War Trolls aren't Giants !?!?

[TheAuldGrump]

Ratmen are cool. The carnival is pretty funky too. Charduni (the LE dwarves) have some flavour to them. I'm not a big fan of some of the other SL races though.

I love the siege undead though. Great concept.

Anyway, this is off-topic.

As for war trolls, meh, I'd just leave them as monstrous humanoids but tack on the "giant traits" special quality, much like some critters have ooze-like or plant-like traits despite not being those critter types. So the war troll is mechanically a monstrous humanoid. It's a dumb design decision but I'm not likely to bother reworking it from scratch. I'll just declare that in my games it also counts as a giant... so it's probably a weird mutant version of trolls but it's still a troll. I'm certainly going to treat it as one, including making it vulnerable to the anti-troll abilities and weaponry (like giantbane weapons).

There's a good way to handle it.

My favorite SL critter is the Inn Wight.... just plain creepy and sad.

The Auld Grump, prone to undead, fey, goblins, ogres, and the like...

 

[Aaron L]

Heck, I love adding class levels to monsters. The fire elemental monks I have are just cool as heck. Just imagine a kung-fu fighting six foot tall... fire. The visuals I have of them are amazing.

 

[Henry]

There are some other differences to War Trolls too, such as its dazing blow, and fire having no special effect on them, (I LOVE THESE GUYS!) so class levels wouldn't necessarily cut it, either. I agree though that it should have been the same type as other trolls though - heck, every other troll in that book is a giant!!

It's not so much a failing of the creature, though, as a failure of the DM. I agree with Pielorhino, and so does the DM Advice book / Catacomb guide from AD&D second edition. It was one of my favorite advice books of previous D&D, and it also said that changes to existing rules and rules mistakes should allow the players a chance to retcon previous recent choices if they had known differently. (Example in the book was a player character buying a scroll of invisibility, and then the DM changes the way invisibility works, making the scroll useless to the player).

 

[Borlon]

An easy fix would be to give the war trolls "giant blood"- for effects that involve type, war trolls are treated as giants. Just like half-orcs are treated as orcs, and half-elves are treated as elves.

 

[Shade]

This is definitely an issue we're aware of. Just last week, we talked about a creature that had giant in its name, but its type was fey. We changed the name in development to prevent exactly this sort of confusion. It's confusing for players and DMs, and that's not something we want.

I'd wager that if the war troll came across the team today, we'd either change the type or give it a different name.

Now that's good news!

Ideally, war trolls should be giants.

To make them better fighters, any of the above suggestions would work.

If the concern with it being a template is that DM's won't know how to apply it...no problem. WOTC always includes a sample critter now with every template. Add the "warbred" template to whatever troll variant they desired, and problem solved.

WRT class levels and monsters, there's been some debate on how likely it is that DMs use this tool. It's really not clear.

I think the issue is that class levels don't neatly create a 1:1 CR progression. A frost giant with a level of barbarian gets a lot for that +1 CR. A frost giant with a level of sorcerer? Not so much.

I've found adding class levels to monsters to be a mixed bag. The associanted/non associated class levels works to a degree, but gets really trick with classes like cleric.

Adding class levels to outsiders is almost always worse than advancing them by HD. Ditto for dragons. The class features gained rarely offset the additional HD, boost to save DCs due to the additional HD, the +2 BAB, boost to all saves, great skill points, etc.

An expansion to the improving monsters section of the Monster Manual would be extremely useful to DMs. As it stands currently, it doesn't cover various issues, such as whether spell resistance improves (it should, IMO), if damage reduction gets better (once again, I think it should), etc.

 

[BSF]

How much a Ranger knows about any specific group of monsters should be determined by the appropriate Knowledge skill. Mind you, they should have the ability to pick up Knowledge skills for appropriate creatures as class skills, and they should get favored enemy bonuses to the check as well.

If the DM didn't realize they weren't giants though, then there is a lot of wiggle room for the resolution.

To me it sounds like a couple of mistakes both on the part of the player and the DM. But they are easily rectifiable in the long term. Either modify the monster description, or modify the items purchased. But in the future, be sure to use the skills that are available in the game or you make assumptions at your own risk.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

WRT class levels and monsters, there's been some debate on how likely it is that DMs use this tool. It's really not clear.

Sure, but I myself don't see the reason why WotC shouldn't use this tool where appropriate, and use their bully pulpit to publicize it. I'd be perfectly happy to see a "War Troll" entry in a monster book, if it were a troll with class levels and some appropriate background notes instead of a (needless, to my mind) new monster type.

Monster listings these days do this all the time with advanced, templated, and classed versions of the monsters they list. I would be happy to see the same thing done with stand-alone entries: it's just as useful to me, and less bother.

However, I'll grant that there are probably people who somehow (falsely, in my opinion) feel they're getting value out of a new monster type that they're not getting out of an equally-usable treatment of the same topic using the existing rules. That "monster mash" aesthetic doesn't do a thing for me, personally. Instead, 3rd edition did so much to bring consistency and options to the system that I always feel it's a shame when I see needless inconsistencies and failure to exercise options, especially in an official product. To me the War Troll represents both.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Ideally, war trolls should be giants.

To make them better fighters, any of the above suggestions would work.

Or (unless I missed somebody already saying this) you could just cut to the chase and give them a couple judiciously-chosen racial bonuses. No muss, no fuss.

 

[Nebulous]

Templates are great. I had a troll in my adventure sunday and i just added permanent spider climb and doubled it's movement rate. Scared the HELL out of the party as it could clamber toward them on walls and ceilings at 120' per round, a whirling dervish of death (they're only 3rd level). I sort of made it up, but it was a template nonetheless. Spidertroll!!

 

[Henry]

Scared the HELL out of the party as it could clamber toward them on walls and ceilings at 120' per round, a whirling dervish of death (they're only 3rd level). I sort of made it up, but it was a template nonetheless. Spidertroll!!

If I were playing a 3rd level guy, a NORMAL Troll would scare me, much less this thing!