More mad props for the HG's

[IAmJacksOpinion]

I was just sitting here thinking of ways to raise my post count (not really), and, thinking back, I remembered my fond clanned days with the militia.

I can remember numberous times where I would end up sparing with the half-giants. Now, I had my prefered weapons and all they had was a shield and a fist, but still. Those guys are incredibly massive and even at a point where I was still fairly new, sparring matches would end with exhaustion rather than a winner.

Honestly, the thing's twice my height and at least 10 times heavier! Even unarmed I would think it would've at least hit me once! It's natural size and toughness kept it going as I continually landed weak hits on it. Seriously though, that thing is truely massive. Weapons or no, it should've been able to sneak blows in and crack my skull!

So, my idea is, why aren't unarmed half-giants stronger against armed opponents? Purely on their size and reach of arm they should be able to hit an armed target. You ain't gonna be able to parry a half-giants fist. Only thing that should be able to save you is dodge.

[bloodfromstone]

I don't doubt the reality of your points, but, from my (limited) experience, half-giants are already scary as hell and probably don't need any more help in this regard. Again, my experience with half-giants is pretty slim, though, so I'm just throwing out a quick opinion.

[Vesperas]

You just moved very very fast.

In -my- experience, my past militia characters typically got a ripe spanking in a spar, with half-giants less skilled than it.

[Rhyden]

Half-giant's combat abilities are very high as it is, I wouldn't change a thing.

[Armaddict]

half-giants are already scary as hell and probably don't need any more help

Half-giant's combat abilities are very high as it is, I wouldn't change a thing

You're both wrong.  Yes, they have awesome strength and can pummel the crap out of you in a couple hits.  However, there are some -very- important things that ground a half-giant and keep it from being what it really...-really- should be.

Half giants have incredibly low agility.  To the point that a newbie desert elf has a pretty decent chance of winning against a low-moderately skilled half-giant.  Agility affects your chance to hit (though this may be offset by their strength.  In my experience, it's not.), your ability to dodge, and a myriad of other things in combat, including, I believe, critical hits.  Fact of the matter is, take a ten day warrior, or a four day warrior if they've been training like they're supposed to in the Byn, and they almost literally have no reason to fear the average half-giant PC simply due to the fact that they can get four or five attacks before the half-giant's turn to swing comes about, which they can generally defend.  Because of the low agility, those hits generally hit harder than against your normal foe, resulting in a half-giant going down quicker than what it should be.  Sure, they have almost twice the hitpoints of the average human, but when it goes down that much faster, it sucks.

Half-giants have very limited ability to 'train' like the other races, to counteract that almost defenseless state.  They are too much of a risk, as they -can- get those hits, particularly after a little bit of training, that put a person out of commission.  Once again, most will say this makes sense, but it also keeps Half-giants pretty dependent on their starting bonuses to offense and their strength.  Really, those don't save them much.

Take a look at how people in game react to someone saying 'lets take down a giant'.  Generally, there's very little hesitation, which is straight up -wrong-.  These guys are absolutely gargantuan in comparison to most people, a single hit of a balled fist will likely break bones or give concussions.  With a big weapon, you should want to avoid fighting that beast like the plague unless you have a couple buddies (Think traditional fantasy.  You -very- rarely hear of people going against ogres one on one, and when a 'hero' does, they're generally made into epic fights where the hero is close to death).  Now why is there is irrational courage against something that could easily maul you so badly?  People -know- half-giants aren't as dangerous as they should be, and take the chance to look badass as a scrawny human.  Combine this with the ability of all the other, relatively tiny races to get that high damage on head and neck shots, and you've got an enormous guy who is not so enormous once the combat code kicks in.  5 day dwarf warrior dual wielding hammers does the uber smashes to the head, and the enormous giant bends down just to easily receive the blows and crumple like a felled ox, at the mercy of the thing he should have stomped on.

At this point, the only saving grace for a half-giant is their ability to subdue almost without fail.  People -hate- the half-giants that subdue/kill, but the fact of the matter is...that's the only way to reflect the scariness that a big, lumbering, strong as hell moron actually possesses, until a half-giant actually joins a group that can help protect it while it learns, or gets very lucky and is extremely careful in 'skilling itself up'.

My problem with this is...half-giants shouldn't -have- to 'skill up' to get that dangerous without using subdue.  More bonuses for the sheer size of the creature is the solution...make them scary, lower their weapons 'finesse' (their combat skill potential), and show just why only the greatest generally go into combat, one on one, with a half-giant confidently.

Long post going on here, and I apologize, but this is one of my long-time gripes in the races.  I was in support of half-giants being able to knock weapons out of hands when their attacks were parried, due to the sheer strength behind the blow (Dodge or die! ), and also presented the idea that successful hits from a half-giant have a chance of a) stunning or b) acting like a bash, knocking the target to the ground.

You'll notice just how few long-lived half-giants there are compared to how many play, and that goes on for a reason.  The players aren't doing stupid things in every case.  The half-giant just plumb out gets screwed in it's cost/benefit ratio, and that's -before- you add in playing a mentally slow/childlike intelligence personality.

[Maybe42or54]

I'm still waiting for another well played Hg. One that isn't a stronger, slower, smart human.

[jhunter]

<insert his post here>

My thoughts on the subject exactly.

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Maybe42or54:

I'm still waiting for another well played Hg. One that isn't a stronger, slower, smart human.

Not to pick on Maybe42or54 or anything like that, but I get sick of reading comments like this. If every half-giant you see is so poorly played, why don't you go make one yourself, and show us how it's done, rather than insult everybody that's currently playing one?
[/derail]

[Olgaris]

There are well played half-giants.

Half-giants are deadly.

Why shouldn't a many day old warrior be able to kill a slow half-giant? Why shouldn't half-giants have to train in order to mature into the fantasticly deadly things that they can become?

[Armaddict]

There are well played half-giants.

Agreed.

Half-giants are deadly.

They can be.  Not innately, like they should be, due to their size.  Unless you like the subdue/hit tactic being a reflection of that, in which case I'll continue to use it against single attackers.

Why shouldn't a many day old warrior be able to kill a slow half-giant?

I didn't say they shouldn't be able to.  It's in my post.  A relatively -low- playing time warrior will beat a half-giant fairly often, though, and not just through luck either.  The half-giant may be slow, but that doesn't make him -helpless- to the first guy who knows how to swing a sword, either.  A nice boot from a humanoid twice the size of you is a pretty damn excessive amount of force.

Why shouldn't half-giants have to train in order to mature into the fantasticly deadly things that they can become?

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  Half-giants are gargantuan.  They're immensely strong.  They -should- be quite a bit more deadly, innately, but like I said...they get screwed by the code that gets in the way.  Likewise, I didn't say they shouldn't have to train at all.  What I said was that right now, they are drastically -underpowered- at the beginning, and that training as a half-giant was very hard to come across (once again, not likely.  While they may not run around sparring and smashing each other, I think giants would be given -some- semblance of training on being initiated into almost any clan to make sure they don't take off their teammates heads, and to maximize their damage...half-giants are expensive to employ).

As I noted in above post, I think it's somewhat odd that sparring for a half-giant is tossed away as much too dangerous, pretty much no matter who you talk to, but then once a half-giant is wanted or has a bounty on their head, you suddenly have a pretty good pool of people who are -fearless-, virtually,  when it comes to hunting down a half-giant by THEMSELF!  Also noted above...I think most average fighters would be pretty careful to have at least one buddy if not two to take down something that can utterly smash you.  Why does this happen, when it does?  Players all recognize that half-giants aren't -that- dangerous, unless they're one of the few that has lived for ages (I can think of a couple long lived half-giants since I've played here.  The vast majority seem to die out relatively quickly), or you're hunting them alone so that they can subdue you.

Half-giants are roughly two and a half times the height of the zalanthan human....Over twelve feet tall.

Half-giants have aproximately -ten times- the body weight of a human on zalanthas, according to the code in the character generation.  If we assume the body weight of the zalanthan human is still close to 160 lbs or so...that's 1600 freaking pounds.  And generally, a good portion of that is going to be muscle, even if the half-giant is fat.  They're strong.

Slow yeah.  But I still don't think all those guys who have 2 years of training under their belt and now think they're 'hardcore' should be so confident in going after a half-giant raider or whatever, simply because they know they'll pummel it due to it's low agility, and hey...they can parry pretty good, so a half-giant's swing would be -easy- to knock aside.  Pheh.  Big guys are dumb and slow, your average joe shmoe -should- be well off against them because of that, right?

Come on.  Make their immense size and strength -worth- something.

[Cale_Knight]

Having never actually played one, admittedly, I think half-giants are pretty good considering their karma level. Their potential is utterly frightening, but it's hard to get there.

Well, they're a three karma race. Not all that much in the grand scheme of things.

[Rindan]

HGs are deadly.  The reason why it is hard to train them is because unless you are super skilled, you are going to kill someone.  I had 25+ day old ub3r warrior of d00m.  This guy was so bad ass he could tear apart all of the Byn and Kuraci at the time with the singular exception of Davaz (and who the hell could tear apart Davaz?).  My character was assigned the responsibility of training an absolute n00b half-giant.  

Normally, I would wield a single weapon in the off hand so as to not utterly destroy the n00b I was fighting.  Hell, I would wield a single weapon in the off hand to fight everyone but the top tier warriors.  The average warrior under 15 days stood absolutely no chance against my guy holding a single off handed training weapon.  I made the mistake of trying to train a half-giant in this manner.  The first few sparring lessons resulted in me whaling on the HG for a while before finally breaking off because he was too badly hurt.  Then one day a week or so into the training the HG hit me.  The blow with the training weapon took off over half of my HP brought me down to about 10 sp from being knocking me out.  

I swore from that day on that I would 'train' HG by wielding two weapons and beating the living piss out of it day in and day out.  I also swore that the day the HG managed to land another swing when I was wielding in my preferred style, I would call the training off.  Hell, if that HG hadn't run off I probably would have stopped before then.

HG are very hard to train because they are so deadly.  If a half-giant can hit you, it can kill you.  Not only can it kill you, but it can do it in one blow.  People are right to be damn apprehensive about training the thing sparring.  The only proper way to train a HG that makes even a little sense is to have a master warrior literally beat the shit out of it with training weapons and hope the HG learns something from it, or have it go out and kill things in the desert.  Any other way is insane and asking for someone to end up dead.

Half-giants are innately deadly.  If you believe otherwise, you are going to have a nasty lesson coming to you.  The biggest problem that HGs have is that a lot of them tend to do stupid things and kill themselves.  Granted, HG are supposed to be stupid, but these things ARE surviving 20+ years a player takes over one and finds a way to kill it.  They are dangerous, but obviously capable of existing in society as non-slaves seeing as how cities let them into the gates.  Just keep your HG alive, find a job where you need to kill things, and you will have a complete terror on your hand.

Hell, I remember one time Kurac set out to kill a half-giant raider.  They closed the gates of the outpost and ambushed it with a pile of men.  Closing the gates to Luir's just to kill one person says that they took the entire thing damn seriously.  Take a lesson from Kurac.  If you are going to kill a half-giant, take it seriously.

[Twilight]

Its sort of disturbing everything I've read in this post seems to be oriented towards one on one combat.

I would hazard that a very large proportion of the world's half giants are in one of the two city states armies.  I don't care how bad ass you are, if you are cruising along killing a couple of soldiers (or Bynners or whatever), and a half giant jumps into the mix, you better be damn, damn scared.  All they need to do to kill you is hit you, once.

[Maybe42or54]

Maybe42or54:

I'm still waiting for another well played Hg. One that isn't a stronger, slower, smart human.

Not to pick on Maybe42or54 or anything like that, but I get sick of reading comments like this. If every half-giant you see is so poorly played, why don't you go make one yourself, and show us how it's done, rather than insult everybody that's currently playing one?
[/derail]

I said _another_ one. I've seen a few. I'm just waiting for another one.

I always hear things about how powerful they are. Even this thread makes it sound like that is all they are good for. I'd prefer that we change the focus of a half giant from super powerful to A RP genius.

As soon as I kiss ass enough for some more karma, I'll gladly play a half giant.

[amoeba]

As soon as I kiss ass enough for some more karma, I'll gladly play a half giant.

Save your lips, special app.

On topic, I've enjoyed interacting with many half giants.  To me the RP is more importiant than any coded actions.   Being massivly strong does not make someone always deadly.  Speed matters, they can be a strong as hell, but they never hit you that strength means nada. It also doesn't mean someone is smart to attack them one on one, but who said all people are smart?

[X-D]

I've played a few half-giants...

First, I'd like to say that I agree that they are under powered code wise, though, not greatly. I have a problem with how easy it is to dodge a HG's blow yet still be close enough to hit him...its simply silly. I have a problem with the idea that anything short of a HG disarms a HG...silly in the EXTREME...

Human teacher to HG trainee "Above all you must keep hold of your weapon."

Hg "Um, Alright."

Hg keeps deathgrip on his 200 pound maul.
Hg has the strength to lift an inix and throw it, yet a fucking 60lbs halfling can knock his 200 pound weapon into ANOTHER ROOM.

I have a problem with the idea that something weighing less then 500 pounds wielding a 3 pound weapon parries the attacks of a HG weighing 1.5 to 2 TONS and wielding a weapon weighing more then the defender.

BUT, all that aside, I've never really had any problems training my HG's up in skill, and have had 4 of them that -I- feared no PC with, not even any 4 PCs...well, any non-HG PC..grin.

And actually laughed when a single PC of any skill came after them, And killed every single one of them without mercy simply because of the shear stupidity of the player. Its akin to a 5 day warrior thinking to take on a mek, it does not happen, but that same warrior won't think twice about taking on a PC HG...

Basicly the same thinking that used to be about magickers, I'm SO VERY glad Halaster and CO have been putting so much work into making magickers scary again...and only hope that someday the same energy goes into HG's.

(edit) Oh, and only two of them were fighting classes...the non-fighting classes where even deadlier

[Jarod550]

Maybe42or54:

I'm still waiting for another well played Hg. One that isn't a stronger, slower, smart human.

Not to pick on Maybe42or54 or anything like that, but I get sick of reading comments like this. If every half-giant you see is so poorly played, why don't you go make one yourself, and show us how it's done, rather than insult everybody that's currently playing one?
[/derail]

Maybe because he doesn't have the Karma?

Jarod

[Anael]

Two words: Spec app

[Kalden]

Save your lips, special app.

I'm guessing that's what we have to blame for all these Allanak Militia HGs...

[Maybe42or54]

We have experimentation to thank for half giants. Period.

[Intrepid]

At least one of those HGs is played by a player with karma.

[Maybe42or54]

They grow on you. If they don't kill you, I bet.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure I agree that the 'desert elf beats a half-giant' premise stated in this thread.  With a HG who had barely any combat I walked up to a group a desert elves and knocked the first one, who was long-lived, silly.

I'm almost positive, based on the fact that said desert elf had just killed something, that this wasn't the case of smacking a merchant.

Mostly I think concerns about half-giants stem from something symptomatic of a larger problem.  Someone who has a 50 day warrior is going to be pretty much fearless in one-on-one combat versus anyone.  In reality you can't look at a mugger and think 'Oh, he's only wearing Levi's jeans so he's probably not a good shot with that gun' but in Arm you can, whether you intend to or not.

[Malifaxis]

I've been a newbie d-elf who had to fight off a trained HG.  Did I break a sweat?  Not really.  Out thought the player behind the HG, and maneuvered him into a deadly situation.  Problem solved.

I've been a well trained HG vs a pack of 3 team played (friends IRL from what I heard) d-elf twinks (I don't use that word lightly.)  If I remember right, I took a total of five arrows and three thrown spears before I knocked one out and killed another, then left out of boredom.  Did I subdue kill?  No.

HGs are only as deadly as the player behind it.  If you can't think of a way to make a HG deadly, then it's honestly your fault, and not the fault of the code.

Does this change the fact that HGs should be more deadly?

Hell no.  HGs should have a chance to just kill the shit out of you with any blow to the head.  You honestly think that a playful backhand from a HG wouldn't shatter bones?  Go take your painkillers, sip some bicardi and lay the hell down, because you're a sick idiot.  

If you want to get realistic about it, HGs should knock people around with every swing, perhaps to the point of throwing them into another room.

A human being can generate over 100 mph on the end of a baseball bat, if I remember right.  What do you think a HG can do when weilding a hammer the size of a golf bag?  Your character's
head, in proportion, is about the size of a softball.

Why can a giant not, at day one, put any thrown thing THROUGH another person, if it hits?  Yeah, low chance on hit, but I don't think that a spear would stop in a body if thrown by an arm larger than that body.

Wanna get super realistic?  Bare handed HG grabs an opponent and swings him like a bat, since it wouldn't be hard at all.  Sure, it'd have to be a trained HG, but there's no reason due to physics why it could not happen.

But again, on the super realism, why can't you hamstring a giant?  Why can't you toss sand to blind your opponent, blah blah blah.



I guess the point of this post is that if you're having a problem with a HG, then it's probably your problem.  People usually don't get HGs unless they can roleplay.  HGs that can't roleplay generally don't stay alive.

If you want to see better HG roleplayers, then be a twink.   Take a dwarf with the focus of 'killing off all of those dumb ass half giants, to make the race smarter' and have at them.  If you can't figure out a way to make a dwarf kill a giant in 5 days, then you need serious help.

After you've killed 10 or 15 giants, the players you whacked (probably repeatedly, as the bad ones tend to recreate) will probably move on to bigger and better things.  A role that they can actually roleplay well.

[Cenghiz]

I did play two half-giants.. One was a ranger.. According to his history, he was somewhat lost after his master died of old age.. His master was a *xxx* so that giant didn't ever require his fighting skills in his life, except bashing a few scrabs in the head to acquire food for him and his master.
So, not knowing much about the abilities of a h-giant, I headed out into the desert in Allanak to look for a scrab after some tavern chatter and initial buying hassle.
I pwned the scrab in two hits directly into the head. I was.. kinda awed.. I thought of all the times I was about to mess with h-giants with all other characters.. I also had time to 'asse -v' the scrab than found out the reason.. I was really huge.
Maybe I was lucky, but that h-giant smashed the head of anything in his sight as he slowly migrated from one place to another. The code was backing me up that I was huge. I never ever thought of subduing and hitting.. Though it would make me even stronger.
They're weak against warriors? Possibly they are.. Warriors do know to defend themselves. They're used to avoid or redirect swings much faster than my huge bulk swung at them. Possibly I would have no chance against one if one attacked me.
A change is needed? I don't know.. If a h-giant was trained in an academy or Byn, I guess he would be so deadly in short time. Maybe we should leave them as is..