Troll Mutate

Mutates keep the common troll's lean, repulsive, mottled gray-green build, but alien energy has scrambled their bodies with deformities, extra limbs and organs on the outside. Some changes now breed true, so nearly every mutate has a third arm and additional eyes. The same corruption saps them: they have only half a normal troll's Hit Dice.

A mutate attacks with three claws and a bite, all weakened by its condition, and a weapon adds only +4 to damage. Three rounds after it is hurt it regains 3 hit points per round, never recovering fire or acid damage. A roll of 20 with an edged weapon severs a limb, which keeps fighting and creeps back afterward. At 0 hit points or less it falls but keeps healing and acts again once its total is above zero; fire or acid applied while it is down kills it for good.

Each time a mutate regenerates more than 20 points, there is a 20% chance a vestigial organ or appendage buds at the wound. Half of these become fully functional within 24 hours; the rest dangle uselessly, grotesque parodies of real organs.

The tribe answers to a psionic matriarch and spends its days just staying alive amid gibbering mouthers, packs of brood gibberlings and laboring myconid bands. The myconids pose little threat and make a favorite meal. Mutates are craftier than ordinary trolls.

Ages ago trolls wandered into a mountain holding a gate to the Farther Dark during one of the rare openings of its outer gates. They survive by scavenging and by eating gibberlings, myconids and the occasional adventurer.

The two-headed queen has 6+6 Hit Dice and the extra head grants a second bite. That head also carries a wild psionic talent with 30 PSPs and a variant of the project force devotion. Should she forgoes her bites she may use it alongside her other attacks, up to three times a day: it succeeds on 16 or less on 1d20 and deals 2d6 plus the target's Armor Class in damage, so negative AC reduces it. She has just two arms, but a working tentacle tail lashes over her heads for a stunning 1d6+3. She slays every other female to stay on top and claims all treasure for herself.