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View Full Version : On the role of giants and the importance of scale in your games



Kol Korran
2015-04-03, 10:19 AM
When I came back to roleplaying D&D a few years ago, using the 3.5 version, I remember my disappointment when coming to fight giants: I was imagining Massive creatures, towering high above me, walking... well... GIANTS, only to discover to my dismay that "Hey, the stone giant the same size category of an ogre".

This quite surprised me, as in my mind, the basic thing about giants was their sheer size and scale. That is what they are named for after all. Sure, size Large and Huge monsters are big, but they don't feel all THAT big, compared to my imagination. When bringing up things like Colossal size in D&D, and putting up a miniature or such, it doesn't feel like it. I mean, Colossal should be Godzilla-like big or such... A whole new level of "Oh my, that's BIG!"

In the fantasy setting I have only played in D&D, so I was wondering how do monsters whose main selling point is size, like giants, feature... Or how do you as DM's use sizable monsters in your games?

In FATE they have a little installment with dealing with Really big monsters, making them occupy zones (In D&D terms, each of their part encompass a different battle map), which make them feel so big, as to be partly considered to be a terrain, which I think is quite cool!

What other ways and means have you used to make size matter more than just a size bonus to strength and combat maneuvers? And in case you do so- how do you use giants to make them feel like giants in the stories? (Of my imagination at least, but I think of folklore as well- the Cyclop, Jack and the Bean stalk and more)

Flickerdart
2015-04-03, 10:44 AM
Creatures that are larger than Colossal (actually larger, not virtual size categories like Colossal+) are not creatures; they are terrain - or if you rouse their ire, unto gods. You know what you do when a giant the size of a mountain punches you? You run away, or you die.

BRC
2015-04-03, 10:57 AM
The thing is, once you get that big, the standard rules for DnD Creatures kind of fall apart.

If an Ogre swing a club, you can dodge it, or take it on the armor. If you're dealing with something that big, it's no longer a matter of attack and defense. When the Giant tries to stomp on you, or swipe at you with hands the size of houses, Reflex Saves and positioning become far more relevant.


Also, with a creature that size, swords and arrows are not going to hurt it to any appreciable degree.

Personally, I would treat it more like terrain and traps than a Monster (Which is to say, as a pile of hit points and abilities).
Action Economy skews towards the little guys. The Giant gets maybe one or two actions per turn.

These Actions include things like
Turning up to 90 degrees.
Stomping.
Kneeling Down (So as to better see the tiny people and make massive, sweeping attacks with his arms)
trying to grab/smash with arms (If kneeling)
Trying to brush climbers off
Taking a single (Massive) step.
Roaring (To disorient enemies), ect.

Actually dealing damage to this massive creature will require siege weapons, powerful spells, or dealing appreciable damage to vulnerable areas (Like the Eyes). With these Massive creatures, Facing is crucial. You keep the giant disoriented with attacks (Like bee stings, they're not dealing appreciable damage, but they still hurt) and keep it wasting it's actions turning rather than stomping while trying to set up a way to actually hurt it.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-03, 02:09 PM
What role would creatures such as this play in a fantasy adventure? They would be far too massive to be enemies -- that +5 longsword would, at most, cause a giant that large to blink in irritation if you hit him in the eye. A fireball might be the equivalent of touching his skin with a match.

If he even noticed, you'd just anger him and cause him to wipe out your home kingdom.

Knaight
2015-04-04, 01:21 AM
I rarely employ creatures larger than D&D Huge in much of anything, and the few exceptions are sea creatures (e.g. whales), which might get to D&D Colossal but will generally be encountered with a boat. The really big stuff is generally saved for futuristic settings, in which case it's more likely a massive ship or space ship than a creature.

oxybe
2015-04-04, 01:26 AM
Creatures that are larger than Colossal (actually larger, not virtual size categories like Colossal+) are not creatures; they are terrain - or if you rouse their ire, unto gods. You know what you do when a giant the size of a mountain punches you? You run away, or you die.

You punch back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zERLRUc4GbI).

Ralanr
2015-04-04, 01:29 AM
Creatures that are larger than Colossal (actually larger, not virtual size categories like Colossal+) are not creatures; they are terrain - or if you rouse their ire, unto gods. You know what you do when a giant the size of a mountain punches you? You run away, or you die.

I'm not even sure running would be a viable option. Praying on the other hand, that's a different story.

Kami2awa
2015-04-04, 03:44 AM
Creatures that are larger than Colossal (actually larger, not virtual size categories like Colossal+) are not creatures; they are terrain - or if you rouse their ire, unto gods. You know what you do when a giant the size of a mountain punches you? You run away, or you die.

Call of Cthulhu has the Dhole, whose damage entry in the monster list is "enough to flatten a battleship". If hit by one, you get a Luck roll to determine if your remains are ever found.

Then, of course, there's this approach:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1235

DigoDragon
2015-04-04, 07:42 AM
You punch back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zERLRUc4GbI).

My daughter asked me what I was watching.
I have no idea.

(I mean, I know this is One Piece, and I've seen episodes of it before, but... this is like, weird even for One Piece)


...though when it comes to "Battle of the Colossus" kind of fights, I try to streamline some climbing mechanics cause yeah, it is like fighting terrain in my games and a PC will always curiously ask if he/she could climb on the darn thing and attack a specific part. Like the eyes.

Yora
2015-04-04, 10:24 AM
Angry DM posted something (http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/) related to this earlier this week. Normal D&D rules start getting weird at Huge and don't really work for anything beyond that.

Irennan
2015-04-04, 11:52 AM
Yes, and it is even more ridiculous that a giant creature can have less strength/hp/what you have than a gnome or a halfling,

In my homebrew set of rules (not D&D), ''large'' creatures are hard to face; monsters larger than that would be very dangerous and resilient and it would be wise to avoid fighting them, unless well prepared. Also, in my games >medium sized creatures are the only ones to have access to higher tier of stregth and con (which I consolidated together), and their hp-str relation is not linear. Also, damage received by weapons at least 2 size-categories smaller (''medium'' vs ''huge'', for example) or by AoE with splashes smaller than the creature is reduced by a certain % (applied after eventual DR). Finally, ''huge+'' monsters' attacks have the potential to deal damage in a small area, knock smaller creatures and so on.

Arbane
2015-04-04, 04:47 PM
You punch back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zERLRUc4GbI).
Sometimes, you have to punch harder than that. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7V_GNbe8zg)

oxybe
2015-04-04, 05:22 PM
Sometimes, you have to punch harder than that. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7V_GNbe8zg)

I like the cut of your jib.

The only rational place to go now is GIGA DRILL BREAK (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9N-BuufhyU)!

But in all honesty, it all depends on the tone and genre of the game. Not all games or settings want the heroes to run from giant mountain things. I have special place in my heart where cutting these giants down to size feels really good.

Cealocanth
2015-04-04, 06:48 PM
When dealing with monsters of ridiculous proportion, I've found that there are two ways that it can be approached. Either you can treat them like terrain, like has been already suggested, or you can split up parts of them into multiple monsters. The first one works, but it can be difficult in instances where the players are both on the ground and on the monster. The second one works as well, but only in instances in which monsters have multiple parts, like the kraken and its tentacles.

Karl Aegis
2015-04-04, 08:59 PM
Making big things bigger doesn't actually make much of a difference, especially in D&D. Make them as big as you want them to be. Size of the creature doesn't add anything to the challenge of the fight. A large scorpion isn't much different from a gargantuan scorpion. The same tactics work against it the same way. It might take longer, but as long as you have achieve your win condition you win. Something big like a giant might have a win condition like getting into melee combat (easier said than done), auto-hitting, and auto-killing, but making it bigger just makes your players room for error smaller by making its melee radius bigger.

(Un)Inspired
2015-04-04, 10:02 PM
Giants should stay where they belong; in the playground.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-04, 11:55 PM
I've always wanted to do a huge-monster as terrain encounter but have never really had the chances. It's certainly the approach I'd take if I wanted to introduce something super-massive into the game. So throw me in that camp I guess. I figure the monster would have vulnerable spots that players would need to navigate to Shadow Of The Colossus style. It probably wouldn't be a "Giant" in my case as in just a big humanoid thing, but I think the approach could work for just about anything of super massive size.

Feddlefew
2015-04-05, 04:03 AM
The largest monster I've ever run was a Colossal+* dragon stone golem, which I treated as a mobile dungeon. I used trap statistics for its attacks, and the party had to go inside to fight the kobolds controlling it and free the trapped elementals to kill it.


*I think. It was somewhere in the range of Colossal to Colossal++.

goto124
2015-04-05, 06:07 AM
Now that is true Dungeons and Dragons.

Feddlefew
2015-04-05, 06:48 AM
I'm going to re-build it for 5e. :smallbiggrin:

ETA: I swear this was before I'd ever heard of Acquisitions Inc.

Ralanr
2015-04-05, 05:29 PM
I'm going to re-build it for 5e. :smallbiggrin:

ETA: I swear this was before I'd ever heard of Acquisitions Inc.

Please share the details of how this works. Cause that sounds awesome.

Feddlefew
2015-04-05, 08:43 PM
The general steps I followed:

1) Choose a creature. Find its monster manual entry and a good picture of it, and take some notes about its body plan and iconic attacks. How big are the body parts compared to each other? What parts will be moving relative to each other? What parts will be large enough to fit rooms in?

2) Start drawing your dungeon, using the notes you've taken. I would suggest starting with the "ribcage" or similar area and working from there. You only need to make a detailed map of the major rooms, and there should be at least one per major appendage. Don't go overboard. I used a flowchart to show how rooms connected.

3) Now that you have your interior space, fill it with stuff. I put a large crystal in each appendage which, when smashed, released a very angry fire elemental and disabled the appendage it was in. Since the space was made by Kobolds, there were plenty of traps and cramped passages interspersed with open spaces with ambushes.

4) Take some measurements of the final golem's size (using your map) and realize that the game can't simulate creatures that big. What I decided on was that each limb (Head, arm, arm, leg, leg, tail, and wings) had a turn in the initiative, and just interspersed them so that a part moved every two turns for the PCs. I used trap statistics instead of attacks. So instead of having a slam attack on the arms and legs, they used a hybrid of the compacting room trap and the falling spike block trap from the DMG. I used the statistics for reinforced masonry and gave the party access to siege equipment instead of treating it like a creature, since the fight with it is all about making a hole large enough for the party to get inside.

5) Remember that when you run the dungeon golem, you need to make it clear that the objective is to get inside ASAP instead of fighting it on the ground. Don't even bring out the miniatures. The party was level 11-12, ended up using an enormous amount of gunpowder and a very well disguised pit trap to blow off a foot, and the cleric still got reduced to 1 hp by a wayward stomp while they were luring it there.

ETA: So this falls firmly in the "Treating oversized monsters as terrain" camp, in case you wanted to know my stance on that.

Sith_Happens
2015-04-05, 11:00 PM
Sometimes, you have to punch harder than that. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7V_GNbe8zg)

Beat me to it.:smallamused:


Now that is true Dungeons and Dragons.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/172/737/ff1.png

Jay R
2015-04-06, 11:44 AM
I had the same cognitive dissonance when I first discovered D&D Giants.

The first fantasy series I ever read with giants in them, they were this size:

https://literaryfictions.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/stumbo-the-giant-no-49-oct61.jpg?w=543

Grod_The_Giant
2015-04-06, 03:05 PM
My last Mutants and Masterminds campaign included a handful of giant robots-- giant as in "300 foot tall." I statted each limb, the torso, and the head as different creatures, and gave each a turn. The legs would try to stomp on you, the arms would grab and crush you, the head would shoot lasers and the torso spawned attack drones. It was a fun fight-- there were great visuals with the robot toppling over but still dragging itself towards the city, balanced on one arm and one leg.

(I also built a giant robot out of K'Nex and had it sitting on the table. Every time a limb got damaged I disconnected a few parts, and when they were destroyed I ripped them off. Good times)

Stellar_Magic
2015-04-06, 03:39 PM
I've been playing around with making a somewhat Saga Edition derived game and hit this same hurdle... Essentially DnD and D20 derivatives don't handle scaling very well at all.

I'm still wrestling with a solution to the problem, but will say that my current solution is to incorporate multipliers to HP, damage, and defenses derived from a creature's size.

Say you have a normal average human. He does 1d4 unarmed damage with his fist, takes up 1-square of space, and has 10 hp. Double his size (increase size category by 1 step) and he then does 1d4x2 unarmed damage with his fist, takes up 2x2-squares of space, reach of 2-squares, and has 20 hp.

A 'Large' human would be 10 ft. tall, if I increase this to 'Huge' with a 20 ft. tall being, I would rule that their attacks are treated as a 1-square area attack. Damage and hp would again increase (1d4x5, 1-square splash from the fist, 50 hps for the creature).

Now, if I use this pattern to define a creature of colossal size...

A 'Colossal' human is 80 ft. tall, deals 1d4x20, 5-square splash from an unarmed strike, and has 200 hit points.

If you go for even bigger... say the 320 ft. tall 'Colossal (cruiser)' variant, then I'd up the damage to deal 1d4x100, 20-square splash from an unarmed strike, and give it 1,000 hit points.

At which point I'd think people would say that they'd need a siege engine to even consider fighting it. Or a tank... (An M1A1 Abrams deals 2d10x20 with its main gun in this system... so even then it'd take an average of 5 shots to bring down a 300 ft. tall level 1 human being).

Now coming up with level adjustments and CLs for creatures of different sizes is a royal pain with this system, but I think it nails scale a lot better then baseline DnD did.

Fizban
2015-04-07, 06:54 AM
Size has nothing to do with toughness in DnD (apart from likely increased HD/NA/con scores which are mirrored in smaller creatures). A simple 5' cube of stone has 900 hit points, more than any non-epic monster in the books, more than a Great Wyrm Red Dragon (Or Seismosaur, Leviathan, etc). So creatures are inherently much easier to destroy than terrain. The same sword that hews human sized chunks off a human hews dragon sized chunks off a dragon. The creature may be larger, but it still has to put limbs into your reach to hit you, and remember the events on each turn actually occur simultaneously. So while the monster is swatting at you, you're slashing it's limbs right back, and because of it's size and inertia there's no way for it to mitigate the damage by moving. A single (heroic) swordblow could cleave a human in two, but he'll twist out the way and parry with his armor so it becomes only a damaging slash, and keep doing it till he gets tired and messes up after running out of hit points. A titanic monster gets human sized chunks cleaved off it's limbs repeatedly until it can no longer avoid lethal arterial blows, or loses it's posture and exposes a vital organ for a final strike. Imagine not a single stab, but dragging the sword 5' or more as you run from one side of your space to the other.

For godzilla sized monsters, the natural laws of (DnD) reality catch up to them and stuff like that Asura's Wrath video starts happening. A hammer blow travels up the arm and damages everything along the way. The laws of physics are temporarily enforced as a medium creature that is physically possible clashes with a creature that should not be capable of existing, and when a medium blade cuts through AC, the medium creature's physics takes over causing huge pieces of monster to simply fall apart because it's not physically possible. Or a ratio change, where in the moment the hero strikes everything gets stylized and the monster only looks maybe twice his size, and the blow causes commensurate damage because it's not just an optical illusion but actually reality bending because of the size difference being subordinate to the hp rules (this one always makes me think of the final battles in Gurren Lagann where size both totally matters and then doesn't matter at all because not to scale).

So expand your description is my advice :smallbiggrin:

Milodiah
2015-04-07, 11:39 AM
I find sci-fi games tend to handle it well, not because they're prepared for giant creatures so much as they're prepared for the individual scale and the starship scale overlapping at some point. And once you have the rules for a person fighting a several-hundred-ton starship, and vice-versa, you can try to figure it out from there.