Deep Trolls (Race)

[Grimsage Matt]

"Deep in the dark,
Deep in the gloom,
Deep past god or demon,
Deep past Stone and flame,
Deep to where the earths
Hearth beats,
The Deep Trolls Sleep."

Trolls, a often barbaric race. But a few... A few a old and powerful scions of times long before even the gods emerged from the primordial muck. And the Deep Trolls, they remeber.

Personality; Deep trolls will often appear to be slow. This is mostly because they don't belive in undue haste. They are calm and serious, with grim tendecies. As impartial as the stone of the world, they often spend uncounted years in a deep hibrination, listening to the world. But they can be roused. And woe to whatever stands in their way.

Physical Description: Imagine a human, close to 10 feet tall, with skin of granite, and eyes that smouldered like coals. Their hair resembles minerial veins, their teeth gemstones and their nails steel.

Relations: Most don't even know about them. Only ancient sages can even teel the diffrence between a Trollish mineral warrior and one of these, at least before they speak. Those outsiders and elementals that remeber them, they know them as guardians of the primes world hearts, and implacible guardians.

Alignment: The Deep Trolls tend to be impartial, and so are most often neutral. However, on the law/chaos scale, they can differ greatly. Some are slow and meditative and stickles for the tradtions. Some just dwell on the mysteries. and some are rash Ill advised adventurers.

Lands:; Deep Trolls live near the outer mantle. Or the inner mantle. This is possible because they're immune to lava, and can breathe it as easily as air.

Religion: The world itself. Druids and shamans form the bulk of the relgious element among them.

Language:; They speak the lanuages of the depths. Terran, Ignan and Undercommon, they speak and know them well.

Adventurers: Deep troll adventuers are often seen as rash and foolhardy by the Jarls and Sages, as they abandon the deeps for the hastey and soon gone plesure of the surface.

Deep Troll Racial stats (Will edit them in)
+2 Con, +2 Wis, -4 Dex, -4 Cha. The Deep Trolls are tough as stone, perecptive, and take the time to figure things out. However, they're withdrawn and conyemplative natures render them cumbersome, and not used to dealing with others.
Giant(Earth). Deep Trolls are trolls that have a anceint, unshakeable bond with the very earth.
Medium Size
Diffrent sense of time; The life span of a Deep troll can be mesured in contiental drifts. As such, they tend to move slightly slower. They're base land speed is 20ft and they have a -1 racial penalty to initiave. However, they are immune to slow effects, fatigue and exhust conditions. Their movement speed cannot be reduced by emcumbrence or armor. At 10 HD, they gain mettle. At 15 HD, they gain improved mettle.
Stony Hide; A deep trolls stone like hide is tough. They gain a natural armor bonus of 1/2 their HD. At 12th level, they gain DR1/Admentine per 4 HD.
Stonecunning; As the dwarven racial abillity.
Earthen Endurance; 1/hour, they may rapidly restore their own wounds. As a swift action, they can heal themselves for Their HD times their Con Mod.
Powerful Build; They're treated as large size for all benifical purposes. At 8 HD, they lose Powerful build and grow to large size.
Tremorsense; A Deep Troll has tremorsense out to 10 feet.
Darkvision; Deep trolls posess Darkvision out to 60ft, as dwarf.

Skills; Pick two class skills. You gain a bonus to them equal to 1/3 your HD. +3 To truespeak, and +5 on craft checks to create runes.
Favoured Class; Shaman, Druid.
LA;+2

[Madara]

I like the fluff: Give me some crunch :smallcool:

It would fill a nice spot in my new worldbuilding project, so I might want to adopt it.

[Lord of Shadows]

Ditto what Madara said. The homebrew campaign here calls the underword "The Beneath," and these would fit right in.. Er , under.

Looking forward to the rest.

[Grimsage Matt]

Deep Trolls now have some crunch.

[Grimsage Matt]

Some Feats, to help em meat the Crunch.

Deep Living
Required; Deep Troll, Fort save+2
Benifits; You are used to living deep underground. You gain bonus to saving throws aginst poison and disease equal to 1/2 your HD. At 16 HD, this becomes immunity to nonmagical poisons and disease.

Deep And Fireproof
Required; Deep Troll, Deep Living.
Benifits; You gain Immunity to lava and resteince to fire equal to 1/2 your HD.

Magma Breath
Required; Deep Troll, Deep and Fireproof, 12 HD.
Benifits; You may breathe lava as easily as air. You are also immune to nonmagical fire, and your Resistence to magical fires improves to HD.

Earthen Step
Required; Deep Troll, Wisdom 14, Earth sense.
Benifits; You know a bit about the earth, and can convince it to part a bit. You gain Burrow 5 feet. You need to be able to speak in order to for this to work.

StoneFish
Required; Deep Troll, Earthstep.
Benifits; Your burrow speed is equal to your base land speed, and you gain earth glide.

[Othesemo]

Ooo, I like.

My only thought would be that their +4 dex sort of outweighs their -1 initiative. Fluff notwithstanding, these things are actually more likely to outspeed an otherwise equal human than not.

[Grimsage Matt]

Ooo, I like.

My only thought would be that their +4 dex sort of outweighs their -1 initiative. Fluff notwithstanding, these things are actually more likely to outspeed an otherwise equal human than not.

Edited. Should have been -4 Dex.

[Grimsage Matt]

So, Madara and ShadowLord79, how you like the crunch? Will be adding in some racial substation levels in a bit.

[Madara]

I am peaching


Deep Troll Racial stats (Will edit them in)
+2 Con, +2 Wis, +2 Int, -4 Dex, -4 Cha. The Deep Trolls are tough as stone, perecptive, and take the time to figure things out. However, they're withdrawn and conyemplative natures render them cumbersome, and not used to dealing with others.
Giant(Earth). Deep Trolls are trolls that have a anceint, unshakeable bond with the very earth.
Medium Size
Different sense of time; The life span of a Deep troll can be mesured in contiental drifts. As such, they tend to move slightly slower. They're base land speed is 20ft and they have a -1 racial penalty to initiave. However, they are immune to slow effects, fatigue and exhust conditions. Their movement speed cannot be reduced by emcumbrence or armor. At 10 HD, they gain mettle. At 15 HD, they gain improved mettle.
Stony Hide; A deep trolls stone like hide is tough. They gain a natural armor bonus of 1/2 their HD. At 12th level, they gain DR1/Admentine per 4 HD.
Stonecunning; As the dwarven racial abillity.
Earthen Endurance; 1/hour, so long as they are in contact with the earth, they may use a cure spell witha level equal to 1/2 HD on themselves. Cure minior wounds counts as a 1/2 level spell. Caster level equals HD.
Powerful Build; They're treated as large size for all benifical purposes. At 8 HD, they lose Powerful build and grow to large size.
Tremorsense; A Deep Troll has tremorsense 5' per HD.

Skills; Pick two class skills. You gain a bonus to them equal to 1/3 your HD. +3 To truespeak, and +5 on craft checks to create runes.
Favoured Class; Shaman, Druid, Truenamer.
LA;+2

Are you going for LA +2? I mean you reach it, but it wouldn't be too hard to bring it down to +1.

Stats: Drop the Int bonus, or the Wisdom. Most likely the Int. I can see the slow-moving wise types, but aging will give them the mental bonuses you're thinking of.
Giant Type: This will lead to the belief they should have at least some LA, which is fine.
Diffrent sense of time: Drop the Mettle. Also, there are too many abilities that scale with HD, it kinda bothers me.
Stony Hide: Its ok, but could easily be a flat +2 bonus to Natural Armor
Earthen Endurance: This is cool. Make it a flat hp/ day rather than spellcasting. Like 5xCon hp/day.
Powerful Build: They're giants, this makes sense. Growing to Large size at 8 HD is ok, I don't have a problem with it.
Tremorsense: Yeah. You could drop this, or make it a flat 20'
Favored Class: Normally there's just one, but really, there should be more so that's fine. But Truenamer?!? Why?

Overall I suggest making a few drops to bring it down to LA +1

[TuggyNE]

Deep trolls seem like they should have more RHD than regular trolls, but currently none are in evidence. Also, a couple of their feats seem like they're essential for their chosen life near the core (Deep Living and Deep And Fireproof). Finally, I second Madara's distaste for an overabundance of HD-scaling abilities; two or three are OK, but six?

[Lord of Shadows]

I am peaching

Are you going for LA +2? I mean you reach it, but it wouldn't be too hard to bring it down to +1.

Stats: Drop the Int bonus, or the Wisdom. Most likely the Int. I can see the slow-moving wise types, but aging will give them the mental bonuses you're thinking of.

Giant Type: This will lead to the belief they should have at least some LA, which is fine.

Diffrent sense of time: Drop the Mettle. Also, there are too many abilities that scale with HD, it kinda bothers me.

Stony Hide: Its ok, but could easily be a flat +2 bonus to Natural Armor

Earthen Endurance: This is cool. Make it a flat hp/ day rather than spellcasting. Like 5xCon hp/day.

Powerful Build: They're giants, this makes sense. Growing to Large size at 8 HD is ok, I don't have a problem with it.

Tremorsense: Yeah. You could drop this, or make it a flat 20'

Favored Class: Normally there's just one, but really, there should be more so that's fine. But Truenamer?!? Why?

Overall I suggest making a few drops to bring it down to LA +1
Agreed that it wouldn't be too hard to reign it in to a LA +1, but at the levels of parties I expect to be encountering these, one level isn't going to matter that much.

The Wisdom bonus fits the creature best. Int bonus would add more Skill points, but, I think I'd drop this one.

I don't have a problem with Mettle. And yes, there are alot of things scaling with HD, but again, for the use I can imagine putting them to over here, that's probably fine. These are going to be rarely encountered creatures of myth and legend. They should have some ooomph behind them.

The rest all looks OK, but I would drop Favored Class to just one, or maybe two. And I will echo Madara, "Truenamer?"

LA +2 is OK here. Good work so far. Thanks.

[Grimsage Matt]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120488 This Truenamer fix is the one they have favoured with. Also, the whole HD scaling abillities thing was ment to represent that they get tougher as they get older, more elemental and earthlike.

Also, about the feats:smallamused: The monster will get 'em as bonus feats. However, made 'em feats to represent that adventurers aren't as used to their homelands as the Deep Trolls that live there. Sort of a, "You don't live here, how did you ever get used to it?" sort of deal.

And ya, might int out.

[Grimsage Matt]

Note, I suck at tables, so these will be sloppy.

It's the Deep Trolls Racial substation levels:smallbiggrin:

Barbarian
"Do you think you can continue to defile the earth? Come, let me show you her fury."- Cragnan, just before the demon invasion of '69 was destroyed.

The Deep Trolls are normaly calm. However, some of them are like the volcano. For centuries, they are calm, but when they erupt, nothing survives. The Deep Troll Barbarian however, bonds themselves to the burning heart of the world. It's rage, is their rage.


A deep troll barbarian may choose to take a racial substation level at their 1st, 3rd and 8th level of barbarian.

Level BAB Fort Ref Will Special
1 +1 +2 +0 +0 Rage aginst the Earths Foes
3 +3 +3 +1 +1 The Stone protects
8 +8/+3 +6 +2 +2 Pyroclastic Fury

Rage Aginst the Earths Foes(EX); They lose the Barbarians Fast movement abillity, and instead have the Rangers Favoured enemy abillity. The Favoured enemys they may pick from are; Abberations, Outsider(Evil), or Undead. The bonuses aginst their chosen favored enemy increases by 1 at 5th level and every 5 levels afterwords.
The Stone Protects(EX); So long as they're in contact with earth, they gain light fortifcation. This improves to Moderate fortifcation at 9th level, and heavy fotifcation at 15th level. They loose the Trap sense feature.
Pyroclastic Fury(SU); While Raging, they channel the molten fury of the earth. There melee attacks deal a addtional Xd6 fire damage. X is equal to their base Str Mod. They rage one less time per day then there level would indicate.

Druid

You say that the stone beneath you is not alive? Truely, I pity you who cannot hear the earth.- The Deep Troll Archdruid Gramkom.

The Deep Trolls know what few surface druids do. The very stone beneath their feet, is alive. Sure, it's not alive in a way the the impatient surface dwellers would understand, but the world's heart beats still.

A Deep Troll Druid may take a racial substation level at their 1st, 3rd and 5th druid level.
Skills; They Add Knowledge(Dungeonerring) to their skill list.

Level BAB Fort Ref Will Special
1st +0 +2 +0 +2 Stone Heart, Earthen Compainion
3rd +2 +3 +1 +3 Step of Stone.
5th +3 +4 +1 +4 Stony Transformation.

Stone Heart(EX); Deep Trolls know the stone is alive, and nature supports them on this. They may use Armor made of stone. However, they lose Wild empathy.
Earthen Compainion; A Deep Troll does not have a normal animal compainion. Instead, they have a small earth elemental companion. At 4th level, they can have a medium Earth elemental companion (As a druid 3 levels lower). At 7th level, they may have a large earth elemental compainion (As a druid 6 levels lower). At 10th level, they may have a huge earth elemental companion (As a druid 9 levels lower). At 13th level, they may have a greater earth elemental companion (As a druid 12 levels lower). At 16th level, they may have a Elder Earth elemental compainion (As a druid 15 levels lower). It adds half the bonus tricks it would have learned to it's DR.
Step of Stone; A Deep Troll Druids Woodland stride and trackless step abillity are altered. They now function in areas of stone.
Athourity of the Stone; They lose their normal wild shape abillity, and Elemental Wildshape can only transform them into earth elementals. However, they gain all the SU abillities. They may also Rebuke and command creatures with the Earth subtype as a cleric of their level 3+Wis mod times per day.