Giant (starting race)

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The giant is a playable race that first appears in GruntHack, and is also present in NetHack Fourk, SliceHack, SlashTHEM and EvilHack. Most implementations give them traits similar to the non-playable giants encountered in vanilla NetHack, such as heightened strength caps, lower speed, and the ability to freely pick up and carry boulders.

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NetHack Fourk

Racial benefits and restrictions

Giants can pick up and throw boulders, but their size prevents them from wearing most normal armor. They move at half-speed and have a heightened attribute cap for strength, but significantly lower caps for every other attribute.

EvilHack

The giant was added as a playable race in version 0.1.2, adapted and modified from GruntHack and SliceHack.[1]

Giants can be any of the three alignments, and can be played as a Barbarian, Caveman, Infidel, Monk, Priest, Samurai, Valkyrie, or Wizard.

Racial benefits and restrictions

Player giants have infravision like most non-human races. Giants possess faster hit point regeneration in comparison to human characters, and gain hungerless regeneration at experience level 12. However, their movement speed of 10 is markedly slower compared to other races, and they also have an innate aggravate monster property that they cannot gain stealth to override.

Giants know the identity of all worthless pieces of glass, and start the game with some random gems identified - they are also capable of using uncursed touchstones as blessed similar to gnomes, and can dig as well as any dwarf. They can also pick up and easily carry boulders, which can be stacked and quivered like any other projectile, and weigh 8 aum for giants as opposed to the standard 6000 aum; m can be used to walk over a boulder rather than push it. In Sokoban, a giant player will be given a prompt for picking up or moving onto a boulder.

The giant's size grants them an improved base AC of 6 (compared to 10 for vanilla races), renders them immune to engulfing and falling through trap doors, and lets them tear through webbing with ease. It also prevents them from wearing most body armor (including cloaks and shirts) and fitting through small spaces - they also take extra damage from projectiles fired by slings, and cannot ride the vast majority of steeds in the game.

Their size and strength do grant additional advantages elsewhere, however: in addition to making strength-based actions easier, giants excel in combat with their bare hands and clubs, and have a greater chance of stunning an opponent or shattering their wielded weapon. Giants can also wield two-handed weapons in one hand and even twoweapon them. As far as steeds, the sole option a giant has is the woolly mammoth - which is a suitably powerful choice for a pet in its own right.

Attribute caps

Character
Race
Strength Dexterity Constitution Intelligence Wisdom Charisma
Giant 25 14 25 14 18 16

Giants have increased initial and maximum carrying capacity to complement higher strength and constitution caps - but their movement speed and caps for dexterity, intelligence, and charisma are much lower.

Giant items

Giants may start with random valuable gems in their inventory. Many roles' normal starting items, primarily pieces of body armor, are also changed to accommodate their body size and roughly match the role's usual starting AC. The differences in starting inventory are as follows:

Standard item(s) Replacement item(s) Affected roles
ring mail +0 helmet Barbarian
cloak of magic resistance amulet of magic resistance Wizard
splint mail large splint mail Samurai
robe +1 high boots Monk, Priest
leather armor +0 helmet Caveman
leather jacket +1 high boots Infidel

Strategy

Most giant players should consider gathering a stack of boulders as soon as possible - they can use multiple boulders to drop far stronger monsters on offense, and can arrange a wall to block off or constrain monsters on defense.

References