I think this would be a mistake. It would make it too easy to exploit. The DM could have 4 medium-sized opponents flank you without you being able to use any close bursts on them. It’s also a weird mechanical effect where they have bizarre “blind spots.”

The suggestion I made seems to imply a more natural tactic (to me, anyway): flanking is a little more effective against a much larger foe because they’re too slow to attack at both sides quickly. That just feels like the mechanics reflecting the game world a little better from my perspective.

Another issue is that this bonus really only helps weapon-wielding Giants, which makes them a good choice for those classes, but a terrible for other classes – and more so than playing a race that just has a suboptimal stat bonuses for your class.

You can even do this without breaking the general rule. The origin point for any close effects from a large-sized PC is unusual: it’s the intersections at the center of each of their four sides. In fact you could get even more general: for LOS/LOE, cover, flanking, etc., anything where you use a specific point within their space as part of the calculation, the outer four corners of the Large creature’s space aren’t accessible to the PC (but are legitimate for enemies to target).

In some ways this is essentially treating them as diamond-shaped rather than square. Might even be able to extrapolate the diamond-shaped thing to a general rule… I’d have to think about that one some more. It does have the tidy geometric property that their effective area is only twice, not four times, that of a normal one-square critter.

Maybe make it clear that there are no Large sized Superior weapons?

And thank you for reminding me of the 4[W] and such. While a +1 doesn’t destabilize things on basic attacks, a daily attack with an initial +3 to damage (from a larger weapon) is a bit more impressive.

As to close bursts, I’d just say a large creature doesn’t get a full burst. After all, why should a Giant Cleric’s spells be more effective than a Human’s? I’d start with the fact that a normal close burst 1 covers 8 squares and say a large creature must choose one of their facings that is not covered by the burst (12 total – 4 off one facing = 8 total). It’s pretty easy to explain this as representing the same side burst issuing from off to one side of the larger creatures space. For more martial maneuvers, it is reasonable to imagine a large creatures bulk makes spinning around more difficult and they do more “sweeping” attacks. Etc.

And for the record, it was Michael’s idea about the reach feat thing, I just expounded on it.

I really want to see where you take this Fred, please post about it when you are done.

-Rob D.

PS – Clearly my hatred of Greenflame Blade darkened my view to find an excuse to make it problematic. Definitely should have checked the book first. That said, I think Francis B is on the right track with the idea of making some of the implicit-but-not mandatory elements of size into feat-unlockable elements.

Some mention of the Warden was made. Herein lies the challenge. While the warden’s free mark wouldn’t be substantially increased by being large (it still takes an immediate action to utilize the attack or slide) it does stack with the creature’s large size to make it very hard to get to allies. A large defender of any class can cause some extra stickiness, but a large sized warden will effectively be able to add a -2 to more enemies than their medium counterparts. This means less those enemies have a harder chance to hit allies.

The same sort of issue arises with powers like the fighter’s Rain of Blows, which is a stance that deals 1 [W] damage to an adjacent enemy at the start of their turn.

To be frank, I am willing to believe that those occurrences could be balanced by the fact that it is just easier to flank a large opponent. Given the proclivity of lurkers and skirmishers who deal extra damage while the enemy grants combat advantage a DM could really put the hurt on a large sized creature.

On to point 2, close bursts. This is a problem, a large sized cleric’s turn undead is just naturally stronger than a medium sized cleric purely by the fact that the large sized cleric has a larger attack area. You could indeed try to patch this up by stating that you must choose an origin square, but then you are doing the opposite by decreasing the size of the large cleric’s attack area. It seems that neither solution is what we are truly after here.

I’ve been sitting here running it over for awhile now and although I’d like to say that I have an answer I’m afraid I am currently baffled at what sort of remedy we could apply to keep the game balance without instituting house rules or resorting to such 3.5isms as racial penalties. I will continue to mull the issue over however and if I find further insight I will be sure to pass it on.

Now, as for reach. I’m going to have to agree with Michael here. After pouring through the Monster Manual *went from A to E, not an exhaustive search I know, but enough to find some similarities*:

1)There are several large monster that do not have reach, however the majority of these monsters utilize natural weaponry such as Bites and Gores that would almost seem to have to be in melee to have been accomplished.
2) However some large creatures with Bites and Gores do have reach, which would seem to go against the majority. It seems in these cases however that the creature has a form which they could coil up such as the young black dragon, who could conceivably stretch the five foot distance with his outstretched body and neck.
3) Finally, and here is the good news, there exist the occasional monsters with no reach and no real reason why they wouldn’t have it. Two examples with artwork (and therefore a canon representation of their spatial forms) are the Rage Drake and the Drider. While either one could use its size to gain reach, neither do. This bodes well to disprove the concept that all large creatures have at least Reach 2.

Therefore I recommend having a large creature who can take a feat to gain Reach 2. It doesn’t unbalance the game very much, and it still gives allusions to flavor.

Larger weapons: On the two-handed style of things this actually doesn’t present too much of a challenge, a large greataxe for instance only increases the average damage by .5 (1d12 to 2d6). But if you were to look at the one handed weapons you’ll see about an increase of about 1 over every medium counterpart. This creates a proclivity for fighters to go sword and shield (or two-handed) over the two-weapon style. This is just one example of how the damage increases, and the fact that 4th Edition uses separate tables for one-handed and two-handed progression might affect your player’s choices if they play a “giant” race. Frankly, this could just be considered a racial trait that gives a +1 to damage with powers that have the weapon keyword. It is a powerful ability to be sure, but not necessarily unbalancing, just something to be considered if you are playing the race or dming for a player who has chosen the race.

Squeezing: This is another issue that can easily be solved by the purchase of a feat, consider the 3.5 Tunnel Fighting feat from Dungeonscape which negated the penalties associated with squeezing. A similar style of feat could reduce the penalties, or considering 4e lack of 5′ passages completely negate them without causing too much of an unbalance in the system.

Or alternatively, you could leave that downside intact and factor it in with some of your other negatives as the counter-weight to the close burst issue.

Those are just some thoughts I had while reading your post and the comments. I’ll drop by at a later date if I have any more idea, and I’d love to see a blog post regarding your ultimate decision on the matter.

I don’t have it in front of me; But the I remember warforged juggernaught paragon path had some interesting med size to large size effects.

That reminds me a bit of some of the stuff Monte Cook did with Giants in his Unearthed Arcana/Arcana Evolved stuff. PC Giants started as Medium creatures but taking a few racial levels allowed one to “grow” to large size…

-Rob D.

I think there is something to be said for the fact that existing PC races have discrete abilities (and notably once-per-encounter powers) that don’t lend themselves to combination. Large size is “always on”, which encourages the phenomenon: “I cant’ think of something specific, but I’m sure there’s a really bad combo out there somewhere.”

Upshot: While WotC would really have to work to make a Large size PC race and I would be concerned about publishing one for general consumption, I wouldn’t have any qualms about adding one to my home game, where I could adequately plan for and deal with any unforeseen consequences.