So, last year we got Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which I thought was a great book with a ton of resources that really made me want to run a dragon-themed campaign. If this UA indicates anything, it seems possible we might get a similar giant-themed book some time in the future.
Giants are, I think after dragons, the most classic fantasy creature. Indeed, basically every culture on earth has giants - which, to be fair, might be because it's not that hard to come up with the idea. What's scarier than a hostile person? How about one who is bigger than your house?
In D&D, of course, the giant creature type covers not only the classical giants (Hill, Frost, Stone, Fire, Cloud, Storm) but also things like Ogres and Trolls. It's a broad and varied type.
Anyway, let's get to the good stuff:
The UA brings us subclasses for three classes, as well as a number of feats. I'm not going to fully transcribe them (here's a link) but I'll sum up and add my thoughts.
The Barbarians get Path of the Giant, which is pretty straightforward. This is actually my favorite of the subclasses they present, though I'll note that it bears a striking similarity to the Fighter's Rune Knight. Here, when you rage, you grow to Large size (and later Huge) and get an extended reach (first 5 extra feet, and then 10.) Immediately, my mind went to making a Bugbear Polearm Master here to have a melee range of eventually 20 feet.
The subclass also has a cool theme of using thrown weapons - at level 3 you get to add your rage bonus to thrown weapon attacks, and then at 6 you can turn any melee weapon into a sort of elemental weapon that returns to your hand immediately after throwing it, in addition to doing your choice of acid, cold, fire, thunder, or lightning rather than its normal damage.
The most hilariously silly and awesome part of the class is that you can pick up and throw other creatures. They make a Strength save against a DC based on your Strength (or, if it's an ally, they can just let it happen) and you move them to a space within 30 feet. And yes, that can mean off a cliff.
Druids get Circle of the Primeval. Here, the theme is based more around ancient behemoths like dinosaurs, or potentially wooly mammoths and other megafauna. Mechanically, the primary theme here is that you get a pet you can summon using your Wild Shape charges. The pet is fairly tanky. At higher levels, you can sink spell slots into summoning the companion to super-charge it, giving it extra damage, temp hit points, and a faster speed.
The notion of a druid summoning a giant beast is totally in-flavor, but I feel like this one is a little underbaked. Sure, Druids have plenty going on anyway, so maybe a subclass doesn't need to be all that complex, but I guess for me I'm just not quite as excited about this one.
Wizards, then, get Rune Crafter. This subclass allows them to empower spells they cast with different runic effects. The effects here are things that I feel I'd have to see in play to really be able to get a sense of their worth.
Essentially, you're getting to add effects onto your leveled spells based on the level of the slot you expend. One nice alternate use you get for your rune charges is at level 6, when you can expend runes to turn a failed Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution saving throw into a success. The fact that this isn't just a chance to reroll but full-on makes it a success is pretty great - you could use this a bit like an Artificer's Mind Sharpener to make sure you never drop concentration on an important spell.
Moving on, we have Feats.
Several of these feats are themed around the various True Giants. I particularly like Ember of the Fire Giant, which gives you fire resistance and allows you to replace one of your attacks with a burst of fire damage to creatures around you.
Runecarver Apprentice allows you to carve runes on items that give you a particular spell you can cast for a day. This is also a prerequisite for Runecarver Adept, which gives you more uses of these spells.
It does look like we're getting some iteration on feats - giving feats level requirements and sometimes having "feat trees" with prerequisites.
I'm very curious to see how feats are treated in the 2024 PHB - as 5th edition stands, feats are very costly to take, so I think it's unusual for a player to take more than one or two. On the other hand, this also makes building a character a less difficult thing to do.
Some of the lore text found in this document hints at some interesting things: beyond giants, there's discussion of titans and behemoths. I really feel like this could be a hint that we're getting some book in the future that's all about big, big things.
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