Trolls

You got a purty mouth. Heh. Heh. Heh.

Big ugly green monsters without too much going on inside their noggin, and most of them have the ability to regenerate. That’s probably all you really need to know about trolls. But, cutting the post off there would be kind of lame. So, I’ll see what else I can weasel out of these critters.

Trolls, in Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, are just shy of being a giant in height (nix that, they are giants) topping off between seven and eight feet tall and weighing anywhere between three and eight hundred pounds. If they have hair it’s greasy and limp and their noses often look like it’s been broken one too many times. They favor swamps, bogs, and moors as their homes. Trolls, like I mentioned above, have the ability to regenerate hit points over time and re-grow limbs and such. It’s not a fun thing to come up against, especially if you’re lacking a torch, or a campfire, or a weapon with a flame enchantment on it.

Another interesting thing to note is the lack of gender among trolls (at least from my point of view and my house rules) as they reproduce asexually. To make more trolls you cut a piece of an existing one off and a new troll, minus a few points of intelligence from the base troll, will grow in 3d6 days. This makes it really nasty for adventurers who hack and slash their way through a whole troop of trolls and don’t take the precaution of burning the bits and pieces after the fight. What that group gets is an army of pissed off trolls tracking them down later in the week.

And, one fun thing that comes along with this is making a smart troll.

According to 3.5 stats for a troll the average intelligence is a 6. This means the troll gets a -2 modifier to anything that requires the use of intelligence. And, if you’re making a troll PC you take a -4 racial adjustment to whatever you rolled for intelligence. The statistic block even goes so far as to state that 3 is the lowest a trolls intelligence can drop.

So, how do you make a smart troll?

First, you bring a little malevolent pixie named Damien Trollbringer (he’s been mentioned on the blog before) into the picture.

Second, you pick up as many wondrous items as you can that give bonuses to intelligence.

Third, you let Damien go at applying all of these magic items, ointments, potions, and what have you, and then use a Wish spell to bind all of the items to the troll as if they were a natural part of his body.

Not Revenire the Troll King, but I can't draw so he's close enough.

The result is Revenire the Troll King. Revenire (the last time I looked at the character sheet) has an intelligence of 35 giving him a +12 to any intelligence related skill. He used this intellect to escape Damien and went about creating an army of super trolls. He used his own fingers to spawn the first ten of his army, those are his generals, each with an intelligence of 30, the subsequent generations, after the fourth, is back to having average troll intelligence.

I would do the math on that, but it seems like it would be a lot. At a random guess, I’d say you’d have around 100,000 trolls, assuming that each general cut off all ten fingers, and then the next generation did the same, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, that’s an epic level adventure waiting to happen J

Anywho, I’m off.

Later kids.

Ryan

4-10-14

The Undertaker

This is an odd one. Lol. It’s like with CM Punk, Cupcake gave me a wrestler to talk about and now I’ve got to figure out what to say. Lol. Honestly it should be easy though, as the Undertaker is one of the most recognizable wrestlers in the professional wrestling industry. At least he used to be. Now, he’s kind of dwindled down to doing one match a year. The match at Wrestlemania, the match he always wins because the Undertaker has never lost a match at Wrestlemania. In fact, that streak has become material for whoever it is he’s going up against to use in their promos.

Taker’s opponent this year is Brock Lesnar, a beast of a man who has more in common with a rock than a human being. He’s using this whole “conqueror” thing as his take on the match with the Undertaker. Lesnar’s manager, Paul Heyman, comes out to the ring at least twice an episode to announce that Lesnar is going to conquer the streak.

The match will be pretty good. The Undertaker’s matches are always damn good. But, one must look at it like this. The Undertaker is probably the oldest wrestler climbing into the ring at Wrestlemania (he’s 48 and that’s damn old for a professional wrestler) and he’s going up against the human equivalent of a semi.

I might actually have to sit down and work up stats for these two wrestlers just to work out a good probability of who will win. I know it’s going to be the Undertaker. Let’s face it, if Lesnar wins Taker fans will riot in the streets. But, just knowing the statistics of the match will be entertaining.

Something else interesting to note, it was CM Punk who went up against the Undertaker this last Wrestlemania. That was a fantastic f***ing fight.

And, now for requisite information.

Making the Undertaker work as a Dungeons and Dragons character wouldn’t be too hard. I’m not sure how the template is worked in Pathfinder, but the Undertaker could fall under two undead templates. First, and most likely, he could be a death knight (a grave knight or demonic knight in Pathfinder). I say this is the more likely of the two as the death knight/grave knight is a martial combat template. While the other option would be a lich; I could see some justification for this template through the way the character is portrayed (particularly when they made a big fuss about the Undertaker’s urn), but I’d still lean towards a Death Knight. As for a race…I think I might put him as a half giant or an ogre, something big and powerful, but still carrying plenty of speed (to some extent intelligence, though that would be a bit of a stretch when it comes to the ogre).

And, one more fun little thing.

I am absolutely positive that when the Undertaker is beaten at Wrestlemania it will be revealed that he is a time lord. His regeneration cycle will kick in, and upon completion of that Undertaker 2.0 will finish mopping the floor with whoever his opponent is.

So, now that all that has been said (including the Doctor Who reference) it’s time for me to go and get in bed.

G’nite all.

Ryan

3-10-14

PS: When I was talking about the Undertaker with my wife, earlier today, I told her he was going to be a fighter/barbarian death/grave knight of level 13 or higher. I also implied that they might have to face off with him. Lol.

Dreams

Dreams can be many things to many different people. They can be good happy things where everything is perfect. They can be terrible nightmares that hell couldn’t hold a candle too. And, then they can make absolutely no sense at all with the world seeming to be skewed this way and that. Then, you can also look at dreams as ambition; the thing you want to do with your life and the heights you want to rise too. A dream can be something you want.

My dream—at the moment—is to find something to say about dreams that doesn’t sound ridiculous. Lol.

I was talking to Cupcake about it, and we were basically talking about how I could use dreams in the story. She mentioned using mindflayers (psychic mini Cthulhus that eat brains) as antagonists who create perfect dreams for the PCs, with the downside being the PCs could never escape from their dreams when they realized it was a nightmare. The problem with that comes from the OGL. Mindflayers, also called Illithids, are not considered Open Game content. They are part of the Product Identity of Wizards of the Coast Dungeons and Dragons brand. Therefore, if I use them, then publish the adventure (as I plan to do with all of the adventures I write), then I will get a nice fat lawsuit dropped right on my head. And, that would just suck.

So, there won’t be any mindflayers in my game. That doesn’t mean I don’t have equally nasty monsters to take the place of those critters. But, talking about them here would give away the big surprise I’ve got planned for the PCs. (Please note that said surprise has something to do with the campaign as a whole and not just the current adventure.) That should leave them guessing for a while, lol.

Anyway, this surprise beastie has psychic powers far beyond the capabilities of any being the PCs have run into yet, and parts of it have the wicked urge to infiltrate an enemy’s dreams; a sort of psychological warfare, and, yes, they can easily take control of those dreams by tapping into the subconscious and finding the things the subject desires most in life and the things the subject fears the most. Then it would bend those things to get the subject to act the way it desires. If it wants to keep it from resting, it will give the subject the most terrifying nightmares possible. If it wants the subject to be overconfident in their actions, it will give the subject dreams about what it wants most.

Then if the beastie is pissed off at the subject it can put the subject through hell by subjecting it to a dream that it can never escape from. The body would wither and die slowly as the conscious and subconscious minds were tormented, even killed, time and time again so long as their bodies draw breath. Escaping from that sort of nightmare would be a helluva feat, and it would certainly be something entertaining to throw at the PCs. The first obstacle they’d have to overcome would be realizing they’re in a dream. The second would be communicating with one another. The third would be finding a way to break the beasties hold on them. All the while, the beastie would be watching them, knowing their moves before they’re made, and it would be entertained. Maybe it’s something that can’t be beaten.

Who knows?

Not I said the fly.

I guess it’s just going to have to be one of those adventures I write and play with my group to find the answer.

Now I bet Cupcake wishes she hadn’t made that suggestion about mindflayers. Lol.

Ryan

2-25-14