Spriggan at the Gate

So you fucked up the Cumberland mission and now you find yourself having to fight Spriggan in Douglas or George's Ghost in Castle Nerack. Let's say you want to take on Spriggan, what must you do?

Well, the first thing is DON'T. We're talking about a giant with 12K HP here. Most of the time at this stage of the game, dishing out 12K worth of damage is nearly impossible. Seriously, if you screw up the Cumberland quest badly enough where you can't find the alternate routes, and HAVE to go through the front door, I recommend coming back a bit later when you have a bit more resources as your disposal.

... but if you feel like you HAVE to give it a try...

The Basics
Spriggan is a Giant type creature with 12000 hit points, obscenely high constitution, and vacillates between annoying to deadly depending upon RNG.

His defense values are fairly standard for bosses of his type. His overall physical defense is around 12, with his slash defense climbing slightly higher to 18. His magical defense are all around 8, except for his status defense, which is around 48.

He can be put to sleep, poisoned, and stunned.

So what do I mean when I say he vacillates between annoying to dangerous?

Well, the reason is simple. 90% of the time, he's going to just swing his club at you with a normal cudgel attack. Depending upon how strong your bludgeon defense is, that can swing can be mildly annoying (at 26 defense, it does around 60 damage per swing) to dangerous (at 16 defense, that same swing will do 171). But that's not what makes him dangerous, as that part can be easily dealt with. No, the danger is in the 10% of the time when he decides to do something else.

And those something can be drawn from the following list: Just for the sake of damage study, here are the projected damage values of each of those assuming that your defense is either 16 or 26. Note: estimates only. These numbers are all subjected to an RNG swing that can increase the amount slightly.
 * Headblow
 * Twinstrike
 * Bonecrusher
 * Fissure Strike
 * Grand Slam
 * Stone Shower

As you can see, these numbers can be kind of nasty at any level but it's power is significantly lower with just 10 more points of bludgeon defense. In short, this is the best reason to use helmets. Not hats, not headgear, but helmets specifically. Helmets tend to have a a bludgeon defense that is almost double that of their listed slash value. (Closed Helm, for example, has a listed slash defense of 12, but gives you 24 bludgeon defense) For every 10 points you can boost your bludgeon defense value, you can probably cut the damage ratio by another 50 points.

Having said that, good equipment is not something we can expect in early game. So we need to find another way to mitigate against damage.

Luckily, Spriggans CAN be put to sleep and stunned. UNFORTUNATELY, headblow only works <30% the time against him, thanks to his high status defense. However, feint can work against 70% of the time, which means if you have a few characters who can beat a 17 speed reliably, you can have them layer multiple feint / stun attempts on him and hope to stop him before he acts, all the while have someone who is aggroing at the front line using parry to stop most of the club swings.

Since feint and parry are both 0 SP skills, you can pretty much set it up to have itself be sustainable for a long fight while your other party members slowly chip away at him.