Mountain Giant

At 14 feet and 2,000 pounds, mountain giants look much like hill giants: light tan to reddish brown skin and straight black hair. Males wear full beards with no mustache and carry big potbellies. They dress in rough skins and carry huge clubs, and their stale stench carries several hundred feet downwind.

Mountain giants never use ambush or tricks. They like to claim a high, unreachable perch piled with boulders, then stand openly, rarely seeking cover, and throw rocks down for 2d10 each. They can catch such missiles 30% of the time. At close quarters their clubs, usually just logs or big branches kept in quantity, deal 4d10+10 including Strength. Their Strength of 22 equals a fire giant's.

A mountain giant can spend a full turn summoning other monsters, which arrive 1d6 hours later. Roll percentile dice: 01-70 brings 1d10+5 ogres, 71-90 brings 1d6+3 trolls, and 91-00 brings 1d4 hill giants; the giant never knows in advance which answer its call. Control is loose: it gives broad orders, and the creatures carry them out as they see fit, fighting for the giant but valuing their own lives more. They remain until killed, dismissed or replaced by a new summoning.

A family typically lives in a large mountain cavern, often with unexplored passages leading deeper, and cares little about the world beyond. There is a 75% chance that summoned monsters serve as guards and servants. Females and young rarely leave the cave. Mountain giants are polyandrous, one female usually living with several males, and since 75% of births are male, the population stays small. Where two or more share a lair, a female is present half the time and a child one time in four; roll 1d4 for its age, 4 being a helpless infant and 1 to 3 an older youth fighting as a hill giant in Hit Dice, damage and to-hit.

Each family has a 20% chance of a shaman, level 1 on 1d6 rolls of 1-4 and level 2 on 5-6, drawing on the Healing, Elemental, Combat, Charm, Animal and All spheres. A shaman can also sense any cave or cavern mouth within half a mile, magically hidden ones excepted. Only one family occupies a lair, but several form a loose tribe across a mountain or range, led by a 3rd-level shaman who presides over the very rare tribal gatherings, advises any who make the trek, and lives with summoned monsters rather than other giants.

They forage and hunt, eating nuts, tubers and other mountain plants, with mountain sheep as their favorite meal. Nothing preys on them, but a careless choice of cave can be fatal, since they seldom explore the back tunnels and things from the deep sometimes emerge to eat them in their sleep. Neither good nor evil, they can be dealt with peacefully, though they are wary and slow to trust outsiders.