"You" are a brain. Everything else from your skeleton, lungs, heart, skin, muscles, eyes etc are not "you" they are parts of you designed to help you move, perceive, interact and acquire what you need for survival.
Quoted just this because I agree with the rest of the post... but "you == your brain" is not, as far as I know, stated anywhere in the rules. It is probably usually a fine adjudication for a DM to make (although it would break down for some creatures, like, say, a Gray Ooze), but what "you" actually is is, as far as I know, left up to the DM to decide.
Do remember this is the Rules forum not the DM forum, it's not about what you find fun as a DM but rather how the actual rules work.
Regeneration is a type of healing.
The rules say you cannot heal when dead.
A body part of a creature is not the creature.
If the Troll is alive at 0 hp, it can regenerate / heal if it was not damaged by fire or acid.
If the only thing left is not something that is the living creature - ie a hand - it cannot regenerate or heal regardless of whether it is the biggest piece - size of a part is irrelevant.
So if you chop off a hand, the hand does not regenerate ever. The troll might if still alive, but the lost hand doesn't.
A hand is part of you. It is not you. It will never be you, attached to you or not, biggest piece or not, it remains only a "part".
"You" are a brain. Everything else from your skeleton, lungs, heart, skin, muscles, eyes etc are not "you" they are parts of you designed to help you move, perceive, interact and acquire what you need for survival.
A troll head kept alive is still the brain, still the troll and can regenerate. Anything unattached to that becomes a lifeless piece.
So NO by all semblance of sanity, biology, D&D rules (which does establish brains and how they work, a vital part of Mindflayers and Intellect Devourers for example) and such all indicate that a the troll is not its hand. A severed troll hand is not, and never will be, a creature and therefore cannot ever regenerate into a troll - not by the regenerate trait, not by the spell, not ever by anything.
Those ARE the RAW. Now, if you want to have a nigh-immortal troll that could regenerate from a hand (or hell, just a few drops of blood) that's entirely up to you. If you find that fun, power to you, enjoy. But that is homebrew, and your homebrew has no place in a forum specifically about the rules. Nobody is saying don't have fun, just it's not what this discussion is about.
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Also: putting the hand into a bag of holding where you have homebrewed that the hand is going to turn into a full troll is a very bad idea. Unless you want to lose that bag. Because a bag of holding is not big enough to contain the troll so it will rip when it becomes too big which will destroy the bag and send all contents and probably the wearer/holder to the Astral Plane.
However, if you have homebrewed that the bag of holding is larger and can contain the troll, sure. But it will suffocate and die and when dead will not regenerate unless you've homebrewed that rule away too.
If you chopped off a trolls hand, and then threw the rest of the troll through a wood chipper, but didn’t aim the wood chipper at a bonfire or an acid pit, then the hand would be the largest part and the troll would regrow itself from that. You couldn’t cut a troll in two and get two trolls.
But if you through that theoretical hand into a Bag of Holding, the Bag only has a finite supply of air. So depending on how long you left it in there you might only get a partially regenerated troll, or a suffocated troll that could then re-regenerate once it could breath again without the aforementioned fire/acid treatment.
PS- If you threw the hand into the wood chipper after the rest of the troll, then it would be dead.
I would also like to point out that the entire troll doesn't need to be burned it just need to take fire or acid damage that turn to not regen. So I hit it with a firebolt and deal 1 fire damage and then the fighter murders the rest of its HP in the same round.
Regeneration. The troll regains 10 hit points at the start of its turn. If the troll takes acid or fire damage, this trait doesn't function at the start of the troll's next turn. The troll dies only if it starts its turn with 0 hit points and doesn't regenerate.
If you chopped off a trolls hand, and then threw the rest of the troll through a wood chipper, but didn’t aim the wood chipper at a bonfire or an acid pit, then the hand would be the largest part and the troll would regrow itself from that. You couldn’t cut a troll in two and get two trolls.
But if you through that theoretical hand into a Bag of Holding, the Bag only has a finite supply of air. So depending on how long you left it in there you might only get a partially regenerated troll, or a suffocated troll that could then re-regenerate once it could breath again without the aforementioned fire/acid treatment.
PS- If you threw the hand into the wood chipper after the rest of the troll, then it would be dead.
How does the universe know which part of a troll is the largest? Why, if the hand is regenerating now, couldn't it regenerate before? What is the mechanism that mediates this phenomenon?
Yeah, I think people forget sometimes that the rules of a game are there to encourage fairness while also building a narrative world to share with one another. Everybody has a different method of interpreting rules, but my view is that tabletop RPGs exist to promote creativity and imagination, not to stifle it by narrow readings of rules.
No. The rules simulate the reality of the game world.
How does the universe know which part of a troll is the largest? Why, if the hand is regenerating now, couldn't it regenerate before? What is the mechanism that mediates this phenomenon?
Yeah, I think people forget sometimes that the rules of a game are there to encourage fairness while also building a narrative world to share with one another. Everybody has a different method of interpreting rules, but my view is that tabletop RPGs exist to promote creativity and imagination, not to stifle it by narrow readings of rules.
No. The rules simulate the reality of the game world.
The rules exist to sell a product that encourages people to come together for shared storytelling that has Rules because without rules it would be almost impossible to decide which fictional character wins in a duel/contest with other fictional character. The rules exist to facilitate a shared gaming experience. But the game world is run by the GM, not by WotC. It is the option of the GM to interpret the rules as they see fit so long as the other players are okay with general work being done by the GM on their shared behalf. Let's not forget that GMs are also a player.
I think I just now realised how I think troll regeneration works: There has to be circulation.
Sure, troll tissue will regenerate, but that's a process that needs nutrients, oxygen, energy - and those things are in the blood. So effectively, any part of the troll not connected to the heart will regenerate, but it will run out of juice long before it can regenerate an entire troll.
If we look deeper into this, it may seem like you could stop a troll's regeneration by destroying it's heart. On the surface, that seems a reasonable assumption, but obviously that's something evotrollution has taken care of: Around and inside the heart are fatty tissues that contain enough energy or nutrition for the heart itself to regenerate. Sure, if you keep at it for long enough, maybe you'll succesfully stop this process - but really, grabbing a torch is a quicker solution.
A cleverer question is: If I have a troll, and I syphon off it's blood a little at a time, until I have some liters - then cut off a hand - could I then feed this blood to the hand, and thus create a new troll. And the answer in this case is yes! Cloning trolls in this way is possible, but difficult to manage in practice, as the trolls know they are the same troll, and each feel that they are the original. Such cases end with one troll killing the other - unless they are kept apart permanently.
As an aside, a troll will kill another troll by eating it's heart.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
A new troll can grow from a hand, it is stated in the 2014 stat block that sometimes dismembered limbs can become a new troll, how that works in a bag of holding is that the hand would grow into a new troll but without air/oxygen then the troll will suffocate and be stuck at 0HP/incapacitated when retrieved, once out it would start to regenerate but at 0HP it would be very vulnerable so the players can slice parts of the troll off and as acid kills troll meat, they could eat it and shove the troll back into the bag. The players now have an infinite source of food, sucks to be the troll tho.
Trolls do not have immunity to death however and less than 100 Max HP, so what happens if a troll is hit with power word kill? Surely it dies but does the dead troll now come back as a brand new troll or is it's body just completely inanimate? I assume the latter but it's not clear.
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Quoted just this because I agree with the rest of the post... but "you == your brain" is not, as far as I know, stated anywhere in the rules. It is probably usually a fine adjudication for a DM to make (although it would break down for some creatures, like, say, a Gray Ooze), but what "you" actually is is, as far as I know, left up to the DM to decide.
I think the MM says they can grow new heads... 🤔
I would also like to point out that the entire troll doesn't need to be burned it just need to take fire or acid damage that turn to not regen. So I hit it with a firebolt and deal 1 fire damage and then the fighter murders the rest of its HP in the same round.
Regeneration. The troll regains 10 hit points at the start of its turn. If the troll takes acid or fire damage, this trait doesn't function at the start of the troll's next turn. The troll dies only if it starts its turn with 0 hit points and doesn't regenerate.
How does the universe know which part of a troll is the largest? Why, if the hand is regenerating now, couldn't it regenerate before? What is the mechanism that mediates this phenomenon?
No. The rules simulate the reality of the game world.
The rules exist to sell a product that encourages people to come together for shared storytelling that has Rules because without rules it would be almost impossible to decide which fictional character wins in a duel/contest with other fictional character. The rules exist to facilitate a shared gaming experience. But the game world is run by the GM, not by WotC. It is the option of the GM to interpret the rules as they see fit so long as the other players are okay with general work being done by the GM on their shared behalf. Let's not forget that GMs are also a player.
I think I just now realised how I think troll regeneration works: There has to be circulation.
Sure, troll tissue will regenerate, but that's a process that needs nutrients, oxygen, energy - and those things are in the blood. So effectively, any part of the troll not connected to the heart will regenerate, but it will run out of juice long before it can regenerate an entire troll.
If we look deeper into this, it may seem like you could stop a troll's regeneration by destroying it's heart. On the surface, that seems a reasonable assumption, but obviously that's something evotrollution has taken care of: Around and inside the heart are fatty tissues that contain enough energy or nutrition for the heart itself to regenerate. Sure, if you keep at it for long enough, maybe you'll succesfully stop this process - but really, grabbing a torch is a quicker solution.
A cleverer question is: If I have a troll, and I syphon off it's blood a little at a time, until I have some liters - then cut off a hand - could I then feed this blood to the hand, and thus create a new troll. And the answer in this case is yes! Cloning trolls in this way is possible, but difficult to manage in practice, as the trolls know they are the same troll, and each feel that they are the original. Such cases end with one troll killing the other - unless they are kept apart permanently.
As an aside, a troll will kill another troll by eating it's heart.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
A new troll can grow from a hand, it is stated in the 2014 stat block that sometimes dismembered limbs can become a new troll, how that works in a bag of holding is that the hand would grow into a new troll but without air/oxygen then the troll will suffocate and be stuck at 0HP/incapacitated when retrieved, once out it would start to regenerate but at 0HP it would be very vulnerable so the players can slice parts of the troll off and as acid kills troll meat, they could eat it and shove the troll back into the bag. The players now have an infinite source of food, sucks to be the troll tho.
Trolls do not have immunity to death however and less than 100 Max HP, so what happens if a troll is hit with power word kill? Surely it dies but does the dead troll now come back as a brand new troll or is it's body just completely inanimate? I assume the latter but it's not clear.