Your experience roleplaying with a half-giant PC

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What was your experience encountering and roleplaying with a half-giant player-character?

Overall, a positive one

158
64%

Overall, a negative one

48
20%

Neutral/Mixed

40
16%
 
Total votes: 246

chris a gogo
Posts: 621
Joined: Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:41 pm

Re: Your experience roleplaying with a half-giant PC

Post by chris a gogo »

half giants have a cool culture that easily jives with arelith.

As I understood it they are unwanted bastards of a monstrous (and frankly weird) union that are despised and unwanted by there giant parent and hated for being the offspring of giants by humans?

But I am happy to be corrected in this view, if you could post which 3.5 source book it's in so I can read up on it that would be great thanks.

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Ork
Arelith Gold Supporter
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Posts: 2567
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2014 8:30 pm

Re: Your experience roleplaying with a half-giant PC

Post by Ork »

Kite_Alaster2 wrote: Sat Sep 14, 2024 4:08 pm

It actually does have some relevance here cause if you look through even this thread there are people who deny half giants even exist and want to dismiss any argument for them being a thing by saying they don't exist.

A misrepresentation since most people, myself included, say they have no exemplars- which is still true. Half-giants are now confirmed in the same status as fungal drow breastmilk, but just because ed said something on twitter doesn’t change my stance that some were poorly played, had no foundational identity, and contributed to the zoo that has become arelith.

Rakiov
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2022 11:13 pm

Re: Your experience roleplaying with a half-giant PC

Post by Rakiov »

I feel like this discussion has gotten a bit to targeted and loses the point of what we want to discuss here. Trying to measure out RP as good or bad kind of puts people on the spot and isn't conducive to a good RP environment. RP is subjective, we each RP things out differently depending on how we want to play a character. I think singling out half-giants for bad RP because of a lack of context to their backstory and existence is no different than singling out any other half race for doing the same.

In the end some people latch onto their heritage as identity when they can't find their own, this is true in real life and it isn't any different in RP. You can have half-giants act like giants or make wild claims because that's how they feel they identify themselves as. Just as a half-elf or a half-orc can latch onto their elven or orcish heritage. All of this is subjective. But if the DMs really cared about how the representation of half-giants are done, they can turn the race into a application race like we have for so many others instead of just removing it outright. In the end this is a game we are playing to escape and have fun with, if you lose track of why you are playing and stop having fun, then what's the point?

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I am War
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:59 am

Re: Your experience roleplaying with a half-giant PC

Post by I am War »

Half-giants are by far my favorite reward race — the wiki lore on the subject was written just enough to leave rooms for players to interpret and imagine. The initial mechanical stats and limitations helped shaped the roleplay and associated builds to come. What the community did with it has been stellar majority of the time and this reward race should serve as a prime example of how reward races should be done.

In comparison, Firbolgs and Gloaming — no idea what to do with those races other than treating them as bigger humans or drow with wings, so dark Avariel. Maybe it’s a lack of understanding of them on my end, or it is also the lack in the direction or diction from which edition of which how they would be roleplayed.

With the latest changes to half-giants, I will say some of the changes weren’t necessary, other than what it feels like a slap on the face for those who enjoyed them for what they are to discourage players from playing half-giants because someone on the dev team has a beef with what half-giants may be from the lore perspective.

The size reduction make some of them smaller than Half-Orcs now, when they’ve always been smaller than firbolgs already so I don’t see why that was needed.

Alignment removal was alright, though the initial partial restriction did actually help with players interpreting the race and shape the roleplay, as minor as the mechanical thing may be.

Last but not least, if there’s a problem with the bloodline, renaming half-giant to giantblooded or Jotunbrud wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, given the reduction in size. Give them the same treatment as plane-touched if lore is such a concern.

Also can somebody make an executive decision on Firbolg lore already?

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