I had a minor villain in one of my games who was a troll king who kept his little finger locked away in a secret vault, so that even if his main body was destroyed he'd regenerate from said finger.
I always prefer to run it that fire is a commonly known weakness for trolls in the sense because of the increased likelihood of meeting them for the average traveller. A traveller moving with a torch mysteriously able to scare a troll away might recount their story and so others going the same path too bring burning torches to scare it off to the point it’s a commonly accepted fact. There’s no point in trying to step around it, I’ve found.
I agree with this. Trolls, like many monsters, would have been a plague to humans (and even other monsters) since forever. And unlike most monsters which can be killed by hitting them enough, if you run into a troll or lycanthrope or some other very commonly faced monster that's apparently immortal, once someone discovers the one way to kill it, they're going to make sure it's common knowledge. Exceptions might be something like rakshasa, who are know to hide their existence, so most people don't even know these guys exist, let alone their weaknesses. Or mimics, super common but you can kill them by hitting them a bunch. So most wouldn't know you can instantly negate their adhesive with alcohol.
Yeah, my thought as well. If trolls are a big enough problem in an area that the area is named after them, there will be stories. Now, there could be false stories as well so the PCs may have heard different tales like decapitation works, or you have to mutilate the body as much/more often than they heard fire works. But there *would* be stories of heroes and armies and travelers and stuff who defeated trolls with some secret or another. Also, Chill Touch in 5e which is a cantrip. So a good number of wizards also likely know of its effectiveness and have written it down somewhere.
Yeah I think it goes a long with vampires don't like sunlight and other things that really any kid would have heard stories or seen plays about growing up.
I feel like if made-up monsters’ weaknesses are common knowledge, it stands to reason that even more people would know their weaknesses if they _were_ real.
We forced a troll into a bag of holding. He essentially went into a hibernating state as we kept it closed. We got a nasty surprise when we forgot about partway through the campaign
@@ZenFr0g Unless swamp gas ;3 I used that as a context clue environmental in a session against a swamp troll one time. My players thankfully all played ignorant to their characters having zero knowledge of the fire and acid thing going into it and during the climatic fight the gas i described nonchalantly in the area bubbling from the water gave one of them an idea to light an arrow on fire and shoot it there after they got thee Troll near the water. Boom went the troll, it was epic. It was a reasonable thing for them to do it since their characters knew that explosives just do big damage and they weren't sure how to kill the damn thing.
Absolutely the common person would know a troll's weakness. 1: because of reality, ask a random person on the street how you kill a vampire for an example. 2: World building, if people didn't know how to deal with them, they'd had overrun all the towns and villages by now, so people MUST know how to keep their numbers down.
Maybe like pest control or captain of the guard. Not everyone irl knows how to deal with dangerous creatures unless they’re a daily problem for said citizen; like grabbing snakes or rabid animals. So I think as long as the dm keeps them rare and in low numbers it would be more of missing person case and not an Emu War - thus majority of a population wouldn’t know what they were
it's like pretty much everyone knows what to do if a bear approaches you, (brown lay down, black attack etc.) like maybe some people in cities wouldn't know, but any adventures above level 1 absolutely would know
@@DoABarrelRol1l we don't know how to deal with rabid animals or snakes because they have no magical weakness. If 100% of snakes could be incinerated by the sunlight, everyone in their mother would knew that
@@georgeuferov1497 and even without obvious weaknesses, lots of people know some of the more obscure mundane ones, like you can put pressure on a crocodiles mouth to make it unable to bite, or grab a snake by its tail or head to make it unable to bite you. Most of these aren't even necessary since humans are basically the only animals that use ranged combat and it counters everything else 99 percent of the time.
The phrase "Kill it with fire" should explain how fast people are willing to swap tactics when they see swords, arrows and even magic missiles aren't killing it. Fire and its massive of destructive power is well known to humans. Any average farmer knows that a raging fire is more dangerous than 1 sword. Rural areas have methods and means put in place to attempt to douse fires before they spread to houses or crops. Everybody knows fire is dangerous. I like putting in swap trolls, trolls that aren't affected adversely by fire but by cold, the frost "slows down" regeneration speed as it were and prevents the cells from reforming or reattaching. Trolls that have been experimented by a mage who have bolts like frankenstein's monster, fire and acid don't stop their regeneration but electricity will disrupt their "regenerative current". Burst growth troll was a fun one, if you deal 25% max hp it will grow a random limb in a burst of regeneration, 50% an arm 25% a leg, 25% a head. A leg gives it 10ft more movement, arm gives it another attack, head gives it a two head perk, much like an ettin, plus an extra bite attack. Also having trolls attack during rain is a must, if there's ever a long or intense rain storm have trolls roll out in packs 6 deep or more and get very aggressive. Rain will wash out most fires giving soaking wet creatures fire damage resistance, and could even "water down" acids depending on how you rule the severity of the rain. This is a double edged blade, they are more aggressive and roam in packs but because of the heavy rain and their loud hollering, the party can have bonuses to attempting to hide and avoid.
I remember when my DM had us get surprised by a Troll when we had no fire. He expected us to get a very hard encounter. The bard went Nu-huh and we fed him some deer Jerky my Ranger made. I had like 20 pounds ready for the long trip. So we passed but I was out of deer jerky for everyone. So I went to get more food and got fish. Back came the same Troll. We fed him again and had no food. This went on the whole journey till he Eventually just stopped attacking us and we just kept feeding him till he became a semi-party member.
@@monkeibusiness Clearly the troll was just smart enough to understand that allowing them to live meant that they could feed it more. It's like those things you do with kids where they can either have a candy right in the moment, or wait and have two. The troll gets more food in the long run by not eating them.
Osiris, not Isis. And I've 100% had plans for Troll's Blood Potions that let the troll regenerate if the drinker takes enough damage/hits 0, though the whole "being consumed" thing does put a damper in that plan
Almost makes more sense to let the troll regenerate if they _don't_ drink the potion (thereby exposing it to stomach acid) before the "donor" is killed
Not how it works, they are constantly rotting AND healing back the rotted flesh. it is a miserable existence hence why they throw themselves at anything and everything to try and die
Well, it's like a lot of those troll variants. Most things can kill a troll, just not on it's own. Necrotic seems to be more effective because rather than constantly damaging the troll (as it would anything else) it's being kept at bay by the regeneration. But its pushing its regeneration to its limit, so any further damage isn't getting repaired.
@@eddyeldridge7427 If said regenerarion has a limit. Imagine a troll envelopped by a slime that constantly eats it and growing more and more due to the constant regeneration
@974cerebrate there's a dnd monster I forget the name of whose gimmick is recreating things it ate. Anyway there's a story of one in which it ate a troll and created more. The idea being that it could endlessly feed on them and they could endlessly feed on each other. Wild stuff.
The biggest problem I have with Trolls isn't the "players need to figure out how beat them" but that one spell caster in the party can make them so trivial. Out of the last three games I've played with my players, there has always been one player who has either Acid Splash, Fire Bolt, or Produce Flame.
You could always throw a curveball at them, and have different damage types be the key to preventing it's regeneration. Either as a one-off unique variation, or maybe even have that be the standard of Trolls in your setting, with the fire+acid thing be a false rumor/superstition?
I imagine trolls were scarier monsters when wizard had to survive for half their career to get fireball and had no one fire attack apart from like summoning elementals or fire walls at higher levels
i would just make them immune to spells level 1 and below. that way they're still able to be killed by most parties, but now cantrips don't work on them, so dealing with them requires a finite resource.
This is pretty much exactly like Barroth from Monster Hunter. He's weak to fire, but rolls around in the mud which makes him heavily resistant to fire meaning that's it's actually not a bad idea to bring water weapons for when he is covered in mud. Not the only monster to do something like this either. I should totally throw something like this at my party
But if it's resistant that's now twice as much fire damage needed before it goes down. The deathblow is only on part, you gotta actually deal enough damage to drop it first, or them if you're feeling really chaotic and have multiple trolls lol This could be pretty fun to use! :)
Regenerating enemies run a thin line between annoying and terrifying. Wolverine is a small Canadian man with pointy claws but add in his healing factor and he suddenly is the best there is at ect.
Well regeneration, super strength, near-indestructible skeleton, even beyond regeneration, and natural weapons that slice through metal like cardboard. All together, it creates quite a package. Even on a Canadian.
My headcanon reason to explain the regeneration is that they’re basically teleporting severed cells back into place. The reason fire or acid is needed is because those are the only thing that will throughly destroy the cells on mass.
With my apologies for the pedantry, you mean "en masse". It's a borrowing from French, doncha know. The "en" is closer in meaning to "in" than "on". Anyway I like the idea but if they were just teleporting cells back into place, they shouldn't be able to regenerate from necrotic damage (necrosis=mass cell death). If we assume it's actually supernaturally-fast cell division, though, it would also explain their constant hunger. All that mass-energy gotta come from somewhere…
@@DaraelDraconis There is actually a necromancy cantrip that can kill a troll: Chill Touch. Chill Touch prevents regeneration, and a troll stays dead when it starts its turn at 0 hit points and doesn't regenerate. Note that "regenerate" is neither capitalized nor does it match the exact name of the ability, which is "Regeneration". Trolls die if something prevents them from regaining hit points at the start of the turn on which they have 0 hit points. I don't imagine that particular nuance would be common knowledge, but if you already have an ability,such as this cantrip, that prevents enemies from healing, it seems HIGHLY plausible that you would attempt to use it in this way.
@@theuncalledfor An excellent point in terms of players discovering it! My apologies for the delayed response, by the way. I'm not sure why it's particularly relevant to the fact that in the _general_ case, trolls can regenerate from necrotic damage, though, which is what the comment to which you replied was about…
Your remark about a troll eating a party's trail of breadcrumbs is very reminiscent of an illustration from a 1e corebook (I'm pretty sure it was the PHB, near the end). In it, a party is using the ball of string idea from Theseus in the Labyrinth... and a troll is following them, collecting the string.
I now want to see a troll pulling off some Andy abilities from Undead Unluck. Like using pressured blood to shoot a finger gun. Or better yet, cutting off its legs and flying around with a jet stream of blood.
I mean... Trolls being weak to fire and acid is relatively common knowledge to those of us who do not live in a world where these things are a problem. Now, consider that such a terrible creature would be immediately make an impression on any and all survivors. Even high level ones for being obnoxious to deal with. This information saves lives, and would be quickly passed around.
"Can we all agree that their vulnerability is just not something that would be common knowledge" I mean, sure, but fire as a damage type is so incredibly common that for the troll's ability to actually do something, you're basically required to not have a caster in your group, which... yeah, it's just not gonna happen, not in D&D. I had a party once that faced an entire faction of trolls without even realizing that they could regenerate, simply because at least half of them would throw fire at people as their default way of attacking. Even when I made them fight smarter trolls that lured them into underwater combat, all it did was make them annoyed that their main ways of dealing damage was now only half as effective, but they kept using it, because even a half damage Fireball is still better than Lightning Bolt.
That's what I was thinking the whole time. Even if I didn't know that it was the trolls weakness, I ALREADY kill everything with fire. Now if it could be killed by anything BUT fire, then I would be in trouble.
@@dododojo905 Trolls just aren't the guys to actually kill the party of adventurers on their own, but imagine if they are a henchmen to a bigger threat like lets say a Hag that can cast fire protection on them then its suddenly "haha im in danger" moment.
Speaking of Trolls, in my current campaign we have a Giant Empire based entirely on the idea of the Ordning as a cultural mandate for Giant kind to enlighten the small folk of the world through conquest. So since Trolls are lesser giants. The empire uses them as living siege ammo. One of the best attacks was them completely armored out in spiked armor and Giants tossing them like living boulders. That combined with Ogres as their expendable shock troops riding giant crabs to attack a port city as the party desperately tried to escape...it was a ton of fun.
I had a quest where my players fought a troll. They had no idea about its weaknesses and the most fun with them was them talking to NPCs about potential ways to kill a troll
One of my favorite encounters ive done a few times is a pair of trolls named Vern and Rod. A Venom Troll and a Rot Troll who are best buds. But in combat, the Rot Troll's aura triggers the Venom trolls "poison splash when taking damage" causing them to do little aoe bombs every single round. Its very funny when, at the end of the Rot Trolls turn, you say "everyone takes 11 damage. Including the Venom Troll, who explodes and does 9 more to everyone around him, including the Rot troll." They CAN be scary, but also they end up killing eachother pretty quick
I had a scenario where my players were ment to go to this fancy dinner party and do some espionage and it would turn into a murder mystery. They were levle one or two so to keep them from not going outside the event or avoiding it i said there was a troll in the woods. They ended up all deciding to lure the troll to the party with not a single failed stealth check the entire time they had to bait the troll with food. The campaign then turned into them running from thr law and being huge criminals bc the goverment thought they figured out trollomancy.
Wizards: Nah, I'd win. But for reals though, trolls are a giant dilemma in the D&D world. At what point does the DM say "ok, you suddenly know that trolls can be killed with fire or acid." There's nothing stopping a DM from just turning a troll into some glorified immortal snail situation. Then again, there's also nothing stopping players from leaving a game.
For what it's worth, "burn it to ash" is also a pretty common player reaction to something that doesn't seem to die. So it wouldn't take long for most PCs to come to that conclusion anyways. The real question becomes "Who was the smart cookie of the party and remembered to pack a bottle of oil and some flint & tinder?" Otherwise, that body is not going to burn quickly.
I mean, we have folklore about trolls on Earth and they’re not even real. Makes sense that any place that actually has to deal with real, live trolls is gonna have widely spread knowledge about how to keep them down. Otherwise, no one should know how to fight ANYTHING, and yet even a peasant farmer might reasonably know vampires burn in sunlight despite never having faced one. If trolls live in your area, you know how to keep trolls dead, if for no other reason than that annoying song the village children sing when they play hopscotch.
There is always at least one source of acid when a troll is present: its own stomach. Narrate a particularly good hit as piercing its belly, and the wound not closing as a dribble of digestive juices flows forth. Tada! The characters have a hint without rolling any knowledge skills or thinking to try fire or acid. They might target the belly (improvise a house rule for this dealing one point of acid damage on a solid hit, or something), or it might prompt them to try to remember what caused the wound not to close; either way they have a means of getting the information they need.
Strong disagree on the "it can regen from disintegrate" since at that point a sphere of annihilation wouldn't even do the job, and they're not immune to the chill touch cantrip shutting off their regeneration. I also don't think they're such an uncommon creature that an adventurer wouldn't know how to destroy one.
One cool idea is a villain who is intentionally modifying trolls, experimenting with different ways of destroying them, to see what fucked up powers they’ll develop.
Fun fact, trolls and dealing with them after they figure out how to offset their weaknesses to fire and acid is talked about a lot in book two of the Pathfinder kingmaker AP. Highly recommend for all troll goodness.
I love trolls, but I was kinda hoping for more. I do like the idea that whatever kills the troll becomes a part of the troll's own biology. Imagine a plain Jane Troll that gets abducted by an archmage or whatever and is used as a gladiatorial beast, slowly becoming more resistant to different elemental types. Seems like a cool idea for a unique variant of troll.
Time to homebrew a Troll King monster. Through a lifetime of combat its strength and durability has grown. Takes half damage from all attacks, nothing cancels regen, except for three rounds of fire damage taken after being reduced to zero. Basically, its not good enough to kill it with fire once. You have to kill it, then hit it with fire thrice more while its still dead or else it wont stay dead. Think of it as full cremation rather than burning to death.
@@ribry8512 Exactly like Doomsday. He is the concept of a troll taken to its logical extreme. Just instead of infinite rage, you'd have a being fueled by infinite hunger and given the power of a CR 20 bruiser or higher.
I've got some horrifying ideas for trolls. 1. Disintegrated the troll? It turns into a troll ooze and now it can engulf you like a gelatinous cube. 2. PW:K'ed a troll? It comes back as a zombie troll. Now it has to get hit by fire/acid but also now has the zombie's save mechanic as well! Also I think for fun I might make Strahd a troll, he already is one so why not make him a troll vampire. xD
There's a goblin in Warhammer Fantasy that managed to actually eat a troll. The regenerating meat almost burst out of him, but he managed to hold on long enough to digest it. This gave him the ability to regenerate. Despite how fat and slow he was, he was able to challenge orcs to fight, let their weapons get stuck in his big regenerating torso, and then just stab them while they were trying to pull it out. He ended up leading a massive orc army.
I think players and dms have LONG foregone a very important aspwct of ttrpgs and gaming in general. You can show something, aka that fire hurt bad because the troll happened to grab the torch that npc that escaped and atill has the scar when anything else heals perfectly. Or you can introduce a monster from thw safety of the town, city, guild, whatever where they may learn the "signs and symptoms" of the monster. It reportedly looks like this, it has done these things, etc etc. Then the party should either deduce what theyre fighring vua skill checks, or they can find information on monsters matching thia descriprion from a guild master, famed hunter, library, wizard, or even the bog witch or a devil. It solves a lot of the feelings of metagaming and is satisfying because then you can actually gather gear and weapons and spells that would actually work according to what youve deduced the enemy is going to be. I love doing that and often play characters who try to figure out an enemy before engaging it.
i once had a barbarian who's ritual was that he has to eat everything he kills, let others eat it or feed it to an animal. he got really mad when the others used gross stuff like acid or necrotic on his enemies, but he did in fact eat a troll once.
i always wondered why they always make trolls the big guys who constantly regenerate from almost any dmg done to them, like a cut off hand, ya they'll grow that back, or if they get a head cut off, no problem, but set on fire, damn they are done. but then i realize theres some ppl who make good stories based around that, warhammer being one of em or someone in the comments i read about a troll king and using his finger as a way to regrow himself back.
My first encounter with trolls was actually in 1 of the r.a salvatore drizzt books. I just remember dozens and dozens emerging around the party and relentlessly hunting and chasing them while staying just outside the range of their fire. It horrified me as a child and really colored how i played them in my campaigns once i began dming.
Personally I'd argue because trolls are so widespread that entire mountain ranges get names after them, their weaknesses to fire and acid should be well know
Had a DM put a troll in the underdark that lived in the dark lake. It would attack us while we were on a boat and remain underwater for nearly the entire combat, come slap us a little, then retreat back into the water. Troll pestered us for miles until we trapped it under rubble on a little island and finally put it down.
So D&D 3.5 had War Trolls, a slightly smarter troll variant that like armor and weapons and whose regeneration was only stopped by acid damage. 3.5 also had templates, one of them being half dragon. And a half black dragon was immune to acid damage. So I now had an unkillable monster thats like fighting the terminator. I sent this after my players after they stole a dagger from a wizard as a plot to kill the bbeg. Sure the players could damage it enough to down it but it would keep getting up and keep hunting them because they had stolen the dagger from his boss. Soon, after the first couple times he tracked them down, they realized it just kept coming so they devised ways to just delay it. Left it in a spike pit, buried it in a pit, built a bonfire around him, all sorts of things as they got to experience pursuit predation first hand. The kicker is the dagger they stole, while only a +1, did damage to max HP. They knew this, its why they stole it to kill the BBEG. They never once used it on the troll.
Your clips really helped illustrate your points. It wasn’t just for laughs, the pics and cut-away actually really helped my understanding. You put really effort into picking those
I like that, makes me think of sequestering severed troll parts before they can regenerate into different golem parts so that the head regrows into a helmet, torso into body armor, etc... To create a troll golem.
I literally just finished the entire basically playlist and all I can say is thank you. From Aboleths to Invincible Trolls every video was a delight. Please make more. :)
In a setting where trolls are commonly encountered, I imagine their weakness would also be spread like, pardon the pun, wildfire- possibly through some incident where trolls were used in raids or pitched battle and someone noticed the burned ones didn't get back up.
One of my locations; Trollbridge, is a whole city of trolls, but all of the architecture is just layers on layers of bridges that the Trolls use as houses, businesses, and everything else that you can use a normal building for.
The hunger of a soliditary troll knows no bounds but as in the pages of the Hobbit teachs a group of trolls can be tricked into arguing how to eat you till the sun comes up and they are stone.
I made trolls in my world have some nice counterparts that end up becoming part of the locals culture. Trolls will build bridges for locals and gaurd them, in exchange, the locals will pay "troll tolls" for the construction and gaurding of the bridge. Trolls are insentiviced to build solid bridges so more people are likely to cross, and the locals like the trolls more because instead of asking for gold they ask for goods (often they are fine with rotted food and such) and they will just stop you from crossing if you don't pay rather than killing you.
I kinda hate trolls. They're puzzle monsters where everyone knows the solution already. So any encounter with them has the party either flattening them with little difficulty, or trying to stay alive while playing mother-may-I as they wait to be allowed to win the encounter. Their thing is legit terrifying, but nobody's afraid of them.
I like the idea that there is a fixed number of trolls, so if you manage to kill one effectively, then a severed limb or a lost hair or something from another troll will grow into that troll. Fortunately, they have the memory of a goldfish.
I like the idea of a party killing a troll over and over again as it gradually gets stronger and keeps coming back every few levels, or maybe they don’t kill it right when they are low level, so it comes back as a horrible mutant a few levels later
Remnids me of a game where we decapitated a troll, then, before it could regenerate, put its head in a bag of holding. After lots of debate and back and forth, it was decided it couldn't regenerate whilst in the bag, so what we now had was essentailly a troll grenade. It would take a while to regenerate after lobbing the head, but would be a massive problem for whoever owned the building we threw it into.
My favorite combination is applying the half dragon template to trolls and seeing my party face a true abomination. A troll that breathes fire or acid, I think copper dragons are typically the tricksters or jokers of dragons so applying a half copper dragon to a troll it becomes something that wants you to make it laugh or it eats you.
one of my side quests is actually about a guy researching trolls and essentially he just keeps making more and more fucked up variants that become immune/resistant to more things with the final troll he makes (if the party doesnt stop him of course) would be a troll who was tortured by so many things and "killed" in so many ways that it ends up as a troll version of a chosen of their god, effectively making a troll powerful enough to kill most adult dragons 1v1 and possibly even some ancients depending on how powerful the party is when they find it
honestly, trolls have got to be the best balls of clay to just bend, shift, twist, and pull just to see what would happen from their regeneration alone.
In a campaign I'm running some dwarves had nearly slain a black dragon but were killed before they could finish it off. The dragon slunk off into a cave that was populated by a group of trolls. Despite taking heavy casualties the trolls killed and consumed the dragon, regenerating with draconic mutations such as random scales, horns and wings on top of some good old acid immunity. Grim stuff.
Maybe a big enough clump of troll matter can be posessed by a troll spirit that can be bothered. The spirit anchors to the material plane, the troll bits start growing into a troll. Usually happens between the freshly de-animated corpse and the troll spirit that got displaced from it against its will.
In Tormenta we have the Finntroll or Noble Troll. They are basicly the drow, but with the regeneration of trolls, 2 evil gods guiding then, a unhealth rivality with dwarfs, and they created the regular giant dumb troll as a failled experiment.
Great video! The wording on the ability is so open to interpretation with how it works, it really is DM to DM specific. I suppose if you want to interpret it you have to consider what is "A Troll". If you hold the arm of a troll can you say "This is a troll"? Well no, it's not... but if you hold the torso and head of a troll can you say "This is a troll"? I would say yes! In fact, I would even go so far as to say just the head... that's a physical interpretation. Or you could say that since the Troll has a soul, as long as "The Troll" exists in some fashion it will in fact come back eventually which as stated in the video there is a troll type like that.
One important thing to remember about Trolls, and any monster for that matter, is that the DM is not obliged to ever CALL IT a Troll. What is this gross, lanky giant attacking the party, trying to eat them? They don't know. The DM is either calling it by some highly specific name, like "the Bog Bastard" or "Hungry Henry", or is only referring to it by descriptors. It's especially hard to figure out, if the DM is being highly specific in those descriptors, in a way non-standard for the base monster. If the DM is just describing the art of the Troll from the monster manual, players who have read it will know right away. Any monster becomes more threatening when the players have no idea what it's "supposed" to be. Saying that it definitely is a named monster isn't scary, because it conjures up all kinds of familiar associations within the minds of players. Familiarity breeds contempt. If players don't know the Troll is a Troll, they're not going to jump immediately to fire or acid, unless that's their normal go-to. Which might buy the monster a couple rounds, before the players catch wise. Also, while Trolls aren't bright, you don't need to run them as mindless bags of (regenerating) hit points. Even instinctually, they'll act different when fire or acid are involved. A Troll doesn't fear anything, _except_ those two damage types. So if someone lights a torch or throws a firebolt, the Troll is going to retreat. Or else focus down whoever is wielding its banes. Or even fall back and start chucking rocks at them. Or hide in bodies of water (why do you think Trolls love bridges so much?). Remember, a Troll's banes only stop its healing for the turn it took that damage. It has the luxury of being able to retreat, and then attack over, and over, and over again. The party are the ones that have to expend time and resources to heal. Over a long enough timeframe, so long as the party are denied long rests, the Troll will win.
One of my more disgusting ideas for an NPC is a troll smuggler. Basically a "tamed" troll that decided it's actually easier to work for food than hunt for it. Local gang uses him for snuggling illegal products, paying him with food (of course). He essentially cuts deep holes in himself, put the stuff in, goes either to the city, or back into his swamp and uses his claws again to retrieve the things again. He has no idea he's doing something illegal, or that he's being paid far too little.
Oh my god, I never realized how easy it would be to make a troll some kind of recurring villain who gets more and more powerful as it adapts to each method the party used to kill it before
On the other hand, I like how many people default to the mindset that knowing the weakness of something automatically means they can deal with said thing 100% of the time. It makes for pretty good comedy when said solution isn't applied correctly or is made useless by other factors and they end up regretting their life choices seconds later.
as a DM I had trolls roll in brown mold. (killing with frost enough that they became immune to cold.) but since they were covered in brown mold, thye destroyed any fire within 10 feet, and had the mold leap from themselves to the caster if they were close enough. fun part. "it's a troll covered in some form of dirt-like mold."
I think switching up the damage types for seasoned players keeps things interesting. Alternately, make the particular fire or acid more restrictive but well known. An NPC mentions there might be trolls, take some alchemists fire or ooze acid. If the players try to cast spells to end it, they will discover they need those items at just the right time.
Firebolt. Acid splash. Produce flame. Create bonfire. Those are all cantrips that can kill a troll. Fire damage is just too common to think that no party with have access to at least one fire spell.
In terms of the 'What body part does the troll grow back from?' dilemma, my personal answer is all of the above. In fact this is the way that troll reproduce in my world, with other trolls fully growing out of severed body parts very slowly. So yes Runesmith, I am cloning my trolls, and there's nothing you can do about it.
I like to make my trolls fae because that just fits too me. I also give them the tactic of knowing that if they can run away and cone back later when your party is sleeping or unaware they sure as hell will. It's vert predatory which is on theme. Also being fea is an excuse to give them magic.
One overlooked way to bypass a lot of regeneration is suffocation. You can literally drown stuff to death that otherwise requries very specific mechanics to kill it.
@@THEPELADOMASTERDepends on the situation. If someone's argument about what happens start with "Well technically" then nobody at the table is having fun. But "We drown the beast immune to all blades and magic" is at least a creative solution.
@@RobertPatrician sure, if you want to ignore all the mechanics. A troll can hold their breath for 6 minutes, and won't die from suffocation. Even if you ignore the 6 minutes part, maybe you caught it by surprise, it still won't die from suffocation. It'll keep coming back.
@@THEPELADOMASTER "When a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can’t regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again."
fun fact regarding troll regeneration that idea came from three hearts and three lions by poul anderson. the novel is basically a western isekai and the inspiration for several elements in dnd (paladin, law, chaos etc).
Warhammer Fantasy Trolls are just as terrifying, if not moreso, than DND trolls. They use their regeneration to their advantage, in times of famine, wherein they quite literally self-cannibalize to satiate their hunger. Not eat another troll, *eat themselves.* Stone Trolls also straight up eat rocks, which makes them near-immune to magic and even *harder* to kill. Worst part is they feel the pain and uncomfort of eating rocks, they just don't care and wanna be full.
See I like the idea that trolls reproduce by dropping parts, and begin putting energy in the form of fat into a body part and dropping it. This meaning from time to time with troll who have particularly strong regeneration you might lop off a limb only to watch in horror as that limb spawns a whole new troll.
This reminds me of an ettin warlord I once made: part of his plan was feeding a bunch of magical stuff to trolls to make super soldiers. He had a whole lab set up with a bunch of captive trolls, and kept feeding them different creatures. Dragon meat for elemental resistance, fey creatures for magic resistance, all sorts of stuff.
There's a Troll I like in Kobold Presses' Creature Codex called the Sand Troll. It's kinda looks like it's made out of sand and rock and can swim through sand. The biggest difference to them is that fire and acid does nothing to them, but they're instead weak to water.
I actually had a recurring troll villian who for some reason the dice loved; he never left his bridge but the party kept trying to kill him untill they finally did at like level 12. Only to find that he regenerated later and was still harassing the merchants.
I imagine a scenario where a wizard entombed a troll using Flesh to Stone, but the troll kept regenerating - albeit slowly - out of the original statue, and panicked, the Wizard would occasionally keep casting the spell on the statue. Over the years, this statue has become a monstrosity like no other, and there are now dark and foul parties at work attempting to free this new beast so it might cause havoc once more. Their first step is to take out one single now very-old and very-paranoid wizard who casts Flesh to Stone a few times every year, and serves as the guardian of the statue.
Trolls in Warhammer Fantasy are just like the ones in D&D. One of the most famous goblin warlords in the setting's history, Grom the Paunch, was originally just a normal, scrawny gobbo, until he accidentally ate raw troll meat. The flesh tried to regenerate in his gut, forcing Grom to eat more and more food in an attempt to digest it before it could. This eventually caused Grom to grow to immense size, both in girth and height, becoming bigger than even Orcs.
