Giants and Elemental Planes?

[Grog Logs]

Within D&D lore, is there any link between the Giants and the Elemental Planes? I was reading through Volo's Guide to Monsters for 5e and it talked about the ancient, pre-history battles between the Giants and Dragons. This got me thinking about creation myths and how Elemental Planes might be part of that in D&D worlds. Overall, the Giants line up very well with the four elemental planes.

Storm Giants --> Air Elemental Plane
Fire Giants --> Fire Elemental Plane
Ice Giants --> Water Elemental Plane
Stone Giants --> Earth Elemental Plane

Or, maybe the Giants should be the combination of two or more elemental planes?

Storm Giants --> Air + Water (+ Earth?) (i.e., storms involve wild winds and precipitation)
Fire Giants --> Fire (+ Air?) (+ Earth?) (i.e., fire is obvious, but unsure how to make distinct from stone)
Ice Giants --> Water + Earth (i.e., the solid state of water)
Stone Giants --> Earth + Fire (i.e., fire to harden the earth to stone)

Thoughts? Hill Giants, in this paradigm, would either be diluted versions of Stone Giants or something else entirely. The gradual lose of attunement to the Elemental Planes?

[redwizard007]

It's not a terrible idea. In fact, the fluff could be pretty cool, but you are going to be doing some work reskinning and possibly adding some crunch.

I'm assuming you are playing a relatively recent edition of D&D by the examples of giants you gave. There were far more than that in 2nd edition, and it would probably be a good idea to mine those additional giants for material.

As to the single-/multi-plane approach... Maybe take a look at Mephits for inspiration. Do you want Ooze or Ash giants? That's a choice you need to make yourself.

[Millstone85]

Within D&D lore, is there any link between the Giants and the Elemental Planes?

Not that I know of.

Ice Giants --> Water + Earth (i.e., the solid state of water)

The Plane of Ice is a thing, actually, including in 5e as per its DMG.



As you can see, it is actually between Air and Water. Yes, that surprised me too.

[Talakeal]

IIRC 4E followed this paradigm.

The giants were descendants of the elemental titans, each type representing a different element (Fire fire, Stone earth, Cloud air, and Storm water) and hill giants were those who had, over the eons, completely bred the elemental blood out of them and become fully mortal.

I don't remember if Frost giants were descended from Ice titans or something else.

[Arkain]

Consider using the para- and quasielemental planes, i.e. elemental planes touching each other or an energy plane. For example, air + positive = lightning. Perfect for storm giants (I'd put cloud giants into the "pure" air category). No clue if they're part of more modern editions, but that doesn't hinder you, now does it?

You'd get something like:

Earth - Stone giants, maybe hill giants
Air - Cloud giants
Fire - Fire giants, duh
Water - Um... yeah. Possibly storm giants, but I'd not do that. Maybe frost giants, but water + air = ice, so...

One could arrange for the giants of "pure" water to have disappeared, maybe gone extinct. Who knows, the elemental plane of water is one endless ocean. I'd think about also tlinking giants and genies, since the latter are also linked to the elemental planes. Maybe one created the other?
As for hill giants, one could arrange for them to be either simply not connected to any elemental plane or indeed, the result of either crossbreeding between giant tribes and/or the result of multiple (maybe conflicting) elemental planes touching each other beyond the scope of the para- or quasielemental aspect, e.g. stone giants and cloud giants. Kind of like the suli in Pathfinder. You could also try linking ogres to hill giants, as their further degenerated offspring. Beware of racial overtones though, that kind of thing can get ugly fast.

[Grog Logs]

...I'm assuming you are playing a relatively recent edition of D&D by the examples of giants you gave. There were far more than that in 2nd edition, and it would probably be a good idea to mine those additional giants for material.

As to the single-/multi-plane approach... Maybe take a look at Mephits for inspiration. Do you want Ooze or Ash giants? That's a choice you need to make yourself.

I am coming at it from a 5e perspective, but curious beyond that so I posted here. I should learn more about Mephits, too.

Not that I know of.

The Plane of Ice is a thing, actually, including in 5e as per its DMG.



As you can see, it is actually between Air and Water. Yes, that surprised me too.

Ah, yes, I was probably remembering that in the recesses of my brain.

The Planes of Ice and Oozes is more interesting to me than the Planes of Ash and Magma. The later two simply seem like variations of Fire whereas the former two appear to be an amagalmation into something different.

IIRC 4E followed this paradigm.

The giants were descendants of the elemental titans, each type representing a different element (Fire fire, Stone earth, Cloud air, and Storm water) and hill giants were those who had, over the eons, completely bred the elemental blood out of them and become fully mortal.

I don't remember if Frost giants were descended from Ice titans or something else.

So a possible answer lies in 4e, the most maligned edition. No wonder no one else knew. I dipped my toes in 4e briefly several years ago, so I might have read something about that then. Thanks

[Talakeal]

So a possible answer lies in 4e, the most maligned edition. No wonder no one else knew. I dipped my toes in 4e briefly several years ago, so I might have read something about that then. Thanks

I don't like 4E.

But the one thing I do have to admit, the setting is far more cohesive than any other edition because it was actually designed as a game rather than cobbled together over decades from various kitchen-sink fantasy campaign worlds. Reading the Monster Vault was really nice because it actually made all of the monsters seem to have a coherent place within the larger setting.