Stone Giant Template (Monster Feats)

[JimGroves]

Hi there,

First of all, this is not a complaint. I'm actually looking for a good place to begin creating a Stone Giant Race template.

The Rise of the Runelords AP has a couple of named Stone Giant NPCs with wizard levels (one is 7th level and another is 14th level), moderately high level stone giant fighters, and even a stone giant ranger.

All excellent uses for HeroLab, except there is no default Stone Giant Race template. I understand why Mathias created templates for the races he did, so I'm not complaining, but sometimes the APs will add levels to the most surprising races. *Despite* what the Bestiary identifies as a race with Templates. Runelords is one such example with multiple Stone Giants having PC levels.

(And as a side note.. later on in Chapter Five we've got Lamia's with Cleric levels, but I'm focused on Stone Giants for the moment. One problem at a time.)

A few weeks ago I tried to create one following the tutorials, but it was a mess. When I logged into Hero Lab my Stone Giant efforts kicked back multiple errors, and so I deleted all the files that I created (and Hero Labs runs fine now).

Now I'm going to start fresh.

MY QUESTIONS:

Creating the basics of the race was pretty easy. Taking Mathias' advice I just looked at Orcs and Lizardmen, and duplicated the process. The bulk of it was pretty straightforward.

Where I ran into trouble is the special monster feats and abilities. Like Rock Throwing, Rock Catching, Blending into Rocky Terrain with a bonus to Stealth. And actually creating rocks to be thrown as ranged weapons.

The Rocky Terrain Stealth Bonus was somewhat easy to copy from an existing ability.

I searched all over for Rock Catching and Rock Throwing, as I assumed those would be in the Monster Feats.. as they're in the Universal Monster Rules, but I could not find them. I guess I have to create them and then add them to my Stone Giant Template?

I also created seperate files every time I created a Feat or Ability, as well as my Stone Giant template.. but then I got all kinds of duplication errors.

Any advice or pointers on doing this?

I have reviewed the tutorial, with the storm elves, but unfortunately that example just doesn't seem as ambitious or complicated as this situation.