The Leap Troll is a smaller species of troll, but one of the more crafty and deadliest of encounters that delvers will ever have to face. Not only are these trolls, leapers they are the most accomplished kin at camouflaging themselves in whatever environment they happen to be in.
Here is one that got stuck in daylight in a civilized place. Only the most astute observer will see it i this picture.
Adventurers encountering a Leap Troll should be prepared to withstand a creature that can deal out eleven dice plus fifty points worth of damage, and can absorb up to 7 Hits because of its elastic skin. As always the Leap Trolls do not like to be copied and pasted from on-line where they are available for free into a print magazine for profit without the author's permission. They are low to average intelligence, despite their cunning and propensity towards stealth.
Snow Trolls are said to be the illegitimate off-spring of the Great Cyclops and the Troll Mistress, well before the Wizard Wars that waged throughout the worlds of the Cosm. These are not to be confused with the species of trolls known as Ice Trolls, because the two despite similar proclivity towards cold climates are definitely not the same.
A physical description of these trolls is hard to come by, because their kindred's adaptation is the use of illusion. They love to vex the farther out settlements of civilization with apparitions both benign and horrifying in aspect, but ultimately malicious in intent. Often appearing as a derelicts and offering to perform menial tasks for pay during snow storms in the dead of night. What indicates that these are Snow Trolls is that ultimately the illusion is contradictory towards normal civilized behavior. A snow troll will appear to brush away snow from your front doorstep, but not be wearing a coat or shoes but have gloves on.
Of course, if the villager loves their daughters and wives, they will not let these trolls into their abodes. Offering to say a prayer for them, will foil their Mirage spell and the person, if they survive the encounter will see the Snow Troll as it truly is. No descriptions are available to date.
When wandering through the wilderness worshipers of the Christian god should take extra care, the Snow Troll can smell Christian blood and they hunger for it.
Statistics for this most evil of all trolls are not available.
This species of troll would be a smallish giant and rather rare, but their physical characteristics and magical abilities mark them as a very distinctive breed among the delvers that survive their encounters with them. Rather human-like except for a massive nose and gnarled boulder-sized teeth, often with a tusk, these predators tend to the wilds. What separates them from human-like ogres and giants, is that despite their human-like like appearance their intelligence is more akin to an animal, and certain magical traits.
Red Bellies have been encountered in both torrid savannah and colder mountainous terrain. They like to dwell with social predators, such as lions or wolves, but not with other humanoids. They do not like to copied and pasted from on-line where they are available for free and printed up to published elsewhere without the author's permission. They do not control or master these animals around them, indeed, it seems that the trolls emulate them and seek to learn their tricks as to hunting things. They have no idea what treasure is or how to use tools or weapons. These trolls do not like the confines of caverns or ruins, instead sticking to wildernesses of the regions where they are found.
The term "red belly" comes from the fact that their lower abdomens are a reddish color no matter what pigment the rest of their hairy and naked bodies are. This red increases in hue as they breath in just before releasing a torrent of flame when being attacked by particularly dangerous foes, or when chasing multiple targets. Their amputated limbs do also regenerate, though rather slowly compared to say a Chaos Troll.
Adventurers encountering them should be prepared to face a beast that can do sixteen dice worth of damage plus 75 points of combat adds. The belched flame acts at the Call Flame spell, with a WZ score at 1/4 of the beast's overall MR.
Note: As Paul Ingrassia's Troll Hammer blog is back up and running, once I am done with "the Trolls Over the Holidays" thing, I will post my T&T monsters there once again. Here I'll stick to T&T rules and game news/discussion.
The Sea Troll, often called "water trolls" or even "aqua-trolls," are a kin of trolls that dwell for the most part of their lives in the depths of the seas and oceans of the planet. They are capable of moving about on dry land thanks to their humanoid form and can breath open air, but are by far much more comfortable in seawater. As ever these trolls are very adaptable to their chosen territory. Some racial variations include ice covered areas where they assume the black and white colors similar to an orca whale, and grow until the same size in length and weight. Others is warmer climes tend to grow hammer-head shark like heads and remain much sleeker though perhaps a bit taller. All variations of Sea Troll do not like to be copied and pasted from the web where they are available for free to a print publication that costs money without the author's permission.
While very predatory, the Speaking Peoples in the waters around them, like the otgan and talkipi, do not consider them strictly predators. They are treated more like monster-kin, similar to the Kuda, who, by the way, are often referred to as orks of the seas. If an area is built up enough, the Sea Troll will behave itself and its trollish hunger pains, and stick to chasing schools of tuna and land-dwellers knocked from small boats. More information on the sea-dwelling Speaking Peoples will be available this upcoming year.
Delvers encountering a beginning level Sea Troll should be expect to face a creature that can do 17 dice worth of damage plus 80 combat add points on top of that. Their shark-like skin can vary greatly from individual, generally around two dice worth plus another die added to that, and the GM should not remember the DARO rule. A general rule of thumb from those that would know about facing hungry or enraged Sea Trolls, is, "... the more scars them has, the tougher its hide be." Many a peg-legged and hook-handed pirate adventurer has repeated this bit of lore.
Chaos Trolls are, sadly, some of the best known trolls, mostly because they are so distinguishable. Usually the height of two adult humans to a smallish giant, they always have greasy, green skin with pitted black pores. Their eyes are more akin to a shark's solid black "doll-like" eye, as black as the wiry hair that adorns their heads. Their noses tend to be long, skinny and come to a carrot-like point usually the length of a man's arm. As species of trolls go this lot makes hobgoblins look like rocket scientists when it comes to the brains department.
As these trolls are marked by chaos, they do have a range of special traits that ensures their survival despite their ping-pong ball sized brains. These chaos traits include regeneration or lost parts as well as hit points. Burn damage, if the flame is intense enough to get through the creatures' nature slime. A dislike of being copied and pasted from online where available for for free to be reprinted in magazines at a price without the author's consent. Sometimes they have the ability to disjoint their bodies and move through edifices, nooks and crannies that should be too small for the large creatures to do so. Sometimes it is the ability to move attributes around depending on the environment around them. Infrequently, the WIZ score of an individual will vary each combat round by a certain number of dice. And even more rarely, the Chaos Troll may have all of these traits at once.
There are other traits, but those listed above are the most common.
A party of adventurers encountering a young Chaos Troll should be able to handle twenty-one dice plus 100 points worth of potential damage. Their thick skin is more rubbery than leather-like, enabling ten point natural armor. Their like of shiny things, means that they may wear armor from fallen PCs as trinkets, also adding to their defense in combat. This also means that their loot is also pretty awesome and can be quite magic laden, which they are luckily too dumb to use.
The Chaos Troll is both a sticky challenge for the average delver as well as sometimes interesting opportunity.
Sometimes called a "bridge troll," or a "rock ogre," or even, oddly enough, a "goblin." These creatures can be as tall as a leprechaun when very young to about as tall as three adult humans standing on the lower ones shoulders, in case you don't have your T&T to DnDHead Translator application up and running on your smart phone JerryTel. Though their skin is a thick leathery hide that acts as three points of armor, it is indeed flesh not mineral like say the better known Rock Trolls of Trollworld.
The Delvers encountering these trolls, in their caves or say under bridges, where the creatures like to dwell when unable to find a suitable cave, should not underestimate their strength. The size of this sort of troll depends as much on its environs as its maturation-- as with most of the troll family this reflects the amazing adaptability of any species called a "troll." One as small as a leprechaun can be as aged, capable and as strong as a giant-sized cave troll depending on where it lives.
These trolls like to shun daylight, as their eyes are best suited for low-light levels. They have nearly magical hearing, which is akin to a bat's hearing and can navigate in complete darkness, or especially in the case of bright sunlight, with their eyes shut. Like all trolls they do not like to be copied and pasted from on-line free sources to be republished at a cost in print magazines. This keen hearing also keeps them away from large gathers of other creatures, unless it is to shut the rowdy noise makers up. The antagonism can go both ways, towns near suspected cave troll habitats often use bells or horns to make them feel unwelcome and warned.
Most often cave trolls have no use for treasure or craftsmanship of anything. They have a base outlook, that is only made worse by a hunger that requires as many liftings of food as their strength score is each day. Though distinctly carnivorous and rather ill-tempered in general, these trolls can be social to those that they cannot overcome immediately. Often they will demand tolls at bridges that they lay claim to so that they can buy cattle (or sheep, or goats, or pigs, or orphans...etc...etc) instead of stealing them to get along with their neighbors.
The heroes encountering a cave troll should be able to withstand four dice plus 15 points worth of damage to begin with, if the creature is young. If older, well the GM can adjust the Monster Rating to where he needs. There have been cave trolls that have been worshiped as dark and horrible gods, that only God-Wizards have been able to defeat. There have been tales of cave trolls with spell-like abilities, though these seem to vary from individual to individual and definitely not a proven norm.
I am surprised at the level of response that I received to the "Lope Troll" earlier. Thanks for the emails and praise folks really. Thought I'd take the time to answer one question that has come up multiple (three and half times) in different emails. So Tisi, Matt, Geoffry and Daelga (there are T&T players and troll fans in Portugal?), here goes nothing.
To paraphrase the question, "Does a single player or the whole party have to be able to withstand fifteen six-sided dice plus seventy added points?"
My answer, "Yes."
I thought I covered this sort of thing earlier, but here let me go into more depth. As in real life, sometimes a task can be handled by a single person, other times it has to handled by a team, or at least a group within proximity to the situation.
Now a single high level PC can indeed around the on average 112 points that the Lope Troll can dish out, maybe even from an Ambush style of attack. A Warrior-Wizard, err Paragon with a lot of armor and high Cn might be on a god-quest or something, the Lope Troll will make an interesting encounter, maybe even a whole side story, in that saga.
And in T&T, the Player-Character group can absorb damage from combat, though not the Spite damage, as the players see fit. So a group of say four near beginning level delvers might be able to handle the beastie as well. Well, thinking about it, make that five adventurers, because the single PC ambushed more than likely will be dead before he knows it, and his player will have thrown her Mountain Dew can at me and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and key my car by the next round. Hey, death happens in sword and sorcery RPG campaigns. If I don't get the players used to early on, it'll more than likely get ugly later on in the campaign when I, as the GM, kill 7th or even 10th level heroes. To me it's about the narrative not the personal "daydream fulfillment."
As usual, I digress, I suppose my real point here, is that this question strikes me as being posed from people unfamiliar with an open-ended and not balanced rules matrix like T&T. But I am flattered to get such attention, and hope you all will become fans of my favorite RPG game.
As for questions like "What's the MR?," "Do Lope Trolls eat leprechauns?" or "Are you being surreal with mentions of periodicals?," I can only answer with... (not responding).
Adventurers encountering a Leap Troll should be prepared to withstand a creature that can deal out eleven dice plus fifty points worth of damage, and can absorb up to 7 Hits because of its elastic skin. As always the Leap Trolls do not like to be copied and pasted from on-line where they are available for free into a print magazine for profit without the author's permission. They are low to average intelligence, despite their cunning and propensity towards stealth.
