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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 4755125" data-attributes="member: 12731">I have two related questions to ask you about Trolls (the smelly humanoid monster sort, not the internet sort): How do you handle them? How are they balanced?I hope I'm not ruining things for anyone by not placing within spoilers that trolls can't be killed except by fire and acid.Now, it seems an encounter with a troll (or five) becomes vastly different if the players have some access to either fire or acid or if they don't. Let's call a PC that has a fire sword or an at-will acid spell "capable", and a PC with only hard cold steel or lightning bolts "incapable".Are trolls underpowered against capable adventurers? Or are they overpowered against incapable adventurers?And how do you handle the fact that most players are likely aware of the vulnerabilities of Trolls well in advance of their characters making any Troll Lore skill checks?For instance, it would be cool if a party of adventurers start the King of the Trollhaunt module with no access to fire or acid and only through experience fighting the Trolls find out what helps against them, and keeps them dead once defeated. However, I strongly suspect my players would all go into town purchasing some +1 Fire swords as back-up weapons at the very least. I really have a hard time seeing the signature ability of the Troll ever coming into effect against players with experience from earlier D&D editions.What do you feel about a monster whose signature abilities are likely to never come into effect? Doesn't this effectively make the monster a few levels lower?I should probably add that I'm not really interested in "cheating" solutions where I change the trolls into being vulnerable to some other damage types instead of fire/acid.What about making only attacks that make both fire and acid damage work against trolls? This would have a real chance of surprising the players, while still keeping reasonably close to the "established rules" of D&D Trolls...</blockquote>

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