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.
Part of DnD's conception of trolls come from Three Hearts & Three Lions, a novel that also basically codified the Paladin. But indeed, it's good to go beyond the Monster Manual, and dig deep into traditional folklore. I especially like the bit about turning to stone in sunlight.
@@Bluecho4 yeah. Because the DnD Trolls for me are not Trolls you know. I heard tales of Trolls being crafty, ugly and greedy, they could use magic and trickery to confuse woodsmen and lure them away, but Trolls could also be beutiful and interbreed with humans, they also kidnapped human kids and exchanged them for their own ugly offsprings, Chanelings. Some trolls was also benevolent.Trolls lived in deep dark forest or mountains and they would hoard gold and trinkets.
@@markusnavergard2387 It's worth remembering that mythical creatures being divided into discreet categories, with standardized traits, is a relatively modern invention. Traditionally, names are used interchangeably, or get applied broadly. "Troll" in the context you describe more or less means "fae creature", in much the way "fairy" does. What a troll actually IS can be a nebulous thing, because the common people who believed in their existence had neither the ability nor inclination to standardize their terms.
Aren't the trolls that the gods (Odin and them) used to fashion Fenris's indestructible threadlike chain similar to AD&D's Dwarves? I created Beach (amphibious) Dwarves in Loom of Magus based upon those master metalsmiths. Other tolls of Nordic folklore would easily fall under AD&D's Brownies and other fey folks.
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 :)
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 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.
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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.
" they are natrual enemies, like Dwarves and Trolls, or elves and trolls, or humans and trolls, or Trolls and Trolls, damned trolls they ruined Trolldom!"
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Brutal, i'm definitely stealing this. Imagine a slave culture that is deathly afraid of all food. Maybe having a specific name for the trolls created this way & have an ideology preaching about the more evil of glutony in an absolute extreme. Hell maybe even a proper two caste system, where the mages make potions from the same trolls to offset the cellular damage from aging via regeneration(with a side effect being that, if a mutant troll tastes even a single drop of their blood, it will hunger & hunt for them to the exclusion of everything else - akin to a blood hound). Making the mages themselves eat 10x as much food. Hell why not have a second side affect of invert troll physiology where the more they eat, the more intelligent they become on the flipside of a normal diet makes them as stupid as a troll is. And invent a mythos of original sin, as the false explanation for the state of the slaves existence. So they live to serve.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Personally i think troll sorcerer hags are overkill, and people accuse me alot of overkill monsters. Trope wise it's perfect so i commend you, but game wise troll sorcerer hags is a nightmare scenario, i'd actually save that for a B.B.E.G. as it's the kind of creature that would almost certainly survive to become a warlock patron or something(It would have very few weakness - as a troll. And it would be paranoid and develop counter strategies to those weakness as a hag.). Besides that though, DO IT. 😈😈😈 I'd say polymorph not illusion because you'd litterally be able to sniff them out.
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.
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.
@Regular Slime Not all Lizardfolk need to have the same mindset. I play a Lizardfolk barbarian and he got banned from his tribe for his different way of thinking. He is now trying the hardest to act like a "true Lizardfolk" to find his way back home. (Which is by the way Barovia.) The idea is he will get a vision (A part of becoming a druid) where he sees a world ruled by repitlian races. And that changes his goals and he accept his different way of thinking.
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
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.
Some homebrew campaigns do. Those are usually DM Tolkein fans where their trolls are more humanlike and far more intelligent than classic trolls. Defeating them in those encounters is supposed to be suicide of you try it via combat. The idea is to delay them until dawn and then shatter the light barrier. Those trolls turn back to flesh (painfully) after spending most of the night out of the sun, converting back to flesh and (if needed) reforming their body. That gives them very little time to find a place to hide from sunlight before they are petrified again.
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!
It'd be hard to keep them from turning in on themselves though, they'd have to be in a state of perpetual war with their... "cusine". I'd have them working like orcs(no farming, only hunting, raiding and pillaging) except worse, akin to a vaes dothrak vibe for their kingdom. They'd need a massive range of humanoid kingoms to sac, continously. And they couldn't tollerate the existence of other trolls that weren't working for them(they'd hunt, kill and eat them).
@@thedarkmaster4747 They are smarter than your average orc though. But I think your plan sounds practical for the transitionary period before they get used to higher levels of technology.
Zander Field Yeah I got that, but I meant wouldn't you choose Giants as your favored enemies so troll would be included? It's like someone choosing zombies as their favored foe, instead of choosing all undead yeah? (On the subject of regeneration, you now know one reason why my characters always have a couple of vials of acid and alchemist's fire at all times. Then there's other things you can do to make foes unable to recover health until certain effects wear off.)
Nickolas Holmes oh sorry dude. I don't know actually, I haven't played anything newer than 3.5 and I'm not familiar with the new rules. In 3.5 giants and trolls are separate. I really need try 5e. The PC races are amazing.
Also, the sheer physical might from a slender lanky one is the stuff of nightmares. In Loom of Magus, that is what I usually go for. They are absurdly strong for their size and build.
Yep they are, and with their different variants brother you do alot. An idea that came have a frost giant tribe mix with troll's tribe have make that abomination in MToF
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.
To be fair, regeneration doesn't heal non-hitpoint damage (like ability reduction from are) or hitpoint damage from sources like starvation and exhaustion, at least in PF/3.5. I imagine as giants that rarely die from battle and don't suffer from natural wear and tear, they do live quite a long time, though. Part of me wonders if they suffer from things like cancer, with so much extra cell replication.
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.
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.
Kendrick Roche Lanzot In a Home Brew game of mine, Hags are the offspring of Troll Matrons and Fomorian Kings. So I typically used the three together. It makes for some intense battles.
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"
AJ Pickett Not sure if you watch Court of Swords, but it sounded pretty much like the Half-Orc character named Berg. You and GassyMexican either use the same program or have accidentally stumbled up on the same voice.
According to one video I've seen, they can infest themselves with parasites like that to give them a convenient source of 'snacks'. Not sure if that's canon, but it's disgusting enough that I like it
Only 3? - a hand, foot or even just an eyeball can grow an entire troll, and not many parties go sifting through swamp muck to find all the bits they carved off in order to cremate the ugly
@@joewhite6844 No mage and a group of newbros? In that case, it can stay dead when you burn the corpse, instead of making you find every piece big enough to twitch. Sounds like a fun set of encounters - everyone should remember their 1st time getting "Trolled"
When I DM'd with a new group, I experienced the same from the other side. I had the same troll they could not figure out how to kill for real stalk them. To it, it was personal... kill those who humiliated it at any cost, eating them was dessert.
I might have missed it, but I think you skipped over the origins of trolls and how they may or may not have been created in various worlds. You also didn't mention the mutative properties of trolls and the effect thier diet has on them. I always enjoy listening to your content, but this video is more of a comprehensive list of kinds of trolls throughout the generations than a lore video.
Although my example is a base and not an acid it is acid/base chemistry: one of the easiest sources for a strong base would be pot ash from a campfire. Or maybe just a cantrip lol
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!
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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.
Part of DnD's conception of trolls come from Three Hearts & Three Lions, a novel that also basically codified the Paladin.
But indeed, it's good to go beyond the Monster Manual, and dig deep into traditional folklore. I especially like the bit about turning to stone in sunlight.
@@Bluecho4 yeah. Because the DnD Trolls for me are not Trolls you know. I heard tales of Trolls being crafty, ugly and greedy, they could use magic and trickery to confuse woodsmen and lure them away, but Trolls could also be beutiful and interbreed with humans, they also kidnapped human kids and exchanged them for their own ugly offsprings, Chanelings. Some trolls was also benevolent.Trolls lived in deep dark forest or mountains and they would hoard gold and trinkets.
@@Bluecho4 Intro from a old cartoon based on Scandinavian Folklore. ua-cam.com/video/bZiA3mJLPJ8/v-deo.html
@@markusnavergard2387 It's worth remembering that mythical creatures being divided into discreet categories, with standardized traits, is a relatively modern invention. Traditionally, names are used interchangeably, or get applied broadly. "Troll" in the context you describe more or less means "fae creature", in much the way "fairy" does. What a troll actually IS can be a nebulous thing, because the common people who believed in their existence had neither the ability nor inclination to standardize their terms.
Aren't the trolls that the gods (Odin and them) used to fashion Fenris's indestructible threadlike chain similar to AD&D's Dwarves? I created Beach (amphibious) Dwarves in Loom of Magus based upon those master metalsmiths. Other tolls of Nordic folklore would easily fall under AD&D's Brownies and other fey folks.
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 :)
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.
Tell us more!!! How did you set it up? How did the battle go? Details!!!
"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.
Maybe starving trolls eat themselves to death? Think about it? Diminishing returns. So if you can trap one, you inevitably kill it.
Imagine a huge or colossal troll, thinking attack on titan
getting bigger and having an unending hunger as a result is more of a wendigos thing
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.
Simply seal him in molten lead and toss him into a Dragons hoard
Ya gotta pay the troll toll!!
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You forgot to mention the most fearsome troll of all the dreaded “internet troll”.
Out from under the bridge at last. Thanks Professor!
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.
The troll has always been one of my top favorite mythical creatures.
I gave this vid a like just for that awesome intro
The audio was so bad I skipped the intro
Huge fan dude, I hope UA-cam compansates you well for your hardwork bringing so many inspiration for their campaigns
Trolls are my faves and you’re my fave D&D UA-camr. A match made in heaven
Trolls are one of my faves... might be my faves (I am flighty). But other than that, I totally agree.
Awaken! Awaken! Mustakrakish, the lake troll!
“TROLL!!! IN THE DUNGEON!!! Thought you ought to know.”
Come on guys, I’m disappointed no one else said it.
Ten points to- *insert house name here*
AmigoRoberto “The house of El!”-Superman
“Hate trolls.
Everyone hates trolls. Even trolls hate trolls.”
That’s legit a mood right there mate.
" they are natrual enemies, like Dwarves and Trolls, or elves and trolls, or humans and trolls, or Trolls and Trolls, damned trolls they ruined Trolldom!"
@@markusnavergard2387 You mad, bro? :P
@@BigusGeekus not really
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.
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.
Another high quality video with an amazing narrative intro. This video and the Demogorgon video prove that you should consider doing D&D audiobooks.
I loved that intro.
Same here! ^^
Wanted it to go thurther though.
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.
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.
Remember to bring along some fire or acid
A wineskin full of troll blood? Great idea, but you have to sell it before the wineskin grows arms, legs and a head...
Maybe if you cut it with a weak acid, like vinegar or citrus, you can halt the regeneration?
Love the vid especially the intro. Almost felt like I was there.
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.
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
I really enjoy these lore videos. Thanks for making these
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.
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
Love when you open with mood setting stories🤩
Ps. 17:32 Dear Gods. . .
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.
Ah, trolls. An oldie, but a good one.
AJ, are you Trolling us!?! 😂🤣🤘🏼
This video is relelvent to my interests.
U gotta pay the Troll Toll!!
There are alternative routes to the boys hole brother, this imposed toll is dated
Zeta H8 slaya - Heeeey!! Somebody knows what I was talking about!! Cool.
Zeta H8 slaya - Now I have to watch it again.
I really enjoyed this video. I have always had a special place in my heart for these critters. Well done sir! Thanks again
You trolled us good that time!
You brought the froud trolls into it. Those things scared the crap out of me as a kid.
Great more internet Trolls. Some start a blog so we can flame them. Thanks for another great vid AJ. 👍
Clever but...
Troll...
Lolololololololololol
Troll lololololol
Ha ha ha ha hoooo
Flaming won't work on fire trolls though.
Oh yes, first sessions ever we fought troll, as a punishment for weeding down some important flower field.. of flowers...
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.
Also, there was a custom spell called 'Dominate Troll' that was harder for Trolls to resist.
That sounds awesome
I'm gonna steal it!
Brutal, i'm definitely stealing this. Imagine a slave culture that is deathly afraid of all food. Maybe having a specific name for the trolls created this way & have an ideology preaching about the more evil of glutony in an absolute extreme. Hell maybe even a proper two caste system, where the mages make potions from the same trolls to offset the cellular damage from aging via regeneration(with a side effect being that, if a mutant troll tastes even a single drop of their blood, it will hunger & hunt for them to the exclusion of everything else - akin to a blood hound). Making the mages themselves eat 10x as much food. Hell why not have a second side affect of invert troll physiology where the more they eat, the more intelligent they become on the flipside of a normal diet makes them as stupid as a troll is. And invent a mythos of original sin, as the false explanation for the state of the slaves existence. So they live to serve.
Can-o-Troll, The Never-ending Meal! Just make sure you cook it thoroughly and close the can when you're done with it.
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.
Aka a gnoll
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.
I loved running that for my players back in the day. Still have that issue too.
@@darrenp9454 yeah!
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.
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.
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.
Personally i think troll sorcerer hags are overkill, and people accuse me alot of overkill monsters. Trope wise it's perfect so i commend you, but game wise troll sorcerer hags is a nightmare scenario, i'd actually save that for a B.B.E.G. as it's the kind of creature that would almost certainly survive to become a warlock patron or something(It would have very few weakness - as a troll. And it would be paranoid and develop counter strategies to those weakness as a hag.). Besides that though, DO IT. 😈😈😈 I'd say polymorph not illusion because you'd litterally be able to sniff them out.
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
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 troll is my spirit animal
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.
@Regular Slime Not all Lizardfolk need to have the same mindset. I play a Lizardfolk barbarian and he got banned from his tribe for his different way of thinking. He is now trying the hardest to act like a "true Lizardfolk" to find his way back home. (Which is by the way Barovia.)
The idea is he will get a vision (A part of becoming a druid) where he sees a world ruled by repitlian races. And that changes his goals and he accept his different way of thinking.
Seem like spiderman plot
@@Redrung I'm aware that this like the most often used plot of Green Goblin stories XD
But i wasn't thinking about that while writing my comment.
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
Kyler Black Cool
"I'm a bad troll, a very bad troll." -some troll, a Troll in Central Park
This explains internet trolls completely
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.
One of the greatest monsters of all time I absolutely love them as part of the world
Troll...
Lolololololololololol
Troll lololololol
Ha ha ha ha hoooo
They're Eating her! And then they're gonna eat me! Oooooooh myyyyyyy Gaaawwwwsh!
@@llewelynshingler2173 imagine, instead of heavy breathing, all you hear in the darkness during an ambush:
*Trolling Music intensifies*
@@TerrariaGolem that's even more terrifying!
They knew they were in trouble when they detected trolls. Without acid, or fire, you are just food. EDITED for autocorrect nonsense.
I've been looking forward to this one
This gives encourages adventurers to be troll hunters. You have to get them all.
Aka the barbarian is directly responsible for the troll horde overrunning the town.
Great voice ! I’d buy audiobooks that you narrated.
Maybe one day!
I'm surprised trolls don't have the classic weakness of turning to stone in sunlight
Some homebrew campaigns do. Those are usually DM Tolkein fans where their trolls are more humanlike and far more intelligent than classic trolls. Defeating them in those encounters is supposed to be suicide of you try it via combat. The idea is to delay them until dawn and then shatter the light barrier. Those trolls turn back to flesh (painfully) after spending most of the night out of the sun, converting back to flesh and (if needed) reforming their body. That gives them very little time to find a place to hide from sunlight before they are petrified again.
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!
It'd be hard to keep them from turning in on themselves though, they'd have to be in a state of perpetual war with their... "cusine". I'd have them working like orcs(no farming, only hunting, raiding and pillaging) except worse, akin to a vaes dothrak vibe for their kingdom. They'd need a massive range of humanoid kingoms to sac, continously. And they couldn't tollerate the existence of other trolls that weren't working for them(they'd hunt, kill and eat them).
@@thedarkmaster4747 They are smarter than your average orc though. But I think your plan sounds practical for the transitionary period before they get used to higher levels of technology.
I don't always play a Ranger but when I do Trolls are my favored enemy.
Zander Field Wouldn't it be Giants, but you could fluff it as troll?
Nickolas Holmes no dude I absolutely hate trolls. I think it's their regenerative abilities that pissed me off so much. If not trolls it's undead.
Zander Field Yeah I got that, but I meant wouldn't you choose Giants as your favored enemies so troll would be included?
It's like someone choosing zombies as their favored foe, instead of choosing all undead yeah?
(On the subject of regeneration, you now know one reason why my characters always have a couple of vials of acid and alchemist's fire at all times.
Then there's other things you can do to make foes unable to recover health until certain effects wear off.)
Nickolas Holmes oh sorry dude. I don't know actually, I haven't played anything newer than 3.5 and I'm not familiar with the new rules. In 3.5 giants and trolls are separate. I really need try 5e. The PC races are amazing.
Zander Field Honestly, I think I would prefer 3.5 due to the complexity it has versus the oversimplification of 5e.
Always preferred the slender lanky ones. Thick muscular ones don't seem as creepy while stalking people.
Agreed.
Also, the sheer physical might from a slender lanky one is the stuff of nightmares. In Loom of Magus, that is what I usually go for. They are absurdly strong for their size and build.
Oh boy, trolls are the best creatures.
Yep they are, and with their different variants brother you do alot.
An idea that came have a frost giant tribe mix with troll's tribe have make that abomination in MToF
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.
To be fair, regeneration doesn't heal non-hitpoint damage (like ability reduction from are) or hitpoint damage from sources like starvation and exhaustion, at least in PF/3.5.
I imagine as giants that rarely die from battle and don't suffer from natural wear and tear, they do live quite a long time, though. Part of me wonders if they suffer from things like cancer, with so much extra cell replication.
Everytime I hear that intro I think I miss clicked and an watching some news channel.
I own two troll minis one plastic. one old school ral partha.both got pointy noses.adding vid to my dnd playlist
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.
Any idea on a source? I'm curious
@@playtoyx It was a home brew i think.
I've seen plenty of these bois on the internet.
*That joke was even bad by my standards....*
Trolls?
Aren't there enough of those on UA-cam?
Too funny 🤣😅🤣😅🤣😅
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.
Kendrick Roche Lanzot They pair nicely with Hags as well.
@@Im-Not-a-Dog hey, I didn't think of that, best try that some time.
Kendrick Roche Lanzot In a Home Brew game of mine, Hags are the offspring of Troll Matrons and Fomorian Kings. So I typically used the three together. It makes for some intense battles.
As we also know trolls are quite attracted to careers in the border customs department and road regulation.
*Relevant and Supportive Comment*
*Internet Troll Reply*
My favorite d&d troll is the Venom Troll, because of what it adds to a combat encounter
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"
What voice mod app did you use for the hobgoblin ranger in the intro?
its just my voice with a lower pitch, I use Audacity for all my audio.
AJ Pickett Not sure if you watch Court of Swords, but it sounded pretty much like the Half-Orc character named Berg.
You and GassyMexican either use the same program or have accidentally stumbled up on the same voice.
@@Im-Not-a-Dog the truth is... I am actually a troll. Well, part troll, part dire Hobbit.
The first monster I ever used that caused an inadvertent TPK. Still feel bad about it. Troll had three consecutive nat 20s.
I let a troll out of its cage to distract some guards at a party of nobles once in my friends campaign good times
What happens when a troll is infected with rot grubs? My guess is that the outcome can only be horrible.
According to one video I've seen, they can infest themselves with parasites like that to give them a convenient source of 'snacks'. Not sure if that's canon, but it's disgusting enough that I like it
Thought the etten was a gaint, plus my level 5 party is fighting 2 trolls rn
Time to go hunt some trolls
To AJ and the commenters, what’s your favorite greenskin? Orcs, hobgoblins, goblins, ogres, trolls, so many to choose from.
Weeeelll... in the D&D context, only one of those has green skin, so, trolls.
Don't orcs have grayish green skin?
@@zacharygadzinski3147 just gray.
I like goblins because they beg for their lives
trolls are crazy enemies to good!!! always dreaded fighting them!
Is this contentedness that I'm feeling? Strange indeed.
So the Hulk + Wolverine + Elemental power. Great so opposing elements are their greatest weaknesses.
When I 1st started playing, we had the same troll showed up for 3 sessions before we killed it..
Only 3? - a hand, foot or even just an eyeball can grow an entire troll, and not many parties go sifting through swamp muck to find all the bits they carved off in order to cremate the ugly
@@muninrob we had no mage in the party at the time so yea. Beside we was all new to the game back then.
@@joewhite6844 No mage and a group of newbros? In that case, it can stay dead when you burn the corpse, instead of making you find every piece big enough to twitch.
Sounds like a fun set of encounters - everyone should remember their 1st time getting "Trolled"
When I DM'd with a new group, I experienced the same from the other side. I had the same troll they could not figure out how to kill for real stalk them. To it, it was personal... kill those who humiliated it at any cost, eating them was dessert.
What no Troll kin? 😋
wait, aren't ettin the literal runt of the giants? and unrelated to orcs aside from the the orc's belief of a relationship?
There is some confusion between the mythology and reality of the Ettins origins.
Interesting that the intro story has a *hobgoblin* Ranger. Used to be, they were the 'bad guys'. Kinda like Trolls are here...
Oh they can be bad all right, but some are raised outside of goblinoid culture.
@@AJPickett Or mercenary trackers...
I might have missed it, but I think you skipped over the origins of trolls and how they may or may not have been created in various worlds.
You also didn't mention the mutative properties of trolls and the effect thier diet has on them.
I always enjoy listening to your content, but this video is more of a comprehensive list of kinds of trolls throughout the generations than a lore video.
Would stomach acid suffice, or vinigar? What is the ph potensy suppose to be
Stomach acid in a human is not sufficient to kill Troll flesh.
I suppose it needs to be corrosive enough to be damaging
has to be enough to do at least 1 point of damage every round, stomach acid probably wouldn't be enough, not human stomach acid at least
Stomach acid has a pH of 1 or 2, iirc, lemon juice has a pH of 2. pH doesn't always translate into how corrosive it really is.
Although my example is a base and not an acid it is acid/base chemistry: one of the easiest sources for a strong base would be pot ash from a campfire. Or maybe just a cantrip lol
good video AJ
Thanks for the vid sir.👍🏼👍🏼
I love trolls always did, other than Goblins they are my first monster love way back when.
well, they look kinda goblinoid, don't they?
Now that i think about it i think i had some weird green guy thing lol. Goblins, trolls...hell i even green slimes the forbidden lime jello
Halt! Pay the troll toll to scroll.
My favorite is the war troll from 3.5 nasty creature lol
What was the party composition of the party in the story?
Hobgoblin ranger, Dwarven fighter acolyte, human evocation wizard.
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!