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.

Ice Giant

Today, we’re going to talk about the topic that Cupcake tried to give me yesterday. This is after she said Ragnarok, and I implied that it was going to play some part in the DnD game. I told her no, and said I would do the Ice Giants today, and that’s what we’re going to talk about.

Ice Giants… That’s not what they’re called, and being a Dungeons and Dragons player it kills me to even put the two words together. The adjective ice would imply that the Giants are made of ice, therefore turning them into constructs and golems, and they’re far from that. The better term, the Dungeons and Dragons term, is Frost Giant. And, if we want to get really technical they’re called the Jotunn in Norse Mythology, and they reside in a world called Jotunheim (literally meaning home of the jotunn).

In Norse Mythology, the Jotunn server several very important roles in the order of reality: the world as we know it was created from the body of the largest of the Jotunn, a giant called Ymir. The jotunn also find themselves coming up against the Æsir, the gods of Norse mythology, often playing the role of antagonist, such as the trickster god Loki… who was never actually a god. He was just a jotunn… and he was of no relation to Thor either… in fact… Thor wasn’t even Odin’s son… Scratch that, Google corrected me. I really didn’t think there was any relation there. I thought Odin’s only son was Baldr. Yeah… just looking at Wikipedia for five minutes screwed all of my knowledge of Norse Mythology.

I did check, and yes I was right about Loki having no relation to Thor. Lol.

…

…

…

Sorry, I got distracted there. Watching Tom Hiddleston getting the shit knocked out of him by the Hulk.

“Puny God.”

Gives me chills every time. Which, is kind of right on the mark seeing as Loki is a frost giant, and I’m trying to bring the conversation back around to that point. And, I seem to be failing, as I can think of nothing at all to say about the Frost Giants.

They play a major role in Dungeons and Dragons (obviously) as they are one of the more intelligent and extremely unfriendly types of giants. They’re often seen in the company of orcs and ogres and they’re usually the ones doing the bossing around.

In The Hunter’s Blade trilogy, by R.A. Salvatore, the frost giants, lead by Gerti Oreldottr, are allies with the up and coming orc King Obould Many Arrows as his orcish horde overran the Silver Marches and the kingdom of Bruenor Battlehammer. The frost giants didn’t see much direct combat though, mainly serving as artillery for the army. Being able to lift two and three ton boulders and chuck them up to a mile away makes them just as good as any catapult. Even better really, seeing as it’s much easier to grab a rock up off the ground and hurl it through the air, then it is to wind a catapult back down, load it, position it just right, release it, and pray it hits what you want it to hit. Yup, I’ll definitely be thinking about frost giants the next time I have to overrun a small township with a single wizard tower and a wooden defense wall.

And, this brings me to another point, how should I incorporate the frost giants into my game? I don’t know, and it’s not particularly important at the moment. My PCs are tucked safely(?) away deep underground, and next to an ocean close to the equator of Launam. Not the type of area where a frost giant would be happy.

So, you’re safe for now, Damn Dirty Dungeon Crawlers… You’re safe for now…

Ryan

2-23-14