Is the Ratio of Giant's to other races listed anywhere?

[BlueWitch]

Really for either 3rd Edition, 3.5, or Pathfinder.

Is there anything that shows the Population of Giant's on the planet as opposed to the other races?

For example, I like to think for every 10 Humans, there are 1 -2 Hill Giants. Or something like that.
I'd also like to know about the population of Orc's and Ogre's too. If it's listed anywhere. Mostly because they are a violent race.

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The main reason I'd like to know is to see if it's "realistic" (I guess that's a contradictory term, given this is DnD, but I digress) for there to be a Campaign where Violent Races have been hunted down and are almost Extinct.

(Typically violent Races being Orc's, Bugbear's, Minotaur's, Ogre's, and Lesser Giant's. There's more than these, but I'm in a rush.)

[Saintheart]

D&D hasn't ever really got down to a proper demographic analysis beyond the standard percentages of races in given cities or nations, really, and nor should most games need one unless one of your players is an anthropologist in RL and can't leave his job behind when he comes to the gaming table.

Maybe you could extrapolate out from random encounter tables or something (I have no idea how) but really if you specify out of your setting that monsters are rare because of the (somewhat tired) trope that Humans Are The Worst Monsters Of All prevails in your world, then you don't need a table out of the DMG to say so. Just say so.

[BlueWitch]

D&D hasn't ever really got down to a proper demographic analysis beyond the standard percentages of races in given cities or nations, really, and nor should most games need one unless one of your players is an anthropologist in RL and can't leave his job behind when he comes to the gaming table.

Maybe you could extrapolate out from random encounter tables or something (I have no idea how) but really if you specify out of your setting that monsters are rare because of the (somewhat tired) trope that Humans Are The Worst Monsters Of All prevails in your world, then you don't need a table out of the DMG to say so. Just say so.

Yeah, I guess we'll probably end up doing just that. :smallsmile:

[Biggus]

If you want a realistic answer of how many creatures of a given size an ecosystem can support:

A creature's weight increases as the cube of its height, so a giant twice the height of a human would weigh eight times as much. But, larger creatures tend to need less calories for their weight than smaller creatures do. The comparison of the mouse and elephant found here (https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/ecology-ap/energy-flow-through-ecosystems/a/metabolic-rate) suggests that larger creatures' food requirements increase not as the cube of their height, but roughly to the power 2.37 if I've done my sums correctly.

So, for example a giant the same shape as a human but twice the height would need not 8 times as much food but about 5.17 times as much, and if they're triple the height, not 27 times as much but roughly 13.5 times.

Obviously there are factors other than size which affect calorie requirements, so not every species will follow this formula exactly, but it should at least give you a ballpark figure.

[liquidformat]

Yeah, I guess we'll probably end up doing just that. :smallsmile:

I have always kind of handwaved this it really depends on the geography of a region as well as the level of control the local human/elf/halfling/dwarf/gnome or what have you have over the region.

In an area that is well developed plains with large well protected cities, developed roads, and a government with a focus on protecting their roads and agricultural assets you would expect a mounster population of 1/1000 or less. For that matter you would not expect to see many highwaymen in that location either.

On the other hand if the humanoid population is spread out into small cities/villages with a lot of rough wild land you would expect to see more of those savage monstrous races and they might even well outnumber the more civilized counterparts.

[Saint-Just]

If you want a realistic answer of how many creatures of a given size an ecosystem can support:

A creature's weight increases as the cube of its height, so a giant twice the height of a human would weigh eight times as much. But, larger creatures tend to need less calories for their weight than smaller creatures do. The comparison of the mouse and elephant found here (https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/ecology-ap/energy-flow-through-ecosystems/a/metabolic-rate) suggests that larger creatures' food requirements increase not as the cube of their height, but roughly to the power 2.37 if I've done my sums correctly.

So, for example a giant the same shape as a human but twice the height would need not 8 times as much food but about 5.17 times as much, and if they're triple the height, not 27 times as much but roughly 13.5 times.

Obviously there are factors other than size which affect calorie requirements, so not every species will follow this formula exactly, but it should at least give you a ballpark figure.

Surprisingly this very obscure knowledge is kinda in PHB. Travel rations are among the things that have "These items weigh one-quarter this amount when made for Small characters". Well, they use the power of 2, but this is reasonably close. Most likely it's because they had a lot of cloth items (tent, bedroll, backpack, pouch) which would scale with square of dimensions, not cube, if made out of standard cloth (same logic applies for spellbooks) and then didn't want to introduce a separate scaling for food, but even if it was unintentional, it was a lucky coincidence