If the ripples in our water glass are any indication, something big is on the way. Something that is known for instilling a sense of wonder, awe, and childlike glee. That’s right, today we’re talking about dinosaurs. And you’re in luck, because you won’t even need a goat to lure out this new pack of primeval dinos from Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants.
Join us on a tour to meet these new dinosaurs and see how to use them in your games.
Leveling Up Beloved Monsters
Most longtime D&D players have likely had some experience with dinosaurs in their games. After all, what is an 8th-level conjure fey spell if not really a “conjure tyrannosaurus rex” spell? And who among us hasn’t tried to befriend a velociraptor in the jungles of Chult? I know I’ll never forget when our wizard polymorphed into a big toothy boy in order to face off against a dragon in its lair.
Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants takes the footprint that dinos already have in D&D and combines them with the same primeval forces that make the land of the giants so wondrous and exciting. These dinosaurs push past the realm of beasts to become true monstrosities. These are the dinosaurs that other dinosaurs look up at in awe.
More Dinosaurs to Discover
While this article highlights the new primeval dinosaurs you’ll find in Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, you can also find updated stat blocks for many of the more classic varieties in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. Plus, stats for two of the most popular dinosaurs of all time can be found right here for free on D&D Beyond in the Basic Rules, the triceratops and the tyrannosaurus rex.
The Dinosaurs of Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants
Concept art by April Prime
Crackling with lightning-like energy, aerosaurs are behemoths that tear through the sky. By sight alone, their 200-feet wingspans are intense. But if you find yourself on opposing sides of a battle with them, you may just find yourself unable to stand up to the thunderous forces of their wingspan.
As fearsome as just one of these monstrosities can be, imagine seeing a whole squadron of them, each being ridden by a giant directing them into battle.
Imagine you’re trekking across a distant, unfamiliar landscape and think to yourself, maybe you’ll take a shortcut across that rocky hillscape. It does look like some lava is flowing through some of the cracks, so you just need to watch your step. Just as you crest the summit, the ground starts to shake. You’re not climbing rocks at all, you’ve wandered onto the back of an altisaur. It stands and raises its head, its long neck reaching 150 feet up into the sky. Better hold on for dear life! Wherever it’s heading, is where you’re going now, too.
You absolutely do not want to be in the charging path of one of these behemoths. Glowing with green elemental energy, these behemoth boys can trample across even the ancient forests that line the lands of the giants. Even a single horn from a ceratops is larger than a giant, allowing them to easily fling pests, like adventuring parties, away from them.
The true "ruler of the dinosaurs" is what giants fear the way we might fear a T-rex, and with good reason. Regisaurs are predators massive enough to swallow a full giant without even chewing. If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself on the bad side of one of these towering terrors, you may just want to plan for an "inside the belly" strategy.
How to Use These Dinosaurs in Your Game
I think the more honest question is, “How wouldn’t you use a mountain-sized dinosaur in your game?” But there are definitely a few fun possibilities. Here are some that came to mind for me:
Land of the Lost
Your adventuring party has to cross a massive ancient valley that is simply crawling with gargantuan dinosaurs, constantly on guard to not run afoul of creatures that could stomp them without a thought. Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants contains a table to help you with random encounters in a dinosaur world.
Primeval Pets
These dinosaurs are among the many giant creatures the players might encounter within a giant enclave. Whether they’re being used as mounts for giants to ride into battle, or serving as the most overkill of sentries, a wise adventuring party would be wise not to underestimate their masters.
The Big Enemy of My Big Enemy Is my Big Friend?
The primeval dinosaurs boast sizes that rival even that of ancient dragons. Which could come in pretty handy if you have to fight an ancient dragon. Tracking down, befriending, and training an aerosaur or ceratops could be a pretty epic quest to undergo before heading off to battle.
Hit the Road
If you’re playing a game set in the more familiar regions of the Material Plane, a primeval dinosaur accidentally finding its way into a populated region is what we’d call a problem. A pretty exciting adventure hook could be having to redirect a creature this massive back to its rightful home.
Follow These Footprints
There’s no reason to dig up amber to find out more about these dinos. If you’re excited to check out their full stat blocks as well as the expanded roster of gargantuan creatures from all parts of the giants’ realms, be sure to check out Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants.
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.
they are Monstrosities. There’s no way a CoM Druid can turn into them w/o using Polymorph or Thousand Forms.
it makes sense from a lore perspective that they are Monstrosities too.
“Monstrosity” is a cheap cop-out category most of the time. An owlbear is a monstrosity, while the mosqitobat (stirge) is a beast, despite both being fantastical creatures. Merrow and sea spawn are monstrosities while merfolk and sahuagin are humanoids. Aarakockra and harpies are both bird-people, but the one who can sing with a humanoid mouth isn’t humanoid enough. Why isn’t a giant sea turtle with the beak of a snapping turtle a monstrosity, since it looks nothing like a dragon? There are some monstrosities that don’t look like a fantasy beast or a human with beast traits, but many of those are weird enough to be aberrations.
There doesn’t really need to be a monstrosity creature type if it’s just an arbitrary catch-all without any consistent, shared traits. In my game, I have subcategories of beast-like and humanoid-like monstrosities, and will let them count as the thing they’re like for some purposes, like a moon druid wild shaping into an owlbear or Charm Person being cast on a sea spawn, stuff like that.
Some of the fantasaurs from Ixalan have funny names when you consider what they would mean in the mix of Latin and Greek roots that science often uses. If brontosaurus is ‘thunder lizard’ and pteranodon is ‘winged tooth’ then the Thrashing Brontodon which can destroy your artifacts and enchantments must chew them quite loudly.
But what are the two small dinosaur silhouettes above the human and stone giant silhouettes?
Ducks
The first interesting thing I have seen from GotG. Glad to see the fantasy bent on classic dinos.
Anyone else want to see D&D step away from dinosaur scientific names? And see more of a fantasy take on those ancient animals? How about we drop 'dinosaur' altogether in favor of a 'primeval beast' type?
I have a player who loves dinosaurs so these will be useful
Primeval Beast could also cover animals that were mistaken for dinosaurs when first named, like ichthyosaurus or basilosaurus, but it does raise the question of where the cutoff point should be. If such beasts still exist in the setting, then a pre-human cutoff doesn't make sense. Besides that, a lot of fantasy settings have creationist origins rather than an evolutionary one, so they could be well under 65 million years old.
You aren't looking hard enough. Count the legs on the altisaur. That's one of the AI pieces.
"A scaly biped, the tarrasque is fifty feet tall and seventy feet long."
"[The Altisaur] stands and raises its head, its long neck reaching 150 feet up into the sky."
As if the 5e Tarrasque wasn't already a total chump, now there are creatures at least twice it size.
If you ever run a tarrasque, make it something more like 500 feet long.
Do you mean the ones shown in the article or the ones that were supposed to be for the book? Because the ones for the book were AI art but this one in the article isn't.
Also, based on the altisaur's neck length, it's tail club is around the size of a tarrasque. Literally just lift the tail and let it fall and the tarrasque is dead
The Tarrasque isn't dangerous because of it's size, it's dangerous because it's effectively unkillable. 5e Tarrasque fails at that because it didn't incorporate 3e's insane "Get it to 0 HP and then use a reality warping spell like Wish or Miracle to keep the Tarrasque dead". Also per the statblocks, size aside, the Tarrasque would absolutely shred these apart. They wouldn't even be able to hurt it.
The way I see it Ubtao created Dinosaurs in Chult and Annam created the Bigby's dinosaurs. Both are "dinosaurs" but one group was put in a natural setting where they could flourish and play a role in nature, thus they are beasts. Where as the others were made expressly for companionship and other roles in Giant society so they are technically monstrosities since they do not serve a role in the natural order of things.
I don't believe the Mammoth, Sabretooth or the Titanothere have the dinosaur keyword, so I think it's pretty clear "dinosaurs" are reptilian primitive creatures in D&D (including Dimetrodon, since it is a non-mammalian synapsid).
Judging from April's concept art on twitter, the Altisaur is suppose to have 8 legs
"Life needs things to live"
When I was 5 I loved dinosaus
so did i
Who didn't?
Wotc is just copying their own homework from mtg's Elder Dinosaurs. 3 of the 4 names are from mtg too.
Now I have a Devil Dinosaur for my Moon Girl Artificer