Ways to qualify for Troll Blooded?

[47948201]

Since Troll Blooded can only be taken at 1st level, and requires Toughness, AFAICT to get Troll Blooded, you need Toughness (or Azure Toughness) at 1st level.

There are three ways I know of to do this: Human bonus feat, UA Bear Barbarian, and UA Undying Monk.

Is that it, or are there other ways to meet the prereqs?

[Doctor Despair]

Half-Undead (Gheden) template both gives you Toughness and make you immune to nonlethal damage. LA+1 template, Dragon 313

[Kayblis]

If you have flaws, you can pick Toughness at 1st level.

[weckar]

Troll-Blooded Gheden should be banned at every table, honestly.

[Vizzerdrix]

I could have sworn Improved Toughness counted as toughness. :smallconfused:

[Quertus]

Go back in time, get one of your ancestors to do the nasty with a Troll. Should qualify you. :smallwink:


Troll-Blooded Gheden should be banned at every table, honestly.

Why?

[Doctor Despair]

Why?

I don't think it's that problematic. If you live through a fight with 1hp, it's the same end-result as living with all max hp; the only difference is how many resources the party has to spend on healing you afterward. A high-con Troll-Blooded barbarian will do the same job as a Troll-Blooded Half-Undead Gheden character most of the time with CR-appropriate encounters, with the added caveat that the barbarian will survive fire and acid damage more effectively.

Sure, a character can stack additional immunities on top of that. Mantle of the Fiery spirit for the fire subtype and that one LA +1 Tainted Blood template from Bestiary of Krynn for immunity to acid (or Voidmind, or Half Black Dragon, each for 3 LA)... But then there's still Searing Spell and every other status that can kill characters, along with good old-fashioned force cage.

It's exceedingly difficult to gain immunity to anything at a DM's disposal; if a character wants to be able to trade melee blows without worrying about damage and feel like a grade-A berserker, I'm not going to begrudge them that. They should be prepared for other challenges that their feat will not auto-solve.

[Gruftzwerg]

Strongheart halflings also get a bonus feat.
And then there are Exalted Dwarfs from Dragon Magazin which also get a bonus feat.

Finally there is Barbarian 1, Bear Totem (SRD/UA): Toughness seems I didn't read the post careful enough^^ you already mentioned it.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Flaws to get Human Heritage or Human Blood, one of the Toughnesses, and Troll-Blooded.

[weckar]

What does Human Heritage do for you in this case?


I agree Troll-Blooded Gheden aren't invincible, but being available at ECL 2 it will be a long while before anything can seriously hurt you for which you can't call the DM out as specifically targeting you.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

What does Human Heritage do for you in this case?It makes you count as a human for prereqs. That way you can have, say, a Troll Blooded dvati, or a Troll Blooded neraph. Or even a Troll Blooded kobold.

[Doctor Despair]

What does Human Heritage do for you in this case?


I agree Troll-Blooded Gheden aren't invincible, but being available at ECL 2 it will be a long while before anything can seriously hurt you for which you can't call the DM out as specifically targeting you.

Depends on if you're fighting monstrous enemies or not. Lots of monster abilities disable folks in ways other than straight damage. Even with human opponents, grappling is a thing when they realize they aren't damaging you. Wizards get color spray/etc at level 1. Rogues can apply poisons. Really, abilities damage/drain of any sort is a problem. Heaven forbid you fall into a pitfall trap and can't climb out...

I'd imagine he's suggesting Human Heritage as a way to qualify for the regional requirement? I'd point out that it doesn't require you to be human, though. However unlikely it might be, you could be a Troll-Blooded Warforged from that same region if you have flaws to get access to toughness.

[Ruethgar]

What does Human Heritage do for you in this case?

Only thing I can see is making it more probable that you live in the region. From what I gather they are like 70-90% human.

[Xyril]

I agree Troll-Blooded Gheden aren't invincible, but being available at ECL 2 it will be a long while before anything can seriously hurt you for which you can't call the DM out as specifically targeting you.

That last bit doesn't have to be a huge concern. Yes, if he's dumping something on you in your second encounter that seems implausibly tailored to kill you, I can see the player having a legitimate complaint about meta-gaming and realism and the whole structuring of the campaign. However, there are plenty of ways for the DM to target you such that they can fend of the complaints of even the least self-aware of munchkins. Depending on the setting, the world can absolutely react in a way that would give you a challenge, all without violating the norms and rules that have been established for the story. If a single member of your party is absolutely tearing through the level-appropriate bandit encounters, then eventually rumors will reach the remaining riffraff, perhaps prompting them to get together and bring in outside help to deal with the new, common threat. If your first encounter with the heroes is so one-sided that your surviving conventional mooks refuse to go into battle, then maybe your villain will use espionage to find their weaknesses (or more fun, just start sending in an assortment of expendable specialists until they stumble upon a combination that seems to work better than others.)

Yes, on the meta-level, your DM is targeting your character. However, Rule 0 is that the rules are to help everyone have some common system for having fun. To me, it's no fun when the GM just happens to have the right setup to target your very specific weakness with zero in-game explanation of how someone got so lucky. However, it's also no fun when a player min-maxes a powerful build with many strengths and very few, specific weaknesses, and then emotionally blackmails the DM not to exploit those weaknesses. But acknowledging that the world can actually react to what you do, and that the choices you made to make your early adventure much easier might come at a high future cost... that's the sort of thing that makes a fun adventure. At least to me.

[sleepyphoenixx]

It makes you count as a human for prereqs. That way you can have, say, a Troll Blooded dvati, or a Troll Blooded neraph. Or even a Troll Blooded kobold.

You need to be human-descended for Human Heritage.
There's some wiggle room because that's not really a defined game term, but neraph or kobolds aren't human-descended even under the most generous interpretation so they don't qualify.

[weckar]

Yeah,. Nothing about the feat itself days you have to be human or human descended. Even a Troll could take it.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Yeah,. Nothing about the feat itself days you have to be human or human descended. Even a Troll could take it.
We are talking about the same feat here, right? Human Heritage from Races of Destiny?
Because it definitely does.


Prerequisite: Half-human race or human-descended
race.

Edit: Unless we're talking about Troll Blooded itself, which requires being a member of one of several human-only, Oerth-native barbarian tribes.

[noob]

Human heritage needs to be human descended.
Due to some kind of creatures being able to create children with everything such as the fey you can have a fey which have a distant human ancestor which then mates with a Z and then that Z over the centuries becomes the ancestor of all the Z.
Thus any creature can take the human heritage feat if you are willing to look far enough in the ancestries.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You need to be human-descended for Human Heritage.
There's some wiggle room because that's not really a defined game term, but neraph or kobolds aren't human-descended even under the most generous interpretation so they don't qualify.Humans can reproduce with pretty much anything (as shown by the feat itself), so "being human-descended" isn't really an obstacle, since you can just say your great-great grandfather was a human. If nothing else, he could be a half-dragon, and since dragons can definitely reproduce with anything, going on to mate with a neraph or whatever isn't at all out of the realm of possibility.

It's basically a fluff requirement.

[edit] noob'd!

[weckar]

Edit: Unless we're talking about Troll Blooded itself, which requires being a member of one of several human-only, Oerth-native barbarian tribes.
Yes, I was talking about the feat the thread is actually about :smallsmile:

I suppose my argument does only apply in case of setting transposition.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's really, really dumb to limit Troll Blooded to a single race, belonging to one of three small tribes out in the middle of nowhere in a very specific campaign setting, when having an ancestry that contains troll blood could happen to practically anyone. And what happens if you're excommunicated from the tribe? Or your parents were? Do you suddenly lose part of your ancestry?

[sleepyphoenixx]

It's really, really dumb to limit Troll Blooded to a single race, belonging to one of three small tribes out in the middle of nowhere in a very specific campaign setting, when having an ancestry that contains troll blood could happen to practically anyone. And what happens if you're excommunicated from the tribe? Or your parents were? Do you suddenly lose part of your ancestry?

It's a regional feat, so presumably what counts is being a native of said region. :smallconfused:
Your parents no longer speaking to you obviously has as much influence as you not currently being in your region of origin, which is none.

As for "it could happen to practically anyone"... we're talking about trolls.
Trolls are:
- large
- giants (not that it counts for much with humans, but still)
- butt ugly by the standards of most humanoids
- not shapeshifters
- stupid as hell
- more likely to regard humans as food than sexual partners
We're also talking about a little more than a trace here iirc. As in it happened a few generations ago, if that.

The whole point of the feat is that it's very much not common.
Being troll blooded - specifically troll blooded enough to count for getting the benefits of the feat instead of just being ugly - is like being a fantasy redneck, only replacing "cousins" with "trolls".

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's a regional feat, so presumably what counts is being a native of said region. :smallconfused:
Your parents no longer speaking to you obviously has as much influence as you not currently being in your region of origin, which is none.

As for "it could happen to practically anyone"... we're talking about trolls.
Trolls are:
- large
- giants (not that it counts for much with humans, but still)
- butt ugly by the standards of most humanoids
- not shapeshifters
- stupid as hell
- more likely to regard humans as food than sexual partners
We're also talking about a little more than a trace here iirc. As in it happened a few generations ago, if that.

The whole point of the feat is that it's very much not common.
Being troll blooded - specifically troll blooded enough to count for getting the benefits of the feat instead of just being ugly - is like being a fantasy redneck, only replacing "cousins" with "trolls".So in the history of all that ever was, in all the Material, Outer, or Inner Planes, throughout all the omniverse, only three tribes of humans in one Material Plane ever mixed genetically with any kind of troll? When you have all sorts of other critters (including numerous giants, to the point where there are published bloodlines) that have interbred (willingly or otherwise) with any number of other things?

That...seems just a little far-fetched, ne? Especially when you have other half-human/half-giant hybrids, half-human/half-ooze hybrids, and even half-human/half-undead hybrids.

[noob]

Half troll is a template with a level adjustment.
But maybe troll blooded is 1/3 troll and thus unreachable through normal means.

[sleepyphoenixx]

So in the history of all that ever was, in all the Material, Outer, or Inner Planes, throughout all the omniverse, only three tribes of humans in one Material Plane ever mixed genetically with any kind of troll? When you have all sorts of other critters (including numerous giants, to the point where there are published bloodlines) that have interbred (willingly or otherwise) with any number of other things?

That...seems just a little far-fetched, ne? Especially when you have other half-human/half-giant hybrids, half-human/half-ooze hybrids, and even half-human/half-undead hybrids.

I find it far more surprising that it happened at all, not that it's rare.

Most of the other things humans tend to breed with are either conveniently attractive or at least able to fake it via shapeshifting. And human-level intelligent, not barely sentient.
Of course it doesn't have to be consensual (see half-orcs) but in that case the aggressor has to be interested that way, which as i said trolls generally aren't.
A lot of the weirder combinations can also be explained by wizard experiments.

I'm not arguing that some wizard somewhere didn't try to cross something or someone with a troll, but that's what the Half-Troll template is for.
But the specific circumstances Troll Blooded applies to? No, i don't think it's far-fetched at all for that to be a very limited occurence.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I find it far more surprising that it happened at all, not that it's rare.

Most of the other things humans tend to breed with are either conveniently attractive or at least able to fake it via shapeshifting. And human-level intelligent, not barely sentient.
Of course it doesn't have to be consensual (see half-orcs) but in that case the aggressor has to be interested that way, which as i said trolls generally aren't.
A lot of the weirder combinations can also be explained by wizard experiments.

I'm not arguing that some wizard somewhere didn't try to cross something or someone with a troll, but that's what the Half-Troll template is for.
But the specific circumstances Troll Blooded applies to? No, i don't think it's far-fetched at all for that to be a very limited occurence.Trolls are evil. It wouldn't take much for one or more of them that are not in that exact area to decide it liked hurting humans (and other creatures) in ways that would result in offspring. That, or as you said, magical splicing of critters to make other critters, since that's very obviously a thing, given owlbears and half-oozes and such. And the results can go on to sire offspring in more conventional ways.

All I'm saying is that it's actually pretty far-fetched that only those three tribes, out of all the omniverse (all the multiverses, Great Wheel and otherwise), would be the only ones who ever interbred with trolls or things that interbred with trolls, willingly or not. Trolls are pretty hard to kill, after all, so adding troll blood to a bloodline is a good way to make the bloodline really hard to kill. I mean, troll bloodlines (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm#troll) and half-troll (https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/halftroll.shtml) are things that exist, so it's not exactly unheard-of.

Why is it more far-fetched that a PC or NPC spends a feat to get troll features than it is to get a bloodline or a template?

[sleepyphoenixx]

Trolls are evil. It wouldn't take much for one or more of them that are not in that exact area to decide it liked hurting humans (and other creatures) in ways that would result in offspring. That, or as you said, magical splicing of critters to make other critters, since that's very obviously a thing, given owlbears and half-oozes and such. And the results can go on to sire offspring in more conventional ways.

All I'm saying is that it's actually pretty far-fetched that only those three tribes, out of all the omniverse (all the multiverses, Great Wheel and otherwise), would be the only ones who ever interbred with trolls or things that interbred with trolls, willingly or not. Trolls are pretty hard to kill, after all, so adding troll blood to a bloodline is a good way to make the bloodline really hard to kill. I mean, troll bloodlines (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm#troll) are a thing, so it's not exactly unheard-of.

Why is it more far-fetched that a PC spends a feat to get troll features than it is to get a bloodline or a template?
It depends heavily on the setting i guess.

I'd generally consider most of the weirder templates to be "a really weird wizard did this one once, so just for reference" stuff, not something that's at all common.
From that perspective the only common half creatures are half elves and half orcs. Even "standard" planetouched are rare to the point that they lack the numbers to form their own communities.
Not unheard of, but certainly uncommon enough to be something people remark on.

From your perspective pretty much anyone has something non-human in his ancestry if you go back far enough.
And sure, if that's the case a Troll Blooded human would be a minor curiosity at best.
In a world like that there's probably entire cities of Aasimar and other celestial-descended beings. Maybe being "just human" is even weirder than having some troll blood, who knows?

I'm not too familar with Greyhawk but afaik it falls more into the former category than the latter (as opposed to something like FR, where the latter applies to pretty much anyone of even minor importance).

Though honestly as a DM i mostly just waive regional requirements. You're only allowed one regional feat anyway, so it's not like it'll enable any gamebreaking combos.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Heck, I think there's even a troll blood graft. Spending a feat to say, "Oh, by the way, this feat represents being infused with troll blood as a child after a horrific accident, and the wizard who did it used an experimental serum to give me regeneration as another step in his experiments to become immortal without becoming undead," seems pretty reasonable, to me.

What isn't reasonable is to restrict options so thoroughly like most regional feats (including Troll Blooded) do. Not everyone is so bereft of imagination, or wants to play just the options presented as The Only True Fantasy Game that most designers seem to insist on.

[sleepyphoenixx]

What isn't reasonable is to restrict options so thoroughly like most regional feats (including Troll Blooded) do. Not everyone is so bereft of imagination, or wants to play just the options presented as The Only True Fantasy Game that most designers seem to insist on.

It's setting specific, so conforming to that settings lore is hardly unexpected. It's also third party.
Also rule 0 is specifically called out in the DMG, so i really don't see where the problem is.

It's not like the feat was designed for theoretical RAW discussions on an internet forum, nor does it need to be. :smalltongue:

[Gnaeus]

I agree completely with sleepyphoenix. The words of the feat mean things. “Your family tree contains the blood of the trolls of the Thillonrian peninsula.” If your family tree doesn’t contain the blood of the trolls of the Thillonrian peninsula you can’t get Troll-Blooded.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I agree completely with sleepyphoenix. The words of the feat mean things. “Your family tree contains the blood of the trolls of the Thillonrian peninsula.” If your family tree doesn’t contain the blood of the trolls of the Thillonrian peninsula you can’t get Troll-Blooded."Mine was from a wizard who used a potion with troll blood in it. He might've gotten it from there." *Shrug*

[Vizzerdrix]

I agree completely with sleepyphoenix. The words of the feat mean things. “Your family tree contains the blood of the trolls of the Thillonrian peninsula.” If your family tree doesn’t contain the blood of the trolls of the Thillonrian peninsula you can’t get Troll-Blooded.

See, you are focusing on the wrong part. The tree is the important bit. So if your family doesn't own a tree filled with troll blood, or if something happens to said tree, no more feat.

[weckar]

It's setting specific, so conforming to that settings lore is hardly unexpected. It's also third party.
Also rule 0 is specifically called out in the DMG, so i really don't see where the problem is.

It's not like the feat was designed for theoretical RAW discussions on an internet forum, nor does it need to be. :smalltongue:Dragon s third party? Since when? It's published by wotc, innit?

[sleepyphoenixx]

Dragon s third party? Since when? It's published by wotc, innit?

Paizo actually, at least most of the 3.5 stuff.

[noob]

See, you are focusing on the wrong part. The tree is the important bit. So if your family doesn't own a tree filled with troll blood, or if something happens to said tree, no more feat.

Fits properly in the spirit of dnd optimisation.

[Quertus]

I agree Troll-Blooded Gheden aren't invincible, but being available at ECL 2 it will be a long while before anything can seriously hurt you for which you can't call the DM out as specifically targeting you.


Depends on if you're fighting monstrous enemies or not. Lots of monster abilities disable folks in ways other than straight damage. Even with human opponents, grappling is a thing when they realize they aren't damaging you. Wizards get color spray/etc at level 1. Rogues can apply poisons. Really, abilities damage/drain of any sort is a problem. Heaven forbid you fall into a pitfall trap and can't climb out...

If someone brings a character like that to a game that I'm running, between pits and grappling, ability damage (admittedly rare at level 2) and saving throws, let alone all the things that aren't combat, like social and exploration, one of three things is true:

There is no problem - the spotlight is being shared within tolerances of equally.

I need to improve the variety of encounters I create.

They failed to Balance to the Table.

Figuring out *which* of these is the issue can be admittedly tricky.


So in the history of all that ever was, in all the Material, Outer, or Inner Planes, throughout all the omniverse, only three tribes of humans in one Material Plane ever mixed genetically with any kind of troll?

That...seems just a little far-fetched, ne? Especially when you have other half-human/half-giant hybrids, half-human/half-ooze hybrids, and even half-human/half-undead hybrids.

I mean, I've seen plenty of half-trolls - even before 3e was a thing. And, IIRC, any high-end Broken One could regenerate.

However, I've not really tracked any of the half-breeds actually, you know, having great grandkids or anything.

So, I can't actually say from experience that I've seen a counterexample in a game - just plenty of half-breeds.

[as91]

Several of the specialist fighter variants from Dragon Magazine 310 can take toughness as their fighter feat at 1st level.

[Anthrowhale]

The regions/groups qualifying for Troll Blooded seem to contain subpopulations for all of the PHB races.

Dragon Magazine during the Paizo period is probably better described as "second party", because WotC endorsed their content and Paizo had a license from WotC. This was something like a franchise relationship.