Giants are towering humanoids of great physical might, and many possess additional supernatural abilities. Some giants claim lineage to Annam the All-Father and follow the social structure he laid out, the ordning, while other giants live in their own unrelated societies.

Note that this page concerns creatures given the "X giant" label and their derivatives, not every creature with the Giant creature type — see the Creature Types subpage for information about Giants in general. See also the Giant Deities page for information about the giants' pantheon.

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General Tropes

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Fire, storm and frost giants, with human for scale (3e)

Classification: Giant (3E, 5E), Humanoid (4E)

While giants can be divided into a number of subraces, based on their physical characteristics, preferred homelands, and distinct abilities, they do share some common traits.

Bilingual Bonus: The Giant language is generally taken from Norwegian and Icelandic, though some are changed around just a bit. Even "Ordning" is just Norwegian for "the Order".
Blue-and-Orange Morality: While some giants, particularly storm and some cloud giants, live by standard morality, most giants are guided the Ordning and the concepts of maat and maug. Maat is anything that advances you through the Ordning, while maug is anything that takes you down. This means that for frost giants, raiding and pillaging is maat because that's what frost giants are supposed to do, while a hill giant deciding not to eat a halfling would be maug.
Boulder Bludgeon: Giants love to throw rocks at distant enemies. In 5th edition they can hit someone from up to 240 feet away, inflicting a hefty amount of damage in the process. Some rules also let giants Catch and Return incoming boulders if they roll well enough.
Cult: Some giants, particularly hill and frost giants who value raw strength, may be tempted into the worship of demon lords like Baphomet, Kostchtchie or Yeenoghu. Other giants are drawn to the cults of the Elder Elemental Eye due to their kind's close association with elemental power.
Diancastra: It's hard to express just how deeply most giants loathe and distrust those who turn to the service of interloper gods. It's not about religion; it's a betrayal of family.
Enfant Terrible: Even an immature giant can be a dangerous enemy due to their sheer size and strength, and combat statistics for giant children and teenagers have been around since the game's early editions. Surprisingly, even 5th Edition has rules for "counts-as" statblocks for giant children, though they come with a warning that it's generally best to avoid pitting seasoned adventurers against children who happen to be bigger than them — "Young giants are no more inherently evil than any other free-willed creature, so fighting and killing them can raise abundant moral questions for good-aligned characters."
Fantastic Caste System: Giants have a complex social structure called the ordning, which tells a giant which other giants are superior or inferior to it and gives each of the giant sub-races a set of goals based on their culture. The storm giants sit at the top of the ordning, followed by cloud giants, fire giants, frost giants, stone giants, hill giants, and giantkin (trolls, ogres, and other races the "true" giants regard as distant cousins). This means that the most accomplished fire giant artisan would still be considered inferior to the poorest, least successful cloud giant.
Fantastic Livestock: Some giants keep similarly-oversized animals, such as geese that lay golden eggs, or humongous blue-furred oxen.
Have You Seen My God?: Annam, Top God of the giant pantheon, is established as having withdrawn from worldly affairs, out of disappointment that his children allowed their great empire to fall into ruin. As such, he has few clerics, and most pious giants focus on more responsive members of their pantheon. Some giants are ambivalent about Annam, others hope to convince him to return to the world, while still others oppose such a development since it would threaten the status quo.
Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Giants rarely practice magic in the traditional sense. While magic itself isn't maug, practicing magic takes time away from doing things that are maat, and it's thus considered a waste of time. The exception is runecarving, an esoteric type of magic that rare members of other races may pick up.
Long-Lived: Giants live for centuries. Even the shortest-lived among them, the hill giants, can live for up to 200 years, while the longest-lived, the stone giants, can live to be up to 800.
Our Giants Are Different: Some are much taller than others, but it's duly noted that all of them are several feet longer than an average sized humanoid. Not to mention each of them are granted with magical powers.
Our Titans Are Different: In 4th Edition's cosmology and backstory, the first giants were the titans, towering figures of elemental power that helped the primordials shape the Material Plane out of the Elemental Chaos. Some of these titans still linger on the Material Plane alongside their smaller, more humanoid giant descendants.
Precursors: In several settings the giants created one of the world's first major civilizations, if not the first, and its grandeur often eclipses that of the humanoid civilizations which sprang up in its wake. These ancient giant civilizations have invariably collapsed and been forgotten by the present day, usually because they got embroiled in a great war against a powerful foe like the dragons or the quori and came out of it with a Pyrrhic Victory at best.
Runic Magic: The earliest form of the Giant language was pictographic, symbols that represented concepts as well as holding innate magical power. While modern Giant is written using the Dwarvish script, those old runes still have power, and giants — or studious mortals — can invoke them to cast spells or enhance themselves. The 5E Glory of the Giants supplement includes statblocks for various giants using a rune-inscribed item to power potent supernatural abilities, but should they lose said item, they're much more manageable.
Diancastra: What we call rune magic is the palest imitation of Annam's creative work. He shaped worlds from the primal elements; we struggle to bind the merest scraps of elemental power into the mystic shapes of our runes.
Smash Mook: Hill, stone, frost, and fire giants generally have two ways to attack: hitting you with a melee weapon or chucking a rock at you from afar. Considering how tough and strong they are, this is generally all they need. Cloud and storm giants have a bit more versatility thanks to their magical powers.

Giants of the Ordning

Cloud Giant

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E), 9 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good (50%), Neutral Evil (50%)

Reclusive, aristocratic giants resembling pale, finely formed humans around 18 feet in height, cloud giants make their homes in castles on high mountains peaks. They rarely deign to interact much with either smaller humanoids or lesser giants, which in the cloud giants' minds includes all but storm giants. Cloud giant Ordnings are based on their wealth.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Cloud giant skin tones range into light sky-blues.
The Beastmaster: Cloud giants often tame flying monsters such as griffons, perytons and wyverns like humans tame falcons, and terrestrial beasts such as owlbears and lions to patrol their keeps and grounds.
Blue Means Smart One: Cloud giants are typically depicted with pale blue skin and are the smartest and cleverest of all giant-kind.
Conspicuous Consumption: A cloud giant's standing in the Ordning is based on two things: how wealthy it is, and how much it flaunts that wealth. The most powerful cloud giants display their wealth in ostentatious ways like decorating their homes with ridiculously expensive works of art and giving lavish gifts to their peers... with the caveat that said gifts should ideally be perceived as more valuable than they actually are, to fit in with Memnor's expectations of trickery.
The Gambling Addict: They're notorious gamblers, not helped by being Sore Losers willing to wage generational betting wars in which fortunes are passed back and forth. The most accomplished cloud giant gamblers become "destiny gamblers," amassing enough magic items such as flying staves and enchanted masks to make them truly dangerous combatants
Mage Species: Cloud giants have innate magical powers which most other giants lack. While the spells they can cast vary by edition, they usually have the power to make things levitate and summon patches of dense fog.
The Nose Knows: Downplayed; cloud giants don't have the Scent ability, but their keen sense of smell gives them advantage on relevant Perception checks, presumably to help them smell the blood of an Englishman.
Ominous Floating Castle: During the giants' glory days, the cloud giants dwelt in castles that floated above the clouds, though today only a few such castles remain. While how ominous said castles are depends upon the giants inside them, even Good cloud giants may demand tribute from those beneath them.
People of Hair Colour: Cloud giants typically have silver or light blue hair.

Smiling One

Challenge Rating: 11 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Devotees of Memnor, his smiling ones embody the god's capacity for cunning and deceit, behavior that strains the tolerance of their fellow cloud giants.

Back Stab: A smiling one's weapon attacks inflict extra damage whenever the smiling one has advantage on the attack roll, such as after they cast invisibility.
Magic Knight: They're more resilient than the typical cloud giant, just as deadly when it comes to physical combat, and more magically inclined to boot. They wield an arsenal of bardic spells on top of their kind’s innate magical abilities.
Master of Illusion: Cloud giant smiling ones can cast a variety of illusion spells like disguise self, invisibility, and major image.
Two-Faced: Their masks, displaying a white sneering face on one side and a black scowling face on the other, reflect the mercurial and duplicitous nature of Memnor.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can magically take on the forms of beasts and humanoids, implicitly shrinking when they do so.

Fire Giant

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E), 18 (4E), 9 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Tyrannical, militaristic giants who live in the mountains, preferably volcanic ones, fire giants resemble 18-foot-tall dwarves with dark skin and fiery hair. Their societies are run like immense military camps, and they spend much of their time trying to subjugate and enslave their neighbors. Fire giant ordnings are based on strength and engineering talent.

Elemental Hair Composition: Fire giants typically have bright orange or — often literally — fiery red hair.
Heavily Armored Mook: Fire giants are the only true giants which wear heavy armor on a regular basis, giving them a much higher Armor Class than other giants. Their dreadnoughts described below take it even further by dual-wielding shields in addition to wearing plate armor.
Made a Slave: Fire giants are enthusiastic slavers, and habitually take captives from societies they subjugated or warred against to toil for them in their fortresses. It's noted that fire giants aren't pointlessly cruel masters, but they aren't kind either, since their slaves aren't giants and can be easily replaced. Captives without applicable skills might be ransomed back to their families in exchange for rare metals or more useful slaves.
Playing with Fire: So-called "forgecallers" are fire giants who have mastered the fire rune, allowing them to bury foes under waves of rapidly-hardening magma, or make smoke and cinders billow from their superheated armor for a bit of cover.
Strategy Versus Tactics: Fire giants excel at small-scale combat tactics, but have only a rudimentary grasp of strategy, since that was the cloud and storm giants' job back when the giants had a united empire. As a result, fire giants have waged countless battles over the generations since the empire's fall, but not any grand campaign to expand their territory.
True Craftsman: Whether it's smithing, engineering or architecture, fire giants recognize quality work and hold such artisans in high esteem, and choose their leaders from the clan's best crafters.
Volo: If you want forge work fit for a king, you have two options: dwarves and fire giants. If you don't want to be forced to slave in the mines until you're tossed in the coals, you have really only one option.
Volcano Lair: Fire giants like to make their homes within volcanoes or volcanic caverns — active ones, by preference, and ones who live in less tectonically active real estate can go through quite a lot of wood and coal to make their lairs feel more homey.

Dreadnought

Challenge Rating: 14 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Fire giants with more brawn than brains are resigned to drudge labor around the forge, though some can gain rank by becoming dreadnoughts, heavily-armored warriors who can bulldoze over opponents.

Hot Blade: An unusual variant; the shields of a fire giant dreadnought are hollow to hold hot coals, so that every Shield Bash will burn their opponents as well as batter them.
Knockback: Dreadnoughts can make a "shield charge" attack, mowing over any smaller creatures in a 30-foot line, subjecting them to a fiery shield bash and potentially pushing them ahead of the giant until they might end up prone at the giant's feet.
Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: They're defined by Dual Wielding a pair of superheated, spiked tower shields, which they use as weapons as much as defenses.

Frost Giant

Challenge Rating: 9 (3E), 17 (4E), 8 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil, Evil (4E)

Savage, barbaric raiders of the far north, frost giants live in scattered tribes that sustain themselves through hunting and by raiding their neighbors. Their ordning is determined by raw strength, untainted by "dishonorable" trickery like magic or cunning.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Frost giants have skin the blue of glacial ice.
The Beastmaster: They often capture and bully cold-weather creatures like polar bears, winter wolves, mammoths and especially remorhazes, for use as attack animals or beasts or burden.
Elemental Hair Colors: Frost giants have white or ice-blue hair.
Grim Up North: Frost giants are reavers and barbarians who make their home amidst the snowy wildernesses and glaciers of the utmost north of the world, sallying south only to raid settled civilizations.
Horns of Barbarism: They're typically depicted with helmets adorned with elaborate horns.
Horny Vikings: They're essentially land-bound vikings, complete with Norse-style helmets often decorated with horns, lifestyles of constant raiding, and tribal societies ruled by jarls.
An Ice Person: "Ice shapers" are frost giants who have learned enough frost magic to fire polar rays and wreathe their weapons in chilling cold, or invoke the frost rune to conjure icy armor around themselves, or conjure giant wolves from ice and snow.
Might Makes Right: Frost giants firmly believe that might makes right, and determine status within their society through how many foes they've killed and through their ability to outfight each other. This makes frost giant society unusually open to non-giants — while a human barbarian who can wrestle bears will never become the giants' leader, his power can't be denied either, and he can become honored for carrying Thrym's blessing.
Scavenger World: Frost giants live in one, since they have no industry to speak of, and their susceptibility to fire means they can't work metal in a forge. As such, they'll use the bones and leather of the animals they hunt, but the rest of their gear is scavenged from their raiding victims — a bunch of human-sized shields can be lashed together into improvised scale mail, an anvil attached to a log can become an improvised warhammer, etc.
Worthless Yellow Rocks: Zig-zagged; frost giants prize steel and iron tools and wargear more than gold, and have no use for Medium-sized creatures' currency, though they'll grab gems to decorate their clothes with.

Everlasting One

Challenge Rating: 12 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

To advance themselves in the ordning, a frost giant may seek out additional power by turning to Vaprak, one of the Interloper Gods. Vaprak's might can allow his new "everlasting one" to find glory, but should the source of their power be revealed, the frost giant is slain or exiled for their blasphemy.

Body Horror: Though an everlasting one's regeneration heals their wounds, those wounds may not heal properly if they do not pay proper homage to Vaprak the Destroyer. Everlasting ones who fail to show him due respect end up with grotesque deformities and vestigial limbs, occasionally even growing extra heads.
Cannibalism Superpower: An everlasting one is a frost giant who gained a regenerative Healing Factor by ritualistically devouring a troll.
Deal with the Devil: These giants struck a deal with Vaprak, the savage patron of trolls and ogres. This is not to say that Thrym is any less Chaotic Evil than Vaprak, but at least Thrym is a proper son of Annam.
Healing Factor: They have the same regenerative powers as a troll, complete with the same limitations.

Hill Giant

Challenge Rating: 7 (3E), 13 (4E), 5 (5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Primitive brutes who lurk on the fringes of civilization, and often associate with ogres and orcs. At 16 feet tall, hill giants are among the shortest of the true giants, and are certainly the dumbest. They have little conception of the ordning, but naturally follow the orders of larger and stronger giants.

Big Eater: Giants have appropriately giant-sized appetites, but hill giants especially, to the point where their whole lives and motivations revolve around eating and gathering food, regardless of how poisonous, rotten, or alive it is. A common hill giant game is thus "stuff-stuff," in which they compete to see how many halflings, gnomes or goblins they can fit in their mouths at once without swallowing.
Dishing Out Dirt: Some hill giants manage to master the hill rune, using its magic to knock foes away or bury them beneath rains of stone.
Frazetta Man: Hill giants are in many ways supersized and less hairy versions of this, being brutish primitives with stooped postures, overlong arms and sloping foreheads, which all together make for a very simian, knuckle-dragging profile. They particularly play this role when compared to the other giant types, which are uniformly more intelligent, more technologically and magically advanced, and physically upright.
Large and in Charge: This about sums up hill giant political philosophy — if you're big, you can boss about tinier things. Consequently, hill giants figure they've got free rein to rob and kill smaller humanoids, while their tribes are ruled by the tallest and fattest individuals who can still walk independently and all hill giants defer to the other, taller and mightier strains of giantkind.
The Pig-Pen: Hill giants can eat the most repulsive things, and never bother to clean their lairs, resulting in dens covered in blood, filth, chewed bones and decaying carcasses, the stench of which can attract creatures like otyughs and carrion crawlers.
Primitive Clubs: Typically, when hill giants are shown using any weapons at all, these tend to be giant clubs made from tree limbs or entire trees, sometimes enhanced with metal spikes and similar touches, which make good use of their wielder's immense strength without being held back by their general lack of intelligence.

Mouth of Grolantor

Challenge Rating: 6 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

In the rare event a hill giant eats something so foul that even their cast-iron stomach can't handle it, their kin may regard the sickly giant as an omen from their deity. A giant who fails to recover becomes a "mouth of Grolantor," kept starved to the point of madness to serve as a holy embodiment of their god's hunger.

A.I. Roulette: A mouth of Grolantor is violently insane, which is reflected in gameplay by the fact that it acts completely at random. The one consistent thing it will do is move toward the nearest creature or food it can see: beyond that, it might lash out at everything within reach or focus its attacks on a single target. If there's nothing within reach to attack, it might fly into a rage and get advantage on its attack rolls next turn... or it might stand there in a stupor, or punch itself.
Hungry Menace: They're too far gone mentally to be motivated by anything but ravenous hunger. During raids or in defense of the tribe, a mouth of Grolantor is unleashed to go into an uncontrollable feeding frenzy, only to be recaptured once it's gorged itself on its enemies to the point of passing out.
Insanity Immunity: A mouth of Grolantor is immune to the confusion spell and any other magical effect that would drive it mad because it is already crazy. Its madness also makes it immune to being frightened.
"It" Is Dehumanizing: As their entry explains, "A mouth of Grolantor is so disgraced that it ceases to be an individual and becomes an object," but one that is revered by its tribe.
Life Drain: A mouth of Grolantor magically regains hit points whenever it damages someone with its bite attack.
Madwoman in the Attic: They're kept chained away in isolation from the rest of their tribe, only released during battle.

Stone Giant

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 14 (4E), 7(5E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: True Neutral, Unaligned (4E)

Reclusive cave-dwellers whose isolationist natures belie lively social lives. They see the surface world as a dream, where nothing is quite real and there are no consequences. The stone giant ordning is based on artistry, whether in stonecarving or stone-throwing.

Beneath the Earth: Stone giants dwell underground, amid the comforting constancy of stone. Their Innate Night Vision means they only employ light sources for the sake of an art piece.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Compared to the consistency of the underground, the surface world — with its day-night cycle, weather and changes of season — is seen as something otherworldly, so stone giants treat venturing aboveground like stepping into a lucid dream. They act with far less inhibition aboveground than they do below, because they consider anything they do up on the surface to be unreal and of no lasting consequence, so a stone giant who is normally honest and peaceful while underground would lie and kill without a second thought on the surface.
Combat Aestheticist: Stone giants believe that everything must be done with artistry and grace. Even the simple act of hurling a boulder at an intruder must display graceful athleticism.
Hidden Elf Village: They live in out-of-the-way caves and prefer privacy, so the first sign someone's nearing stone giant territory is generally a near-miss from a boulder hurled as a warning shot. Passage through stone giant land can be negotiated, but they'll request art objects and exotic luxuries over simple treasure, and may require the interlopers perform a service as well.
Light 'em Up: "Rockspeakers" are stone giants who incorporate magic into their artistry, which is even applicable in combat — they can smite enemies with a prism-tipped staff that deals additional radiant damage, injure and blind them with exploding geodes, or invoke the earth rune to blast enemies with prismatic rays that deal damage of a random energy type.
Super-Toughness: A stone giant's rocky hide acts like a form of natural armor. In 5th edition, the Armor Class of a naked stone giant trumps that of any armored giant except the plate-wearing fire giants.

Dreamwalker

Challenge Rating: 10 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Stone giants who brave the surface for artistic inspiration, or are exiled for an infraction, may be driven mad by the experience. Such "dreamwalkers" wander as they will, generally acting at random, but their experience with the surface can make them useful as guides for other stone giants... or if nothing else, as living examples of the danger of spending too much time in a dream.

Collector of the Strange: As they wander the surface, dreamwalkers collect whatever objects — and petrified creatures — they deem significant, attaching them to their own stony bodies.
Infectious Insanity: The very presence of a stone giant dreamwalker forces nearby creatures to make a Wisdom saving throw, with those who fail becoming charmed by the dreamwalker.
Power Born of Madness: Somehow, dreamwalkers' madness gives them the power to warp reality on a small scale, letting them turn whatever they touch to stone and beguile nearby creatures.
Taken for Granite: They can turn other creatures to stone just by touching them. Its victims cannot be unpetrified until the dreamwalker is dead.

Storm Giant

Challenge Rating: 13 (3E, 5E), 24 (4E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good, Evil (4E)

Amphibious, green-skinned giants who dwell on mountain peaks and in submerged castles, storm giants often ally with cloud giants, bronze and copper dragons, and merfolk. These are the highest on the ordning, being oracles and former philosopher-kings.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Most storm giants have green skin, and a rare few have violet skin instead.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Although they're generally Good, storm giants also have dangerous tempers, and have been known to destroy entire settlements over a slight by one inhabitant. Afterward, they might offer a sack of gold in an attempt to make amends.
The Hermit: Storm giants are very solitary beings, spending most of their lives in seclusion from each other, other giants and smaller humanoids alike.
People of Hair Colour: Most storm giants have dark green hair, and a rare few have violet or blue-back hair instead.
Seers: All storm giants can perceive mystical omens of the future in the world around them, and are generally obsessed with portents. In the rare cases that storm giants meet, all present will read the accompanying omens to work out who ranks where on the ordning. The storm giants also know that Annam's return will be heralded by omens in all four elements, and hope to see this come to pass, but the omens of this age are all "muddled, conflicting, and contentious," leading some giants to hire agents to investigate reported portents.
Weather Manipulation: All storm giants have the innate ability to control localized weather and cast lightning bolts, while their quintessents are even better at it, and their so-called "tempest callers" can invoke the storm rune with even more spectacular results.

Quintessent

Challenge Rating: 16 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Storm giants may have incredibly long lifespans, but they are not immortal, and there are those among them who fear death. Quintessents are storm giants who have tried to forestall the inevitable by transforming themselves into living storms.

Always Accurate Attack: A storm giant quintessent's wind javelin attack never misses its target.
Cumulonemesis: The result of their apotheosis. "The blizzard that rages unending around a mountain peak, the vortex that swirls around a remote island, or the thunderstorm that howls ceaselessly up and down a rugged coastline could, in fact, be the undying form of a storm giant clinging to existence."
Elemental Shapeshifting: They can dissipate into raw elemental energy at will, becoming living storms. In truth, the living storm is their default form now, but they can freely revert into the giant they once were for a short time.
Spontaneous Weapon Creation: They have no need to carry weapons, for they can shape swords out of lightning and javelins out of wind.

Other Giants

Abyssal Giant

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

A race of 17-foot-tall giants who roam the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, getting into fights on behalf of their demonic employers, or for their own amusement. While they have acclimated to the Abyss, they are still considered Giants, not Fiends.

Arch-Enemy: They hate drow "for some ancient slight," and other elves because they're related to drow.
BFS: Their Gargantuan greatswords were forged by Kostchtchie himself, and so might deal additional vile damage that cannot be healed outside a hallowed area.
Reynard the Rogue: These giants are walking mountains with swords forged by a demon lord and quenched in blood. My advice? Run.
Covered in Scars: Abyssal giants engage in ritual scarification as well as tattooing, each commemorating a battle or conquest, "be it military, amorous, or other type." They love to explain the meaning of their markings, and older Abyssal giants' skin has so many marks on it that it looks more gray than coal-black.
Delinquent Hair: Their long, shaggy black hair is often worked into "a sort of mane or boar's crest."
Multiple-Choice Past: Their entry cannot agree whether these giants were so violent that their homeland got dragged into the Abyss, or if they made an ill-advised bargain with Graz'zt that ended with them on that plane.
No-Sell: Abyssal giants are immune to acid, cold or fire damage, as well as charm effects.
Power Tattoo: They also boast Damage Reduction that can only be overcome by adamantine weapons, suspected to be because of their tattoos.
Private Military Contractors: The tanar'ri often hire them as mercenaries in exchange for gems and magic items.
Proud Warrior Race Guy: Abyssal giants live to fight, love to "prove their superiority to all puny rivals through combat," and are quick to resort to violence during disputes, after which they eat the loser.
Reality Warper: While on the Abyss, these giants can warp the terrain around them, creating permanent pits or trenches to give them tactical advantages. They particularly enjoy hurling boulders down at victims trying to crawl up out of a 60-foot pit.
Stuff Blowing Up: Boulders they hurl explode on impact, dealing undefined damage to everyone around the target.
Wandering Culture: They're nomads who move between layers of the Abyss, hiring themselves out as mercenaries to the local until they inevitably begin fighting with their new neighbors and moving on. They'll also roam onto other planes like Pandemonium, Hades and even Carceri.

Beast Giant

Origin: Dark Sun
Challenge Rating: 15 (standard), 20 (titan) (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (2E), Unaligned (4E)

Mutant giants who stand 15 to 20 feet tall, easily identified by their bestial heads. Like many Athasian creatures, they possess innate psionics, and most beast giants live on islands in the Sea of Silt.

Eye of Newt: Beasthead giant blood can be used as a spell component for druids and preservers, while their heads can provide more — an eagle-headed beast giant's feathers can be used with feather fall, for example.
Non-Human Head: They have the heads of various living or extinct animals, from goats, wolves and eagles to Athasian species like braxats, id fiends and kirres. Most beasthead giant clans are composed of members with the same type of head, which in 2nd Edition affects the damage of their bite attack.
Power Copying: 4th Edition beast giants can mimick an opponent's at-will or once-per-encounter special attack, using it the giant's next turn as if the creature they're copying had triggered it.
Psychic Powers: In 2nd Edition they know various clairsentience and telepathy powers such as aura sight, psionic blast and life detection.

Bog Giant

Challenge Rating: 6 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Reclusive swamp-dwellers who are among the smallest of giant-kin, standing only 10 feet tall. They're ugly and crude, but more concerned with hunting and scavenging than causing trouble for others, and are on friendly terms with lizardfolk (at least until there's a food shortage).

Fluffy Tamer: Bog giants both hunt and venerate crocodiles, alligators and other giant reptiles, and their settlements are often guarded by "pet" crocs on tethers.
Frog Men: These amphibious giants have mottled frog-like skin and webbed fingers and toes.
Nemean Skinning: Bog giants usually wear hide made from crocodile skin.
Sinister Suffocation: Some bog giants have learned to emulate crocodiles by grabbing and dragging opponents into the water to drown them.

Craa'ghoran Giant

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Millennia ago, a group of stone giants attempted to infuse themselves with elemental energy, and while their efforts granted them additional powers, it also left them warped and deformed, with jagged rock formations jutting from their bodies. Craa'ghoran giants are isolationist like their stone giant progenitors, but they are also malevolent, extorting tribute from those trespassers they choose not to capture and enslave.

Body Horror: They're mash-ups of giants and earth elementals, and look the part.
Construction Is Awesome: Craa'ghoran giants derive status by the stone structures they create (and force slaves to help create), and their domains are often marked by beautiful architecture, bas reliefs and statuary quite at odds with the twisted giants who crafed them. It's mentioned that many dungeons or other monster-infested complexes were originally built by craa'ghoran giants as a demonstration of their talents.
Dishing Out Dirt: Craa'ghoran giants can use stone spike and wall of stone each three times per day, and can be quite clever about using their abilities to split up opponents.
Dungeon Bypass: Their "earth glide" ability lets them pass through stone and dirt as easily as a fish moves through water, though metal still obstructs them. Craa'ghoran giants use this to ambush victims moving through tight, twisty corridors, or to silently stalk them in conjunction with their tremorsense.
Eat Dirt, Cheap: Craa'ghoran giants subsist on rocks and dirt, and particularly enjoy the texture of worked stone. Precious metals and gems are kept as ornaments and trophies, rather than snacks.
Made a Slave: Similar to fire giants, craa'ghoran giants prize dwarf slaves for their craftsmanship, and they'll also conscript local orcs, ogres and goblinoids as guards and scouts.
Super-Senses: They have tremorsense out to 60 feet, letting them detect anything in contact with the ground.

Death Giant

^3e

Challenge Rating: 16 (3E), 22 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (3E), Evil (4E)

Gaunt and grim giants who have bound themselves to darkness, granting them terrible powers.

Art Evolution: They're bald, black-skinned, pointy-eared creatures in 3rd and 4th Edition, but 5th Edition portrays them with purplish skin and fairer features, as fitting with their new backstory as former cloud giants.
Bald of Evil: In 3rd and 4th Edition.
Cessation of Existence: In 3rd Edition, a death giant's soul is fated to be utterly destroyed on the Negative Energy Plane, and thus they can't be resurrected or reincarnated.
Deal with the Devil:
- Their basic 3rd Edition backstory states that this evil race of giants sold the souls of their entire species in exchange for unholy power, which they hoped to use to save their empire. "It was a poor bargain, and the death giants now live with the mistakes of their ancestors." Their empire fell into ruin after repeated wars, while the surviving death giants' own culture has atrophied as they seek some way to rid themselves of their curse, while also retaining their power.
- Their Forgotten Realms-specific 3E backstory pegs death giants as the former "ash giants" of Netheril, who betrayed their human allies during the phaerimm's onslaught and sold their souls to some undefined power to survive.
- In 5th Edition, death giants are former cloud giants who went to the Shadowfell and made an unwise bet with the Raven Queen — no one knows what exactly it was, only that the giants severely underestimated her and she won the souls of those giants and all their descendants in perpetuity.
Guardian Entity: The captive souls surrounding a 3E death giant fulfill this role, granting it bonuses on various rolls, and allowing negative energy attacks like the inflict wounds line to instead heal a death giant.
Magic Knight: Unlike most giants, death giants can wield spell-like abilities such as greater dispel magic or flame strike a few times per day.
Sinister Scythe: While 3E and 4E death giants prefer double-headed axes, 5E death giants wield gargantuan scythes that crackle with necrotic energy, and if wielded by a giant bearing the death rune also prevent those struck from healing until the end of their next turn.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: The vortex of shrieking spirits that constantly surrounds death giants force those who draw near to save against fear.
Your Soul Is Mine!: In 3E, the soul of any creature that dies within 15 feet of a death giant is sucked up into the souls that swirl around and protect the giant, preventing resurrection. Such creatures are freed when the death giant is dead.

Desolation Giant

Origin: Dragonlance
Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

The twisted creations of the Dragon Overlord Malystryx, who now inhabit the wasteland that was formerly Goodlund.

Primal Stance: They're 15 feet tall but permanently hunched, with bulging arms hanging to their ankles.
Transformation Horror: The transition into a desolation giant takes years, with occasional months-long growth spurts of several feet at a time, but the process always renders the subject quite insane.
Was Once a Man: They were formerly humans drawn to Malys in hopes that by joining the dragon, they could attain wealth and power. Instead she infused them with the same energies that reduced Goodlund to the Desolation, warping them into misshapen brutes with patches of rough hair and digitrade legs.
Worthy Opponent: Malystryx intended the desolation giants to be her minions, but instead they refused to follow her orders and continued to defy the dragon even after she killed half of their number. By that point, "Malys found she actually had to begrudge the twisted creatures some respect," and allowed the survivors to settle in her domain as independent wanderers.
Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Desolation giants have been known to lure victims in by acting as gentle, pitiful victims, "before turning on them with an expression of insane, murderous intent."

Dusk Giant

Challenge Rating: 4 (least), 9 (lesser), 14 (greater) (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

These predatory giants lair near humanoid settlements, as they grow larger and more powerful with every sentient being they consume. Unfortunately for them, the giants must continue killing and eating or revert to their smaller, weaker forms.

All Trolls Are Different: Dusk giants are about as closely related to trolls as they are to true giants, and have decidedly trollish facial features, though no Healing Factor. On the upside, they're much more intelligent than trolls and capable of ambushing prey when necessary, though while they're smart enough to learn to use weapons, dusk giants find it difficult to do so given their constantly changing sizes.
Casting a Shadow: Dusk giants are surrounded by a pall of twlight, dimming light around them and imposing morale penalties on opponents' saving throws.
In the Hood: "Least" dusk giants can pass themselves as bulky humans or half-orcs with the help of a hooded cloak, at least until they're close enough to attack a victim.
Sizeshifter: Not by choice. Dusk giants pass through three different stat blocks based on how well they've fed, and thus can range in size from a six-foot, Medium-sized "least" dusk giant to a Huge, 20-foot "greater" dusk giant.
To Serve Man: Dusk giants grow larger by consuming other creatures, especially sentient ones, gaining increased physical and magical capabilities in the process. But even after they consume enough Hit Dice to increase their size category, dusk giants have to keep eating to maintain their new power, and again, consuming sentient prey is much more efficient than eating dumb animals.

Eldritch Giant

Challenge Rating: 15 (3E), 18 (4E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil (3E), Evil (4E)

Unusually for their kind, eldritch giants are fascinated by arcane magic, items of power, and the art of spellcrafting. Though cruel and selfish by nature, they are generally too focused on the pursuit of magical power to bother with other creatures, and smart enough to bargain fairly when necessary.

Amazing Technicolor Population: An eldritch giant's skin is tinged faint purple.
Mage Species: They have innate spell-like abilities that let them wield magic like greater dispel magic and magic missile at will, or dimension door and globe of invulnerability three times per day. Beyond that, all eldritch giants are comfortable enough with magic to be able to use magic items or cast spells from scrolls as if they were accomplished wizards.
Magic Knight: Eldritch giants combine that aforementioned innate magic with giant strength, and are fully capable of wading into combat wielding a giant-sized bastard sword and wearing full plate while also slinging spells.
Power Tattoo: Their bodies are covered with tattoos of arcane symbols, which presumably contribute to their spellcasting.
The Red Mage: Eldritch giant confessors supplement their innate arcane spellcasting with levels of cleric. They believe in the sanctity of magic itself, which to them means anything done with magic is morally justified.
Villains Out Shopping: Eldritch giants are certifiably Evil, but their entry mentions that they'll occasionally have to leave their isolated lairs and visit the settlements of the smaller races in order to purchase paper, ink and rare components for their scrolls and magic item construction projects.

Fog Giant

Challenge Rating: 8 (3E), 11 (5E)
Alignment: Neutral Good or Neutral Evil

Unusually stealthy for 24-foot-tall creatures, these pallid, white-haired giants are also more intelligent than their simplistic equipment would suggest. They prefer to live in caves and thickets in the most inaccessible coasts, forests or marshes, and hunt in groups under the cover of heavy fog or mist.

Bad with the Bone/Carry a Big Stick: When they aren't wielding bleached tree trunks as simple clubs, fog giants like to use massive polished bones as weapons.
Nemean Skinning: Most fog giants go without armor, since it interferes with their stealth, but at least one clan is known for crafting white dragon hide armor.
Retcon: While in past editions, fog giants have been their own giant subrace, 5th Edition casts them as cloud giants who have lost all their wealth, forcing them to resort to banditry and extortion to rebuild their treasure troves. The most successful of these fog giants come to lead networks of thieves and thugs (preferring to work with "civilized" criminals over the likes of orcs and goblinoids), and take on grandiose titles such as "Baron of Bandits," "Duke of Robbery," or "Lord of Larceny."
Rite of Passage: Fog giants greatly value silver, and traditionally young fog giants aren't allowed to mate until they've acquired at least one large silver ornament. Young adults sometimes go off on quests to find such goods, or will barter goods and services for silver from other races.
Sapient Eat Sapient: Their entry notes that they're fond of roast hoofed animals: horses, cows, deer, elk, centaurs...
Stealthy Colossus: Fog giants are Huge creatures with the extraordinary ability to blend in with heavy fog, gaining a bonus on their Hide checks that nearly counteracts their size-based penalty.
Sweet Tooth: They have a fondness for fruit and sugary confections.

Forest Giant

Forest giant (3e)

^{Jungle giant (2e)}

Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

These lanky giants stand at 18 feet tall but weigh only 3,000 pounds. They're avid hunters and ravenous meat-eaters.

Not to be confused with voadkyn, giant-kin sometimes mistakenly referred to as wood giants.

Adaptation Distillation: 3rd Edition "forest giants" are mechanically and thematically the same as 2nd Edition's "jungle giants" from Al-Qadim, just with a different name and a more elven appearance.
Amazing Technicolor Population: Their skin is earth-yellow, while their unkempt hair is pale green.
Greatbow: They wield Gargantuan-sized composite longbows.
Our Elves Are Different: If fire giants are Huge dwarves, then forest giants are Huge elves, and their artwork even depicts them with Pointy Ears. And while forest giants aren't quite Chaotic Good, they get along well with fey creatures and other primitive woodland peoples who share their hunting lifestyle.
Poisoned Weapons: They typically coat their arrows with a poison that induces unconsciousness.
Scary Teeth: It's mentioned that forest giants who live in hotter climes (i.e. "jungle giants") like to file their teeth to appear more intimidating.
Stealthy Colossus: Downplayed; forest giants like to hide among trees to ambush prey, and get a racial bonus on Hide checks that increases in woodland areas, but that still amounts to a paltry +5 base bonus on their rolls due to the negative modifiers from their size.

Jungle Giant

Origin: Eberron
Challenge Rating: 8 (3E)
Playable: 3E
Alignment: True Neutral

These jungle-dwelling nomads stand twice the height of a man, and are generally reclusive and inoffensive, though they have long memories.

For the jungle giants of 2nd Edition, see the "forest giant" folder.

Bewildering Punishment: Jungle giants may attack (or aid) other beings based not on their actions, but the giants' past experiences. This can lead a tribe to attack travelers because they resemble some passersby who insulted the giants half a century ago.
Gentle Giant: They have little appetite for combat compared to other giant kindreds, and prefer to keep to themselves, only rarely emerging from their jungles to trade with outsiders.
Green Thumb: Jungle giants know magic like entangle, snare and wood shape.
In Harmony with Nature: They're omnivorous, but have a great respect for nature, and never forage or hunt beyond the land's ability to recover.
Plant Person: They're still Giants, not Plants, but jungle giants' skin has a barklike texture (and grants them a hefty natural armor bonus), and their fur resembles tree moss, both of which help them blend in with their surroundings.

Maur (Hunched Giant)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/d&d_maur_giant_3e.jpg

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Challenge Rating: 11 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

Former storm giants who have spent generations in the Underdark, becoming pallid and stooped beings. They are desperate to be free of the depths, but must prioritize defending their enclaves against threats like the mind flayers, or simply finding enough food to survive in the Underdark.

Dishing Out Dirt: They know earthen magic like move earth and meld into stone.
Dual Mode Unit: Hunched giants normally go about in a Primal Stance with their knuckles nearly scraping the cave floor, but given space can straighten up to their full height — "an agonizing, joint-popping experience for the maur, though it relishes the change." While "unfurled," a maur grows from Large to Huge, gains hefty stat bonuses including morale bonuses to their Armor Class and saving throws, and can tap into their storm giant ancestry to cast electrifying magic like call lightning and chain lightning.
The Morlocks: Subverted; maurs are descended from a band of storm giants who were banished to the Underdark for some long-forgotten crime, and after thousands of years have become very different beings. But they have worked to retain their ancestors' high culture, and are nowhere near as brutish as they appear.
Super-Scream: Once per day, and within a stone or earthen enclosure, a hunched giant can scream loud enough to deal hefty sonic damage in a 60-foot-cone, also potentially stunning and defeaning those affected.

Mountain Giant

Challenge Rating: 26 (3E)
Alignment: Usually Chaotic

These creatures are essentially titanic hill giants, standing 40 feet tall and weighing 50,000 pounds. They're fairly primitive, solitary, and dislike intruders.

Enemy Summoner: For all their primitism, mountain giants have the magical ability to potentially summon a handful of ogres, trolls or hill giants, once per day.
Ground Pound: A mountain giant who drops at least 20 feet onto foes can make a special crush attack, dealing a hefty amount of damage to and pinning anything they land upon. Normally this is a stomp attack, but the mountain giant can choose to come down on their seat instead to extend the area of the attack.
Human Pet: It's mentioned that some mountain giants like to keep a few dwarves or humans in their lairs as pets.
Throw the Mook at Them: Their favorite tactic in battle is to snatch up a Huge or smaller enemy and throw them up to 120 feet. If this poor sap hits another creature, both it and the thing it crashes into take damage, but mountain giants are just as happy flinging a victim into (or over) the side of a cliff.
Trampled Underfoot: Mountain giants are big enough to squash things underfoot, and can make a trample attack by moving through an enemy's space.

Ocean Giant

Challenge Rating: 19 (3E)
Alignment: Usually Good

These deep-sea dwellers appear something like 16-foot-long merfolk in their natural, hybrid forms, but can magically shift into a legged form to walk on land.

Apparently Human Merfolk: Their "Landform," which they can assume at will for as long as they wish, is that of a Huge legged humanoid who can breathe both air and water, only missing out on their water form's tail attack.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Like storm giants, ocean giants are usually Good and peaceful beings, but "are nevertheless quick to anger when anyone finds fault with their ways." This leads them to get along poorly with storm giants and merfolk, who accuse them of plundering the ocean's treasures.
No-Sell: Ocean giants are wholly immune to bludgeoning and cold damage, though that cold subtype also leaves them Weak to Fire.
Prongs of Poseidon: They prefer to wield enormous tridents in combat.
Underwater Base: They usually dwell in magnificent undersea mansions near barrier reefs, and sustain themselves by harvesting aquatic plants and shellfish.
Unscaled Merfolk: In their natural forms, ocean giants' bottom halves resemble whales rather than fish.

Phaerlin Giant

Origin: Forgotten Realms
Challenge Rating: 3 (3E)
Alignment: Neutral Evil

Formerly stone giants, these stooped and twisted savages would be 20 feet tall if they were capable of standing upright. They get their name from the region of the Underdark they can be found, either as feral predators or slaves of more powerful creatures.

Body Horror: Foul magic has left them permanently hunched over, with armored plating on their backs resembling a beholder's hide, and bestial faces with protruding jaws and elongated, sharp teeth.
Running on All Fours: They use their hands while walking, though this doesn't confer them any advantage — in fact, their base movement speed is only half that of normal giants.
Slave Race: They were corrupted into their current forms by the phaerimms, and those still enslaved by them "follow the orders of their masters without question or fear." Renegade Phaerlin giants are more cunning and show self-preservation.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: They can start combat with a dreadful howl that can make those who fail their saving throws shaken.

Primordial Giant

Primordial sun giant (3e)

Origin: Eberron
Challenge Rating: As base giant (3E)
Alignment: As base giant

Studious and civilized giants who seek to recapture the enlightenment of their lost empire.

Mage Species: These giants' study of their ancestors' magic lets them cast invisibility, invisibility purge or levitate at will, and use spell-like abilities at a boosted caster level. They also have a tendency to take up the warlock class.
Proud Scholar Race: Primordial giants are obsessed with their once-mighty empire, and pore over ancient tomes, delve into lost ruins, and try to replicate magical artifacts from the dawn of history.
The Right of a Superior Species: Evil primordial giants consider themselves so far above "lesser" creatures that they view the killing of other intelligent beings as no different than slaughtering cattle.
Squishy Wizard: Only comparatively. The "primordial giant" template confers bonuses to Intelligence and Charisma, and penalties to Strength and Constitution, though since the base creature is still a giant, even with these penalties it's still much stronger and tougher than most humanoids.
Ungrateful Bastard: It's mentioned that primordial giants are so eager for arcane knowledge that they're willing to trade with other races' spellcasters, but evil giants will then try to kill their fellow mage out of embarrassment for having to rely on an "inferior being" for aid.

Reef Giant

Origin: Al-Qadim
Alignment: Neutral Good

16-foot-tall amphibious giants who dwell on tropical islands near coral reefs, sustaining themselves on flocks of sheeps and goats as well as the ocean's bounty.

Big Fancy House: Reef giants build their homes into island hills and gorges, dwellings that look like mere huts from the outside, but inside are "remarkably well-appointed mansions" filled with furniture and decorations passed down over generations.
Compete for the Maiden's Hand: A reef giant family's eldest daughter is expected to care for her parents in their old age, but also inherits their mansion and all its treasures. This leads reef giant bachelors to hold diving, fishing and surfing competitions to prove their worthiness to said maidens, during which they'll also sabotage their rivals "by any means possible."
Making a Splash: Once per day, a reef giant can summon a whirlpool strong enough to deal damage and potentially drown swimmers, but not strong enough to harm ships.
No-Sell: They're immune to water- or ice-based attacks.
Prongs of Poseidon: Like ocean giants, they prefer to fight with oversized tridents.
Proud Merchant Race: Though reef giants are typically loners, they also commonly make trade agreements with humans and other mercantile neighbors, exchanging pearls and other ocean goods for cloth, sweets and metal goods. This unfortunately means reef giants don't get along with other oceandwelling races like merfolk and tritons.

Sand Giant

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

These 12-foot-tall desert-dwellers are squat and broad for giants, and try to avoid wearing metal armor in their home climes. They are by no means isolationists, and often profit by making their kingdoms important caravan stops, or selling their services as guides through the desert.

Dig Attack: Sand giants have a pretty slow burrowing speed, which they use to bury themselves in the sand in preparation of an ambush.
Magic Knight: They can use meld into stone and statue once per day, or create a shimmering heat effect around them at will to duplicate the effects of a blur spell.
Sand Blaster: Sand giants' signature weapon is the aptly-named sand blaster, a long, hollow tube they pack with five pounds of sand. Not only does getting blasted by the thing hurt, victims also have to save or be tormented by itching skin and burning eyes, imposing a penalty on attack rolls and Armor Class for three rounds.
Sinister Scimitar: They prefer Large-sized scimitars in close combat, though as Lawful Neutral beings, they aren't too sinister.

Shadow Giant

Challenge Rating: 18 (3E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

Perhaps the most subtle and certainly the most stealthy of their kind, shadow giants stand 20 feet tall, with gaunt but fit frames and a preference for elegant but grim clothing. They are xenophobic, solitary and cerebral, but have no compunctions about murder, and are known to sell their services to kill other giants.

Back Stab: They can not only deal Sneak Attack damage like a rogue, they can also make Death Attacks like an assassin, giving them a chance to inflict a One-Hit Kill on unawares targets they've spent a few turns studying.
Black Eyes of Evil: Their eyes have been compared to starless voids.
Casting a Shadow: Their stealth skills are enhanced by their ability to cast spells like deeper darkness, shadow evocation, and shadow walk at will.
Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Shadow giant females have universally black hair.
Hated by All: Their reputation is such that most other giants attack them on sight, and storm giants in particular despise them.
Stealth Expert: They have a lot of ranks in the Hide still, as well as the "Hide in Plain Sight" ability.
Stealthy Colossus: As Huge creatures with a +16 natural Hide bonus (rising to +20 in shadowy areas), shadow giants qualify.
Super-Senses: Shadow giants can use hearing and smell to detect nearby creatures, giving them blindsight.
Weakened by the Light: They are however sensitive to bright light, and take penalties on rolls in natural or magical sunlight.
White Hair, Black Heart: Male shadow giants have universally white hair.

Sun Giant

Challenge Rating: 12 (3E)
Alignment: True Neutral

These giants stand 16 feet tall, with parched skin and brittle hair from centuries spent living in harsh, arid lands. Self-interested nomads, sun giants think nothing of leading their herds to graze on other creatures' fields, stripping the land bare.

Badass Long Robe: They habitually wear loose, light-colored burnooses to protect themselves from the desert sun.
Desert Bandits: They're not described as raiders, but sun giants have little respect for their neighbors' territory, and will lead their herds onto others' land.
Dishing Out Dirt: They can use spike stones, stone shape and wall of stone at will, despite having the Fire subtype rather than Earth.
Horse of a Different Color: Since horses are obviously not an option, sun giants make use of Gargantuan riding lizards or rocs as mounts. Sun giants are also pragmatic enough to use necromancy to create enormous undead steeds, as needed.
Prefers Going Barefoot: They never wear shoes, even when riding or walking across the hot sand.
Taken for Granite: The desert giants of Al-Qadim look so craggy and weathered because they are literally cursed by the gods to gradually petrify. But some of their number also have the power to temporarily summon their ancestors from stone for a time, after which they collapse into dust and rubble.

Totem Giant

Challenge Rating: 10 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral or Lawful Neutral

11-foot-tall giants who both hunt and revere magical beasts, and use their meldshaping ability to emulate those creatures.

The Berserker: Every totem giant can fly into a rage like a barbarian, made the more dangerous by using their Cobalt Rage feat to channel their essentia reserve into their attacks.
Mage Species: These giants have the Incarnum subtype and a natural essentia pool they can use to enhance their various feats and abilities. True to their name, they often take up the totemist class.
Nemean Skinning: Totem giant tribes' greatest warriors usually wear the skin of their totem animals as a sign of their prowess.
Partial Transformation: They can use soulmelds from the totemist list, giving themselves the mandibles and cranial structure of a frost worm, the eyes and plumage of a giant eagle, and so forth.

Scions of the Giants' Gods

General Tropes

Classification: Elemental (cradle), Giant (scion) (5E)

Annam's grandchildren, these titanic beings tower over lesser giants, and are such fonts of elemental power that they alter the world around them. While some of these demigods are awake, others slumber in elemental "cradles" that protect their dreaming charges until they are destroyed, releasing and rousing the scion within.

Anti-Structure: Both the cradles and the scions within them deal double damage to objects and structures.
Barrier Maiden: In some settings, these divine scions might literally hold the world together, and their death (or awakening from their cradles) might cause the Material Plane to collapse into the Elemental Chaos.
God-Emperor: In other settings, scions may have been the rulers of the giants' ancient empire before Annam went into seclusion.
Mook Commander: Within 1000 feet of the scion, all giants of the same species gain a bonus to attack and damage rolls.
Semi-Divine: They're scions of the giant pantheon, which would technically make them demigods at the very least. 5th Edition doesn't have rules for divine ranks, but recognizes scions' power by giving them the Titan indicator.
Sequential Boss: Slumbering scions are encountered in ambulatory "cradles" that are challenging encounters in their own right, but if said cradle is reduced to 0 hit points, the scion inside it awakens and emerges, potentially to continue the battle.
That's No Moon: On some worlds, scions slumber and have become part of the landscape.

Scion of Grolantor

Challenge Rating: 22 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

When slumbering, a scion of Grolantor may be mistaken for a hill, and the land around it becomes productive farmland with agreeable weather. But should the scion awaken, it sets about devouring everything in sight.

Dishing Out Dirt: The cradle of the hill scion can magically create a wave of dirt to entomb enemies alive.
Life Drain: A scion of Grolantor can use its reaction to feed upon creature it's swallowed, dealing damage to them to recover health.
Rock Monster: A cradle of the hill scion resembles a mass of dirt, stone and roots.
Shockwave Stomp: A scion of Grolantor can create a shockwave while moving, capable of breaking other creatures' concentration.
Telephone Polearm: The scion of Grolantor's weapon is a great tree club.
Vacuum Mouth: A scion of Grolantor's lungs are powerful enough to suck food straight into its gullet. Within in a 120-foot line that is 15 feet wide, creatures that fail a saving throw get pulled toward the scion and swallowed whole.

Scion of Memnor

Challenge Rating: 26 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

A slumbering scion of Memnor appears as a cloudbank that might linger in a remote area, inspiring mortals in its shadow to play pranks on each other while leaving offerings for "rain spirits." When awake, a scion toys with other creatures by using magic to turn them against each other, and only wields its thunderous full power against serious threats.

Blow You Away: Both the cradle and the scion of Memnor can wield the power of air to create a vortex of wind, or wind javelins to hurl at enemies.
Cumulonemesis: A cradle of the cloud scion appears as a dense, slowly drifting tower of clouds that never dissipates. When roused, it manifests as a titanic air elemental made of fierce winds and wisps of cloud.
Elemental Weapon: A cloud scion wields a "cloud morningstar" solid enough to deal force and thunder damage.
Make Some Noise: A cloud scion's cradle can create a thunderclap that deals damage to all within a 30-foot-radius, while an awakened scion can pull foes into a windy vortex before blasting them with even more thunder damage.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: A scion of Memnor can fill an area with a "fog of deception" that can cause those within it to be charmed by the giant and attack an adjacent creature of the scion's choice.

Scion of Skoraeus

Challenge Rating: 23 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

The dreams of a slumbering scion of Skoraeus sculpt the caverns around it into fine carvings, and cause tasty moss and lustrous gems to sprout from the rock. If awakened, a stone scion is content to continue its artistry, though it might convert living creatures into raw materials.

Light 'em Up: A stone scion's cradle can make the crystals on its body flare, dealing radiant damage and blinding opponents; a scion itself can do the same with its crystal club.
Rock Monster: A cradle of the stone scion resembles a bipedal mass of stone and crystals.
Shockwave Stomp: A scion of Skoraeus can create a shockwave while moving, capable of breaking other creatures' concentration.
Super-Scream: A cradle of the stone scion's roar is loud enough to collapse mine tunnels.
Taken for Granite: A scion of Skoraeus can transform a living creature in its palm into stone.

Scion of Stronmaus

Challenge Rating: 27 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

A sleeping scion of Stronmaus is typically located high in the sky or deep underwater, to mitigate the damage done should the scion's nightmares cause its cradle to lash out with the fury of the storm. A scion who wakes is usually glad to be free of its troubling dreams, but it has little interest in the problems of humanoids, and can be a calamitous foe if antagonized.

Elemental Weapon: A storm scion wields a sword of lightning.
Plagued by Nightmares: While not all of a storm scion's dreams are necessarily bad — it might see visions of Annam's return or the giants' idylic past — the other dreams, the dark prophecies of the giants' decline and the nightmares of death and destruction, are enough to make it glad to wake up.
Shock and Awe: A cradle of a storm scion can attack with a veritable barrage of lightning bolts, targeting two creatures per attack to deal heavy damage and stunning them.
Thinking Up Portals: Two-way portals to the Elemental Plane of Air (if the scion is in the sky) or the Elemental Plane of Water (if the scion is in the ocean) form within a mile of the cradle or scion.
Weather Manipulation: A scion of Stronmaus' elemental might allows it to call down blades of lightning, boulder-sized hailstones, acid rains and freezing blizzards.
Weird Weather: The weather around a cradle of the storm scion can change drastically from day to day, going from pleasant sunshine to vicious hailstorms without warning.

Scion of Surtur

Challenge Rating: 25 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

A fire scion's cradle can be found in the peak of a volcano, and its presence makes minerals and ore more common nearby, though its dreams of conquest can cause its shelter to rumble and erupt. When awakened, a scion of Surtur sets off to gather an army of fire giants and realize its visions of victory.

Appease the Volcano God: Nearby creatures might try to offer sacrifices to appease the volcano housing a scion of Surtur, to little success — the scion's cradle will attack anything that intrudes.
Elemental Weapon: A fire scion wields a sword of magma.
Living Lava: A cradle of the fire scion resembles a bipedal mass of molten rock that fights like a living volcano.
Playing with Fire: Unsurprisingly, a scion of Surtur and its cradle can attack with blasts of volcanic gas and fire, geysers of lava, superheated smoke, and so forth.
Shockwave Stomp: A scion of Surtur can create a shockwave while moving, capable of breaking other creatures' concentration.
Walking Wasteland: A scion of Surtur inhibits precipitation in a radius of 6 miles around itself, parching the land and withering most plant life.

Scion of Thrym

Challenge Rating: 24 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

An isolated glacier or drifting iceberg can serve as the cradle for a scion of Thrym, allowing nearby wildlife to flourish if they can withstand the bitter cold. If awakened, a frost scion immediately charges at anything that dares challenge it.

Elemental Weapon: A frost scion wields a greataxe made of solid ice.
An Ice Person: A cradle of the frost scion can hurl shards of ice at enemies, or exhale a blast of frigid air to freeze foes in place.
Launcher Move: A scion of Thrym is so prodigiously strong that it can tear an icy glacier out of the ground and hurl it skyward. Everyone in a 30-foot radius of the attack who fails their Dexterity save takes a load of bludgeoning and cold damage and is sent 100 feet into the air to fall back to the ground...
Meteor-Summoning Attack: ...and then on its next turn, the frost scion sends the mass of ice crashing down for another dose of bludgeoning and frost damage.
Shockwave Stomp: A scion of Thrym can create a shockwave while moving, capable of breaking other creatures' concentration.
Snowlems: A frost scion's cradle can animate a bipedal figure made of ice and snow to defend the slumbering scion.

Related Creatures

Gargantua

Classification: Aberration (5E)
Challenge Rating: 21 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

In very rare cases, a seemingly-normal young giant will grow into a 40-foot-tall, purple-skinned, horned humanoid. Such gargantua tend to ostracized by their communities, and either leave for the seclusion of a towering forest or great Underdark cavern, or strike back at the world that shunned them.

For other creatures known as "gargantua," see the relevant folder on the main creature index.

Curse: They can cast a "baleful hex" on any creature they can see, completely incapacitating them for a turn unless they succeed a high saving throw.
Finger Poke of Doom: As a reaction, a gargantua can simply "flick" an opponent, dealing damage and sending them flying up to 100 feet away.
Multiple-Choice Past: Their entry mentions several theories explaining gargantua births, such as an ancient pact with the Far Realm, the influence of the banished god Karontor, or that gargantua are sent by Annam himself to destroy giantkind.
Nightmare Weaver: Gargantua are surrounded by a "weird aura" that can cause onlookers to perceive the behemoth as an embodiment of their worst fears, a Supernatural Fear Inducer that deals a dose of psychic damage as well.
Power Copying: Once per day, a gargantua can try and mimic a spell of 5th-level or lower that they saw another creature cast, resolving it as the same spell level as its original caster.

Hulk

Dust hulk (5e)

Classification: Elemental (5E)
Challenge Rating: 3 (mud), 5 (dust, rime), 6 (mist), 7 (cinder), 9 (lightning) (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (dust, lightning, mist), Chaotic Evil (cinder, mud) Neutral Evil (rime)

Some giant enclaves immersed themselves in elemental power, forsaking their flesh and some of their stature in the process. The resulting hulks are more elemental than giant, though still display signs of their heritage.

Axe-Crazy: Cinder hulks want nothing but "to burn as much as they can until their own flames are extinguished."
Defeat Equals Explosion: Slain hulks tend to explode in 10-foot-radius bursts of elemental energy, which might deal damage and inflict status effects like blindness upon those caught in the blast.
Elemental Embodiment: They look like humanoid elementals, or perhaps the six main giant kindreds distilled to their elemental essence. This also lets them make attacks with their constituent element: cinder hulks can unleash waves of damaging cinders, rime hulks leave a trail of chilling frost as they move, lightning hulks can damage other creatures in their space, and so forth.
Emotion Bomb: Mist hulks are gloomy and dour creatures, whose wails of anguish deal psychic damage and can incapacitate other creatures.
Diancastra: I mourn for the hulks, all of them. The sight of a mist hulk in particular fills me with a melancholy that is hard to shake off.
Bigby: In all seriousness, it's best not to get caught up in what these hulks were or might have become had things gone differently for them. They're dangerous, and most of them do not wish you well. Act accordingly.
Non-Malicious Monster: Dust hulks retain the stone giants' commitment to art, using their swirling bodies as living art pieces as they dance through the air.
Psycho Electro: Downplayed; lightning hulks aren't actively evil, but their mental state is described as "incoherent," so that they dart about "with little sense of purpose and no hint of the contemplation that occupies its distant cousin giants."
Swallowed Whole: Mud hulks inherit their hill giant ancestors' appetite, only they can now simply engulf smaller creatures with their amorphous bodies.

Undead Giants

While giants can be reanimated as zombies or skeletons like other creatures, in other cases they create more unique undead.

All entries are classified as Undead unless otherwise noted.

Barrowghast

Challenge Rating: 7 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Should a hill giant die with an empty stomach, it may rise as an undead horror driven by hunger and malice.

Adaptation Name Change: When they debuted with the undead versions of the six core giants in Dragon #254, they were known only as "barrowes."
Eye of Newt: It's speculated that barrowe body parts could be used to brew a potion of hill giant strength that also gives the drinker these undead's energy-draining ability, "but so far as is known, no one has been foolhardy enough to try it."
Horror Hunger: They died hungry, but now barrowghasts are less concerned with physical food and more about consuming other creatures' life force. It's noted that they'll target former family members first, then go about attacking and feeding indiscriminately.
Maximum HP Reduction: Anyone hit by their life-draining melee attacks has to save or have their maximum hit points reduced by the same amount, until they recover with a long rest.
Poisonous Person: Their noxious blood can poison those who damage them in melee, and barrowghasts emit a stench that can sicken others nearby.
Spawn Broodling: Anyone humanoid slain by their life-draining attack will rise as a zombie ally of the barrowghast.

Cairnwight

Challenge Rating: 9 (5E)
Alignment: True Neutral

These undead stone giants are obsessed with an art project, and after finishing their stone carving will spend their existence protecting it from harm.

Adaptation Name Change: Formerly known simply as "cairns."
Eye of Newt: Unsurprisingly, cairn body parts have an application in stone- or petrification-based magic.
He Was Right There All Along: Cairnwights' bodies become caked with lichen and mineral deposits, which helps them blend in with their surroundings.
Non-Malicious Monster: Unlike most undead, cairnwights have no agenda beyond finishing and then protecting their artwork, or any reason to seek out victims. Cairnwights will only attack those who interfere with their work, damage the result, or steal from them, and will place the petrified bodies of those offenders outside their vault as a warning before resealing it.
Taken for Granite: They can petrify other creatures with a touch.
Workaholic: They were so wrapped up with finishing their masterpiece that they died while working on it, rose as an undead creature, and then got right back to it.

Crawling Head

Challenge Rating: 20 (3e)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The reanimated severed heads of giants, slithering about on a tangle of veins and arteries. Their bloated, translucent flesh is studded with the still-screaming heads of their victims.

Cannibalism Superpower: A variant. Rather than taking powers specific to their victims, the heads consumed by a crawling head fuel its own abilities, can be used to heal itself, or to temporarily enhance an ability score.
More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Their oversized heads contain rows of teeth, like a shark's mouth.
Gone Horribly Right: The original crawling head was created by an overconfident necromancer, who was quickly slain by his creation, which went on to propogate itself.
Necromancer: Crawling heads can use animate dead and control undead at will, or use create undead and create greater undead each three times per day. They can cast these as quickened spells by absorbing a stored head.
Off with His Head!: Their vorpal bite attacks can inflict a One-Hit Kill on a Critical Hit.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: A crawling head with at least ten victims' heads stored inside it can make those heads screech and howl, forcing other creatures within 60 feet to save or cower in fear.
Wall Crawl: They can creep up sheer surfaces and across ceilings thanks to their disgusting means of locomotion.
Weaksauce Weakness: Ordinary water is just as damaging to crawling heads as holy water.

Deathshead

Challenge Rating: 7 (3E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The severed and reanimated heads of giants, created in imitation of the vestige Shax.

Oracular Head: These creatures are of great value to necromancers, as they're quite knowledgeable about any subject, and can act as oracles. Even supposedly good communities may submit to the rule of a deathshead in order to benefit from their knowledge.
Prehensile Hair: Deathsheads move around on ropy tendrils of their own hair, even up sheer surfaces. For this reason, female giants are more commonly converted into deathsheads than males, and stone giants are never used.
Puppeteer Parasite: They can use dominate monster on any creature they've grappled, which lasts only if they maintain physical contact, leading to the deathshead riding or being carried by their thrall.
Turned Against Their Masters: Though deathsheads are useful minions, they're also strong-willed and silver-tongued, capable of dominating unwary creators.

Firegaunt

Challenge Rating: 11 (5E)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

A fire giant whose burning hatred prevents it from moving on to the afterlife.

Ax-Crazy: The firegaunt's only goal is to seek out and kill as many living creatures as possible before being destroyed for good.
Eye of Newt: Firegaunt body parts have various magical applications, and rumor has it that immersing a bottle in these undead's internal fires is one way to make an eversmoking bottle, though said rumors don't specify how long this takes to work.
Flaming Sword: Once per turn, they can cause their mauls to erupt in flames, causing extra fire and necrotic damage.
Playing with Fire: Firegaunts can unleash a conical burst of fire from their eyes, mouth and wounds, dealing heavy fire damage and potentially setting victims aflame.
Volcanic Veins: They look like badly-burnt corpses with fiery veins, which has the practical effect of dealing fire damage to adjacent creatures that deal slashing or piercing damage to the firegaunt.

Frostmourn

Challenge Rating: 10 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

A frost giant who suffered a dishonorable death, causing them to rise as an undead and seek vengenace.

Elemental Shapeshifter: A frostmourn can momentarily dissolve itself into a swirling blizzard to avoid harm, reforming at a distance.
Eye of Newt: These undead's body parts can be used to power a variety of ice spells and frigid magic items.
An Ice Person: Their mere touch deals cold damage, their axes are coated in ice, and they can fire "polar rays" as a ranged attack.
Purpose-Driven Immortality: Subverted. Frostmourns were poisoned, stabbed In the Back, or Slain in Their Sleep, and thus seek revenge for their dishonorable ends, but often they're so hateful that they continue to linger even after killing their killers.
Taken for Granite: A frostmourn can turn the living into frozen statues with a touch.

Spectral Cloud

Challenge Rating: 13 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Ghostly cloud giants who died during a risky wager or from an act of betrayal, though other tales suggest that the transformation can be voluntary.

Cumulonemesis: From a distance they look like a particularly thick cloud bank, though those who come closer might spot a shadowy figure within — only those who penetrate to the heart of the fog bank can see the skeletal giant at its center. This all makes it difficult to hit a spectral cloud unless an opponent is within 15 feet of it.
Eye of Newt: A spectral cloud's essence can be used to make a potion of gaseous form, while some mages seek to trap an intact spectral cloud in a bottle as an alternative to an efreet bottle.
An Ice Person: A spectral cloud can emit a line of chilling wind that deals heavy cold damage and might leave victims incapacitated.
Intangibility: They're incorporeal beings who can move through other creatures or solid objects.
Maximum HP Reduction: Their spectral touch deals damage that, unless the victim succeeds a saving throw, cannot be healed until after a long rest.

Tempest Spirit

Challenge Rating: 15 (5E)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Storm giants who accidentally transformed themselves into undead creatures, driving some to desperately work to undo their mishap, while others lash out in their fury over their condition.

Adaptation Name Change: Formerly known as "temperaments."
Cumulonemesis: Tempest spirits look like giant upper bodies surrounded by stormclouds, and can lash out with hailstones, as well as lightning infused with necrotic energy that can cause Maximum HP Reduction.
Eye of Newt: 2nd Edition asserts that "Temperament bone or essence is considered just the thing for the finest quality wands of lightning, or a nonmetallic ring of shocking grasp."
Fog Feet: Their lower bodies are swirling storm clouds, leading some to mistake tempest spirits for djinn.
Imperfect Ritual: They were evidently trying to become a storm giant quintessent, but performed the ritual in a location where the Shadowfell's influence was bleeding onto the Material Plane. So instead of their bodies dispersing into the elements, tempest spirits were infused with negative energy and only partially transformed.
Intangibility: As (un)living clouds, tempest spirits are incorporeal.

Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Giants

Giants of the Ordning

Smiling One

Dreadnought

Everlasting One

Mouth of Grolantor

Dreamwalker

Quintessent

Other Giants

Scions of the Giants' Gods

Related Creatures

Undead Giants

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Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Giants

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Giants of the Ordning

Smiling One

Dreadnought

Everlasting One

Mouth of Grolantor

Dreamwalker

Quintessent

Other Giants

Scions of the Giants' Gods

Related Creatures

Undead Giants

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Index

Next