Giant

In general a guy who is somewhat larger than average by means besides obesity is stronger than a normal sized human and more dangerous in a scrap, either unarmed or armed with melee weapons. On the same note larger animals are more dangerous individually than smaller animals. Really tall humans that are more than 2 meters tall usually have major health concerns, which get more and more pronounced as height increases. Individuals more than 2.3 meters tall often have to walk with canes. Never the less, these fine details of medicine were not well known in the Bronze Age and people loved to embellish and embellish on embellishments in storytelling. As such it is little surprise that Giants, people who are of a much greater scale than normal Humans, are so common in mythology.

Mythological Giants

The Cyclopses are a type of giants from Greek mythology which have one eye (hence the name). They raised sheep and forged weapons.

Giants in D&D

In Dungeons and Dragons "giant" can designate a subtype of monsters going from trolls, ogres and various Oni all the way up to the "true" giants. The name is also used for the various types of (Whatever) Giant to denote a particular kind. Certain types of giants live in certain areas or have special abilties. For example, the Forest, Frost, Hill, Jungle, Mountain and Ocean Giants all live from where you expect them to. In one cases this is less clear (Fog, Stone and Sun Giants) or almost impossible to tell (Death and Eldritch Giants). Between the books there are often dozens of different giants available, with 3.5e having a staggering 22 different types of "true" giants and a host of others with the type.

Giants tend to be in the mid to high range of monsters, starting as early as CR 7 for the Hill Giant all the way up to 26 for the Mountain Giant, and that's pre-class levels. Giants are very much a mixed bag, being anywhere on the range from bullies to millitant assholes to dicks sitting in the clouds and doing nothing. This can make them decent enemies, aloof sages or a nice way to make players feel like they're hot shit before delivering the smackdown. They are often of the Large or Huge size categories and are all experts of throwing rocks, who because of their size do a lot of damage.

Giants in modern fantasy

In A Song of Ice and Fire, giants are huge hairy dim witted hominids about three to four meters tall that live north of the wall. Even so thats peanuts by the standards of most giants.

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