A challenge (or two)

[IcyCool]

Also before you slay the skills, keep in mind I built the troll not using the base creature and adding, but leveling the base creature from 1 HD. Thus I picked my own selection of skills and feats.

buzzard

I hadn't realized you were using the elite array. Be sure to take that into account when looking at my corrections above. If you'd like me to check over it, please tell me which stats went where.

As to the skills. Note that Listen and Spot are the only class skills for a war troll, and any other skills that you bought were cross-class. You'll notice that I did take into account that you may have selected different feats.

 

[darthkilmor]

As to the skills. Note that Listen and Spot are the only class skills for a war troll, and any other skills that you bought were cross-class. You'll notice that I did take into account that you may have selected different feats.

Why are listen and spot the only class skills for a war troll ? I guess i just dont understand that part

 

[Infiniti2000]

IcyCool, you didn't take the Large size penalty into account for the Atk and Full Atk lines. Well, except for the Bite anyway.

Also, the treasure for this creature should be based on ECL, not CR: "If you choose to equip a monster with gear, use its ECL as its character level for purposes of determining how much equipment it can purchase." So, what's the ECL of a war troll of legend/monk 3?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Why are listen and spot the only class skills for a war troll ? I guess i just dont understand that part

Because, when determining class skills for monster HD, any skill mentioned in its write-up is considered a class skill.

Skills
This line gives the creature’s skills, along with each skill’s modifier (including adjustments for ability scores, armor check penalties, and any bonuses from feats or racial traits). All listed skills are class skills, unless the creature has a character class (noted in the entry). A creature’s type and Intelligence score determine the number of skill points it has.

The Skills section of the creature’s description recaps racial bonuses and other adjustments to skill modifiers for the sake of clarity; these bonuses should not be added to the listed skill modifiers.

An asterisk (*) beside the relevant score and in the Skills section of the descriptive text indicates a conditional adjustment, one that applies only in certain situations.

 

[IcyCool]

IcyCool, you didn't take the Large size penalty into account for the Atk and Full Atk lines. Well, except for the Bite anyway.

You're right, I completely missed that. To be honest, I have a track record of forgetting size mods to attack rolls.

Also, the treasure for this creature should be based on ECL, not CR: "If you choose to equip a monster with gear, use its ECL as its character level for purposes of determining how much equipment it can purchase." So, what's the ECL of a war troll of legend/monk 3?

Egads, ECL? Yikes. That puts it well over 20 I think.

 

[buzzard]

A War Troll starts with the following skills and modifiers:

Listen: +2 (Wis) +2 (Alertness) +7 ranks
Spot: +2 (Wis) +2 (Alertness) +8 ranks

Your new stats bring those up to:
Listen: +4 (Wis) +2 (Alertness) +7 ranks = 13
Spot: +4 (Wis) +2 (Alertness) +8 ranks = 14

Your Monk levels will get you 12 skill points to spend ((4+0 (int mod))*3 = 12) on monk class skills. You have spent far too many ranks on skills, including Knowledge(History), which is a cross-class skill.

Actually you are missing that the intelligence has gone up by 7. A monstrous humanoid normally has 2 skill points per level. A war troll and int of 8 will only get 1 per HD. Thus the MM III is actually wrong on the skills for the War Troll. He should only have 12 skill points to allocate, and in fact has 15. My troll should have 48. Of course my difficulty is deciding what actually pass for class skills for monstrous humanoids. But in total I have 48+ 18= 66 skill points to allocate. I went to town on tumble.

Listen +22 (by rights it has to be a class skill for monstrous humanoid or the MM II screwed up a whole lot), so he spent max ranks on this one. 14 ranks
Spot +22 ditto as above. 14 ranks
Jump +32 (11 ranks)
Knowledge (history) + 4 (2 ranks)
Tumble +21 12 ranks

I have only spent 55 of my total of 66 skill points.

So, while the numbers are in fact wrong on spot and listen they were attainable. In fact I should be allocating a few more ranks here and there. I was a bit conservative since I was unsure of what class skills where what. However the tumble is attainable merely in the monk levels.

War Trolls are listed as usually LE in alignment.

Equipment for a 17th level NPC (CR 17) is 100,000gp

Your creatures gear comes to 35,400gp

Well since it is a particular individual, he has only one alignment, rather than "usually". I was tempeted to make him LN actually, but I wanted the encounter to be a moral quandry. Making it easy to choose not to fight him seemed weak.

Now as for the gear numbers, well that is a complicated issue, and the rules, as written are a bit unclear. After reading them a number of times this is the way I saw it.

A given EL provides a set amount of treasure. Also NPC class levels provide a certain amount of gear for those levels. However only the class levels count towards this purpose, not the total CR of the creature. On a human with class levels, gear is a factor which counts towards the CR of the being. On a monster it does not. As such which you add class levels to a monster, counting the monster's CR would be to grossly inflate their power level. If I were to equip this guy with 100K worth of equipment, I could really go to town. However, I wished to be as close to the rules, yet twinky, as I could manage.

What he has in equipment is something under the number for the treasure of a EL 17 encounter plus the equipment value for 3 levels of monk. I also had to include more conventional treasure in the encounter.

buzzard

 

[Prism]

What he has in equipment is something under the number for the treasure of a EL 17 encounter plus the equipment value for 3 levels of monk. I also had to include more conventional treasure in the encounter.

buzzard

That seems to be exactly how the MM does it - troll ranger, mind flayer sorcerer

 

[IcyCool]

Actually you are missing that the intelligence has gone up by 7.

No, I didn't.

I did mention that you'd need to take into account that I didn't realize you were using the Elite array, and that you'd swapped around ability scores. That makes most of my evaluation pretty useless.

Listen +22 (by rights it has to be a class skill for monstrous humanoid or the MM II screwed up a whole lot), so he spent max ranks on this one. 14 ranks
Spot +22 ditto as above. 14 ranks
Jump +32 (11 ranks)
Knowledge (history) + 4 (2 ranks)
Tumble +21 12 ranks

As was mentioned above, class skills for a War Troll are Spot and Listen. Anything else is cross-class.

A War Troll should have 2 + Int mod (2-1=1) * 4 (for first HD) + 11 (for the other 11 HD) for a total of 15 skill points.

Well since it is a particular individual, he has only one alignment, rather than "usually". I was tempeted to make him LN actually, but I wanted the encounter to be a moral quandry. Making it easy to choose not to fight him seemed weak.

Very true, and I didn't say that you couldn't.

Now as for the gear numbers, well that is a complicated issue, and the rules, as written are a bit unclear. After reading them a number of times this is the way I saw it.

That seems like a decent way to do it. As I said, I wasn't sure about my above recommendation.

 

[Pinotage]

Egads, ECL? Yikes. That puts it well over 20 I think.

21. War Troll 12 HD. LA+6. Monk 3.

Pinotage

 

[IcyCool]

21. War Troll 12 HD. LA+6. Monk 3.

Pinotage

Is there an errata giving LA to Monster of Legend?