You Won't Find This Dark Sun Giant In Bigby's Book

this video was sponsored by Gilman's guide to speed now on Kickstarter hello and welcome to monster of the week the only show on the internet that is sure to leave you informed about d and d monsters without a shadow of a doubt this week we're talking about one of the most bizarre creatures from D D's most brutal setting the shadow giant as always today we'll be talking about the dark history of the Shadow giant both in real world publication and its lore relating to Dungeons and Dragons then we're gonna go over its abilities unique traits ecology and ultimately convert it from a D 2nd Edition into 5th edition d d as always you can find my 5e stats Linked In the description down below and while you're down there you can find a link to this week's sponsor Gilman's guide to speed have you ever wanted to reenact the plot of beloved 90s movies speed and other 90s movies Speed 2 in a DND campaign well with Gilman's guide to speed you can do that and much more the latest Kickstarter project from the folks at only crits is jam-packed with everything you need to run the high octane Arcane Punk game of your dreams there are over 30 new magic infused Vehicles all made to work with the book's brand new speed racing rule set to give you a new way to engage with the DND 5e you love but if you think you can do better on the design front try creating and constructing your very own vehicles and more with codified engineering rules meant to enable player creativity this book has also got tons of new spells new magic items four new classes 12 subclasses new races new backgrounds new Feats and over 40 new monsters that's something I'm very much looking forward to there are pledge levels for all budgets and if anything I've said so far has triggered your Primal urge to go fast I highly suggest you check out this product the folks over at only crits have been pushing the boundaries of game design especially within the 5e space for the past few years now and Gilman's guide is no exception the project is already past its funding goal and is on track to start smashing through some stretch goals starting with blue of new player options so if you've got to go fast hit the link in the description down below head over to the kickstarter and check it out for yourself thank you once again so much to only crits in this Buck Wild d d Kickstarter for sponsoring our video this week now without further Ado let's talk about the Giant Shadow person in the room [Music] the post-apocalyptic world of athis is maybe one of the most brutal DND locales of all time Dark Sun the setting where the World of Athens is located is notorious for all manner of different evils it's a place where even the environment is inhospitable to 99 of life but it wasn't always this way at the risk of this turning into a dark Sun lore dump video I'm gonna condense a bunch of complicated lore into a very simplistic digestible meal for you I only do this because Shadow Giants are really weird and there's some specific context required to understand where they even come from in the first place so in Dark Sun halflings are one of if not the oldest race in the world they've been around since the blue age which is when the world was covered in water then they were dominant in the green age which is when things were covered in forest and fertile land then the first sorcerer rajat came along and figured out how to harness the environment to cast his spells he tried to take over the world and perpetrate a dozen literal genocides many of which were successful until his generals ultimately turned on him and banished him to the shadow realm known in Dark Sun as the black aside from his traitorous generals though rajat was also closely aligned with a bunch of halflings who vibed with his genocidal ideas so when he was eventually deposed and sealed away all the halflings that stood by his side were also banished to the black and doomed to wander an endless nightmare Escape of Darkness for all of eternity unfortunately the war is turned to one slush Paradise into hell world global warming is bad and so was over consumption of oil I mean magic especially for the purpose of waging genocidal War so how does any of this relate to this week's monster well the shadow Giants aren't exactly Giants in the literal sense of the word they are the descendants of those halflings who were banished to the a black all those years ago and while there is no perfect one-to-one analog with the cosmology of Dark Sun the closest thing we have to the black in modern 5th edition d d would be the shadowfell it's a place you generally don't want to be and if you spend too much time there you'll be twisted into some kind of shadowy nightmare creature in Shadow Giants are just so they're living beings descended from halflings that live and exist in a world of utter Darkness they do however possess the ability to shift between the black or the shadow fell for in the Forgotten Realms and the material plane and when they do this they appear as shadowy humanoids with Serpentine bodies however unlike the Shadows you might find in the 5th edition monster manual these creatures don't fear sources of bright light they feed on them in a place of total darkness the shadow giant stands only about six feet tall however when exposed to Bright Light they grow upwards of 25 feet in height not only is this an aesthetic change but the more light they absorb to cast a larger Shadow the more powerful they become for this reason many Travelers mistake them for giant kin and thus they are called Shadow Giants funnily enough the Dark Sun monstrous compendium appendix 2 the only book this creature ever appears in specifies that they don't refer to themselves as Shadow Giants but rather Shadow People which makes perfect sense given that they're not actually Giants at least not genetically so as you can imagine this whole situation made this creature very difficult to support into fifth edition they're just so unlike any other monster that I've come across and they have a very lower heavy origin story with special specific ties to the history of Dark Sun if you happen to be playing a 5th edition dark Sun campaign great this monster is gonna fit right in but I imagine there aren't many of you adventuring in the world of athis right now because we don't have and likely never will have an official 5th edition printing of the setting so what I've done in my conversion is provided some alternative lore with how they might better fit with the Forgotten Realms since that's probably where most of you are or at least in a Homebrew world with adjacent lore and a somewhat similar cosmology so that way if you like this monster you want to slap it in your game you can just do so and there's no need for an on-the-fly justification of where they come from or why they exist in your game it's just all written on the monster stat block for you but we'll dig into that a bit more when we get into plot Hooks and story stuff for the shadow giant for now let's take a look at what kind of abilities this monster possesses and explore a little [Music] oh foreign [Music] this thing is going to be either very dangerous or pretty manageable depending on circumstance its signature trait is called Shadow body which is the one that mechanically explains how it changes in various degrees of light or darkness in regular or bright areas of light this bad boy is standing 25 feet tall and Doling out a ton of damage however in dim light its size category goes down from huge to large and then in total darkness it goes from large to medium and each time its size is reduced it also deals one less dice of damage with every successful attack it makes for example a shadow giant at full strength is going to be slamming its enemies for 4d8 plus 5 damage it also grapples them if they're huge or smaller but when in an area of Darkness this attack will only be doing two d8 plus 5 damage and it can only grapple them if they're medium or smaller so if the party has a way to Snuff out any light in the area they're going to be doing themselves a huge favor when it comes to how much damage they'll be taking the other tricky thing about this creature is physiology is how they interact with radiant damage radiant attacks are meant to be for the most part indicative of pure light so not only does the shadow giant not take damage from radiant sources it actually heals itself for half the amount of damage it would normally be taking and I recognize that this is somewhat counter-intuitive to the way that light and Shadow often interact in DND 5th edition so explaining that your clerics guiding both is simply absorbed by the creature and it looks like it's patching itself up is a great way to explain to the players that something is not quite right here and of course as semi-corporeal beings of Shadow they are straight up immune to non-magical damage and they have some pretty hearty resistances as well but when it comes to them actually dealing damage to other creatures they of course have that aforementioned slam attack and in place of the classic rock throw many of the Giants in 5th edition have I I gave them an attack called Dark bolt this essentially allows them to shoot a missile of dark energy at an opponent causing some cold damage to them and there's a saving throw attached which if they fail they suffer a level of exhaustion I mean they are from your world's version of The Shadow plane after all much like their Undead Shadow cousins the shadow giant is big on the idea of sapping Life Energy they can cause exhaustion with their dark bolts and their slam attacks drain away your strength score temporarily however unlike the Shadow from the 5e monster manual this strength drain doesn't kill you if it drops you to zero strength it simply renders you unconscious for a while this might seem pretty forgiving which it is unless of course that particular Shadow giant happens to hate you because the final action on this Shadow giant stat block is called descend and it works basically the same way the plane shift spell works except it only allows travel between the black or the shadowfell and the material plane and it can take any creatures it's grappling with it Dead or Alive you are coming with me on the one hand this is a great way to travel between two planes with two of your closest friends on the other hand it's a great way to kidnap an unwilling victim and drag them off to the shadowfell a Telltale sign that this monster is from the old school role-playing days of d d is that there is no saving throw like effect where you get to roll a dice and possibly resist being dragged to the shadowfell if it's grappling you and it uses this action it just goes there and takes you with it I mean sure it does have to hit you with a slam attack to grab you first but if it succeeds on that part of it and you don't escape by its next turn you might be if you want to be a little bit nicer to your players you could always give them a chance to break free by making a strength save or something like that at the last moment before being dragged off to a different plane of existence you could also rule that it can only use this ability on willing or unconscious creatures if you're feeling extra nice but rules as written it just takes you on a little trip so as a DM I would use this ability very sparingly because if you're not playing in a gritty High mortality campaign a player becoming trapped in the shadowfell is potentially a huge deal but it could also make for some really interesting plot points so let's talk about that [Music] thank you if you're going to use Shadow Giants in your game I highly encourage you to think about how and where they might fit in with the cosmology of Your World The more 5e friendly lore I included on the stat sheet has them as denizens of the shadowfell who descend from a line of cursed Mortals that accidentally became trapped there due to a lust for magic this is pretty generic boilerplate lore but it works it serves its function and if you want to expand on it you absolutely can but there's also an alternative option where if you want to stay true to the creature's original lore and you're not playing in the world of Dark Sun you could always add the black to your game as another dimension maybe it's a different Realm of Darkness though unlike the shadowfell it isn't simply a shadowy world of edgy sadness it might literally just be a plane of total darkness and if you want to give it its own Dark Fantasy name that's different from the black so people don't associate it with that specific plane in the world of Athens you can always rebranded as tenebaris or something like that and maybe this Realm of Darkness is even part of the shadowfell it could be a Locale that is so devoid of light in anything tangible that the residents of the shadowfell don't even dare to venture there like a vast chasm in the shadowfell's geography that leads to unknown depths of Darkness perhaps it's the one place that the Raven Queen can't exert her influence and as such the shadow people live there in hiding because it was the Raven Queen they originally crossed and now they fear her I don't know there's a lot of different things you could do here but the point is this is all something worth considering if you're planning on having Shadow Giants play a role in your campaign Beyond just a random encounter as for why the party might come across them there are plenty of reasons for that if they happen to be adventuring through the shadowfell the shadow giant could just be another Denizen or NPC they come across on the material plane they're also liable to encounter these guys acting as Merchants as residents of the shadowfell or whatever domain of Darkness you decide on they come across all kinds of weird stuff that doesn't show up normally in the material plane so they gather these mysterious Wares and bring them to the material plane in order to trade it for something they actually need obsidian obsidian is so precious to them because the shadow people need it in order to propagate their species they use orbs of obsidian almost like eggs as objects that they can Infuse part of their Essence into and ultimately have them hatch into a new shadow person so the stuff that you can get from a shadow giant Merchant is going to be extremely weird and exotic to the world most people are used to but in exchange for these bizarre Goods they only accept payment in obsidian how difficult it is for your players to get obsidian is up to you but if there's a known location where a shadow giant sets up shop this can be a great excuse for the players to go seek some obsidian out to trade with one of these guys as a sort of side quest and this could also ultimately lead to some really interesting political faction type stuff maybe the shadow Giants have an arrangement with a kingdom on the material plane wherein they will do the king's bidding in exchange for 100 obsidian orbs every month that could be an explanation as to why they're helping out a faction of morals on the material plane despite not having any actual interest in their politics and if you are planning a whole Adventure in the shadowfell The Shadow Giants could also work as a really interesting way for your players to get there maybe they start the campaign as kidnappies of a shadow giant clan that has spirited them away at the behest of some other character with maybe villainous intent discovering why they were taken in the first place and how they can ultimately make their way back home could be a really fun adventure in and of itself or maybe the shadow Giants took them because they need help with some sort of problem they're facing remember that on the material plane in areas of light they're very powerful creatures but in the shadowfell with no light to feed on they're generally quite weak so enlisting some Mortals for Aid with a problem that can only be dealt with in the shadowfell could be a last Act of desperation and finally it wouldn't be a dungeon dad video if I didn't try to sell you on a way to shoehorn these creatures into curse of straw but seriously any campaign in borovia or another dimly lit domain of dread could be a really great place for the shadow Giants to show up you could scrap the existing lore and just have them function as a long lost and cursed race that occupies a part of borovia and due to the Dark Lord's influence the place has always kept gloomy preventing them from ever being strong enough to fight back but with the help of a cleric casting a spell like daylight they might increase their power and prove to be a formidable Ally but no matter what you choose to do with this monster I definitely want to hear about your ideas stories and plot Hooks and ways you would employ a creature like this down in the comments below I think there's tons of lore and story potential here I know you guys love a weird monster to experiment with especially one from Dark Sun I also wouldn't even be here talking about these monsters if it weren't for all the lovely folks supporting me over on patreon so I want to give a big shout out to all of our patrons and a special shout out to our randomly selected patron of the week this week we're giving a shout out to Lupine Grace thank you so much for your support it's very gracious of you I appreciate it immensely and thank you for watching as always don't forget to check the description down below for a link to my 5th edition conversion of this monster it's there in the form of a Google Document which contains everything you'll need to successfully bring this creature to your table and if you are one of my aforementioned patrons you can of course find the monster of the week style high-res PDF document over on the dungeon dad patreon page which contains all the same information just fancier presentations some brand new artwork and it helps support me in the content we're making here speaking of artwork want to give a big shout out to this week's artist Tam for their incredible work bringing the shadow giant to life he looks very creepy and I love him and of course if you've got a monster you'd like to see show up in a future episode of Monster of the week leave a comment jump in the Discord the link to that is down in the description as well and we have a monster suggestions Channel Channel where you can suggest a monster fancy that and wherever you suggest it it will be added to the monster suggestion list and who knows you might just see it show up on an episode of Monster of the week so once again thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one till then [Music] thank you

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Id: SBQ7dDRVeMo

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 19 2023