Here's a fun idea, think about the environment. Fighting giants in a desert? Swap out their boulders for a 60ft cone of sand and make the players save vs blindness. Fighting in a Swamp? Have them chuck a ball of slime that restrains creatures in a 10ft radius
My favourite kind of giant is the Hill Giant. Sure, they're the lowest in the pecking order, and they're the big dumb brute of giantkind, but that's kind of why i love them. They're so easy to slot into an adventure due to their low CR, and their motivation for food means they can also make for great allies to other monster races, like goblinoids, orcs, and kobolds. And even though they're dumb, I still try to give them culture. For example, I once ran a Hill Giant who was looking for an exotic, new food to present to a lady hill giant as a wedding gift, so the PCs used the Enlarge spell on a cow and convinced him that it was a special growing-cow. I also had the players discover a sprawling mass of hills that had faces, which was a hidden burial site for Hill Giants. Each hill used to be a giant, who after death had returned to the earth, so to say. Each hill had a stone placed beside their face with the giant's name, age, and their greatest accomplishment (eating the most pumpkins, killing a dragon, writing a five-sentence poem) written in giant. Just because Hill Giants are big dumb hungry boys doesn't mean they can't still have a society or a place among their larger, smarter brethren.
Whenever I think of giants, I think of the giants of Narnia. when the children are walking along a cliffside and Giants start hurling rocks at them. I know it's a typical trope, but it's what I always think about. Happy bday child of cody. I hope its a blessed one.
I like the idea of adding a strong element of "noblesse oblige" to the Ordening - It's not just that who owes respect to whom, but also that the greater have a obligation to protect the lesser and see to their wellbeing. The team wipes out a band of hill giants and suddenly finds they're being pursued by a fire giant posse.
underrated giant-kin: Oni. They have damage, stealth, control, regeneration, and shapeshifting. Playing them as an ambush attacker is fine, but having them infiltrate the party or lure members away from the group, only to take chunks out of them before vanishing into the night is terrifying. And if the party can't nail them down, they'll close their wounds in a few minutes to repeat the routine, (potentially with a new face!) before the party can rest. Absolutely horrific.
@@BrianWalker93 so I used The Everlasting One Frost Giant stat block and the anvil was attached to a 10-foot chain and did 3d12+strength. The earth shatter effect I stole from reddit u/sendmeyourjokes from a homebrew weapon they made called Chieftain's Fury. I looked up Reinhardt's Hammer D&D and found it.
I remember one of the best scenes I ever painted was the "Young" Giant king, an absolutely ancient Titan from the "Final Wars". He replaced Anam in the end of that dungeon in SKT and answered any question asked. I had him sitting in an ancient throne and bound in Eldritch chains and Roots planted by archdruids past, hundreds of feet tall and communicating only in telepathy. I was running Tyranny of Dragons at the Same time and one of the players was Westmarching and asked the location of "All" of Tiamat's artifacts, I had to look up if there were more than just the crowns and when I saw there were I had the player roll a d20. I think they rolled a 12 so the Titan had time enough only to recall his memory of twelve ancient locations of such items (that could be researched where they moved more easily now thymey knew they exist and had a starting point) before hordes of Abishai teleported in from a dark gate. The party fought for several rounds and when it was clear they couldn't handle it, the Titan told the wizard to cast silence at his highest ability. That would be his 4th spell slot. The Titan opened his mouth and sucked in enough air to force a DC 19 strength save to which the rogue failed but the Paladin used a reaction to catch him (wizard had gloves of orc strength). The abishai were torn to pieces and jellified by the intensity of the titans whisper and the wizard made 3 concentration checks as the ground below was violently shaking 4-5ft per 1/8th of a second. Then shade of tiamat, a shadowy manifestation of her weakest avatar, manifested and the Titan warned the warlock with telepathy "cast your deepest darkness, that you may survive my light. This shadow beast intends to release me, my time to walk has not yet come." The Titan lifts a finger and the Warlock burns through all of his slots trying to keep darkness up for 1d4 rounds(3)
So timely!! I am currently running a modified Against the Giants (Tales of the Yawning Portal). Instead of the drow stirring up trouble, there's a giant-sized humanoid going around claiming to be the long-awaited (millenia of waiting...) child of Annam and Othea that heralds the return of the giant empire of Ostoria. The hill, frost and fire giants accept his claim, the stone, cloud and storm giants want proof... he just has to conquer a single human kingdom to prove his claim. If he succeeds, they'll join his cause, and the world is in for a bad time. I explained the presence of dragons in the later two modules by interjecting some "enemy of my enemy" nonsense fostered by devotees of Tiamat, but there's a sudden but inevitable betrayal in the offing...
Holy crap my campaign is almost this but all of the giants accept him and it is full scale war. My child of Annam is basically an avatar of Annam himself sent to unite the giants after the 10,000 year curse. I gave him “runic magic” that he uses to empower the different giant kings (these plus the avatar are the final BBEGs!) to create “Jotunn” of the various different elements. They were also given the names of the different giant demigods. My party is basically a strike team for the Lords’ Alliance.
In my setting, the first encounter with giants is also the first encounter with dragons. Under a monastery atop a volcanic island-mountain, the PCs explore some caves. Two of the monks from the monastery are following along just to observe. While in the caves, there's a constant clanging - metal-on-metal, like a bell being rung or a smith's hammer striking his anvil. As they work their way through, they come into a large area where three fire giants (one of them is a dreadnaught) working a giant-sized volcanic forge. Firenewts are there helping, along with some (fire) guard drakes standing guard. A magic portal opens and closes, through which the fire giants are sending their finished products. Fight ensues, but since the PCs are only around level 5-7, they are definitely outmatched. That's when the two monks reveal their true nature: one is a red dragon and the other is a gold dragon (they are lovers!), who transform and join the fight, turning the tide. This is a major reveal that sets the PCs on the next major leg of their progress in the campaign. I've run this multiple times, and I love the reaction of the players when I replace the two monks on the battle map with the dragons. The last group took pics and posted them on their FB timelines. It is later learned that one the main BBEGs in my world has taken control of the giants and is training and preparing them for an assault against some of the cities in the neighboring realms, so that she (the BBEG) can further her own goals.
I too have Giants and Dragons in the same one shot. The party enters a portal and is teleported under a table in the center of a coliseum. Two hill giants engage in an eat off to achieve the rank glutton. One dies and the other fights the team. When the smoke clears the team get teleported back. The quest giver reveals he is a dragon.
Yes! Some SKT love! I'm currently in my second run through and I too LOVE this adventure. When you trim the fat and guide it to be more streamlined, it's an awesome story
A lot of people seem to hate SKT, but it's honestly some of the best content WotC has ever released. It's sure a lot better than most of the 5e stuff they've released
@@Draaza People seem to hate SKT because of chapter 3 being big and sprawling, which I think is a poor excuse. The chapter has tons of small encounters and plot-hooks to remind the PCs of their mission to stop the giant threat, and plenty of powerful allies who can aid them (Old Gnawbone spring to mind especially). SKT has one of the best stories WotC has released, and easily the best one that has that classical high fantasy feel: you and your friends are heroes travelling the land defeating evil giants and trying to unravel a mystery about why they're even active to begin with.
@@Samaru163 Yeah, it does a great job of having that big high fantasy feel. I think it is a bit poor about Chapter 3, I agree it could be better streamlined, but it never feels like anything is out of place to me
I had this idea for a high level one shot. There’s a costal town that used to be protected by a benevolent young bronze dragon that brutally murdered by a storm giant and pet behir. He or she proceeds to impose a tyrannical rule over the town and the town seeks the help of a high level adventuring party to slay the tyrants. The storm giant comes with lair actions, legendary resistances, legendary actions, and a special action if their behir dies in combat. Will come back with more details when I find my notebook lol
I know it's super cliché. But having a giant disguised among humans to explode into thier true size in front of these humans they walked alongside in town gives me attack on titan vibes
Since giants are so big, I like a Sweep attack. This is a weapon attack which hits multiple PCs simultaneously. You can also combine it with knock back or knocking prone, to get a really scary attack.
A reminder that the demon lord, Kostchtchie, is a fantastic default for giants to worship. Regarding the "Twists", in 3.5 there was a stat block for a hill giant dire wereboar. I'd like to see something like that make a comeback. My favourite kind of giant is probably a storm giant. Frost giants are definitely up there too. The last scenario I played in where I took on a giant was a 3.5 module and we had to take on a pair of death giants. Those are not fun to deal with.
For LMoP I had my players come across a Hill Giant toddler. It was roughly the 6.5 ft tall and ridixulously strong and had killed a merchant in the middle of the road. It had been seperated from its mother by a group of orc bandits. This led to a great combat with my 2 player group escorting a toddler hill giant, stealthing to free it's mother, and fighting to reunite thw two without getting killed in the process. It was fantastic.
I love when you and Dungeon Dudes do stuff like this. It inspires me so much with sidequests and other awesome adventures for the party I've been running a game for the last three years. Thanks and Happy Birthday to your son!
Minor villain in my ongoing campaign is a 4 armed giant who came back in time to kill one of the party members. The party member was a rune knight who sold his descendants souls to a demon lord so he could use a warlock cantrip to make "funny lights". The descendants in the future would then practice insane training and eugenics to make their children unkillable so their souls would get sucked down the abyss. The 4 armed giant then found a way to go back in time to stop the party member for ever making the deal in the first place
My party ran into a trio of Hill Giants on the way to Gauntlgrym during Out of the Abyss a few months ago. The DM was very worried about a TPK, but he underestimated how fast we could move and how much damage we could deal. Dragging three severed Giant heads and massive sacks of fingernails for potion making was a very fun way to reach a Dwarven city.
Happy B-day! Thought about using Giants but haven’t. I have a homebrew campaign. Because they seem like someone that could be seen easily walking about on a regular basis, it seems you would have to make sure their existence were worked into the “landscape” of the land/campaign the heroes are in near the beginning. In other words, where do they reside in the land, how often are they seen, what is their and how often is their interaction with the people of the lands, and etc? If the heroes were from that land, outside of legends and children stories of them being seen in ages past, if the giants were already present in the land, then they would know about them and maybe even seen one or more. Otherwise, an optional work in is the idea that maybe the reason they haven’t been seen for ages now is that there was a portal they come and go through into the land and others. It has not been activated for ages. Dragons inhabit the heroes lands (traditionally already assumed and seen there) and giants occupy another land beyond the portals. Though enemies, maybe a truce was made in ages past and either a dragon or giant has violated that truce (purposefully or accidentally) or some cult or faction desires to start the war again for some reason and creates the illusion that the truce has been violated. Either way, now each side blames the other, and the war begins again. Now both go through the portals to do combat at times and for the first time in ages, giants are being seen moving about the land and in battle with dragons. Which side will the heroes take now? The rest will have to be worked out. Glad I saw your video and wrote this comment. It helped me to develop a potential way to work them in to the current campaign and have them suddenly appear and being seen moving about the land and fighting with dragons, wyverns, and such. Maybe the ogres, smarter than they are normally portrayed but keeping the low intelligence act, who were left behind as watchers of the dragons to make sure the truce is kept. WOW! Ideas are flowing. This will allow me to have the heroes come across a rare footprint that is partially covered by the effects of time and a few bones of giants that have fallen in battle...Maybe a skull or two found in a dragon’s lair that they are in. Finding maps to the portals in an Ogres lair which seems more put together than expected for an ogre’s lair. Thanks for the video! Great information as always.
I've had alot of love for simple Hill Giants, mostly because they're one of the few Giant variants that can be easily bribed and most likely the one to live in family groups. Once we had the party just kill a lone Hill Giant unprovoked and it started a vendetta with that Giants clan.
I can't put into words how much I appreciate this video. I've been DM'ing four campaigns over three and a half years and never used giants in my games for the simple fact that whenever I saw their stat blocks they just never really stuck out to me. Thanks to that, I've never really looked into them, but a short dive into their culture and history makes them way, way more appealing to use. I specifically enjoyed discussing the potential mutations and variants!
I've always loved using Storm Giants as ancient sages/fonts of wisdom or warriors of legend who's giant...ness got forgotten over time (kinda how soulsborne games have ENORMOUS bosses but they're just talked about like normally sized people). The kinds of NPCs that stay mostly uninvolved, but when they act it becomes incredibly important. I'll often have them with some kind of possibly uneasy alliance with a faction of Cloud Giants, as their domains can often overlap.
Howdy from Texas! More KYP!!! I LOVE this series!! Yes, I have The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, but Cody’s got a good perspective as well. You can’t have too many ways to kill your PCs.
I once ran a little scenario against a nest of harpies. A few turns into that fight when most of the harpies had been dealt with, in stumbles an entranced ettin. Now the party has to figure out how to deal with this new threat. One of my favorites because it completely changed the tactics needed for the encounter.
I loved this video. The main plot arch of the campaign I’m running rn is that there is an evil Goblin/Troll like creature named King Grimm and his Lieutenants all roughly being based off of different Grimm Fairytales. The first of which my players will get to when the go to find the tribe of the Goliath in their parties uncle who is deep within the mountains. But when they get there, his Uncle Jackileye (Jack for short), tells them the tribe is now under the possession of the mistress of the mountains, an incredibly powerful frost giant maiden. Obviously this is roughly based off of Jack and the bean stalk. Each Lieutenant has been given a homebrewed legendary magic item the players will learn they need to collect before they can take down King Grimm. And seeing these interesting ways you talked about using giants really inspired me for both this encounter and the King Grimm one as he can grow to immense size, even bigger than a giant.
I love fire giants from an visual point of view, and I think their view on the Ordining is really easy for characters to grasp. I have two favorites though in actual use. Ogres, and Cloud Giants. Ogres, specifically the Howda, and other siege variants have such an easily digestible image, with things like LOTR giving players an instant image and sense of dread. I also have a recurring cloud giant NPC that has a floating castle that is a menagerie of impossible things, and whenever players interact with him he will usually have something they need or want forcing players to either bargain with this odd individual that usually presents as human size in a giant home, or contemplate stealing or tricking him at great personal risk. One group did try and fool him, and spent the rest of the campaign on the move contently watching the skys for his floating castle constantly following.
I once had a group of giants play baseball with our party's paladin. One held an action to swing their club attack after another used it's fling attack. My man got blitzed clear off a cliff face with the ensuing homerun swing, and everytime I mention giants now that player begins cursing under their breath lol
dude... i watched your roll20 tutorials back in the day and came back only recently for the accent/voice video... i am very glad i did! especially the last three videos are really great content :) keep it up!
Love the Fling attack, will definitely be using that from now on. I threw a solo fire giant against my party a while back, my favorite change was I gave it a 1/day ability that was essentially thunder step - flavored as it did a running leap to move 60 feet with an AoE burst of flame as it landed. I also gave it a low damage fire aura for anyone dealing damage in melee with it, which led to an awesome moment where our rogue got a killing sneak attack off on it but was downed by the aura at the same time.
There was a DnD campaign on RUclips called the "Sunday Morning Heroes" years ago, and in one of the last couple episodes the party was attacked by an ettin. One of the players managed to feed the ettin a love potion, and the DM played it as one of the heads now wanting to help the party while the other head still wanted to attack them. The absurdity of that scene is what convinced me to start playing myself.
the stone giant gave us the most trouble . surprised us coming out of the wall, flung me into the pool that turns you to stone, and crit'd the bard into a wall, nearly killing him. He jumped in the pool with me and we dimension doored out by the skin of our teeth!
I use fling on most giant creatures, not just giants. My favorite currently is Frost Giant Everlasting One. I had a BBEG that was one with the Mobile Feat and a 20 ft chain whip that he could sweep through the battlefield as a homebrew AOE. He also rode a Mammoth and had a pet Remorhaz. He was raising an army of "rejected" giants (Trolls, Ogres, Cyclops, etc).
I like heartkiller just for the lore purposes, the concept of a hero for giant culture who’ll wipe away the shame of their fall from greatness is an amazing campaign or plot hook!
Hail to Benjamin! Yes, so glad to see a new KYPW! Didn't expect Giants, but a very welcome surprise. So, favorite giant: storm giants; I have a soft spot for the Storm Shepherds from the Seventh Tower series. My plan to use a giant: mid tier. A night hag has made a deal with a hill giant, turning it into a wereboar in exchange for becoming a godzilla monster to destroy a city, which the party needs to stop. Also, a setup for the hag's blood magic and the gnoll-dragon hybrid I'm capping the campaign with. You da man, Cody! Fingers crossed for the Yuan-Ti episode?
Just recently finished a campaign that featured an army of giants as the main protag. I'm thrilled to pieces that there's an official fling mechanic out there that I inadvertently mimicked almost verbatim 😅 Also, the fire giant dreadnoughts from Mordenkeinen's are far and away my favorite giant to throw at a group
Thanks for this Video! it made my combat versus a giant much more fun for my group. I used your pick up idea, and he threw them across the combat field and it to trees. Also Titans are going to be the BBE for the Campaign since I decided to use Roman god names to keep it easier for my players and me, so the Titans make a perfect BBE.
My first use of a Giant was a Frost Giant. Unfortunately, the group I was part of wasn't very helpful to me being new to DMing and TTRPGs all that much, but I did like the idea of what I did with the Frost Giant being the head of a Barbarian mountain dwarf society and he was only that because he killed the previous chief of the group and they had to follow his rules. So I may use him again with this new group and new world, and flesh him out more. Since the world in this campaign actually more dangerous than the world I was doing the first campaign. >_> This video also had me getting an idea about how the hell I may explain this one "Colossal Abomination" that my new group keeps hearing and seeing out in the distance that actually towers over mountains. (Dungeon Crawler Classics actually give you more room to do larger creatures that doesn't have a height restriction and each monster would have their unique thing that makes them different in every part of the adventure). And they could potentially meet a Polymorphed Giant trying to find someone to deal with the thing as it's so dangerous even to giants.
Cloud giant take the cake for me. With there tall castles or even flying ones. Their wealth allows you to add fun details like there weapons having the aesthetics of fine marble sculptures, or even have the rock they throw being luxurious. like they are made of gem or polished stone maybe even carved into shapes like spheres or dodecahedrons. Just a lot of flavor you can get from them
I had a giant sasquatch giant that I set up as one of the remaining guardians for nature in a homebrew campaign. This particular giant had a fling ability that I never got to use lol
Cloud giants for sure. The are the charisma giant. I can imagine a Cloud giant bard trying to talk a dragon out of it hoard, or a warlock who lives in a lavish cloud but has a great debt belonging to Mammon.
Speaking of mutatating giants, I am running a campaign with mind flayers as main villains. They are experimenting on creating more powerful versions of themselves and ceremorphosed trolls and giants are among them
I was toying with the idea of a mechanic for my giants in my game (that my players haven't met yet) where when they hit a player with an attack with their club, the player is flung away a number of feet equal to how far over the player's AC the attack succeeded by. So if giant A attacks player B with a 20AC, and the giant's attack would hit AC30, the player is thrown back 10 feet. Any distance longer than 10 feet and the player is knocked prone. I figure this would be really fun if the giant crits, and would be great fun describing the player flying and flailing through the air.
I ran a Spelljammer campaign, and the party encountered giants in a fun way. First was a commission by a cloud giant ruler of an air world. The big one though was a flying island if all giant types as an adventuring party that traveled around showing people how awesome giants were by tackling their biggest problems.
This video made me miss being a DM. Happy birthday to your kiddo! My favorite Giants are Frost Giants. My longest running campaign took place with a kingdom of ice and snow to the north. Not only would the party stumble across fights between Frost Giants and White Dragons as they ventured through the mountain borders, but there was a notorious Frost Giant Death Knight that would wreak havoc on the party from time to time and disappear upon defeat. Good times.
Death giants. Some versions heal when something dies near them. So when your PCs use their high level AOE spells in a populated area they can completely heal the giant. I purposely introduced him as a mini boss for the big bad at the end of the campaign, and gave him all manner of cannon fauder that worships the big bad, so when he needed a heal he would just use a sweeping attack and kill a few. One of the PCs use a sun burst which while did a bunch of damage to him, also killed a bunch of weak baddies completely healing him as he absorbed the energy of their souls
I was running AL SKT, and they encountered frost giants (2) up on the spine of the world heading to the Temple of the All father. The party decided to pick a fight with them. I had one frost giant throw the barbarian off the mountain. Unfortunately his rage did not save him being thrown off the mountain. A second encounter with frost giants at their home on the sea of moving Ice, I had a character get attacked by a Frost Giant, who had disadvantage to attack this party member. I throw a rock at him, double crit with disadvantage, so the party member used his last luck point to crit himself. The rock overkilled him.
I had a frost giant fling the party's halfling at the rest of the party. During the fight, the halfling tried to flirt with the boss giant (SKT) and failed unknowingly. She tricked him to come to him and despite the giant's minions were attacking the halfling in an attack of opportunity, the halfling kept coming close to the giantess. It wasn't smart for the halfling, since he was knocked unconscious before reaching her. She closed the distance to the unconscious halfling and flung him back at the party. It was fun!
I like ettins the most since they have fun role playing with the two heads, can be put into other societies as mercenaries and bodyguards rather seamlessly and their lore as the ‘runt of the litter’ is pretty interesting
I love Cloud Giants; the fact that they can be good or evil is awesome, but ultimately irrelevant, because their tricky nature means that you can never really know what they're planning. Plus, castles in the clouds provide a great stage to make the players rethink what's possible in a land of limitless magic. Second pick goes to stone giants, who mostly just want to be left alone to do their art (which is very understandable). I love that they think anything outside of their cave is somehow not real, and the surface world is essentially a dream realm where anything can happen and there are no consequences.
I just have to say, a) I've missed the KYPW series, and, b) instead of just throwing rocks, give giants slings. Boom, you've just turned them into a living trebuchet. Give them bows, now they're ballistae. Cheers.
The fire giants are my favorite. My group and I really enjoyed the Fire Giant Forge dungeon from Torm King's Thunder, and it feels cool to have a race that are war-oriented miners like dwarves, but larger and with a different personality
I take the NPC statblocks like Priest, Gladiator, Scout and apply them to different giants, using the giants standard block as a template. Our hasted barbarian was very unfortunate to run into a Fire Giant Priest of Surtur who then dispelled the magic. Then the FIre Giant Battlemaster cut him to ribbons!
More than few times I have given Giants different ranged weapons, like fire giants armed whit javelins increasing the range and adding posibility to pin their foe, frost giant using massive bolas to bind group of enemies in one trow or stone giant armed whit stone disc that are dam accurate and fly far.
Giants can create creative encounters because their size can be used to their advantage and detriment in a dungeon environment where they can’t always get to players who are in areas smaller than them.
Frost Giants are my favorite because one of my first characters was a Snow Goblin (no change in stats, just light blue skin :P) who was adopted by Frost Giants
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BENJAMIN 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 I love giants. I've always wanted to run a gun encounter involving a behir, or maybe a 3-way fight between some giants, behirs, and a dragon Personally I like the Oni, though I want to run a fire giant blacksmith at some point
Thanks for putting this out! I have been thinking about some giants coming up in the game I am running, and I love the KYPW series. If I could put a vote down, it would be for more videos in that series.
Fun fact about the Nephalim: they also appear in the Bible (in Genesis) with the same lore. They are just simply called "giants" in the enlish translations.
I'm running a Cloud Giant (favorite giant) as the BBEG in the current arc of our campaign. He still remembers the lost empire of giants over the realm, and while in exile after the humans conquered their land, he found a ring of 3 wishes, which he used to rise again to power, with a new castle and Slaads as minions in his control. So, believing he's the rightful sovereign of the land, he is waging war on the separate human states, taking advantage of how untrusting they are from one another.
I just had an idea for a giant bbeg that uses a pact weapon that is based off of an immovable rod. He summons it as all sorts of different weapons to meet his needs and can make them hold in place like the immovable rod. Imagine he summons a brick and flattens the barbarian fixing the brick in place, a giant staff held sideways pushing the whole party against the wall. Or even more brutal... Impale a pc on a sword and leave them suspended in midair to taunt the rest of the players.
In a 3.5 game I ran I had a PC with temporary fire immunity. They were fighting fire giants and one of them tackled the PC and sent them into a river of lava so the PC and that one Fire Giant started fighting in a lava river. For one whole round no one else fought, PCs or fire giants going "Well Damn"
OMG... I'm inspired. fling a PC to another giant, who swings a club... COMBO move, distance = 10' per every point above the AC they hit by, anything over a 100' is a home run !
Currently running my first adventure as a DM. Completely homebrew but adding some form of giant encounter sounds like a great idea. Really liked the corrupted by evil giant so i might run something like that in the later stages. Since my pc's only just reached lvl 2. My pick for favorite giant will be a storm giant. Just their sheer size speaks to the imagination
Fling is such a natural thing. They all throw boulders so they should be the kings of moving puny races around the battlefield. I also like to add some class level type abilities go individual giants. We never fight "just humans", so a giant with a paladin aura or sneak attack can be fun to mix it up.
dude when you said the black cat thing and that maybe it came from giant superstition i had an idea that it was originally a black dragon and now im totally gonna use that in my games
Here's a fun idea, think about the environment.
Fighting giants in a desert? Swap out their boulders for a 60ft cone of sand and make the players save vs blindness. Fighting in a Swamp? Have them chuck a ball of slime that restrains creatures in a 10ft radius
My favourite kind of giant is the Hill Giant. Sure, they're the lowest in the pecking order, and they're the big dumb brute of giantkind, but that's kind of why i love them. They're so easy to slot into an adventure due to their low CR, and their motivation for food means they can also make for great allies to other monster races, like goblinoids, orcs, and kobolds. And even though they're dumb, I still try to give them culture. For example, I once ran a Hill Giant who was looking for an exotic, new food to present to a lady hill giant as a wedding gift, so the PCs used the Enlarge spell on a cow and convinced him that it was a special growing-cow. I also had the players discover a sprawling mass of hills that had faces, which was a hidden burial site for Hill Giants. Each hill used to be a giant, who after death had returned to the earth, so to say. Each hill had a stone placed beside their face with the giant's name, age, and their greatest accomplishment (eating the most pumpkins, killing a dragon, writing a five-sentence poem) written in giant. Just because Hill Giants are big dumb hungry boys doesn't mean they can't still have a society or a place among their larger, smarter brethren.
They're not my favourite, but I love them because they remind me of the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk.
Whenever I think of giants, I think of the giants of Narnia. when the children are walking along a cliffside and Giants start hurling rocks at them. I know it's a typical trope, but it's what I always think about. Happy bday child of cody. I hope its a blessed one.
In one of the books the giants also used spiked shoes during a siege.
I think of the stone giants from the hobbit
I like the idea of adding a strong element of "noblesse oblige" to the Ordening - It's not just that who owes respect to whom, but also that the greater have a obligation to protect the lesser and see to their wellbeing. The team wipes out a band of hill giants and suddenly finds they're being pursued by a fire giant posse.
underrated giant-kin: Oni. They have damage, stealth, control, regeneration, and shapeshifting. Playing them as an ambush attacker is fine, but having them infiltrate the party or lure members away from the group, only to take chunks out of them before vanishing into the night is terrifying. And if the party can't nail them down, they'll close their wounds in a few minutes to repeat the routine, (potentially with a new face!) before the party can rest. Absolutely horrific.
Yay, a new KYPW episode! I've missed these. Great video!
Hey how about a weremammoth giant?
Hill and frost giants are actually very susceptible to lycanthropy by their lore.
That is an insanely exciting idea
I love that they gave one of the giants in Rime of the Frostmaiden an anvil attached to a chain as a weapon. Added in an earth shatter ability
I uh... I might need to get that statblock because holy shit that is awesome
@@BrianWalker93 so I used The Everlasting One Frost Giant stat block and the anvil was attached to a 10-foot chain and did 3d12+strength. The earth shatter effect I stole from reddit u/sendmeyourjokes from a homebrew weapon they made called Chieftain's Fury. I looked up Reinhardt's Hammer D&D and found it.
Love the fact he started with a shoutout to his son. Good man, priorities.
I remember one of the best scenes I ever painted was the "Young" Giant king, an absolutely ancient Titan from the "Final Wars". He replaced Anam in the end of that dungeon in SKT and answered any question asked.
I had him sitting in an ancient throne and bound in Eldritch chains and Roots planted by archdruids past, hundreds of feet tall and communicating only in telepathy.
I was running Tyranny of Dragons at the Same time and one of the players was Westmarching and asked the location of "All" of Tiamat's artifacts, I had to look up if there were more than just the crowns and when I saw there were I had the player roll a d20.
I think they rolled a 12 so the Titan had time enough only to recall his memory of twelve ancient locations of such items (that could be researched where they moved more easily now thymey knew they exist and had a starting point)
before hordes of Abishai teleported in from a dark gate.
The party fought for several rounds and when it was clear they couldn't handle it, the Titan told the wizard to cast silence at his highest ability. That would be his 4th spell slot.
The Titan opened his mouth and sucked in enough air to force a DC 19 strength save to which the rogue failed but the Paladin used a reaction to catch him (wizard had gloves of orc strength).
The abishai were torn to pieces and jellified by the intensity of the titans whisper and the wizard made 3 concentration checks as the ground below was violently shaking 4-5ft per 1/8th of a second.
Then shade of tiamat, a shadowy manifestation of her weakest avatar, manifested and the Titan warned the warlock with telepathy "cast your deepest darkness, that you may survive my light. This shadow beast intends to release me, my time to walk has not yet come." The Titan lifts a finger and the Warlock burns through all of his slots trying to keep darkness up for 1d4 rounds(3)
Thank you so much for reviving the KYPW series, I love it.
Happy Birthday Pal! I hope it's a great one :)
So timely!! I am currently running a modified Against the Giants (Tales of the Yawning Portal). Instead of the drow stirring up trouble, there's a giant-sized humanoid going around claiming to be the long-awaited (millenia of waiting...) child of Annam and Othea that heralds the return of the giant empire of Ostoria. The hill, frost and fire giants accept his claim, the stone, cloud and storm giants want proof... he just has to conquer a single human kingdom to prove his claim. If he succeeds, they'll join his cause, and the world is in for a bad time. I explained the presence of dragons in the later two modules by interjecting some "enemy of my enemy" nonsense fostered by devotees of Tiamat, but there's a sudden but inevitable betrayal in the offing...
Holy crap my campaign is almost this but all of the giants accept him and it is full scale war. My child of Annam is basically an avatar of Annam himself sent to unite the giants after the 10,000 year curse. I gave him “runic magic” that he uses to empower the different giant kings (these plus the avatar are the final BBEGs!) to create “Jotunn” of the various different elements. They were also given the names of the different giant demigods. My party is basically a strike team for the Lords’ Alliance.
In my setting, the first encounter with giants is also the first encounter with dragons. Under a monastery atop a volcanic island-mountain, the PCs explore some caves. Two of the monks from the monastery are following along just to observe. While in the caves, there's a constant clanging - metal-on-metal, like a bell being rung or a smith's hammer striking his anvil. As they work their way through, they come into a large area where three fire giants (one of them is a dreadnaught) working a giant-sized volcanic forge. Firenewts are there helping, along with some (fire) guard drakes standing guard. A magic portal opens and closes, through which the fire giants are sending their finished products. Fight ensues, but since the PCs are only around level 5-7, they are definitely outmatched. That's when the two monks reveal their true nature: one is a red dragon and the other is a gold dragon (they are lovers!), who transform and join the fight, turning the tide. This is a major reveal that sets the PCs on the next major leg of their progress in the campaign.
I've run this multiple times, and I love the reaction of the players when I replace the two monks on the battle map with the dragons. The last group took pics and posted them on their FB timelines.
It is later learned that one the main BBEGs in my world has taken control of the giants and is training and preparing them for an assault against some of the cities in the neighboring realms, so that she (the BBEG) can further her own goals.
Do you mind if I borrow this hook? That's freaking awesome!
I too have Giants and Dragons in the same one shot.
The party enters a portal and is teleported under a table in the center of a coliseum.
Two hill giants engage in an eat off to achieve the rank glutton.
One dies and the other fights the team. When the smoke clears the team get teleported back. The quest giver reveals he is a dragon.
Cody, your videos never fail to disappoint. I am ALWAYS inspired by your “KYPW” videos!
Yes! Some SKT love! I'm currently in my second run through and I too LOVE this adventure. When you trim the fat and guide it to be more streamlined, it's an awesome story
A lot of people seem to hate SKT, but it's honestly some of the best content WotC has ever released. It's sure a lot better than most of the 5e stuff they've released
@@Draaza People seem to hate SKT because of chapter 3 being big and sprawling, which I think is a poor excuse. The chapter has tons of small encounters and plot-hooks to remind the PCs of their mission to stop the giant threat, and plenty of powerful allies who can aid them (Old Gnawbone spring to mind especially). SKT has one of the best stories WotC has released, and easily the best one that has that classical high fantasy feel: you and your friends are heroes travelling the land defeating evil giants and trying to unravel a mystery about why they're even active to begin with.
@@Samaru163 Yeah, it does a great job of having that big high fantasy feel. I think it is a bit poor about Chapter 3, I agree it could be better streamlined, but it never feels like anything is out of place to me
I had this idea for a high level one shot. There’s a costal town that used to be protected by a benevolent young bronze dragon that brutally murdered by a storm giant and pet behir. He or she proceeds to impose a tyrannical rule over the town and the town seeks the help of a high level adventuring party to slay the tyrants. The storm giant comes with lair actions, legendary resistances, legendary actions, and a special action if their behir dies in combat. Will come back with more details when I find my notebook lol
I know it's super cliché. But having a giant disguised among humans to explode into thier true size in front of these humans they walked alongside in town gives me attack on titan vibes
Since giants are so big, I like a Sweep attack. This is a weapon attack which hits multiple PCs simultaneously. You can also combine it with knock back or knocking prone, to get a really scary attack.
A reminder that the demon lord, Kostchtchie, is a fantastic default for giants to worship.
Regarding the "Twists", in 3.5 there was a stat block for a hill giant dire wereboar. I'd like to see something like that make a comeback.
My favourite kind of giant is probably a storm giant. Frost giants are definitely up there too. The last scenario I played in where I took on a giant was a 3.5 module and we had to take on a pair of death giants. Those are not fun to deal with.
Objection! That loving, wholesome, heartfelt birthday wish for your clearly amazing son was at least 15 seconds not including the 10 second preamble.
For LMoP I had my players come across a Hill Giant toddler. It was roughly the 6.5 ft tall and ridixulously strong and had killed a merchant in the middle of the road. It had been seperated from its mother by a group of orc bandits.
This led to a great combat with my 2 player group escorting a toddler hill giant, stealthing to free it's mother, and fighting to reunite thw two without getting killed in the process.
It was fantastic.
I love when you and Dungeon Dudes do stuff like this. It inspires me so much with sidequests and other awesome adventures for the party I've been running a game for the last three years. Thanks and Happy Birthday to your son!
Minor villain in my ongoing campaign is a 4 armed giant who came back in time to kill one of the party members. The party member was a rune knight who sold his descendants souls to a demon lord so he could use a warlock cantrip to make "funny lights". The descendants in the future would then practice insane training and eugenics to make their children unkillable so their souls would get sucked down the abyss. The 4 armed giant then found a way to go back in time to stop the party member for ever making the deal in the first place
My party ran into a trio of Hill Giants on the way to Gauntlgrym during Out of the Abyss a few months ago. The DM was very worried about a TPK, but he underestimated how fast we could move and how much damage we could deal. Dragging three severed Giant heads and massive sacks of fingernails for potion making was a very fun way to reach a Dwarven city.
Love the thought of a tiny gnome NPC turning into a storm giant! Literally Attack on Titan style!!
Happy B-day! Thought about using Giants but haven’t. I have a homebrew campaign. Because they seem like someone that could be seen easily walking about on a regular basis, it seems you would have to make sure their existence were worked into the “landscape” of the land/campaign the heroes are in near the beginning.
In other words, where do they reside in the land, how often are they seen, what is their and how often is their interaction with the people of the lands, and etc? If the heroes were from that land, outside of legends and children stories of them being seen in ages past, if the giants were already present in the land, then they would know about them and maybe even seen one or more.
Otherwise, an optional work in is the idea that maybe the reason they haven’t been seen for ages now is that there was a portal they come and go through into the land and others. It has not been activated for ages. Dragons inhabit the heroes lands (traditionally already assumed and seen there) and giants occupy another land beyond the portals. Though enemies, maybe a truce was made in ages past and either a dragon or giant has violated that truce (purposefully or accidentally) or some cult or faction desires to start the war again for some reason and creates the illusion that the truce has been violated. Either way, now each side blames the other, and the war begins again. Now both go through the portals to do combat at times and for the first time in ages, giants are being seen moving about the land and in battle with dragons. Which side will the heroes take now? The rest will have to be worked out.
Glad I saw your video and wrote this comment. It helped me to develop a potential way to work them in to the current campaign and have them suddenly appear and being seen moving about the land and fighting with dragons, wyverns, and such. Maybe the ogres, smarter than they are normally portrayed but keeping the low intelligence act, who were left behind as watchers of the dragons to make sure the truce is kept. WOW! Ideas are flowing.
This will allow me to have the heroes come across a rare footprint that is partially covered by the effects of time and a few bones of giants that have fallen in battle...Maybe a skull or two found in a dragon’s lair that they are in. Finding maps to the portals in an Ogres lair which seems more put together than expected for an ogre’s lair.
Thanks for the video! Great information as always.
I've had alot of love for simple Hill Giants, mostly because they're one of the few Giant variants that can be easily bribed and most likely the one to live in family groups. Once we had the party just kill a lone Hill Giant unprovoked and it started a vendetta with that Giants clan.
I can't put into words how much I appreciate this video. I've been DM'ing four campaigns over three and a half years and never used giants in my games for the simple fact that whenever I saw their stat blocks they just never really stuck out to me. Thanks to that, I've never really looked into them, but a short dive into their culture and history makes them way, way more appealing to use. I specifically enjoyed discussing the potential mutations and variants!
I've always loved using Storm Giants as ancient sages/fonts of wisdom or warriors of legend who's giant...ness got forgotten over time (kinda how soulsborne games have ENORMOUS bosses but they're just talked about like normally sized people). The kinds of NPCs that stay mostly uninvolved, but when they act it becomes incredibly important. I'll often have them with some kind of possibly uneasy alliance with a faction of Cloud Giants, as their domains can often overlap.
Howdy from Texas!
More KYP!!! I LOVE this series!!
Yes, I have The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, but Cody’s got a good perspective as well. You can’t have too many ways to kill your PCs.
I once ran a little scenario against a nest of harpies. A few turns into that fight when most of the harpies had been dealt with, in stumbles an entranced ettin. Now the party has to figure out how to deal with this new threat. One of my favorites because it completely changed the tactics needed for the encounter.
I loved this video. The main plot arch of the campaign I’m running rn is that there is an evil Goblin/Troll like creature named King Grimm and his Lieutenants all roughly being based off of different Grimm Fairytales. The first of which my players will get to when the go to find the tribe of the Goliath in their parties uncle who is deep within the mountains. But when they get there, his Uncle Jackileye (Jack for short), tells them the tribe is now under the possession of the mistress of the mountains, an incredibly powerful frost giant maiden.
Obviously this is roughly based off of Jack and the bean stalk. Each Lieutenant has been given a homebrewed legendary magic item the players will learn they need to collect before they can take down King Grimm. And seeing these interesting ways you talked about using giants really inspired me for both this encounter and the King Grimm one as he can grow to immense size, even bigger than a giant.
I love fire giants from an visual point of view, and I think their view on the Ordining is really easy for characters to grasp. I have two favorites though in actual use. Ogres, and Cloud Giants. Ogres, specifically the Howda, and other siege variants have such an easily digestible image, with things like LOTR giving players an instant image and sense of dread. I also have a recurring cloud giant NPC that has a floating castle that is a menagerie of impossible things, and whenever players interact with him he will usually have something they need or want forcing players to either bargain with this odd individual that usually presents as human size in a giant home, or contemplate stealing or tricking him at great personal risk. One group did try and fool him, and spent the rest of the campaign on the move contently watching the skys for his floating castle constantly following.
OMG, Is that another KYPW?!? I’ve waited for this series to continue for so long, let go!
I once had a group of giants play baseball with our party's paladin. One held an action to swing their club attack after another used it's fling attack. My man got blitzed clear off a cliff face with the ensuing homerun swing, and everytime I mention giants now that player begins cursing under their breath lol
Really happy to see the KYPW series back!!
dude... i watched your roll20 tutorials back in the day and came back only recently for the accent/voice video... i am very glad i did! especially the last three videos are really great content :) keep it up!
Love the Fling attack, will definitely be using that from now on. I threw a solo fire giant against my party a while back, my favorite change was I gave it a 1/day ability that was essentially thunder step - flavored as it did a running leap to move 60 feet with an AoE burst of flame as it landed. I also gave it a low damage fire aura for anyone dealing damage in melee with it, which led to an awesome moment where our rogue got a killing sneak attack off on it but was downed by the aura at the same time.
There was a DnD campaign on RUclips called the "Sunday Morning Heroes" years ago, and in one of the last couple episodes the party was attacked by an ettin. One of the players managed to feed the ettin a love potion, and the DM played it as one of the heads now wanting to help the party while the other head still wanted to attack them. The absurdity of that scene is what convinced me to start playing myself.
the stone giant gave us the most trouble . surprised us coming out of the wall, flung me into the pool that turns you to stone, and crit'd the bard into a wall, nearly killing him. He jumped in the pool with me and we dimension doored out by the skin of our teeth!
I use fling on most giant creatures, not just giants.
My favorite currently is Frost Giant Everlasting One. I had a BBEG that was one with the Mobile Feat and a 20 ft chain whip that he could sweep through the battlefield as a homebrew AOE.
He also rode a Mammoth and had a pet Remorhaz. He was raising an army of "rejected" giants (Trolls, Ogres, Cyclops, etc).
I like heartkiller just for the lore purposes, the concept of a hero for giant culture who’ll wipe away the shame of their fall from greatness is an amazing campaign or plot hook!
Hail to Benjamin!
Yes, so glad to see a new KYPW! Didn't expect Giants, but a very welcome surprise.
So, favorite giant: storm giants; I have a soft spot for the Storm Shepherds from the Seventh Tower series.
My plan to use a giant: mid tier. A night hag has made a deal with a hill giant, turning it into a wereboar in exchange for becoming a godzilla monster to destroy a city, which the party needs to stop. Also, a setup for the hag's blood magic and the gnoll-dragon hybrid I'm capping the campaign with.
You da man, Cody! Fingers crossed for the Yuan-Ti episode?
Just recently finished a campaign that featured an army of giants as the main protag. I'm thrilled to pieces that there's an official fling mechanic out there that I inadvertently mimicked almost verbatim 😅
Also, the fire giant dreadnoughts from Mordenkeinen's are far and away my favorite giant to throw at a group
I loved the idea of demonic transformation with the Giants. I think I may use that in future. Thank you!
Thanks for this Video! it made my combat versus a giant much more fun for my group. I used your pick up idea, and he threw them across the combat field and it to trees. Also Titans are going to be the BBE for the Campaign since I decided to use Roman god names to keep it easier for my players and me, so the Titans make a perfect BBE.
My first use of a Giant was a Frost Giant. Unfortunately, the group I was part of wasn't very helpful to me being new to DMing and TTRPGs all that much, but I did like the idea of what I did with the Frost Giant being the head of a Barbarian mountain dwarf society and he was only that because he killed the previous chief of the group and they had to follow his rules. So I may use him again with this new group and new world, and flesh him out more. Since the world in this campaign actually more dangerous than the world I was doing the first campaign.
>_> This video also had me getting an idea about how the hell I may explain this one "Colossal Abomination" that my new group keeps hearing and seeing out in the distance that actually towers over mountains. (Dungeon Crawler Classics actually give you more room to do larger creatures that doesn't have a height restriction and each monster would have their unique thing that makes them different in every part of the adventure). And they could potentially meet a Polymorphed Giant trying to find someone to deal with the thing as it's so dangerous even to giants.
Cloud giant take the cake for me. With there tall castles or even flying ones. Their wealth allows you to add fun details like there weapons having the aesthetics of fine marble sculptures, or even have the rock they throw being luxurious. like they are made of gem or polished stone maybe even carved into shapes like spheres or dodecahedrons. Just a lot of flavor you can get from them
I had a giant sasquatch giant that I set up as one of the remaining guardians for nature in a homebrew campaign. This particular giant had a fling ability that I never got to use lol
After you menched a roc, i started to imagine a giant riding one.
Happy birthday Benjamin! May your year be filled with awesome memories, and even better friends!
Cloud giants for sure. The are the charisma giant. I can imagine a Cloud giant bard trying to talk a dragon out of it hoard, or a warlock who lives in a lavish cloud but has a great debt belonging to Mammon.
Speaking of mutatating giants, I am running a campaign with mind flayers as main villains. They are experimenting on creating more powerful versions of themselves and ceremorphosed trolls and giants are among them
Love it. KYPW are always so inspiring.
I really hope you keep doing the KYPW series!!
I was toying with the idea of a mechanic for my giants in my game (that my players haven't met yet) where when they hit a player with an attack with their club, the player is flung away a number of feet equal to how far over the player's AC the attack succeeded by. So if giant A attacks player B with a 20AC, and the giant's attack would hit AC30, the player is thrown back 10 feet. Any distance longer than 10 feet and the player is knocked prone. I figure this would be really fun if the giant crits, and would be great fun describing the player flying and flailing through the air.
I ran a Spelljammer campaign, and the party encountered giants in a fun way. First was a commission by a cloud giant ruler of an air world. The big one though was a flying island if all giant types as an adventuring party that traveled around showing people how awesome giants were by tackling their biggest problems.
Frost Giants, Actual Firbolgs not the molly-coddled CR style - and Trollkin ala Koboldpress -- so much FUN!
This video made me miss being a DM. Happy birthday to your kiddo! My favorite Giants are Frost Giants. My longest running campaign took place with a kingdom of ice and snow to the north. Not only would the party stumble across fights between Frost Giants and White Dragons as they ventured through the mountain borders, but there was a notorious Frost Giant Death Knight that would wreak havoc on the party from time to time and disappear upon defeat. Good times.
Death giants. Some versions heal when something dies near them. So when your PCs use their high level AOE spells in a populated area they can completely heal the giant. I purposely introduced him as a mini boss for the big bad at the end of the campaign, and gave him all manner of cannon fauder that worships the big bad, so when he needed a heal he would just use a sweeping attack and kill a few. One of the PCs use a sun burst which while did a bunch of damage to him, also killed a bunch of weak baddies completely healing him as he absorbed the energy of their souls
These are always so fun. Great job.
I was running AL SKT, and they encountered frost giants (2) up on the spine of the world heading to the Temple of the All father. The party decided to pick a fight with them. I had one frost giant throw the barbarian off the mountain. Unfortunately his rage did not save him being thrown off the mountain.
A second encounter with frost giants at their home on the sea of moving Ice, I had a character get attacked by a Frost Giant, who had disadvantage to attack this party member. I throw a rock at him, double crit with disadvantage, so the party member used his last luck point to crit himself. The rock overkilled him.
I had a frost giant fling the party's halfling at the rest of the party. During the fight, the halfling tried to flirt with the boss giant (SKT) and failed unknowingly. She tricked him to come to him and despite the giant's minions were attacking the halfling in an attack of opportunity, the halfling kept coming close to the giantess. It wasn't smart for the halfling, since he was knocked unconscious before reaching her. She closed the distance to the unconscious halfling and flung him back at the party. It was fun!
I like ettins the most since they have fun role playing with the two heads, can be put into other societies as mercenaries and bodyguards rather seamlessly and their lore as the ‘runt of the litter’ is pretty interesting
Great video! My players are about to face some frost giants, so this was nice timing… hah 🤓⚔️
FINALLY IVE BEEN WAITING SO LONG CODY BLESS YOUR SOUL
I love Cloud Giants; the fact that they can be good or evil is awesome, but ultimately irrelevant, because their tricky nature means that you can never really know what they're planning. Plus, castles in the clouds provide a great stage to make the players rethink what's possible in a land of limitless magic.
Second pick goes to stone giants, who mostly just want to be left alone to do their art (which is very understandable). I love that they think anything outside of their cave is somehow not real, and the surface world is essentially a dream realm where anything can happen and there are no consequences.
If we zombify a Storm Giant and made him mount a half-dragon Roc we have a Dark Souls boss at the game table
My favorite giant is an Ogre named Ook. Ook isn't evil or angry, Ook is just hungry.
Really going to refer back to this for my Giant campaign.
Glad to see you're back!
Storm giants are always fun…really want to use half dragon giants at some point
I just have to say, a) I've missed the KYPW series, and, b) instead of just throwing rocks, give giants slings. Boom, you've just turned them into a living trebuchet. Give them bows, now they're ballistae.
Cheers.
The fire giants are my favorite. My group and I really enjoyed the Fire Giant Forge dungeon from Torm King's Thunder, and it feels cool to have a race that are war-oriented miners like dwarves, but larger and with a different personality
I play as a halfling wizard that grew up in a Castle of Frost Giants. Since then I have a soft spot for all things giant 🥰🥰
I take the NPC statblocks like Priest, Gladiator, Scout and apply them to different giants, using the giants standard block as a template. Our hasted barbarian was very unfortunate to run into a Fire Giant Priest of Surtur who then dispelled the magic. Then the FIre Giant Battlemaster cut him to ribbons!
thank you for another video! I saw your video dropped 50 minutes ago and I just had to see it.
Please keep it up. I love your content.
More than few times I have given Giants different ranged weapons, like fire giants armed whit javelins increasing the range and adding posibility to pin their foe, frost giant using massive bolas to bind group of enemies in one trow or stone giant armed whit stone disc that are dam accurate and fly far.
Giants can create creative encounters because their size can be used to their advantage and detriment in a dungeon environment where they can’t always get to players who are in areas smaller than them.
Stone. Slow speaking seers who can hide in plain sight. Just got to love em
Happy birthday Benjamin!
Frost Giants are my favorite because one of my first characters was a Snow Goblin (no change in stats, just light blue skin :P) who was adopted by Frost Giants
Happy Birthday Benjamin! Hopefully you grow up to be a great and funny guy like your dad!
Bro another KYPW video? Nice!
Also Happy Birthday Benjamin!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BENJAMIN 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
I love giants. I've always wanted to run a gun encounter involving a behir, or maybe a 3-way fight between some giants, behirs, and a dragon
Personally I like the Oni, though I want to run a fire giant blacksmith at some point
Thanks for putting this out! I have been thinking about some giants coming up in the game I am running, and I love the KYPW series. If I could put a vote down, it would be for more videos in that series.
I just recently started a giant-focused campaign, so this came at the perfect time.
Fun fact about the Nephalim: they also appear in the Bible (in Genesis) with the same lore. They are just simply called "giants" in the enlish translations.
I'm running a Cloud Giant (favorite giant) as the BBEG in the current arc of our campaign. He still remembers the lost empire of giants over the realm, and while in exile after the humans conquered their land, he found a ring of 3 wishes, which he used to rise again to power, with a new castle and Slaads as minions in his control. So, believing he's the rightful sovereign of the land, he is waging war on the separate human states, taking advantage of how untrusting they are from one another.
Cloud Giants are a favorite. Both fling and telekinesis if I remember right.
I just had an idea for a giant bbeg that uses a pact weapon that is based off of an immovable rod. He summons it as all sorts of different weapons to meet his needs and can make them hold in place like the immovable rod.
Imagine he summons a brick and flattens the barbarian fixing the brick in place, a giant staff held sideways pushing the whole party against the wall.
Or even more brutal... Impale a pc on a sword and leave them suspended in midair to taunt the rest of the players.
In a 3.5 game I ran I had a PC with temporary fire immunity. They were fighting fire giants and one of them tackled the PC and sent them into a river of lava so the PC and that one Fire Giant started fighting in a lava river. For one whole round no one else fought, PCs or fire giants going "Well Damn"
The dedication(-ish) to his son was sweet.
OMG... I'm inspired. fling a PC to another giant, who swings a club... COMBO move, distance = 10' per every point above the AC they hit by, anything over a 100' is a home run !
Thank you. I love giants. So much fun.
Currently running my first adventure as a DM. Completely homebrew but adding some form of giant encounter sounds like a great idea. Really liked the corrupted by evil giant so i might run something like that in the later stages. Since my pc's only just reached lvl 2. My pick for favorite giant will be a storm giant. Just their sheer size speaks to the imagination
Fantastic video! Keep up the great work!
Fling is such a natural thing. They all throw boulders so they should be the kings of moving puny races around the battlefield.
I also like to add some class level type abilities go individual giants. We never fight "just humans", so a giant with a paladin aura or sneak attack can be fun to mix it up.
dude when you said the black cat thing and that maybe it came from giant superstition i had an idea that it was originally a black dragon and now im totally gonna use that in my games
That was cute. Happy birthday Benjamin