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Oops, the wrong game had me laughing.
Noticed something: Luke's complaints about giants can be equally applied to humans. Any counterpoint anyone can come up with for humans can easily apply to giants.
12:50 Now try to find something interesting Maruts can do. Giants may be big sacks of hitpoints that do damage, but a Marut is a big sack of hitpoints that does 120 dpr.
At my after school Pathfinder club, I always tell my students to think of monster design like puzzle design – determine the intended path to victory, and build with that in mind.
While your players may very well come up with an alternative path to victory, having an intended path makes the fight rewarding because there is something for your players to discover, and then (more importantly), exploit!
As such, the single most important aspect of any monster is its weakness!
The weakness shouldn't necessarily be obvious (& subtle weaknesses are a lot of fun when you figure them out), nor should it be easy to exploit (why not retreat, prepare, and come back ready for revenge).
Put a flaw in the proverbial armor, then figure out what the monster is going to do while your players are busy figuring out how to stop it!
A good monster is basically a timed puzzle!
One item about monsters that I think may GMs forget about that helps add variety, not all monsters need to be evil. In fact many of them are not inherently evil which can make for some interesting story dynamics.
Haha!! Luke no word good. At least he doesn't totally suck. To improve your giants, have them utilize the terrain. Each one is terrain specific, so give them actions and abilities relative to that environ.
3:38 "When monsters have weaknesses, it gives players a puzzle to solve." That's not a puzzle. That's just wasting attack after attack until you finally find one that deals damage. It's the same as doing a jigsaw puzzle upside down – ultimately you're just trying each piece until you find one that fits.
Now, if you had set this up somehow – if the players had found some notes in the hag's lair that indicated a vulnerability to acid and cold, for example – it would be different. But in your example, you just arbitrarily swapped the troll's resistances and vulnerabilities to waste the players' time.
Challenge accepted. You can't speak. You can't do your job.
Stop using the word "decimate" when you mean "devastate." Seriously. "Decimate" means to eliminate one-tenth of something.
I’ve used flying giants before as well as player classes.
I do have my monsters retreat or surrender too. My party has a fire giant henchman now too
Use giants from Bigby's book.
Adding this to favorite videos!
As usual great gudance and a fun listen.
I like these videos and I"m an habitual notetaker, but I would pay a buck or two for a list like this, or bulletted notes for this. The same for most of your lists.
Giants are fantastic monsters to pit against the players as long as you throw a group of giants at them instead of a singular one to fight. If all you have them do is swing their club instead of tossing, grappling, focusing fire…well, then you have made them a boring bag of HPs.
Very good video- a lot of great content. 2 comments.
1. Ripping on Giants is fine, but provide examples (beyond the one comment about hitting the celling) on how giants can be made better, and explain why you chose the abilities you did.
2. There are more than a few people who play high level D&D. Content creators keep saying "no one plays high level D&D" – it puts the false narrative out there. High level D&D is challenging and rewarding-for the players and DMs.
Love your content man. All of these guides really help with my DM'ing skills and this one especially
Little idea I’m posting to my fave D&D content creators: put a bow on you or icon in support of JoCat
I like using Giants as friendly NPCs more than enemies. I just love their culture and divisions. And the way they interact with player characters is so cute.
I love those pathfinder monster cards. I’m slowly purchasing all the cards for the bestiarys and APs i am actively running
Lots of the bosses I've designed follow these tips really well. They're chaotic and the phase system keeps them from being too complex (while also stopping the players from 1-tapping them)
Something I always add to enemies is a recharge ability. They are so often underrated, but when done properly, they can scare the pants off players haha
Monsters with too many abilities (high level spellcasters) only really work as solo encounters, so you don't have to split your attention between
Monster x does A, monster y does B, and then when monster x comes back up, you haven't forgotten that it did A because you have to keep track of all the stupid little things every monster can do separately
Enjoy the videos you make….share many of your tips to my friends and the D&D groups at the game shop I work at. Keep up the Great Work!!
One issue I've had is that some monsters do fancy things at death, like Zombies who can get back up with 1 hit point, or the ooze which divides instead. These are neat mechanics, but during our whole first dungeon with zombies, they never rolled to regain hit points so I almost forgot, and the critical on the ooze meant it didn't have a chance to divide.
Ah I see this is just a clever way to get your viewers to give you ideas for giants. Clever man!
7:02
But an oversimplified monster is boring. So, don't do either.