A new campaign (now with play report)

[Manbearcat]

@Quickleaf Here you go, if you're interested. I made it Gargantuan. You can do that and use a couple or make it Huge and use 3 or so. Whatever works for your setup.

Trolls!!!
Gargantuan natural humanoid (swarm)
Level 10 Elite Brute XP 1000
HP 264; Bloodied 132 Initiative +5
AC 25, Fortitude 27, Reflex 19, Will 20 Perception+7
Speed 6
Resist half damage from melee and ranged attacks; Vulnerable 10 to close and area attacks
Saving Throws +2; Action Points 1

Traits
Rend - Aura 1
Any enemy that starts its turn in the aura takes 7 damage and grants combat advantage until the end of its next turn.

Swarm
The Trolls!!! can occupy the same space as another creature, and an enemy can enter its space, which is difficult terrain. The Trolls!!! cannot be pulled, pushed, or slid by melee or ranged attacks. It can squeeze through any opening that is large enough for at least one of the creatures it comprises.

Regeneration
The Trolls!!! regains 10 hit points whenever it starts its turn and has at least 1 hit point. When the Trolls!!! takes fire or acid damage, its regeneration does not function on its next turn.

Troll Healing (healing)
Whenever an attack that doesn’t deal acid or fire damage reduces the Trolls!!! to 0 hit points, the Trolls!!! does not die and instead falls unconscious until the start of its next turn, when it returns to life with 15 hit points. If an attack hits the Trolls!!! and deals any acid or fire damage while the Trolls!!! is unconscious, it does not return to life in this way.

Standard Actions
Horde of Claws - At-Will
Attack: Melee 2 (one creature and each creature in the Trolls!!!’s space); +15 vs. AC; Hit: 3d6 + 7 damage.
Effect: The target is grabbed (escape DC 18)

Minor Actions
Hungry Maws - Recharge 4, 5, 6
Attack: Melee 2 (one creature grabbed by the Trolls!!!); +13 vs. Fortitude; Hit: 2d8 + 7 damage, and the target is immobilized (save ends)

Free Actions
No Escape - Encounter
Trigger: An enemy leaves the space occupied by Trolls!!!.
Effect (Free Action): Close burst 2 (triggering enemy in the burst). The target takes 10 damage, and the Trolls!!! slide it 4 squares into the swarms space.

Move Actions
Flowing Swarm - Encounter
Effect: The Trolls!!! shift up to their speed and can squeeze through spaces as a Large creature.

 

[Rechan]

PCs have 3 rounds before the gatehouse is closed by a troll guard or human guards. At that point, getting past/thru the gate could take precious time.

Just out of curiosity, do you tell the PCs this up front, or just imply ala "guards run towards the gatehouse" in the first round?

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] Wow! More stat blocks for me You shouldn't have.

While I appreciate it, in this particular case I'm not convinced it's a time saver. While I wouldn't have to track HP & regeneration for *as many* trolls, the total HP the PCs would need to get thru actually increases. Here's how: A troll has 120 HP. Three trolls (the # I believe is represented in your swarm stat block) have 360 HP altogether. The troll swarm has 264 HP...but in actuality because it resists half melee/ranged damage (the main damage modes for my party), it has twice that, so about 520 HP.

That alone tells me any time savings at the table that I get from not having to track *as many* HP/regenerations, I am going to lose to a bag of HP. I suspect the net gain is zero.

But my objection goes deeper than just that. I would be ad-libbing quite a bit to run this swarm as I would definitely use multiple troll miniatures/tokens at the table and would want them to be able to move independently and "give the appearance of being discrete monsters" by each getting an attack. So that means I'd need to radically redesign an elite which would feel more like a hydra than anything else I can think of. And there's the matter of determining when the discrete "parts" (individual miniatures) of the troll swarm would be killed....there's really nothing you can do in monster design that would make sense here, it would need to be entirely ad-libbed.

 

[Quickleaf]

Just out of curiosity, do you tell the PCs this up front, or just imply ala "guards run towards the gatehouse" in the first round?

Imply. And it can change if the PCs take countermeasures.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Quickleaf Understood. What I do (logistically) when I use swarms for mass combat is I basically treat them as a mobile terrain feature overlaying the real terrain features. My PCs are good with that. In fact, we love it. Works great for us. Probably something lost in translation as it seems highly likely that our respective table dynamics have a fair stretch of playstyle/agenda differences. Regardless, I hope whatever you decide to to works out for you guys! Have a good time!

 

[Quickleaf]

Hey, could someone XP Manbearcat for me? Apparently I did too recently still. :/
[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] Thanks! I wish I could be a fly at your table when you ran that encounter. It sounds very interesting, I'm just not grokking how it would work with my group is all.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm just not grokking how it would work with my group is all.

Do you use any large, gargantuan or topographical hazards such as treacherous ice, quicksand, crumbling catwalks, sinkholes, etc? There is actually a "Zombie Mob" level 17 hazard out there. You basically just treat it like you would a topographical hazard...except narrate it as a sentient one...with lots of big nasty teeth and claws...and grey, mottle flesh and a cellular structure with hyper-regenerative capacity...and bad attitudes.

We don't map our fiction at a 1:1 ratio to the tokens on the board. So seeing a big "sheet" of trolls versus a single troll token has no impact on us. We're fortune in the middle through and through and the battleboard is just there as a tactical/spatial/topographical reference. If the token issue is a big one for you guys, you could do as is stressed in the Zombie Mob hazard; for every 1/4 HP destroyed of the Swarm, remove 1/4 (in this case 4) of its squares.

Or, alternatively, you could just do as you had planned