Troll Thread

[abcd_z]

To be fair, it was never intended to be a genuine troll thread and I'm perfectly okay with the topic shifting to something more relevant to the board.

I wasn't entirely thrilled with the accompanying insults, but I guess haters gonna hate.

[abcd_z]

[Black Vulmea]

My Minarian campaign has a Troll Kingdom in it--a confederation of large or larger humanoids.

I liked having the trolls as allies when I played Divine Right back in the day. They pose an immediate threat to Port Lork, The Pits, and the Walled City of Adeese - ally with Skoagg, then send your ambassador to raise a mess of barbarians, and take Hothior's, Zorn's, or Shucassam's capital in a turn or two. Good times.

Troll hunter. Not super recent, but a great movie about a modern troll hunter working as a government employee. You can see it on netflix if you're so inclined. It is so much better than it has any right to be.

Very, very entertaining movie. Monster hunters as game wardens - there's a d20 Modern campaign right there.

This raises an interesting question: how much can you change a troll before it is no longer recognizably a troll?

Y'know, changing a troll's vulnerabilities but leaving everything else pretty much the same is nowhere in the same ballpark as making them "human from a different dimension with grey skin, candy-corn horns, the occasional psionic ability, a caste system based on blood color, and a bizarre reproductive system," so what's your fucking point again, exactly?

. . . the works of John Bauer . . .

Those are beautiful.

Interesting a troll thread threadjacked by a discussion on Trolls. Only on this site!

*bows*

[Panjumanju]

I was really hoping this was about actual RPG related trolls since I'm considering running a Forgotten Realms game.

How do you guys make trolls interesting at the table?

I give them all working-class British turn-of-the-century cockney accent.
Also, being able to grow back limbs is a great surprise when a player first fights one.
All my players love encountering trolls.

//Panjumanju

[thedungeondelver]

My favorite published encounter with trolls is the nest of like...I want to say there's 20-30 lurking in a chamber in G1, in the dungeon area.  

I like it because it's as though Gary said "Look, your DM has probably been screwing with you guys with Trolls for the last two, maybe three years while you get high enough level to do something about it.  You know what to do, here." (e.g., lob a fireball spell into the room).

[Bedrockbrendan]

WTF. This thread is closed.

[Bedrockbrendan]

Re-opening as long as it remains about gaming.

[rway218]

We added trolls as optional enemies for Salem World for the Hardcover and current release.  They are one of the most overlooked, sometimes wrongly used encounter that a GM has at their disposal.  Think of modifying the base abilities in a D&D campaign enough for lower level groups to succeed (and lower the XP as well).  It will get them the in game information they need for a full version encounter later.

By the way, I too wandered on here thinking it was a "Troll" thread about trolls not trolls... ugh... so confusing...

[jeff37923]

The most fun I have ever had with trolls in game was when I assumed that they were just like a toy and detach limbs to put together smaller creatures out of them. A smart troll tears its hand off, removes and eye and an ear, then puts them together to be a spy crawler which watches the PCs before coming back to the source troll and reattaching to download the information gathered.

[Black Vulmea]

The most fun I have ever had with trolls in game was when I assumed that they were just like a toy and detach limbs to put together smaller creatures out of them. A smart troll tears its hand off, removes and eye and an ear, then puts them together to be a spy crawler which watches the PCs before coming back to the source troll and reattaching to download the information gathered.

That's awesome.

I think one of the things with (A)D&D trolls, absent a critical hit table, is that the referee needs to figure out how friable trolls are, in order to really take advantage of things like heads or claws attacking on their own. I usually rule that an attack with a slashing weapon like a sword or an axe which causes damage equal to or greater than 6 HTK lops off a limb or the head - a headless troll will move in a random direction each turn until it comes into contact with something, at which point it attacks, which can result in a headless troll attacking one of its mates.

Trolls should also take advantage of this, using lopped off heads and claws like thrown missile weapons.

[Ronin]

Second, change up the vulnerabilities. Trolls who are injured by salt or iron filings instead of fire and acid appeared in campaigns I ran.

I love the idea of iron filings. It totally fits (at least in my head) with unseely court fae. I dig that very much.

[Ronin]

Very, very entertaining movie. Monster hunters as game wardens - there's a d20 Modern campaign right there.

Insert game x instead of d0 modern, and I'm in. All fucking in!:)

[rway218]

I'm leaving a link to a story (video) about glow worms in a Cave system.  This could be a great set up to a troll encounter, giving the visuals of the opening up to the point is becomes a water covered floor.  Even past that, I'm going to start on rules for these worms for Salem World as monsters themselves.  Trust me you will get some good ideas from this.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/wonder/enter-the-cave-of-glowing-worms/vi-BBxVTpr?ocid=spartandhp

[Old One Eye]

This raises an interesting question: how much can you change a troll before it is no longer recognizably a troll?

If I defined a troll as, for example, a human from a different dimension with grey skin, candy-corn horns, the occasional psionic ability, a caste system based on blood color, and a bizarre reproductive system, is it still a troll?

I see trolls as having about the least defined platonic form of any mythical creature.  When I played the troll in 5th grade Three Goats Gruff performance, my outfit was nothing at all like a DnD green, rubbery, regenerating giant.

So for me, humanoid is about all needed for a troll.

[Black Vulmea]

I see trolls as having about the least defined platonic form of any mythical creature.

And yet they are better defined for D&D than just about any other 'giant class' creature, as they come almost verbatim from Three Hears and Three Lions.