
Aniuś the Talewise |

Sometimes I like to think about the possibility of adapting d20 for eotenhām, my constructed world based on jǫtunheim of Nordic cosmology, that developed out of my version of the story of Bēowulf. (I use Old English rather than old norse because of Bēowulf and better familiarity with OE, hence the name eotenhām)
Giants generally have high respect for authority and tradition, with a intra-species solidarity much stronger than that of humans, and utterly lack spirituality (a sense of the spirits or the wyrd, including a spiritual sense of the gods) or 'gigamorphism', the giant equivalent of anthropomorphism, that is, they do not project giantlike qualities onto non-giant entities.
Thus, giants have no capacity for magic, which requires spirituality to function, though they can make some use of runes as discovered by Wōden. Their religion is exclusively ancestor veneration. Their supreme ancestor is the Father of Giants, who is called Ymir in Old Norse, and in their language Ørte'ana Taba/Old Etnish, by the title Ørte.
The giants live in one sprawling, agrarian, record-keeping society ruled by one royal family at the city of Ūtgeard. They build their homes mainly of stone. Cities are uncommon. Ūtgeard is one great, sprawling city state complex that surrounds the north pole of Eotenhām just below the arctic circle and before the onset of taiga and tundra biome.
At the North pole itself, Ymir is buried, his burial mound is guarded by the serpent jǫrmungandr, as inside the burial mound exists middangeard, our world.
TL;DR: eotenhām giants are not pathfinder giants. They can't practice magic (though they can utilize runes), they possess a supernatural ability to shapeshift, and they are 7-10 meters tall.
The first strain, the so called "wild" humans, are not unlike ourselves, in that they underwent no artificial selection. Wild humans live in mostly mesolithic hunter-gatherer/forager/scavenger bands in the parts of the world yet unsettled by giants. Giants hunt them for food and for sport, so they always travel light, and can seldom stay in one place for long. Many of these cultures have semi-domesticated wolves, who serve as guardians watching for giant attacks, and so the symbol of the wolf is revered by many. The Serpent culture, living in the tundra and taiga north of Ūtgeard, is unique in that the people worship the serpent Jǫrmungandr.
As humans are a generally spiritual species with a strong sense of the wyrd, wild humans can and do practice magic, and many cultures are also familiar with and utilize the runes as divined by Wōden, though they do not keep records. In the Legendarium, the fuþark of our world is a corrupted form of the runes as divined by Wōden, and thus less powerful. Later developments on the elder fuþark are even less powerful, in the same vein.
The second strain is domesticated by giants, and has been for millennia, so they have been genetically altered through generations of artificial selection, which is the definition of domestication. These humans are raised in farms for meat, fat, skin, hair, and are also trained to perform manual labor. Some are also kept as pets. These humans speak pidgins of the giant's languages and are discouraged from developing their own cultures. Those humans with particularly high spirituality are removed before they develop magical skills. Scyld Scefing is a livestock human (a "boar of eotenhām" as they are poetically termed) who was rescued and sent to middangeard.
It must be remembered that giants do not see themselves in anything that isn't a giant. Thus they see humans as being like any other animal, and vastly inferior to themselves, as being driven primarily by primitive instincts and lacking the sophistication that they have.
TL;DR "wild" humans live in nomadic mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies, constantly on the run from being hunted by giants. They have strong magic traditions and utilize runes, but they do not keep records. Livestock humans domesticated by giants also exist.
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The problem that immediately struck me is the possible lack of balance--In a game system, humans become easy fodder for a giant party, while an unlucky human party would be easily overwhelmed by giants. In the rare event of a mixed human and giant party, the latter would be totally OP.
In the story, very rarely a single human such as Grendel's mother (a powerful sīdwif/magic user) is capable of taking on and defeating a giant. Naturally, this should be also possible in the game system, although very hard.
Alongside how to regard classes, and modeling the magic system, this was one of the issues that caused me to shelf the idea of adapting d20 for my eotenhām or my legendarium.

Hark |
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Unless you're trying to have giants with hilariously low stats, you're probably going to have to consider running your game world as one populated by mighty heroes rather than normal humans working their way from weakling to all-powerful badass. Meaning humans players need to start at advanced levels to put them on par with giants. That is if you somehow want balanced Human/Giant Parties.
One of the issues likely to come up with advanced humans, is that they are very likely to overpower Giants of comparable level. Monster levels generally suck when compared to actual class levels. Now you can either decide to live with it as is, or try to fix it. I ran a campaign years back with lots of Races that had monster hit dice. What I did to help mitigate balance issues and keep the races without Hit Dice from overwhelming the other races was use Gestalt rules. Races with hit dice used their racial hit dice as one of their two classes, while races without hit dice just advanced as two classes. I greatly narrowed the power gap, it also made casters viable for races with hit dice. In a normal leveling scheme you would end up with a level 10 Giant Wizard having 9 levels of giant and only 2 levels of Wizardly power vs their human counterpart that is a full level 10 wizard possessing all of the related power. If you gestalt it both the Giant and Human can be Level 10 Wizards, so there is no lose in magical potential between the races.
Just my thoughts, I don't see it working out in any kind of balanced manner done any other way.

Aniuś the Talewise |

I see. I imagined from the beginning that my giants would use class levels rather than monster advancement, but that may also depend on how I would even approach classes from the first place, seeing as the d20 classes are designed from a typical Western High Fantasy perspective and my legendarium is either Migration Period/Viking Age Historical Fantasy (as on middangeard) or spun off from it (as in realms such as eotenhām) and thus might not be very compatible.