Monsters of the Trollhaung VIII: Encounters I1, W7

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** SPOILER ALERT**
These articles update monsters in adventure P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens – reading them may spoil encounters in the module!

A couple of big, bad trolls…

Skalmad the Troll King (Level 13 Elite Soldier)

The players at last get to meet the King, and it should be a scary fight. The original stat block for Skalmad is surprisingly decent, though it suffers from outdated stats (i.e. poor damage) and a real, Elite-like double attack. With a few updates, it should prove a worthy foe

1. Changes introduced

• Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race. Since Skalmad is an elite, I gave it twice the usual amount of regeneration and had Troll Healing bring it back with more HP.
• Modern Elite: Elite monsters should have roughly as many attacks as two standard monsters, so I gave Skalmad an at-will double attack in Dual Axe, and boosted the encounter and recharging powers to a more impressive level. I also added a bit of damage to Baleful Eye.
• Modern Soldier: Aside from lowering attack bonuses, I changed the basic attack to mark as an effect. Toppling Swing became a downright scary attack with the addition of a daze (on top of the existing prone effect), but I made it target only marked enemies. This prevents Skalmad from using all its most powerful attacks in the first round, and adds quite a bit of strategy to the monster.
• Removed redundancy: The claw attack was pointless, so I deleted it.

 

Warren Troll (Level 11 Brute)

See Encounter W1.

Nothic Gazer (Level 11 Artillery)

See Encounter W6.

Thurk, Troll Smith (Level 12 Soldier)

1. Changes introduced

• Toned down Troll Healing - see previous article about trolls as a race. Since Skalmad is an elite, I gave it twice the usual amount of regeneration and had Troll Healing bring it back with more HP.
• Modern Soldier: Aside from lowering attack bonuses, I changed the basic attack to mark as an effect. Toppling Swing became a downright scary attack with the addition of a daze (on top of the existing prone effect), but I made it target only marked enemies. This prevents Skalmad from using all its most powerful attacks in the first round, and adds quite a bit of strategy to the monster.
• Removed redundancy: The claw attack was pointless, so I deleted it.

Redspawn Firebelcher (Level 12 Artillery)

1. Changes introduced

• Updated defenses, attack bonuses, and damage. This is a simple yet serviceable monster, so a couple of straightforward number tweaks should leave it ready for use. I upped the ranged attack accuracy, increased damage all around, and boosted some defenses which where excessively weak.

Grimlock Minion (Level 14 Minion)

1. Changes introduced

• Added Role (Brute). As an old minion, this one was missing a role. Brute was the most fitting, by far.
• Updated defenses, attack bonus, damage. This monster’s stats were unusually low, to the point that they wouldn’t have been out of place in a minion with several less levels. Now it’s up to par with modern minions.
• Added Trait (Grimlock Resilience). I stole this one from the Human Slaves in Dark Sun, and I think it’s an amazing design. This lets you have threatening minions even if you don’t use any special houserule for minions. With our house rules, they were pretty impressive, though not to the point of becoming unbalanced.

All images are (C) 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. These statistics blocks were generated using the D&D Adventure Tools, despite the tons of bugs. Except for the ones where I gave up, and used MS Word instead.