Aura of Death. The giant projects an aura of dark energy that extends 60 feet out from it while it is conscious, reaching behind barriers and around corners. Creatures in the aura can't regain hit points, and whenever one loses hit points, its hit point maximum is reduced by the same amount until it finishes a long rest. Undead and constructs are immune to this effect.
Cloak of Souls. Stolen souls swirl around the giant, draining life and warning of danger. Each creature that begins its turn within 10 feet of the giant or enters the area for the first time on a turn takes 13 (3d8) necrotic damage. In addition, the giant can't be surprised and has advantage on Dexterity saving throws. When the giant is subjected to an effect that would turn undead, the giant must succeed on a Charisma saving throw against the DC of the turning effect or else this trait stops functioning until the end of the giant's next turn and it must recharge its Shrieking Souls action before it can use it again.
Collect Souls. When a creature dies within 15 feet of the giant, if the creature isn't a construct or undead, its soul is stolen by the giant and begins to swirl around the giant's body until it is released. A creature whose soul is stolen cannot be brought back to life until the soul is released. If the giant dies, the giant's own soul is destroyed, and the souls it has stolen are released, or stolen by another death giant if that giant is within 30 feet.
Death Affinity. When the giant is targeted by an effect, it can choose whether to be treated as a giant or be treated as both a giant and an undead.
Gigantic Necromancy. When one of the giant's spells would create a skeleton or zombie, it can choose to create a giant skeleton or giant zombie instead.
Innate Spellcasting. The giant's innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 23, +15 to hit with spell attacks). The giant can innately cast the following spells, requiring no components:
At will: detect evil and good, inflict wounds (as 5th-level), speak with dead, thaumaturgy
3/day each: blight, dispel magic, flame strike (deals necrotic damage instead of radiant damage)
1/day each: harm
Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If the giant fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
Magic Resistance. The giant has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Marshal Undead. Unless the giant is incapacitated, it and undead creatures of its choice within 60 feet of it have advantage on saving throws against features that turn undead.
Necrotic Absorption. Whenever the giant is subjected to necrotic damage, it takes no damage and regains a number of hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt, unless it was dealt by a death giant. In addition, the giant's hit point maximum can't be reduced.
Ordainment of Death (Mythic Trait; Recharges after a Short or Long Rest). If the giant is reduced to 0 hit points, it doesn't die or fall unconscious. Instead, it temporarily embraces undeath, regains 360 hit points, and creates a skeleton in the spaces of up to six humanoids, giants, or undead that died in the last hour if the space is within 120 feet of the giant. For the next 1 hour, the giant is both an undead and a giant, and the range of its Aura of Death trait is doubled.
Spellcasting. The giant is a 20th-level spellcaster. Its spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 23, +15 to hit with spell attacks). It knows the following cleric and paladin spells:
Cantrips (at-will): light, toll the dead, vile miasma (new)
1st level (4 slots): command, compelled duel, healing word, weakening smite (new)
2nd level (3 slots): blindness/deafness, hold person, spiritual weapon
3rd level (3 slots): animate dead, feign death, spirit shroud, summon undead
4th level (3 slots): banishment, blight, death ward
5th level (2 slots): contagion, danse macabre, negative energy flood
Unholy Smite. The giant's weapon attacks are magical. When the giant hits with any weapon, the weapon deals an extra 3d8 necrotic damage (included in the attack). Once on each of its turns when it hits with a melee weapon attack, it can cause the attack to deal 18 (4d8) bonus necrotic damage.
Multiattack. The giant makes three battleaxe attacks.
Battleaxe. Melee Weapon Attack: +17 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 22 (3d8 + 9) slashing damage, or 25 (3d10 + 9) slashing damage if used with two hands, plus 13 (3d8) necrotic damage.
Rock. Ranged Weapon Attack: +17 to hit, range 60/240 ft., one target. Hit: 35 (4d12 + 9) bludgeoning damage plus 13 (3d8) necrotic damage.
Shrieking Souls (Recharge 6). The giant commands its guardian souls to shriek as one dark chorus. Each creature within 120 feet of the giant that isn't deafened must succeed on a DC 20 Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and become frightened for 1 minute. It also gains one level of exhaustion if it doesn't have any exhaustion already. While frightened in this way, a creature must take the Dash action and move away from the giant by the safest available route on each of its turns, unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a location where it doesn’t have line of sight to any death giant, the creature can repeat the Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the effect ends for that creature.
The giant can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn. The giant regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.
Soul Blast. The giant hurls one of its guardian souls at one target that it can see within 120 feet of it. If the target is an undead, it regains 30 (12d4) hit points. Otherwise, the target must make a DC 23 Constitution saving throw, taking 30 (12d4) necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a success.
Weapon Attack. The giant makes one melee weapon attack against a creature that it can see.
Death Magic (Costs 1 or 2 Actions). The giant casts a spell. If the spell is of 2nd-level or lower, it costs only 1 legendary action to do so, or 2 actions otherwise.
If the giant's mythic trait is active, it can use the options below as legendary actions for 1 hour after using Ordainment of Death.
Cleave. The giant makes two melee weapon attacks. The attacks must target different creatures.
Drain Life. Each creature within 30 feet of the giant must succeed on a DC 23 Constitution saving throw or else take 25 (10d4) necrotic damage. If at least one creature fails its saving throw, the giant also gains 25 (10d4) temporary hit points. Undead and constructs automatically succeed on the saving throw.
Soul Casting (Costs 2 Actions). The giant casts a spell that normally requires an action or bonus action to cast, without expending a spell slot or requiring components.
Description
Though they are not listed in the Ordning, there exists a race of giants that are nearly forgotten among the tomes of mortalkind. They are known as death giants, and they still lurk among their umbral castles and keeps that line the mountains of the Shadowfell, biding their time until they can reclaim their old glory in the Material Plane.
Each death giant is naturally connected to the Plane of Negative Energy. This connection grants them great necrotic power, but it also curses their souls to oblivion.
Remnants of a Dead Empire. Death giants are few in number, even among the races of giants. Once, they were a group of fire and stone giants that called them-selves the ash giants. The ash giants were so numerous and prosperous that they rivalled all the empires of the other giant races combined. They owed their prosperity and their name to their relentless conquests. The ashen armies were bolstered by the corpses of their slain foes, which they systematically raised as undead legions.
However, the empire of the ash giants soon found that their myriad successful conquests had a downside: they were running out of fresh lands to conquer. In a display of extreme hubris, the leaders of the ash giants chose to begin waging war on the empires of their fellow giants. They started by decimating the lands of the hill giants, taking their fellow giants as slaves and even raising the dead giants as gigantic undead warriors. Some claim that hill giant society has never recovered from the ash giants' onslaught.
As a result of this war, the other clans of giants came together and made the difficult decision to exile the ash giants from giant society. Moreover, they chose to gather together under one banner, waging a war to end the ash giants' conquests once and for all.
Souls Sold to Darkness. Faced with the combined might of the other frost, fire, storm, cloud, and stone giant clans, as well as even the normally pacifistic green giant clans, the war engine of the ash giant empire was unable to persevere. As the war raged on, the ash giants began to lose more and more ground, and their forces were pushed back until they occupied only their own homeland. A great fear of defeat overtook the ash giants' leadership, and in their craven malice they sought out aid from the dark, unknowable forces that lurk beyond death within the Plane of Negative Energy, choosing to sell the souls of their own people for access to power that might grant them victory.
Unfortunately for the ash giants, this soul pact hurled their people, their cities, their fortresses, and all that they possessed into the Shadowfell, the plane between the Material Plane and the Plane of Negative Energy, transforming their bodies in the process. In one terrible night, the ash giant empire was lost forever, and its giant-folk became death giants. Their cities and castles were strewn across the wastelands of that dark realm, left in a ruined state, and almost immediately the death giants began to war amongst themselves, blaming each other for the fate that had befallen them.
As they warred, these first death giants discovered the true cost of the soul pact: instead of passing on to some form of afterlife, their souls were bound to the Plane of Negative Energy, and were annihilated upon death. Only oblivion awaited them after death. Ruined and scattered, broken and hateful, the remaining clans of death giants decided to call a truce among themselves, so that they might instead focus on ending their curse without losing the mighty power that it grants them, and retake the old glory of their lost empire.
The other clans of giants, led by the wisest of the storm and stone giant clans, agreed to banish the ones now known as death giants from the Ordning and even to remove their existence from the books of history.
Sadistic Soulbreakers. Death giant society is largely ordered through pain and suffering. Torment is used to break the will of not only the living slaves, but the souls of the dead as well. Those death giants with a talent for torture are educated as soulbreakers. They are taught to use the dark magic of the Shadowfell by nurturing the most vile and wicked feelings within them. They gain mastery over the magic of shadows and souls, and they wield these powers to subjugate and torture the weak for their lord, for punishment, or for mere amusement.
Tyrannical Bone Kings. Reigning over the ruins of their once great empire, the rulers of the death giants are often known as bone kings for the masses of bones that they collect within their toppled ancient castles. A bone king typically uses these skeletal remains to make hordes of skeletons on demand, filling the empty courts and courtyards on a whim. They demand fealty from the denizens of the Shadowfell surrounding them, including the shadar-kai and the sorrowsworn. Those who resist must defend themselves from attack by the bone king's skeletal armies and death giant retainers. As they slowly claim territory, they build power hoping to eventually be the one crowned emperor when the empire is retaken.
Mythic Traits and Actions
Mythic traits transform battles into more epic conflicts, and they work especially well at the end of adventures or campaigns. Mythic traits are optional; they don't need to be used during combat with creatures that have them. If you so choose, as a DM, you may simply ignore a monster's mythic traits and mythic actions.
The Bone King as a Mythic Encounter
Battle against a death giant bone king, especially one that is inside its lair, is already a potent challenge for most groups of high-level adventurers. If you want to take the encounter to a higher level of deadliness and drama, you might have the bone king use its Ordainment of Death mythic trait. When this happens, it temporarily becomes an undead, like a death knight, and embraces a wave of necrotic energy that grants it necromantic power and vitality. While in this skeletal form, the bone king can choose one of its mythic actions when it uses a legendary action.
You might foreshadow the bone king using its mythic trait by describing it losing flesh and becoming more and more skeletal as it suffers wounds. Read or paraphrase the following text when the bone king uses its Ordainment of Death trait:
"The death giant's last dregs of skin slip from its skeletal frame, but it does not fall or even falter. Instead, a dark glow emerges from its eye sockets. In a flash of soul energy, the giant is now nothing but bones beneath its armor: a huge skeletal warrior overflowing with the energy of Death itself."
Fighting a death giant bone king as a mythic encounter is equivalent to taking on two challenge rating 26 creatures in one encounter. Award a party 180,000 XP for defeating a bone king after it uses Ordainment of Death.
Lair and Lair Actions
Powerful bone kings typically occupy one of the ancient ruined castles or keeps from the old ash giant empire. If not, they find somewhere suitable to serve as a seat of their reign, such as an ancient necropolis or the caverns beneath a massive cemetery, where they build a castle or keep of their own.
The lair of a bone king is massive in structure, built from imposing wrought metal and magically-preserved bonework. The gigantic halls are lined with ashes and dust, and the floors are scattered with all kinds of bones from all manner of creatures and eras.
Lair Actions. On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the bone king can take a lair action to cause one of the following effects. It can't use the same effect two rounds in a row.
- The bone king creates a cage of bones around one creature that it can see within 120 feet of it. The target must succeed on a DC 23 Dexterity saving throw or become trapped in the cage. While in the cage, it is restrained and it takes 18 (4d8) piercing damage at the start of each of its turns. It can use its action to make a DC 23 Strength or Dexterity check (its choice). On a success, it frees itself. A creature adjacent to the cage can use its action to make the same check, freeing the trapped creature on a success.
- The bone king create a giant skeleton which rises from the ground under the bone king's control in an unoccupied space that the bone king can see within 120 feet of it. The skeleton's initiative is 20, and its turn happens immediately after lair actions.
Regional Effects. The region containing a bone king's lair is warped by its presence, which creates one or more of the following effects:
- Undead such as bone nagas, ghasts, giant skeletons, giant zombies, mummies (mummy), and wraiths appear within the area. Undead with a challenge rating that is less than 12 also become loyal to the bone king and aggressive toward intruders in the area.
- Any humanoid, giant, or undead that dies in the area rises as a skeleton after 1 hour if the corpse is not destroyed. If the creature was size Huge or larger, it rises as a giant skeleton instead.
- All nonmagical plants in the area that aren't creatures die. Trees leave behind skeletal, leafless trunks and branches made entirely of bone.
- Any non-undead creatures in the area feel deep, unrelenting aches and pains in their bones (if they have any). They feel as if their bones are being pulled by an unseen force.
- Open and empty graves appear in random locations throughout the area. The graves range in size from those constructed for Medium humanoids (6 feet deep) to those constructed for Huge giants (30 feet deep). Some of the graves contain magic items, but most of those are cursed. Strange monsters from the Shadowfell lurk in the shadows of many of these graves, waiting to ambush those who venture too close.
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