Why no large characters? D&D 5e
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- Опубликовано: 6 окт 2021
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Why won't WOTC release a large playable option?
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You just can't tell me that half a guy stacked on 90% of a horse's body takes up the same space as the dwarf next to him
If you look at the info for them, 5e centaurs are basically pony people, not horse people. That's why they are medium.
@@Dragowolf_Rising The one in the Monster Manual is large, and the watered down player versions have the same "we know you *should* be large so you count as Large for things that don't matter" feature as other races they've shrunk.
Well, some dwarves are wider than they are tall, so yeah. Maybe so.
My headcanon is that centaurs are sized appropriately for horses that _weren't_ subjected to thousands of years of selective breeding, as actual horses were. In the Bronze Age, you did not see heavily armored warriors riding on horseback, as you saw with medieval knights. Because the horses in that era had not yet been bred to be large enough to carry a heavily laden human. It's why Bronze Age civilizations made frequent use of the chariot, which put less strain on the horses (and whose weight could be distributed across multiple horses).
PC Centaurs are basically "natural" Centaurs, in proportion to wild horses prior to human intervention. From that perspective, the fact that _any_ Centaurs are Large, let alone the default ones in the Monster Manual, are what require explanation. It's not why the PC Centaurs are so small, but why the monster Centaurs are so big.
I explain this by following through with the analogy. Monster Centaurs were the ones who engaged in an informal eugenics program within their own society. Choosing only the biggest and strongest children to remain in the herd. Any that didn't make the cut were cast out, forced to make their own way. These smaller Centaurs formed communities of their own when possible, or had to fall into other communities (such as that of humans and other "civilized" races).
Hence why PC Centaurs are Medium. The ones in the Monster Manual are the extremists who bred themselves into larger forms, and maintained their wilder ways. Whereas PC Centaurs are the runts who had to acclimate to orderly society, and thus act more like typical adventurers.
@@Bluecho4 For what it’s worth, wild horses still exist today (they live in Central Asia) and are the size of the very smallest riding horse, in the grey area between Medium and Large. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to think centaurs are similarly sized or even smaller
"The problem with big pcs"
"Honestly all of it is pretty cool"
"Just do it"
As someone who once played an arachnae in a mech suit, *yes*
JUST DO IT
I had an idea for a large pc;
A Eath elemental taking the form of a Giant ground sloth.
They were a large creature, nothing homebrew about it (meaning yes, they had a greataxe that delt 2d12).
*However* because they were slow as hek, they could only make an action, bonus action or reaction once every 2 turns.
Basically just a playable Slaking in d&d.
"After crawling through the dungeon on hands and knees for the past 2 hours, your oversized character now has a serious backache and can only move at half-speed."
Granted I think the point there is "Try to figure out how to make it work rather than just yeeting it into the sun"
That idea of having the large player wait outside the fortress while the other party members sneak inside to open the main gate to let the big guy in sounds like a fun little adventure
Probably not as fun for the player that just waits around tho
@@sarcasmismyfavoriteemotion4180 Oh i am sure there are things you can have the waiting player to do. Or, maybe you could make the Large Character a Sidekick of a physically weaker character as a sort of way to counterbalance their frailty, like imagine a Halfling Cleric with below average Physical stats, so he has an Ogre friend that protects him while he makes sure the party and his ogre friend are healed
I seek to remember some party with a pcthat couldn't climb. They used pulling or something pretty funny
The main reason I want to play a large sized creature is because I want get my DM to OK a large Warforged fighter, and when he asks us to place our minis on the table I just slam a fucking Gundam model onto the map.
This is excellent and you better get video.
My DM is currently giving me funny looks because I asked to play "Gim-79," a large Warforged fighter doing a shield/sword/crossbow combo (for his size, I may be able to bullshit a standard Medium creature crossbow into being his equivalent of a hand crossbow). Gim's big, he's strong, he's tough, and he's dumb as hell.
The problem is I almost never play fighters this basic, so this is highly out of character and now my DM is wondering what I'm up to.
@@subtlewhatssubtle is your DM still wondering what the hell you were doing?
@@BjornIdiottsonn So I had to adjust "Gim-79" into "Cyclops, the Shield Defender" and refine him into the party tank (which we needed anyway), because I found a chrome Bandai Chogokin Zaku to put on the table.
The response was split between "Oh that's so cool" and "oh goddammit you weeb."
Best $10 I've spent in a while.
@@subtlewhatssubtle Act natural, give no hints. Refuse to elaborate. Sounds worth it for the reveal honestly.
“Pick up the Oni’s 2d10 glaive” this made me laugh, as this literally just happened to me! My party killed an Oni, and my Rune Knight fighter grabbed the glaive. My dm seemed a little smug for a moment, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to use it since I’m just a medium humanoid…. But giants might… I can become the big! So yeah, I now have a 2d10 damage glaive I can totally use lol. My poor awesome amazing dm.
Not sure what the panic is about having a 2d10 weapon versus a 2d6+rage.
@@krinkrin5982 reach is one.
@@krinkrin5982 People see the Max Roll potential and forget bad luck strikes often XD
I dont know why youre so smug about this, the only reason you're allowed to use that Glaive of is because you're the DM let's you. being large doesn't inherently let you use oversized weapons.
@@zhangbill1194 I mean,
If it originally belonged to a large creature, and assuming you have relatively comparable strength to said creature
It would be 100% illogical to say "you can't use that because reasons"
Unless you made it so it's like
Conveniently cursed
"Not a bullshit... MEDIUM Minotaur" was exactly my reaction to no large characters in the game.
Playing a Minotaur right now and was taken aback when i learned the pc minotaur is only 6ft while the enemy minotaur is like 9. Just...why?
@@NathanButh Still not as weird as the fucking medium Centaurs if you ask me xD
SAME. I was like "Minotaurs AND centaurs?! Finally, after all these years, we get large races! Huzzah!" Turns out we got minimoos and ponymen. Shameful. The same goes for the loxodons.
@@lightning_bishop260 I always found it strange because the problem of large PCs being too strong compared to smaller PCs would be fairly easy to solve. For example the lack of same size loot in most dungeons would help balance it a bit. Since larger characters can't always find same size equipment they would have to buy or forge custom armor and weapons they can actually use. The DM can also make some of the monster weapons cursed so they can't use anything too op without jumping through a few hoops first. Everything else can probably be handled through RP.
@@NathanButh Malnourishment. Gotta eat yur BEANS!
I suddenly love the idea of a rune knight who straps an impractically oversized anime-y greatsword to their back, and have sworn to only draw it when they’re “worthy”, which is to say, when they gain the ability to increase their size.
Fights with his fists until he can wield his mighty blade.
As a Rune Knight with Shield Master, yes, grappling is a problem. A BIG problem.
...for our DM.
Because I keep making an attack, using my second attack to grapple, and then using my shield bash to shove the grappled enemy prone.
According to Giant's Might, you gain advantage on all strength checks while under its effect - including athletics checks made to grapple, or to shove.
So I slash a dude, hook the sword around their back for leverage, then hit them with the shield to knock them against the flat of the sword where they trip and my big fat metal ass pins them.
A prone creature must spend half of their speed to stand up from prone. A grappled creature has a movement speed of 0, and therefore cannot stand from prone. They're stuck there until they succeed at the athletics or acrobatics check they need to get out of my grapple... an opposed check, which my Large Boi (TM) has advantage on.
Meanwhile, all my melee buddies are standing around the poor pinned sonofabitch carving them into turducken. The best part is that since I'm large, and our artificer knows Enlarge/Reduce *which stacks with Giant's Might for some reason,* he can make me huge. That is to say, two size categories above medium. *And guess what you can't do against creatures two or more sized larger than you, lol*
So if I'm huge, I can pull this pinning maneuver against medium opponents and they LITERALLY DON'T EVEN GET TO CONTEST THE ROLL. I JUST WIN BY LAW OF GOFUCKYOURSELF.
I think my DM might hate me guys
Nice trick! I applaud your ingenuity. At the same time, stuff like this is just another reminder that 3E handled size waaay better.
@@mlevine2005 It really... REALLY did.
If your dude is large, just gonna have to face larger enemies. Upsize some things
@@irok1 honestly I'd love that
being able to grapple a Huge sized creature and knock it down would be a majorly cool set piece to go through with my group
I think you need a free hand to grapple, unless you're homebrewing. So sword and board on a rune knight grappler is only "officially" kosher for loxodons, I think,, since they can grapple with their trunk. Still, though... That is a build to consider.
Fun fact: Runeknight doesn't increase size by 1, it sets size to large. So a small kobold Runeknight would turn large, then huge at 18
Another fun fact: enlarge does increase size by 1, so said kobold Runeknight could turn from large to huge at level 3, and huge to kaiju (gargantuan) at lvl 18
Am I planning to play a kobold who wants to be like the dragons? Yes
A fellow Kobold gentleman I see
*writing this down*
@@fake-inafakerson8087 I’m going to play a Fairy. Natural access to a once a day Enlarge.
Rune knight also doesn't increase weight.
So if you need to cross ice, become huge then watch your weight be dispersed between all those tiles.
"Give the players cool stuff! And then crank the CR!"
This sounds like my whole DMing philosophy...
Been rockin’ my crew with some dope stuff for 5 or more levels (since they hit level 4) the battles have been legendary.
Same here. I homebrew a LOT in the campaign I am DMing, and I give players homebrew items and spells, as well as the ability to purchase vanilla magic items at full price that are sold at magic shops. Nearly every town has a magic shop.
Exactly this. I've honestly already ruled that you can use large weapons normally anyway as long as you have gauntlets of ogre power or a belt/potion of giant strength or similar, so I'd probably just make minotaurs actually large.
Centaurs I would make large, but I'd have then count as medium for the purpose of weapon sizes; it's got a human sized torso on there, and is only large because of the horse body.
@@aliciacordero8399 Not always true, some centaurs are just massive. Yoked out of their minds. Absolute studs. A real stallion, if you will.
I agree, I always try to balance things with my player, if they want to be a large creature SURE but it's would be difficult in certains situation.
Zee: "Large characters are not a great idea."
Me: ".....I wanna make a large character now!"
Remember that the squeezing rules exist, so large creatures CAN fit in spaces designed for medium characters, they'll just take penalties while doing so.
I forget, is there a rule about most magic items resizing to fit their users in 5e, or was that something from a previous edition?
also in a bit of an oversight, medium sized creatures somehow cannot squeeze in any other space. Squeezing is based on what one size smaller doesn't have to squeeze to and small creatures also use a 5 foot square. This means that medium sized creatures are pompous pricks that always require a 5 foot wide corridor, by RAW.
"lemme tell you why you can't play large characters"
*rattles off all the ways it's more interesting*
Grapple and Prone the flying Adult Dragon.
Magic spell AoEs you can even homebrew to be like... if it's not literally a 5-foot radius around you, you pick a starting point in the space you occupy and it radiates out from there. This would mean you don't get exponentially better AoE coverage, you just get a bit more flexibility in where you target it.
Melee threat and 5-foot surround AoEs are fine too. Surround AoE is intended to counter enemies clustering around you, and Large characters have more melee spaces they can _be attacked from_ on top of areas they can threaten. Melee threat is overrated because you only get 1 reaction per turn, and a lot of the time if you want to attack different targets you're able to move around anyway.
It legit just seems like a cool idea that they're sleeping on because they don't want to deal with hypothetical edge cases. Even the "larger weapons" thing is an edge case nobody takes advantage of as-is; I've never had a PC try to go, "hey, I'm going to try to swing that Storm Giant's Huge-size greatsword for 6d6 per hit," which is absolutely a strategy you could go for - 3 levels in Fighter for Rune Night embiggening, 2 levels in Barbarian for Reckless Attack to cancel size disadvantage.
Maybe we'll see Large-size options in 5.5e.
Counterpoint to the melee range… that’s also four more tiles that enemies can hit YOU from.
Literally a mmo raid boss
Harder to use some forms of cover, too.
While technically true, if you have one or both sides blocked off, that just means an extra attacker. I.e. if you are blocking a hallway as said in the video. Then only 2 enemies can hit you from the one side. And if you pull off silly shit like in some campaigns I have heard about... say.... playing a gnome or some shit who rides on the big person's shoulder >_>
Needless to say, it can easily get whacky fast.
Also, imagine having REACH with those extra blocks? Anything within a large radius is your target.
It also means that one creature on your flank can provide flanking for two on the other side.
@@coryalfaro9376 If you are a large creature and get surrounded like that, either the DM is playing it and intends it to just be a semi kinda almost difficult encounter, or the player in charge of it is an idiot for getting into that situation.
Although being large or bigger does effectively increase your reach, unlike actual increases to reach, there is a downside as well. In particular, you can only reach more squares due to being closer to more squares, so while you can reach more creatures, more creatures can reach you as well, making you much more likely to trigger attacks of opportunity when moving and much more likely to end up caught in AOEs.
This
You can also make it so that being in multiple squares makes you take more AOE damage
My D&D table now just quotes "That's my fucking guy! That's me! I'm a Minotaur!" at each other now. We don't even play, we just say the line.
I'm just imagining how you would roleplay a failed intimidation.
"How could I fail? I'm bigger than his house"
"I dunno, maybe you spoke in UWU"
"He knows you CAN hurt him, he just doesn't believe you WOULD."
@@aliciacordero8399 "I kick his wall in."
Honestly, the drawbacks of being a Large Guy in a Medium world sounds like awesome RPing (and world building) potential. And good fodder for your DM to play around with. Sneaking isn't as viable, those old crossings might collapse under the weight, suddenly you have cause for a side plot to find that one blacksmith who is willing to work on armour over his size. And of course, Carrying your gnome wizard on your shoulders.
To be fair, it was always possible to carry a gnome, so long as you were Medium.
@@Bluecho4 Of course it was always possible. But that's like standing on the table vs standing on the roof lol
Certainly better roleplay than conniving Wheelchairs designed for adventuring, into a world where low level clerics can cure anything likely to put someone in one.
With a couple of options for defying that, but it's not like any reason is beyond personal choice or a deliberate ongoing effect like a curse.
Not that I think about it, a Cursed Wheelchair that binds the user to itself upon attunement (and with some kind reason for said attunement) sounds interesting.
But not enough for commonplace Wheelchair bound adventurers or adventuring groups. (Especially not Wheelchair _ACCOMMODATING DUNGEONS._ )
I can see how it would raise a lot of complications, and shouldn't be handed out to a novice player. But it offers as many disadvantages as advantages, so it's not like it'd be overpowered. Although I could see power gamers abusing the shit out of large weapons if you let them.
I can see why they don't just blanket allow it by default, because you'd have to be careful about which players you let have it.
@@grimwolf9988 Depends on your table. Do you have a combat focused group, or a role play focused one. I'm mostly a roleplay focused player, so I'm always tickled by the potentials in running large and small characters.
“Bu-but GAME BALANCE!”
*Points at silvery barbs
Bu-but DND has infinite ways to make your encounters more crunchy if you let the players have stuff and have fun.
Large creatures can navigate just fine. They'll just have to use squeezing rules a lot.
_A creature can squeeze through a space that is large enough for a creature one size smaller than it. Thus, a Large creature can squeeze through a passage that's only 5 feet wide. While squeezing through a space, a creature must spend 1 extra foot for every foot it moves there, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage while it's in the smaller space._
keeping this rule in mind next time my players decide to buy a war elephant
Most doorways count as small
@@almightyk11 …You mean humans have to _squeeze_ in order to just fit through a _doorway?_ Yeah, no way.
@@gaminggeckos4388 yes but as it's so small a space it's negligible impact.
@@almightyk11 doorways in real life are human size so why would they be smaller in dnd?
Starfinder, ripping a line of cocaine: Wanna be a large? Wanna be a dragon? Wanna be a dragon with lasers?
WANNA BE A FUCKING SENTIENT BEAR?
'WOTC has to be careful about what they release because people like me are assholes,' is SUCH a mood. XD I have a player that would have a FIELD DAY with this video because he LOVES to break things with RAW.
i could feel 2 of my dm friends staring at me through the ether as i heard him say this.... and theyd be right
The way he said it too was somehow just incredibly hilarious to me. I nearly choked.
I'm reminded of a game I played in where we players were told "you can do whatever you want as far as character creation". The DM then turned to me and said, "PHB only, and not even all of the PHB." I couldn't even complain about it because it was honestly pretty fair.
@@WombatDave I had to be this DM with my brother several times......
@@WombatDave break a game once, and you have a mark on your back for your DM for all time.
have your players ever put you through grapple hell? where a durid takes conjer animal summons 8 constrictor snakes around your boss monster
Beast master plus Giant Crab equals CC for days. Those little shits grapple automatically with a hit and there's no contested check until the grappled creature uses its action to break free. Meaning that they can also grapple with opportunity attacks. Finally the ranger can buff it with ensnaring strike at higher levels.
Poor Amrik never stood a chance
@@EvilExcalibur It's like the one saving grace of the beast master ranger. Time for crab.
Let's just be honest here, anyone who uses summoning spells like this in a full or oversized party is already evil enough.
i know this is an old comment but, as far as i know, RAW the caster does not choose the animals summoned by conjure animals, just the number/CR breakdown. i believe the DM chooses the actual animals
"Your giant axe the size of an ox broke. No, the blacksmith in town CANT fix it, its bigger than his entire forge. You are now weapon less until you and your party take down another giant
I love the way he says "That's my fuck'in guy!"
My group is new to d&d, my first character is a Goliath Eldritch Knight Fighter and I chose the Enlarge/Reduce spell. First time I used it was to enlarge myself, grapple a green dragon to hold it's mouth shut so it couldn't use it's breath attack and keep it grounded so it couldn't fly away, while my party members took turns absolutely destroying this thing. Made for a very good time! Love the videos, keep up the good work!
Your DM was very generous to allow that, because grappling only makes their speed 0, they can still attack and breathe.
Goliath Rune Knight....i have ideas....
i can see it now
Goliath: hey green dragon!! whats your name?
Dragon: well uh..
Goliath: IT DOESNT MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS!!! *proceeds to rock bottom the dragon*
@@ittyandpocky if he goes through the bs that is grappling rules I can totally see how the DM allows that
@@ittyandpocky Using the Grappler feat, two successful grapples in a row means both the attacker and the target are restrained. No movement, no attacks.
My party got around this by having our centaur be a 2x1 instead of a 2x2 or 1x1. This seems to be a happy medium where its not too broken and allows for some funny centaur moments.
Here’s a fun combo: a rune knight, a conjugation wizard, and the local town blacksmith.
Get the blacksmith to construct a great axe 1 size too big for your character. Get the conjugation wizard to create blood of a werebear (which is debateable on if it’s possible, but RAW there’s nothing against it), and drink it.
Then use the runeknight ability to increase you and your stuff’s size by 1, and finally get the wizard to cast enlarge/reduce on you, increasing your size to gargantuan, the max that’s possible.
Boom. Have fun with your minimum 19 strength and 4d12 weapon.
Oh, and the ability to grapple a Tarrasque. That too.
Ah, the dreaded conjugation wizards! Legends says they can modify the very fabric of reality itself based on linguistic gender, case, and number!
@@rhymeswithmoose228 I saw that and was going to be very disappointed if something like this wasn't the first response.
Just so you know, I appreciate you.
No issues with most areas, because there are rules on squeezing. A large PC can go anywhere a medium can, as long as the medium isn't squeezing.
Also, having a martial character with real upsides and downsides would be awesome. You're big, so often your size is an issue. But you actually hit like a truck.
ehh it still feels like a mess balance wise, but if you can make it work more power to you
Or the other way around!
I at least had a lot of fun with a 1 foot Fairy Echo Knight!
The problem is that your PC is always in the spotlight because of it.
"Lets take 25 minutes to figure out how to get Giantman through this small kobold tunnel" and "Step out of the way everyone, Giantman will win this fight."
Are all scenes about the large PC, and the party will be obligated to help and buff you to "play optimally".
Unless your DM is cool enough to make sure everyone's got enough going on that it never feels weird. In which case, hell yeah, play a large character. Even better yet, let a shy roleplayer take it if they'd like, let's em take the spotlight without the pressure to come up with stuff on the fly.
disadvantage on all attack rolls on smaller than medium size cratures maybe?
im gonna be honest with you, the games that i end up in (and by extension the DMs i play with) seem to like letting us be OP. Its more fun for everyone cause they can throw bigger baddies at us, and we actually have to pay attention because even if we CAN smash everything in one turn doesnt mean the dice will let us, and then half the party is doing death saves and shit just got interesting.
but thats just our personal play style.
I now formally request "Why no tiny creatures" as the new Official Fairy Race makes me depressed and sad.
Sadly the only example I know of was the Fremlin I think in 2e. A very weird Chaotic Neutral fairy/gremlin type. Was very hard to play for both role playing reasons and it's stats sucked. Nearly no strength, con, etc only good stat was Dex. It's racial level limits were really low too.
Reduced carrying capacity (even though technically your equipment weighs just as much as normal), logically shouldn't be able to use Medium creatures' weapons, pretty much can't grapple, am I forgetting anything?
Ah yes the pixie toothpick rapier wielding rogue.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming I do remember a fellow player of mine from the 90's playing a quickling. IIRC they were 2 feet or less so a tiny size.
Starfinder has a race of playable Tiny creatures and they're great.
Reverse this, why can’t I play a tiny creature?? They released fairies and made them small without releasing and general heights and I’m incredibly frustrated with the idea that my fairy just looks like a gnome with wings.
Not to mention the official release gutted all the stuff that made a fairy intersting in the Unearthed Arcana...
Because a single hit with pretty much anything would probably cut you clean in half at best and turn you into a puddle of blood at worst. At least that's how my DM explained it to a fellow party member who wanted to run a realistic fairy sorcerer. Basically HP is directly correlated to size, or at least logic dictates that it is.
@@kronkrian100 okay so why can a medium creature fight a giant weilding an axe?
@@kid14346 Because medium creatures have significantly more volume and can shurg off a hit or two from a higher weight class. Try to play a tiny character in a medium sized world or higher and you will get pulverized. Unless it's a specific campaign, there is a reason why players can't run tiny characters through the official game.
@@kronkrian100 as we know dnd follows the real world rules and logic.... like if my medium/small character can be hit by a huge robot's hammer fist the size of a small car and survive... who says a tiny creature can be slapped by a medium creature and survive...
A thing I noticed randomly at some point is that creature's Hit Die is based on the creature's size. So tiny is d4, small is d6, medium d8, large d10, huge d12, gargantuan d20. Of course, this doesn't matter for PCs, but it's surprising how easily its missed in the DM's guide. (Page 275, step 2). Although, I just came to notice it from an app that automatically modified the creature's hit die.
Module magic items aren't really an issue:
The description given under "Wearing and Wielding Items" (DMG, p. 140) says:
In most cases, a magic item that's meant to be worn can fit a creature regardless of size or build. Many magic garments are made to be easily adjustable, or they magically adjust themselves to the wearer. Rare exceptions exist. If the story suggests a good reason for an item to fit only creatures of a certain size or shape, you can rule that it doesn't adjust.
I still think it would be cool to have a sprite wearing a magic ring as a crown though.
@@DazraelArianos well if it fits any creature wearing it, it presumably fits any way you wear it (within reason), so that's fair game
I would respond by virtue of the principle that that's dumb, and so no.
@@Madcat56 That's all fun n games until somebody shows up to the game with a copy of "The Book of Erotic Fantasy" and wants to wear a ring as another kind of ring.
@@johns9652 which is one of the reasons i said within reason.
I ran a Dark Sun campaign for 2 years with a Large home brewed Half-Giant Barbarian. Worked fine, but here were the big downsides for the player; dungeon hallways became a headache, because he needed clearance to swing his weapon around, was difficult terrain for his teammates, and blocked their line of sight. His equipment was FOUR TIMES as expensive, AND he needed FOUR TIMES as much food and water, which is a problem in a Dark Sun game. Behind the screen, just to account for Athas being full of tough cookies, I unilaterally increased monster up by 2/HD and designed home brew races that basically blended sub races together; dwarves got both mountain and hill features, elves got high and wood features, and the half-giant was a comboed half-orc and Goliath with a large size footprint and the notes about the ripple effect downsides of being large. All in all, he had fun, the other players loved it, and he died horribly and heroically against a wasteland mutant in a dungeon that was too small for him. Just as it should be!
Narrow dungeons are the bane of any large sized creature lacking a burrow speed.
Circumstances in that SAME campaign actually made me look it up, and burrow speeds only work on loose earth, not stonework. Burrow alone cannot save you!
Nice "fix". I might "borrow" this. Thanks for sharing.
If you can't swing around your weapon, charge and grapple. Unless the stats are fucky, you should naturally have gravitated towards being the tank/juggernaut of the group, either a mobile wall or just being a huge threat to the enemy.
For early logistics issues I would suggest the DM allows for you to take a small penalty and let you cut down your rations in half or allow more leeway for your foraging/hunting skills, not make the equipment cost 4 times as much but 2 or 3 perhaps going off about how "it's a lot of material, but because it's a lot of material it's much easier to make something sturdier even without steel" and brute strength alone can still make a more effective weapon out of anything even if it won't last the whole encounter.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 Since you're curious, I had a durability system to model 2e's wood/bone/stone/metal system (weaker materials broke quicker but were cheaper; the big guy needed to deliberate on the quality of his gear more thoroughly), and there was a half-elf psionicist/ranger multiclass in the party that did the foraging; sometimes they'd find food that didn't require a fight, sometimes there was good meat on big nasties that were a challenge to bring down. It all worked out okay. Funny you should mention grappling; he went Battlerager barbarian, to get double damage dice on his weapons AND his armor spikes, and to grapple in tight spaces! Great minds think alike. When he ended up dying, I had one of the villainous factions take his body and made it the core of a mud golem, so they had to fight the spike-covered golem-ized body of their fallen half-giant barbarian as a TERRIFYING miniboss. They then recovered it and ended up reincarnating him late in the campaign as an athasian gith; since half-giants are magically engineered to be dim slave-labor in Dark Sun, this had the function of "awakening" him to the injustices he suffered under and he became a freedom fighter in a monstrous guise. Cool arc, all around!
Well, he could be a mini minotaur, but that would include an innate deathly allergy to tartar sauce.
The rules in the DMG about the monster's weapon also says "Double the weapon dice if the CREATURE is large, triple if Huge, Quadruple if Gargantuan".
I also noticed in the paragraph right before this says "If a monster wields a manufactured weapon, it deals damage appropriate to the weapon. For example, a greataxe in the hands of a Medium monster deals 1d12 slashing damage plus the monster’s Strength modifier, as is normal for that weapon."
This implies that damage come from the weapon when it's a manufactured weapon.
Honestly, the 3.5 rules in weapon sizes solves most of the issues here. Medium is base size and each size category going up or down either increases or reduces the damage output of the weapon by 1 die step. So 1d8 medium weapon would become 1d10 for a large weapon or 1d6 for a small weapon and so on. I've done this as a 5e homebrew, adjusting the Enlarge/Reduce spell accordingly, to a good deal of success and balance.
Honestly i have found that when people homebrew 5e it often mimics or is very similar to 3.5, simply because they had rules for everything, want a complex magic item creation system, 3.5 did that, want to be a large or tiny creature, 3.5 had rules for that, i just find it funny when people make 5e more like 3.5.
@@Redlinkz1235 Personally, I find it a lot easier to remove/ignore stuff from 3.5/PF1 to reach my desired level of subsystems than it is to add stuff to 5e. The much larger variety in class mechanics is a strong attraction, too. I think WotC could tap a significant market by publishing a book of optional subsystems for a lot of this stuff that people can pick and choose what their group wants to plug in. I figure the most likely reason this hasn't happened is because 5e was designed completely without those subsystems, and incorporating a lot of them is really hard to balance at all now.
I like the system of larger characters have issues hitting small characters, 3.5e did a good job reflecting that I feel like
That's what I do, too. Weapons have sizes, and you can't use a weapon more than 1 size away from you. So halfling can't use 6 foot longbows. And giants can't use that magic dagger. Magical items re-sizing (other than rings) is cornball.
Finally, someone whos see a powerful option for players and instead of just completely flat out saying don't do it actually encorages us to find out how to make it work.
I could see a homebrew that uses something like equipment stat requirements (like a lot of video games, dark souls comes to mind).
"WOTC design team have to be really careful with what they release because players like me are *assholes*."
Summed up the whole channel there. Good shit!
"give the players wicked magic items and crank your cr" has to be the best description of my first time running a game ever
Zee should have a second channel of some kind where he animates things like probablybadrpgideas, it’d be great.
Zed Bashew
The only problem is that we'd have to clone Zee in order to get the same amount of content for two channels. If we can find out how to do it, I'm all for it. More animated content, the better!
It should just be a series [Probably Bad RPG Ideas]
"What if we had a space game, that is also an underwater game."
"What about a 'honey I shrunk the kids' tiny game where your challenges are navigating while tiny?"
"Bug Game. GIANT BUGS EVERYWHERE"
"Oozetopia. Everybody is an ooze"...
etc.
@@JP-mg5hy Everything is a mimic, *everything.*
@@JP-mg5hy "What if we had a space game, that is also an underwater game."
Isn't that subnautica?
So here's an interesting fact about size. And no, it's not how spiders can grapple gnomes and halflings. Each size step up is √2 times larger than the previous size, and likewise going down a step. So if you increase two steps, you've doubled your size. And this _does_ apply to Small, sort of. Going √2 down from Medium (5 feet) should land you at ~3.5 feet, which is too big to fit more than one in a square, so it just rounds up to 5 feet, like Medium. But going down √2 from 3.5 feet gets you to 2.5 feet for Tiny. There is one exception, though, and that's going from Medium to Large. For some reason, Large is double the size of Medium, with no intermediate step. There's basically an entire size category missing between Medium and Large.
I was in a campaign where one of our players was an eleven foot giant. They knew that his size would frequently make things awkward, but with the DM's creativity they rarely felt left out, in the way, or that they were hogging all the damage. All things can work with some effort.
yeah they're just upset that they have to put effort into their stories.
"If you think grappling is cool... Thats a problem."
Don't call me out like this man.
I think he was more saying that grappling becomes an issue when dealing with large characters, but he doesn't seem to care much for grappling in the first place, so if *you* think grappling is cool then those issues might matter to you.
PC races that should be large but are medium in 5e are really weird. Centaurs for instance. So, lets talk about horses. The Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica says this "The upper bodies of centaurs are comparable to human torsos in size, and their lower equine bodies average about 4 feet tall at the withers. Though they are smaller than a human rider mounted on a horse, they fill similar roles as cavalry warriors, messengers, outriders, and scouts." You measure a horses height by the shoulder/withers in hands, and a hand is 4 inches. So D&D 5e centaurs are 6 - 7 ft tall, and their height at the shoulder on average is 4 feet, which is 12 hands. 12 hands is exactly the height at which a breed of horse is considered to be a breed of pony. Meaning that most 5e Centaurs have fully proportioned humanoid torsos, but weirdly little pony bodies. Its bizarre.
Jeremey Crawford actually stated recently that Centaurs do not receive mounted bonuses when wielding lances as well. Which means to receive said bonuses... your centaur has to ride a horse.... it's as dumb as it sounds.
@@spartantnt1023 TBH the 5e ruleset is kind of garbage overall mainly due to shirking the design scope of the system to achieve the goal of bounded accuracy based on a lack on fundamental understanding of probability and statistics. The smaller box of the rules results in so many bad workarounds like the my little pony centaur.
? why is that "weirdly little"? a 12 hand pony would probably be ~500 lbs. i.e., much, much bigger than the lower half of a regular humanoid. That seems like a completely reasonable proportion. As you said, they're 6-7 feet tall, so taller than an average human but with an average size torso, so one could argue that their upper body is small in proportion. No reason why a centaur should necessarily have a big 16 hand horse body. It's a fantasy creature.
@@dillonkaseysmith the average height of a human male today in most western countries is 6ft so the centaur is slightly taller. We are talking about a centaur where the withers come up to your hips. This is hilarious in terms of proportions.
The Centaur has gone from powerfully imposing to weird and funny. I
@@dillonkaseysmith Except that they say the human half is comparable in size to a regular human torso. The reason its weird is a difference in scale between the two halves. Most centaurs depicted in media have a regular human torso attached to the body of an average sized breed or horse or larger. Now imagine a normal person sized upper half attached to the horse equivalent of a dachsund, and realize that this is the average appearance of 5e centaurs, meaning that half of them have pony bodies even smaller than that.
Make an entire party of player characters that are large creatures, like a party of giants that need to head out into the wild to find help for a magical crisis that threatens their homeland. You could have them deal with people screaming and running away from them instead of listening to what they have to say, you might even want to have them struggle with things like a quickness to anger and try to keep each other from smashing everything out of frustration and anger. There are lots of story avenues you could go down, but what it comes down to is that their size will be both a limitation and an advantage depending on the situation, this will likely not be a great fit if you run pre-made campaigns but if you plan out your own story you can make it work.
This is called balancing the campaign around the party! A very good habit for homebrew campaigns (Provided there's some homogeny about it, it becomes easier). The problem with large creatures in normal campaigns, which apparently a large majority of 5e players do premade adventures (or someone else's brews from what I've seen) makes balancing things a little harder.
Homebrew campaigns are all I use, my own makes and designs, because I can tweak and engineer encounters the players will have fun with (and they won't be able to look in the adventure book and plan around things >_> Looking at one of my old players) This means I can develop a large race (or even tweak an existing race to be large, like centaur/minotaur which should be large, and then develop things around it) If they're uncommon, they'll have difficulty finding items, but since I'm a benevolent DM, I'll sometimes let them find a large suit of armor or large weapon from a treasure area. Things that'll help them along the way. We're all in this together, including the DM. It's about fun. :)
@@TheSpoonyFox I have done some premade campaigns, but always feel I need to adapt or even rewrite parts of them to fit the choices of my players or the characters they have created. Anything can and should be changed in my opinion. Working with the player on a one on one or out of game basis to think through some of the issues and solutions they might have while playing a character like this might be a good idea.
As far as loot, I never focus on that as the big reward for playing any ttrpg, whether it be as a GM or player I feel the story you create as group is always better than the gear that drops, and it's the easiest thing to change and adapt. If part of the loot is integral to the story then keep that, otherwise you can make the chest a magic chest and have it pop out custom items for each character, you can have the dragon hoard include some items looted from and ancient battle with a hoard of giants, you can make the items magical themselves so they resize for their user.
I would also maybe look into something like a slight bonus for large characters using improvise weapons like pulling trees out of the ground or hurling boulders, maybe make it so non-forged weapons break down easily after so-many uses, I'm sure there are mechanics that someone has for doing rolls for weapon wear.
If you want to give your players a challenge you can also make finding enough food for such a large body harder to find, leading to issues where they might have to make the choice of doing something morally questionably to survive. Or you can make the acquisition of armor or weapons more expensive based on the materials or facilities needed to forge giant swords and axes.
I think it's fair to let a player know what these issues will be when they are creating their character and work with them so that the challenges feel fun and present new role playing opportunities rather than feeling like a punishment from the DM.
4 giants are escorting a wagon of supplies down Triboar Trail towards Phandelver…
I literally had a group of cultists who would commit suicide or run rather than give us any info. Grapple was EXTREMELY useful, and since I druid crocodile'd to secure the first grapple, it was definitely cool.
Large PCs have always been allowed in my worlds. Its just like Small or Tiny characters. If you're willing to take the risks, we can explore this story.
“WOTC needs to be careful with what they produce”
WOTC: *glances nervously at twilight cleric”
Hexblade smiles psychotically and nods.
Tell me more about how powerful 300 feet of darkvision in your game that doesnt even have battlemaps
@@punishedwhispers1218 the temp hp of twilight cleric is omega good
"Because people like me are ASSHOWELLS" That delivery left me cackling for a solid minute.
2:20 the perfect timing and delivery of that "FUCK" killed me lmao
Anyone who disses grappling never did a piledriver on a flying dragon as a polymorphed Giant Ape.
"Because people like me are a s s-holes" I feel called out alongside you Zee
Sounds like a 12-step program that I need in my life.
Just a heads up with loot in regards to large sized PC's, the description given under "Wearing and Wielding Items" (DMG, p. 140) says:
"In most cases, a magic item that's meant to be worn can fit a creature regardless of size or build. Many magic garments are made to be easily adjustable, or they magically adjust themselves to the wearer. Rare exceptions exist. If the story suggests a good reason for an item to fit only creatures of a certain size or shape, you can rule that it doesn't adjust."
So if nothing else the PC's size shouldn't really matter when it comes to loot.
I think he's primarily talking about weapons. A mundane weapon made for a medium creature doesn't magically grow so a large creature can use it effectively. The opposite is also true; a mundane weapon made for a large or huge creature does not shrink so a medium creature can use it.
Also your quote from the rulebook pertains to items that can be worn like enchanted armor and belts of STR/headbands of INT, not to magic weapons.
To be fair "easily adjustable" doesn't necessarily mean "fits on literally anyone be they a pixie or a ancient wyrm".
It's a phrase to make people not quibble over boots not fitting right, the ability to expand or contract a hundredfold falls into a significant feature rather than an incidental addon.
I home-brewed an ogre race that was large size, it had a whole bunch of benefits that would greatly make a Marshall character Smile but it's big drawback was unless otherwise stated it couldn't wear any armour they find and any armour made for them would cost twice as much, the size increase only applies to magic items but if a large PC was buying armour they would have to have it Taylor Made for them because no one has a suit of armour that fits somebody that's 10 ft tall, at least not in a civilized humanoid settlement
I don't know about 5E, but in 3E the price multiplicator for non-magical armor for large humanoids was a killer. As for magical armor or weapons? Hope you can find and pay a wizard to make them for you.
By this logic if you cast Enlarge on a weapon exclusively you can make its damage higher with a disadvantage penalty
Easiest shit.
"Okay, made my char. An exiled minotaur fighter with a taste for human art. He is so coo..."
"Holup. No. Not in this campaign, did you not read my notes?"
Directed by: Balance Jones
Or...
"I want to play a minotaur, because your notes mentioned something about their society being caught in the crossfire."
"Okay, that would be cool. Let me ask the other guys if they are okay with that. This is some serious campaign changing shit, need to adjust things. In the meantime work on his backstory and just in case make a normal backup character too."
*Campaign turns out to be epic with weird shit going on. Stupid questions come up about weapons and stuff and you guys all tackle the issues in a logical grown up manner because you all want to have fun.*
I play as a mimic knight (originally a joke character) and after quantifying and getting stuff moved around to make him a viable character, we realized mimics are like lobsters and grow indefinitely until killed and growth is also affected by how much space a mimic has to luve in and how much it eats or has access to food.
So we have had to make plans for him being a large character by mid or late campaign due to well......him growing. He is already tall compared to a human, Because as a character he likes food and what is categorized as food for him is pretty lose. He bounty hunts and only brings back what is requested by the quest giver as proof of a kill, so anything extra on the quest monsters, bandits, enemies,ect. All food options. All on top of just regular food.
He hid he was a mimic pretty well for a while till party stumbled on him having a snack. They kind of have accepted it, He's probably going to end up being like a dark souls boss.
He is fun to play but not the brightest bulb
I've run into this with one of my players playing a homebrewed Treant race. It has led to some fantastic RP as an entire city staring at a tree that has decided to plant itself outside of the local tavern. Another moment was when a hobgoblin captain tried to seek protection in a ruined tower where the tree couldn't fit. Simple solution. Tear down the tower.
If they have weapon sizes included then WHY AM I NOT ALLOWED TO USE POLEARMS AND GREATSWORDS AS A KOBOLD WHAT THE FUCK
THANK YOU
I thought there was a rule that said that a small creature wielding a weapon with 2-handed tag has disadvantage on attacks? Maybe that was in an older edition.
@@ghosteevee yeah that's what I'm talking about
@@blockhead134 the only explanation I can think of is that a "kobold-sized" greatsword would probably just be a regular-sized longsword. At a certain point, the weapon is so small, it doesn't do proper damage?
That’s weird. I could’ve sworn that 3.5 had rules about this.
"if you think grappling is cool then that's... a problem"
I choose to understand this as people who like grappling are the problem, not the grappling rule itself
I played as and with many Large creatures in 2nd Edition and it was generally fun. Mostly Bugbear, Furbolgs and the like. As you say sleeping in the stables, having trouble entering doors or rooms, being too heavy to cross a bridge etc were all fun moments that made normal tedious task more interesting.
But it was all made worth it when your bugbear can just lift that chest up and carry it out of the dungeon after a thief failed to pick it's lock or Wielding two Giant Scimitars at the same time.
Have said characters ever sought out civilizations that accommodate their... girth?
Or the large character 'sneaking' through the enemy camp by yelling in the face of anyone that wants to stop them "Shaddup! I'm Sneaking!"
@@toddkes5890 Lol funny enough my Bugbear was a fighter/thief... and some how hid in shadows despite being about 7 and half feet tall. Backstab from a large creature is no joke.
Dwarf rune knight, unarmed fighting style, tavern brawler and skill expert: athletics. At lvl 10, I had a +14-15 to athletics checks (grapples), and could punch -> bonus grapple -> force prone as part of one sequence... and when enlarged I had advantage on that. I literally pile drivered an adult black dragon out of the air and kept him prone for an entire fight once due to potions of heroism and flight, and haste.
Rune knights are awesome.
The mental image here is bloody amazing!
Large Creature's AC should be calculated with 8 as the base instead of 10. There. Let them keep the big sword.
I was just about to suggest that, lol
Seems fair enough to me. Bigger creature means easier to hit.
So, should a small and tiny creature’s base AC be 12 and 14 respectively?
The little sizzle you put on "ass holez' tickles my brain just right.
"Ya know? I dunno. Fuckin...go out...Do it!", the homebrewing spirit in a nutshell
I ran a game in Theros that included a centaur. We made him large. Minotaurs in that setting are big bois but not a 10ft base necessarily, they aren't as big as goliaths for instance. Tall and wide, but still not more than 5ft wide footprint. So they are medium still. But a centaur is a horse. It takes up more space. A horse that fits in a 5ft square is a pony.
It didn't create any issues for us in the game. Weapons and armour mostly still need to fit a normal human sized body so no need to pretend it gets an extra d4 damage, and he has chonky build so counts as one size larger, so we just made him one size larger.
It would be amazing if they were a spellcaster. Imagine a centuar using spider climb. You could pull a skyrim with your mount.
D&D but characters dimensions are considered.
Your centaur can go down that 5 foot wide passage, but you better not ask them to turn around.
Dude this completely explodes in their faces for the giant barbarian. Cuz you cannot tell me a HUGE barbarian's sword wouldn't do 3D10 damage on every hit.
Bein able to hit more enemies in melee sounds good, until you realize if you get swarmed that's more knifes going into your legs.
Also for the larger weapons I would rule it like the spell enlarge in which case it's a regular weapon that deals 1d4 extra. Special magical weapons used by bigger creatures also aren't that much of a major issue since you can have a normal size flame tongue greatsword deal 4d6 damage in total, which if you're using the loot tables in the DMG could be found in a hoard for creatures of any CR. (Also killing a strong opponent and taking their weapon requires you to defeat them first which seems fair enough.)
Curiously, back in 2nd edition AD&D, there was a setting called Darksun. In that setting, one of the race options was a Half-Giant. An 11 to 12 ft. tall creature, that most of the fun with the character was roleplaying the size issue. The main issue, obviously, is that it requires more food, water, and equipment is both heavier and more expensive, adding a challenge to properly equip the creature. Mind you, large creatures can still fit through 5 ft. gaps, just at half movement. So, most map size problems are not as much an issue. Though it would make the Reduce spell very useful to help the large creature navigate smaller spaces, only to drop concentration and have a 12 ft. monster on the battlefield. As to the extra damage for weapons, true, but they are more expensive and would basically be between common to uncommon magic items depending on the weapon. I think it would be incredibly fun to do this.
The sacrifices made for accessibility, man.
WotC's own 3rd Edition embraced the idea of Large characters. Yes, bigger weapons do deal more damage, but the damage is much more tempered than what 5th chose to do: Instead of straight up *multiplying* the damage dealt, larger weapons use the next largest die: A club designed for use by a Medium creature (such as a human or elf) deals 1d6 points of damage, so the Large club deals 1d8, the Huge one 2d6, the Gargantuan 3d6, and Colossal 4d6. Bigger weapons use different tracks: a weapon that starts with a d10 or d12 (such as a bastard sword or greataxe) uses d8s after Medium.
This trends the other way, as well: Smaller weapons deal less damage. So a club designed for a Small creature deals 1d4. A Tiny club deals 1d3 (Yes, those exist.), a Diminutive one rolls 1d2 (a literal coin flip), and a Fine size club (one designed for a creature less than 6 inches tall) deals a whole 1 damage.
The original version of the Dragon Disciple prestige class in 3rd ed, found in "Tome and Blood" made your character grow a size category, commonly creating a large character. I was actually a little disappointed when that was changed in later editions, pathfinder, etc.
You say "These exist" As if you couldn't use a D6 for both a d3 and a d2.
I'm a big fan of things making at least a base level of sense.
A club that weighs ~eight times as much isn't going to do only 28.6% more damage on average.
Honestly, I don't think that the issue with being unable to find properly sized gear would be a terrible problem, as magic armor, clothes, jewelry, etc., resizes to fit the wearer. DMG, page 140 states "In most cases, a magic item that's meant to be worn can fit a creature regardless of size or build. Many magic garments are made to be easily adjustable, or they magically adjust themselves to the wearer." However, it later on that page it stipulates that "Rare exceptions exist. If the story suggests a good reason for an item to fit only creatures of a certain size or shape, you can rule that it doesn't adjust. For example, armor made by the drow might fit elves only. Dwarves might make items usable only by dwarf-sized and dwarf-shaped characters." Based on what the first quote says, I think that wearables adjust to the wearer, but weapons don't, so any weapons you use would need to be specially made for bigger creatures
I like the 3.5 and pathfinder solution to this, yes you can use bigger weapons, yes you are bigger and can there for block a slightly larger space, but also... you are BIGGER, meaning you're easier to hit, large pcs received a natural -2 to AC [other sizes got more negatives all the way to like -8 for gargantuan creatures], that means your paladin in full plate and a shield doesnt have 18 ac, hes large so he actually has 16 ac, it was at one point a strategy in some of my old games where you would enlarge reduce an enemy to just drop their ac so you could hit them easier, it had bonuses, AND negatives.
Pathfinder also split AC in to three types; flatfoot, touch, and regular AC. A large creature will typically have horrible flatfoot and touch AC, BUT their regular AC will actually be really good in comparison. Generally, pathfinder is a lot more balanced because the system wants players to innovate and create both within and outside of the limits of it, and presents good foundation for any dedicated TTRPG group looking to step away from 5E. It's not perfect, and takes more effort and possibly paper work, but you can always tune the rules to your group's needs.
Is it just specific creatures, or can't you just move through the space occupied by a creature one size larger than you?
@@trentonstaggs2968 you can move through the space of a creature larger than yourself at half speed, meaning the large creature requires 20ft of movement to move past and it prevokes AO which with something like the sentinel feat makes it take 4 turns to get past them assuming its not taking a shove to push you back 10 feet, which they do with advantage because bigger.
You may not be able to grapple a creature over one size larger but you can CLIMB it, which sounds way more badass.
When small PC's use weapons with
the heavy property they have to roll with disadvantage, so rolling disadvantage with a weapon one size catagory larger is a pretty consistent rule.
Ooo... so I just need advantage to balance it out.... thanks for the idea...
Darn, no heavy crossbow for my kobold artificer.
@@williamturner6192 If you go beyond the 1 size category, it becomes unusable wholesale though. So, small creatures with a large weapon can't even swing it at all. Medium creatures get disadvantage. Etc.
The thing is, large-sized and small-sized and etc. characters were definitely a whole *thing* in previous editions of D&D. The complications they present aren't all that complicated when you get down to it. In 3.5, there were rules for playing pretty much anything, though the way they balanced things (Effective Character Level) was pretty bad. But size is honestly not that big of a deal.
So, if someone is big, they can't enter a 5 foot corridor easily. There's spells to fix that; elsewise, they could squeeze into the space at a penalty. Or they could find an alternative means of entry, especially since they've probably got a high strength score.
Basically, for any given problem with large size, I can see fairly easy ways to either circumvent the problem or just deal with it. The biggest issue is the power boost in wielding a bigger weapon, but... Honestly, I think even that could be worked around. But it's easier and more user-friendly for WotC to just avoid implementing large-sized characters, and I get that. But they've done it before, so they have the capacity to implement them if they really wanted to.
I've played as a Large Minotaur and the other players decided to sneak through a sewer system to try and get under the place we needed to go. I asked the DM, "Is the tunnel big enough for me?" We all fell silent as we realized, I was too big.
Squeeze mechanics?
@@wizardtim8573 everyone just decided it would be easier if I just waited outside
Pull a pathfinder and reduce the AC of large PCs, that way you become a lot easier to hit without a shield, which means if you do want to use a greatsword you'd be a sitting duck to touch spells/attacks
You mean go back to DnD 3.5 size rules. Pathfinder got the size penalty/bonus to AC straight from DnD 3.X.
@@peregry Both are correct, you don't need to 'umm actually' someone if they're still right.
Yup. I played a homebrew frost giant in a Pathfinder 1e campaign and it worked out just fine. He did more damage but he also missed more often and was hit by enemies more easily. It balanced out and was a refreshing way to play a campaign. I still remember just how fucked I was when the DM had a group of guards break out the flaming arrows, too. That fire vulnerability was no joke.
Also just say most cover either won't help you or has it's category reduced (full to three quarters three quarters to half).
@@russeshe001 'Umm actually' is to argue a semantic, being broadly right or wrong is irrelevant since it's pertaining to the specifics and technicalities.
This was solved in 3.5! You take the weapon damage up by one dice step. 1d4 becomes 1d6. 1d6 becomes 1d8. 1d12 become 2d6. Big monsters just have tons more strength so they get a bigger +damage on the end.
I like the idea of finding a greatax that was made for a kobold and using it as a battleax. Regular battleaxe does 1d8 but a kobold greataxe does 1d10. It's a creative way to improve your PC's weapons without making the weapons magical.
Small correction, the die progression went like this:
1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 2d6 -> 3d6 -> 4d6 -> 6d6 -> 8d6 etc.
And for more exotic dice it was:
1d10 -> 2d8 -> 3d8 -> 4d8 -> 6d8 -> 8d8 etc.
1d12 -> 3d6 -> 4d6 -> 6d6 -> 8d6 etc.
So it did snowball at the largest sizes, but understandably so. After all, getting hit by a Colossal Greataxe is like colliding with a freight train head-on...
The system was cool as shit and allowed for a lot of shenanigans. One of my favorite characters was a Master Of Many Forms druid that wielded an enchanted 2-meter long axe (thanks to a feat) and could morph himself into a Huge Giant, enlarging the axe even further.
Slapping someone with a 21d6+45 crit to the face was... memorable.
I think I can explain why grappling is a problem.
I once played a Fighter, whose magical armor got infused by the soul of a white dragon (two nat20s on a thingy, it's a long story), allowing him to turn into an Adult White Dragon for 1 minute every 30 days (retaining some of my character's class features, but not racial features etc.). When our characters were in their mid-levels, the single-target damage of the dragon was actually lower than that of my fighter, but it had one significant advantage (other than fly speed, I guess): its size was huge. And I used that fact when we had to fight an Ancient Black Dragon in its lair. How? Well...
On my turn, I can make 3 attacks with my action (+ action surge if needed) and each of them can be replaced with a grapple. Even with lower strength (and no Athletics proficiency as per the dragon - which wouldn't be the case with an actual character), the probability of me successfully grappling the other dragon was pretty high on the very first turn (and legendary resistances can't help him). And now the black dragon has 2 choices:
1. Remain immobile for the remainder of that fight:
- it cannot use fancy tactics like staying out of range of most of us and use its breath weapon whenever available
- it cannot escape
- it cannot try to finish off wounded characters who hid behind something or ran out of range
- if our other characters were all ranged, it could only really attack my character, who is pretty tanky as a dragon (imagine the grappling PC being a barbarian instead...)
- etc.
2. Try to break the grapple on its turn:
- it takes a full action (not just one attack) to attempt to break a grapple
- it still had a decent chance of failing if it tried, completely wasting its turn
- even if it succeeds, I'm very likely to just re-grapple it on my next turn
The fight still wasn't a free win due to lair actions, legendary actions etc., but it was made SIGNIFICANTLY easier without needing any other special resources (we didn't even bring acid resistance potions...) or particularly lucky rolls.
Now imagine being able to do that in every single boss fight with just a 2nd level spell or an uncommon potion... seems fair and balanced? :P
Wizard handing a Rune Knight a ring of spell storing: We will suplex a storm giants.
Rune Knight: Yes!
"And fuck up the bell curve"
Yeah, because a character who just killed an Oni couldn't ever find a Flametongue Longsword...
The problem with that is the DM decides if you find a Flametongue Longsword. If you can use giant monster weapons, then the DM can't send a monster with a weapon he doesn't want you having against you.
@@TheGregamonster that's already part of dming. As soon as you have your first encounter against guys with plate armor you could just steal their plate armor. That's a far bigger impact than a couple extra damage dice.
@@TheGregamonster yeah, martial classes need to be kept in check! Not as though there's also a level 1 single target spell that can exploit weaknesses of most monsters because it can change elements and it's scaling is SUPER good with it having 3d8 (????) Elemental damage at level 1.
...wait.
And level 5? Fuck no one should be able to deal more than 4d6 damage. That would BREAK the game. Especially if they could hit more than one target.
@@airagog If you live in a world where you can bend reality to your will and you refuse to learn how, that's on you.
Back in the good ol' days, I played a large human. Basically Andre The Giant in spiked fullplate armor. According to the rules back then you could grapple up to 3 people at a time, but you take a -5 per additional person. This was SUPER FUN! Example: oh no that spell caster is about to fireball the entire party. Andre performs headlock doing armor spike damage+str every turn and preventing any spells requiring somatic components. Oh no there is a horde of goblins attacking, andre uses goblin mace(mace made of screaming terrified and soon to be dead goblin) it's super effect. Oh no the thief is escaping down that alley, andre uses squeeze. He gets stuck and the next hour of hilarity is the party trying to get him out without destroying the buildings.
Conclusion, large is fun.
3.5 had an awesome set of feats you could take: Monkey Grip + Wield Oversized Weapon combined would let you wield a weapon 2 size categories larger than yourself. Of course, weapons didn't scale multiplicatively back then...
I did this with a homebrew character originally made for a one shot. I asked my dm before we started what the other half of a half-orc is. His response was a smile so I became a half-orc, half-ogre. I was a large creature and my weapon of choice was an anchor. I could wield it with one hand and it was a d12. There were definately times that were a pain travelling or very funny where the party is talking to an evil hag in her small hut and I’m just chasing butterflies outside
I literally played a large creature in 5e (fighter) from the start of the campaign. I agreed with the DM that I will not benefit from the larger weapon damage rule. There were no balance issues since.
I also feel that wizards themselves forgot their own rules on size when writing "Enlarge/Reduce". Since that spell increases the size of your equipment, why in the world would you get 1d4 extra damage? With a longsword, are you rolling 1d10+1d4+STR? 2d10+1d4+STR? Neither seems right and it seems to point at an oversight in design.
That's a carryover from older editions (3e/3.5e at least).
In older editions larger weapons dealing more damage was an explicit rule in the PHB. However being a larger size also just carried an inherent damage boost based on the size.
@@AztecCroc They need to decide if they want to recognize the square cube law or not.
I played a large Lizardfolk Barbarian with 18 strength in a party of small gnomes and a Dwarf. I was basically a party bus for the group while we traveled around.
You know, the more I think about it, the disadvantages in access to places, the inability to get standard equipment without more cost, and the likelihood that the "common folk" may have negative interactions with larger PCs kinda offsets the physical damage increase. That's especially true given a larger PC can be targeted by more opponents (considering the number of squares around their base.
I have one player who loves minotaurs. I just may allow him to be Large.
From the point of view of the game designers the problem is that they basically only created rules for combat though so they expect that most of the game will be combat. Everything else is pretty much DM's whim and they have no real way to way to ensure balance for that especially for organized play. That is the use case they designed for, the thing that helps market the game in stores.
I would agree with all of this if not for one simple thing: Vlagomir's Spark. What's Vlagomir's Spark, you ask? Oh, just this little effect in Rime of the Frostmaiden that happens when a Barbarian, Ranger, Monk, or Fighter touches Vlagomir's Spear. It's effects are...interesting, and are as follows:
"You gain 1 foot of height every hour and become proportionally heavier until you stand 21 feet tall and weigh 7,700 pounds. When you are 9 feet tall, your Strength becomes 19 unless it is already higher. For every 3 additional feet of height you gain, your Strength increases by 1, to a maximum of 23. Armor and clothing you are wearing and weapons you are carrying magically increase in size to match your growth. If you are the recipient of a greater restoration spell or similar magic, this charm vanishes from you, and you immediately shrink back to normal size, along with any armor, clothing, and weapons in your possession."
In case you thought you read that wrong or I misquoted, no, this is in fact a charm, as found in the 'Supernatural Effects' section of the DMG. So in a canonical, WotC-written adventure, it is perfectly reasonable for a martial character to be Huge in size at "ideally" levels 8-9.
If WotC is bold enough to give a charm that provides a permanent-albeit 'curable'-boost up to Huge size for adventurers levels 8-9, they can suck it up and give us Large races.
From a worldbuilding perspective large PC's arent an issue. Large races in general are though. Mostly because they ask the question "If something like 10% of your world are centaurs, how are buildings changed to accommodate them?" Which then spirals off into all manner of nonsense with stairs, ladders, how sturdy buildings have to be to support them on anything but the first floor, hallway dimensions, and so on and so on. Mechanically in combat it's honestly no different than dealing with an enlarged PC. And if the race in general is quite rare you can skip the worldbuilding aspects and make it an RP opportunity.
Thats the fun part tho
The other way to do it is to make a deliberate statement about the world not being designed with Large creatures in mind, even when Large races are fairly common. It shows the societal power imbalance between the Medium majority and the Large minority, and how the Powers That Be don't care about accommodating those that (literally) don't fit.
For instance, it's my headcanon that being a Centaur on Ravnica _sucks._ Both because everything is smaller and because there's all kinds of tight corners, verticality, and crowded areas. Dense, crowded urban terrain is not to the liking of a race whose natural proclivity is to run wild in vast open plains (that, thanks to the thousands of years of urbanization, no longer really exist). It's why so many Centaurs join the Gruul Clans. Living in Ravnica is enough to make a horse person want to tear it all down and flatten the rubble into pasture.
Why would buildings need to be enlarged to accomodate large cretures anyway. It's not like humans or dwarves are very friendly with minotaurs, and centaur society hates buildings and cities anyway. This is fantasy land, where racism and oppressing minorities for racial and cultural reasons is the norm
@@marcogenovesi8570 Or it could be fantasy land, where cities are absurdly diverse melting pots where people barely pay attention to racial differences (besides the practical), and entirely _different_ social conflicts are the norm. The 5e source book settings aren't the only ones, and a fantasy setting doesn't have to draw so directly from our real life societies.
This comes down to personal preference ofc, but honestly I find worlds where society has to deal with problems like "how to we build a society where goblins can live alongside 10 foot tall quadrupeds" a lot more interesting than "racism allegory number 1251"
@@incognitoburrito6020 **sniff** **sniff sniff** Smell that? Smells like _RAMPS._ **burrows back underground**
This is the territory where I would as the DM say "oh fuck all these rules, You want a big sword, fuckin do it if you have oh idunno.. 18 strength? who cares."
The semantics really cuts down on the fun & telling players they can go stab the big dragon with the fuckoff sword is more fun than saying "noo technically hegha;shgoisugpeiohasgh".
I enjoy the rewards of players ending up in dumb situations far more than following the rules. Anytime they suggest something I know is gonna make things interesting I tell them to go for it.
Oh, you want to attempt to sink a ship by punching a hole in it with your dragon breath while half your party is on board? Yes, I'll allow it.
I always had the urge to try playing a Large character just to see what it was like. DM worked with me to make a custom Drider class that felt balanced and honestly it was a lot of fun. I never felt broken. Each advantage usually has a disadvantage too. You block space? You're blocking it for allies too, and well, enemies want to beat you up more. You hit bigger areas? You struggle with cover a little more and are a bit easier to target. Stuff like that.
But what it really did was add a lot of roleplay or thinking where you wouldn't expect it. A character is unmoving? Put them on the drider's back. People are terrified of a big scary spider? How can we disguise them? There's a lot of fun to be had with large characters and if you're worried about balancing, some simple tweaks go a long way. I've never even thought about picking up enemy weapons unless it's a very fancy, named weapon, that is obviously a modified or magic basic weapon that one of us is supposed to obtain. Oni club? Yeah that's usually just "Unlootable." Eh, it's basically a video game, not many games let you loot everything, anyway!
I like how you specifically mention the oni's glaive. My friend ran a sadly short lived campaign where i played a barbarian. We killed an oni and we had a fun debate about whether I could use the glaive or not for this same reason. He basically told me "go for it, but you have to drag it around everywhere, can't attack twice with it, and it doesn't shrink so good luck."
I'm in a Pathfinder game with a couple friends as a 4'1" barbarian dwarf and somehow convinced an npc (and by proxy our GM) able to cast permanency spells to cast enlarge person on me, making myself 8'2"; I don't think he fully understood what he got himself into until my level 7 dwarf rolled a nat 1 for damage on a punch and still hit them for 22 dmg...
Needless to say I can't wait for our next game :)
opinion on making large characters pick 8 consecutive squares to be their reach, and if they want to change their reach they have to “turn around” like slow motion giants in cartoons
Deadass that’s how I “balance” games for my players. I want them to feel powerful and awesome because it often leads to them enjoying the game
Roll play balances the giant problem. Also, sure you can hit more squares but fill those squares with adds and now they get slapped 12 times a turn
Pro tip:Full Orc PCs have Powerful Build which makes you count as a size larger for carrying capacity and weight you can push drag or lift. As a DM I'd have a hard time not applying it to big ass weapons
I just played a large dryder battle master with great weapon fighting and polearm master. It was great fun not entirely unbalanced. Spaces made for medium features were difficult terrain and I had to be more careful about not getting too many enemies around me but we managed just fine.
3:02 - that is in fact the "heavy" property on weapons.
One size larger = disadvantage, 2 sizes (pre errata when shrunk gnomes and halflings couldnt use heavy weapons rather than also somehow had disadvantage on them) and no use.
Since a regular "Greatsword" is just a large creatures "shortsword".
During one of my Dungeons and Dragons adventures, I played as a Large Ogre character. Being bigger than most, I encountered several obstacles, such as not fitting into certain areas and having to wait outside in some situations. However, these challenges opened up more roleplaying opportunities for me and made the game more enjoyable and engaging overall. It allowed me to approach the game world from a unique perspective and provided a fresh, exciting experience.