Thursday, June 4, 2020

More Magical Fire Giants

Someone in my last article about frost giants pointed out that the random powers made them feel more like ice elementals than giants.  That was a good point and it made me realize I should clarify something– unlike my articles about trolls or dragons, I don't think this way of doing giants is clearly superior to the standard way.

Standard giants are great if you want giants to mostly just be big hulking brutes; this is for if you want giants to be more exotic, more magical, and probably less numerous to compensate for that.  These are maybe a bit less like D&D fire giants and a bit more like Norse mythology fire giants.  



So, more magical fire giants.  Give them one or two of the following six powers.  

1.  Flame Aura.  The giant is surrounded by a flaming aura that reaches about five feet beyond it's skin.  Anyone standing within five feet must save or take d6 damage each round.  Anyone who attacks the giant with a non-reach weapon automatically takes the damage, as does anyone who the giant grapples or hits with an unarmed attack.  Giant-sized swords and axes are more than 5 feet long so people hit by them don't take automatic damage.  

2.  Melt Stone.  The giant can turn a small patch of stone– about 5x5x1 feet– to lava once per combat round.  The lava takes one exploration turn– 10 minutes– to cool to the point where it can be safely walked on by humans again.  The giant itself can walk through lava just fine.  Anyone knocked into the lava takes d20 damage, and an additional d20 per round until they get out, and must make a strength check to escape the sticky lava.      

3. Lava Bomb.  The giant can heat boulders right before throwing them, turning them into shells of cool stone with a gooey hot lava center.  These boulders shatter on impact, spraying the nearby area with lava.  The boulder does one extra die of damage.   If damage types matter, consider this half impact and half heat damage.   

Anyone within 10 feet of the impact point must save or take 2d6 lava damage.  A person hit by the boulder doesn't take this extra damage– it's already factored into the "direct hit" damage (extra damage for the lava, but less damage for the boulder being less hard).  Optionally, on missed hits roll a d8 for direction and d4 for distance to see where the boulder actually lands.  

4.  Flaming Sphere.  Similar to the 5E spell, the giant can conjure a floating ball of fire.  Every combat round it can move this ball of fire up to 30 feet, and may make an attack roll to try to ram it into someone, dealing 3d6 damage.  This is in addition to, not instead of, the giant's normal actions.

The flaming sphere emits light in a 60-foot radius which reveals anything and anyone hidden or invisible.  Giants with this power will often command squads of humanoid archers, using their flaming sphere to illuminate enemies for the archers to attack.  

5.  Eyes of Ignition.  With a gaze, the giant may ignite any highly flammable substance it looks at, such as paper, oil, dry leaves, or alcohol.  Wood, cloth armor and human skin aren't flammable enough, but a lot of non-treated cloth is, and hair might be. Oil sealed into airtight containers won't work either; there needs to be oxygen.  Giants with this power will try to fight in areas pre-seeded with innocuous-looking flammable materials.  

6.  Firewalk.  As it moves, the giant may leave a trail of fire in its wake.  This fire reaches ten feet high (the giant can see over it unless it crouches) and is several feet across, as thick as the distance between the giant's left and right feet.  The fire lasts ten minutes, and the giant may only have a sixty-foot length of it going at one time.  Anyone who runs through it takes 4d6 damage; anyone in the space occupied by the fire when it starts can save to dive to one side and avoid it.   

Giants will usually use this power in one of three ways: either to cover their retreat, to create a barrier that prevents enemies from closing to melee range while allowing them to throw boulders over it, or more aggressive fire giants may even get behind an enemy and use it to cut off their retreat.  

Other articles in this series

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