Half Giants in Pathfinder

[David Fryer]

I'm making one last push to have one new race added to the PFRPG. I have been reading over the adoption of giants in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords and I realized that this would give a perfect justification for including half-giants as a core race. If you removed their psi-like ability and their natural psionics and changed their favored class to barbarian they would fit in perfectly with the other core races in PFRPG without a level adjustment. Just thought I would throw it out there and see if anyone else agrees or disagrees with me.

[daysoftheking]

I agree on concept, but I think the PFRPG guys could do better than WotC on the stats. My homebrew already has them and my players love and love to hate them.

[Jason Grubiak]

Sorry...I disagree.

The core races are just fine IMHO.

I'd love a future Pathfinder book that has new PC races like Half-Giants, Teiflings, Genasi, Dromites or whatever.....But not in the core book.

[Pneumonica]

Agree on adjusting the traits on the Half-Giant - there's nothing Half-Giant about the 3.5 rules. Plus, with the 3.Pai Toughness you can give them that Feat for free and that'll be closer to the 2nd ed Half-Giant. But yeah, there's nothing about 3.5 that links to the 2nd ed Half-Giant.

As for using them as a new core race, I disagree. We're mostly trying to bridge from 3.5 to 3.Pai - new stuff is mostly not there (new Feats I don't think count, although the Combat Feats system is a bit of a break).

[Jason Grubiak]

I do agree that the 3.5 version of half-Giant is a bit....Odd.

Wizards breeding a psionic servitor race by combining humans and sand giants....

No doubt it was inspired by Dark Sun...But outside of the Dark Sun setting they seem very strange and out of place.

[tbug]

I'm still of the opinion that "half-"anything should be a template. Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary has a really great set of half-giant templates that I expect will mostly continue to work just fine with Pathfinder RPG.

[Goblins Eighty-Five]

David Fryer wrote:

I'm making one last push to have one new race added to the PFRPG. I have been reading over the adoption of giants in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords and I realized that this would give a perfect justification for including half-giants as a core race. If you removed their psi-like ability and their natural psionics and changed their favored class to barbarian they would fit in perfectly with the other core races in PFRPG without a level adjustment. Just thought I would throw it out there and see if anyone else agrees or disagrees with me.

I think with so many giants it makes sense, except for the actual conception. I mean yuck and/or ouch!

[Pneumonica]

tbug wrote:

I'm still of the opinion that "half-"anything should be a template. Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary has a really great set of half-giant templates that I expect will mostly continue to work just fine with Pathfinder RPG.

By and large I agree, but there might be some oddities. A liger, for instance, is larger than both its parent species, so if you were to merely create a "half-lion" and a "half-tiger" template and merge them, you'd come up with something other than an liger. To me, the half-elf is one of them, or at least was when they still got diplomacy bonuses.

Goblins Eighty-Five wrote:

I think with so many giants it makes sense, except for the actual conception. I mean yuck and/or ouch!

The Half-Giant flavortext (and the original 2nd ed version) talks about the fact that they didn't actually "breed" together - they are a psionically-induced hybrid, I imagine made through judicious use of polymorphing the same way that half-dragons are produced.

[Heathansson]

Pneumonica wrote:

By and large I agree, but there might be some oddities. A liger, for instance, is larger than both its parent species, so if you were to merely create a "half-lion" and a "half-tiger" template and merge them, you'd come up with something other than an liger. To me, the half-elf is one of them, or at least was when they still got diplomacy bonuses.

Its my favorite animal...

Actually, some gene in lions and tigers that controls growth maximum is in one sex in the lion and the other sex in the tiger, so if you breed the opposite sexes from that, yes you get a liger with no growth stopping hormonal control. If you breed the other pair of sexes, however, it's not the gargantuan 12' long dire liger thing.

Hmm....maybe half giants come about like that somehow(?)

[David Fryer]

Pneumonica wrote:

Goblins Eighty-Five wrote:

I think with so many giants it makes sense, except for the actual conception. I mean yuck and/or ouch!

The Half-Giant flavortext (and the original 2nd ed version) talks about the fact that they didn't actually "breed" together - they are a psionically-induced hybrid, I imagine made through judicious use of polymorphing the same way that half-dragons are produced.

And then like a half-elf or half-orc they become their own race which breeds true. Since the mul (half-dwarf) is the only halfblood that is explicitly stated to be sterile, one can only infer that the others are able to breed amongst each other. In fact WotC has stated that if a half-elf breeds with an elf the offspring is treated as an elf in terms of game statistics and as human if a human was the other partner. Not to mention the half-giant/ogre mage hybrid race in Eberron.

[Pneumonica]

David Fryer wrote:

And then like a half-elf or half-orc they become their own race which breeds true. Since the mul (half-dwarf) is the only halfblood that is explicitly stated to be sterile, one can only infer that the others are able to breed amongst each other. In fact WotC has stated that if a half-elf breeds with an elf the offspring is treated as an elf in terms of game statistics and as human if a human was the other partner. Not to mention the half-giant/ogre mage hybrid race in Eberron.

Exactly correct. Half-Giants actually can't breed with Humans or Giants. Even if there wasn't the biometric inconvenience of a Large-sized creature (they weren't Medium-sized in 2nd ed) mating with a Medium or Huge creature, their genetics were distorted by the psionic process that made them and by generations of interbreeding amongst themselves (not to mention by the mildly mutagenic environment of Dark Sun).

[David Fryer]

Heathansson wrote:

Pneumonica wrote:

By and large I agree, but there might be some oddities. A liger, for instance, is larger than both its parent species, so if you were to merely create a "half-lion" and a "half-tiger" template and merge them, you'd come up with something other than an liger. To me, the half-elf is one of them, or at least was when they still got diplomacy bonuses.

Its my favorite animal...

Actually, some gene in lions and tigers that controls growth maximum is in one sex in the lion and the other sex in the tiger, so if you breed the opposite sexes from that, yes you get a liger with no growth stopping hormonal control. If you breed the other pair of sexes, however, it's not the gargantuan 12' long dire liger thing.

No you get a Tigon, which is the offspring of a male tiger and female lion.