Blackstone Gigant

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

At a Glance

A construct.

DM’s Notes

Since they’re constructs, they can be created in any shape. In particular, I see two versions being popular:

  • a gigant with two legs, resembling a female drow
  • a gigant with a snake tail, resembling a marilith

Drow Gigants

This examination looks first at the ones that are made to resemble multi-armed drow females. Blackstone gigants typically range from 32-96 HD; they’re Gargantuan at 32 HD and become Colossal at 64 HD. Conveniently, Gargantuan humanoids range from 32-64 feet in height. So I recommend making humanoid blackstone gigants’ height equal to HD.

At 32 ft tall, the “average” drow female would weigh about 4600 lbs. I calculate the volume of such a drow to be about 2.1 cu m, which means if she’s actually a blackstone gigant made of basalt, rather than a living drow, she weighs 13,900 lbs. There’s quite a bit of leeway here if you need it to be lighter or heavier; if you interpret “blackstone” to be obsidian, the weight might be as low as 10,600 lbs, but if you take it to mean black sapphire it’ll be more like 18,500 lbs. You can also increase the weight a bit by deciding that your gigant is armored and therefore has a little more bulk; gigants, as written, are nude except for perhaps some jewelry. The main factor controlling weight is what stone you carve it out of, rather than the presence of armor; different substances clearly means different weights. I think basalt is a good compromise, especially since it’s a very black stone.

I heard you were looking for some basalt?

The “deal” with blackstone gigants is that they frequently have more than two arms. So here are some variations, assuming that you use basalt as the stone and create the golem in the shape of a drow female (with legs, not a snake tail).

2 arms 4 arms 6 arms 8 arms
32 HD, 32 ft tall 13,900 lbs 15,150 lbs 16,400 lbs 17,650 lbs
64 HD, 64 ft tall 55,600 lbs 60,600 lbs 65,600 lbs 70,600 lbs
96 HD, 96 ft tall 125,000 lbs 136,300 lbs 147,600 lbs 158,800 lbs

Marilith Gigants

If you want to do the blackstone gigant as written in the Fiend Folio — which is to say, more like a marilith (phenomenal illustration) — then I suggest adding 75% to the above volume and weight numbers.

Why such a big addition? Because according to the experts, a human leg accounts for roughly 15% of total body weight. If 30% of our weight is legs, then 70% is our upper bodies. If you don’t add sufficient mass to balance out the upper body, then the creature’s center of gravity is too high and it falls over. Entertaining, but not very efficient in combat.

You might point out that the above statement doesn’t seem to make sense given that the mass of our legs is quite a bit less than that of our upper bodies (30% vs 70%) but the difference between a marilith and a human is that the human has legs, which must always be carefully positioned so as to maintain a vertical position. The marilith, in contrast, has sufficient mass in her lower body that she doesn’t need to remain coiled… she can do basically whatever she wants with her tail and remain upright while doing it. Therefore, the tail must overcompensate a bit. This is why I figure the marilith’s body mass is divided at least 40%/60% in favor of her lower body.

There’s also the point that snake flesh is probably more dense than human flesh. So far, Google is not my friend in this regard… I can’t find specific information. I’ll work on the numbers again if/when I get new information, but for now it does assume equal density.

Finally, the assumption is that a marilith “stands” 150% as tall as the humanoid upon which its upper body is based, due to the necessary bending of her lower body. As written in the Fiend Folio (and interpreted by me) the marilith is based on a 6 ft tall female; therefore she stands 9 ft tall. Of course she can reach much higher than that when she wants to, but that’s her normal standing height. Since the gigant merely replaces flesh with stone, the gigant’s shape will be exactly the same as that of a living marilith.

Here are some variations on the marilith-shaped gigant, still using a female drow for the upper body and still using basalt as the stone-of-choice.

2 arms 4 arms 6 arms 8 arms
32 HD, 48 ft tall 24,300 lbs 26,500 lbs 28,700 lbs 30,900 lbs
64 HD, 96 ft tall 97,250 lbs 106,000 lbs 114,750 lbs 123,500 lbs
96 HD, 144 ft tall 218,800 lbs 238,500 lbs 258,200 lbs 277,900 lbs

Sources

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