"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.
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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.