Dungeons and Dragons Lore: Troll 

As a Scandinavian, whean anyone mentions Trolls in DnD i get a compleatly diffrent set of images in my head. The Swedish tapletop Rpg Trudvang has more classical scandinavian set of trolls. Tall humanoids with massive heads,hairy bodies long arms,tusks,tails, love of gold and magical powers. May or may not turn into stone in sunlight and may be weak to thunder and lightning spells.

I'm old school, my players were jumped by a troll crossing a bridge, all while the river was rising. They had a time limit to get past it before the river swept them away. They did it. It was the first time I've seem my players jump up with excitement. It was a great encounter.

I’m from Michigan and residents of the Upper Peninsula sometimes refer to residents of the Lower as Trolls because they live “below” the Mackinac Bridge which connects the two landmasses...so there ya go :)

"Everybody hates trolls, Nar'takk. Even trolls hate trolls." Lol

I all ways love the the idea of trolls mad with hunger from unstable regeneration growing larger and more aggressive until they starve.

I had a Half Black Dragon War Troll with ranger levels hunting the party after they acquired a magic dagger for a patron to get the dagger back. Because he was immune to acid and only acid can stop a war trolls regeneration the party wound up treating him like the terminator; coming up with plans to down or trap him and then running, just trying to stay ahead of him and deliver the dagger before he caught up again. They never bothered to find out the daggers enchantment before they delivered it. It didn't deal normal damage but reduced the victims max possible HP, and yes that would have kept the HBD War troll from regenerating.

Ya gotta pay the troll toll!!

Out from under the bridge at last. Thanks Professor!

Awaken! Awaken! Mustakrakish, the lake troll!

A wineskin full of troll blood? Great idea, but you have to sell it before the wineskin grows arms, legs and a head...

You forgot to mention the most fearsome troll of all the dreaded “internet troll”.

The troll has always been one of my top favorite mythical creatures.

29:23 Love the shout to Forest Trolls. Big lumbering Trolls that stick severed limbs back on themselves can be scary, and trained War Trolls clad in armor and well armed with giant weapons and the knowledge battle formations can be even scarier. But Crafty, trap-using, poison wielding , brachiating Forest Trolls are the most terrifying. Ambushing from the tree tops with a hail of spears, only to retreat and strike again and again.

“TROLL!!! IN THE DUNGEON!!! Thought you ought to know.” Come on guys, I’m disappointed no one else said it.

Ah, trolls. An oldie, but a good one.

U gotta pay the Troll Toll!!

Huge fan dude, I hope RU-vid compansates you well for your hardwork bringing so many inspiration for their campaigns

I loved that intro.

I'm in an ongoing "Out of the Abyss" run and we had one particular skrag pretty much become the Family Guy chicken for a while because we didn't have any acid damage on hand.

I had a campaign where a super coven of thirteen night-hags were conducting a breeding program composed of : themselves, demon trolls and regular trolls, and erinyes to produce an army to conquer a planet in order to pull it into Hades. This was second ed, and my "demon trolls " were essentially troll cambions

Trolls are my faves and you’re my fave D&D RU-vidr. A match made in heaven

This makes me realize that in all the D&D I've experienced, I've never once had a troll encounter, either as a player or GM. Not a single one. I should put it on my to-do list for my current group.

I gave this vid a like just for that awesome intro

And no mentions of the 3.5 abomination called the Half-Black Dragon War Troll...good luck killing that thing anywhere near it's CR

I remember that my first troll encounter happened in the middle of a lake, in a boat. My character spent most of his time on his back, struggling to stop its severed hand from struggling. In that fight he was also cursed by with wereshark lycanthropy.

Yay Wormy! Yay Troll town. Seeing trolls behaving more or less like hobbits.

Been cooking up a troll to throw at my players with an obsession with magical trinkets and jewelry. But, none of the jewelry fits his monstrous proportions, so I gave my boy blaztak the ability to essentially shove any magical item nto an open wound. If the the item is in the wound when the troll gains hit points at the beginning of its turn the item’s magic is imbued in the troll, allowing the troll to use that magical item as if it were wearing or wielding it. The troll would also be considered attuned to the item. Like if he stuffs a stomach wound with a Rust Bag of Tricks, he might use an action to cough up some troll/giant boar hybrid (using the giant boar star block). Or his hand gets chopped off, so he haphazardly slaps a Ring of the Ram in between the two sections of arm as he presses it together to heal. Next turn you see him reach out his arm and fire off a spectral troll head from his now reattached fist

The troll is my spirit animal

Dragon magazine #30 has a really interesting campaign in it called "A Wrastle with Bertram" by Willy Walsh where you get to wrestle a domesticated troll for adventurers numbering no more than 8 characters of 2nd lvl or higher. Trolls are great,especially when you become a veteran troll hunter going after the various types.

Oh yes, first sessions ever we fought troll, as a punishment for weeding down some important flower field.. of flowers...

An idea I came up with was a "Gnome-Troll", which arises when a troll consumes considerable quantities of flesh associated with the fey, predominantly gnomes. Their hair is brightly colored, as is common for gnomes, and they have the capacity for illusion magic. They know Minor Illusion, and can cast Silent Image once per day. They use their illusions to hide in plain sight, and to lure prey (sounds of someone calling for help, or piles of treasure). These trolls also have advantage on saving throws against magic, which makes it harder (though hardly impossible) to strike them with magical sources of fire or acid damage.

Just ran a game where the players fought a Shadow Troll. She kept regenerating a necrotic shell of her former body, but it sloughed off of her like shredded tires. Like the regular Shadows (which strangled the shadows of characters), she could go 2D and slip under doors. And I used the Loathesome Limbs rules. The players loved every encounter with her.

Thanks for the video AJ, I always enjoy seeing what I’ve missed about a common monster. I’m exited to see what your next video will be, especially if it’s about fleshwarping.

This gives encourages adventurers to be troll hunters. You have to get them all.

AJ, are you Trolling us!?! 😂🤣🤘🏼

This video is relelvent to my interests.

“Hate trolls. Everyone hates trolls. Even trolls hate trolls.” That’s legit a mood right there mate.

Trolls were a source of nutrition in one of my games. An evil magocracy used special alchemically treated balls of troll flesh to feed their slave armies. It would regenerate at the same pace as it was digested, as long as the slaves ate nothing and drank only water. If they died or ate anything else, it would begin to grow until it burst out. My players were horrified after slaying the enemy soldiers only to have deformed and ravenous trolls burst out of the corpses like something from alien.

I don't always play a Ranger but when I do Trolls are my favored enemy.

Great video as always! Personally, I like to incorporate the legend of Beowulf, and use trolls as the offspring of hags! To up the stakes, you can even give such trolls some levels in sorcerer or warlock, to reflect their magical heritage. Since I also use hags in combination with scarecrows, it's very easy to find a hag (or three!) sending a scarecrow into a village to spread ergot among their grain crops, and having trolls as their children and melee bodyguard, which makes for a nasty and challenging lair. To incorporate more classic mythology, you can give trolls a racial phobia of billygoats, even giving billygoats double damage on ram attacks against trolls! For no particular reason, I also see trolls as part-time scavengers, and as such, the lords of lairs with otyughs and carrion crawlers, but only when there is ample food in the area. For an April Fool's Day variant, you can have Dematrolls, aka Trollagogues. These trolls use illusion magic to infiltrate human political forums and town councils, only interject vile hate-speech and demagoguery intended to bring down otherwise well-meaning political discussion. They can also be found altering scholastic records and promoting nonsense conspiracy theories for sole purpose of disrupting discourse.

I am imagining a troll at sent from the future to the past that's moderately strong but weaker than normal trolls but extremely intelligent. He or she is such a future to the past to study creatures that went extinct or mysteries long-forgotten.

Love the vid especially the intro. Almost felt like I was there.

Always preferred the slender lanky ones. Thick muscular ones don't seem as creepy while stalking people.

Trolls in my game have Australian accents, and some are more intelligent than others but still tend to be entirely self serving creatures, also they almost always are wearing at least a kilt or pants, they find it embarrassing to not cover up

I'm surprised trolls don't have the classic weakness of turning to stone in sunlight

You trolled us good that time!

Another high quality video with an amazing narrative intro. This video and the Demogorgon video prove that you should consider doing D&D audiobooks.

Great more internet Trolls. Some start a blog so we can flame them. Thanks for another great vid AJ. 👍

Everytime I hear that intro I think I miss clicked and an watching some news channel.

I just got a idea. What if a Lizardfolk Druid created a portion made from his own blood and the blood of a troll to transform non-lizardfolk into lizardfolk. Because he belives that when every humanoid on the planet becomes a lizardfolk, their lost god will return and the world will become a utopia.

29:23 There's my boy the forest troll, shown with this picture. Only medium troll, and one of the few trolls with average human intelligence. Fast healing and tremendous constitution as you would expect. Poison spit as well. Imagine how deadly a kingdom of these blokes would be. Every bit as clever as the humans and dwarves and halflings they're fighting, but many times tougher and able to fight for days and weeks on end. Thousands of warriors all armed with poisoned weapons that while not especially virulent, inevitably weaken and kills countless soldiers. And forget about using germ or chemical warfare. They're way too hardy for it to be effective, although the reverse isn't true.The only major requirement for them would be well stocked supply caravans. And they sure wouldn't have any qualms about eating the fallen on the enemy side to shore up the mess cart. It would be a nightmare to meet such an army on the field of battle! Always wanted to play a forest troll and run a campaign where they are a major threat to the good guys for the above reasons. Good video AJ!

Playing a troll/orc barbarian. Raised by humans as a foundling. William ( named after Bill Bixby as a nod to his character from a certain TV show) is very polite and has a very disciplined daily routine. Things do tend to go sideways quickly however, when his routine is disrupted or if he sees things that go against his moral code. Then he gets angry. I play him as a jekyl and hyde persona being a gentle lawful good to berserker chaotic neutral. Fun to play. Great video it is giving me tons of content to help flesh him out.

I really enjoy these lore videos. Thanks for making these

When I 1st started playing, we had the same troll showed up for 3 sessions before we killed it..

To AJ and the commenters, what’s your favorite greenskin? Orcs, hobgoblins, goblins, ogres, trolls, so many to choose from.

What happens when a troll is infected with rot grubs? My guess is that the outcome can only be horrible.

Awesome AJ, you finally did trolls! This is another monster I love in it and its variants. I love them so much as monsters, Loom of Magus has a playable race: Half-Trolls. Many of my veterans love picking that race, especially if the campaign is low level. One really gross troll home-brew I have is the Gore Troll. Trolls are sometimes killed in their gore pile (where they take their victims to eat at their leisure). If troll bits and blood fall into the gore pile, the pile of partly eaten victims and carrion, the troll may regenerate in that and fuse with them. The party does not usually see it happen and the party rarely, if ever, covers the pile with fire and-or acid. That pile produces at least one Gore Troll, looking like a composite troll of both it and its various prey. It's usually just a nightmarishly cosmetically altered troll but sometimes it's an abomination. And yes, I love nightmare fuel in my campaigns. A LOT of my sessions would qualify as horror. One of my players compared my Gore Troll to a Deep Spawn of sorts but it was an unfair comparison.

Love when you open with mood setting stories🤩 Ps. 17:32 Dear Gods. . .

Oh boy, trolls are the best creatures.

Thought the etten was a gaint, plus my level 5 party is fighting 2 trolls rn

You brought the froud trolls into it. Those things scared the crap out of me as a kid.

I heard about this one setting where ia guy said necromancy was invented by an ancient troll that had grown so big he was confused for a mountain during his thousands of years long slumbers.On dark nights a necromancer hopeful could approach this mountain and speak his name.He would open his eyes converse with them and maybe if they were lucky hand over the secrets to necromancy.

"I'm a bad troll, a very bad troll." -some troll, a Troll in Central Park

My favorite is the war troll from 3.5 nasty creature lol

This explains internet trolls completely

In my opinion people overlook these way to much. I love trolls, easily one of my favorite monsters. Thanks to lotr I always pair them up with orcs, goblins, ettins, and ogres.

I really enjoyed this video. I have always had a special place in my heart for these critters. Well done sir! Thanks again

Is this contentedness that I'm feeling? Strange indeed.

Thank you so much for posting this. I've been working on a homebrew project regarding trolls, and its very hard to find any info on certain varieties of troll. For instance did you know that we've never had a slime troll stat block the only mention of slime troll is in dragon magazine #301 and it's just a picture we just know it exists.

The first monster I ever used that caused an inadvertent TPK. Still feel bad about it. Troll had three consecutive nat 20s.

Trolls? Aren't there enough of those on RU-vid?

I own two troll minis one plastic. one old school ral partha.both got pointy noses.adding vid to my dnd playlist

As we also know trolls are quite attracted to careers in the border customs department and road regulation.

Red dragon troll hound, wizard Polymorph a troll with six legs, build like a pit bull the size of a large pony cover in red dragon scales, then breed them true. Red dragon troll hounds are regarded as large size, and if skinned for their dragon scale hide it will regrow within a week. After eating lots of sheep/wool or other scaly animal. Dragon scale armor is common for a given wizard armor guard.

Great voice ! I’d buy audiobooks that you narrated.

Troll... Lolololololololololol Troll lololololol Ha ha ha ha hoooo

lol, as I walked up, my computer did that negative colors when you look at it from a certain angle thing, and it looked like the thumbnail said, "stroll"

They knew they were in trouble when they detected trolls. Without acid, or fire, you are just food. EDITED for autocorrect nonsense.

03:47 "Trollolo rip! Trollolo tear! Untill by trollolo - It is done! Untill it is done!" reply "Trollolo sneak!?!? Not speak!" ans "Trollolo is confused? And confusion make trollolo angry! Angry... Untill it is done!" *a sneak attack/attempt at intimidation becomes a minature civil war* to me it doesn't make sense that trolls age, as regeneration would counter it.

One of the greatest monsters of all time I absolutely love them as part of the world

I've been looking forward to this one

Time to go hunt some trolls

I let a troll out of its cage to distract some guards at a party of nobles once in my friends campaign good times

Thanks for another great video AJ. I've always liked trolls in dnd. I've only had one opportunity to use them and my veterin players dealt with them handily enough but it was still a fun encounter.

My favorite d&d troll is the Venom Troll, because of what it adds to a combat encounter

wait, aren't ettin the literal runt of the giants? and unrelated to orcs aside from the the orc's belief of a relationship?

I love trolls always did, other than Goblins they are my first monster love way back when.

So the Hulk + Wolverine + Elemental power. Great so opposing elements are their greatest weaknesses.

Thanks for the vid sir.👍🏼👍🏼

trolls are crazy enemies to good!!! always dreaded fighting them!

I've seen plenty of these bois on the internet. *That joke was even bad by my standards....*

What no Troll kin? 😋

Halt! Pay the troll toll to scroll.

Interesting that the intro story has a *hobgoblin* Ranger. Used to be, they were the 'bad guys'. Kinda like Trolls are here...

*Relevant and Supportive Comment*

I think the troll that still gives me nightmares was the Trolleis Serpent Beholder. My co DM came up with in my HomeBrew world. Was made by a mad wizard and was a Frankenstein monster who patched the body of a troll with the tail of a yuan-ti abomination and the head of a small beholder. Moves fast, wants to eat you, immunity to magic thanks to the beholder anti-magic central eye, and has some of the beholder eye ray attacks. And every cut off body part that is not burned to ash or destroyed in acid will grow into a new monster in a few weeks. Thankfully, with heavy losses, the party killed eight of the original 12 that where made. One of the dark evil gods took the dead ones to the abyss to grow an army for the Blood Wars. Okay even more nightmares these things now are demons!

good video AJ

What happens when someone ignores the "Don't feed the trolls" rule?

For whom the bell trolls

My party I DM for encountered a terrifying troll in the wild. Tom the Troll that wished to be a Bard.