My favourite thing in the latest 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons manual, Bigby Presents: The Glory of Giants, is the Bag Jelly. The new creature in the bestiary is a huge, lumpy bag of mush, described as sometimes being clean and pristine, other times murky and dirty, possibly with gold inside waiting to be fished out, or maybe just waiting to swallow adventurers whole. It's especially fitting that this is a standout creature in D&D's latest supplement, because Bigby Presents: The Glory of Giants is decidedly a mixed bag.
It comes with just one subclass, which is low but also within the realm of normalcy for a book of this style. However, with Giants being such an interesting topic (and so rare in a lot of official adventures), I would have liked to have seen this expanded on a little more. This subclass is Path of the Giant for Barbarians, and its most interesting feature is that it allows you to swell your size to Large. However, Giants themselves are Huge, so it doesn't even let you become a Giant. I understand that's a choice made in the name of balance, but for the only Giant subclass to let you become not-quite-a-Giant is a bit of a let down.
At 14th Level you eventually become Huge, and at 10th you can start picking people up and throwing them, so there's a bit of Giant flavour there, but many tables don't go up to 14th Level (even many official adventures or anthologies barely scrape it). It might be cool as a Small creature, but as most play as Medium you just get a little bigger. Woo. As for the two backgrounds, Giant Foundling (a non-Giant raised by Giants) feels a little obvious, but Rune Carver (an expert in Giant runes) has a lot more flavour. It's a background I can see myself running, but not one that inspired me to immediately think of a character. The character creation side of the manual is thoroughly okay.
There are six feats, but that disparity between only offering a single subclass makes the range a little irritating. Added to that, the first five feats are flavoured for Fire, Frost, Cloud, Storm, and Hill Giants, but to take them you need to also take the sixth new feat, Strike of the Giants, with the respective variant. So in order to take Ember of the Fire Giant, which gives you Fire resistance and lets you burst attacks with flames, you also have to take Strike of the Giants (Fire), which lets your melee weapon do 1d10 Fire damage. It's good, but it means tying up two feat slots, and you can only do it with Martial Proficiency or taking the Giant Foundling background. It's good, but it's not that good.
However, there is some gold lurking in the Bag Jelly. The bestiary itself is a high point for the manual, bringing in some fantastic new creatures. Giants are painted in the book as creatures of great contrast - some peaceful and in-tune with nature, some wild and destructive, and others vindictive and manipulative. There's a deep connection with prehistoric lore to be found here, explored in more depth than I've ever seen from Wizards of the Coast. This connection might have made for a good subclass for a Druid or Ranger, but let's not keep going on about that, shall we?
Aside from the Bag Jelly, I love the Grinning Cat, a dark take on the classic Cheshire Cat idea. A "mischievous Fey who delights in pestering and misleading travellers", Grinning Cats are invisible creatures who lurk near Giant caves and can make themselves (or parts of their bodies) visible and invisible at will. It also uses its whiskers to teleport, which can be harvested at victory to grant players access to the spell Misty Step - and it's always great to see WotC add creatures that offer more than lumps of HP to be chipped away at. Shout out also to the Giant Tick, one of the most disgusting encounters I've ever read, at the Ettin Ceremorph, which offers a twist on Mind Flayers (and timely with the hype around 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3).
The magic items are another saving grace of the book. This is where the runes and prehistoric connections mentioned throughout the manual finally get a little substance. We get Prehistoric Figurines of Wondrous Power, which give a dinosaur flavour (including a potentially cursed T-Rex) to the classic Figurines of Wondrous Power, a fiery whip powered by runes, and boots cast with dragon runes. There's also a handy guide that Giant items magically resize to fit their wearers, but not in ways you might expect (a ring may become a bracelet, for example), which like the Grinning Cat whiskers is a nice touch and shows some deeper thought behind the theme. Each type of Giant also gets a selection of treasures to help fill out a lair for any potential adventuring.
Possibly the most valuable part of The Glory of Giants is found in the chapter on Enclaves. There are 18 different Giant lairs, which each get a page of mechanical description and full page map outline. There's a huge range not only in aesthetics but in build here, with some sprawling empty spaces, some labyrinthine dungeons, some mountains to ascend, some watery lairs, and many that tap into the runic nature of Giants. Each square on the map is also ten feet rather than the typical five feet, letting you play around with the scale of Giants against your relative puny players. Even if they take Path of the Giant. Which will not make them Giants. Not that I'm bitter.
Here's the acid test for a manual like this - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:as a DM who writes all their 🐠own adventures, does this make me want to build a Giants campaign? The answer is 'no'. Not because running Giants seems too difficult (the book provides enough information to make it a cakewalk), but because there's not enough cohesion (or options for the players) to inspire me. However, I've already started to change around my existing campaigns to add in some encounters from the bestiary and some magic items, so it's not a total washout. I might even divert them into one of these enclaves. Like I said, it's a mixed Bag Jelly.

Bigby Presents: The Glory Of Giants
Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is a Dungeons & Dragons supplement that provides 🍷a deep dive into everything related to giants. Narrated by Bigby alongside demigoddess Diancastra, the book is available now digitally and physically through Amazon and D&D Beyond.