With over 40 species to choose from in 5e's official sources, finding the right species for your character can be daunting. Firbolgs give you the opportunity to play as a gentle giant with a gift for communicating with nature.
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Something about firbolgs that you might recognize is that they are designed to mimic sasquatches. They are tall and hairy, live in the woods, and have a knack for staying hidden, and all that the painters in Faerûn could manage are blurry portraits. Part of being a firbolg is learning who you are in a diverse and dangerous world while using your many gifts to blend in.
5 Consider Firbolgs In Your Game's Setting
In Faerûn, firbolgs tend to hide themselves from contact with other species and will live in remote locations along with their clan. As an adventuring firbolg, your role-play might involve your character being naive to social customs or rules. You can lean into this naivete without sacrificing your character's personal morals or codes. Although it might cause tension with outside forces or the laws of a kingdom your character never had to follow before, it can lead to some memorable role-playing moments that define your motivations.
Playing as a firbolg means learning how to interact and learn from new cultures and potentially bring what you have learned back to your clan. With a naturally high Wisdom score, your character might be able to understand these new concepts quickly but not necessarily accept them.
Although Monsters of the Multiverse sort of ignores innate, learned languages, you can choose for your firbolg to know the language of giants. It will likely be uncommon in your game's setting, which can act as both a curse and a boon. Since they are used as a common enemy type, being able to communicate with giants might drastically alter the story for your party or even the whole campaign if used creatively.
4 Be A Not-So-Gentle Giant
Despite most DMs being keen to ignore encumbrance and allow you to carry a warehouse in your pocket, campaigns that do require weight management will find the firbolg's Powerful Build ability allows you to rely on strength alone to interact with difficult obstacles or carry massive treasure hordes back to the tavern where most other species can't. Even for DMs that don't remember the specific weight rules, just saying 'I have Powerful Build' is usually enough to justify making an Athletics roll that most other characters won't have the chance to succeed.
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While firbolgs are technically medium, their giant lineage gives them heights from seven to eight feet tall. While a hindrance when stealthing or moving through tight spaces, you can squeeze bonuses out of an exceptional height by using it as an intimidation factor or navigation tool. Even the unique version of a firbolg's Disguise Self spell, allowing them to seem up to three feet taller, will let you disguise as large-sized creatures. Bandits seeing an 11-foot-tall orc step out the back of a wagon might make them think twice about stealing from you.
3 Make The Most Of Your Connection To Nature
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As a friend to nature, firbolgs can communicate with both plants and animals and even have advantage on Charisma checks to persuade them. This is an underrated ability as it requires some creativity to make the most out of, but it is very helpful in most situations where either can be found.
Need to break out of jail? Ask a nearby rat to steal the sleeping guard's keys in return for a piece of cheese. A wall of vines obscures the secret passage into the temple? Politely ask them to move out of the way. You can convince guard dogs to stand down, bees to swarm, birds to lead the way, and squirrels to deliver messages.
As a firbolg, you should utilize your connection to nature as much as possible and fulfill your Disney princess dreams. While this can be challenging when creating a firbolg that breaks the cliche of a hippy mountain farmer, there are ways to draw on your connection in even the most inhospitable of places. A firbolg of the desert might use lizards to lead the way to water or ask a palm tree to flex its leaves for shade. A firbolg who lives on the streets as an urchin can use rats and pigeons as warning signals, informants, or even assistant pickpockets.
2 Recommended Class Options
While you could play a firbolg in any of the available classes, a few are otherwise perfectly suited for getting the most out of your unique abilities. Also, don't feel like you have to play as a druid despite Volo's Guide not-so-subtly hinting at it. You can easily justify a firbolg fighter, monk, or warlock.
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Illusion Wizard
The Firbolg Magic ability gives you access to the Disguise Self and Detect Magic spells that can be cast once per day or with any available spell slots. As a wizard, these innate spells allow you to round out your spell book with more niche spells since you have learned two essentials. They also don't count against your prepared spells, which gives you access to more options in and out of combat.
What makes Illusion school wizards especially suited for firbolgs is the sixth-level Malleable Illusions feature, which lets you alter any illusion spell you cast that lasts longer than a minute as an action rather than having to recast the spell. This works with the firbolg's innate Disguise Self spell and is useful for creative players who wish to shift around to various disguises.
Rogue
What makes playing as a firbolg rogue especially challenging is the lack of a Dexterity bonus. But the firbolg Hidden Step ability makes up for it when considering how sneak attack works. One way a rogue gets their iconic sneak attack bonus is by having advantage on the attack roll. This is usually done by using hide as a bonus action so that you can attack a creature that can't see you, giving advantage on the attack roll.
With the Hidden Step ability, firbolgs can turn invisible as a bonus action that lasts until the next turn. This allows a firbolg rogue to use their bonus action to act as both the disengage action, because enemies can only make opportunity attacks against creatures they can see, and the hide action, giving you advantage against a target that can't see you, therefore triggering the sneak attack bonus. Being able to turn invisible will also make the rogue's job as a scout a lot easier and far less dangerous.
Druid
The most obvious class choice for a nature-loving hermit is as a druid. The firbolg's ability to communicate with nature fits the aesthetic of a guardian of all things green and fluffy. As a mechanical benefit, the Speech of Beast and Leaf that allows you to speak with plants and animals frees up the druid spell list from having to prepare spells like Animal Messenger, Animal Friendship, Beast Bond, or Speak With Animals while making spells like Locate Animals or Plants even more useful.
Also, because Hidden Step is a firbolg ability and not a spell, you can use it while wild-shaped to turn invisible as a beast.
1 Prioritizing Your Ability Scores And Skill Proficiencies
Although Tasha's allows players to mix and match ability score bonuses how they wish, this is an optional rule not every DM allows. Firbolgs start with a plus two to Wisdom and plus one to Strength.
While this makes firbolgs best suited as druids, you will want to make sure you don't have a neutral or negative bonus to Dexterity. Otherwise, the advantage to stealth for being invisible might not matter when you can't add anything to the roll, and taking the Stealth skill proficiency will make up for it entirely.
With the Wisdom bonus, make sure to choose Perception and Nature as your skill proficiencies. While Perception is a universally useful skill and probably the one most rolled, the bonus to Nature will help any time you are attempting to communicate with it.
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