Giff
by Prince Phantom
Alright, let’s get this out of the way now. I’m of the camp that believes this race is to be pronounced with a hard “G” sound. With the full knowledge that I’ve already offended about half of my readers, let’s press on. The Giff are hippofolk, and yet another race that seeks to fulfill the fantasy of being the biggest guy in the room. Unlike most similar races however, the Giff don’t just empower melee martial builds. In fact, the Giff seem to empower ranged martials the most, leading them in a pretty unique direction.
Giff Features
Speed: 30ft walking speed, swim speed equaling it.: Getting a swim speed is very nice, as it’s actually pretty rare outside of a couple of subclasses and races. However, this is not the race to choose for an aquatic campaign, as we strangely get no ability to hold our breath for extended periods of time. I find this very odd, as real life hippos can hold their breath for so long that they can sleep underwater. Big flavor fail, and maybe another victim of the Spelljammer books being so rushed.
Astral Spark: This is nearly identical to the Goblin’s Fury of the Small, except we can’t use it more than once per turn and we don’t have a restriction on the size of our target. This also only works with weapon attacks, whereas the Goblin ability can function with spells. That’s not too big of a nerf, as spellcasters probably aren’t too attracted by this race anyway. Still, this feature adds a very insignificant amount of damage and is honestly almost a ribbon feature.
Firearms Mastery: Now this is very unique. No other race in the game grants firearms proficiency, and this goes even a step beyond that. We get to ignore the loading property of firearms (necessary if we want to use them with extra attack) and we can fire without disadvantage at long range. This is like taking a little bit from both the Gunner and Sharpshooter feats. You’ll still probably want Sharpshooter for the -5/+10 to hit and damage, but being able to skip Gunner on a build that wants to use firearms is a big gain.
Hippo Build: This is Powerful Build in a trench coat, with a big extra bonus. Always on advantage on all strength checks and saving throws is actually pretty great. This means all grapple and shove checks are made with advantage, along with any Athletics check. Player characters aren’t subjected to strength saves super often, but you’ll be glad to have this when it does come up. There is a problem though. Everything else about this race begs us to build for Dexterity to make the best use of firearms possible, but this is asking us to invest in Strength. That makes finding a build that wants to use all parts of this race difficult, as most characters will favor one of those stats heavily over the other. Barbarians normally like to have both be pretty high, but definitely want to be attacking using their strength score, so they’re out of the question. Some very niche cleric builds might want both to be high, but also probably want to be using their strength to attack, so those likely don’t work. My best guess for who could use this is a Fighter or other ranged weapon user that also wants a 15 strength to wear plate armor. Yeah, I know that’s not a great answer, but I’m running out of ideas here.
The Giff are in a weird place. I definitely think it’s fine to just focus on Dexterity and only care about strength enough to make Hippo Build not a dead feature, but that doesn’t satisfy my optimization-geared brain. Still, the Giff successfully fills the niche of being a gun-toting hippo person, but it falls flat at being just about anything else. Hey, I’m sure that’s someone’s fetish.
Final Rating: 3/5
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