There are a handful of new player options available in Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. One of my favorites is the Giant Foundling. As a giant foundling, you aren’t a giant yourself – but you grew up among them. This background is also an interesting peak into the approach Wizards is taking with backgrounds moving into the updated Players Handbook. Let’s dive in to learn more with our Giant Foundling 5E Guide.
Giant Foundling 5E Background
As a foundling, you were raised among giants despite not being one yourself. You spent your formative years with the much larger creatures, learning their ways and your magic. This background found in Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants is an interesting approach for a background.
Giant Foundling Traits
Your time among the giants has provided you with a number of skills, languages, and possessions that will benefit you during your adventuring career.
- Skill Proficiencies: Intimidation, Survival
- Language: Giant and one other language of your choice
- Items: A backpack, a set of traveler’s clothes, a small stone or sprig that reminds you of home, and a pouch containing 10 gp.
Your Origin Story
It’s unusual for a non-giant to live among giantfolk. You’re going to need an origin story for that! Glory of the Giants provides you with six premade options, or you can always come up with one of your own.
| d6 | Origin |
|---|---|
| 1 | You were found as a baby by a family of nomadic giants who raised you as one of their own. |
| 2 | A family of stone giants rescued you when you fell into a mountain chasm, and you have lived with them underground ever since. |
| 3 | You were lost or abandoned as a child in a jungle that teemed with ravenous dinosaurs. There, you found an equally lost frost giant; together, you survived. |
| 4 | Your farm was crushed and your family killed in a battle between warring groups of giants. Racked with guilt over the destruction, a sympathetic giant soldier promised to care for you. |
| 5 | After you had a series of strange dreams as a child, your superstitious parents sent you to study with a powerful but aloof storm giant oracle. |
| 6 | While playing hide-and-seek with your friends, you stumbled into the castle of a cloud giant, who immediately adopted you. |
Strike of the Giants
One of the things Wizards of the Coast seems intent on as they redesign 5E is to bolster backgrounds to include a feat. It’s not a bad approach in a vacuum, as feats can be a lot of fun. Of course, there is always the risk of power creep – but that’s a concern for another day.
When you take the Giant Foundling background, you start the game with a feat – Strike of the Giants. Adding this feat is the centerpiece of the background, and it is far more powerful compared to some of the more traditional background options.
Strike of the Giants exemplifies the approach Wizards of the Coast is taking towards feats. It is a multilevel feat, meaning that as you level up it provides you with the chance to take additional feats that require Strike of the Giants.
At the basic level, Strike of the Giants offers you six options. You select one of these options when you take the feat, and you can use it a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus between each long rest. These options add bonuses to a successful melee weapon attack, and they include:
- Cloud Strike: Deal 1d4 additional thunder damage, with the potential that you become invisible until the start of your next turn.
- Fire Strike: Deal an extra 1d10 fire damage.
- Frost Strike: Deal 1d6 cold damage and possibly reduce the target’s speed to 0.
- Hill Strike: Deal 1d6 additional weapon damage, and potentially knock the target prone.
- Stone Strike: Deal 1d6 force damage, and potentially push the target 10 feet.
- Storm Strike: Deal 1d6 lightning damage, and potentially give the target disadvantage.
How to Build a Giant Foundling Character
A giant foundling has a unique perspective on life. You live your early years among the large, powerful giants, drinking in their wondrous strength and runic magic. However, you are no larger than the size of a child to them, meaning that your daily existence is fraught with danger.
This strange combination of factors makes for an interesting backstory. Does your character bristle at being called small after years among the giants? Or did you learn to stand up for yourself even against foes that tower over you? There are a lot of interesting options to play with.
Conclusion
That wraps up our Giant Foundling 5E Guide. This background really highlights the direction Wizards of the Coast is heading. It involves a feat, which itself is very different than the feats of the past. Whether or not this background is worth taking really depends on if the Strike of the Gods feat fits your character build. Speaking of feats: be sure to check out our 5e Feats Guide!
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