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I'm thinking of running an "Against the Giants" style series of adventures which have 3 different types of giants as the adversaries.
My players are vaguely aware of the classic 1st edition adventures, so I don't want to use the giant types from that, and I don't want to use the giants that feature in Part 4 of Rise of the Runelords; (not gonna spoiler it, but I imagine most GMs on here know which 4 types of giant that rules out).
At the moment, I am thinking of using Marsh Giants (cannibal thugs with a fetish for aberrations), Desert Giants (twin scimitar wielding dervishes) and Taiga Giants (spiritual savages who live among the megafauna) as they are 3 of my favourite types. However, does anyone else have any alternative suggestions for different types of giant they think would make particularly cool adversaries?
The ultimate enemies will be a (presumably small, since they are CR 17) group of rune giant plotters. I'd like them to have a group of Darklands-dwelling minions that act as go-betweens, so any suggestions for those will also be welcome (the more obscure the better, as I'd like to replicate as much as possible the "wtf was that?" ending of G3).
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Frost and Fire are actually two of my favorites, so I'd be sad about dropping them (jazzing them up by having the frost giant jarl be a half-white-dragon and the fire giant chieftan have some efreeti blood, would be a fun twist).
That being said, I'd replace the Hill Giants with Formori. They'd still have Hill Giant stats, more or less, but be prone to deformities, with some having two heads (ettins), some having one eye (cyclopes), some having an extra arm (athach), etc. with a few more innovative options, like a lopsided giant that has a spindly little human-sized leg on one side and a spindly little human-sized arm on the other side, but whose 'giant' arm is large enough that it does damage like a huge cloud giant and has more than expected reach. The fomori would have some similarly degenerate ogres serving them (actually stunted 'dwarfs' among them, using ogre stats, but some having extra arms, heads, etc. as well). Perhaps there's something in the area that explains their mutations, such as a fallen chunk of radioactive skymetal that is slowly poisoning the adventurers as they get closer to the giant chieftan's lair, where he has a crude throne constructed atop the deadly meteor itself (in a room occupied by the most freakishly deformed giants, some of whom have bug-like limbs and bits of exoskeleton, tentacles, amorphous changeable forms or even 'psychic' powers of enchantment, illusion, divination or necromancy)!
The Frost and Fire Giant sections of the adventure rely heavily on the environments (the Glacial Rift, etc.) and use various cold or fire themed creatures as well, so they'd have to be heavily changed based on the new giant type chosen.
Using some sort of aquatic giants, served by merrow (aquatic ogres) and scrags (aquatic trolls), and various other malign sea beasties (dire sharks, a giant octopus, a sea drake or dragon turtle, etc.) could play along with that theme. Their community would be sculpted from the coral of a reef, combined with hollowed out sunken ships (that they've dragged below themselves).
Desert giants, living in a dune-sea region of the desert, with a lair made of sand that has been fused through intense heat into a surreal spikey glass phantasmogorical castle, could be funky. Waves of heat could ripple up from the desert around them, and vast mirrors they've constructed could be used as weapons during the day, focusing the light of the sun to blind and sear approaching enemies (causing them to suffer as if in an area of severe or even extreme heat, while the mirrors are focussed on them). Desert dwelling creatures serving them could include sand-worm like creatures (mongolian death worms! or boring old purple worms...), dust diggers, giant ant lions, and some elemental creatures (avoiding those common to the fire giant modules, like hell hounds, in favor of stuff like mephits or thoqqua or something).
A secretive cabal of stone giants, whose elite 'stonewalkers' have developed the ability to move through stone, allowing them to pop out of walls and attack, and use a Moveby Attack-like ability to dive back into the walls and avoid counter-attack, could be intriguing. They'd exist in mountain villages carved into the side of otherwise unscalable cliffs, like pueblo cliff-dwellings, and design their narrow communities to allow them plenty of room to dash into and out of thick stone pillars and walls.
A cloud giant cloud castle, complete with a unique spell-like phantom steed variant that creates a non-combat wyvern mount of solidified cloud-stuff for them to ride on their raids to ground-based societies, could be fun as well. They'd have domesticated larger-than-normal hawks, falcons and eagles, ranging from sizes small to large, for use as hunting animals, and have an assortment of humanoid slaves trapped on their cloud castle (with no escape possible other than leaping to one's death...). Getting up to their cloud castle would be the first obstacle, and they would be able to rain called lightning, strong winds, and other weather effects down on those who approach uninvited.
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... Great Stuff ...
Flippin' heck, that is a great bunch of ideas.
Okay, I am revising my original concept to add additional giant adventures.
G1 Coral Reef of the Merrow
G2 Stilt Town of the Marsh Giants
G3 Caves of the Fomori
G4 Glass Citadel of the Desert Giants
G5 Pueblo of the Stone Giants
G6 Tent City of the Taiga Giants
G7 Sky Castle of the Cloud Giants
D1 Vault of the ?
D2 Against the Rune Giants
I'm thinking that dwarves and gnomes will have to swap out Defensive Training for an alternative racial trait (per Advanced Players Guide) as otherwise they will be too effective. Rangers won't be able to take favoured enemy (humanoid (giant)) and players will be discouraged from playing single class / primarily rangers as it might lead to frustration. Is that fair?
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Too much of the same thing would, IMO, be way, way, overkill, from a thematic standpoint, and risk getting boring and repetitive.
I'd pick the three I find coolest or more inspiring to work with, and dump the others, poaching ideas if possible. (For instance, one of of the giant keeps might have an ambassador or two from other giant-kin who aren't part of their alliance of giant scheme, allowing you to put a small entourage of that giant-type in a section of the keep that has been modified to be comfortable for them.)
The radioactive mutant 'Fomori of Starfall' or whatever is definitely near the top of my list, since it allows lots of weaker races (ogres, instead of giants, at the beginning) and funky aberrations, which can help 'level up' a weaker party that moves on to the actual source of the 'mutations,' and finds the crater of the fallen meteorite, now with warrens tunneled into the walls of the crater, and a crude stone keep assembled in the center (over the fallen star itself, which the deformed ogres and hill giants worship as a blessing from their gods).
Tweaking it this way, with fomori warrens tunneled into the sides of the crater walls, and adding in a fomori mutant who can meld into stone and does 'hit and run' attacks, you can poach the most evocative ideas from the 'stone giant pueblo,' and trim the list down a bit.