The Gaming Den

So, I realized you can use the same flask-thrower tactic from the Rog5 I mentioned in Annoying Game Questions to beat the Tarrasque at a lower level if you can get a bunch of commoners and the use of a Cloud Keeled galley (see below).

Now I want to see the lowest level/funniest/best ways Denners can think up to defeat Fiction's lamest Godzilla expy.

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The First Airborne Commoner Brigade
Get a cloud keel galley, 52 commoners, and 208 acid flasks. Give each commoner 4 flasks, and line them up two deep at the rails of the Galley.

Fly the ship over Big T, 30' above him to stay out of his reach. Each commoner tosses an acid flask at him and takes a 5' step back, into the square of the commoner who's prepped an action to take a 5' step forward when the guy in front of him steps back. 104 commoners drop a flask each turn, dealing 3 acid damage on average per flask, for a total 312 acid-40 regen=272 average damage per turn.

The first airborne commoner division can defeat Big T in 4 rounds (possibly 5, since I think they'll need a round to pick up another flask in each hand).

If you have a battalion of human warriors you've specifically trained for this, they have Quick Draw and TWF, and can drop two flasks per round, albeit at a -5 attack....against Touch AC 5. The First Airborne Anti-Tarrasque Force drops Big T in 2 rounds, and at that point you just need a wizard to cast the Wish spell.

The biggest problem with this approach, is getting the ship. A galley costs 60,000g, a cloud keel, for letting the ship sail in the air at 40', costs 200,000g. Now, if you have a wizard to cast the necessary Wish spell, you can probably have him use planar crafting tricks to go make a Cloud Keel. Alternatively, you turn the Galley into a Zeppelin, which still has a decent cost to it, but at least it doesn't require magic.

Alternatively, you call up the dwarves and get colossal chains made, then take you're biggest obstinate asshole, give him a keg of liquid courage and a bed full of women to impress, and you chain up the unconscious tarrasque outside your city in fucking boat-anchor chains and stocks. Conceivably, I can't find anything for "bigger than normal chain break dcs," but looking at the bonus creatures get based on size to break them, you could say that scaling chains up raises the break DC by 4 per size, meaning that Colossal chains have a DC 42 break DC, which the Tarrasque can't actually roll.

*** slow clap ***

Prak wrote:Alternatively, you call up the dwarves and get colossal chains made, then take you're biggest obstinate asshole, give him a keg of liquid courage and a bed full of women to impress, and you chain up the unconscious tarrasque outside your city in fucking boat-anchor chains and stocks. Conceivably, I can't find anything for "bigger than normal chain break dcs," but looking at the bonus creatures get based on size to break them, you could say that scaling chains up raises the break DC by 4 per size, meaning that Colossal chains have a DC 42 break DC, which the Tarrasque can't actually roll.

If you want to base it off walls, you could get your chains magically treated, which is about as valid as the size comparison.

As an aside, is this using 3.5 rules or a later edition? If 3.5, the Big T has a +33 to break stuff because of his own size bonus.

Oh shit, I didn't think about size bonus for him. Yeah, I was using 3.5. So you'd probably need giant chains that are then magically treated, or something.

I'll play a fighter 1 with a race that has acid resistance 1+.
I'll grab quick draw as a feat.

The big T has 858 hp and regen 40.
I'll quick draw 858+1+40 acid flasks as a free action and drop them all as a free action for 1 splash damage each.

Then I'll shovel some earth into his mouth and keep dropping acid flasks 'till it suffocates.

Headband of intellect +5 and a 1st level aspiring diplomancer could just Diplomacy roll the bitch and make friends with it.

In fact, this has "been done" in one of the sillier games I played in. It basically was the companion of a pixie. It preferred the name "peaches". Don't ask.

Edit: I'm not sure you need a +5 headband of intellect. You just need greater than animal intelligence to use diplomacy if memory serves. So maybe a headband of intellect +1?

No headband needed, Tarrasque has an int of 3. It can be diplomatized, theoretically. It can't speak, but it can be diplomatized.

Like so.

The tarrasque doesn't have swim as a skill, what's the easiest way to throw it into the ocean

With 5E you can get a couple of competent archers with magical weaponry, throw them on horses or something to boost their mobility and kite the thing to death in under 20 rounds.
All you have to do is find a way to deal about 35 damage a round to the thing and its all a matter of time. If a round is 6 seconds, that means a Tarrasque goes down to a magically armed longbow militia in about 2 minutes.

Anything that can create a legion of followers, like Animate Undead shenanigans, and somehow make their weapons magical could nearly solo the thing, given a big enough horde. I'm thinking a few Necro-Bards, Clerics and Wizards could take the thing down just on a damage basis. At that point, you've got a CR 30 challenge getting trumped by a fistful of low double digit guys. And that isn't even close to being broken or cheesy or min-maxing or anything. It wouldn't require Miracles, Wishes and 300,000 GP floating craft. The 5E Tarrasque is just simple arithmetic.

The 5E version does not have Fast Healing or Regeneration. It also has less than 700 HP and does not require a Wish or Miracle to ultimately kill.

I think 20 or so Level 10 guys with nice bows on horseback could get the job done. Bring along some magical buffing and you've got it in the bag.

Any decent sized town probably has 20 or so Level 10 jamokes lying around who could kill a Tarrasque in literally two minutes or less, much less an entire nation.

I figure this CR 30 is the capstone for PCs, a big HOLY FUCK encounter for them to wrap a game up with a bow. Thing is, if they've got any sort of ranged attack abilities they can probably wittle the thing down with mundane damage, provided they don't have some spells that could instantly solve the problem.

The Tarrasque wasn't even that big of a deal in 3.5 nor Pathfinder, and the 5E version is WATERED DOWN.

5e Big T dies to 10 lvl 5 champion fighters with a +1 longbow in the time it takes him to get from 600' to the archers. The Tarrasque is not a threat in 5e.

OgreBattle wrote:The tarrasque doesn't have swim as a skill, what's the easiest way to throw it into the ocean

The Tarrasque has Strength 45.

It can swim, at +17.

I just walk to another town, more than happy for Big T to demolish this one.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:The tarrasque doesn't have swim as a skill, what's the easiest way to throw it into the ocean

The Tarrasque has Strength 45.

It can swim, at +17.

Yeah, even stormy seas are only a mild impediment to him, with a DC 20 that he only needs a 3 to continue through. I mean, he swims damned slow, but it's not like he's blocked by water.

Prak wrote:No headband needed, Tarrasque has an int of 3. It can be diplomatized, theoretically. It can't speak, but it can be diplomatized.

Let's go goofier. Intimidate isn't going to be an option since any DM with a hair on his asshole will give the tarrasque a massive bonus on intimidate checks, but the Tarrasque is particularly not very good at sense motive, so bluff checks might work.

So yeah, 1st level bard with a potion of "speak with animal" has a decent chance of bluffing the tarrasque that it's already eaten your town and is full.

Koumei wrote:I just walk to another town, more than happy for Big T to demolish this one.

Walk at less than half speed even. What sort of creature can't move the length of itself in 6 seconds? I don't even understand how a 70ft creature can only move 20ft. That's like, the human equivalent of taking a single step per turn.

Yeah, even stormy seas are only a mild impediment to him, with a DC 20 that he only needs a 3 to continue through. I mean, he swims damned slow, but it's not like he's blocked by water.

Also she's really tall so you'd need really deep water.

Tarrasque seems to be smaller than a blue whale in length and weight.

TheFlatline wrote:

Prak wrote:No headband needed, Tarrasque has an int of 3. It can be diplomatized, theoretically. It can't speak, but it can be diplomatized.

Let's go goofier. Intimidate isn't going to be an option since any DM with a hair on his asshole will give the tarrasque a massive bonus on intimidate checks, but the Tarrasque is particularly not very good at sense motive, so bluff checks might work.

So yeah, 1st level bard with a potion of "speak with animal" has a decent chance of bluffing the tarrasque that it's already eaten your town and is full.

I love this one just for the absurdity.

Bard: "Go home Tarrasque, you're drunk."

Tarrasque: "What? No, I wanna wreck that town."

Bard: "You already did. You drank all the ale at the inn, rolled around on the hay bales, and now the town is a smoldering ruin."

Tarrasque: "Really? I don't remember that...maybe I am drunk?" [staggers off]

If you wanted to make the it stronger just by swapping out feats, what would you pick?

Brutal throw would let it throw things as improvised ranged attacks.

What about templates and class dips?

radthemad4 wrote:If you wanted to make the it stronger just by swapping out feats, what would you pick?

Brutal throw would let it throw things as improvised ranged attacks.

What about templates and class dips?

Making it fly and go really fast are basically prerequisites for it to be a threat at all. If you can seriously just get on any old horse and trot away from the fucker it's not a boss monster at all.

OgreBattle wrote:Tarrasque seems to be smaller than a blue whale in length and weight.

Yeah but blue whales don't stand up.

I'm just saying you can't bring her to a beach or river or something.

radthemad4 wrote:If you wanted to make the it stronger just by swapping out feats, what would you pick?

Brutal throw would let it throw things as improvised ranged attacks.

What about templates and class dips?

Go to Magic of Blue and give it some Soulmeld feats to fly and make ranged attacks and shit.

Dip Cleric 1, with domains that grant more turning, then DMM (something).

If DMM (Heighten) meet prerequisites for things, take Epic Spellcasting too.

No, even better. It has 48 HD, Clr1, Increased Spell Capacity 8 times, then Epic Spellcasting.

You know. I honestly think the 20' speed could be a typo. Someone was using a number pad, hit 2 instead of 5, and just didn't notice. 50' is still slow, but it's acceptably slow for a 70' long avatar of destruction.

radthemad4 wrote:If you wanted to make the it stronger just by swapping out feats, what would you pick?

Give it its Rush speed 24/7, and make the Rush into a REAL gap closer that's like Freedom of Movement meets Trampling + Sunder+Auto20-Break checks, that's also like Incorporal's defy gravity. Speaking of, 4th's initial idea that it has gravity manipulation around it I think was also a good one, force enemies to it, have anti-ranged measures, and Giant Area attacks (like Scream, Fists that explode the area) mentioned in that one thread for making gianter stuff exciting.

I know these threads have existed for years, and I recall one funny way to take him out was to throw him into the Plane of Water, and watch him infinitely drown.

The terrask is a prop monster. Its stats can't possibly represent it correctly. When 5 heroes of assorted classes don't stand in its way it demolishes the town because that whats the fluff says happens. When the PCs are in the way they fight it.

Now its still a terrible monster, especially in 5E, because you probably fight it outdoors where the run away and shoot it strategy will be immediatly apperent and you want the players to fight it straight up.

For a game that was derived from a wargame its wierd how terrible the D&D combat rules have always been for depecting large numbers of people fighting. In fact the combat rules are pretty much screwed up if you step outside of the basic D&D idiom of a few salty heroes vs. a horde of things that run up to them or 1 or 2 big nastys that they face alone. Hell, the "offical" 3.X mass combat rules basically said "don't try and roll dice for mass combat, the system is BS for that, consider the battleground a very odd type of dungeon instead.