Too many giants? What other monsters to use?


Rise of the Runelords


Hi, I will start a Rise of the Runelords campaign with my group of players in about 2 weeks. We finished the Carrion Crown Adventure Path and will finish the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path next week. Two of my players have complained that they got tired of the same enemies over and over again. In Carrion Crown it was undead and in Legacy of Fire it was Efreeti and other Fire based monsters.

In Rise, the first book is heavy on Goblins, the second has quite a variety of enemies but starting from the third book it is giants in all forms: Ogres, Trolls, Hill-, Stone-, Cloud and Rune Giants etc.

I see these players hitting giant fatigue soon when the Adventure Path progresses. Are there other monsters that would fit in the theme and make sense as Karzoug's minions?

tl;dr: Are there other fitting enemies than mostly various giants for the end of Rise of the Runelords?

Thanks in Advance


McBaine wrote:

Hi, I will start a Rise of the Runelords campaign with my group of players in about 2 weeks. We finished the Carrion Crown Adventure Path and will finish the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path next week. Two of my players have complained that they got tired of the same enemies over and over again. In Carrion Crown it was undead and in Legacy of Fire it was Efreeti and other Fire based monsters.

In Rise, the first book is heavy on Goblins, the second has quite a variety of enemies but starting from the third book it is giants in all forms: Ogres, Trolls, Hill-, Stone-, Cloud and Rune Giants etc.

I see these players hitting giant fatigue soon when the Adventure Path progresses. Are there other monsters that would fit in the theme and make sense as Karzoug's minions?

tl;dr: Are there other fitting enemies than mostly various giants for the end of Rise of the Runelords?

Thanks in Advance

Hrmmm are you sure you actually read through the adventure?

I'm gonna spoiler this because it's not like you couldn't cheat and just read it as a player anyway but just in case you aren't the GM and want to actually be surprised ...

Spoiler:

Book 1 - goblins, boars, zombies, extraplaner hounds, humans, demons

Book 2 - ghouls, ghasts, zombies, undead bats, haunts, humans, golems, lamias

Book 3 - ogrekin, ogres, humans, giant creatures of doom, ettin, trolls, mechanical constructs, stone giants, lamias, hags

Book 4 - stone giants, dragons, harpies, mummies, zombie giants, rune-giants, zombie giants, shining children, redcaps, spiders, lamias

Book 5 - humans, demons, dragons, humans, demons, undead (various), liches, humans, humans

Book 6 - haunts, wendigo, yeti, dark children, angled hounds, leng stuff, giants (of all kinds), dragons, devils, lamias, humans

If you read through the entire adventure and all you saw was 'giants' after book 3 then I don't know what to say.... they are a common foe - I'll grant you - but outside of book 4 they are hardly the majority - and when they become common again an entire book and a half has gone by so not quite fatigue inducing.

Ogres and giants are not the same thing.


Hogpiling...

A few could be added to Ckorik's list

Spoiler:

Book 3: undead fey, necromancer giant
Book 4: rocs, dire bears, mastadons, transmuter giant
Book 5: constructs, mustard jelly, weird ochre jellies, elementals and wizards of every possible kind
Book 6: fey, undead, daemon, planetar, and one the most powerful wizards Golarion has ever known

AP's have themes (Wait a minute... Skulls and Shackles will have a lot of pirates?) - that's how stories are told. So, yea Wrath of the Righteous has a crapload of demons and Hell's Rebels has devils all over the place. If your group wants a lot of combat variety and few repeating enemies, that's cool, but maybe AP's aren't for them.

And replacing giants in the AP would take an immense amount of work and really erode the backstory of the campaign.

Spoiler:

Central to the Thassilon/Runelord manifestation in Varisia is their massive architecture and the immense ruins they've left behind. One reason (besides the Runelord's megalomania) the buildings were massive is because the builders were giants. Runelords putting giants back under their thrall is a critical part of the story.


I would suggest, if you really wish to introduce different minions for special K and his underlings, to follow this approach.

new enemies ideas:

Book 3 - Switch the Ogre's leadership with Ogre Magi and create a subplot that sees them allied with the stone giant in order to resurrects the body of the Rune King into some kind of uber oni.
Book 4 - Have Mr Shorty have enslaved a few clan of shoanti and force them to serve him and raid the lands. This allows you to variate encounters with characters that have class levels. Also, you can give more emphasis on the Lamias under the tower and grant them more minions or goals.
Book 5 - Have some kind of invasion of the Runeforge by a force that was waiting the right time properly ride it and sees the PC's efforts as a distraction - in this way, there could be the chance that the pc's cannot acquire the elements needed to proper forge their anti K weapons.
Book 6 - Make the pit fiend Aviaxal return with an army and siege sections of Xin Shalast, trying to conquer it and getting revenge from K. When the pcs enters his war, he could see them as possible allies or, if they refuse, as looting bags to use to proper pay more infernal forces. Also, this idea could work if you swift the theme with beings from leng trying to conquer the city for their purposes.


Thanks for your answers.

Yeah, I have have experienced Rise of the Runelords as a player and now I prepare it as a DM for another group.

I know that it is not always giants, but they are very common. Ogres are close enough to giants. A ranger with favorite foe (giant) will get his bonuses against ogres because an ogre has the type humanoid (giant), so technically, yes they are kind of the same thing.

I understand that this is an Adventure Path has a theme, but my players seem not to happy with it. They complained about always fighting undead in Carrion Crown even when there are many different types of undead and one of the books has not even one undead creature in it, but still the complaint was there.

I see what I can do and maybe add in some more Leng stuff and look into the things Pnakotus Detsujin suggested (the attack/siege at the end seems a really cool idea and shake up).


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
McBaine wrote:

Thanks for your answers.

Yeah, I have have experienced Rise of the Runelords as a player and now I prepare it as a DM for another group.

I know that it is not always giants, but they are very common. Ogres are close enough to giants. A ranger with favorite foe (giant) will get his bonuses against ogres because an ogre has the type humanoid (giant), so technically, yes they are kind of the same thing.

I understand that this is an Adventure Path has a theme, but my players seem not to happy with it. They complained about always fighting undead in Carrion Crown even when there are many different types of undead and one of the books has not even one undead creature in it, but still the complaint was there.

I see what I can do and maybe add in some more Leng stuff and look into the things Pnakotus Detsujin suggested (the attack/siege at the end seems a really cool idea and shake up).

Which parts of repeated enemies do they dislike? (For example: Thematic/motif repetition, mechanics, or strategy)?


To be fair, Carrion Crown is a difficult AP to play through. And undead are WAY more annoying then giants. So it might not be as much of a problem as you think.

That said, with 5 bestiaries and a monster codex, as well as the occult bestiary and inner sea bestiary, as well as a inner sea monster codex, you should be able to find something to replace stuff with if it starts to feel repetitive.

I also recommend Shattered Star, as both a sequel and thematically similar bestiary entries.


Pnakotus Detsujin wrote:

I would suggest, if you really wish to introduce different minions for special K and his underlings, to follow this approach.

** spoiler omitted **

Just a bit of +1 - while I posted above suggesting giants were pretty important to the overall story for RotRL, Pnakotus' ideas are very interesting and would make good additions/modifications for a GM with the ambition (time) to make them work.


Quote:
Which parts of repeated enemies do they dislike? (For example: Thematic/motif repetition, mechanics, or strategy)?

Honestly I'm not sure. They said something along the lines of "In Carrion Crown it was undead all the time, now [in Legacy of Fire] it is fire based enemies. It gets old fast." Seems to be a thematic thing.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

If they have complained about undead even in the modules where there weren't any, then you have something of a challenge. It sounds like you'll have to intersperse other encounters in as part of the giant force to prevent thematic oversaturation in the first place.

Thankfully, there are a number of creatures that go well with giants. Hags naturally meld with them well, and their magical abilities can offset some of the restrictions giants give. And of course the giants can have pets.

Spoiler:
The Graul homestead is a good example- riding dogs, a giant spider, the dire rats, and the plant in the basement.
At lower levels, you can start with giant vermin and assorted animals and then step up with various more magical minion equivalents like winter wolves, salamanders, ankhegs, trollhounds, hell hounds (including Nessian Hellhounds), purple worms, remorhaz, etc. If you have the extra time to go through some of the later bestiaries, you could go through and pick out a few more obscure servant type monsters.

And because of Karzoug's involvement, you can easily throw in creatures created or conjured by him. Evil outsiders could be inserted in place of some of the giant encounters, perhaps as early warnings to hint that there might be more going on than meets the eye. Constructs also fill roughly the same analogous role. (We know that

Spoiler:
Karzoug magically animated his statue at the end of one module
so there could be more constructs. (Golems obviously, but you might also get a lot of mileage out of animated objects since they're fairly customizable). Perhaps the constructs could be animated by giant life force bound into the constructs' bodies with runes?


Quote:
Perhaps the constructs could be animated by giant life force bound into the constructs' bodies with runes?

Oh, I like that a lot.

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