[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

"A giant? Just a giant? Bring it on man!"

"The giant has a mace."

"Run away!"

Seems more like:
"The giant has a mace."
"Sweet, that does a lot less damage than it would with a club!"
No?

Originally Posted by Helborn

In Death test 1, the Giant, at the end, PP 161 does 3+3 with his club, i.e. the damage of a Battle Axe +3. According to the table, if the damage was based on strength alone (with no weapon skill) the damage should be 1+6. There is your difference. A trained fighter will do the damage according to the weapon table using a club, while an untrained fighter will do damage according to the ST table.

That'd be cool if the rules said that.
Really it is that the Death Test I giant damage hasn't changed since it was written about 1978, using the original Melee rules which are also still as was in new Melee, which say a Giant ranges from at least ST 24 to "about 50 if he's a tough one", and that a Giant does 1d+1 damage for every 10 ST he has, so the 30 ST giant does 3d+3, and the 50 ST giant would do 5d+5. In ITL, giants are said to be ST 25 to 40, and per the table, even with a two-handed club would do:

ST 25-30: 1d+7
ST 31-40: 2d+5
ST 41-50 (Basic Melee only?): 3d+5

It's not vastly different from the basic Melee formula for most ST values, but Melee giants have an advantage:

ITL damage vs basic Melee damage:
ST 24-29:    1d+7 vs. 2d+2   (avg 10.5 vs. 9, max 13 vs. 14)
ST 30:       1d+7 vs. 3d+3   (avg 10.5 vs. 13.5, max 13 vs. 21)
ST 31-39:    2d+5 vs. 3d+3   (avg 12 vs. 13.5, max 17 vs. 21)
ST 40:       2d+5 vs. 4d+4   (avg 12 vs. 18, max 17 vs. 28)
ST 41-49:    3d+5 vs. 4d+4   (avg 15.5 vs. 18, max 23 vs. 28)
ST 50:       3d+5 vs. 5d+5   (avg 15.5 vs. 22.5, max 23 vs. 35)

ITL has also had the sentence about swords, axes, or giant cesti strapped to their hands (2d+2, 3 dice in HTH), but I always took that to mean cesti damage rather than sword, axe, or club damage. Seems like it should still go by the ST table since giants vary at least from 25 to 40 in ST, which would be:

ST 25-30: 1d+7, 1d+8 in HTH
ST 31-40: 2d+5, 2d+6 in HTH
ST 41-50 (Basic Melee only?): 3d+5, 3d+6 in HTH

So apart from lower max possible damage for ST 25-30 giants, the table gives rather higher damage with Cestus than the comment in the giant description in ITL.

As for sometimes using axes and swords, unless there's a rule for getting to do more damage with high ST, giants would seem to do better with clubs.

And as for a giant becoming a club expert/master, they pretty much can't since weapon Expertise is an IQ 11 talent and giant max IQ is 10.