Giants as Playing Characters -- Your thoughts?

[Bill_in_IN]

Thank folks. Good discussion.

I still stand by my statement about elitist D&D loyalists. Perhaps, things have changed these days but there was huge rivalry between D&D and TFT back in the day. They actually spewed lies about TFT any time someone expressed interest. I played D&D some and was OK with it. However, most DMs that I knew focused very little on battle resolution while TFT was great at filling in that gap.

Again, once you mentioned non-human play characters, they went into full ridicule and shut down mode.

[amenditman]

Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN

Thank folks. Good discussion.

I still stand by my statement about elitist D&D loyalists. Perhaps, things have changed these days but there was huge rivalry between D&D and TFT back in the day. They actually spewed lies about TFT any time someone expressed interest. I played D&D some and was OK with it. However, most DMs that I knew focused very little on battle resolution while TFT was great at filling in that gap.

Again, once you mentioned non-human play characters, they went into full ridicule and shut down mode.

I find this remarkable. The different D&D groups I played with had no idea that Melee/Wizard/ITL existed. The only gamers who knew of it were people I introduced to it.

[phiwum]

One of the primary reasons I'm not keen on giants as PCs is simple logistics.

There will be times when a giant will be left out of play. I'd think a typical house has a ceiling much too low for a giant to enter comfortably. One hex passageways are not uncommon and while a giant might can squeeze through, he couldn't fight in such a passage. And so on.

So giants just sound like a pain in the butt to me. It doesn't sound pleasant for a PC to sit outside in the rain, waiting for all the important indoor role playing to be settled.

But maybe I'm wrong about how much of a drawback size is outside the battle (and sometimes in).

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by amenditman

I find this remarkable. The different D&D groups I played with had no idea that Melee/Wizard/ITL existed. The only gamers who knew of it were people I introduced to it.

TFT was more competitive with D&D back in the early 80's. They dismissed it as a basic hack and maul game that stupidly allowed non-human characters. I heard it many times. Occasionally, you could bring in a new player but they were either put off by D&D or never played it before.

I had no real problem with D&D. TFT just seemed better suited for battle resolution and was less rigid towards races and species.

[Chris Rice]

I didn’t allow Giants to increase their DX.

[hcobb]

May a giant get down on the ground and engage a human in HTH for that lovely +4 DX bonus?

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by hcobb

May a giant get down on the ground and engage a human in HTH for that lovely +4 DX bonus?

That's a good question. I'm tempted to say yes, but I'm not at all certain.

Thematically, why not?

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I didn’t allow Giants to increase their DX.

That falls under GM discretion and is OK with me. I allowed it under special circumstances and even then it was a 1:6 chance. The main special circumstance was if the giant spent most of their time around more intelligent character types.

[larsdangly]

I think it is totally obvious that giants can engage in HTH with humans or other foes. There is nothing in the rule books to suggest that they are limited in this way, and there are no general rules that limit who can and can't participate in HTH (other than a couple of special cases involving very small combatants, like rat swarms).

[Shostak]

Agreed. But why not just swat them at +4DX while they are down?