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In considering the Giantslayer AP, I'm mulling over an idea to give Giants an automatic CMB check on their attacks for bull rush or knocking opponents prone (trip). The reason is because while I love giants, they tend to be rather boring inn combat. This might make them more of a menace as well as more cinematic as their great strength and size can send PC's flying.
So what are some thoughts? Would I be completely gimping the melee characters with this?
Giving automatic awesome blow on each hit is probably too strong. You're melee characters will never be able to stay and fight with your giants. It will be a pretty big "screw you". Now, if you want to customize giants by replacing existing feats with those required to get awesome blow then that would be fair.
Heck, it might even be alright if you just give them the awesome blow feat, with the important caveat being that it must be performed as a standard action (which is how the feat actually works). Which will preclude making more than one attack a round, and cannot be performed as an attack of opportunity. That really removes a large portion of the threat because if he's knocking away the tiny human, he's also not doing as much damage to him either. And it still gives melee characters a chance to get to the enemy and do damage, instead of attempting to get close and getting fly swatted away. Every. Single. Time.
Which is what would happen with your suggestion of it happening freely on every attack.
awesome blow is the way to go.
another way to spice up giants is to give some of them the feat from 3.5 thats allows them to add their strength modifier to thrown weapons. basically make a few of them boulder throwing specialists.
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I think some of the kaiju from Bestiary 4 can attack all creatures standing together in an area. That might be appropriate for giants as well; if there's PCs adjacent to each other, they might be squashed by a hit from the same gargantuan-sized club.
It'd require some rules R&D of course, but basically, with weapons that big, you're making a kind of area attack. It means that to fight giants you really want to spread out. That could be the tactical change of pace you're looking for.
By the way, Awesome Blow is pretty neat on a monster with significant Reach. And you might make an Improved Awesome Blow feat that could be used multiple times per round (on AoOs, even!)
Of course, by the time that kind of feat comes into play, the PCs will probably have some pretty vicious anti-giant ordnance as well.
I think some of the kaiju from Bestiary 4 can attack all creatures standing together in an area. That might be appropriate for giants as well; if there's PCs adjacent to each other, they might be squashed by a hit from the same gargantuan-sized club.
It'd require some rules R&D of course, but basically, with weapons that big, you're making a kind of area attack. It means that to fight giants you really want to spread out. That could be the tactical change of pace you're looking for.
No rules R&D required, this is done easily enough with Cleave and Great Cleave.
Well he was specifically mentioning PCs that were standing adjacent to each other.
There's also Whirlwind Attack if you want to just attack a whole area.
On the flip side of making giants tougher, give them some defenses that matter. Flat DR X/-, to reflect their superior durability, stacking with all other DR of the X/- persuasion. Maybe even throw physics out the window and say they take reduced damage from area effects, or let them make Fortitude saves instead of Reflex saves against such things.
Have all movement by giants against smaller creatures generate free overrun or bull-rush attempts without provoking any AoOs. If a giant is coming through, you're soon either out of the way (bull rush, giant does not have to keep moving with the victim) or outta luck (overrun).
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A better beefing up of giants would probably be to give them Iron Will and Lightning Reflexes to cover their weak saves, along with Combat Reflexes to capitalize on their reach if they have the dexterity for it. Replace lack-lustre feats in their lists with these instead of just tacking them on as you feel appropriate.
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I think the free overrun/bullrush comment is interesting.
Consider a 15ft corridor, a huge giant, three martial PCs standing side by side and a squishy mage hiding 30ft back behind them.
To get to the mage, the giant would probably have to make separate Overrung attacks against each PC to get through, but he just doesn't have that many actions per round, especially since you can't substitute overruns for iterative attacks.
The giants could have the trample ability.
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The easy way to make giants tougher is to sometimes give them smarter tactics and reach weapons. Augment a Hill Giant's stupid great club with a long spear and said Hill Giant is instantly about 30% more combat effective. A reach weapon, 12 DEX, Combat Reflexes, and intelligent tactics make them really nasty. Add in awesome blow on top of those and you'll be killing off PCs left and right. Really, if you just make optimal use of Power Attack (which applies to AoOs) you probably don't need Awesome Blow to challenge your PCs
Do your giants ever trip your PCs? Why not? It will usually work. Compare the CMBs! Think of some of your giants as giant two handed reach/trip fighters, and have them use the same tactics PCs routinely use, and your giants get a lot deadlier. Remember that a trip at reach does not require Improved Trip, as the foe generally lacks the reach to take the provoked AoO.
I faced a similar issue running Ride of the RuneLords. Good tactics and reach weapons made an enormous difference. A Rune Giant with a glaive starts with 40' reach.
I'm unaware of any published Paizo adventure that includes a giant with a reach weapon. This is probably because they design so that non-optimized iconics can triumph. As in, the giant's masters deliberately have the giants use sub-standard weapons and tactics, so as to give PCs an advantage. Giants with reach weapons would massacre iconics, so they don't do it. A tactically-capable giant using effective reach tactics should rarely take a full attack from melee PCs, yet should generally be able to Full Attack. This works really well for Large creatures, which is why PCs like Enlarge Person so much. Your players are more optimized than iconics. So do it.
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Reach is also useful to shut down many archers. With 30' reach perhaps it's possible to full attack that archer right over the head of the melee PCs. We've seen PC reach builds able to get a 50' reach. Giants can generally do the same. Many combat maps are not even that big. A prone archer can't fire arrows at all. The best defense is generally a good offense.
This obviously does not work if the fight is in a big open area, or if the archer does not provoke AoOs. Great reach still makes it easier to get at the archer. Coupled with 30' movement, a reach giant can attack an archer within 50' or even 80'. It's pretty much always a big advantage on a giant. A giant who chooses to fight archers in a big open space is a stupid, and soon to be dead, giant. Fight archers in a crowded space, if you want the advantage. Thus the smarter tactics I opened with.
Doing more DAMAGE with rocks is not the only solution to making rock throwing more ferocious. Although it's OFTEN overlooked, it only takes a little Quick Draw to make many giants be able to throw more ROCKS in total.
Yes. A rock throwing giant would be lethal, indeed.
Maybe allow them to grab rocks as if they quick draw. That would be a nice combat add on. One rock per round is really not impressive.
Well, if a level 11 human can do this with a rock:
+19/+19/+14 (2d4+26 + 1d4 Bleed/19-20), No penalties until the fourth increment (120ft+)
What can we make a giant do?
(See link in my previous post).
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You can make giants more interesting if you:
- Switch several feats. Some feats are literally terrible choices and it would be logical to switch some if giants are more melee or ranged focused opponents. I personally don't understand why do Cloud Giants even have fog/mist spells if they can't even see through it. At least give them Blind Fight feat to give them more advantage.
- Use CMB checks via AoO attacks. I cannot describe it how useful it is to trip a charging barbarian on AoO due to reach. Awesome Blow feat can keep their opponents away also and limit them to 1x attack per round, while giant is getting additional AoO due to reach.
That's all I could think of at the moment,
Adam
You could do this, but remember this:
If the giant is doing a full attack, and he succeeds to send the opponent flying on the first hit, all the following attacks will miss.
Just have the giant target someone else, then. Full attacks don't have to all target the same opponent.
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Good points all, giving Awesome Blow was something I thought about and will probably go with. Just trying to come up with a way to make the giants cinematic beyond just being big bags of experience. I do like the range option to add Str to the boulders. Im definitely going to have to look some of those 3.5 feats up.
Thrown weapons add strength to damage by the default rules. Do the rocks not add strength?
What about a whip build. I figure that's got to be crazy.
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Perhaps giving your players an additional combat option might help make things dynamic too.
Additionally I let Giants attack with their slam attacks in addition to their weapon attacks, and call them STOMP attacks. This means full attacks from Giants can be damned dangerous, so finding a way to stop giants from full-attacking is probably a good idea.
<@> <@>
Race Specific Magic Weapon and Armor ( 30% cheaper to make also ).
Most giant have above average Wisdom. Group would have divine caster with them to buff them up during fight.
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Simply giving your Giant a longspear probably increases it's combat effectiveness more than Awesome Blow. Lots of reach magnifies the value of Awesome Blow. They are synergistic. When a giant with 20' to 40' reach knocks a foe 10' away with Awesome Blow, that [prone] foe is still within reach for further attacks. If the giant lacks a reach weapon then the foe is likely to be tossed to a safer place, out of reach of further iterative attacks. Awesome Blow and a reach weapon complement and enhance each other.
So if you want to get a little nastier add Awesome Blow. If you want your giants much more effective then also give them reach weapons. Note the ubiquitous giant Slam attack does not require hands, so giants always threaten adjacent. I'm at a loss to explain why their supposedly intelligent masters never tell them to wield long spears or polearms, when it would so obviously increase their combat effectiveness so drastically.
Giant rock throwing sucks unless you build the giant specially for it. The rocks hit plenty hard, but the to-hit roles are awful (no Strength bonus). Giant rocks usually only hit on a 20.
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Have a giant specialize in improvised weapons, and then pick up a PC and use the PC as the weapon.
Have a giant specialize in improvised weapons, and then pick up a PC and use the PC as the weapon.
You mean like a giant with barbarian class levels and the body bludgeon rage power?
I mean, you would need a low CR giant, but it could be an amazing combo.
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I enjoyed a few of the named giants out of rise of the runelords.
Mockmurion being a wizard was pretty cool.
I remember 1 of the giants using a oil of darkness and used a giants decision to gain an advantage.
Adding classes to lower CR giants is a good way to beef them up. A raging giant is cool.
Adding a longest like Luckbender said makes it hard to be a martial character against the huge threat radius for AoO. Mixing it with throwing rocks at full range you can make a cool switch hitter reach giant. Given class levels like fighter he will come up with the feats.
I also like the idea of a grappling giant. Make it possible to grab 2 targets and slam them together doing damage to two people at once.