>>76960319
Giants are gods LE collectora edition. Each one is a unique being originating directly from God and was made with a specific purpose in mind

That's very Dark Souls but I like the idea of them being civilized and vaguely somewhat divine.

>>76960319
So, in other words, Thomas Covenant Giants.

I think like an archer would be a waste of a giant. That's basicly just a super deffensive balista that rearly needs that deffens due to being far from combat. If the enemy reached him, than it's most likely too late already.
The threads about a week ago agreed that things like construction worker/equipment are a fitting job for one

>>76960319
>Immortals setting
Giants are around 16-20 feet tall
They are primarily herbivorous, preferring to graze on the endless fields of tundra grass.
The only other creature capable of eating this grass are mammoths

They are peaceful, timid creatures.
Stone age technology at best.

>>76960319
A giant archer would snap any bow it tried to pull given the properties of material proportionally change. I suspect slings would go the same way but they might have luck with atlatls at even the largest sizes. One thing I mentioned last giant thread was the gentrification of the classic tree-club image. Giant nobility might curate "bludgeon-groves" going from selection for practical traits like sturdiness, straightness and grippy bark to ornate thorns, buttress root flanges and timed blossoms to provide "a flower death". Dick-measuring is a universal trait so there'd probably be a race towards redwoods at the expense of their actual wieldiness, a family with a collosal oak nobody could hew let alone lift might say "see how mighty our divine ancestors were, they lifted this as though it were a twig". These are as credible as the omnipresent "that mountain is a tomb built atop my forefather" claims and just as tactless to contest. Smaller than their tall tales or not the nobility can still flatten you.

>>76960596
Come to think of it there is one out of the materials problem in muh setting. A key conceit is that all magic derives from the human form. Beasts are just beasts until they become strange and dire through the consumption of human flesh and witches and monsters are all as otherworldly as they are cannibal.

The old, cruel giant-kings jealous of their subjects' little toy decided they needed something more durable materials to suit their stature. Seeing the unnatural vigour of the dire beasts they wondered if the invigorating effects of flesh on fauna could be replicated on flora. The blood-oaks were a natural progression of bludgeon-groves and after a few generations of steady sacrifice, pollarding and grafting the nobility were quite pleased with their deep red timber. For the first time the greatest of the great could swing staffs and draw bows without sundering them to splinters and a fashion for ever-longer canes caught on until smaller kin realised they looked like children hobbling with the sticks of their fathers. Another issue is that human slaves simply didn't have the tools for such vast work and like true nobility the giants were loathe to lower themselves to mere handywork. Balzac the whittler took scandalously sincere interest in working the grooves and whorls but being the largest son his line ever produced none dared question his choice of pursuits. It's said that his masterwork, the Arc of Triumph, was a composite formed of the wood of a stolen blood oak and the bones of the owner who came to avenge the sleight. It was drawn only once, reputedly in an attempt to kill the sun, and when Balzac's heart gave out from the unparalleled effort it is said his soul was loosed into the void along with the arrow. Little is known of the bow's subsequent fate, those of paranoid bent have accused any number of machinist clans of designing gearings whose obscene torque could only be intended to use the dreadful weapon.

>>76960319
There are giants of all species, including humans. They are usually the same, just big. Some Giant Humans are usually tasked with building and protecting villages. Some became warriors and a pain in the ass for the other armies to deal. There was this instance were a member of the Royal family was born a giant, he studied magic and combat from the get go and became one of the strongest warriors ever, became a hero and one of the most adored kings from his land.

>>76960563
Giant bipeds don't sound well adapted to a diet that forces them to bend down all the time. Pure herding, a return to knuckle-walking or giraffe-feeding sound a little more plausible.
>>76960855
Fuck that's cool. I can imagine the bow groaning with all the lives that went into it. Not exactly the peaceful giants OP asked for though is it?
>>76961119
When you say all species do you mean ALL species? cm wide megabacterium? Mile long kelp? Always liked visibly different nobility assuming gigantism is heritable.

>>76961286
>When you say all species do you mean ALL species? cm wide megabacterium? Mile long kelp? Always liked visibly different nobility assuming gigantism is heritable.
Yes, there are a few cases of people dying from giant parasites. It's too rare though.

>>76961340
I imagine it helped germ theory a bunch. Are there naturally miniature people? It's fun to imagine assassination/surgery by injecting specially bred and trained strains of micro already small species.

>>76961371
>I imagine it helped germ theory a bunch.
Never really thought about that desu. Thanks, will write something about that
>Are there naturally miniature people?
There are! But it's even rarer than Giants and mortals usually see it as a curse, while giantism is seen as a blessing. Doesn't help that one of the few "kuldens" (as they are called, meaning little devils) helped in the assassination of a really adored local lord for "personal reasons" that never reached the public.

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>>76961286
I mean the wood's been bloodied too many times over too many generations for the supposed souls inside to care much (it's said that blood oak writhes and crackles unnaturally as it burns though). The glue used to bind bone to wood probably had a dash of human tallow and resins from other blood-trees (gum was popular) out of superstition, the ogres threw a little manflesh into everything for luck.

The giants today actually are like OPs chill dudes. Turns out flipping off the square cube law and letting your entire metabolism rely on magic leads to stillbirths and madness. The mother of all tantrums spirals among godlike Hapsburgs convinced the lesser houses who only just survived in the rubble that some eugenic outbreeding was in order and no more giant-on-giant killing was to be permitted in favour of highly ritualised duels to prevent the smaller peons (who they were now acutely aware massively outnumbered them) got ideas.

Things carried on like that for a while until the warring titans faded into myth and the nobility got uppity again. They moved to restrict borrower free city privileges (those even smaller than humans had become master urbanizer-bureaucrats) and found the littlefolk pushed back with chemical weapons, clever engineering and suicidal human wave tactics. After the horrors of the flensed men the final illusion of giantish rule was broken.

These days they're like the bongs a generation after giving up their empire. Very sorry about all that oppression business yet prone to pining for better times (the few who are bitter are massively so on everyone else's behalf). Inertia still makes them rich and generations of breeding for public address and spectator sport makes them popular figures.

>>76960319
I prefer to make them "gods that do not grant divine spells or guide worshippers through the after life." It'd be kind of like how they were Germanic legend and the Poetic Edda. Some giants may have been considered gods like Scandi who is often called a giant but seems like a goddess too and often gets described as such especially her association with winter and hunting as does Ullr.

>>76960855
>>76960596
If you're saying human material is magic couldn't they weave their hair into a sling?
>>76961472
Apparently Kulden is cold in Norwegian, any intentional resemblance or just random phonemes? The line between poison and medicine has always been viewed with suspicion, a campaign about corpse-cutting, diseases-punching widely reviled surgical pioneers would be rad.
>>76961595
>Inertia still makes them rich and generations of breeding for public address and spectator sport makes them popular figures.
Bongs might be rich but they've cultural hegemony and are only so-so at their own signature sports. Anyway, cool rise and fall story.
>>76961861
Sounds animist elemental in that sense. Begs the question if gods are "ethereal giants" whose vastness commensurate with their power is expressed in matter mortals can't perceive. I guess once your best defence against a threat is prayer you may as well call it a god. Most religion probably derives from that primal appreciation for the overwhelming.

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The equivalent to Giants on my setting are also a bit different
>In the past, the region of "Not!Russia" was dominated by these immense titans that inhabitated those plains in high castles with magic

>Then, the ancestors of the people currently living there showed up, and waged war against them (the actua history is a bit different from that), but in the end the Giants were defeated, but they placed a last curse on the people that defeated them

>The spirits of the Giants are forever conected to the lands of "Not!Russia" and to the people that inhabit it. They travel to the bodies of people that died in war and "possess" them, turning the body into some sort of cocoon. In 100 years, a giant comes out of it, with the clothes/weapons and appereance based on the fallen warrior.

>These giants are stupid and brute creatures, but hunting them is EXTREMELLY IMPORTANT because with each year that they are left they grown in size and inteligence, until they recover their powerful magical habilities - essentialy, with time the giants go back to their old glory. Because of that, not cremating bodies is a big taboo.

>Hunting them as they rise up became such a recurrent tradition on Not!Rusia, that they can "predict" more or less when a great number of giants are going to rise up together ,and prepare weeks in advance to hunt them down

>>76962160
I assume you mean lost cultural hegemony? Yeah, burgers are the showbiz satraps these days but then they're also the dubiously competent world police everyone seethes about. Sports like wrestling were always taken seriously by the giants because back before bludgeon-groves there was little they could arm themselves with that would last a fights and effective stuff like Murder-greaves and death-rakes were viewed as extermination tools rather than something you'd use to kill someone of stature with. The later ceremonial era prized non-lethal contests even more so (it was considered bad form to let lessers see their nobles bleed) and in proportionally confined areas (though surprised by littlefolk density there was still steady development across the reign of giants).

Great idea with the hair by the way, I can imagine lineages breeding themselves (or more likely their manimal herds) to produce wiry wool. The longest locks would still belong to giants because why bother keeping massive livestock when it's hard enough to feed the nobility as is? Probably lead to Sikh style beards and turbans in weaver-houses who gifted (never sold, that's for grubby peasants) long locks of tough if not silky dreads to patrons.

>>76962228
Very nice, hope you don't mind if I steal it. Going by my body horror bent the "arms" that reanimated soldiers come out wielding probably are their detached and repurposed limbs. Do copies of the same soul despise one another or form roaming warbands of clones? Is it a single ancient soul surfing into each body such that twins are impossible? I don't know if this is based on existing Russian folklore but then I'm not very well read.

>>76962525
>Do copies of the same soul despise one another or form roaming warbands of clones?

No, every soul have just one body, and when they die go for another. Its like a possession that reshapes an existing body into a new (alive) giant.

Initially they have no memmories of their past lives, they are too stupid. Over some decades they start remembering details of their past lives.

>>76962612
Cool. I'd probably have my cake and eat it by having dumb "shattersouls" get embodied by many people (at which point infighting and cannibalism to become one again, gathering with kin or ignoring one another is "individual preference") and singltons like what you mention who while still dumb regain their spark quicker and often act as commanders of the horde. Again, any link to Russian folklore? I know some bogatyrs were massive and imagine that the viking colonists inspired the invasive peoples history. What is the actual history for that matter?

>>76960596
>>76960855
>>76961595
>>76962525
OP here, that's a pretty damn cool idea. I like it a lot, especially the "cursed bow" thing. Also gives them a far more "human" (for lack of a better term) feel, with jealousy and pride motivating the giants to commit evil deeds rather than just "ha ha foot go stomp".
As a side note
>A giant archer would snap any bow it tried to pull given the properties of material proportionally change.
This makes me feel considerably stupider than it perhaps should. It seems completely obvious now.
That said, if one were to hypothetically design a "bow" for a giant without the aid of magic or fantastical wood (we'll handwave the existence of the giant, obviously) how would you engineer it? Depending on the size of the giant, I suppose rather than having the bow be made of a single piece of wood you could make it two-part and rely on metal leaf-springs or the like for the bending action, a bit like a composite bow except very big and presumably a tad less complex. Though at that point you might as well make a ballista the giant could use.
>t. couldn't engineer his way out of a wet paper bag

>>76960319
>How would you do giants differently, /tg/?
Why do you NEED to do giants differently?

>>76963497
To be honest bows are probably non-starters given the largest equivalents were ballistae which used torsion springs to story force instead of the wood itself. That said this could be due to the fact that they're upscaled crossbows rather than bows, presumably because they allow steady ratcheting force rather than requiring a single smooth draw that puny humans couldn't provide for something that big. Judging by trebuchets being the largest artillery pieces and Balearic shepherds being snipers with their slings fancy thrown rocks might still be the way to go (still have that material problem absent magically tough hair though).
>t. also a poster child for Dunning-Kruger

>>76963603
Why not? Variety is the spice of life and I'm already getting ideas from micro-macro surgeon-assassins >>76961472 and the revenant forest >>76962228

>>76962160
>Apparently Kulden is cold in Norwegian, any intentional resemblance or just random phonemes?
Lol, I didn't know that, I just create roots for basic words and mix them together, maybe change something depending on region/time/formality. I wouldn't say it's a conlang or anything, but it's not random. "Kul" means little/small/minus, "den" means devil/trickster/bad manners.
>The line between poison and medicine has always been viewed with suspicion, a campaign about corpse-cutting, diseases-punching widely reviled surgical pioneers would be rad.
Indeed! Would love to play something like that

>>76963637
>Why not?
Needless fluff is useless fluff

>Variety is the spice of life
Then make something new instead of trying to "reinvent" something old

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>>76963742
Get a life, faggot, if you have no creativity that's on you, let people like OP enjoy themselves

>>76960319
Giants are the only pure humans. Everyone else is a descendant of a cursed mutant or a hybrid with some kind of fae or demon.

>>76963742
>he doesn't want to wonder among groves of strangely shaped trees only to find a conspicuous absence and recently moved dirt
>"batter-root" says a helpful plaque just to the side, you remember a nearby seige that'll probably be broken any minute now...
>>76963790
Can't decide if corporate canvassing is more or less pathetic than a few obsessive autists.

>>76963851
Begs the question of what actual fae and demons look like given they're usually depicted as humanoid. I take it those would be degenerate intermediaries?

>>76963909
They're generally quite small.

>>76964111
But humanoid? Kind of takes away from the theme of giants as pure if there are other upright naked apes wandering around.

>>76960319
The Colossus fathered the Titans.

The Titans fathered the Giants

And the Giants fathered the Dwarves.

The giants are the generally rare ruling class of the dwarves, alongside dragons. It is not uncommon to see a pack of dragons and a party of giants go to war alongside a dwarven coalition of clans. Or it would be if the clans got together more than once every century or so for a war large enough for both.

>>76961286
>When you say all species do you mean ALL species? cm wide megabacterium? Mile long kelp? Always liked visibly different nobility assuming gigantism is heritable.
Well now I know what giant blood does alchemically in my setting. Imagine a giant being slain, only for years later a massive fungal network to sprout because the adventurers forgot to burn the body, and some mycelium took well the blood. Or it could just be the origin of dire animals.

>>76960532
>>76960596
Just give him a bag of rocks and a spot with a decent view.
Imagine the fastballs he could pull off.

>>76960319
>How would you do giants differently, /tg/?
Different from what?

But in general, I'm not a huge fan of doing things different. Do new things, for sure, but doing things "differently" is just a recipe for confusing your players who have had a lifetime of association with a word and now they have to actively remember you mean something else when you say it so they're focusing on that instead of the actually interesting things you have going on.

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>>76960319
I like the concept of mountain sized giants. Stage hazards, not enemies.

>>76967717
Good thing fire is scale invariant. Assuming I were running that kulden surgeon idea it'd be an opportunity to observe usually pesky biology in much greater detail. Given giants are saintish such desecration would have to be well hidden and extremely quick...
>>76967893
>human body good, human body + tools better
Compare sprearchuckers with the simple addition of an atlatl artificially extending their arm. A giant bowler given a sling would be so mighty that there's a chance the boulders they throw would disintegrate from the forces imposed on them.
>>76960532
It also mentioned that poison and massed artillery was the best way of fighting back against a giant. By exploiting mobility relative to cumbersome engines a big guy could pummel fortifications in short, targeted bursts and run away (long strides) without giving defenders time to react. The ground would still have to be checked for ambushes and traps by scouts of course but integrated warfare has always been the name of the game.

>>76960319
Tachnologically superior aliens from Gantz or Macross that want to fuck your shit up.

>>76970459
Not exactly giant exclusive but I've always wanted to run a campaign of adventurers hunting Shadow of the Colossus-tier dozy beasts without being able to whale on their shins like in Monster Hunter. "Gameplay" would be staking out the beast's habits and features of the surrounding landscape before constructing some killing trap to lure it into. Any ecology that can support a colossus is probably pretty hostile so fighters would still have a role protecting surveyors from tiger-sized "vermin" and offering their own intimate insights into the art of death.

>>76960319
> regaling them with tales of "the before days".
What does this have to do with adventuring? Sounds just like GM masturbation that’s completely irrelevant to players.

>>76970956
>Adventuring never, EVER requires information gathering or lore about where to find your objective.
>All adventurers have a special sense that directs them directly to ancient ruins and treasure.
>Playing any other way is storyshitting
inb4 'unironically right'

>>76970990
My Spidey Compass will help me find the bank.

>>76970956
>>76960855
>mention the fable of Balzac the whittler in passing
>players find an oddly worked giant bone in one of their tomb raids
>a mysterious machinist combine starts sending agents to acquire it by fair means or foul
>when they get it the hills resound with unearthly groaning
>witches say the sound unsettles their sinews, what is wound must be sprung
The past never dies, sometimes it is even resurrected.

>>76970990
And having direct access to people who not only literally experienced history firsthand but are also super keen on sharing their experience sure makes lore mysterious and fun to discover!

>>76971035
Senile immortals who confuse the past for the present can make a delightful mess of chronology. The lucidity of their insights taken individually makes the overall jumbling even more insidious.

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>>76960319
Quasi-feudal alien clans who occasionally rope humans into their politics and combat trials. They largely refuse to give up honorable arranged combat, but humans taught them industrial warfare eventually. They still think other species are at least half crazy, or at least politically mad, and resent the resources they have to spend on war materiel now.

>>76971027
>the sun is a tyrant! a fat sovereign blotting out the smaller sparks with its crass irradiance
>when it is slain by a bolt of cold iron the countless stars will emerge, rejoice and redouble again
>the night shall be as day, so says the machinist general! in the new world no longer shall the lesser labour under giantish yoke

The blood oak is just asking to be made into a literal family tree, a kind of massive bonsai where each elaborately tangled branch represents a bloodline. Also assuming noble blood ever quenched its roots I bet a Robert the Oak situation emerged (gotta shoe in that crowned leaf particularist emblem wherever I can).

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>>76960319
Read the Ogre-Gods.

>>76971195
Already have senpai, making a series of monographs depicting prominent rulers and their enduring effects on the realm is going to be a blast. One of my favourite aspects of the comic was the veneer of historicity it gave everything else. Wolf's story was a nice ground's eye view and I understand why barbarian lineages would be irrelevant but I did miss the lists of kings and chamberlains, maybe book 4 will feature prominent giant powers behind the throne.

>>76971195
Any other good giant-centric media for that matter? Someone already mentioned Dark Souls features a ton of big bois on account of the greater soul = greater body conceit and of course there's Shadow of the Collossus though they're not really a race as well as any number of fairy tales.

>>76971319
Brothers: tale of two sons has some cool giant sections.
One where you have to navigate a battlefield of dead and dying giants and one where you're sneaking through a giant's home before he comes back. The giants look human but are proper big. The latter has a griffiin in a birdcage.

Haha, in my setting the giants are always female, and are about 70ft in height. There's not enough fabric in the world for a giant to wear proper clothes so they always dress in one pieces dresses that they think is modest. But haha, when you're a normal sized person you can see their giant cooter and butthole when they walk past. Also they have the creamiest legs and the softest feet. The rules of thermodynamics are kinda like attack on titan where they're huge, and they can smush you if they put the effort into it, but mostly they just float centimeters off the ground so they don't actually leave any prints or have dirty feet haha. It still sweats on a hot day though so if one steps on you by accident you get buried in incredibly soft giantess soles and you're forced to breathe their sweat haha. They also perceive time slowly, but not as slow as ents so basically you squirm and thrash and go "noooooo I'm forced to breathe in the pocket of smelly air in your cushiony sole helllpppp noooo" haha and then they rub against your body for a bit, before getting off you and asking if you're alright. They're extremely benevolent so they often pick you up by the nape of your shirt and kiss you until you're better, haha but sometimes it gets bad and you get sucked into their warm moist mouth and get swirld around a little on their velvety tongues as you're forced to inhale their sweet nectary breath (they eat cloud blossoms, a fruit that grows on clouds). Haha you go slush slush, and maybe a slight suckle but they gently spit you out when they realize their mistake and they say sorry and make you lay on their giantess lap until you feel better, but their skirts are so short haha so you kinda roll next to their cooch.

>>76971524
Not sure why this is written ironically. This is based.

>>76971376
Good point, I guess a great deal of recent horror titles count too given scale is a great shorthand for threat. Jesus Christ those scrambling gluttons were creepy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8uarNp5Jpk
>>76971738
Keep erp on the coomer thread.

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>>76960319
Its because I played Mabinogi as a kid, but giants as a civilized race has always appealed to me.

I feel giants are underutilized in fantasy seeing their prominence in folklore etc. I know they can't be THAT big when they're actually a people but 10-15 feet is pretty damn scary in actuality.

>>76972606
Same, making any given abusive local lord an ogre immediately adds rustic colour to a story. Even more so if you're going with a Fafniresque take that the evil is in some way related to monstrosity.
>>76971524
Coom aside Attack on Titan mass raises an important issue. Even if giants have magic physics that make a scaled up human anything but a cripple there's no reason to assume this would extend to telekinetically reinforcing the ground. Giant empires would probably be road builders to leverage their speed without destroying the crops they depend on and massed marches would be a no-go (as if there'd be enough big guys for a whole battalion anyway).

>>76971524
Homebrew setting pdf pls haha

>>76972757
Haha, You see the sky giants actually have a cousin species. Where the aptly named pale giants float due to their affinity for the heavens, their more malevolent counterparts, the earth giants have a functioning magnetic field that keeps them from damaging the earth. While all giants have tend to be mostly docile, these chocolate skinned earth giants harbor a mild disdain for humans and see them as ungrateful children at best, and harmful parasites at worst. Anyway haha, let me tell you more about them haha. While the sky giants have long, dainty legs, slender figures and large chests (because their essence is channeled skywards.) The relatively shorter 60 foot tall earth giants have earthier proportions haha. Firstly, they have a smaller chest (folklore has it that this is because they have no heart) but they have wider hips and thicker thighs. Haha, where the sky giants go out of their way to avoid hurting humans, the more territorial earth giants will make sure that trespassing humans are properly taught a lesson. Firstly, haha, they establish the difference in the natural order by steppin on the human haha while making it abundantly clear that it's intentional. Haha, given their size and the way they perceive time, giants are creatures of few words and prefer expressing their hatred in simple words like "pathetic", "disgusting". "lowly" while intentionally trapping underneath the arch of their soles or worse - trapping them in between their toes. When a giant really really hates a human haha, they sit down, cross their legs, and trap the human in between their feet while hissing degrading words and demanding an apology haha. Given their view on humanity, an earth giant typically forces the human to degrade himself further by calling her "mommy" or "mistress" etc haha. And while they wouldn't actually seriously harm a person, they're known to forget about a human and sit on them by accident and trap them in between the thick jiggly backsides haha.

>>76960319
we had RL ones but they go outcompeted by humans its not a effective way to survive

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>>76960319
Fusion-powered military-grade cyborgs. Fusion reactor output scales with the fifth power of reactor diameter, so there's a strong pressure to build them as large as possible to give them more power for mobility and weapons. With advances in materials science, the sweet spot for maximum performance works out at around 60 feet.

>>76962228
>John Bauer
Good taste

>>76971319
The other thread reminded me that the Second Apocalypse series has giant elves, one of the better sequences imo. The elves themselves are pretty metal being ancient and demented trauma addicts (memory overload robs them of any experience not held fast by PTSD) who can't an hero because of an inhuman passion for life. The Tall were bloody paragons among a whole race of warrior-poets so their mental decline took a different turn, instead of being lost in dementia punctuated by murdering all their friends to better remember them they're lucid but uniformly murderous. The viewpoint character descends into the heart of a mountain on a feeding cart tossing pig carcasses down onto heroes reduced to ghouls.

>>76960319
fuck that boring giant, we want to find the forge that made that gear

>>76977807
Probably his brother with the bum leg careful about visiting his forge, I hear his wife's a slut and he'll splatter you if he catches anyone staring.

>>76960319
I like the idea of smaller giants who are ~10ft. They actually make sense without resorting to magic physics and they aren't so diverged from humans that they seem like an alien species. They are essentially living siege weapons in warfare and can commonly be seen in aristocracy especially the tribal version. For the rare male specimens that grow to over 12ft tall they are sometimes seen as living deities walking on the Earth and worshipped by those they rule over. They take longer to grow and consume more resources than humans so they often resort to leading swarms of humans when they battle as their own population isn't anywhere near large enough to displace humans.
There was once a rebellion against a well known giant lord. The rebels holed up in a castle after being defeated on the field. The expected long siege did not occur as the giant lord, his wife, brother and 20 year old loli daughter (7ft) brought the giant version of handcannons to the battle arriving a full week before the siege weapons were expected to be dragged over. Two days later the rebellion ended due to a significant breach in the castle wall allowing the Giant Lord's human army to invade showing that castles designed to ward off human invaders isn't suitable for warding off giants matching the ancient legends of giants jumping the walls of ancient forts in a single bound.

>>76978370
Nice and restraint-pilled. It's amazing how much a even few plausible departures from reality can add to a setting. How diverged are we talking? Half-giants could be infrequently fertile mules, even if interfertile giantish clans might tend towards strong contacts with distant kin to ease the exchange of blood to counteract inbreeding in populations particularly vulnerable to it. Without enough population for palanquin bearing slaves and the lack of roads for sufficiently large chariots they'd probably take hiking seriously as a group. To counteract the inbreeding above they might even encourage men to go Rumspringa (children in wedlock are still preferred of course).

Giants live a non-sequitor modern lifestyle. One asks the party to climb inside and fix his toaster.

>>76960471
Ayyyy my boy.

>>76971226
>mfw massive statue of long gone king is actually to scale

>>76978492
Giant blood is possible but it's kind of rare due to practical reasons. Human and giant bodies have a considerably different size making human mothers pretty much impossible. As for giant females their marriages are often chosen by the male giants plus miscarriages are common due to the half-giant fetus being much weaker than a normal pregnancy. For those that are successfully born they still need to take longer to grow and consume more resources than humans so their numbers could never balloon to a level where they are more than a curiousity.
The giants themselves have a fairly healthy population and don't need to worry about inbreeding. It's much smaller than the human population but even with a 1% population size there would still be a thousand for every hundred thousand humans so it's only small by comparison. A giant aristocratic family has the option of other aristocratic families or lower ranked giants in their employ to find partners with. Most of the lower ranked giants are affiliated with an aristicratic family or tribal community as a method of keeping the power firmly rooted in giant hands.
In the setting there is also a breed of giant horse similar to draught horses so they can charge around like the smaller people. These would be impractical to breed for human mounts as they require several humans to look after. A cavalry charge by Giant Knights is a feared concept on the battlefield and ordinary infantry can't hope to resist it.

>>76978886
Cripes, hypermobile artillery is bad enough. I don't even want to think about charges of that scale, the mass alone would make lances redundant because of easy trampling. Have they had their Agincourt yet or are they so far undefeated?

So what sort of mechanics should be used to apply to giants? My setting has 22 foot tall dragon girls and I've given them improved Fitness, diminished Coordination, and slight natural armor. But other than that I'm thinking about just increasing their scale of everything by 16. 16 times the Encumbrance Limit, 16 times the amount of work completed when doing labor, 16 times the amount of food needed, etc.

And yes I know it should be 64 times the food but magic dragon efficient metabolism. Which also deftly sidesteps scat implications, so win-win.

I suggest improving giants the way you can improve anything.
Make them robots.

>>76978945
The most popular tactic is to swarm the enemy with human infantry before using the giant forces tactically. The humans aren't fodder either so it's not uncommon to see human cavalry deployed for big moves. One of the advantages to this approach is that if a blunder is possible then the less important forces make it before the giants have a chance to. So far guns haven't made much of an appearance being the toys of the rich and powerful so the cavalry are still at their peak.
While muddy ground and marshland is more significant for giants they have long strides leading them to be very quick on their feet even if they dismount and if the poor terrain is small enough their horses can directly leap over as they also have a greater long jump capacity than regular horses.
The giants aren't undefeated. Even against nations lead by humans a loss isn't unreasonable. They see foreign nations lead by giants as rivals so there are often conflicts between them for land, resources or population. It just really, really sucks to be a human with a cheap spear when the giant cavalry trample your position.

>>76979126
Dragons should eat way more food but it should also be annihilated in the dragonfire avoiding any messy stuff (except a smoking burp.. maybe). Dragons and efficient metabolism aren't really on the same page. They need lots of energy to keep their dragonfire burning.

>>76960319
Are you that same Elf-Giant thread guy form the other days?

> I quite like the idea of giants with actual combat skills beyond "swing club and yell a lot"- a giant archer, for example, would be pretty scary for the opposing army.
Seriously even bland as fuck D&D has done more interesting example of giants and titans. Go read a monster manual before you post.

>>76979126
Depends on your setting goals. If regular sized characters are expected to be on par with dragon-girls be sure they have correspondingly absurd capabilities if only because for every 1 giant there are a horde of humans, only the best of which become PCs.
>>76979327
Good compromise, the burp is a charming touch. Maybe add apex predator lethargy for less logistic strain too.

>>76979327
Not all dragons are elementally aligned to fire. And the logistics of dealing with enormous amounts of food would be distracting for a game. This is for a roleplaying game after all.

>>76979418
When you're dealing with the equivalent of a sixteen man squad it either needs support like one or should have other balancing drawbacks. Either that or make smaller party members similarly OP (unless a fully superhuman giant party is what you were after).

>>76979412
It's a WW1 style conflict setting with magic and fantasy elements. Human battlemages are plenty powerful, albeit rare. But I'm not worried about that.

I'm purely thinking about how to mechanically model the impacts that being 22 feet tall would bring.

>>76979418
If it's lightning or acid it's still dragonfire. Ice usually ends up being dragonfire too. As long as they have a highly destructive breath technique then it'll annihilate food for energy just fine.

>>76979461
Honestly I can't imagine WW1 with tank-tier infantry undo trench warfare before it gets dug in. At that point it'd be a hybrid of older wars and WW2 with less integrated arms. Realistic models would have to account for the square cube law in terms of strength which isn't very fun on the human frame without magically strong joints so you're better off embracing the unrealism and calibrating it to whatever powers you've seen fit to give other classes. What system do you have in mind anyway?

>>76979559
Oh but that's the beauty of it! A major theme of the game is the changing face of war as time goes on, starting off in the stuck-in-yesterday's-war fighting style and seeing how that fails to take into account new technology, and the scramble to see what works as the war goes on. Starting off, giant dragon girls will be largely used for labor and as artillery support, basically playing the role of mobile field guns.

As the war goes on, and the importance of armor becomes more apparent, more options will become available to the players (for all races, not just dragon girls) and that includes tank style breakthrough with heavy armor and held shields, or portable versions of the huge flamethrowers they experimented with in the real WW1.

I have been tossing around the idea of making the setting's gravity just be lower than Earth's. Like maybe ~85% of real life, which I realize requires handwaving a lot of physics like atmospheric changes, but also allows for more plausible giants and larger airships and aerial harpy fighter squads, etc.

So it's not "realism" I'm looking for. Just wanting to make sure I've taken enough into account to make playing a 22' tall dragon girl feel different enough.

As for system, it's my own. Five attributes, each with 4 governed Skills, which form a dice pool of varying size and you count Hits. Attributes determine number of dice, Skills determined size of dice being rolled. It's like something between Shadowrun and Savage Worlds, tuned to fit WW1. I've already tested out the base system with a cyberpunk fantasy game and it went very well. Feels great once players get a handle on it and extremely quick to resolve.

>>76979721
Leave gravity alone, aether theory still hadn't been widely discredited back then had it? Revive other older theories, the supernal dragonfire that power the girls' efficient metabolism and physically buoys their footfalls is primal phlogiston. Flamethrowers would seem redundant to a firebreather, no? Maybe afterburner masks to augment their breath and give them that terrifying gas mask aesthetic the war was known for.

>>76979963
Phlogiston theory went out in the 1770s and Aether theory was widely disproved by 1905 (though it didn't fully die till Einstein in the '20s). I'm already reviving older theories that were prevalent from the time, like élan vital as the French equivalent's version of magic. I'll look into other theories from the time, that's a good idea.

The point of flamethrowers is that they aren't tiring to use unlike one's own internal fire. And again, not all dragons are fire dragons. I do love the idea of war masks that can amplify their effects, though. That's a great idea, I'm totally using that, thanks!

>>76980454
It'd be an interesting inversion if the masks were sources of gas, a black dragon girl might use concentrated miasma around her mouth as a catalyst to make caustic poison of the only mildly terrible chemicals fed into her face from cannisters on her back. Glad to be of service and good luck.

>>76980504
>a black dragon girl
At the moment I've got Ice (Slavic), Fire (Central European), and Lightning (Asian) dragon girls. I'm not sure if adding more subtypes would be more interesting or dilute them more. It's an interesting idea, though having poison breath kind of unavoidably paints you as the villain, don't you think?

>>76981657
So do flammenwerfers, I'd been assuming some level of edge. It's hard for me to imagine a twee WW1.

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>>76960596
>A giant archer would snap any bow it tried to pull given the properties of material proportionally change.
If a giant can't use a bow due to your aforementioned observation, then a giant wouldn't be able to exist in the first place, as the same rules applying to the bow would also apply to the giants joints and bones (not to mention angular acceleration from falling over), unless the magic which applied to the giant doesn't apply to the bow, which is stupid and immersion breaking.

Your post really annoyed me.

>>76981812
Giants are magical beings, trees are not necessarily and I detail how to make them magical in muh setting (which makes a point of only humans being magic) here >>76960855. No reason to get your jimmies rustled, it only applies assuming very specific circumstances.

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4E did Giants the best.

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>>76960596
>A giant archer would snap any bow it tried to pull given the properties of material proportionally change.
What you're saying making no sense. Which properties of the material? There's hardly a material property that would make sense to relate to a raw change in height (length units). Strength, stiffness, density? Which? All? Something else? It's totally arbitrary...

Furthermore has it occurred to that you DO NOT NEED to keep everything in proportion? You're free to adjust the bow dimensions as needed! There's no rule against it! Perhaps a giant's bow may need to have a larger thickness/length ratio, for example. So what?

What do you think a ballista is? Or a trebuchet? (not exactly like a sling but still) Honestly I'm confused by your whole outlook on this.

>>76981755
>So do flammenwerfers
The difference being that soldiers can pick up and then put down weapons. A Poison Dragon Girl cannot stop being a walking war crime.

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>>76960319
Giants are a product of an unusual birth "defect". Gigantism taken up to eleven. Although delivered as a normal human, they see a level of growth which is astronomical by comparison.

Due to the nature of the more hostile elements of the world, such beings were seen as a divine blessing by the Gods and honoured and adorned with reverence befitting of one such thing. However unlike many, they are always blessed with an unusually benevolent and kind nature. As such many cultures have changed them to be more of a "Knight like" culture of honour and defending the weak to put their obscene strength and combat prowess to the use of a village or city during times of conflict or war, be it between other races, daemonic forces or another human faction.

They aren't scyscraper big, more like this.

>>76984993
4e generally did a great job with elemental creatures and giants, but I'm not sure if they are "the best".
"The best among D&D" at most.

>>76986659
I did't say that 4E had the best Giants. I said 4E did Giants the best.

>>76985080
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Size_effect_on_structural_strength
Structural strength. Again, assuming giants handwave physics as they have to in order to make sense but the world around them is otherwise mundane. Seems you'd make a bow too wide to comfortably grasp once is becomes sufficiently short and squat, at that point it's more a matter of thick crossbows. Ballista store energy in torsion springs instead of bending wood, probably because finding large pieces of wood straight enough would be much harder than for smaller weapons as well as the logistics of transporting siege engines that can be reassembled and partially replaced. The sling or atlatl would be the equivalent of trebuchets with the giant's arm (known to be supernaturally sturdy) serving entirely in the former or being extended by wood in the latter, neither places the majority of the stress on the mundane wood. Not sure about rope's tensile strength at that scale so I handwaved giant hair as yet more magically tough stuff, weaving human hair is cumbersome but a tight braid might serve.

>>76985618
Neither can a fire dragon girl for that matter.

>>76987488
Anon, entire fantasy ignores physics. Wizards cast spells. Dragons are too large to fly. Giants should collapse under their own weights.

>>76987488
Torsion springs have less inertia than leaf springs because the center of mass is closer to the pivot point. This means they release faster and can transfer more energy to the projectile.

>>76960319
My favourite way I've seen them depicted is as a highly intelligent race dying in numbers but valued among other races as depositories of knowledge and skill. Immortal unless violently slain these ancients are protected by the law as well as greater powers. In times when history and technique is written in tapestry and spoken word the giants exist as first person witness.

>>76988743
That's fine, any given hypothetical relies on a certain set of assumptions. You're free to disregard them and propose another set to serve as the basis of discussion. Fantastic physics in one area don't imply spillover into others else the presence of even a single gnome would be tonally equivalent to gravity taking the day off every few weeks.
>>76989287
Remember seeing a tragic grimdark take that took living repositories and scarce resources to an extreme. The idea was that a benevolent giant was forced into reaving because whatever harm it took to feed its tremendous hunger was outweighed by the knowledge that it carried. The idea of something writing medical treatise and crop almanacs on every available surface between eating anything it can get its hands on struck me as a good tragic image.

>>76987494
Fire can be used for things other than killing, anon.

>>76990413
True though I doubt that will matter to public consensus once the burned battalions come to light. Excepting great propaganda by one side or the other that is, anything but the Germs whining about shotguns after all their bullshit.

>>76960319
Giants are the bastard children of nobles,
when their noble spirit can not express itself in the rule of a domain instead it twist their body.

>>76990653
Interesting take, I imagine it implies that reigning noblemen sublimate their power into the lands they rule making every polity a nested fisher-kingdom. I wonder how mercantile free cities manage, maybe the exchange of goods generates its own mojo much as the exchange of oaths/fealty does for nobles?