Hello fellow PF'ers
At our last Pathfinder session, we came into this little issue:
I am playing a dwarf character, and as it is with dwarves, he has some bonuses against giants (Pathfinder Core Rulebook, p.21: Defensive Training: Dwarves get a +4 dodge bonus to AC against monsters of the giant subtype).
What happened then was that we encountered an undead - in a place full of them – but this one was the undead of a giant (think "Left4Dead", what they call "a Tank"), so our discussion was:
- Is it still considered a giant? Our GM say that he had applied the "undead" template to this giant, therefore it looses the giant type, so no bonuses for the dwarf.
- but Pathfinder says "... monsters of the giant subtype"; would it be that in this case, the undead be labeled of this giant subtype?
We ended up this discussion with the dwarf getting the bonuses anyway, but we still had doubts left to our mind after that. What would you say?
PS: also: we were wondering if a Giant Spider would also fall in this "giant subtype" category?
Hello fellow PF'ers
At our last Pathfinder session, we came into this little issue:
I am playing a dwarf character, and as it is with dwarves, he has some bonuses against giants (Pathfinder Core Rulebook, p.21: Defensive Training: Dwarves get a +4 dodge bonus to AC against monsters of the giant subtype).
What happened then was that we encountered an undead - in a place full of them – but this one was the undead of a giant (think "Left4Dead", what they call "a Tank"), so our discussion was:
- Is it still considered a giant? Our GM say that he had applied the "undead" template to this giant, therefore it looses the giant type, so no bonuses for the dwarf.
- but Pathfinder says "... monsters of the giant subtype"; would it be that in this case, the undead be labeled of this giant subtype?
We ended up this discussion with the dwarf getting the bonuses anyway, but we still had doubts left to our mind after that. What would you say?
PS: also: we were wondering if a Giant Spider would also fall in this "giant subtype" category?
It probably depends on which undead template was applied. I just looked at "Ghoul" and a giant that turns into ghoul is just "Undead". So by RAW, your dwarf would not get the bonus vs. a Giant Ghoul.
In my game, I would have let you have it, though.
A Giant Spider would not give the Dwarf the bonus either. The creature has to have the word "Giant" in parentheses next to the type, like this:
Type: Humanoid (Giant)
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Type: The creature's type changes to undead. It retains any subtype except for alignment subtypes (such as good) and subtypes that indicate kind (such as giant). It does not gain the augmented subtype. It uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.
Found this under Skeleton in the PRD bestiary. Its the same text for all the undead templates except here it clarifies that the giant subtype indicates kind and is lost upon changing to the Undead type. So nope, no bonuses against giants when fighting undead ones.
The way I would recommend to think about it is how does the creature think. Dwarves get a bonus vs Giants from generations of fighting them. They do not get a bonus vs "really big things" just giants.
So I would say the bonus is in part from knowing how they fight and think as a culture. So Giant spider and giant skeleton are a no... but any pure giant or creature with a template that at it's root was a giant and has the mind of a giant you would get it.
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In many cases, when a "giant" changes template, they lose the giant type (the skeleton quote above looks to be an exception).
That said, I agree with Thazar. The bonus the dwarf gets is because years of dwarves fighting giants, and them learning the giant's tactics, and how best to defend against them. So, my ruling would be if the new creature continues to think and act like a giant (such as the vast majority of intelligent undead), then I'd allow the dwarf bonus. But if the giant becomes a mindless automaton, then the dwarf no longer knows how best to combat it, and thus loses the bonus.