Once upon a time, when I was still running Pathfinder, I started
picking up third party products. I didn’t allow too many third-party products,
but when I did, it tended to be items that were thematic to the campaign I
wanted to run. One of those products was a supplement from Rite Publishing
called In the Company of Giants.
Rite Publishing did several “In the Company of” products, which
were supplements that allowed players to play monstrous races. These
supplements were inspired by the 3.0 Savage Species book, as well as the racial
paragon classes introduced in the 3.5 version of Unearthed Arcana, but spent a
little bit more time delving into one specific type of creature.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I have a
weakness for giants. I have no idea where this comes from, but I love the huge
sacks of hit points. Despite this, I never ran a campaign where I allowed the
material from In the Company of Giants.
The Pathfinder version of the supplement allowed you to play a
Jotunnar, a giant-kin race that had the option to take levels in a racial
paragon class. They either took this class at 1st level and only
advanced as a Jotun Paragon, or they stayed one of “the stunted.”
The Jotun Paragon would pick an element, and various giant styled
powers were grouped under the elemental types. For example, an Earth Jotun
Paragon could take options to emulate Hill Giants, Stone Giants, or even Ettin.
Recently it came to my attention that Brandes Stoddard did a 5th
edition D&D conversion of the mechanics of this supplement, and it took me
until I got home from work to pick it up and read through it.
Giants in
a Moderate Sized PDF
The 5th edition D&D version of this supplement is
16 pages, including an OGL page, a title page, and the front and back covers.
The front cover shows a frost giant about to clobber a rider on a horse, so I’m
all for that. Interior art is black and white with a sort of runic border.
Pre-Mechanical
Pages
There are about five pages of background material about the
Jotunnar included in this supplement. This covers some elements like appears,
age, and naming conventions, but also includes a history set in the Rite
Publishing setting of Questhaven.
It’s worth noting that many of the elements of giant philosophy
presented in this background material lines up well with the Ordening and the
concepts of Maug and Maat that govern the giants in the Forgotten Realms, so if
you are using the current default D&D setting, the background presented
doesn’t require a lot of manipulation to fit.
The
Mechanics of Giant-Kind
As with the Pathfinder version of the supplement, Jotunnar are
presented as a PC race. Unlike the Pathfinder version, there is no mention of
only going down the path of the Jotun Paragon or forever being one of the
Stunted.
The Jotunnar look to be around the same power level of Goliaths,
which seems to be a good judge of how powerful the race should be. They swap
out negating damage for a chance to reroll poor saves, and they exchange the
goliath’s athletic abilities for the ability to be more intimidating.
There is also an interesting sidebar that notes that the Jotun
Paragon class is only available to “giant related races.” That means that if
you happen to use races like Goliaths or Firbolgs, they should totally be able
to take this class as well. It is also mentioned that the restriction is only
for flavor purposes, so a human that is blessed by the giant gods might be able
to take the class as well, for example.
The point of all of this is that the Jotun Paragon class for 5th
edition D&D isn’t designed to be an “all or nothing” class, and is designed
to be balanced more against standard D&D classes, instead of bundling a
special set of rules together to form an alternate progression.
A Touch of
Class
The class itself almost feels like a monk without Ki, maybe? It
grants an alternate bonus to armor class, gives limited ability to do extra crushing
damage a few times per short rest, and creates a slam progression for the
character. The class also allows the character to eventually grow to Large size,
and then to Huge size, but they retain the ability to return to Medium size
when it is beneficial.
At 2nd level, the player must make a choice, not unlike
other D&D classes in 5th edition. In this case, the choice is
what Jotun lineage to follow. In this case, the choice is a more deliberate
choice to follow the progression of a specific giant race. Unlike the
Pathfinder version, that required the player to choose an element, and then
bundled giant traits under those elements, these paths are more tailored to the
specific giant race chosen.
My personal preference is for this version of the progression.
Instead of picking specific abilities (that might be further modified by feats
in the Pathfinder version), each path feels very thematic to the giant race
chosen. The Jotun Paragon gains abilities that don’t just feel like a fire
giant or a frost giant, for example. They feel like a paragon of fire giants or
frost giants. For example, Fire Giant Lineage Jotun Paragons can enhance
weapons in a forge, while frost giant paragons eventually gain freeze breath!
While the Jotun Paragon is getting more abilities, eventually,
than the base giant lineage might have, all the powers they gain are very
thematic for the fifth edition expression of those giants. In addition to the abilities
mentioned above, stone giants on the surface can sometimes ignore damage,
because the surface world is just a dream. Hill giants gain benefits from
eating their fallen foes. Cloud giants and storm giants get magical abilities
like creating illusory duplicates or (big shock) throwing lighting.
Giant sized weapons are handled in a special manner, just adding a
level based extra die of damage instead of scaling for large or huge weapons.
Given that 5th edition places less of an emphasis on the same rules
governing PCs and monsters, this seems to be a workable solution for limited
some of the potential issues with triple damage weapons in the hands of the
party.
Notable
Omissions
Compared to the Pathfinder version, the 5th edition
version of this product does not have the multiple pages of feats that modify
the Jotun Paragon’s abilities. Personally, I’m not especially turned off by
this streamlining.
More Maat
Looking over the Pathfinder version of the product and seeing this
conversion, this supplement captures what the concept was for the original
product, and presents it in a way that feels very consistent with previous
D&D 5th edition classes. That’s impressive, given that this is
such a different concept than most classes in the game. Not only do the class
features feel like 5th edition classes, they feel very much like the
giant types that are being emulated.
Maug?
It says so right in the title, but if you aren’t interested in
giants, the product doesn’t stray from its topic. Unless you are building an
NPC using PC rules, this is a very player focused product. While I think it
adheres to theme better with the class features, compared to the Pathfinder
version, the Jotun Paragon class is a bit less customizable, between the elemental options and
the extra feats that aren't converted.
Recommended--If the product fits in your broad area of gaming
interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.
This product is a solid, thematic supplement that allows for a
very specific thing. It creates a player option for running giant characters,
and if the campaign allows for that theme to be explored, this looks to do it
very well. That’s a specific niche, but at the same time, the product is worth looking
at just to see how such a specific concept can still follow the 5th
edition style so well.
Thank you for the review! -Miranda Russell (Rite Publishing)
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