Goliaths are mountain-dwelling nomadic half-giants that first appeared in the book Races of Stone during the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, there is a pretty sizable chapter dedicated to them in this companion book, you can learn a lot about their culture, way of life, the deities they worship, and even find inspiration for roleplay. Later, they had an appearance in the fourth edition, in book two of Player’s Handbook where they were briefly mentioned as one of five new playable races. For DnD 5e, you can see their updated stats and special abilities in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Elemental Evil Player’s Companion.
In my opinion, this race is extremely underrated and underutilized since they are very unique and provide interesting role-playing opportunities. So, what makes them stand out? According to lore, goliaths are a very honorable race that originated in Toril and lives in tribal communities on mountaintops. Their rugged living environment taught them to be self-sufficient and they pretty much adopted the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” mindset (a la Kelly Clarkson). So, goliaths not only compete amongst each other, they try to better themselves each and every day, and defeat is just a motivator to them.
Appearance-wise, since they have some giant blood, they are taller than humans, standing at 7-8 ft tall and weighing in at around 300 pounds. Also, they are naturally athletic and very muscly, so be sure not to get on their bad side. Their skin is gray or light brown and covered in markings that they believe tell their destiny, and their eyes glow in a blue or green color. If you have a hard time imagining them, most illustrations of goliaths resemble Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy.
Creating a Goliath Character
Since goliaths are huge and typically have a very muscular build, when you create a character of this race you get a +2 boost to Strength and +1 to Constitution. Their body is said to have been “carved out of stone” and therefore is pretty resilient so they usually just wear some hide or leather armor. This resilience also comes in handy through Stone’s Endurance feature which is specific to this race and they can use it once per rest. When they take damage, goliaths can use their reaction to reduce it by a d12 + their Constitution modifier. This can help you dodge a critical blow one day and save your character’s life.
This race also has a Powerful build, meaning they can carry heavier things than standard medium creatures and are proficient in Athletics.
Typically, they yield two-handed weapons and speak Common and Giant. Because of their living conditions, they are naturally adapted to high elevations and cold climates, this doesn’t give them additional abilities but might be useful for roleplay purposes.
If you need some role-playing inspiration, I’ve also got some tips for this aspect of the game. The origin of this race and all the information we have on them suggest that they would behave stoically and very rarely express their emotions. So if you want some inspo for your next campaign, you can emulate Drax with his deadpan humor, or, if you’ve watched Star Trek, you can model a character based on the very honorable and courageous Klingons.
The best classes for this race
There are many good class options for a goliath and the one you choose will mostly depend on your preferred playstyle. Additionally, you might want to consider the other players’ choices and see what role needs to be filled in your party – maybe you desperately need a tank, or you really can’t start the campaign without a healer. In this section, I’m going to give you just a few examples of different classes that, in my opinion, make sense for this race but feel free to choose your own if these don’t suit your needs and wants.
I believe that the most obvious class option for goliaths would be barbarian. You could play a tank, fighting the enemies in closed-quarter combat, and Stone’s Endurance will help you absorb less damage. Also, since goliaths and barbarians usually wear little to no armor and both live in tribal communities, they are a perfect fit. So just grab an axe and start swinging!
Another choice for players that want to stick with a strength-based melee-heavy build would be a fighter. The characteristics of this race make them natural masters of combat and the feature of Stone’s Endurance would, again, give your character some extra durability on top of the already high number of hit points. Choosing feats instead of the ability score feat can also help you diversify your character, also, many Martial Archetypes of fighters can be a great fit story-wise for this race.
If you want to go down the road less traveled, I would maybe suggest making a goliath ranger. It might not seem like that great of a choice straight away, but this build is great for small parties where you need a character who is good in melee combat but also needs some ranged attacks. This can give your party a lot of flexibility, but you would need to bump up the Dexterity and Wisdom stats since they are very important for rangers’ abilities.
Goliaths are not that good of a match for spellcasting classes like sorcerers or wizards, since they usually have low Intelligence stats, but if you still want to have a few spells in your repertoire, you still have options. Paladin, cleric, and druid are all good options that can take some hits too. You can even create a solid goliath warlock who is not as frail as this class standardly is.
Finally, choosing a monk can be a way to escape some of the stereotypes attributed to goliaths. You can choose not to be a big, mean fighting machine and go for this highly disciplined, typically very patient class. Your physical appearance will make you appear very menacing and the Strength and Constitution boosts will help you in absorbing damage and dealing blows. Unarmored Movement and Unarmored Defense are also pros for choosing this class and can increase your movement during combat.
