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Runestar
2011-02-06, 06:31 AM
While I have use giants in encounters before, I never really used their ranged attacks much. Recently, I am looking at how they might make for competent ranged attackers, and a few questions popped up.

1) Why do they only make 1 ranged attack/round, despite having a bab of 6+? Is it because they need a move action to draw a new boulder? Does this mean that with quickdraw, they can throw multiple rocks per round?

2) How many hands do they use to hurl rocks? I noticed that for the stone giant, it receives 1.5xstr mod to damage on thrown rocks, but the other giants (hill/frost/fire), they only get 1xstr mod to damage. Why the discrepancy? Can they opt to throw a rock using both hands to get the extra damage from str?

3) Aside from brutal throw, point blank shot, rapid shot and precise shot, what other feats are good for a throwing giant?

4) How do hulking hurlers stack up? Just as written from the book, no shenanigans like uranium beachballs and the like.

Thanks all for your input. :smallsmile:

Re'ozul
2011-02-06, 06:34 AM
Rapidshot only works with ranged weapons, not thrown ones i believe.

Runestar
2011-02-06, 06:40 AM
Rapidshot only works with ranged weapons, not thrown ones i believe.

There's a difference? :smallconfused:

Re'ozul
2011-02-06, 07:08 AM
Urgh, yeah sorry was a brainfart.

Feats:

Point blank: (sadly necessary for a lot of things)
Far shot: throw twice as far
Plunging shot: (Only useful when on a hill, or mountainside)
Power throw: (needs power attack) power attack for thrown weapons
Ranged weapon mastery - bludgeoning: (most likely not though)

LansXero
2011-02-06, 04:35 PM
As a little aside, whenever I use giants I put them in montainous terrain and I dont make them throw 'boulders', but instead push way bigger ones tumbling down to the PCs. damage = you die crushed.

The Glyphstone
2011-02-06, 04:48 PM
As a little aside, whenever I use giants I put them in montainous terrain and I dont make them throw 'boulders', but instead push way bigger ones tumbling down to the PCs. damage = you die crushed.

Are they flipping entire mountains over onto the PCs? High-level characters can fall from orbit and live, or take punches from archfiends. It's gotta be a really big boulder to oneshot them.

Hyudra
2011-02-06, 04:58 PM
I see the boulder throws as flavor, and think they exist just to give Giants that battlefield presence and to lend credibility to the Giants as far as the general threat they pose to civilization.

Picture a situation where the PCs rally to defend a town from an orc incursion, setting up the defenses, organizing the villagers, and spacing themselves out so they can each hold a pivotal checkpoint. Then the orc allies, a trio of Hill Giants, appear on the horizon. Moments later, a boulder crashes through a barricade that took half a day to set up. The Giants are effectively siege weapons, and the PCs need to find a way to deal, before the Giants undo all their hard work.

I don't think, though, that a boulder throw is really meant to be a defining thing as far as Giant tactics on the battlefield.

LansXero
2011-02-06, 04:59 PM
Are they flipping entire mountains over onto the PCs? High-level characters can fall from orbit and live, or take punches from archfiends. It's gotta be a really big boulder to oneshot them.

Yeah but the earliest giants are around CR 10-11 iirc and mostly its just big chunks of rock. I rule that while the tougher of them can probably take the blunt trauma, they still need to check strength to push it from on top of them or slowly get asphixiated. Or have their friends blow the thing up / roll it away while still dealing with the giants. May not be entirely 100% within the rules but it seems its more logical this way. Why would someone in higher ground with loose rocks take the effort of lifting and throwing something when they could just push and roll down something bigger?

Edit: Oh yeah, using Giants as siege weapons is pretty cool too. Reminds me a lot of HoMMIII cyclops.

The Glyphstone
2011-02-06, 05:17 PM
Yeah but the earliest giants are around CR 10-11 iirc and mostly its just big chunks of rock. I rule that while the tougher of them can probably take the blunt trauma, they still need to check strength to push it from on top of them or slowly get asphixiated. Or have their friends blow the thing up / roll it away while still dealing with the giants. May not be entirely 100% within the rules but it seems its more logical this way. Why would someone in higher ground with loose rocks take the effort of lifting and throwing something when they could just push and roll down something bigger?

Edit: Oh yeah, using Giants as siege weapons is pretty cool too. Reminds me a lot of HoMMIII cyclops.

using giant rocks for extra damage is fine - it's just the rather arbitrary "a big rock = instant death" ruling, considering the utterly impossible things that even mid-level characters survive on a regular basis. If you at least give them a Reflex save to dodge, then it's better.

nedz
2011-02-06, 06:06 PM
Make sure that they can grapple - shouldn't be too hard.

1) They open up at range with their rocks
2) Party beatsticks close to melle range
3) Giants grapple beatsticks
4) Giants throw beatsticks at squishies
rinse and repeat.

Thurbane
2011-02-06, 08:28 PM
1) Why do they only make 1 ranged attack/round, despite having a bab of 6+? Is it because they need a move action to draw a new boulder? Does this mean that with quickdraw, they can throw multiple rocks per round?
I'm pretty confident that Quickdraw would let them throw boulders with their iterative attacks. Rockthrowing is listed as an Ex ability, and the SRD says Ex abilities are a free action unless noted otherwise.

faceroll
2011-02-07, 02:03 AM
I see the boulder throws as flavor, and think they exist just to give Giants that battlefield presence and to lend credibility to the Giants as far as the general threat they pose to civilization.

Picture a situation where the PCs rally to defend a town from an orc incursion, setting up the defenses, organizing the villagers, and spacing themselves out so they can each hold a pivotal checkpoint. Then the orc allies, a trio of Hill Giants, appear on the horizon. Moments later, a boulder crashes through a barricade that took half a day to set up. The Giants are effectively siege weapons, and the PCs need to find a way to deal, before the Giants undo all their hard work.

I don't think, though, that a boulder throw is really meant to be a defining thing as far as Giant tactics on the battlefield.

D&D giants aren't usually that big, and the rocks they throw are just rocks. A 50 lb rock from a hill giant is only a boulder if you're a cat or something.


Are they flipping entire mountains over onto the PCs? High-level characters can fall from orbit and live, or take punches from archfiends. It's gotta be a really big boulder to oneshot them.

When you consider an actual boulder is about 1,000 times heavier than the rocks a giant throws, they seem a little more dangerous, especially as they're being trundled by giants. You could easily optimize the damage to a point where you'd need a tweaked out psion to survive the HP damage, but why bother?

TroubleBrewing
2011-02-07, 05:38 PM
When you consider an actual boulder is about 1,000 times heavier than the rocks a giant throws, they seem a little more dangerous, especially as they're being trundled by giants. You could easily optimize the damage to a point where you'd need a tweaked out psion to survive the HP damage, but why bother?

I think you're missing Glyphstone's point. As I understand it (and this is my view as well), he's saying that making boulders arbitrarily deadly adds nothing to the game while simultaneously taking the fun out of the game. A game where everything is mega-deadly and kills you instantly, no matter your level... Well, that's why there are later versions of D&D. And why there is a whole school of thought where things of this nature are labeled "Gygaxian", though usually those things are deadly in a comical manner, somewhat akin to the Tomb of Horrors. Players are usually in on the joke with things like that, but with instant-death boulders, it just seems like an arbitrarily literal version of "rocks fall, you die".

AslanCross
2011-02-07, 05:51 PM
War Hulk is better for giant builds than Hulking Hurler. It's pretty solid, and far less broken. They get both good melee and ranged class features too.

The Glyphstone
2011-02-07, 05:53 PM
I think you're missing Glyphstone's point. As I understand it (and this is my view as well), he's saying that making boulders arbitrarily deadly adds nothing to the game while simultaneously taking the fun out of the game. A game where everything is mega-deadly and kills you instantly, no matter your level... Well, that's why there are later versions of D&D. And why there is a whole school of thought where things of this nature are labeled "Gygaxian", though usually those things are deadly in a comical manner, somewhat akin to the Tomb of Horrors. Players are usually in on the joke with things like that, but with instant-death boulders, it just seems like an arbitrarily literal version of "rocks fall, you die".

That's a pretty good summary, including the literal rocks falling and everyone dying. Why would being hit by a rock, even a big rock, be instant death, where a high-level character can take a bath in molten lava or fall from orbit (okay, maybe not that one) without more than relatively minor injuries?