Colossal Troll

[Grogg of the North]

I'm looking to create a colossal troll. Something dark and evil that has existed since the world was born. Think Mustakrakish from Metalocalpyse. I've got a few ideas of where to start but I'd like to see what other people think.

1) Use the Titanic Template as a jumping off point and slap it on a troll. It's only gargantuan but its not a deal breaker even though I'm asking about colossal creatures. The template also assumes that the base creature is medium or smaller and that the base creature is an animal. The stats seem to change linearly so figuring out an entry for a large creature shouldn't be too hard.

or

2) Use the table from the Giant Size spell in CArc. I'd have to figure out how many HD to give the bugger. A tremendous monster rampaging across the country side with only 63 hp seems a bit anticlimactic.

or

3) Apply the Half-Troll template to something already colossal, like a mountain giant.

 

[Kinak]

If those are your options, Titanic seems like a good bet. That should get you in the right range. That said, at the CR you're looking at, 5 HP/round regeneration is kind of a moot point.

Another simple solution is just refluffing the Tarrasque. Remove the tail and maybe carapace. Everything else seems pretty on-theme.

What sort of CR are you looking for?

And what's the purpose of the encounter? Are they trying to kill it or put it back to sleep or get around it somehow?

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[howandwhy99]

Step one for me is the design before the rules are applied. Do everything you want without reference to what you think can or cannot be done in rules. That's very important. A truly titanic troll living since the earliest days is great fantasy and very mythic. I wouldn't treat this creature as hit points. Treat it as larger than life figure it is. Is it male? female? asexual? a divine spirit of the world? The spawner of all lesser trolls? In terms of challenge, we're talking on the level of Archdevils, Demonlords, and Divine Servants.

When that conceptualization is finished and you are satisfied, then you can start applying appropriate statistics to it. My one regret is D&D is missing so many stats it is desperately in need of that much of what you create won't be covered by them.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

You could steal the giant template from Pathfinder, and stack that with another size-enhancing template.

 

[Celebrim]

How much CR do you want the final monster to have?

The basic rule for advancing size class on a 3.X monster is:

+1 Size Class, +4 STR, +4 CON, -2 DEX, +3 Natural Armor Bonus

It's kinda like a mini-template.

So one approach would be to take a troll, triple the normal HD (and all that implies), and apply the above modification 3 total times. To capture, "dark and evil that has existed since the world was born", then select and apply a template on top of that to get to the CR level that you want - fiendish, half-fiend, etc.

Triple HD troll + 3 size increases + fiendish template gets you something like:

Unique Troll: CR 16; Colossal Giant; HD 18d8+216; hp 297; Init -1 (Dex); Spd 30 ft.; AC 17 (-8 size, -1 Dex, +16 natural); Atk 2 claws +17 melee (2d8+12), bite +12 melee (2d8+6); Face/Reach: 15 ft. by 15 ft./20 ft.; SA Rend 4d8+18, Smite Good; SQ: DR 10/magic, Regeneration 8, Resistance (Cold and Fire) 10, scent, SR 23, darkvision 90 ft.; AL CE; SV Fort +23, Ref +4, Will +6; Str 35, Dex 8, Con 35, Int 6, Wis 9, Cha 6.
Skills and Feats: Listen +17, Spot +17; Alertness, Iron Will, Power Attack, Powerful Charge, Cleave, Large and in Charge

I'd tweak that slightly on an ad hoc basis to get where you want to be with it - collosal is actually a huge disadvantage under the base rules - and to make it more well rounded for its CR. The above is probably closer to CR 13 or 14 in IMO. For example, CR 16 creatures probably need a ranged attack, faster movement, and slightly higher AC. I might ad hoc in the Elite stat array to make the stats more well rounded as well, and do something like 'slippery mind' to do something extra about that low Will save.

So, add in ad hoc, 'Rock Throwing' and 'Rock Catching' as a giant, and add the 'Slippery Mind' quality. Maybe bump up natural AC to +24 to get the AC to 25, alter wisdom to 13 to bump Will save to +8 and listen and spot to +19, and change the movement rate to 40'. Maybe play around with the other ability scores as well using the elite stat array as a guide. Don't get too hidebound to the rules. It's a unique creature; do what you want with it.

Also note, my balance is based of 3.0. If you are using 3.X, particularly late 3.X, you'll need to go much higher for the CR. And if you want to go higher on the CR, use the half-fiend template in place of the fiendish template, and you get a pretty nasty monster.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I haven't really given much thought to CR since this will most likely happen down the road in the campaign. I assume that however this winds up, it will probably be at least mid to high teens.

Ideally, what I'm hoping for is that this bugger has been asleep for a very long time and only recently woke up. Preferably if it's the PC's fault.

I would like to have the option of stabbing the troll to death; it would just be very very hard. Either through DR, regeneration, SR or even spell turning. I think I would also apply that the only way to ensure it's dead is to cast wish and miracle over the body, just like the Tarrasque. I want to provide the PCs an alternate solution, providing they're willing to do some leg work researching it, of putting the troll back to sleep. Plus that leads to a nice moral dilemma. Do you let the beast wander the country-side in a rampage of destruction while you research the ritual to put it back to sleep? Or do you stand with the king's army and attempt to slay the beast through martial and arcane might?

Knowing my players, I think their first response is to try and charge the troll. And it isn't until someone gets eaten that they're going to consider other options.

 

[Kinak]

Yeah, I'd probably just plan on reskinning the tarrasque. It's really very close to what you want here.

I'd just take the tarrasque, remove carapace and tail swipe, then increase its regeneration some to compensate... maybe give it an ability to shrug off one magical effect a round as part of its regeneration.

If you want to go mythic, give it an ability that when its blood is spilled, the blood regenerates into another (normal-sized or at least smaller than it) troll.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Dandu]

Take it from someone who is an expert on trolling, you must give it flight and preferably teleportation. Otherwise, your PCs will be able to deliver death from above.

 

[Celebrim]

I haven't really given much thought to CR since this will most likely happen down the road in the campaign. I assume that however this winds up, it will probably be at least mid to high teens.

Ok, we're good with CR 16-17 then.

I would like to have the option of stabbing the troll to death; it would just be very very hard.

You realize this isn't an option even with a normal troll. You can crack open a trolls skull, or flay open its chest and then kill it with a torch - but just stabbing a troll only result in a very angry but still living mass of ground up troll flesh no matter how much stabbing you do.

The sample troll is already somewhat hard to kill because the normal coup de grace strategy doesn't work. You need something that does more than 10 fire damage in order to coup de grace it, because of its fire resistance. If you apply the half-fiend template as well, it also gains immunity to bottles of acid and the like. And either way, it's not enough SR that casters in the low teens only have about a 50% chance of effecting it. So we are talking about needing like 25 10HD fireballs to take it down.

I think I would also apply that the only way to ensure it's dead is to cast wish and miracle over the body, just like the Tarrasque.

Unless you are planning to hand out a ring of wishes and hints that they shouldn't use the wish except to resolve some pending problem, you can assume that this isn't going to happen. Presumably this is a boss fight you are going to want to do when the PC's are in the low teens, and as such wish and miracle won't be available as options.

I want to provide the PCs an alternate solution, providing they're willing to do some leg work researching it, of putting the troll back to sleep. Plus that leads to a nice moral dilemma. Do you let the beast wander the country-side in a rampage of destruction while you research the ritual to put it back to sleep? Or do you stand with the king's army and attempt to slay the beast through martial and arcane might?

The above troll is immune to mobs, it's reasonably vulnerable to a professional army. A few hundred archers with the help of a Magic Weapon spell or similar minor enhancements can knock it down, then all you need is the royal wizard to come over and cast 'Scorching Ray' until he gets lucky enough to punch through both ER, SR, and the Troll's fort save. Presumably fantasy armies are smart enough to employ strategies like that. If you really want veritable immunity to armies, you are going to need to carefully tailor the Troll.

 

[Celebrim]

Take it from someone who is an expert on trolling, you must give it flight and preferably teleportation. Otherwise, your PCs will be able to deliver death from above.

While I don't agree that it has to be flight and teleportation, I do agree that any CR 11+ creature worth it's CR needs responses to the normal sorts of strategies that high level characters might employ, including flight, invisibility, save or suck, etc.

Flight can be countered in several ways:

a) A sufficiently long ranged attack that you can respond to death from above or at least reduce its efficiency to a level that becomes trivial. If you decide to fly and it beans you with a rock for 4d6+18 damage, then it stops looking so great. If the characters have to fly a mile over the target, the number of hits they are going to make practicing high altitude bombing makes it very resource inefficient to try to take it on that way, especially if it regenerates.
b) Less long ranged attack, but ensuring that the creature is always encountered in an sufficiently small area - a cave for example - that you can't take cover simply by getting out of range. With a sufficiently small enclosure, the creature can rely on melee and possibly jump.
c) Giving the creature a burrowing speed, which thereby creates an impasse. Alternately, giving it the amphibious trait and placing it near to water can create a similar impasse.
d) Giving the creature flight, or allowing the creature to summon things that can fly.
e) Giving the creature various immunities and resistances to ranged attacks, such as with Weather Control or the ability to create suitable concealment for itself (clouds of fog, etc.), or the ability to catch/deflect missiles, etc.

Invisibility also needs a counter. In general, the above sample troll has scent and high listen and spot so it has minimally sufficient ability to counter invisibility, but probably not flight + improved invisibility (plus say a 10HD wand of fireballs). If you are really worried about that and your party tends to optimization, all the above suggestions plus rolling in the elite and replacing the fiendish with the Half-Fiend template produces a reasonably effective CR 17 monster.

But yes, flight is the reason the CR of a simple brute sort of creature has to be effectively capped.