I have been working on a playable troll race for my homebrew world and would love some feedback. All comments welcome. 

 Troll

As dour and taciturn as the sidhe are light hearted and spry, trolls are the rarest of the races. They normally inhabit mountain caves or deep forests and force races that wish to trade for troll crafted items or special ores to come to them in their remote homes.  

Trolls suffer under a curse which has twisted their bodies. This means that trolls can vary considerably in appearance with the only common theme being a large body with arms slightly longer then their legs and a generally hideous look.  

 Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score increases by 2 

Age: Trolls have lifespans equal to several human lifespans. They enter adulthood in their late teens but are not considered fully mature until attaining a half century.   

Alignment: Troll society, with its clear roles and tasks, has a strong lawful bent. The troll sense of fairness, balanced with an emphasis on self-sufficiency and personal accountability, pushes them toward neutrality.  

Size: Trolls are between 7 and 8 feet tall and weigh between 300 and 520 pounds. Your size is Medium.  

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.  

Troll Healing.  Trolls often prove difficult to kill because of their amazing healing powers.  You have advantage on death saving throws.  Additionally, when you spend hit dice to heal, you regain an extra 1d6 hit points for each hit die spent. 

Powerful Build: You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.  

Troll deformity: The physical shape of a troll is twisted and deformed. They often have multiple heads, warty stone like skin or extra arms. While often horrific in appearance these deformities rarely inconvenience the troll and are often a boon. Pick one from the list below.  

• Horns: you have grown larger than normal horns that may be used as a natural weapon to make unarmed strikes. The horns deal 1d6+strength on a hit. 
• Multiple heads. You have an additional head. You gain advantage on perception checks and rolls to awake from sleep. Additionally, attacks that remove heads only render you unconscious for 24 hours while the secondary head grows bigger and becomes dominant. After 30 days your lost head will regrow and during this time you lose the benefits of this deformity. 
• Multiple arms. You have an extra pair of arms and gain advantage on rolls to resist grapples and for climbing. You can also carry small items in the extra appendage(s) but can’t use it to fight with. Lost arms will regrow after a period of 30 days during which time you lose the benefits of this deformity. 

Languages: You speak, read and write Common and Troll 

Subrace. Trolls are divided into two major subraces. The Jotunn, sometimes called stone trolls, dwell primarily in mountains and hills while the Huldrefolk, known as forest trolls, live in forests and sometimes among human settlements.  

 Jotunn 

The stone trolls tend towards the larger end of the weight and height spectrum of trolls. Their skin and eyes tend towards greys and browns while their hair is often black or blue.  

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.  

Natural Armor. Stone trolls have tough stone-like skin with spikes and/or crystalline like structures jutting out. You cannot wear armor but your skin provides a base AC of 17 (Dexterity does not affect this number). You gain no benefit from wearing armor but can apply a shield’s bonus as normal.  

Iron Worker: You gain proficiency with blacksmithing tools.  

Huldrefolk 

The forest trolls are often tall but lean and willowy. Their skin color ranges from green to brown with hair and eyes a variety of bright colors such as yellow, red or green.  

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.  

Woodland lore. You gain proficiency in the Nature skill.  

Forest Magic. The Huldrefolk are deeply connected with the magic of the woods. You know the Druidcraft cantrip. When you reach 3rd level you can cast the Animal Friendship spell once per day. When you reach 5th level, you can also cast the Locate Animals or Plants spell once per day. Wisdom is your spell casting modifier.  

Random Height and Weight

Race Base Height    Height mod  Base Weight   Weight mod
Troll      6' 6''                  plus 2d10''      300                   x (2d6)

Quote from Slaine000 >>

 

Troll deformity: The physical shape of a troll is twisted and deformed. They often have multiple heads, warty stone like skin or extra arms. While often horrific in appearance these deformities rarely inconvenience the troll and are often a boon. Pick one of the below deformities.  

• Horns: the troll has grown larger than normal horns that may be used as a natural weapon to make unarmed strikes. The horns deal 1d6+strength on a hit. 
• Multiple heads. Advantage on perception checks and rolls to awake from sleep. Additionally, attacks that remove heads only render the troll unconscious for 24 hours while one of the secondary heads grows bigger and becomes dominant. 
• Multiple arms. Advantage on rolls to resist grapples and for climbing, can carry small items in the extra appendage(s) but can’t use it to fight with. 

 

At the bottom of the first post here is something very, very helpful. 

Quote from Slaine000 >>

Troll Healing: When using hit dice to heal after a short or long rest you may add 1d6 to each hit die rolled.  Trolls often prove difficult to kill because of their amazing healing and thus you also gain advantage for death saves. 

Troll Healing.  Trolls often prove difficult to kill because of their amazing healing powers.  You have advantage on death saving throws.  Additionally, when you spend hit dice to heal, you regain an extra 1d6 hit points for each hit die spent. 

Quote from Slaine000 >>

Quote from Slaine000 >>

 

Troll deformity: The physical shape of a troll is twisted and deformed. They often have multiple heads, warty stone like skin or extra arms. While often horrific in appearance these deformities rarely inconvenience the troll and are often a boon. Pick one of the below deformities.  

• Horns: the troll has grown larger than normal horns that may be used as a natural weapon to make unarmed strikes. The horns deal 1d6+strength on a hit. 
• Multiple heads. Advantage on perception checks and rolls to awake from sleep. Additionally, attacks that remove heads only render the troll unconscious for 24 hours while one of the secondary heads grows bigger and becomes dominant. 
• Multiple arms. Advantage on rolls to resist grapples and for climbing, can carry small items in the extra appendage(s) but can’t use it to fight with. 

 

 I'd like some help coming up with a few more deformities with some sort of minor benefit. Some ideas so far..

Tail. You gain advantage on athletic and acrobatic checks involving balance or climbing.  

Long arms. You can run on all four arms/legs. Your speed increases by 20ft when doing so but you cannot carry anything in your hands. 

Extra eyes. You gain darkvision. In addition, you have disadvantage to saves against gaze attacks. 

 

• Breath weapon.  As dragonborn. 
• Resistance.  You have resistance to one damage type of your choice, other than bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing. 
• Poison gas.  You can duplicate the effects of the poison spray cantrip.  Your spellcasting ability for it is Constitution, and it is considered nonmagical. 
• Lightning claws.  You can duplicate the effects of the shocking grasp cantrip.  Your spellcasting ability for it is Constitution, and it is considered nonmagical.  
• Claws.  Your claws are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes.  If you hit with them, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. 
• Darkvision.  You have darkvision out to a range of 60 feet. 
• Tremorsense.  You have tremorsense out to a range of 30 feet.  
• Natural armor.  You gain a +1 bonus to AC. 
• Light claws.  Your claws are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes.  They do 1d4 slashing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike, and can be used with Strength or Dexterity (your choice). 
• Pseudo-wings.  You take no damage from falling. 

Thanks for the help Matthias. Put in some of your suggested edits. Still puzzling over deformities. I don't want too many choices but you have given a couple good ideas. 

I am interested in your opinion of the race. Does it seem halfway balanced? Do the abilities and description make them seem interesting? Still working on some kind of full write up. 

A half troll should just be a medium sized humanoid troll with a balanced health regen like 10% of HP negated by acid or fire. 1d4+str claws, darkvision, keen smell and +2con +1str. Basically a troll. The other half of your race is what allows you to join the ranks of society as an adventuer thus allowing you to follow a class path etc.....Voracious appetite etc... should'nt be a racial trait just roleplay that stuff if you want to be hungry or eat people and let the DM roleplay it out with you. Just my opinion.

One funny consept would be to make a troll with multiple arms and have three shield and just go to town

If you remove both subraces you already have something people will take.   If you want to keep the variants, I suggest adding some more negatives.  At least a -1 Charisma, as they are deformed.

Oversized Tusks that Can be used for a Goring Attack

Quote from Mog_Dracov >>

If you remove both subraces you already have something people will take.   If you want to keep the variants, I suggest adding some more negatives.  At least a -1 Charisma, as they are deformed.

 

 

 

 there aren't any negative race modifiers anymore, in addition using the tashas optional rule you could technically turn -1 CHA to -1 anything 

I wasn't sure about if the title was pointing to a class or race focused in doing Shenanigans everywhere, or if it was pointed to a typical Troll race.

At least you did a nice work describing this race.