D&D 5E Troll regeneration

[I'm A Banana]

If you do take issue with it, I recommend just changing the damage type required to stymie regeneration rather than demanding the players refrain from applying said knowledge.

Try this:
(1d12, roll twice)

1. cold - the troll's skin is pink with scaly, dry, red patches
2. psychic - the troll's face is upside-down in its skull
3. lightning - the troll's shoudlers are covered in vines
4. poison - the troll has an extra (vestigial) arm growing from the back of its neck
5. radiant - the troll exhales small wisps of acrid smoke from its mouth
6. thunder - the troll's tongue is long and slightly prehensile
7. bludgeoning - the troll's bones poke through its skin at the joints
8. force - the troll is unusually fat and waddles when it walks
9. piercing - the troll has a thick tuft of mossy green chest hair
10. necrotic - the troll has an assortment of broken weapons stuck in its hide
11. slashing - the troll has a long neck that can peer around corners
12. no change. Acid or fire still works. If you roll this twice, it's a normal troll.

You can roll for one damage trigger, or both. You can roll for each troll, roll for a given encounter, roll for a clan of trolls, or even (if you REALLY want to annoy the players and track a lot of details!) roll every round, or every time their "weakness" is struck.

You might want to telegraph that these aren't "normal" trolls in various ways, if you'd like to encourage the party to be strategic. The descriptions above help with that - "Oh! This troll has an upside-down face! CALL IN THE VICIOUS MOCKERY, BOYS!" - though they're meant to be something that can be learned about over multiple encounters with both the weird trolls and the normal ones, and if you do a frequent change (every round!) or just change ALL trolls (so there are no more fire/acid ones), it kind of loses that punch.

This even works with the narrative of trolls in 5e - mutants are common and "freaks" are known.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

When I ran Horde of the Dragon Queen the level 7 party had a lot of trouble with Trepsin the Four Armed Troll. Along with his high damage output he had a cloak that allows him to ignore 10 fire damage on each fire attack. The Wizard of the party only had fire bolt prepared as a fire spell and he tended to roll low on it when he used on Trepsin allowing him to ignore the damage. Also while the players had heard that fire worked wonders on trolls, none of them did remember that acid worked as well. Leading to the bard spending a turn consulting lore on how to best trolls. Upon which I told them that acid worked as well as fire did. But now before 3 of the 5 person party were downed in the fight.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Relatedly, what would happen if the DM decides to give the troll death saves? If a troll at 1 HP takes fire damage, is knocked to 0, then fails a death save but takes no further fire damage in the round when it fails, does it begin regenerating again at the start of its turn the following round?

I haven't thrown a troll at my players yet, but I'm planning to for our next session. It would likely be a very dangerous encounter, so I'd like to be sure about how it should work before I do.

I actually give all monsters death saving throws, and I have a player who has* a PC with trollish regeneration (and lowered stats) thanks to messing around with ancient aboleth biotech. Here's what we decided on for trolls:

1.) Trolls are immune to death by massive damage. I take the PHB literally that trolls die only when their regeneration is stopped. Could have gone the other way on this and in a different campaign might--it all depends on whether you think it is cooler to kill a troll by decapitation or turning it to jelly, or for a troll to survive decapitation/being turned to jelly. In this campaign I chose the latter.

2.) Once you apply fire to a troll at zero hit points, then it starts making death saves per usual, and dies after three failures. If it stabilizes at zero HP, it wakes up in 1d4 hours, exactly as usual, and then commences regenerating back to full health.

-Max



* Well, had a PC. Currently dead at 8th level due to charging off to fight a dozen hobgoblins solo, except for his ten or so animated skeletons. Hobgoblins killed the skeletons with longbow fire and then cut down the death cleric in spite of his Corpse Armor. He got back up, and they cut him down again and one of them kindled a quick fire upon seeing his regeneration in action (also, he has green trollish skin now and looks rather like a dragonborn troll, so this wasn't a stretch), and one round later he was down again and on fire.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Except that Firebolt does 1d10 damage.

Whereas Chill Touch does d8 damage and negates 10 points of healing. Effectively it's doing d8+10. Chill Touch is superior in this scenario.

 

[empireofchaos]

Whereas Chill Touch does d8 damage and negates 10 points of healing. Effectively it's doing d8+10. Chill Touch is superior in this scenario.

But wouldn't Firebolt effectively do d10+10? It stops regeneration for the following round, and does regular damage.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But wouldn't Firebolt effectively do d10+10? It stops regeneration for the following round, and does regular damage.

Oh, duh. Yes.

I was thinking for some reason that Fire Bolt only stopped regeneration from 0 HP, which is obviously not the case.

 

[Kithas]

Personally I don't get the whole not letting the players use their knowledge about things in the game. Personally I've never seen a werewolf,vampire, or zombie but I know you use silver bullets wooden stakes and double tap. I assume in a world with trolls they at least have myths about them not liking fire. D&D is usually set in a med-high fantasy setting that includes a lot of word-of-mouth storytelling. Some monsters weaknesses fall into common sense imo, skeletons don't have much to stab or slash, so clearly bludgeoning works better etc. When it comes to vampires and trolls I assume the people in the party, being adventurers and into that sort of thing, have at least heard tell of trolls not liking fire, and to never trust demons.

Switching around the trolls weaknesses seems even more of a dick move if they do remember. Basically it turns into "Well fire and acid didn't work, we know there's something that turns off it's regen let's hope we find out what it is before it kills us!" Personally that doesn't sound fun.

Generally you end up with trolls being either much too high for their cr if there is no fire or knowledge of fire. Or way too easy because of their blatant weakness.

One way my dm is currently solving this with vampires and could easily be translated to trolls; make it hard to employ their weakness. Not impossible mind you, just interestingly difficult. And don't make it about finding out what the weakness is, no one really enjoys Guess Who. You could make it raining outside the cave and the fire/acid damage it takes be reduced because of the water, thus making the pcs lure him into the cave, trapping themselves more but getting a fighting chance.

Tl;Dr Don't be a dick with your players, present them with a puzzle but let them have the pieces to solve it.

 

[PnPgamer]

Oh, duh. Yes.

I was thinking for some reason that Fire Bolt only stopped regeneration from 0 HP, which is obviously not the case.

But I reckon it works against other creatures that have regeneration not dependent on fire. Or creatures that cast restorative spells. at least in theory.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But I reckon it works against other creatures that have regeneration not dependent on fire. Or creatures that cast restorative spells. at least in theory.

Yes. I've used it on vampires.