Trolls as a PC race

>don't turn to stone in sun
>regenerate

GURPS has Trolls has a ready race, using their point system they cost 70 points to play as - so it's still balanced but if you start at 100 points you're going to have shit for skills.

Strength +10, IQ-2, Health+4
Perception+2, Size Modifier+1
Acute hearing 2, Amphibious, Breath-holding 2, Combat reflexes, Damage resistance 4, Discriminatory smell (like a bloodhound basically), Extended lifespan 1, Fearlessness 4, Photographic memory (preparation required 1 hour)
Appearance (Ugly, but not to own kind), Bad Temper, Disturbing voice, Dyslexia, Gluttony, Nocturnal (permanent, paralysis turn to stone)
Odious racial habits (eats sapient beings), Social stigma (monster race).
Code of Honour (Carry out spoken agreements), Uncongenial
Night vision 8

They have a hatred towards organized religions and so cannot be Clerics of any lawful/nuetral gods, as well as having abilities that specifically counter any lawful beings.

They have a very small regeneration factor when out of combat which allows them to heal much quicker than their party members

They have high strength and stamina, but lower agility and intelligence.

They're large creatures.

That's it really. Nothing else really characterizes traditional Scandinavian trolls

Y'know, with relatively few changes an ogre magi could be turned into a troll. Add the sunlight thing and change their spell-like abilities to fit - I'd personally change Alternate Self to something to do with turning into an animal.

You don't. Same reason you couldn't do with dragons. Council of Wyrns had to dedicate a freaking book to bending the system for that and it was shit.

Doesn't one of ACKs' supplements include a troll race-as-class?

There are two main problems with this idea:

1. It requires you to define what a "traditional Norwegian style troll" is in clear enough terms to use as a race in a game, and a PC race at that. This is beyond hopeless. It's like trying to define a "traditional style elf" - entities (and even THINGS) referred to as "trolls" have existed for so long in so many iterations in so many different places in Scandinavia that the variance is completely impractical. The word is theorized to have originally been less of a noun and more of an ADJECTIVE used to define just about anything unnatural - even witches were said to engage in "trollery". Even limiting ourselves to nothing but authentic Scandinavian folklore, you got trolls being depicted as anything from tiny to human-sized to mountain-sized, sadistic to morally ambiguous to kindly, barely sentient to gullible to clever to devious, barbaric to civilized (living naked in caves and stealing to livestock to living in cottages or even castles, wearing clothes and jewelry and keeping magical gardens), solitary or social (from living in pairs to living in families or clans to having a proper king ruling over them), hideous to beautiful, with any number of physical features and magical abilities. Do your trolls have tails? Do they have horns? Stupidly huge noses? Can they talk to animals? Turn into animals? Turn OTHER people into animals?
Case in point: pic related is a kind of troll, and I wouldn't exactly have it trashing the Hogwarts dungeons.

(cont.)

2. D&D type games, especially OSR, aren't really equipped by default to handle races with wildly different capabilities to the average human adventurer. It's the same reason you don't normally see centaurs or mermaids being presented as standard (e.g. centaurs would have a hard time exploring dungeons and using many types of equipment, mermaids have the aquaman problem). It's not just a matter of pure balance - you could argue that INSTANT DEATH FROM AN EXTREMELY COMMON METEOROLOGICAL CONDITION is enough of a disadvantage. It's that their particular combination of attributes makes them a chore to have around on most normal adventures with most normal parties. Yes, they're very well suited to kidnapping princesses into the Norwegian forest but if you need to do just about anything else, from fucking around in a tavern to shopping for weapons to crawling around in a dungeon, having a PC which is two or three times as big as the others is just not practical. And that's ignoring the fact the whole party would have to change all their adventuring habits and go nocturnal if even one player wants to play one.

>and I wouldn't exactly have it trashing the Hogwarts dungeons.
It would be trashing my dungeons for sure.

Now that you mention it, yeah, we haven't even TOUCHED on the subject of female trolls, which make the depictions of male trolls appear downright consistent. Beyond all the other factors already stated, you also have to account for the fact that, in stories featuring both male AND female trolls, there sometimes appear to be so little relation between them it's hard to say if they're the same race. Sometimes a female troll is just a female version of the male form (hairy all over and with a huge nose and all), sometimes they look like beautiful humans with tails or hollow backs or something, sometimes they're witches, sometimes the male trolls are stupid but the females are smart, sometimes they lust after humans and sometimes they want to eat them, etc.

Hell, you even got weird ass combinations where in a family of trolls the man is huge and hairy, the woman is a giant man-eating hag, but their daughter is some beautiful forest maiden (which may or may not be man-eating). No explanation as for how the fuck this even works.

I don't remember where I read it (some roleplaying game or another, I'm assuming) but I like the interpretation that female trolls are human looking/beautiful until they give birth to a troll's child, at which point they turn into hags. This also explain why they're so eager to marry humans (giving birth to human children doesn't trigger the haggification).

I don't know about other ones but D&D 3rd edition had something called a Fensir, which was a kind of giant from the outer plane of Ysgard which was basically a mythological troll. More humanoid looking except ugly and with huge noses, turn to stone in sunlight, live in cottages, good with potions, etc. For some reason all fensir are born as twins which have a telepathic connection and after giving birth a female fensir bloats into a huge mindless blob of hungry fat called a Rakka.

The last few traits I have no idea why were included.

Actually, the rakka transformation only happens SOMETIMES after birth. This is an important event for fensirs because they're matriarchal, so it's an issue when the head of the household one day turns into a rampaging meatball.

Another fun fact that refers to troll myths is that fensirs don't turn to stone before puberty (because of reasons). Child fensirs are every bit as talented in magic as the adults and often cause all sorts of mischief to other races.

Split them up into different races, make one of the races a player race. Or make more than one player races.
Let them play Riesen, Kabouters, Hulders and Goblins.

>an ogre magi
You mean an oni?

Yes, an ogre magi.

You'd be surprised by the similarities. Both oni and trolls likely originally referred to immaterial, evil spirits. Both are described most commonly as violent, man eating giant yet both are occasionally cast as friendly to humans. Both are said to be magically adept yet not necessarily smart (and are for some reason exceptionally gullible). Both inhabit natural features that were once important to local pagans and both have a complex relationship with the currently dominant local religion. Both are even said to have daughters as beautiful as they themselves are hideous and in both cases, stories of marrying one have a tendency to end with her murdering her human husband with her giant strength.

they are also both associated with mountains, and intoxication

But the troll's daughter has a cow's tail and the oni's daughter's head grows huge and fire breathing when she's angry! Huh! Totally different!

Of all things, less that, I think. Both get drunk, but oni are far more ASSOCIATED with it than trolls. Like, it's a feature of their description, rather than something that happens to happen to them. Conversely, I'd say oni are associated less with mountains and more with the shrines that are placed on them, whereas trolls are with the actual geography.

All but the last point are features common among virtually all folklore creatures

Idk if it's true but I saw some user here once claim they have similar origins because oni may have been based on stories of ogres/trolls from travellers.

>But the troll's daughter has a cow's tail and the oni's daughter's head grows huge and fire breathing when she's angry
Uh oh, this is starting to become a harem situation.

Sounds far-fetched to me. I mean, most cultures have stories of some kind of evil man-eating ogre type kinda creature living on the outskirts of civilization. It's one of the most common types, right after "evil magic-using women you can blame shit on", "ghosts", "magical little forest people" and "something Europeans settlers are going to call a dragon".

Like I said I didn't see a source but I'd buy it.
While some things can certainly develop independently from shared human experience like flood myths because people often build near water sources there are other cases of myth arising from legends and rumors spread and butchered as they went like how manticores were likely based on secondhand reports of tigers.

Yeah, but the man-eating giants of all things are actually pretty likely to be based off of early encounters with some bigger, nastier tribe tens of thousands years back. Or possibly some kind of evolutionary predecessor, going even further back. I mean, consider how many separate cultures have a legend specifically about giants who ruled the world before the current gods/god, for example. You think they all came from contact with the Greeks?

Work on your reading comprehension or stop arguing against strawmen, I hardly think they all came from one source but oni specifically might have. I also wouldn't be surprised of a case of them existing in some original form but then taking on elements inspired by cultural exchange.

Although again I didn't see a source, I also don't think it's really any less believable than your armchair theories about them being based on ancient tribal enemies or some evolutionary psychology relic.

The hell? Where did that aggression come from? Was that an argument?

No aggression meant but I never claimed all cases of man-eating giants and pre-god giants came from the greeks so either you misread my post and what I was saying and thus might need to work on your reading comprehension, or you were arguing against a strawman of my post.

While similar myths can evolve independently there are also plenty of cases of cultures borrowing from eachother or turning misunderstood stories into myth.

Some of the cases of dragons in different cultures are even the result of cultural exchange.

In OSR terms, think I wouldn't give them spellcasting per-se but make some of the magical abilities like class features you gain at higher levels. IE in level one a troll can talk to animals, level 4 it can turn into animals like a druid or something, level 7 it can polymorph other 1/week, stuff like that. Maybe give it the ability to brew potions at a high enough level, although without its own spell list it'll probably be limited to certain types. Or maybe give it a Thief like ability to use magic items? High level troll can build a castle into which will move a bunch of other trolls and maybe a few human servants. Local vegetation will hide it and local wildlife will become allied with it.

Asides from that, probably just make its basic abilities include stuff like being really huge and strong. OD&D didn't do ability bonuses very well but maybe some playaround that. Not sure how I'd handle turning into stone. Save vs. Paralysis seems the most straightforward but it might be too dickish on the player.

This is actually fairly underpowered, if you ask me.

To design troll-folk I'd give them a few similarities to standard trolls, but make them more intelligent and magically adept. All the different varieties of trolls, like giant ones with plants growing on them, ones who disguise themselves as human women, and ones that rule underground societies would be separate individuals.

I'd probably do it in the ACKS fashion, where there's several different classes Trolls can take, each with a different focus

>Role-playing game has ironclad rules that can in no way be altered because God-Jesus and Duh Bear will punish CWCville

k

No, you cannot (at least in any decent version of D&D).

>Regenerating creatures can regrow lost portions of their bodies and can reattach severed limbs or body parts if they are brought together within 1 hour of severing. Severed parts that are not reattached wither and die normally.

>Severed parts that are not reattached wither and die normally.

that's from PF

heres 3.5

>Creatures with regeneration can regrow lost portions of their bodies and can reattach severed limbs or body parts. Severed parts die if they are not reattached.

in 2e the limbs withered and died.

And now having looked at 5e and its terrible rules, of course they fuck it up and allow regenerating troll army by way of sloppy language. Fuck 5e, its devs, and everything it stands for.

As to OP
Im going to have to echo the other poster who talked about how trolls in scandinavia are basically a catch all category for supernatural things from the mountains and forests. There just isn't any way to really make a PC troll race without excluding a vast majority of what makes trolls trolls.

>daughters as beautiful as they themselves are hideous and in both cases, stories of marrying one have a tendency to end with her murdering her human husban
I wonder if one of the other hominids we coinhabited the earth with in prehistory had really ugly men but beautiful women.

Probably no, but it didn't prevent our ancestors from sleeping with them, so they could've probably used the excuse. The reigning theory is that we bred neanderthals into ourselves, not killed them, for example.

Do trolls get computer proficiency?

>implying trolls know what they're doing

Folklore trolls don't regenerate.

Trolls feel more like high intelligence, low wisdom to me. They're great at magic (the Swedish word for a wizard is trollkarl, literally "troll man", and sorcery is trolldom) and love to deceive humans, but they're also pretty easy to fool themselves.

What was the name of the guy who gets a troll to disembowel himself? Askelatt?

>Fuck 5e, its devs, and everything it stands for.

Well, that was kind of the point I was trying to make. But also if you had read Legend of Drizzt you know that in Faerun new trolls can regenerate from severed body parts.

They're called fensir, they're in the Fiend Folio.

Askeladd, in the version I know.

The hell? Is it really that hard to copy+paste the rules from 3.5 ed and then rewrite them as needed?