The Goliath, A Giant Waste

“Roll twice for Athletics when jumping or climbing?”

Depending on the campaign, that can be huge. I like to throw physical challenges at my players because I hate puzzles and there’s only so much opportunity for social encounters. It’s nice to know there’s almost zero chance of fumbling a climb check halfway up a wall and plummeting to your doom (or at least to the loss of a couple healing surges). Being able to roll twice for jump checks makes pulling off stunts a lot less of a gamble.

Going to echo both Swordgleam and Rev. Lazaro here — the “roll twice for Athletics when jumping or climbing” ability would be a huge benefit to my players. I tend to try to manufacture three-dimensional spaces for battles, so even apart from the traditional dungeon-crawling uses for those two skills, they often end up being important in my game.

Mechanically, a goliath barbarian is an amazing striker. It’s got a twofer for stat bonuses, a boost to Will defenses, and Nature’s a class skill for the barbarian. And here again the Powerful Athlete class feature becomes critical — you can jump as part of a charge, so using the better of two Athletics rolls becomes really useful for Rageblood Vigor builds. The goliath makes a good defender, too, as you said.

I like Goliaths from a less mechanical perspective as well, probably because the old 3.5E Races of Stone book did a good job making them interesting. They also have the advantage of bringing no baggage with them into the game: Dwarves, minotaurs, gnolls, orcs, and other “traditional” Big Tough Guy races have years – or centuries in the minotaur’s case – of mythology and gaming tradition built up around them. Goliaths don’t have to “play against type” or be a “traditional” anything — they just are.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Dark Sun books appear to be using goliaths for the old half-giant race. That should help add some interesting features to them, in both the ‘fluff’ and ‘mechanics’ departments.
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I love Goliaths because they make humans a more attractive character race to play lol. Too few humans in a typically human-dominated world makes a party of players seem more like a group of carney freaks that travel from town to town for money/fame. “Hey look! The carnival’s attractions include a handful of midgets, a lizard boy, a horned girl, a giant (bearded?) lady, and even a normal person! – the rarest race of them all!!!”

My hope is that with the “Half-Giant” flavor in the Dark Sun guide, perhaps with some athasian feats for goliaths might really flavor these a bit better. In any event, it had more “fluff” than the current setup.

Athletics is one of my favorite skills.

Everyone loves showing off by using Dungeoneering, Nature or Arcana checks to get a leg up on encounters, while others pat themselves on the back by using their Perception and Insight to see if the NPCs mean what they say and using their gift of gab to use Diplomacy.

But few things are more embarrassing than being unable to jump, climb or swim across terrain of moderate to easy DC.
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A player at my table is playing with a Goliath Swordmage. He like a lot the concept, but I see goliaths as primal characters that don’t rely on arcane technics, even if the role is defender.
.-= franciolli araujo´s last blog ..Masterplan [P2] =-.

I’m playing a Goliath Monk right now, and damned if Powerful Athlete isn’t getting tons of use with the Crane’s Wings move action. I’m jumping all over the place like you wouldn’t believe. Perhaps they’re not the most interesting race per se, but I’m enjoying some rather unique mechanical synergies.

I remember in one game a friend who used a barbarian goliath did an athletic’s check to jump onto a roof to kill the poison crossbow wielding halfling rogue douchebag trying to kill our wizard. Sure, the wizard still died in the end, but it was a badass maneuver to reach the rogue where he thought he was safe and bloody him. Another time he climbed up the side of a staircase to slaughter some kobolds. In the final encounter of the campaign he jumped into a pit of lava as a dead ancient dragon was sinking into it to rip out its heart so he could use it to reinvigorate the seed of his religion’s sacred tree. The second roll and training bonuses he took allowed him to be a badass no one else around could match.

Of COURSE someone’s going to view these bonuses as a waste if the DM sucks and the player has no imagination!

I tend to disagree, as long as you stick to one of the ‘ideal’ classes. I just ran a year-long paragon tier game with a highly effective Goliath Barbarian. Stone’s Endurance allowed him to be reckless — he could get himself into trouble, then throw up the resistance rather than taking the beating a Striker deserves when they stray from their Defender. A couple of the Goliath racial feats proved handy as well.

As for fluff, we actually had a decent chunk of the plot revolving around the enslavement of the scattered Goliath tribes at the hands of an Eldrich Giant empire. The competitive nature of the Goliaths kept the proud tribes from unifying until it was too late, and the PC was a survivor of the prison camps. Any race, and I do mean any, can be given depth if you’re willing to apply a little creativity. Rock-for-brains super-jocks may not be terribly inspiring on the surface, but the stone men in our little story had flesh&blood hearts.

I actually like the Goliath. I generally tend to use ranged feats combined with throw anything and fling ally. Using improved grapple and other unarmed feats allows you to built a rather wild character. They make a good artillery piece for melee heavy groups.

I don’t agree that Goliaths don’t have great flavor. At the very least, you’re forced to come up with a more interesting backstory than “became an adventurer” to get them down off that mountain. Their competitive aspect is a good way to get into some fun roleplaying, and can really help out with their backstory as well, such as with my Goliath Cleric. Also the Stoneblessed paragon path is fantastic, especially with a reach weapon. I see Goliaths more as exciting larger than life people jumping around mountaintops in exhilarating competitions, than anything akin to dwarfs.