So now I'm going to do the same thing for giants, one type of giant at a time. There are many, many types of giants across all the different OSR games and D&D editions, so I'll start with the common types that made it into 5E: frost, fire, stone, cloud and storm (hill giants don't get special powers). After that maybe I'll get into the more exotic ones.
 |
| They're not just giants; they're also vikings. |
As with trolls, apply these powers on top of the base stats from whatever system you're using. If you need giant stats, here are the ones from Sword and Wizardry, and here's a monster generator for Labyrinth Lord.
So, frost giants. They all have stats as per one of those two games, and they're all immune to cold damage. If you want to distinguish between regular frost giants and frost giant lords, the regular ones have one less HD, and the lords have one more.
All frost giants additionally have one of the following six powers, and frost giant lords or shamans have two.
1. Cold aura. The giant is surrounded by a chilling aura with a 5 foot radius. Anyone within this radius must save or take 1d6 damage and be slowed until the round after the leave the aura.
2. Icy shell. The giant's skin is covered by a thin layer of ice. Reduce all damage (other than poison, psychic or anything that logically wouldn't be affected by it) by two. A fireball, or hot weather, will melt this shell off, and it takes at least a half hour to re-form.
3. Frost strikes. All melee attacks inflict an extra die of frost damage, and anyone hit must save or be paralyzed. They can save against each round to break the paralysis.
4. Conjure ice. The giant can conjure a block of ice equal in volume to a five foot cube once per combat round. Giants with this power will mostly use it outside of combat, to build fortifications or prepare the battlefield with chokepoints and kill zones.
5. Freeze water. As a combat action, the giant can freeze a few cubic feet of water that it can see within 120 feet. Giants with this power will try to get enemies wet, often fighting in the rain or an area with a lot of puddles, so they can use this power to freeze enemies in place.
6. Ice javelins. The giant can conjure and throw a javelin of ice as a normal attack action. These javelin do the same damage as thrown boulders normally would, but they travel twice as far, and anyone struck must save or be paralyzed, as with the frost strikes power.
Other Articles in This Series
Fire Giants
Cloud Giants
Stone Giants
Sand Giants
Storm Giants
hmmm seems too far in the "ice elemental" direction, only the ice javelins feel like something REALLY appropriate to giants per se. idk tho. something like a massive, icy belch breath weapon thing could be legit. or being able to inflict an icy paralysis by giving enemies the evil eye. but I guess if they need to be more magical than that then your stuff's solid.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's a fair point. Another way to use this would be to only let giant lords and shamans have one power, and other giants not have them. Or re-envision this type of giants as solitary individuals rather than operating in tribes. But this is intended to be more in line with the old Norse mythology of giants as magical creatures, rather than largely variants of "big huge brute" that they became in D&D.
ReplyDelete