Scaling down Frost Giants?

[Slayer Lord]

I'm GMing a campaign centered around world mythology. My party is due to enter the Norse-themed region soon, where the local frost giants have teamed up with one of the Big Bads to bring about an Ice Age so they can go stomp all over the world. Thing is, they just got to level 7, and with a CR of 9, your average frost giant is going to be better suited as a boss encounter. The party consists of a human cleric, a human Conjurer, an orc Brawler and a Strix Slayer, and they're all smart players, so I doubt just the one frost giant will be too much of a problem. It just doesn't seem to me that encountering vanilla frost giants at only one or two at a time fits very well in this kind of story. Especially since the Frost Giants' leadership is most likely in on the plot, and it wouldn't take many PC levels before they start courting TPKs.
I do plan on having the Frosties use lesser giants as minions, but is there an easy way to scale down the Frosties enough to make it really seem like an invasion? Or would I be better off encouraging them to try a more subtle approach without lessening the danger of a confrontation?

[SilverLeaf167]

As with most melee brutes, the things that make Frost Giants dangerous are their health and their damage output. Not like there's much more to them. They start with 14 HD, and the simplest way to make them weaker is to take some of those away (and recalculate their numbers accordingly) along with some of their STR score. They'll still be... well, big blokes with a lot of health and strength, but with lower numbers, they'll be proportionately easier to beat without "feeling" very different.

The exact amount of nerfing is up to you. One thing you should keep in mind is that 8 HD is the lowest they can go while still keeping enough BAB for two attacks. Any lower than that will pretty much halve their damage output, but if you want to have big groups of them, that might be a good thing too.

[Epic Legand]

My question is how much work are you prepared to do ? How may giants do you want your party to cut down in one encounter ? You could rewrite all giants, make Hill giants 4 HD with powerful build, make Frost giants have 8 HD, ect. Lower all CR, then have your boss be a lower CR Frost Giant with class levels. You should still keep the cold immunity and fire vulnerability, and one would assume they will load up on fireball wands. Maybe also describe them as being small then the book versions. Hill giants are 7'6" and 500 pounds, for example.

[Dagroth]

You could apply the Cold Subtype to some Hill Giants and call them Lesser Frost Giants...

Give them a couple of Fighter or Barbarian levels if they turn out too weak.

[Der_DWSage]

Dagroth has the right of it-templates can solve the problem the 'easy' way, or you can rebuild some stats.

I suppose you could also take the average Frost Giant, reduce the saves by 2, halve its HP and strength bonus, and call that a -2 CR adjustment.

[Eldariel]

I think it might be an interesting avenue to go against the standard expectation - having the players unable to actually engage the main enemy units in battle forces them to get creative and engage in subterfuge. Note, the most powerful Frost Giants (particularly in a Norse Settings where more or less everything has a hand in magick) would probably be spellcasters and their big HD doesn't actually augment their casting in any meaningful way so you can get away with quite a few of those without making them actual TPKs. Of course, a casting Giant Gish (Cleric, Arcane, whatever) would probably run over the party with relative impunity so some care must be taken - but it's certainly not out of the question to run a campaign where each individual opponent is a significant challenge and they travel in organizations the party cannot engage head-on conventionally.

Between the Cleric, the Wizard and the Slayer, the party has a lot of ways to attack the Giants' weaknesses, particularly their horrid Reflex-save with spells like Web, Burst of Radiance, etc. Thus, if they can get the drop on the Giants, they certainly can take down significantly powerful organizations of even class-leveled Giants. And they have spells like Silence and Invisibility Sphere in their arsenal so it's not like they're without the tools to do that.