Giants Vs Dragons

Here's a question for you: How do giants and dragons get along?

Depending on your perspective a giant is either a very large human with magic or a human is a very small giant without it. Giants are in every respect more powerful than humans are. Your typical dumb brutish ones are little more than animals and would just be one more prey animal to a dragon. But what about the smart giants?

Both dragons and giants are very magically powerful. Both have innate spellcasting abilities (often elemental) and live a long time. They're huge and need to eat a lot. Competition between the two groups for land they could sustain themselves on would be fierce. Both occasionally love to lord it over the smaller races as well.

Not that they're entirely alone, of course. There's other beings "on their level", so to speak, like colossal sea monsters and other large, magical beasts.

We all know how humans and their cousin races deal with it: They get eaten a lot until a hero shows up and slays the monster. But how do these colossal creatures get along with one another? What would a nation of dragons and a nation of giants have to say to one another and what would be the result of a war between the two?

Take D&D 5e as a setting to establish a baseline but feel free to discuss any universe where lots of colossal beings exist.

I'm also gonna put up some Dragon Vs Giant art because it's pretty cool.

I seriously wonder why I never made a war between dragons and giants a story for a game before.

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They would each be wise to stay clear of each other. Otherwise, shit like ebberon happens.

Generally speaking, dragons are basically the natural epitome of power and intelligence. Magic has flowed through them since the dawn of time and, in some cases, entire worlds are born of their essence. The most powerful have basically become gods or their spirits return to the landscape upon their choice or death.

Giants are a close second, only because they haven't existed as long. The ancestors of giants (titans or some approximations) created worlds from the raw materials of the cosmos, but eventually fell from power due to asshat gods uprising or something similar (I'm looking at you Zeus). The offspring of said titans still bear magical might.

When it comes down to it, the key distinction between these two pillars of fantasy (other than simple biology) is that dragons are existential and giants are artifice. Giants create worlds, powerful artifacts and great cities. Dragons allow worlds to spring from them, artifacts are taken from their hide, and cities are built by the lower races to worship them.

Dragons and Giants would never get along on more than a personal level (think cities of dragons meeting cities of giants) due to their biological and natural similarities. They are huge, powerful and smart (I don't buy into feral giants. they arent giants any more after that)

Somehow I've never thought about this before but it sounds awesome.

The giant should get his shit kicked in. It would be the equivalent of a human trying to wrestle a fire breathing, flying crocodile.

They did... in Eberron.(this is the answer for all ideas of that nature, including good elves, playable drow, goblins, etc.)

What if it's a giant Steve Irwin?

I think there's one key difference that you are forgetting. Giants aren't always social - hell, many of the stories about them are about them eating people - but they're more social than dragons are by far.

Dragons are solitary creatures by nature. Giants don't usually build highly populated giant cities but they do tend to have tribes and clans and stick together.

I think dragons are more powerful but giants more numerous and better at teamwork.

That's because it's basically a Kaiju film except one of the Kaiju is "naturally" a giant magic human instead of a robot or mech suit.

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I've only seen them referenced in conflict in Arcana Evolved, Monte Cook's fantasy heartbreaker. The setting's got a decent length backstory, but basically the giants are the important ruler race, not humans, and the dragons have only recently returned to the land they rule. It's a political conflict rather than a military one as of Year Zero for the setting.

Really, it probably only happens because the game has giants in a prominent position. Most fantasy settings have a version of dragons, but very few have giants as more than just an occasional big boss monster, possibly because they're so strong that they trivialise humans if they also appear in significant numbers.

Fantasy Craft lets you play as a dragon or a giant as well as a human and tries to make that balanced. I've never heard how well it succeeds at that balance, but I'd like to try it at some point. I ran Fantasy Craft once, but made the mistake of making the humans the dominant race in the backstory, which made the weirder race options feel out of place and cut down one of the fun things about that system.

Is there a different RPG that's good for giants and dragons as playable options? Or at least other options that aren't Elves, Dwarves and sodding Orcs until the end of time?

They'd probably get along fine if it were Steve. It's not a giant manta ray, after all.

I don't know. Previous people brought up Eberron, which does indeed have giants in it in more than just a "boss monster" position.

Personally my favorite giants are Nephilim. Half-angel cannibals with divine magic. There's something about the lore of them that I just really love. Angels falling for humans and teaching them forbidden secrets. Punishing them by forcing them underground but leaving their divine senses intact, then cursing their children with limitless hunger so they have to watch as their kids devour each other and the people they loved. Then they're all drowned.

Those giants are from a tragedy story, not a war story, yet they're some of the coolest giants in myth to me. I guess that's why I like Hinnom best in Dominions 4.

You know there's another interesting question for you: What the heck is the offspring of a giant and dragon going to be and why isn't there a race of them running around? Both species are notoriously randy and can breed with damn near anything.

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Guys.... Wait... guys.... what about, hear me out, what about a giant who, and hold on, this is the fantastic part, what about a giant who RIDES a dragon?

Like think about it. You've got this giant who (Through some non-specific means, (Could be he tamed the dragon. Could be he beat the dragon into submission. Could be he and the dragon came to the mutual conclusion that together they could be awesome, etc whatever.)) rides this even bigger dragon who does his dragony thing.

Together they could rule just about whatever the fuck they wanted!

And it works on multiple levels for just about everything you might want to use it for.
Need a super dooper boos/BBEG who's gonna give your party a hard time?
>Intelligent giant riding an even intelligenter dragon.
Want a powerful NPC who the party helped at some point who can destroy an army while your players take on the BBEG?
>Middle of the road intelligent giant riding a 'x' breathing mega lizard?
Desire an unusual encounter for you ERP group? Yeah you know where this is going.
>Giantess vs Dragon Dildo 2: The arousening.

The possibilities are endless!

I was trying to think up some sort of rival for dragons as a whole. A type of monster that approaches dragons in power, numerous enough to wage war on them, and mythologically significant.

How the fuck did I miss Giants?

Giants, aboleths, Djinn and their cousins and so on are all large or above and are good rivals for dragons. Aboleths are a particular favorite because they're so old - they're arguably the oldest creatures around. Like giants and sometimes dragons they like enslaving lesser races and making empires too. It makes sense they'd tangle with sea dragons and sea giants almost regularly.

I like to think there's a perpetual competition between dragons, giants, and aboleths. One rules the land, one rules the skies and one rules the sea.

>I don't buy into feral giants. they arent giants any more after that
Well what are they then? They are GIANT people after all.

They certainly don't get along in my setting. Considering they are the source of the zombie plague.

Giants have domesticated T-Rex's though.

Aren't Elephants or some shit rivals to Dragons in those old beastiaries or something?

Gigantic fire-proof Mammoths could be a thing

This thread is relevant to my interests.

So, let's say I want a Fire/Ice/Lightning trio of ancient, powerful material creatures.

If Dragons are Fire and Giants are Ice, what should be Lightning?

You could go with Djinn or other sky creatures like them. I don't think there's a great lightning monster archetype though; the closest would be titans and Zeus and all that and they're in a different category.

Humans work well vs. dragons in historical legends, but the dragons are usually (?) smaller than D&D dragons. So giants are the equivalent of human dragon slayers when the dragons are that big. At least that's how I'd do it.

Beholder vs Dragon race war

Beholders actually make a good "underground" race.

So you'd have:

Land: Giants
Sea: Aboleths
Air: Dragons
Earth: Beholders

Well, mythologically speaking, Griffins were symbolic of pretty much every concept of power that european dragons traditionally weren't, so play with that a bit.
Since they're both patchwork monsters, maybe make a four-monster rivalry between Griffins (wind), Dragons (fire), Manticores (fire) and Chimeras (shit more fire), with Sphinxes and Lamassu being the moral elemental extremes.

I wonder if gryphons have their own version of wyvernism where they're just really big birds with dorky cat paws instead of normal bird legs.

Depends on the size of the giant compared to the dragon.

Could be a world where giants are 50 meter tall.
But dragons are only like 20 meter long.
Then the giants would smack the shit out of dragon.

Or are we talking about Dragons who are like 500 meters long from head to tip of tail?
Eyes the size of suburb houses?
With 10 meter teeth?

Or are we talking about gravity defying Titan Giants where each step is a small earthquake or dragons with wings that shadows entire countries aka ANCALAGON?

You need to imply scale.

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Maybe Raiju or something.

shedu and lammassu!!!!

I am doing a giant/Dragon combo in my setting as the ultimate legendary heroes, routing demon invasions all on their own.

In the setting I'm making at the moment, Giants and Dragons were the ancient rulers of the world until they went to war for complete domination. The Giants lost, reducing their numbers severly, but als badly bloodied the dragons.

Even though this was thousands of years ago, and dragons now longer rule (dragons had their own civil war; Lawful alligned dragons vs Chaotic Alligned dragons. Left them exceptionally weak and allowed the mortals, led by Elves (just elves, hadn't split into High/Wood/Drow yet)), the two races still see one another as rivals.