Talk:Giantkin

From Tearsofblood

Revision as of 16:36, 12 March 2009

Language

Do we need a Giantkin language? Couldn't they simply use Giant as their language? -Citizen Joe

Should they really get Feldarin (common) as automatic? I realize it is needed for adventurers, but far up north, the race rarely sees Feldarin. -Citizen Joe

Formatting quotes

I was wondering if there is some way that we can have journal entries appear in a different font of background or something so that they stand out as such. -Citizen Joe

culture

"The Giantkin live in small tribes of 30- 300 Giantkin ruled by councils of elders or chiefs. Generally they don�¢ï¿½ï¿½t any inheriteable class system �¢ï¿½ï¿½ but there is an exeption �¢ï¿½ï¿½ thorough the lands there are three or four Giantkin who are best described as storyteller-lords. "

I think this needs a lot more work. I deduce from this that the position of story-teller lord is passed from father to son but that all other positions (chief , elder etc) are assigned purely on merit. However I had to read it three times before I came to that conclusion and I am not even sure that was the intention. Also this sounds somewhat like a high-level prestige class with the following requirements:

• giantkin race
• must have studied for X years at the feet of another story-teller lord or be related to one.
• there must be a vacancy
• various bardic requirements

For what it is worth I agree with the comments regarding language.

fairs

"In the days long past, when the Giantkin had a greater sense of unity, there was a tradition of tribes travelling and gathering near the lord of the area where there would be an occurence every five years that could be best described as a very big fair �¢ï¿½ï¿½ lots of trading, court disputes of great importance, competitions for the best wrestlers, archers, singers, storytellers and many others. During the Plague, one of the lords wanted to revive the tradition and call together the gathering, but only two tribes appeared. Nowadays these fairplaces are long left behind, only wind, birds and reindeer going there and lords live in the swamps and islands."

Is there a better word than "fair"? For example "moot" if that is not already overworked in fantasy contexts.

ritual cannibalism

This probably has long term consequences on disease etc. Is this something that needs to be developed? Do shamans eat the brains of deceased shamans to gain better access to the spirit world? Does eating the flesh of a plague victim subvert the giantkin's immunity to the plague?

I think that ritual cannibalism should be noted, but the exploration of why and the release of spirits and shaman stuff should be detailed in the Tears of Faith Supplement. Don't get hung up on those details just yet. Citizen Joe 13:37, 10 March 2009 (PDT)

gaps

Nothing on alignment. First of all need to search the forums on that. Lot of stuff in the thread "Giantkin write-up version 0.0.1 " which has not moved since November.

Loose ends

Ok, after rereading the last page of the forum thread on the Giantkin writeup here I realize that we need to discuss some things to finish off these guys.

Once and for all, are they LA +1 or +0? This begs the question, if they are to be +0 are they balanced enough? If we make them +1, have we gimped them too much.

One way or the other, what will the initiative penalty be?

Weathervision: in or out? I had an idea, might be too big of a bonus, but rather than Weathervision which helps them in obscure periods of poor visibility due to weather (yeah, like a DM makes that happen every adventure), how about we give them a bonus against glare. Maybe a bonus against certain bright light affect spells? Either that, or give them low-light like Wunderhund suggested and call it good.

Ok, now to debate. Their balance aside, how does everyone feel about playing a +1 LA character in general? [Silas woz here!] Do you shun them or embrace them? Does the benefit of it outweigh the fact that as a spellcaster with +1 LA you are a level behind other spellcasters. Does that pigeon-hole them into only playing melee classes? Discuss. --MostlyHarmless 10:37, 10 March 2009 (PDT)

First of all I have to say I am not very happy with this is as a forum. As I understand it there is nothing to stop me manipulating your posts, which I would never do of course!

I actually play a lawful-good Tiefling monk of Pelor so I have some comparison. A tiefling monk is quite low on hit points and tieflings are much better suited to rogues. The combination is quite challenging but is so far my favourite character ever. Whether people never or rediculously often want to play a race is one measure as to whether that race is balanced. I have tried to develop tools to explore the balance[[1][question]] but I suspect it may actually be necessary to package some of these questions up and post them on the general homebrewing board.

My own suggestion for weathervision is to treat it like blindfighting. So the Giantkin would roll twice for concealment if it was due to natural or magical fog of any description. I suggested this on boards sometime back. --silas the monk 11:17, 10 March 2009 (PDT)

I thought it was decided that they shoot lightning from their eyes :) Seriously though, A decision on weather vision requires an assessment of what happens without the weather vision. What are the normal effects of rain, snow, wind, glare etc.? If an effect grants concealment, then it doesn't to a Giantkin. If an effect has a limited range, then double that range. If an effect has a penalty to some vision related skill or ability, then remove the penalty.

Unless snow blindness and glare off the ice (and sea) is already covered in an existing rulebook, then I think those rules should be detailed in Tears of Ice. And also include means of ameliorating the condition. Citizen Joe 13:35, 10 March 2009 (PDT)

I agree this is not the best. It requires a manual step to add your signature/timestamp and it's certainly not as easy as a forum setting. I reread the SRD for weather and I just don't see that this makes any sense any longer. I vote we just give them lowlight vision. That makes sense from winter having 24 hours of night, no? Assuming that our world tilts just like Earth.--MostlyHarmless 10:34, 11 March 2009 (PDT)

Fog causes 20% mischance during attacks in the SRD. For natural fog this is in the "wilderness and environment". For magical fog this is in the spell descriptions.--silas the monk 10:45, 11 March 2009 (PDT)

Leave the decision on weather vision until after the balance issues are taken care of. Giantkin are on my agenda for the Tears of Ice supplement, so no final decision needs to be made until then. In the meanwhile, giantkin can be present as NPC's that don't need to follow any kind of balance issues. I'm happy with giving up on balance and calling them a level adjusted creature. I don't know what that level adjustment would be, but it is easier to do that than to come up with all the gimping techniques needed to get them down to human standard. Citizen Joe 13:50, 11 March 2009 (PDT)

I'm ok with leaving the decision on weather vision but I am completely against leaving the balance issues until Tears of Ice. We're not WotC and are not timing the release of our supplements to increase sales or anything. Heck, if our supplements are finished, they ought to come with the core volume. But Giantkin have always been a core race and should not be an NPC race in the core volume and then a player race in Tears of Ice. Tears of Ice should be a supplement that goes into more detail on Giantkin, but not change their mechanics. That's my position and I'm stickin' to it. Man I really dislike this venue for discussion more and more. --MostlyHarmless 09:36, 12 March 2009 (PDT)

Religion

This more detailed section should go into the Tears of Faith Supplement. Furthermore, this would be how the Feldarin explain the giantkin religion in terms of their own Five Gods.

• Nature

The omnipresence of the Giantkin Gods is best represented by Nature. The Giantkin word for "nature" is synonymous with the word for "world". All things that are real are nature. Earth and sky could be considered the things, if one really wants to make such an artificial difference, that associate with the Nature God most, but really, when a Giantkin worships anything, he also worships nature. There is no single folk hero figure that represents nature, since they all do.

• Travel

When the winter comes, birds travel south. When spring returns, they return with spring. Stars move throughout the year, sometimes they hide behind the horizon, but they always come back. Reindeer herds travel vast distances, but come back young Giantkin travel south and return as adults. Every soul is traveling through this life. Retke is considered a way of honoring of the constant travel, but besides it, it also gets an amount of tribute, respect and sometimes worship through honoring and speaking to birds, reindeer, moving stars, rivers, wind and all things that move. Tuuletallaja, a hero that was cursed to travel the Ursoule forever for stealing a book of wisdom, could be considered the "focus" of the Travel God.

• War

Life is full of struggle and change. Two reindeer fight for the right to mate with a certain female. Old days are thrown behind the edge of the world and new ones get forged there. Iron is taken from the lakes and forged into swords and people get killed. Smiths create new weapons, yet they are not evil, but necessary. Smiths make knives and tools. Smiths make weapons for hunting. When the sun fell down, Saarenmeesi, the legendary smith, made a new one. War is represented by every conflict and the heart of the god of war is in the battlefield and in the smithy.

• Magic

Song and magic are everywhere. Trees sing and wind sings and sea sings. Mothers sing besides the cradles. Music has the ability to change things and find the inner soul. Indeed, a popular hero, Taivantarka, was the best singer there has existed and he could command all the forces of nature. Shamans use song and drums to fall into trance. For the Giantkin, music and song are the first and foremost aspects of magic. They do sense the other sides of magic too, since shamans and druids are able to work magic without song. Sorcery is also known and respected. Worship of God of Magic consists mainly of worship of singing birds and all people that are able to sing.

• Death

All things come to an end. Cold winter can take quite a number of lives. Staalu and diseases kill cunningly, secretively. Sea is deep and many souls drown. Yet death is not a final thing, since souls of the ancestors come to visit their living families in late autumn to see how their families are doing. Tables are covered in the cellars so that the souls of the departed could eat and saunas are stoked for them. Death and the dead should always be remembered and honored, but they should not dominate the lives and they should never come back in living form. Bodies are a thing of the living world. That is why the dead are eaten. There are very few tribes of Giantkin that do not eat their dead, but they either burn them or, in case of burial, heavy stones are laid on the corpse so that should it awaken, it couldn't move itself. The person from the folk tale that represents the God of Death most is a dead woman Tuisku from the deepmost north in the sky that hoards many treasures but loathes to give them away.