Giant PCs

[Catman]

Imagining a Campaign of Giants, functioning like normal PCs. Kind of a role reversal and could be fun. Maybe make the "world at large" larger, so we don't have to deal with crouching all the time. I mean, with a lot of campaigns often spending lots of time outside or underground, size wouldn't be such a "huge" issue. We could have Giant cities that are civilized, rural Giant villages, etc. Wouldn't even have to be evil. Big Friendly Giant-like. Protector of the little people! Or just unaware of their own size and strength. I'm thinking the coolest part would be fighting dragons, terrasques, etc, a clash of the titans! So, what would be the problems with this? Mechanically, thematically, etc? I don't have a "ton" of experience with size differences.

[Uhtred]

As long as the world you interact with on the regular is your scale, the differences are negligible from running a medium-size campaign, especially if you'll bef acing mostly giant-sized enemies. The moment you face a Battallion of medium-sized creatures, you have to compute penalties, but as long as everything is in scale, operate normally. I love the thought of a bunch of giants obliviously roaming through the countryside, unaware that they're wreaking havoc until a kingdom decides to respond. :P

[Psyren]

Hmm - I'd be interested in running a Kaiju-style campaign where the players are big magical creatures like Black & White. They would face off against armies of smaller creatures, otherworldly invaders, giant robots and natural disasters.

Or maybe reverse it and have the players be the robots, facing off against Kaiju and such.

[Biotroll]

You can place your campaign in Eberron, Xen'drik. Xen'drik was continent that had giant civilization after all. It's long dead now and giants live in tribes mostly, sure, but if you decide to go into dungeon, there is good reason why the dungeon is big enough for giants. Also, giant ruins everywhere. Uncovering ancient giant lore and such could be nice (and if I knew my players are into it, I would make such campaign for them). As enemies, drows and elves who were once slaves to giants. Stormreach is human city (mostly) but it is full of weird characters anyway so while giant might be unusual, it won't be such a big problem imo.

Another wild idea, which would be totaly awesome, is: giant pirates! :smallbiggrin: You might be big, but sea is bigger and imagining a party of giant pirates on huge ship attacking others is funny. :smalltongue: And you can actualy wrestle with kraken!

Anyway, problem would be in making the PCs. Giants come with big pile of RHD and LA, so unless you use homebrew (hint (www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=270.0)) it might be hard to pull of. Also, if players are to face a lot of smaller enemies, action economy will be their doom.

[ngilop]

If he does a scaled adventure then there will be no reason to have anything to do with level adjustment or racial hit die.

the giant will be tackling things their size, pun intended I guess...

so who care if said giant has a LA of +4 and 12 RHD, they are going to be fighting CR 12-15 things anyways at the beginning.

[Catman]

Giants at sea sounds terrifying for everyone involved...

I'd imagine the campaign would start at least at level 10, depending on what kind of Giants. Fire and frost are personally my favorite, then storm. Would I just add class levels on top of the MM stats? I know Frostburn has some unique stuff on Frost Giants with class...

Would the PCs be unbalanced, since they all have 10 levels of smashing and not healing magic?

[Psyren]

You could throw in Totem Giants with Lifebond Vestments/Therapeutic Mantle etc.

[Catman]

You could throw in Totem Giants with Lifebond Vestments/Therapeutic Mantle etc.

What book is that from, and what is it?

[Psyren]

What book is that from, and what is it?

Magic of Incarnum. Are you familiar with Incarnum? If not that's a whole other topic :smalltongue:

[Urpriest]

Giants at sea sounds terrifying for everyone involved...

I'd imagine the campaign would start at least at level 10, depending on what kind of Giants. Fire and frost are personally my favorite, then storm. Would I just add class levels on top of the MM stats? I know Frostburn has some unique stuff on Frost Giants with class...

Would the PCs be unbalanced, since they all have 10 levels of smashing and not healing magic?

If all the giants are the same race, then you probably can just peg CR to PC capabilities and not worry about ECL calculations. If they're different races, though, you should use the full ECL rules to take into account differences. You may need to use encounters of slightly lower CR than normal for the ECL just to keep things reasonable.

As an alternative, consider using the CR rules instead, and asking players to pick a character of a particular CR. That will address the "balance" between casting and melee issue that you're speaking of, since casting levels will be non-associated. The major issue here is that you'll need to revamp XP somewhat, since leveling won't always be linear.

Regardless, you certainly shouldn't just plop classes on top of the stats in the MM. Either stat them up like Giant NPCs or like Giant PCs, certainly either way don't force them to use the 10 10 10 11 11 11 stat array.

If you aren't familiar with any of the terms in this post, you really ought to read my Monster Handbook. It's a basic prerequisite to running monster characters.

[Catman]

Magic of Incarnum. Are you familiar with Incarnum? If not that's a whole other topic :smalltongue:

I have to book... that's about where my familiarity stops. Still haven't grasped the concept.

And thanks Urpriest! Some of it was a little over my head and I'll be sure to look at that.

[Iamyourking]

I've done a lot of development on a setting where this is very much a possibility, at Sons of the Fallen (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gWxat5o0-y6ofPVP72N__mq2Jo5YfBppwLNTfgVjWhQ/edit). Of course, the whole group would have to be the same race to keep it balanced; but it could very easily work if done properly.

[Catman]

I've done a lot of development on a setting where this is very much a possibility, at Sons of the Fallen (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gWxat5o0-y6ofPVP72N__mq2Jo5YfBppwLNTfgVjWhQ/edit). Of course, the whole group would have to be the same race to keep it balanced; but it could very easily work if done properly.

The Rephiate Soldier caught my eye... what giant race was that? Or did you make your own?

[Iamyourking]

I made my own, as that was kind of the point. That said, it draws from Jewish folklore and the Dominions series of games; but ended up developing a life of its own as it grew.

[Catman]

So, in reference to Urpriest's Monster Handbook, I could remove "monster" levels from a giant to make a giant base class, with a LA instead of CR?

[Jgosse]

I have always wanted to play a Firbolg Character.

[Metahuman1]

I could totally get into running a Fire/Frost/Storm/Cloud Giant if the mechanics were written such that you could do it and the character would be playable.

And depending on the group, massive protectors of the littler people or something a bit more One Piece style were it's you out there doing your own thing, and it just happens that doing your own thing tends to end up leading you to clobber bad things while you sail around in a massive ship sounds sweet.

[Urpriest]

So, in reference to Urpriest's Monster Handbook, I could remove "monster" levels from a giant to make a giant base class, with a LA instead of CR?

Well, no. None of what you said means anything.

Could you try to rephrase in game terms? For example, by "'monster' levels" do you mean racial hit dice? In what sense would you be replacing CR with LA?

[Catman]

Well, no. None of what you said means anything.

Could you try to rephrase in game terms? For example, by "'monster' levels" do you mean racial hit dice? In what sense would you be replacing CR with LA?

Yes, Racial Hit Dice, not monster levels. The way I understood your handbook, monsters have sort of class levels, from which they derive their hit points, skills, BAB, etc.

My bottom line question is can you turn the giants in the MM into base races, and how?

[TuggyNE]

My bottom line question is can you turn the giants in the MM into base races, and how?

Sure. All players start with all the racial HD listed. You can (and probably should, in an all-Giant game) also remove up to 4 points of LA from all of them. Storm and Cloud giants probably get +5 or +6 LAs to start with.

So a Fire Giant PC would have 15 Giant HD and no character class to start with, and would be ECL 15, gaining WBL as appropriate, and fighting monsters at that level or probably somewhat tougher.

[Catman]

Sure. All players start with all the racial HD listed. You can (and probably should, in an all-Giant game) also remove up to 4 points of LA from all of them. Storm and Cloud giants probably get +5 or +6 LAs to start with.

So a Fire Giant PC would have 15 Giant HD and no character class to start with, and would be ECL 15, gaining WBL as appropriate, and fighting monsters at that level or probably somewhat tougher.

How would I do this?

[TuggyNE]

How would I do this?

Um, which part is unclear? The RHD are the hit dice listed in the monster entry, although skill points, base ability scores, and feats can of course be re-selected by the PC. Reducing LA by 4 across the board should be straightforward.

[Urpriest]

Yes, Racial Hit Dice, not monster levels. The way I understood your handbook, monsters have sort of class levels, from which they derive their hit points, skills, BAB, etc.

Ok, that much was reasonably clear (though you could have also meant levels in one of the homebrew monster classes, or some other concept of monster levels, which is why I asked). What did you mean by "LA instead of CR"?

In general, if you're removing racial hit dice you need to modify LA as well, since LA is calculated with the idea that RHD+LA=equivalent PC level. Generally LA goes up if you remove racial hit dice.



My bottom line question is can you turn the giants in the MM into base races, and how?

If by "base races" you mean races like those in the PHB, yes, trivially. Use Dwarf stats for Fire Giants, Elf stats for Frost Giants, Human stats for Cloud Giants, etc. Done.

The difficulty comes if you want to turn the giants into races like those in the PHB, while keeping some of the benefits of being giants. In that case you have to ask, what benefits do you want to keep, and which do you want to get rid of?

Basically, you need to answer the following questions:

1. How close do PCs need to be to the giants in the MM? Do they need to have the same racial hit dice? The same bonuses to ability scores? The same special abilities? The same sizes?

2. What "cost" should playing a giant have, if any? To put it another way, how many levels should be taken up "paying for" being a giant? Are you ok with most of the PCs' levels being taken up by Giant RHD and LA? Some of them? Or do you want all of your giants to be LA +0?

3. Is everyone playing a giant? If so, is everyone playing the same race of giant, or do you need to balance the different races? Basically, what sort of balancing do you need to do between players?

4. How good are you at estimating what fights your players can handle? Do you need a strict idea of what sort of CR monsters to pit against your PCs, or can you estimate it based on their capabilities if you don't have clear guidelines?

[Evandar]

Just make everything else one size category smaller.


I'd just grab a base race, throw the modifiers from Enlarge Person (and include movement speed) onto them, maybe add some elemental DR for the various types of giant and call it a night.

[Naanomi]

Make sure someone plays the 'halfling' of the group by being something *just* size Large (Ogre?) and constantly mock them for being so small

[Metahuman1]

One way to make this easier, consider using Gestalt.

Here would be the break down.

1: You and the PC's ALL agree on one race of giant to use, keeping it the same race for balance.

2: PC's all use one side of there Gestalt for there giant progression until it plays out, and the other side for regular classes.

3: .....

4: Profit.

[AlltheBooks]

Skipped a post or two and may be mentioned. My advice as a DM who has done some Xen'drik, dragon AND larger than large PC campaigns and use battle maps.

Have a plan. And a big table. Unless you can resist putting a lot of detail into your dungeons. Then just scale down. Even still if you have some mobile combatants a typical vinyl battle map will not suffice. Big pads of plot paper helps, make friends with an architect or engineer :smallbiggrin: