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D&D Ideas — Unearthed Arcana Giant Options

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is Unearthed Arcana Giant Options which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of giants we’re fast approaching the production stage of our own giant collection of magic items. There’s still time to preorder your Mage Forge deluxe set of 250 magic item cards. You can get Nerdarchy the Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

Assimilate all our content from the week that was! Deploy Battle Packs for your combat encounters, think like a dragon and don’t even try to resist playing a new RPG plus our weekly hangout, a live chat with an industry pro, the continuing quest of untraditional wizards and our Zoo Mafia live playtest continues to round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

The latest Unearthed Arcana put out by Wizards of the Coast’s D&D design team inspired us to go over it and talk about giants this week. The UA gives some new giant themed subclasses and feats. We get a Primal Path for barbarians, a Druid Circle, and an Arcane Tradition for wizards.

We’ve got our own giant themed Otherworldly Patron for warlocks in our Frost King module. In the module this warlock subclass is tied to a particular individual giant. You could do the same thing with the UA giant themed subclasses. A stone giant tutor could educate your Runecrafter wizard, the Path of the Giant barbarian could perhaps be raised by a fiery tempered fire giant while a Circle of the Primeval druid taught to conjure primeval forces from a kindly hill giant mentor.

I love when either the D&D team or a third party publisher like ourselves introduces subclasses with these deep ties to lore in the world. Rune Knight fits in nicely with these subclasses as well. For the Rune Knight I like the idea of a grandfatherly storm giant taking a young warrior under their wing. You could run a whole giant themed adventuring party — barbarian, druid, fighter and wizard covers your roles nicely. Got a fifth party member? Add our own Otherworldly Patron The Frost King warlock for power granted by a frost giant.

Imagine five different giants bringing together five of the small folk to fulfill a prophecy. Each of the characters are raised or brought together at a young age to be trained by these powerful beings. What would cause a hill giant, fire giant, frost giant, stone giant and storm giant to undertake this endeavor together? They could be the last vestiges of an ancient order dedicated to holding back the world’s oldest foes. This could be dragons, fiends or creatures from the Far Realm. These young heroes have been chosen to stop the coming storm.

I’d start with cultists dedicated to ushering in a new age by awakening this slumbering evil. Next begin adding weak versions of your chosen evil. Slowly add in more powerful creatures and followers. You can add in adventures involving stopping rituals meant to awaken sleeping monsters or stop them from opening portals to other worlds and ushering in more threats. For a final campaign boss there are plenty of threats from challenge rating 20+ to choose from no matter what kind of threat you choose to go with. You could throw in a fetch quest to assemble a powerful magic item or artifact to be used against the big boss.

In between all of this the adventurers could learn about giant culture and interact with giant society. While dealing with this world ending threat they can also explore what giants are all about in your campaign world.

From Ted’s Head

Giants are one of those monsters I never truly understood. Over the years of playing I have seen everything from they are massive 100+ foot tall creatures that could kill normal humans just by stepping on them to creatures not even twice as tall as the average human. I wrote a post about scaling up your D&D game to giant proportions I hope you find fun and useful for your games.

The Unearthed Arcana includes a few things that touch on runes. There is the Runecrafter Arcane Tradition for wizards and two feats — Rune Carver Apprentice and Rune Carver Adept. I love runes and honestly desire to learn to identify them to incorporate them more into my games. Rune crafter apprentice reminds me heavily of the Runecaster class from my time with my first LARP from back in the day. They could draw runes on weapons or people granting specific benefits. Since these features are from Unearthed Arcana I look forward to seeing these become official material.

From a lore perspective I see giants linked to dwarves. Ironically I’m not very fond of giants but very much love dwarves. These polar opposites of size share commonality in their language and traditionally hold animosity towards each other — so much so in past editions dwarves had combat bonuses specifically when fighting giants.

Sharing a language to me means some kind of shared history. What does that mean in your world? Were dwarves servants, slaves or maybe protégés of the giants who eventually broke away? This is a fun idea to explore especially if you have a dwarf and maybe a goliath in the party. Incorporate runes and the shared language of Dwarvish and Giant heavily into the campaign. Adventurers can explore old ruins containing areas with furniture for both types of peoples together, possibly even cohabitating.

Whether giants form a singular encounter or a campaign spanning plot they are a core staple of D&D. Minions, beasts and ogres are the easy starter points for games set up against foes like giants. Hurled boulders from afar could be hazards giants create when they are not willing to go into the fray just yet. You could lower the damage and have them throwing from very far away. As the plot thickens ogres and hill giants test how far the heroes are willing to stay in the fight. The threat can escalate from there.

One easy plot ideas finds giants trying to claim an ancestral home. Giants live for so long that humans found and settled an area wholly unaware how hundreds of years ago giants called the area home and embarked on a pilgrimage. Not wanting bloodshed the giants moved on expecting the humans to go away but they did not. They dug in and stayed with generation after generation claiming more area and building walls fearing the threat of the nearby giants.

If this is too complex what if the giants are searching for an item buried under the center of town? Perhaps to make matters worse there is a monument to the town’s hero built right on the spot where the item is buried. Giants are not known for conversation in the games I have played so perhaps they wander into town planning to simply take what they want. The residents see them confidently striding towards the center of town and begin messing with their statue. Torches and pitchforks come out and many humans lie dead before the giant is run off. The bad blood begins. How long will it be before the giants overrun the humans or before someone starts a conversation and resolves the issue peacefully? How do you use giants in your games? [NERDITOR’S NOTE: Sounds like the makings of a Folk Hero!]

From the Nerditor’s Desk

Looking through the Unearthed Arcana 2022 — Giant Options playtest document was a watershed moment for me when it comes to 5E D&D. After looking through the new subclasses and feats presented within my very first thought was how the game has evolved into a fantasy superhero RPG. With all the time I spent engaging with players I suspect this perspective lies at the heart of what lots of folks take issue with as D&D’s design philosophy changes. For me it was a breath of fresh air.

Finally 5E D&D feels like it’s establishing a concrete identity in the vast array of RPGs out there.

Over the last few years it’s become increasingly clear to me how the D&D experience is completely subjective. This has always been the case but 5E D&D steered in this direction and in fact leans into it — both mechanically and philosophically. Perhaps the most often cited aspect of the system is how the rules are presented merely as guidelines. Just look at all the times those Captain Barbosa memes are invoked. Somehow 5E D&D manages to find some middle ground and indeed flourished through this approach in contrast with similar business practices. The strength of brands like Starbucks stems from meeting consumers expectations regardless of where and when they interact.

For lots of longtime RPG hobbyists like me this creates a strange scenario. Since my very first RPG experiences my friends and I played different games all the time — like every week. We started with D&D like so many others but found great enjoyment playing Gangbusters, Gamma World, Toon, Twilight 2000, Rifts, Vampire: The Masquerade, West End Games’ Star Wars, Stormbringer and so many others I can’t remember. Each one presented a different experience influenced by their particular rules systems.

I believe the difference now emerges because of the community aspect surrounding 5E D&D. Wizards of the Coast smartly (for economic purposes) pivoted the D&D game into a lifestyle brand. Players discovering the hobby now through 5E D&D become not just hobbyists but participants in a greater collection of people. It’s not uncommon to encounter players totally unaware there are other RPGs out there at all.

What does any of this have to do with Unearthed Arcana 2022 — Giant Options? What I hope is the design team continues to explore this direction. There’s no question the superhero genre’s impact on popular culture is tremendous. I hope 5E D&D goes even further to establish its identity as a fantasy take on these kinds of stories and adventures. It can feel a little weird for those of us who grew up along with previous editions still focused mainly on quasi-medieval flavored D&D but ultimately I hope this modern day approach pans out to create a healthier dynamic in the RPG space.

When I want to play this sort of game I’ll know 5E D&D is the right move. For a more traditional approach I’d bust out a game like Symbaroum or whatever your taste, there’s a LOT of quasi-medieval fantasy RPGs out there (4E D&D for me since it’s my favorite edition). Campaigns with a more mechanically lighthearted touch there’s Quest. Straight up modern day superheroics I still prefer good old Marvel Super Heroes RPG (FASERIP). And of course campaigns themed around specific IP like Star Wars I’d look first to games designed specifically for those properties.

The fun of RPGs for me lies in how a game’s mechanics influence the experience they’re specifically design to elicit. It’s particularly interesting to me viewing 5E D&D as a fantasy superhero game now because it makes more sense. Superheroes by their nature vary so wildly in what they can do that they lend themselves quite well to a subjective rules system. Consider the Fantastic Four. One has super strength and durability, one can fly and project solar intensity fire, one turns invisible at will and creates indestructible force fields and one’s super smart and can morph and change their body. How are you gonna balance a game around that?! No universal paradigm’s going to ensure everyone’s experiences turn out even remotely close.

*Featured image — A giant imbued with immense arcane might has risen to become the Frost King, uniting seven warlords through eldritch pacts granting them a portion of his power. Adventurers travel to the seat of the Frost King’s power for the Clansmeet and become embroiled in a cold-blooded murder investigation. Check it out here.

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