Goliath
by Prince Phantom
I write this review with the full knowledge that it will probably be outdated in a few months when the upcoming book all about Giants is released. That book supposedly will have a revised Goliath that ties more closely into their Giant heritage, and that’s definitely for the best. The Goliath we have now is a bit underwhelming, and like most martial leaning races, does very little to incentivize selecting it over a race that gives a feat at level 1.
Goliath Features
Little Giant: This is basically Athletics proficiency and Powerful Build rolled into one feature. If you’re looking to make a grapple build, Athletics proficiency is a must, but most builds that want that can grab it straight from their class, and Powerful Build is a very campaign dependent and situational feature.
Mountain Born: Cold resistance is pretty good, and would be extremely helpful in a campaign like Icewind Dale, but the other part of this will probably never come up as most tables don’t even know that there are rules for high elevations.
Stone’s Endurance: This uses our reaction to reduce damage we are about to take by a d12+Con modifier proficiency bonus times per day. This will average out to about 8-9 points of damage prevention, and you can basically count this as extra HP each day. At early levels this can completely cancel all the damage from an attack, but this quickly looses effectiveness at later levels, even with getting more uses. It using our reaction is also a bit of a downside, as many optimized melee martials will be making opportunity attacks each round with Polearm Master, and caster classes would probably rather use their reaction on a spell like Shield. Still, this has its uses and you’ll be happy to have it.
The only thing the Goliath really has to write home about is Stone’s Endurance, and there are better defensive features than this on numerous races. I look forward to seeing how this gets reworked in the upcoming book, and I’ll definitely revisit this at that time.
Final Rating: 2/5
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