Troll Troubles

No time like the present to add another cranky creature to our Wandering Monsters Wilderness Trek Table! What might the dice have in store for you this time?!

These will be our second and third entries to the table, as we already got things rolling earlier with our misunderstood gorillas. To catch you up, DM Ben wants to make a couple of monster tables for the two classic themes, dungeons and wilderness, by populating them with cool STLs that we’ve printed and painted up for our own campaigns.

Regarding the table mechanics, we kept things pretty simple and followed the modern-day DnD 5e wandering rule of rolling a d20 for every hour. Half of the table will include a creature throw-down, and the other half will be non-events.

If we’re talking long rest, then it’s just one roll for the entire eight-hour sleep/watch duration. If the group is taking a short rest, roll 6d6, and any roll of a six would lead to a roll on our Wilderness Trek encounter table.

Nothing too complicated, right?

First, let’s do our non-combat event (or row 2 of the table)! We’re calling this one “Just passing through” as a non-threatening adventurer just so happens to be taking the same path and inadvertently stumbles upon your pitstop area. The DM can whip up the core description: race, class, description, demeanor, etc.

Or, if you love a good dice roll, break out dice sets that truly randomize these specifics. Beardic Inspiration has awesome Instagram clips demonstrating these random rolls, and the sorta dice he utilizes are easily found on Etsy by fantastic creators like Viridian Gaming.

DM Ben constantly reinforces the theme that every encounter doesn’t always have to be a fight to the death. A character’s skills and proficiencies are just as important as their armor and weapons. Poke at newly encountered creatures whenever possible and try to see what their intent is before going in, guns blazing.

Thus, entry two in our table will be “Passer-By,” with the goal of letting everyone go about their business. Your adventurers might ignore them and simply pass on any engagement, they might try a little role-playing, etc. Be loose with it. Skip any fighting unless the party forces your hand.

Side Note: always keep a couple of random minis on hand so you can plop something down on the gameboard if the situation calls for it.

Let’s add row four to our table with this wandering troll! This mini is from EC3D Designs and their Beasts and Baddies collection. We particularly dig this big-toothed bugger because of the big ol’ sack he’s dragging around. That mini detail fits a great narrative of him patrolling this particular stretch of the forest because he thinks he owns it, and everyone he runs into is trespassing.

For its stats, we plugged the D&D Beyond’s Troll numbers into a DnD online CR Tool to ensure nothing was out of whack for our party of six level-four adventurers. This particular monster combat is on the easier side with the intent to disrupt. We’ll have a few future entries that are on the harder side, but we want the difficulty level to be all over the place in this table.

Plus, our slumbering adventurers are probably at their worst, so that always makes things a bit tougher…especially if you’re a DM like Ben, who requires no long rests in armor.

Next time, we’ll have two more rows to fill as we continue our march on to 20! What’s next?!