Always like to add an idea, so for giants go with the elemental aspect and turn an expectation on its head. The Fog Giant: Giants are big. You should hear them coming. But one steps silently from the primal fog, stops all voices, and vanishes leaving ruin behind. This giant emanates a 60ft radius of silence. It can also cast level 5 fog cloud at will without concentration. Anywhere its fog is it has blindsense to see and can teleport to with a recharging bonus action. Its actual eyes are blind. So beware the morning fog rolling in, when the world seems so quiet.

I think a giant would carry a version of a hockey stick. A 3’ tall, 8’ wide timber sweeps through your party sending everyone flying.

I had a friend run a giant fight that was run closer to a environment challenge where we had to fight the giant in sections we had to start with a leg that we needed to damage enough to get the giant's knee to buckle so that we could try and disable arms or try and get at the face and neck.

I had a wonderful encounter with these tall bipedal (stereotypical) wendigo-like creatures, they were roughly 50 feet tall and were attacking a village in the middle of the winter months, I had to completely improvise the entire encounter, but I was very proud of myself to have come up with the idea of hurling bodies before watching this video, the ability worked in a way that the mass of bodies thrown would deal *some* damage, but the primary effect of the ability was that the still writhing mass of reanimated corpses would grapple any nearby creatures (the party) and try to engulf them within itself- super fun encounter overall, the players seemed happy with it and I just wanted to share :)

This legit may be my favourite of this series so far. I'd like to add more to the concept of elemental giants. If you really want to tie your giants to the elemental plane, strongly consider bloodied states, where giants start leaking elemental energy once they drop below 50% hp. Or instead maybe when hit by a large enough attack the giant's blood turns into a mephit of the appropriate type. Forcing players to have to think about how they contain the beast

Here's an idea-- Giant Rune Magic Think of this scene; You and your party are delving deep into the volcanic wastes. Your mission? To parlay with the local fire giant. You come upon the giant, working at its forge-- words are exchanged, an insult is taken, and now the giant is hostile. As a bonus action on the giant's turn, or as a legendary action, the giant runs a hand up its weapon. As they do so enormous runes carve themselves into the weapon and flare to life causing the weapon to burst into flame. Fire Giants are supposed to be the master forgers of Giant kind. There is no doubt in my mind that one of them could make their own weapon a magical one on the fly. Each giant has a theme that they can play to. Hill giants are dull, but incredibly tough; Stone giants are artisans who specialized in crafting; Frost giants are beast masters, why shouldn't they be able to cast "Dominate Beast" at least a couple times a day?

Giants make an excellent template to apply to other creatures think about it a giant molten pterodactyl and yes I know it’s Rodan. If you get tired of the types of giants offered normally it’s an idea.

Oooh boy... can't wait for my party to make it to the Underdark. That Restless Lumberer is 100% going to make an appearance in the narrow, confined spaces...

Sure, Monster Manual Giants could use some upgrades, and these are good suggestions, tho I'd argue for creating your own Kaiju class of monster, if that's what you're really after. If you're going full Shadow of the Colossus, that's a Tarrasque-sized opponent, the kind of thing you would have to climb on to even hope to hurt, much less kill, just like the vg. Or maybe it's a dungeon in its own right (a la Zelda), that the party must enter in order to defeat it. Or you might need some magic to make yourself that big too, either morphing to Kaiju size or having a Mecha you could pilot to fight them.

Foot Stomp: all medium size and smaller within a 15' radius are knocked prone. Dex save +15 for the prone party members, failure means they are stunned as well. Recharge 5-6.

I like taking giants to one of two extremes. I either make them completely unknowable walking natural disasters that can’t be reasoned with or assimilate them into the varied cultures or kingdoms of the land. If you take the walking natural disaster route you can create foreshadowing scenes depicting the utter destruction these creatures are capable of while leaving their threat more conceptual similar to a kaiju. For example fire giant that you discover exists after finding a city reduced to nothing but ash and burning rubble as if an unheard of explosion was released in the city center. The closer to the blast you get there isn’t even rubble, the buildings were reduced to dust and ash. You see a massive path of scorched land leading into the mountains in the wake of the destruction. On the other hand you have the almost entirely known and human like in nature. In that case imagine a giant assassin hired by the main villain who uses the forests and simple spells to remain hidden. Imagine having to worry that a sadistic 40 foot tall monster that wants nothing more than to rip you apart might lurk around any corner and having to worry that it will fall upon you if you dare sleep. A near unstoppable hunter who could be right on top of you and you wouldn’t know until it’s too late to run. Perhaps you could even come up with some sort of warning or signal that the party can use to tell when the giant is close and build up an encounter,like the sound of the heavy boot covered foot falls of a hill giant, the sound of a great-axe dragging through the ground as its carried by a stone giant or the clanging plate of an armor bound fire giant warrior. All are obsessed and on the hunt for your blood. Depending on your use of sound effects you might not even warn them, you could just start playing your choice of warning signal while the party is discussing a plan in the open and waiting to see if they notice. You could even play it at random times and make the occasional dice roll to put them on edge, like their giant pursuer is toying with them.

My concern with making giants into Titans is that then the world in which your players are inhabiting must necessarily be shaped by such extraordinary creatures. There's no real room to drop them into an existing campaign setting.... unless they find themselves transported to the Isle of Titans, of course. That said, 100% agree that the average giant desperately needs a tune-up from the current MM blocks, and your suggestions are GREAT.

If I remember, the dragons were created to show the giants that they weren’t invincible. Giants may not be invincible but they’re definitely unstoppable!

So, funny thing, I did most of the abilities you made here for my game a few months back. For me my giants are much larger than what they say in the book, and also unlike the book most giants tend to be around the same size on average, standing at anywhere from 30ft to 50ft tall depending on their age. Being the descendants of titans each type of giant has control over a specific type of element. The hill giants I threw at my players were adolecent twins standing at around 40ft tall, and being hill giants they had moderate control over soft earth and many of their abilities reflected that such as a legendary action (that I never got the chance to use because my players wiped one of the giants in a flash by using haste for the first time) that the both of them shared, which had one giant throwing a boulder to the other who hit it with their club and caused a 60ft cone of rubble that required a dex save against. Hill giants will live just about anywhere with open spaceand lots of soft earth, and they actually get their name by the way they make their homes, which is lifting a layer of earth into a massive hollow hill shape. Unlike the rest of their kin, hill giants are the only giants in my world that don't build communities, and as such are more common and slightly dumber/weaker as they will find any place on the surface with soft earth to create a home and sruvive by hunting wildlife in the area, though green dragons are their favorite food.

The Giants in my setting were living bio-weapons, humanoids covered in scales with eyes like floodlights. The smaller ones were dimwitted, fast, terrifying monsters that could trample buildings and throw horses like pebbles and yes they ate people. The largest ones were like the God Warriors of Nausicaa, lipless with purple gums and flesh between grey plates capable of shooting beams of light that would create domes of burning hot plasma that would engulf cities and reach ten times higher than a mountain. It was believed the largest giants were slain long ago during the Symphony of Ash and Thunder but now apparently, a city found one deep beneath a submerged megastructure. An expedition of salvagers were drilling deep into a vein of concrete and gears until they found a chamber so tall that you couldn't see all the way down. All salvagers could see were colossal pillars stretching down to where they could see the heads and shoulders of smaller giants arranged neatly in grid patterns standing eerily still like an armada of stone warriors. Then too the farthest side of the gargantuan chamber, they saw a colossal sitting on a throne that could dwarf any sky scraper of the old world twofold. The Last Colossus sat on a throne with wires and pipes burrowed into its skin, large horns sat on the sides of its blank face with black lidless sockets gazing into an unfathomable oblivion. In its left arm it held a tight balled fist and in it's right its hands rested on the pommel of a towering great sword that could cleave a mountain in two. The Salvagers considered blowing up a section of the superstructure to bury this chamber so that no force in the world would be capable of leading such a terrible army again, but it would surely collapse into a gaping sinkhole and kill everyone on the surface, or worse awaken the Last Colossus and bring an untold crusade of terror to the surface world. By the time they could come up with a plan to hide the abominable basement, a contingent of the Hrulssarian Empire sent an army lead by Franszen Douchelsmorf the Eighth, of House Douchelsmorf to watch over the city after the mayor brokered a deal to become vassals of the Hruslssarian Empire. Now we got a problem, an occupying force has captured a city built upon some great megastructure ruin and this army of death from the old world might be used by the big evil empire of my setting to conquer the world. Whats a fella to do with the army of sleeping demons in the basement when the feds are at your house? You didn't know you had a secret basement full of sleeping demons, now this looks bad.

Now I have to sculpt some giants. Thanks a lot!

I was running Storm King's Thunder and the party was defending Bryn Shander from a group of frost giants. One of the party members fell unconscious during the encounter (they thought they could seduce the leader during a fight). The leader grabbed the fallen adventurer and she tossed the member at the adventurer's allies. Hitting one and causing the fallen member an automatic failed death save. It turned into a TPK, and one of the players (not the perve) wants a retry and so now I get to run it again for him and the new group.

I'm gonna run storm king's thunder and I'm definitely using some of this stuff. That campaign book also has some interesting abilities giants too, they add a thunder stomp and the ability to throw people for damage too.

Hello Ben, awesome video as always! Just a little feedback, could you provide an "example block text" for these make formidable videos (things like when creature shows up, when creature use their signature move...etc)? I would really like to see your complete take on such descriptions than just bits and pieces.

Love these videos. I don’t use anything from the MM as is. I customize all monsters.

I actually ran a dark fantasy game using Mythras Classic Fantasy, and an undead hill giant was the first boss and the party got spotted by it after leaving the woods and crossing a mire toward a ruined city... AoT season 1 was definitely a bit of an inspiration for it.

Mhm.... I have never been a huge fan of giants, but this video makes me wanna use them as antagonists in a game. Your concepts sound cool as hell.

Woa. This is good stuff!

"...introduced by Monsters of the multiverse..." Volo's and Tome of Foes: "am I a joke to you?"

Imagine the party is camped on a hill in the rain. They're cold, wet and tired from a long day's march, maybe weakened by a previous encounter. As they're talking, they hear a thudding in the distance. If they go to look around the hill to see the source, you tell them they see a cloud of steam with a dark shape in the middle, flecked with what look like embers. It's running right at them, a couple miles away but steadily getting closer. Let them panic for a while, interrupting with descriptions of the sound growing louder, ever more vivid descriptions of new details that can now be seen, and finally, the hissing of the rain, boiling on contact with the skin of a fire giant. Roll for initiative.

Great video!

Hell yeah. This video is quite helpful for my dnd Eberron campaign set in Xen'drik. Thanks

What a great video, and sorely needed! You were right on the money when you said that giants are easily overlooked. The standard stat blocks are pretty boring. I've just recently decided to focus a small part of my campaign on giants, and I wished I had seen this sooner. But, I'll still be using some of this advice, especially the bit about revealing the giant's presence slowly and letting the fear creep in.

Loving your ideas man! You are definitely helping to improve my game. One of the things I can't stand about the over inflated 5e is that a kick like that SHOULD be instant death no matter how strong you are. Being grabbed then bitten right in half or grabbed and thrown into a wall is death. No one would survive that and that's fantastic! You need an army to fight a giant and that's how it should be. But 5e you just survive everything and use some stupid gimmick to kill 10 giants coz you're just so special. No Jack, you're dead.

I always kinda wanted to go the Jotunn route. Jotunn in mythology didn’t specifically mean giant even though Jotunns were sometimes huge. But Jotunn were more akin to forces of nature something like an earthquake or tidal waves. They embodied what could not be controlled.

Currently have giants and first thing I did was make them feel giant. The party comes up to their ankles or shins if the giant is young. Second the giants barely fight seriously bc they would rather pick up the players and put them in their bag of neat things. And last they take steps that are huge expanses of space bc they got them big long legs.

I remember half-giants having a psionic "stomp" ability in Darksun, and in 3e expanded psionics, and it gave me an idea after watching yr vid that, as you mentioned dumb lumbering giants are a bit if a trope and maybe a sinister way to subvert this expectation is to have say hill-giants who outwardly act less-intelligent and aloof, with a muttering, simple version of the giant language or maybe whatever language is local, meanwhile the truth is that they are an inherently psionic species who primarily communicate telepathically in a way that magic users aren't detecting even if they are looking for magical shenanigans, and these hilll giants then have a real sadistic streak and enjoy luring brave heroes in to slay some dumb giants who then string the heroes along through the hunting grounds in a "the hills have eyes" meets the teutoberg forrest situation, using mystical powers beyond the reckoning of mage, priest, or druid, and putting way more effort in messing with the heroes heads than actually trying to physically harm them.

I’ve always liked the random attack table for giants in Warhammer Fantasy, and many of them could easily be transferred to 5e. There could be stuff like an AoE club swing that hits everything within 15ft, jumping up and down knocking people over over and dealing Massive damage if the giant lands on them, or picking up and swallowing a character whole, purple worm style

I made a pretty deep criminal organisation for a Drow/Duergar city with huge surface-dweller imigration issue. Basically, due to giants and ogres being too big to operate within it, they instead works outside of it, extorting "protection tax" from mushroom farmers outside the city walls, and their leader "King Zog/Fingereater Zig" (Please don't kill me for making that joke Albanians) Ettin pretty much made it one of the 3 main factions of that gang, alongside thieves' guild hiding in "slums'" sewers, and Roland's Syndicate fighting for control over market district against unionized merchants, Roland himself being the richest non-drow non-duergar in the city wanting to rise as far up as he can "Cyberpunk:Edgerunners" Faraday style. Back to giants, there are only a few true giants actually in their gang, with ogres, Ettins and half-giants or Ogrillons being more common, and some orcs, gnolls or other monstrous folk chosing to stick with them too. Currently I planned only one- a fire giant, that wears an extremely tought full-plate spiked armor he forged and customised himself. He can keep it closed to have higher AC, or open it and let the fire out to deal constant fire damage to anybody nearby.

Love it I had been putting together a stat block on a halfling cursed by a hag like arch fey and practically stoled most of this. Brilliant stuff here.

Great series! Inspiring!!

This man shouts some very sensible advice.

Rather late comment. But imagine the sheer terror, of a giant breakdancer using it's sweeping kicks in combat.

awesome dude , subscribing . love this content

Great video. Ever done one on dark water pirate battles?

Where have you been all my life?

PeakContent

have the throw just do fall damage, so its pretty lethal to new players, throw them a certain height.

Due to your accent, I thought it might be called a Clown Giant. Imagine what damage a pie the size of a waterbed will do?

The link is dead... How i gonna use MY TITAN? Help me

giants in my settings are all double the size listed in the monster manual, these f*ckers need to be scary.

Giants also don't have to be dumb either......imagine a world where a kingdom of giants farm and segment off all the humans like cattle to breed and farm for them....picture Attack on Titan if all the titans were almost as intelligent as humans and they were the ones who built the walls, would come in and demand sacrifice?

It's called WOTC are trying to standardize all monsters to make it "easier for everybody," it would appear to me. For whatever unfathomable reasoning that is operating behind their sillier recent decisions like, oh, trying to make monsters all so nice and friendly and "misunderstood" as opposed to actual threats to the players. I like your videos and ideas far, far better, sir.

Too much anime does this...