D&D: Tomes and Trolls and Giffs Oh My!
With Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes officially in select stores now, let’s take one last look at two classic monsters closely tied to the internet: Trolls and Giffs.
I mean, all you have to do is scroll down to the comments to find some trolls, and if you’re looking for a graphic interchange file, you won’t find one here because we use .jpegs, but Giffs (hard g, heretics) are also prevalent everywhere online. So it’s fitting that both of these monsters are the subject of the latest D&D Beyond videos.
First up, let’s talk trolls. There are all kinds of trolls and they’re gross–the big theme/lore nugget for how they work is mutation. They take the idea of “you are what you eat” a little more literally than you’d think. And you get a variety of troll types, including my favorite, the spirit troll.
Each one is more horrific than the last, but it’s leaning into what trolls represent. They are these big representations for greed or gluttony–and you can have them change or be adapted to suit whatever you need for your players.
And then there are the Giff. These are some of my favorite monsters–I remember first seeing them in the monstrous compendium for second edition–and they’ve come a long way since then.
They’re still the space-faring mercenary hippomen you know and love. They represent Spelljammer in 5th Edition, along with Neogi and a few others scattered throughout the monster manuals. And they are explicitly Spelljammers–they love to sail the planes and wield their firearms–they’re a great example of monsters that might be allies.
Heck, they’re a great example of a campaign. Or at least of what an adventure could be like. Sure you’d have to restat them so you could figure out how to reverse engineer a player race entry from them, but–they’re there. And along with the troll varieties, they are a good example of the kind of updated classic monsters you can find in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, now available in select stores and on D&D Beyond.
Okay but if you kill one of the hippomen and then raise them as an undead servant, does that make them an animated giff?
