc before you actually reach the giant.
i'm so here for the rhys muffled yelling lmao
I've been running the same campaign every week for over three years, and I've announced that I need to take a break from it after we finish this arc. I was insistent that someone else DM for a couple months while I get to be a player - but now thanks to you, I'm itching to run a three-shot where seasoned giant slayers have to research, track, and meticulously plan an ambush for a truly deadly giant.
Shadow of the Colossus is my favourite game of all time, and I've always longed to translate it to tabletop form and share it with my friends. I'm now determined to make this happen. Thanks for all the ideas and inspiration Dael!
At your mention of a giant wading ashore, I immediately thought of the giant from Time Bandits.
And at your mention of powerful artifacts, I immediately thought of trying to gather the three items in AD&D that made you a terror to giants: Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Girdle of Storm Giant Strength, and Hammer of Thunderbolts.
Well hell, you made ME want to run giants, and I always thought giants look superlame in D&D! I would add though that I think there's one thing you missed: Setting up a trap.
Attack on Titan had a pretty sweet couple of scenes regarding this concept, but for my Savage Worlds I'm going to introduce some mega-mechs, and while you can destroy a sensor or smth the mech just can't be killed with normal attacks. So how do you kill it? Here's an example (world = post-apocalyptic with structures intact):
First you take out some sensors to soften it up, then you lead it towards a valley where you've got a dam rigged with explosives, once they're set off the mech has to struggle with the flooding water and difficult terrain. Immobilized, you draw its attention with sentries set up to shoot at it from the north, as you descend from a skyscraper to the south. Land on its back, open the hatch, and get to work on those circuits.
It's more about the planning, dealing with potentially unforeseen difficulties, and running it less as a combat and more like a heist in a movie. Don't restrict yourself to the game being played in real-time, play a mix of "when you were planning" and "now that it's happening", and if the plan is solid and rolls go well just let them OWN the scene. Don't add difficulties just because, let them be total badasses. Now if things go bad however, limbs will be lost, the injuries will be real.
Great stuff. My issue with D&D giants has always been that they weren't, ya know, giant. Golly gosh!
I have always liked the way Norse Giants were portrayed. They seem to range from a little bit bigger than normal people all the way to mountain size. Many were shape shifters, could alter there own size, and could use magic. Look at Utgard-Loki for an example of what I'm talking about. He could make illusions that could trick gods, move his castle around, and make it invisible. He may or may not have been big enough for his glove to be mistaken for a cave (illusions make his size tricky to pin down). I feel like with a bit of the right motivation, he'd make a great BBEG, but is also a great side story as is.
Dam, I'm supposed to be taking a break from DM'ing, and now I feel like planning a giant campaign.
I had a raged odd idea for a group of characters in my campaign I’m working on- a coven of hags that are in truth, giants in magical disguises who help the adventurers free a cloud giant noble and eventually free a storm giant queen
This allowed me to expand on a campaign idea I've had milling aroung the back of my head (extra points for guessing my other inspirations.) The gods who have been forgotten or are simply unworshipped slowly shrink. At their peak, they exist as a typical metaphysical god would. They are everywhere and everything. However, as time passes and thier following decreases, they must begin taking form, like the titans you have described. Eventually, they shrink to lesser giant kin and finally they are the size of a mere mortal. Thus, hunting giants is a culture all to itself, similar to a war-driven society.
Interesting. I've played with a campaign-specific origin for giants that's essentially the inverse of what you're describing: rather than giants being races of their own, a giant is what you get when a humanoid tries to attain god-like power in the mortal world by linking their own essence with a natural force/element. The process is rare, forbidden, and increasingly prone to failure the more mighty the giant-type chosen. D&D's true giants successfully bond with dirt, stone, ice, flame, air, or lightning. Titans beat astronomically-high odds and bond with pure energy, becoming truly immortal; shaitans, their evil homebrew counterparts, bond with pure entropy. Ogres are humanoids who swear loyalty to a full giant and are imbued with a bit of their boss's power, including any elemental resistances the true giant has (i.e. frost ogres, fire ogres, storm ogres). Other D&D giantkin are either fey who just happen to be jumbo-sized (firbolgs, fomor), or are the freakish result of the bonding process going horribly wrong (ettins, athach, trolls, etc).
Among other things, this disassociates giants' type from both alignment and intelligence, while making it more plausible for them to exist in the world without stripping whole continents bare to feed breeding populations for every type. It also gives them a lot more reason to be involved with non-giants, since they started out that way themselves and may still share interests, loyalties, or even family ties with regular-sized folks. The mythic "human hero marries giant's daughter" trope needn't involve any additional size-shifting magic, here.
Giants of particular types do tend to fit their default D&D cultural motifs, but that's because of how and to whom each variety's version of the force/element-bonding ritual tends to become available. Hill giants are rural peasant bullies whom a hag worked the dirt-binding ritual on to cause trouble; stone giants are philosophical sculptors and masons who recruit apprentices; frost giants are barbarian raiders who slew other giants and looted the secret from them; fire giants are warlords, often dwarfs, who bond their blood heirs to the flame, but may also forfeit the secret to those who best them in battle; cloud giants are what you get when a clique of spoiled bored courtiers get ahold of a banned book on air-bonding; storm giants are self-proclaimed protectors who hand-pick a successor, purely because they like them. No titan or shaitan has been created in thousands of years, and it's unclear if any of them even remember their previous time as mortals.
This is an awesomely timed video~ I am currently running a homebrew campaign that involves quite a few giants of various types and styles, so all of this inspiration is a big help! Have an awesome day, friend!
OHhhh. Called shots. Ha that makes more sense. Giving a giant a cold shunt would be rather difficult in battle. GJ and TY. Really enjoying all the ideas.
I recently found your channel, please keep up the amazing work. I love watching your videos!
"I feel left out"
I lost it. Had to rewind after that cause I totally missed the next 20 seconds
Damage Reduction is amazing! I loved this mechanic in 3.5 and wish it would come back. Damage Threshold reminded me of this.
Came into this thinking it'd be something silly, because I already have my own prejudices about how I like my giants, but you really won me over for some stuff. Especially liked the part about giants being a unit by themselves. I'm thinking a Giant Scout unit could be like 2 of the wild unarmored ones. It'd be interesting to see what a cavalry giant unit would be (giant's using elephants like skates?).
I love the way they did Diane in the Seven Deadly Sins. With her backstory that the Giants sold their skills to armies
Yaas. I love this. can't wait to use it on my players. I thought of the lesser giant do something like thunder wave or earthquake spell in a 20 or 25 cone. As the ground breaks and cracks as the giant slams its foot down or fist causing the field to change completely and making it hard for the players.
I'm extremely in favor of having them both, in part because having a party take down some giants like they're a mid level baddie is just very empowering and sometimes that's what you want
I am extremelly curious to see what you have to say about dragons, specifically as villains and in combat :)
As I listen to this I realize I’ve been more or less doing this within my Pokémon Tabletop United campaign. Medieval setting, giants are massive (I’m introducing their existence by having the players walk through an eye socket of an ancient skull, then realizing this wasn’t just a rock arch as they turn back and see the face), and the setting is heavily inspired by Welsh, Celtic, and Norse. Even use Bretonic for the ancient name of the giants. But the twist? The rapidly spreading empire are using Yveltal (which I believe is based on an eagle in Yygdrisil) to eat the ancient giant bones and spit them back up into a cocoon, filling them with dark magic that the moire uses to raise the ancient race of three eyed giants to do their bidding. Players have a few options they could pursue, one being awakening the ancient golem Pokémon created by the giants. Ancient man used these to fight back and destroy the giants originally. So there’s your ancient artifacts. Ironically one of my players worked Xerneas into her backstory, so there’s some potential for some “chosen ones” Her by Xerneas another by Yveltal. Or of course straight up warfare and gaining political allies or inciting rebellion within the empire.
There’s lots more, but hopefully my ideas may spark someone else’s!
Thank you for your wonderful D&D topics, I am psyched to run a BFG one shot !!! and thank you for the link to GM BINDER ... it's awesome and simple
Dael, I love your videos, and this one was really good, but I noticed something. You upgraded your Ankylosaur mini on your bookshelf. And i couldn't stop thinking about how much I'd like to have your opinion on how you would run dinosaurs in D&D. I'm a huge dino fan, and I'm looking forward to my players encountering some, but I'm having a hard time finding a reasonable way to intermingle dinos with the high fantasy world I've created. Have you ever used them, and in what context? I'd love to hear your input on this. Thanks, and keep up the good work! You're my favorite D&D/mythology expert on TH-cam! :-D
You're a mad scientist! Love your ideas
I made a Giant Ranger for a campaign concept I was working on. They basically patrolled an entire coniferous forest firing huge crossbow bolts with steel wires that people could hook cablecars up to.
I forget what the companion was. Giant falcon would be cool.
This is a really cool Twist on Giants.
If you need inspo for creating and running Giant related things, the TG board on 4chan had a cool quest called "A Frost Giant Are Thee" a few years back, should be able to read it on the archive if you dig a bit.
Thank you for articulating what I have felt was wrong with D&D giants since 1st Edition, and for providing ways to spice them up! And you are so engaging to watch :-) Keep up the great work!
During your conversation about giants I started thinking about the cloud, storm and frost gaints, there's alot of different giants you're literally talking about. Though you may already know about but these are some pretty clever ideas that would be great sources of ideas
that sibling exchange is glorious
Cool video with nice ideas. One thing to note about giants and even more so about true Giants is where they fall when they die. They might crush a castle under them or block a river with their carcass. It could also be an interesting adventure to go collect the giantslaying item from the body of the last giant that was killed with it.
IMAGINE if they swell up like dead beached whales and exploded into putrid chunks.
Between this video and the trap making video a while back, I feel a little more prepared for something in my homebrew campaign.
I've been doing a fairytale campaign and the second portion revolves around Jack and the Beanstalk crossed with the old woman who lived in a shoe.
So basically Jack managed to go in and steal some gold and steal a harp but when he came back for the goose (stolen from Mother Goose - a goddess of the light/life domain [yes I tortured myself into making my own fairytale pantheon]), the giant had placed essentially human rat traps. He tosses Jack into a cage and proceeds down into the village leveling it to bits.
A single man chased after the giant and managed to coax the giant into stepping on some spears he'd wedged into the ground. The giant rips off his shoe, tossing it aside, checking that there's nothing still attacking his foot. He scoops up the man and brings him back to his cloud castle and tosses him in a cage with Jack.
The woman, seeking her husband after him having been away so long doing trades with a neighboring village, finds the discarded shoe. Realizing that he may either be dead or simply taken, she decides to move all of her children there to wait for him to escape. Some of her children argue that it's foolish to wait for a dead man, others of younger ages complain about living in a shoe, but the rest decide to humor her and make the best of things. They turn this shoe into a home as best they can.
Meanwhile, up in the castle, the giant has been constructing various traps. Things that may look like convenient bridges to human-sized creatures prove to instead be weighted in such a way that, once standing on one end, the trespassers are dumped into a bucket awaiting collecting later. Those pesky holes in the wall? Put a box up against them where the inside looks like a finely decorated room for the weary traveler to take rest in. Once they step inside, their weight pushes a panel beneath the entryway carpet and a metal door slides shut behind them (kinda just based this off the no-kill mouse hotel things you can buy). I've been toying with the idea of glue traps, of the giant periodically spraying a poisonous gas into the walls and what the DC save would be for that, and some actual giant mouse traps with bags of gold placed upon them rather than a slice of cheese. He even took in a pet flying cat (I made a creature [the Leonino] from Kobold Press larger) in the hopes of her chasing away invaders.
The hardest part has been trying to think of a way to do my map. I know the layout of his home, and so I've been placing various holes in the walls behind furniture or knick-knacks that the giant may have missed seeing. I primarily expect the party to stealth through the walls and have this section of the campaign revolve more around disarming traps rather than combat (meaning I've assigned XP for any traps they can possibly defuse). The only true battles they can partake in are against the cat and, eventually, the giant. However it's been really difficult to make a map for the inner walls of a home - it may be more-so something I'll have to make up as I go with inspiration from either The Rescuers Down Under or The Borrowers.
Thank you for all your help, Dael! I feel a little more prepared than I did before. 💙
Basically giant's just really tired of adventurers breaking into his home and stealing his crap all the damn time. So traps everywhere it is!
I've run a few fights with giants in BESM, which in its 3rd edition adopted size categories similar to D&D, but with a more open-ended scale (well beyond gargantuan and colossal). Armor reduces damage in that system, and scales with size, so called shots are critical to beating giants. It's a solo Greek myth campaign with my wife playing an archery-based hero, so keeping way, way out of reach is her go-to tactic. But giants are fast, and they throw HUGE things (just not nearly as accurately as her missiles). If one ever gets lucky, it might just one-shot her, so she's terrified of them despite her mad bow skills.
Here's an idea I had a while back for giants. This would be in a scenario involving a powerful dark wizard who almost took over a large part of the world a while back being resurrected. The heroes are trying to convince a giant to help them, because frankly they need the help. The villain is trying to either raise an army of giants or kill a giant and harvest it for spell components or use it in a dark ritual of some sort.
So with their first encounter with a giant, the heroes would be in the frozen lands and as they walk through the snow they see a mountain range in the distance. The tallest mountain is so tall, you can't even see the top of it because it reaches all the way up into the clouds. Then that mountain stands up and it becomes clear that it was a giant, sitting down with their head bent down. And then the giant sees something, reaches into the icy cold sea, and pulls out a blue whale - with one hand - and uses a claw or a blade to gut it like a salmon. Just to drive home how fricking HUGE this giant is
Also, the giant speaks in earthquakes. Like, their voice is so low that it's easier to feel the vibrations of their voice run through the ground than it is to actually hear them. It's kind of like infrasound, which also works because infrasound has been shown to creep humans out and even been linked to haunted house stories.
At first, the giant wouldn't take the threat of the BBEG seriously because they're a GIANT. But helping the heroes? If the heroes are lucky, this is a giant who's friendly enough that their response is "well, can't hurt to help you tiny creatures". If the heroes aren't... combat time. But then another giant is killed by the BBEG.
And this is the first obvious difference between my approach and yours, because what I'd go with is that giants HAVE a society, they just don't usually interact with each other unless they've got a reason to. And once word gets out that this insignificant dark wizard has easily killed a giant, word spreads. As a result, we get a meeting between a group of giants that the heroes might be able to listen in on. Some of the giants are freaked out and want to go into hiding, some of the giants want to join forces with the BBEG because hey, clearly this is someone powerful, and we've got a chance to kill stuff for them so why not take it?, and some of the giants want to join forces with the heroes because CLEARLY the BBEG is a huge threat, so it's better to help take the villain out. And if the heroes ARE there to listen in, they might be able to try to persuade the giants to help out. Or it could go horribly wrong and now the BBEG has five whole giants on their side.
If the players manage to convince some of the giants to join their side, it would also be a chance for the players to get to know the giant, and get some insights into how giants see the world, humans, even each other.
I've been subscribed for about a year now and I'm just realizing you have dead of winter on your shelf... nice.
It might legit might be my favourite game, it's so good - I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for other genre crossroads games
@@MonarchsFactory I haven't gotten to try it, but have you heard of Gen7? It's a Crossroads game focused on an interstellar colony ship
@@CyberianWaste Did it come out?? I heard whispers and then just a whole lot of nothing
@@MonarchsFactory It did! I didn't get to see what it entails, but they had a copy at my "Local Board Game Store" Had the same excellent artwork as DoW
I like to use a figure to define the monster, since I have a ton of figures from years of collecting. So one figure is a toy from the Swamp Thing cartoon called Skinman, and he looks like (to me) a Stone Giant Vampire. He's 4 inches tall, so he scales to be about 20 feet in-game, so he's a Large Giant. And when he starts using his Vampire powers to players who expect a plain old Stone Giant, and they freak out, that's what makes me enjoy being a DM
Time Bandits! That scene where the giant wades out of the sea wearing a ship on its head like a hat.
Great news, a few weeks ago this video inspired me to make a campaign themed around giants.
(And as i often do, i just...remade giants...i like homebrewing ok? I might put them on a website at some point...)
A thing I love to do is steal words, and most often wrote down a few words in giant and their meaning, so when I speak giant I can implement those words
I stole from pathfinder kingmaker the word "Burba".
Which I use as Humanoid. Or two legged being. Kinda like the word Kith from PoE.
I like the idea of a sweep attack, but I don't really like the 3 person limit, so I think a cone could make that attack so much more devastating
Took me a minute to figure out what a "culled shut" is. Part of the charm of this channel is gauging how tired my brain is.
This is so helpful! I'm literally just about to start a campaign where the BBEG is a 3 headed frost giant. In my world all the different types of Giants are from the different planes (or subplanes) of existence, hill Giants are from the material plane, cloud Giants are from the plane of air etc. My Giants used to be able to freely travel between the planes but after they fought eachother into oblivion they were unable to. On Halloween night, when the boundaries between the planes are thinnest, the three headed frost giant has managed to travel to the material plane and is trying to reclaim the planes for the Giants once again.
Great video!! Keep up the good work, Dael!!😁
The concept you described is very Dragonlance’ish. The giants are the dragons, the artifacts are the dragonlance, and the armies are the armies of the other races (Which in itself is LoTR’ish). I like it, it’s familiar and cuddly!
I think it was Shadiversity who did a video on what types of weapons Giants would use. He settled on armored boots to kick people with and scythes to cut people down like wheat.
Which is good because i feel like most of the time he just settles on “its bigger/stronger than a human? give it a sword/long bow!”
I actually love the scythe idea. Gotta steal that if I find an opportunity.
The main thing this made me realize is that I have leaned too heavily on the default assumption that anything you fight must have health, take damage, and be able to die from being stabbed too much. Which is way more limiting than I realized.
I'm so glad I put in a Giant threat in my Barbarian region; now the giants are menacing and the barbs are attack on titan slinging giant slayers! Great ideas :D
There was a giant fight in one of the campaigns I ran. One of the things I regretted the most was not allowing the giant to just move through medium and smaller creatures. It’s huge, it should be able to just step over them, ignoring their blades.
Saw your old vid about your dm screens.
Saw this vid
Subscribed.
(Ayy the three S's)
I love your personality, hope you do great on TH-cam!
I like damage thresholds. Like an attack is meaningless unless it does at least 15 damage.
Going with the idea that Frost Giants and Fire Giants aren't so much species as they are what that particular giant specializes in, maybe have some giants know magic. Kind of like the giants in fairy tales who could transform themselves or turn invisible. A fire giant could be a giant who makes use of fire magic or spells that help them make their home in a volcanic area. If he's living alone and basically has to rely on his own skills to get food and clothes, utility spells like mending, prestidigitation for cleaning, or the like could be really useful if he wants to own a big fancy giant-sized castle.
They'd probably be something like a sorcerer. Getting their spells from a magical bloodline as opposed to rigorous study.
I like the start of the campaign being the characters doing what they do, but then these earthquakes start happening, multiples in rows. The tiny village shakes a tiny bit. as time passes the earthquakes start intensifying. The concept is the giant is fighting and when 3000 tons is dancing on the disco floor, ike if someone kept lifting a destroyer ship and stomp it into the ground. There is no internet, etc, but eventually the party runs into refugees as they flee the decimation
So it's been almost a year, Dael, can we plz get that kraken video?
I always love your ideas but often wonder how id fit them into my quite generic dnd world with quite (no offense to them) unimaginative players. But those lesser giants I think could fit replacing the different species
Great video! I was wondering if you had similar ideas for dragons as well?
I like the idea of giant clans in which they are very diferent from each other.
These are starting to sound like the giants from "The Silver Chair " 😁
Absolutely an influence!
where were you all my live. I would SO like to be part of one of your D&D sessions. They must be amazingly captivating. Love your content!
I really like the idea of true giants being so rare that they become actually unique creatures, each one withe their own quirks, M.O. and weak spots. It is an awesome idea for a campaign around them, like the one you propose.
Lesser giants' concept is similar to that of the dragons in the monster manual: they are a species with their own culture and echology and interact with smaller races according to their individual character. I think both concepts but I'd rather keep them separated as the existence of lesser giants could dull a bit the effect of a true gigant.
Aaaaand, just to let you know: your IG account is @daeldaily... similar but different ;)
I hate this video because I'm already a year into a heavily personalized Storm King's thunder/Tyranny of Dragons campaign and I love this take on the different kind of giants (Surtr the Fire Giant as opposed to Surtr, a fire giant), and it's way too late to shift gears. But I'm definitely going to take some inspiration from this.
I am totally running this campaign, no question.