BX Monsters A to Z: Giant

 In the D&D Basic Set, we got an iconic monster of six distinct flavors, the dragon. In the Expert Set, we have giants, also iconic monsters of six distinct flavors. 

For the most part, I've just never gotten excited about giants as I have about dragons. Sure, they're a fantasy staple, but I always struggled to imagine how they really fit into the D&D world, as well as how a fight between giants and human and demihuman characters would look. More on that later, though.

The six major species of giants, in ascending order of Hit Dice, are Hill (8 HD), Stone (9), Frost (10+1), Fire (11+2), Cloud (12+3), and Storm (15). Armor Class is a 4 almost straight across the board, except the storm giant, which has AC 2. Obviously, these guys are no mean feat to take down, even the (relatively) lowly hill giant. Except for the hill giant (2-16 damage), the damage for each type escalates in multiples of d6, from 3-18 for the stone giant up to 8-48 for the storm giant. Working from the standard of 1-6 damage for a typical attack of a human-sized creature, we can get an idea of how much "manpower" is behind a giant's attacks: a storm giant is equivalent to about eight people in terms of potential damage per round. All giants except hill and storm may also throw boulders for 3-18 damage to a range of 200', 300' for stone giants. Even hill giants are capable of dealing some heavy damage, and by the time you get to the upper echelons, each attack is essentially the damage equivalent of a single-target mid-level fireball spell. In fact, it seems odd that a giant has but a single attack; if anything, it should be an area-of-effect threatening anyone within a certain range and angle in front of the giant. I've also written in the past on the idea of saving throws to avoid the attack rather than an attack roll by the giant, since plate armor might as well be aluminum foil to the business end of a giant club.

Movement rates are 120' (40') across the board, except for the storm giant at 150' (50'), implying rather ponderous, plodding movement for creatures standing two to four times the height of a human. Still, they're fast enough to catch even a modestly encumbered party of humans and demihumans. Morale ranges from very steady (8) for lesser giants to very tenacious (10) at the highest ranks. Given how formidable they are, good morale is entirely justified.

 Each type of giant has its own characteristic appearance, personality, and habitat. Hill giants are basically enormous cavemen, primitive and dull-witted. Stone giants actually look like they're made of stone. Frost giants are huge Vikings. Fire giants are rather dwarf-like, but much bigger and cruder in their craftsmanship. Cloud giants seem inspired by Olympian gods, pale and robed, and storm giants are clearly Zeus himself, complete with the ability to hurl lightning bolts for damage equal to the giant's hit points (save for half). All but hill giants are likely to have animal guards, and in numbers much greater than those given in the animals' own monster listings... as if the giants themselves weren't formidable enough, you might also have to deal with 3-18 polar bears or 6-36 dire wolves! 

Every giant type, from hill to storm, has Type E treasure plus 5,000 gp, a more than decent haul if you can manage it. Trickery and stealth are probably the best ways to get your hands on this loot, as the prospect of fighting and beating one or more giants plus their animal servitors is a daunting one to all but the highest level parties. 

The ecology of giants is a tricky thing to sort out, and one of the reasons they've never quite resonated with me. How do they sustain themselves, with the undoubtedly huge amount of food and other resources they'd require? Well, is of particular interest to note that the number of giants encountered is quite low. Only hill and stone giants are likely to be found in more than pairs or trios. To me, these groups probably represent family units, either mated couples and maybe one or two offspring, or a few siblings or some such. If giants have clans or tribes, they're likely comprised of several of these small groups, spread out over vast territories and rarely encountering their kin except on very special occasions. Perhaps there's an annual Giant-Moot or Giant Jubilee where they all get together to eat and drink and brawl and make merry in large gatherings. In any case, I'd imagine populations of giants overall to be pretty low.

That still leaves us with the question of what they eat and how they obtain it, though. Some types might practice some sort of agriculture, perhaps growing giant-sized versions of human crops. After all, their cyclops cousins are known to tend vineyards and flocks of sheep. The image of even a smallish giant feasting on normal-sized potatoes and turnips, though, never mind foraging roots and berries from the woods, is quite comical. I could see stone giants subsisting on agriculture, perhaps growing giant edible fungi in their caves, and hill giants supplementing their raids with home-grown crops. Frost giants might keep slaves or servants of smaller races to grow food for them. Mostly, though, I imagine giants being primarily carnivorous hunters, taking down prey like large mammals like moose, elk, or even grizzly bears and woolly mammoths (or in the case of storm giants, large fish and sea creatures). Even those would be rather like rabbits and pheasants are to humans, though. It's probably a safe bet that giants have a metabolism that's slow, very efficient, or both. They probably also have very low birth rates, resulting in relatively stable populations; otherwise, giants would almost certainly be aggressively expansionist with regard to their territories, and few other beings could stand against them.

Besides the ecological questions, which some DMs might well simply hand-wave and move on, there's the more immediate problem of depicting fights between giants and human- or demi-human-sized beings. Hill giants aren't too difficult; at 12' tall, their bellies at least are within reach of most human melee weapons. How do you narrate a battle with a humanoid approaching or exceeding 20' in height, though, without resorting to really absurd descriptions of warriors leaping several times their own height to land blows against the giant's vulnerable head and vitals? And what exactly happens when a giant "hits" a human with an axe whose haft is an entire tree trunk? 

Assuming you're not a fan of over-the-top cartoon combat in your game (which is a perfectly valid choice if it's fun for you, but I personally lean more toward gritty verisimilitude), melee with a giant is going to involve a lot of dodging, rushing in to slash and smash at vulnerable feet, knees, and legs, and darting to relative safety again, repeat as needed. Meanwhile, only the attacks from the giant that do enough damage to reduce a PC to zero hp are going to land and be narrated as such. Everything else is going to be evasions, near misses, and maybe an occasional glancing blow, but that doesn't mean the targets escape unscathed. True, any direct hit is almost surely fatal, but remember, a "hit" on the attack dice doesn't necessarily mean full impact from the attacker's weapon. If you narrowly fling yourself out of the path of a devastating axe blow, colliding with a tree or a jutting rock and cracking a rib in the process, that counts too; you got hurt as a result of being attacked. Eventually, the party will inflict enough painful wounds that the giant will falter, and when it stumbles and drops to one knee for a moment, someone seizes the opportunity to finish it with a resounding blow to the temple or slash across the throat. The overall point is that the DM must exercise a good deal of creativity in narrating a fight with giants to capture the epic feel while not giving over to comic book cheese (unless you and your group are into that, knock yourselves out!)

Having written the two paragraphs above, I actually feel much better and more confident in using giants in my campaigns, and in fact, giants can be very versatile elements of a game world. In particular, their attitudes toward smaller folk could vary widely. Some might exemplify the Gentle Giant trope, perhaps seeing humans and their tiny kin as delightfully cute. That could easily lead to a Misunderstood Monster situation, with humans fleeing in terror from a giant who just wants to live and let live or even be friends with them. Other giants might be haughty and contemptuous of "little people," but not necessarily belligerent; men are like rabbits or field mice to them, lesser things but usually no more than a nuisance. Still others, of course, might be openly hostile and warlike, seeking to conquer territory and/or subjugate the puny populace to do the giants' bidding. Some might even regard those fast-breeding humans as a viable food resource. Giants who are favorable or indifferent toward humans might hire themselves out to wealthy or powerful humans as brute labor or mercenary muscle; it would certainly be advantageous to a king or wizard to have giant on his payroll! A friendly or neutral giant might even be the object of a quest to find him and persuade him to aid in some task in which his great size and strength are essential.