Editor's Note: On August 4, we became aware that an artist used AI to create artwork that appears in Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants and that previously appeared in this article. Read our statement on the use of AI here.
In Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, your party can go all in with adventures featuring one of Dungeons & Dragons’ most iconic primordial powers, the giants. Explore the realms and enclaves of the giants themselves, take a deeper dive into their lore, and face off against a new bestiary of massive monsters in this book.
Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants also takes some familiar faces from D&D and adds new monster builds and interpretations. Take, for example, our old pals, the frost giants. The book builds on their inspiration from Norse mythology and mixes in some new lore that’s unique to D&D.
Let’s take a look at the new frost giants that can be found:
Frost Giant Ice Shaper
Frost giants are often known as mighty warriors, rampaging their way across blizzard-stricken battlefields with their war horns, and forging power structures in the ordning based on sheer might. But frost giant ice shapers, the warrior clerics of frost giant society, weave powerful magic through their mastery of runes.
Frost giant ice shapers are physically as hardy as any other warriors in their enclave, but they surpass the others by harnessing the sheer elemental power of air and water. This extra layer of power on top of their physical strength usually leads ice shapers to claim positions of leadership among their enclaves. Frost giant ice shapers summon their power from frost rune-inscribed ice or similar objects that act as the source of some of their most potent abilities.
One of the most fearsome abilities that a frost rune grants an ice shaper is the power to summon 1d4 ice wolves (which use the winter wolf stat block). These elemental wolves fight alongside the ice shaper and gain a +6 bonus on their attack and damage rolls when they’re within 30 feet of the giant. This ability allows the giant to cycle through an unending supply of minions to tire out a party and grind through their hit points and spells without even breaking an icy sweat.
Frost Giant Ice Shaper Tactics
The major appeal of this new frost giant is that it adds a layer of magical attacks to a being typically focused on using brute strength. These giants will certainly be a challenge for high-level characters, and their ice wolves make them a tempting choice for DMs whose parties are used to facing up against a single target and moving on. The sudden appearance of wolves can dramatically change the landscape of a battle.
If you want to throw your players a bone, narrate how the ice shaper’s rune-inscribed object glows whenever they summon or control their wolves. This may signal to the group to focus their attacks on the source of the giant’s power.
Using Frost Giant Ice Shapers in Your Game
Because the power of their runes allows frost giant ice shapers to easily ascend to leadership roles in their enclaves, there’s a great opportunity to use one as the larger threat among an already challenging group of giants.
They function as clerics within their society, so roleplaying one with a deep spiritual connection to the power within their runes opens up a lot of opportunities for different types of encounters with them, either in combat or through social interaction with your players. They could be antagonistic from the start, or perhaps they could be open to sparing the tiny lives of your little band of adventurers, if they’re able to aid them in some way.
Frost Giant of Evil Water
There’s a new frost giant who has gone all in on evil, Elemental Evil that is. The frost giant of Evil Water is tied to the Princes of Elemental Evil featured in Princes of the Apocalypse. The Princes of Elemental Evil are godlike beings from the elemental planes. They lead devoted cults and seek to use their respective elements for sheer destruction.
Frost giants of Evil Water are cultists of Olhydra, the Princess of Evil Water. Believing that ice is the ultimate form of water’s naturally destructive forces, this brand of frost giant is dedicated to leaving as much cruelty in their wake as possible.
While they’re often viewed as heretical within the ordning, Evil Water giants will often keep their allegiance a secret and attempt to push their communities toward the behaviors that appease Olhydra’s lust for violence. For their service, Olhydra grants her giants the ability to breathe water, making them a threat on land as well as underwater.
Art by Olivier Bernard
Frost Giant of Evil Water Tactics
Frost Giants of Evil Water carry massive harpoon weapons that they can fire using the Multiattack action on each of their turns. Not only does the harpoon damage their targets on a hit, but they grapple them and can be used to reel them in. Further, the target will take damage whenever it tries to escape the grapple.
The ability to pull characters into water gives the DM an opportunity to unleash surprise attacks. The frost giant’s harpoon can also be an effective way of preventing characters from helping each other, such as by pulling a healer away from a character low on hit points or by preventing a martial character from defending a more squishy caster.
Using a Frost Giant of Evil Water in Your Game
Evil Water cultists fit incredibly well into a seafaring campaign, either as a baddie to face off against at the end of a quest or even as a particularly brutal enemy that emerges during a random encounter. Imagine your players’ surprise when one of these harpoon-bearing brutes rises up from under the tides. Olhydra’s goal is to flood the world and plunge it all into her nightmarish, icy depths, a scenario the party would likely wish to avoid by defeating her brutal servants.
Frostmourn
What’s scarier than a frost giant? How about a vengeful undead frost giant? Frostmourns are what might happen when you don’t solve your frost giant infestation in an ethical way. A frost giant killed through some dishonorable means can rise up again as a frostmourn. That means a cunning party who tries to avoid a dangerous combat by killing a giant in their sleep might find themselves being stalked by a mummified giant’s corpse looking for that sweet, sweet vengeance.
There’s a lot to freak out about with a frostmourn, but easily the most terrifying ability that these ghoulish giants gain is the power to turn its targets into frozen statues. A creature petrified in this way has a single hit point and will shatter if they take bludgeoning damage, killing them.
Frostmourn Tactics
Since a frostmourn is an undead creature driven by vengeance, they make a pretty brutal enemy to throw at your party. A great way to lean into this in combat is to have them focus on attacking a single target. Characters who don’t take the threat of a frostmourn seriously could end up as the shattered remains of an ice statue after a simple unarmed strike from a frostmourn.
Using a Frostmourn in Your Game
A pre-existing frostmourn would work well as an encounter in a game set in the frozen north, amidst a horror-themed survivalist adventure like Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, for example. But the true fun of the frostmourn is the ability to set it up if you have a party that likes being particularly sneaky or dishonorable. If you know your party is one that might find some clever way of defeating a frost giant without facing them directly in battle, having the frostmourn return later in the campaign seeking vengeance would be an excellent twist.
Big Things Are In Store
If these expansions on the classic frost giant pique your interest, and you’re excited to check out their full stat blocks as well the expanded roster of giants from all parts of the ordning, be sure to check out Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. Here’s an overview of what to expect in the book:
Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
hey man, i appreciate you are doing your job, but the discussion has moved far beyond this point. even if they do have non-AI created pieces in previous books, it has come to light now that in their current digital work, they do use AI. and, if you look at the frost giant ice shaper, it shows clear indications of odd quirks that come with artwork created by AI. the foot, the belt, the two completely different hands. please understand that this is a terrible look for wizards.
It does look like the AI goes beyond just this one artist as well - the altisaur in the book is pretty obviously just a AI mirror-image of the concept art by April Prime. The weird little grey hanging foot only make sense once you see the original, the missing legs are a common AI artifact, not to mention whatever is going on with the tail. April Prime is not credited as an interior artist and specifically says she doesn't use AI, so what exactly happened here?
I'm having real trouble coming up with anything other than one of the credited artists running the concept art through an AI and just taking the result or a WOTC employee doing it so they don't have to commission a piece, and both of those options just truly suck. Hopefully the truth is something else, but I was excited about this book since I'm running Storm King's Thunder for some kids, and now I can't imagine ever buying it.
Truly sad, I guess its time to learn Pathfinder
It would be great if all the shitty AI art were destroyed
It's AI art. There's a bunch in the book apparently.
judging from april's recent tweet, she wasn't informed of this. very bad look for wizards and shows very clearly how this stuff directly harms artists, even the ones directly involved in dnd products. this is unacceptable and should be rectified very quickly.
If this poor quality AI generated artwork is what we can expect in books going forward then I think I may have already purchased my final D&D book. This is so disappointing.
Both the top and bottom pics are by Ilya Shkipin who seems to use AI, that's why they look so bad and weird with the awful proportions, textures, patterns and blends of skin, hair and clothes while the middle one looks cool and makes sense. Just another example of a company using the cheapest option in a talentless artist that need to use AI and even then makes bad artwork.
We've spent the whole thread discussing this, yes.
My bard used Mass Suggestion to send 9 Frost Giants back to their stronghold during a raid to "prepare for draconic attack" and one of them was summarily executed by their Jarl. Is that guy's corpse gonna be looking for me now? :o
On Twitter the artist confirmed they implemented AI in the creation of the images used to depict the frost giants here. This is deeply embarrassing for WOTC.
Yeahhh, the fact there are 3 examples of AI art usage for this, I'mma give this one a pass.
Unless of course WotC fixes their error and actually gets someone to make actual art of the monsters Ilya forged.
I'm fine with people using AI for non-commercial, private/personal use, but when a MULTI-MILLION company restorts to it rather than just paying someone to make art.
Yeah, I can't support that product
On Twitter Ilya Shkipin confirmed they used AI in the creation of their images.
Whatever AI was used on those images really screwed the pooch on the polish.
Giants are cool. Using AI art is not cool. Hire human artists. I won't buy a book filled with any AI-generated garbage.
Is WOTC using Ai art in their official content now?
Sad to see AI art being utilized as a tool to help make art for D&D books.
One of their artists is using it to assist their work, which is highly disturbing. It's possible that Wizards knew about this or that they were inept and did not understand that. The main question now is what they will do with the community's reaction to this discovery.
Although I'm not shy about my opinion of AI art and the harm it is causing to the freelance art community, just to clarify - they did hire a human artist.
It's just that the artist has stated he used a process of creating a quick sketch, running it through an AI engine, and then doing a little clean up. (Although the dinosaur image has been brought into question whether whoever made that one used their own sketch or the concept art or a simple redraw of the concept art, but that hasn't been clarified.) So it is not as bad as simply hiring AI prompt writers like some companies are starting to do in various industries, but it is still prominently using a tool that a very large portion of WotC's regular freelance pool of artists is strongly opposed to, which is not a wise business move when so much relies on the work of those freelance artists.
It is still bad enough that I canceled my pre-order, however. These tools in their current state have far too many ethical & legal questions, as well as far too many artists have said their careers are already being harmed by these tools for me to support products that include AI art. (Similarly, Secret Invasion was the first MCU show I skipped because of their AI art opening credits, but sounds like I didn't miss much anyway!) So I agree with your sentiment entirely, but don't want to muddy the issue with claims that WotC is not hiring artists.
Ai Art?
Read the post literally two ones above yours.