D&D Creature Feature: Trolls

I love trolls. They are gross, smell bad, and drive engagement with circular arguments based on personal preference that I can milk endlessly to get the number of comments on each video up… Oh! Wait, that’s next episode. Today we are talking about D&D Trolls, who are just as fun to engage with as a DM, especially when used on a party who have not battled them before. 

Bashing quickly through the basic stat changes before we embark on their Chaotic Evil new abilities, we find a tougher, harder-hitting baby member of the Giant family. Still AC15 but now with 94 nominal HP, up 10 from 2014, like other creatures in the 2024 Monster Manual, Trolls have lost their two different damage Bite/Claw attacks for a single Rend attack. The good news for DM’s is all 3 now do 2d6+4 damage, which is a slight buff… AND now have a 10ft reach, making for a nasty opportunity attack surprise for the 2014 player who thinks they know it all.

Gone is the Keen Smell ability, replaced with, again, a boosted Passive Perception up 3 points (the proficiency bonus) from 12 to 15, putting trolls on a much higher alert. While their speed is still a modest 30ft for a Large-sized creature, they have a new Bonus Action called Charge, which allows them to move half their speed, 15ft, as long as it is directly towards a tasty-looking foe. That’s ON TOP of a Dash action giving Trolls a 75ft max movement per turn.

Then, of course, we come to their signature ability, damage regeneration, which I am also happy to say has been beefed up! At the start of each of their turns, Trolls now recover 15HP per turn, up from 10, unless, as before, they suffered fire or acid damage. I still remember the first time I pitted Smacky the Barbarian in single hand-to-hand combat with “Mr Scratchy” to win the allegiance of his ancestral tribe. The half-orc must have splattered the pet troll into mush 4 times and was nearly dead before he worked out he needed to throw the corpse in the raging bonfire I’d placed in the middle of the arena for him… argh Home Game memories… 

Smacky stands (finally) victorious vs Mr Scratchy the Troll

Lastly, the “Loathsome Limb” ability, which was an optional sidebar in 2014, has been moved into the core stat block and, fortunately, has been made MUCH simpler. Seriously, the old version was so complex it took up half a page, and I can’t even go into it here, but every possible combination of leg, arm and even head dismemberment was covered, each with different effects on combat. A DM nightmare to track…and thus ignored. Now, it’s much more user-friendly and hilariously fun. 4x a day when the Troll is bloodied, a returned 4^th edition term meaning below half of its max HP, and it receives 15 slashing damage in a turn, it loses a limb, gains a level of the Exhaustion condition, and that limb becomes its own independent REGENERATING creature, the Troll Limb! Flavour it how you will, the Troll Limb has its own stat block, can move 20 (that's a quick arm), has a +6 to hit with 2d4+4 slashing AND regains 5 of its 14HP each turn when not crispied or acided. That’s much more manageable for the DM. OH! It also has… Darkvision?! I mean, sure, it needs to ‘see’ somehow I suppose… if only there was a rule that WHY IS THIS NOT BLIND SIGHT! UURRRAAAGGHHG!

Best, however, with the most potential for chaos is the Troll Spawn ability, where after 24 hours, a Troll Limb has a 1 in 12 chance of regenerating into… a fully formed troll. Yep, this is why you never see a baby troll. They reproduce by tearing off a bit of themselves and throwing it in a hole. Now, as a DM, imagine your party coming across a swarm of Troll Limbs, the result of a huge argument of a tribe of Trolls who tore each other up literally limb from limb, then moved on, leaving the body parts behind… approximately 23 hours, 59 minutes and 42 seconds before combat breaks out… and 3 rounds into combat the DM is rolling 24 d12s on the table why the players look on confused… then terrified. I mean, the chances are remote, but it could happen, right? RIGHT?!

A cave full of regenerating troll limbs... what could possibly go wrong?

Speaking of rare, I tend to just focus on the Monster Manual listings here, but if you are as big a fan of the Trolls as I am, you can find HEAPS more in the comment section… I mean other D&D publications. Notably, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, where you’ll get the Spirit, vemon, rot and Dire trolls; and Bigby’s Glory of the Giants for the Legendary CR17 Troll Amalgam as the apex predator of the family.

Usually at his point of the blog I’d insert a blatant and shameless plug for some of my own creations here at the ZG Store for you to consider but you know, none of my current lineup of Paper Mini’s include the Troll… so let’s use that as excuse to instead point you over to Patreon where I will make the freshly minted Troll Paper Mini free to followers there, along with a Mini from each of the previous Creature Features. Forgive me, I am new to that platform, but once I’ve figured it out, I am sure there will be opportunities for folks keen to flick me a few coppers a month to access more of the ZG back catalogue. Watch this space!