[PF] DMing for a party of Giants

[Gabe the Bard]

I'm going to be running a one-shot game where all the players will be giants, ogres or other large creatures. The story is undetermined but I will probably be making pregens for everyone based on entries for ogres or hill giants from the monster manual. They might be a family of ogres trying to survive in human-infested lands, or a band of giant raiders. Maybe a group of giants are tasked with defending a keep or dungeon from hapless adventurers.

So I was looking online for some inspiration to make interesting encounters for a party of large PCs, but I came up empty. The closest thing I could find was the occassional post by a player who wants to play a half-giant or find a way to be permanently enlarged. So I've come to the playground for advice. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestion to design an adventure for a party where everyone is LARGE? What kind of challenges could the PCs face? How would you let them feel the significance of being large size without having it feel like just a scaled up version of a normal game?

[teslas]

All I can say is, make the lion's share of their fights against medium-sized creatures, and at least one with some small-sized ones. That's all the fun of it, right? Grapples, bull-rushes, etc. They are large, let them feel that way!

That's not to say that just because they are fighting medium-sized characters they need to consistently easily trounce them. Obviously, smaller-sized PCs have been beating up larger-sized things for ages, and that possibility need not be suspended now. They will still be challenged, be it by the number of their attackers or whatever else.

I would suggest to them (or generate for them) that they have a way of protecting themselves from ranged attacks. Maybe have one or two have tower shields, maybe another can cast Wind Wall or whatever that other lower-level spell is that makes you immune to non-magical arrows, etc. Maybe just make sure the encounters take place in places with ample cover (but remember that large creatures lose some movement going around hard corners!).

Make them work to get up close to their enemies, and then let them have the joy of squashing them. It's a one-off, so the focus should be fun.

[Deadline]

Maybe you could run the old Against the Giants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Giants) series of adventures in reverse? Or maybe run it as a sort of civil war or tribal raiding scenario?

[Gabe the Bard]

Teslas - Thanks for the suggestions! Those are all really great ideas. I'll be sure to put them to use :)

Deadline - A friend of mine also mentioned the Against the Giants adventures. But the most recent version I could find was the AD&D silver anniversary edition. I have yet to come across a 3rd edition conversion of Against the Giants. So I may do something along the lines of Fortress of the Stone Giants in reverse since that is in Pathfinder already.

The thing I'm struggling with now is balancing the options for the playable giant characters. I was originally planning on just pulling giants straight from the monster manual, with the frost giant as a baseline. But I'm finding that coming up with caster options is taking a bit more work to keep things interesting without becoming unbalanced.

[Malroth]

Primordial Giant ogre-magi makes a pretty good caster and the primordial giant template itself on any low LA giant also works.