Stone Giant Ordinate

Stone Giant Ordinate (Sneak; CR 22)

Neutral - Large - Giant

Lore:	Know (Local)
44		59
Basic DC		Full DC

Initiative

42

Perception:
46	+36
Passive	Active

Ambush:

8+

on a d20

Senses:

• Standard Senses
• Low-Light Vision
• Tremorsense 60 ft.

Movement Types:

• Walk 40 ft.
• Earth Glide 80 ft.

Defense

AC

48

Man Def

48

Monster Health
1,356	678	42
Hit Points	Bloodied	Hit Dice

Saving Throws
Fort:	+24
Refl:	+19
Will:	+19

Strong Against:

• DR 22/Common (Bludgeoning,  Crushing,  Piercing,  Slashing,  Slime), bypassed by weapons with Sunder (Quality)
• Immune (no effect): forced movement, Quelled, Prone, Splayed

Weak Against:

Offense

Size:	Large
10 ft.		10 ft.
Space		Reach

To-Hit

+34

Man Off

+36

Action

1

Points

Standard Attack (Melee):

• 1x Obsidian Shard Sword +34 (5d8+36/19-20 x2)
  as slashing (physical, common)
  plus: Slides target up to 1 square per hit

Full Attack (Melee):

• 3x Obsidian Shard Sword +34 (5d8+28/19-20 x2)
  as slashing (physical, common)
  plus: Slides target up to 1 square per hit

Standard Attack (Ranged):

• 1x Hurled Stone Chip +34 (5d8+36/19-20 x2)
  as slashing (physical, common)
  (Increment: 150 ft.; Max Range: 1500 ft.)
  plus: Pushes target up to 2 squares per hit

Full Attack (Ranged):

• 3x Hurled Stone Chip +34 (5d8+28/19-20 x2)
  as slashing (physical, common)
  (Increment: 150 ft.; Max Range: 1500 ft.)
  plus: Pushes target up to 2 squares per hit

Siege Damage: Not siege capable

Statistics

48

STR

28

DEX

32

CON

16

INT

16

WIS

18

CHA

Skills:

• Knowledge (Dungeoneering): 36
• Knowledge (Local): 36
• Movement: 36
• Perception: 36
• Stealth: 41
• Survival: 36
• All other skills: 31 (no ranks)

Languages: Giant, Common, Undercommon

Feats:

Special Abilities

Stony Skin (Su, Aura) Automatic after takes damage

Any time a Stone Giant takes physical damage sufficient to pierce its Damage Resistance, sharp flakes of stone and stone dust are generated that affect all enemy creatures within its reach. This ability will activate once per round, per enemy attacker. All enemy creatures within its reach when it takes physical damage suffer 22 points of slashing (physical, common) damage, and are Dazzled by the stone dust. Note that unlike many conditions, Dazzled stacks! If you get enough stone dust in your sensory organs, it can render you quite ineffective.

Gravel Flick (Su) Swift Action 1/Rnd

As a swift action up to once per round, a Stone Giant may snap its fingers and fire off a small shard of stone at any creature who has damaged it from beyond its melee reach. Gravel Flick inflicts 5d8+28 points of slashing (physical, common) damage, and allows the Giant to Push the target one square. Affected targets are allowed a Reflex saving throw, DC 32, to reduce the damage by half and negate the Push.

Improved Catch Boulders (Ex) Free Action

As a free action, a Stone Giant may roll a d20 any time a thrown or projectile weapon is fired at them or passes anywhere within their reach. This applies to giant thrown weapons, siege weapon projectiles, arrows, bolts, bullets, or any other thrown weapon or ammo. Note that catching a projectile this way is a violent action that will set off alchemical bombs and items. If the Giant rolls a 14 or higher on this d20 roll, it successfully catches the attack, it is interrupted and lost unless it is an alchemical bomb or effect, in which case it effects the giant which caught it. Using this ability on a weapon with Returning means the attack is interrupted and lost but the weapon still returns to the wielder.

Disappear in a Cloud of Dust (Ex; Sneak Role) Automatic if Stony Skin is activated, 1/Round

Up to once per round, if an Ordinate's Stony Skin power is activated, it may initiate stealth even if they are being observed, as they blend into the dust cloud generasted by their stony skin ability in an eerie fashion. To make this even worse, they may slide up to 2 squares (10 feet) if they wish, as part of this same automatic activation. In practice, this often means that they will suffer a single hit from a given attacker, then vanish, sliding two squares away. This makes melee against an Ordinate extremely difficult if a physical damage type is used.

Unseen Assassin (Ex; Sneak Role) Always On

Sneaks always have the Stealth skill with a value 5 higher than their "all other skills" value (this is already included in the numbers listed in the Skills section, above).

Backstab (Ex; Sneak Role) Always On

Sneaks gain +2 to hit and add a +7d6 bonus to their damage (as precision damage) when they make an attack against a target that is unaware of them, or a target they are flanking. The bonus to-hit is in addition to any bonus they may receive for flanking, or any AC penalty the target may be suffering for being flat-footed, etc.

Stone Giant Ordinate

This creature possesses the Sneak role, and therefore counts as 2 monsters for purposes of encounter size, XP award, and treasure.

This monster frequently has the Sneak role, but may be set to other roles if desired.

Dwarves like to say that they are the True Scions of the Stone, but that is a lie.

There are many creatures that are far more attuned to the mysteries of the Solid Dark than mere dwarves. Even the Dwarven cousins, the Duergar, are mere pretenders.

Of course, the most attuned out there to the joys of Structure are also among the most alien. Earth Elementals are barely comprehensible on their best days, the soutterrain are completely monstrous in their state of being as well as their form of body. The Xorn are paragons of reasonable intent compared to those two tribes, and everyone is familiar with how peculiar the Xorn are.

And then, there are the Stone Giants.

Stone Giants are easy to overlook. They are not actively horrible, like many tribes of giants. They do not raid and murder and campaign, they do not hurl lava or call storms, they do not revel in utter evil or enjoy cannibalism. As Giants go, they're fairly benign.

Stone Giants are also thought to be rare, although there are certainly strong hints that they may be far, far more common than people think, because Stone Giants live inside stone. Much as volcanoes have Fire Giants and glaciers have Frost Giants, stone has Stone Giants.

The problem is, there is a LOT more stone than there are volcanoes or glaciers. Every mountain, hill, and plain could be swarming with Stone Giants, in their deep nests, living contentedly in the solid stone like maggots in a fresh corpse. There is almost no way to know for sure.

Stone Giants, when they are encountered, tend to be seen underground, stepping silently out of cave walls and floors, or in mountains, emerging blinking from a cliff to peer about at the open space, bemused. Indeed, Stone Giants seem to come to the surface in the mountains mainly for the novelty of hurling huge boulders across insanely long distances, which they apparently can't do underground. It is not uncommon to find whole tribes of Stone Giants peppered across mountaintops, booming with laughter as they engage in weird contests, blocks of stone the size of carts lofting across the sky like improbable kites....

Of course, there are also the occasional towns, villages, and even cities that are found...empty. No sign of the inhabitants aside from gore, gravel, stone, and sand scattered all over, and no sign of any attackers that ever breached the gates, as if the attackers appeared from the ground, or just walked right through the walls.... Stone giants seem to be fairly benign most of the time, but they sometimes attack without warning, for reasons likely related to their internal politics, which are mysterious at best.

In battle, Stone Giants are terrible foes, their blows knocking you around like a drunken sailor, and their stony skins shedding bedeviling grit and shards as you battle them. Stone Giants are able to step into and out of stone like most creatures walk across a floor, which can make fighting them a travail. Shooting at a Stone Giant is not a good plan either, as they can pluck missiles out of the air like they were born to do it, and then they will flick stones back at you like sling bullets.

Stone Giant Ordinates are the leaders of Stone Giant tribes, big, powerful warrior types. They can stand toe-to-toe with the best of them, but they rarely bother. Instead, they hit you where it hurts. They are incredibly skilled at vanishing into a swirling cloud of dust and grit, then hitting you from your blindside so hard that you're lucky to survive. When an Ordinate is in the battle, stay alert, and keep your healer nearby.

Combat Tactics

Stone Giant Ordinates are usually sneak-class creatures, which means they are stealthy and lethal...at least in combat. Ordinates are definitely the leaders of their various tribal groups, and they are as noble and commanding in that role as you would expect. And in battle, they act the part of the 'big tough guy in charge', right until their 'Disappear in a Cloud of Dust' power activates. After a single physical damage hit that exceeds their damage resistance, they vanish in a cloud of dust.

This stops most follow-on attacks, and far worse, will allow the Ordinate, often, to move themselves into a flank or adjacent to someone who cannot beat their Stealth roll, and thus add their hefty Backstab damage to their attack. Almost the only way to easily melee an Ordinate is to use non-physical damage, which can be difficult indeed for the unprepared. If you must use physical damage against them, it is best to have a low-perception character make the initial attacks, and hope their keen-eyed fellows can spot the Ordinate after it stealth's away.

Or just use a lot of explosions.

Out of Combat

Very little is known about the Stone Giants deep, secluded culture. They seem to be organized into tribal units, and there are hints that there are at the least confederations of tribes, if not entire Stone Giant nations. How many Stone Giants there are is difficult to tell, although some sages and cyphers have calculated, given the number of Stone Giant sightings, that there are probably at least as many Stone Giants as there are Hill Giants. Given the considerably greater danger of Stone Giants, and their ability to appear anywhere, these calculations give people pause.

Above ground, Stone Giants are often found as skilled workers for other types of giants. They are also quite commonly found as captives and slaves of less scrupulous giant tribes. It seems that Stone Giants can be easily restrained from using their Earth Glide, perhaps by special manacles, or the intervention of professional slave-takers such as Hobgoblins, or Aranea. As a result, it is not uncommon to see Stone Giants enslaved by Frost Giants, or serving in economic serf-hood to Fire Giants. More powerful giant clans also make use of Stone Giant skills, such as the dread Fomaori.

In the Unterwelt, Stone Giants are surprisingly rare, but when they do show up, it tends to be in considerable force, as they apparently have some sort of migratory nomadic system underway.

Rewards

XP: 1,230,000 (Sneak role included.)

Treasure: Sellable Goods worth 370,600 gp.

Weight: 440 lbs.     Volume: 17.6 cu. ft.

Optional Treasure Rules: Roll a d20 on Table 1 below once per encounter (NOT per creature). Any items discovered are in addition to the normal treasure for the encounter.

Table 1: Remnant(s) Found
1 - 8	Nothing Found
9 - 12	1 Languid Remnant (tier 1)
13 - 15	1 Pale Remnant (tier 2)
16 - 18	1 Bright Remnant (tier 3)
19 - 20	Roll on Table 2
###	Nothing to see here!
###	Or here. Move along.

Table 2: Remnant(s) Found
1 - 3	4 Languid Remnants (tier 1)
4 - 7	4 Pale Remnants (tier 2)
8 - 11	1 Intense Remnant (tier 4)
12 - 15	1 Blazing Remnant (tier 5)
16 - 18	1 Vital Remnant (tier 6)
19 - 20	Roll on Table 3
###	Or here. Move along.

Table 3: Remnant(s) Found
1 - 3	4 Bright Remnants (tier 3)
4 - 5	4 Intense Remnants (tier 4)
6 - 8	4 Blazing Remnants (tier 5)
9 - 11	4 Vital Remnants (tier 6)
12 - 15	1 Prime Remnant (tier 7)
16 - 18	1 Mythic Remnant (tier 8)
19 - 20	1 Empyrean Remnant (tier 9)