The Tarrasque is a gargantuan monster that can deal massive damage with its bite, claws, horns, and tail. It has immunity to fire and poison, magic resistance, and can reflect spells back at its enemies. Tarrasques are vulnerable to ranged attackers like Sharpshooter and have no way to fight back against spells. They also have an advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
When the Tarrasque is targeted by a magic missile spell, line spell, or spell that requires a ranged attack roll, roll a d6. On a 1 to 5, the Tarrasque is unaffected. However, it is vulnerable to ranged attackers like Sharpshooter to negate long ranged disadvantage and go ham with a longbow. The Tarrasque has an advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects. Reflective Carapace: When the Tarrasque is targeted by a magic, it makes a ranged weapon attack against it with a to-hit bonus of +19. If the target is more than the target size, the Tarrasque makes a ranged weapon attack against it with a to-hit bonus of +19.
The Tarrasque is immune to fire and many magical effects, including poison, energy drain, ability score. In most versions of D and D, the Tarrasque is either immune to damaging spells or has its greatest strength in its natural weapons. The Red Dragon has 19th-level sorcerer abilities, while the Tarrasque is immune to most targeted spells and can be killed easily.
In summary, the Tarrasque is a powerful monster with immunity to fire, poison, magic resistance, and physical damage from normal weapons. Its ability to reflect spells back at its enemies and its ability to deal massive damage make it a formidable opponent.
📹 Let’s Kill The Tarrasque! – Weird Things You Can Do In DnD
How to kill a Tarrasque in 5 minutes with one spell.
Is Tiamat bigger than a Tarrasque?
Both Tiamat and the Tarrasque are classified as Gargantuan, with a footprint of 20×20 ft. Tiamat’s ability to bite or tail whip further corroborates her considerable size.
Has anyone ever beaten a Tarrasque?
The speaker has successfully vanquished three tarrasques in a multitude of campaigns and one-shot scenarios. These include two in a four-year campaign with a 1-20 record, a larger and more proficient tarrasque, and the matriarchal tarrasque, which necessitated two sessions to overcome.
What spells work on a Tarrasque?
The tarrasque is affected by magic missile, line, and ranged attack spells when targeted. On a 1 to 5, the tarrasque remains unaffected. The D and D 5E Free Basic Rules only cover a fraction of the available content. Additional options are available in the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. Traits include Legendary Resistance (3 days) and Magic Resistance, which allows the tarrasque to choose to succeed or succeed a saving throw.
Is there more than 1 Tarrasque?
The tarrasque was a terrifying creature known to inhabit the Prime Material Plane. It was 50 feet tall and 70 feet long, with a long tail, reflective carapace, and two large horns on its head. There was only one tarrasque believed to be slumbered within the world’s core, and no one could predict when it would awake. The tarrasque was irreversibly tied to the Prime, making it difficult to deal with. However, ancient texts suggested that a way to deal with the creature was to deceive it, luring it into another plane and sealing it there.
The tarrasque was an enormous abomination, roughly the size of an ancient dragon, with two long horns, a thick carapace, a mighty tail, many spikes, and a wide, toothy maw. It had two small eyes, but they were not relying on them for sensory perception. The tarrasque was impossible to frighten or charm and had resistances to every kind of damage. It moved at a speed roughly half that of a human, either while walking on the surface, climbing a height, or burrowing through the earth.
Is Tarrasque stronger than a dragon?
The dragon has the option of fleeing and resting, with the intention of improving its spell usage in the event of an unsuccessful initial attempt. It can be reasonably deduced that the Tarrasque would emerge victorious in a direct physical confrontation with the dragon. However, if the dragon is not lacking in intelligence, such an encounter is unlikely to occur.
Is the tarrasque unkillable?
It is possible for Tiamat and certain creatures with a CR of 23 or above to defeat the Tarrasque in a one-on-one confrontation, thereby rendering it powerless. However, it should be noted that the Tarrasque is only required to emerge victorious on a single occasion; it cannot be permanently vanquished. It is only possible to permanently destroy a Tarrasque by causing it to destroy another Tarrasque. It should be noted that this information may be influenced by JavaScript and browser compatibility issues.
Can Tiamat kill a Tarrasque?
Given her considerable intelligence, ability to fly, and proficiency in ranged attacks, Tiamat is well-positioned to defeat the Tarrasque through a patient and strategic approach. The Tarrasque’s attacks are not magical in nature, whereas Tiamat is immune to nonmagical ones, which renders her victory inevitable.
What is a Tarrasque weakness?
Despite its maneuverability, Traské is unable to attack air units. It is therefore recommended that one avoid approaching him, as it is possible to use the Fly ability on party members and shoot him from the sky.
Is Tarrasque a god?
The Tarrasque, a sentient weapon, is believed to be forged by primordials in the Dawn War to be released against the Gods’ order. Some speculate it is a foreign entity brought to the plane via magical transport by a cabal of insane wizards. Others believe it is one of thousands of its kind, a race of colossal beasts that thrive in a system far from civilized worlds. Some believe there is only one true Tarrasque, summoned by unknown means.
Is the Tarrasque unkillable?
It is possible for Tiamat and certain creatures with a CR of 23 or above to defeat the Tarrasque in a one-on-one confrontation, thereby rendering it powerless. However, it should be noted that the Tarrasque is only required to emerge victorious on a single occasion; it cannot be permanently vanquished. It is only possible to permanently destroy a Tarrasque by causing it to destroy another Tarrasque. It should be noted that this information may be influenced by JavaScript and browser compatibility issues.
What is the Tarrasque immune to?
The tarrasque possesses a number of advantageous characteristics, including a high armor class, partial immunity to magical effects due to its reflective carapace, immunity to poison and fire damage, and a high damage output from its five attacks. When considered alongside its robust defenses, these attributes combine to make the tarrasque a formidable opponent.
📹 What They Don’t Tell You About The Tarrasque – D&D
—————————————————————————————— Sources -Ed Greenwood and Johnathan M. Richards …
I was going to interject by saying that the tarrasque is also immune to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, but the clay golem stat block even has the Magic Weapons feature, which bypasses that issue. However, with a +8 modifier, you’re going to need to roll 17 or higher to be able to actually hit the thing, working through 676 hp (or up to 990 if your DM rolls for it) at an average rate of 16 damage per hit. Have fun!
You can kill a tarrasque with an aarakocra and a +1 bow with the artificer infusion that creates it’s own ammunition because the damn thing has no ranged attacks and for some god damned reason throwing a rock (even if it’s a boulder) counts as an improvised weapon and as such, it deals a measly 1d4 damage. 5e has just the strangest interactions.
In lore the Tarrasque has three stomachs, one for grinding, one for dissolving, and another for absorbing the magic within objects. As a DM I would allow this but have the player on a timer. Quickly kill the Tarrasque before the player enters the third stomach or they instantly die with only godly intervention or a wish spell being able to bring them back.
You don’t even need to use a CR 9 monster to do this! A couatl, a CR 4 celestial, is able to take on a Tarrasque fully by itself, it just needs to use its change shape action to turn into a stegosaurus or other huge beast to avoid being eaten by the Tarrasque. For all the Tarrasque’s strengths, it doesn’t have magical attacks.
That only works on that 5th Edittion pushover of the Tarrasque. The 3.5 version has Regeneration 40, which also grants immunity to instant death and unhealable wound effects (like the one the clay golem has). And basically requires you do deal enough damage from instant death effects, then cast a wish spell on it.
I think tarasques are immune to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non-magical attacks, so I don’t know if that works. Something I DID find though is that there is a magic item that can trap a monster, and that a mimic can both survive in the tarasques stomach and deal acid damage over time, provided it does not take damage before It is swallowed.
What if the tarrasque suffocates you by holding you underwater or simply clenching your windpipe? If the player can be creative so can the monster. You also better make sure to finish the fight in under an hour or the target will stay a 3 intelligence clay golem forever. That’s going to be tough if it’s only the clay golem attacking, it has a very low chance to hit the tarrasque, only hitting with a 17 or higher. You’ll also continually be frightened by it and knocked prone or restrained. Your only chance is if it chooses to swallow you, it seems unlikely that it sees a disgusting clay thing as food.
Be me DM who’s party tried this “The tarrasque continues on its way, eating and destroying your home and it’s inhabitants as it was left with no real threat to its safety. Oh you give chase? No worries it’s twice as fast as you.” My players have never tried to look up cheese for a fight since. Cuz if they found it, I’ve probably seen it too.
With a +8 modifier, the golem will needs a roll of 17 or higher to hit, for two attacks per turn, or three attacks every third turn (thanks to Haste), for seven attacks per three turns (on average). Dealing 16 damage a hit until you reach the tarrasque’s 676 hit points means 43 hits (again, on average). Only hitting 4 out of 20 attacks (17,18,19,20) – plus disadvantage from being restrained – means you’ll hit 4% of your attacks. This means you’ll need 1075 attack ATTEMPTS, which will take you *460 TURNS* to kill a tarrasque as a clay golem. For reference, true polymorph lasts for *100* turns. If you want to kill a tarrasque using true polymorph, you’ll need at least 5 targets and at least 5 9th-level spell slots… or some sort of external buff effect. Or, as other people have mentioned, you can play an aaracockra artificer. That works too, I GUESS.
You can actually beat the tarrasque at an even lower level by taking advantage of the spell Conjure Celestial 1) Cast Conjure Celestial to summon a Couatl 2) have the Couatl shape change into an elephant and 1 v 1 the tarrasque 3) watch as the dm looks in horror as he realizes that this huge sized creature is immune to all of the tarrasque’s attacks, including it’s swallow attack, as it can’t do it to huge creatures. 4) Profit
Another thing you could do is cast polymorph on the tarrasque to turn it into a rabbit (or something else with low hp) and have your other spell caster buddy to cast power word kill. You might want to burn some of its legendary resistance first though, but theoretically you could end the fight in 6 seconds. This is DM dependent but 60% of the time it works all the time.
As noted it can be swallowed, and while it is healed by acid damage, the lore on the Tarrasque is pretty specific, anything it swallows is obliterated in short order, even artifacts. However, no mention is made of how inhospitable a Tarrasque’s lungs are. I had a player cast gaseous form on himself, get snorted in through its nose, and then just go blender on its lungs until it suffocated.
1) The tarrasque can just run away, it has double your movement speed or 3 times if it uses a legendary action. 2) It’s not just standing around waiting for random dudes to come fight it. It’s gonna kill tens of thousands of people and destroy entire cities by the time you kill it. (if you even can) 3) It can just pick you up and throw you into the air, you’re not immune to fall damage. (though this is not RAW) 4) To emphasize point 2, on average it will take you an hour and 45 minutes to kill it. Why? You do 17 damage on average per hit, but you have a less than 25% chance of hitting it because of its 25 AC. You can attack twice per turn so that’s 9 damage if you round up. Its bite grapples you, you need a DC20 strength save to not be restrained and if you are, you attack with disadvantage, which means your chance of hitting it drops to 6%. (luckily Golems are pretty strong so the DC is easy to make). Let’s say you do 7 damage if it’s just standing in front of you and not moving away, that means you need almost 100 turns until it dies, an hour and 45 minutes. This example just emphasizes some silly design aspects. The tarrasque got heavily nerfed, it doesn’t heal anymore and it can’t burrow. A Clay Golem being immune to non magical attacks makes zero sense. You can have shitty +1 magical weapons that damage it, but a giant monster that can literally eat entire cities does nothing to it. Falling from 10 feet damages it but being stomped by something with far more force than a fall is no problem because it is technically an “attack”.
I think the best way to house rule this would to say the tarrasque’s siege monster and the golem’s physical immunity cancel out, like advantage and disadvantage. But RAW, this would work. And really you could do it as early as level 10 if you happen to get a manual of clay golems. It’s still a month and 65,000 gold, but it’s certainly easier to get that together than to hit level 17.
Just going to point out that Clay Golem has a speed of 20 ft per round, Tarrasque has 40 ft and can move 20 ft up to 3 times per round as legendary actions (so up to 100 ft round). It’s tail is a 20 ft reach with a +19 to hit, which auto succeeds on the Golem’s 14 AC. So the Golem runs up, gets whacked with a tail and needs to do a 20 Str save or get knocked prone. Unless you’re saying a Tarrasque would waste its time fighting forever against a Clay Golem, what I think happens is the Tarrasque smacks it down then leaves to go destroy buildings and eat anything organic. The Clay Golem would not be able to keep up with the Tarrasque. The Tarrasque essentially would ignore it.
This really shows how much WotC has to dumb down enemies when implementing them into D&D. The Terrasque, from a lore perspective, nullifies magic that touches it almost to an extent creating an antimagic field around itself. Aside from that its attacks should definitely be considered magical. And then we have the stomach which is literally the most destructive force in the world. Each of its (I believe 4) stomachs has the power to eviscerate gods (this is like magically dead, dead. not I can revive into a new body because I’m a god dead, but dead, dead because you were eaten by a mfing Terrasque).
Why wait till level 17? If you get your hands on the Black Dragon Mask you can defeat the Tarrasque at level 7 with no risk. The mask will upgrade your acid resistance to immunity, which you can get from either a transmutation stone wizard class or just taking the black dragonborn race, then you just cast Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere and wait for it to swallow you out of frustration. Once in the stomach you’re immune to acid and it can no longer fight back while you slowly punch it to death. The resilient sphere isn’t technically necessary, just the swallowing, but it removes all risk.
Here is a fix to scare your party away from the area you obviously don’t want them in if they are fighting a tarrasque: The sounds of combat and the desperate calls of the tarrasque attracts more tarrasques. Now lets see whos willing to sit there and fight 3 tarrasques very blandly for an hour. (If they have the determination to just do that, then they earn it.)
This one seems like the kind of scenario where the dm has to describe the tarrasque swatting the golem with it’s tail and sending it flying, it’s the Tarrasque it’s probably dealt with thousands of cocky wizards with clay golems trying to waste it’s few solemn moments awake destabilizing the world, why would it be interested in something it should have the instinct to avoid? It’s stupid but with good enough instincts (3int 11wis) so if it’s being pestered it should either remove that golem from the fight or leave the fight altogether, it can’t burrow in 5e but it can move 80ft a turn with dash, so unless you can move the golem as fast the Tarrasque it could be multiple rounds away from the golem even reaching a fighting position. The idea of monsters being mindless even with a decent wisdom doesn’t incorporate them well, a low int high wis creature should always have a good instinct, they may not recognize a strategic plan but they would notice a boulder teetering on a cliff or a unhidden trap placed in the open, they wouldn’t charge headfirst into a line of spears, or fight something that seems to ignore their attacks, they have a sense of self preservation even the tarrasque which is technically “immortal”, why did the Tarrasque awaken if it was going to waste it’s chance to destabilize the world on fighting squishy golem boi
So for all the players and DMs: 1. If the party is high enough level to face the Tarrasque then they most likely have a wizard that has studied magical and legendary creatures in books. So it isn’t even necessarily metagaming by the players of they came up with this from an appropriate knowledge check. 2. If the players make a knowledge check and present this plan then you as a DM have to inform them of any obvious changes to the Tarrasque in your world from the RAW in 5e. IE: magic attacks, higher intelligence, etc. 3. Not doing so is metagaming against your players; yes that’s a thing. 4. Or you can change a different aspect of the encounter: having to rescue people as they are tastier than the golem and it goes for the people at it’s faster move speed, environmental aspects that make the plan more difficult to pull off the way they want (while still feasible), and/or add into the lore of your world that there are creatures that follow behind the Tarrasque that feast on the leftovers like how the are animals that follow predators in the wild (while including that information in the knowledge check as well). 5. Create a Tarrasque death cult or similar at least that they have a chance of discovering that works against them. Boosting an encounter arbitrarily in the moment when the party has done homework to handle the encounter is lazy DMing at best and petulant at worst. Especially if it makes your earlier responses to them during research to be incomplete or false without a reason for the information you provided to be incorrect like trusting information from a source that happens to be the aforementioned Tarrasque death cult.
“The Tarrasque whacks you with it’s tail. Roll a DC27 Strength save.” “I fail.” “You take 6d12 blunt damage and are thrown 200 feet into the air, taking max fall damage.” And that’s how you beat this strat. If they succeed at the check, just make them only fly 100 feet and repeat until the golem’s dead.
i love this idea. truly do. but sadly there is a way for the tarresque to kill the clay golem. the tarresque has 30 str and is gargantuan sized. a clay golem is only large. meaning the tarresque can pick you up and throw you as high and far away as he can. falling damage ignores immunity to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing and thus the tarresque can kill you. having said that, the tarresque is a primal, apex predator with an int of 2 or 3 iirc. meaning it lives on instincts and it can be debated if its instinct sooner tells it to eat it or yeet it. i’d say yeet it cause the clay golem is clay and not flesh so he would yeet it after taking some hits while being unable to fight back
If you cast True Polymorph on yourself you have to concentrate to maintain it. EVERY time you take damage you have to make a save DC 10 or half the damage taken. ( Bite your DC would be 18 ). The odds of you keeping the spell up are slim to none since if you include it’s legendary actions you would be attacked 6 times in a round and since the AC of the golem is only 14. You would be hit likely 5 of those 6 times EVERY round. So the DC for each attack based on average is, 18, 16, 14,14,12,12 each round to maintain the spell. You would be unable to cast any other spell during that time or use any magic item you are wearing ( as per the spell description). You would also find it difficult to get an attack off because it could bite you to restrain ( DC 20) or knock you prone with it’s tail ( DC 20) And with it’s legendary abilities if the first failed it would merely do it again for either one on your turn. If you convinced it to eat you it would regurgitate you once you hit it like twice, and while you were prone leave. If you chased it, it would merely keep swatting you with it’s tail til you stopped. But yes statistically, you could kill a Tarrasque. But there is likely yet to be anyone who has within these confines of the rules. But for GOD’s SAKE. Have someone ELSE cast Polymorph on you.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but isn’t the tarrasque really REALLY huge? I seem to remember at some point in the vast mists of time before the one ring was made and during the reign of Gary Gygax, that immunities are nullified by certain types of size difference. So theoretically the tarrasque could still kill a clay golem, if it hit with a swing, due to the fact that it’s claw is the size of the USS Enterprise and the clay golem would be squishified by the hit. I’m remembering all the way back to ages of time ago when Dol Guldur hadn’t been built yet and we were still in the world of D&D ed. 2, so this might have been changed later.
Firstly, “Choose one creature or nonmagical object that you can see within range”, so you walk around with a Clay Golem following you everywhere… Secondly, let us say that the above is true. When the Tarrasque bites you, you will most likely be grappled. You will spend the next hour, for the most part, playing who rolls better in an attempt to break the grapple to deal damage. Lastly, a hour has passed, along with the duration of your True Polymorph spell, and now, become a snack. Also, if someone really wanted to play fun games like this, and I understand this is all fun and games, I will remind you, my idea of fun and games is that this Tarrasque was special and its last meal was a bunch of broken, jagged shards of Adamantine which are now stuck in its teeth jutting out everywhere.
Me and some players did the math on this. To keep a long story short you would have to hit roughly 1800 times with disadvantage and needing a 17 or higher on every roll. Meaning in theory you would kill it but there is a higher then not chance of you failing and then just turning back and dying in the stomach.
That’s what happens when you are sloppy editing your books. And I’ve often noted the Monster Manual feels like someone was exhausted and didn’t bother to actually edit it and catch all the really obvious omissions on a lot of entries. And don’t get me started on the DMG. There’s a lot of useful stuff in there, but it’s buried in a torrent of poorly organized stuff that may or may not be useful or even interesting, so reading it is such a slog that I STILL haven’t finished it. And I’ve run successful campaigns in the system for years.
Kills it DM: and as the phantom of the tarrasque disappears, leaving behind a black bone. The Magic caster that defeated the tarrasque, quickly realized he only defeated a fake tarrasque. And not only that… That bone had archaic runes which started glowing as if they were expecting the magic to end. The caster got teleported to a Dark plane… and in front of him… … a Mecha Elder Lich Half Red Dragon Half Tarrasque whose size spammed miles stared at him… Laughing at his stupidity thinking he could mock one of his creation
Or you can take one of the two flying races and get sacred flame at level 1 from one of the classes that lets you take it and go kill the tarasque with your level 1 character and sacred flame. The tarrasque is not resistant or immune to radiant damage and it’s got a dex save with no modifiers, so your 16 casting stat point buy self has a dc 13 save giving you a little over 2 damage per round with an expected kill time of just over 42 minutes. If that’s too much effort or the gm won’t let you fly and you have 20 gold to spend, you can partner up with someone and both of you get find familiar. Cast this, then both of you go to sleep, wank off whatever, the familiars will kill it for you by one taking the am shift and one on the pm shift of simply keeping it awake. The Tarrasque has no defense from sleep deprivation either and will die in a little over a week. This is slower and does take 20 GP, but can be done with 2 level 1 wizards of any race (or any class that you can get find familiar on, or varient human/the new create your stuff cause either gets a feat you could take to get find familiar with any class. The tarrasque used to be a scary monster, but 5e snowflaked it.
“The Tarrasque definitely does not eat you because it isn’t stupid, and knows things that dense are bad for its colon.” “The Tarrasque picks you up, carries you to a volcano and throws you into the lava crater. You can try to roll to swim away, but who are we kidding. Thanks for trolling.” “The Tarrasque picks you up, carries you to the arctic circle and steps on you until the cold damage kills you.” “The Tarrasque picks you up carries you to a beholder’s lair, picks up the beholder, forces the beholder to look at you, dispelling your polymorph, then sits on you killing you instantly while it snacks on the beholder like a grape.” “The Tarrasque picks you up, ground swims seventeen miles into the planet’s crust, leaves you there and swims away. You’re still alive, but you’re trapped under seventeen miles of solid rock and earth. What’s the duration on polymorph?” “Speaking of which, let’s skip the ground swimming. The Tarrasque sits on you. You can’t move. What’s the duration on polymorph again?” Anyway, thanks for trolling. See you next game, min/maxer.
The one issue is that the acid in the terrasques stomach actually dissolves magic. It’s said it’s able to digest ANYTHING, including gods, which is why despite it not actually being that strong compared to gods, gods still have a respect for it. This would imply that any magical affects that come into contact with it’s stomach would be dispelled, and possibly that it would overcome resistances and or immunity to acid damage. It has been stated that the terrasques stomach dissolves magic items and might even be powerful enough to destroy lesser artifacts, so what is a simple polymorph spell in the face of that beasts stomach?
Or since the terrasques shell only repells direct attack spells. Be lvl 18 wild magic sorcerer for spell bombardment and lvl 2 fighter for action surge. Cast meteor swarm and focus all 4 40ft square area of effect meteor shower on it. Now use sorcery point to cast a second one then use action surge to read a scroll of meteor swarm. Even if it still hae legendary risistance it will take over 1k points of damge killing it.
the easiest fix that dms I’ve talked with about this are simply to make the tarrasques bones and teeth (aka attacks) adamantine equivalent. though making them magical also works, the dms i talk to usually want to keep the changes minimal so that players don’t feel completely screwed when having to deal with a tarrasque… should that ever occur. but its unfortunatly true that clay golem is a counter to 5e tarrasque.
This actually fails at killing the Tarrasque. Since the clay golem cannot be harmed and can not do enough damage on average to overcome the Tarrasque’s healing ability; the golem is trapped until the spell is turned off at most in one hour; and unless the target of the True Polymorph has acid immunity its still going to die from acid and still be restrained until it does die.
The Tarrasque in 5e is extremely over hyped. There is like a million ways to kill it. For example while your wizard cant hurt it easily he can just cast fly om the party and let the ranged dps dumpster it. Ancient Red Dragon, Lich (properly statted as lore in the book reccomends with magic items on it) and the Prime Elementals/ Named Fiendish Lords far outclass it. Tarrasque is really only useful to be scary when you need to protecf something (such as a town or mystical structure, which it does triple damage to) too
I’ll do you one better, a level 2 Artificer combined with a race with flying speed can infuse a bow to be magical, and just chip away the Tarrasques healthbar without it being able to do anything. If the DM banned flying races (rightfully so), a level 3 Artificer with the Alchemist subclass can give itself a flying speed for 10 minutes, or 100 turns, three times before running out of slots. Giving it 300 turns to kill the tarrasque (400 if you get a lucky roll at the start of the day) allowing you to 1v1 the tarrasque easily. The Tarrasque’s base sheet in 5e is so laughably easy to cheese that it can’t even be considered a difficult fight.
So I’m seeing some people trying to make a couple of loopholes based on the arguments in this article, and after a bit of research I don’t think those loopholes work unless you have a problematic DM. Namely: 1) “Tarrasque can still throw the golem for fall damage!” I see nothing about tarrasques having a particular way of throwing anything. While it is a 50-foot tall monster, you’d basically have to have it throw the golem as an improvised weapon, and that gets into a lot of weird questions. Not saying this wouldn’t work, just that it doesn’t seem as straight forward as “Tarrasque used Seismic Toss….. it’s super effective.” 2) “I’ll just give my tarrasque healing like they used to have in older editions.” So one thing not listed in this article is that the Clay Golem’s attacks don’t just hurt their target, they reduce the target’s maximum HP by the damage of their slam attacks, and this can only be reversed with a spell that the tarrasque does not have. No healing factor will negate the fact that your health itself is being damaged. In all fairness, the counter to all of this is that one argument I saw states that due to the tarrasque’s AC and the golem’s lower stats, the golem has to roll a 17 or higher to hit in the first place, so the tarrasque really does have all day to devise a plan, but it also has an INT of 3, so a good DM should keep those plans painfully simple. The tarrasque had a fairly large foot, so if it steps on the golem, I could see the DM making an argument that he golem doesn’t have enough wiggle room to attack, effectively the penultimate “restraint,” however the tarrasque has to move that foot eventually, and the golem will be there when it does.
It’s OK to let your PCs have a victory, but it would be more fun to make it a campaign event. Suppose your PCs are the apprentices of the heroes who died trying and failing to stop the summoning of the Tarrasque by a cult. The cult succeeds, and in one year or five years or whatever, the Tarrasque will come and lay waste to the world. PCs have to retrace the steps of their masters and adventure to find the hidden weaknesses of the Tarrasque so that they can defeat it when it comes. Maybe it is that clay golems and similar beings can attack it with impunity. Maybe it’s something else.
This one is incredibly interesting! Never thought about using a Clay Golem to fight a Tarrasque: however, I want to point out a small technicality, and then a MASSIVE flaw in this plan. But first, the Tarrasque is a literal joke in D&D 5e: it doesn’t heal, can’t burrow like it used to, and can’t jump high enough to invalidate flying. A level 2 Aarakocra Rogue with a Long bow and enough arrows can kill a Tarrasque, and the Tarrasque can’t even get away, because the Aarakocra is 10 ft faster than it (plus they can dash as a bonus action with Cunning Action, invalidating the Tarrrasque’s Legendary action “Move”), and it can’t kill the Aarakocra, because it can’t reach it, and it can’t HIDE, because it’s too dang big to fit anywhere. They’re a gutted monster, that you should always, always buff if you put in in your campaign. On the flipside, your Clay Golem plan has a very, VERY big flaw. Clay Golem definitely do just outclass the Tarrasque in a 1v1, but there are caveats: first, and just a minor technicality, Clay Golems have a speed of 20 ft, half of a Tarrasque’s movement speed, so the Tarrasque COULD just ignore it and leave instead of eating it. More pressingly, though, the Clay Golem has this nifty little feature called Immutable Form: “The Golem is immune to any spell or effect that would alter its form.” Nifty for Clay Golems that are made, NOT NIFTY WHEN YOU TRANSFORM INTO ONE! You see, spell rules state that any of the text within a spell is considered that spell’s “effect”: this INCLUDES True Polymorph’s ability to CHANGE YOU BACK.
I don’t feel like tarrasque really deserves the infamy it has,at least in 5e So here are a few features i would tack to it to make it a truly world ending threat “Unstoppable engine of destruction:the tarrasque regenerates 20d4 health on the start of his turn.if the tarrasque is unconscious when this feature would take place,reduce the amount of health by 1d4.the tarrasque only dies if this feature would heal 0d4.if he is allowed 1 hour to feed witouth combat,this feature completely replenishes itself.if this feature would be negated by healing nullification such as by a chill touch cantrip or the negative energy cone of a death tyrant while the tarrasque is unconscious,it subtracts 2d4 instead of 1d4 and heals anyway” “God killer:any damage the tarrasque deals ignores all ressistances and immunities.a natural 20 automatically deals the most amount of damage that it could deal” “Earthglide:the tarrasque can move freely through rock and earth.while burrowing,it is completely immune to all and any divination spells apart from a wish spell that is not replicating a 8th level spell or lower” And another action “Apocalypse roar (recharge 4-6):the tarrasque lets out a earth shattering roar.any creature within 120 feet of it must make a DC 21 strenght saving throw or take 91 (21d6) thunder damage and be thrown 30 feet away from the tarrasque on a fail.on a success,the creature takes half damage and is not thrown away”
Yeah, as a DM, you fucked whomever you turned. Clay Golems have immutable form, so that person is now permanently a Clay Golem. If that person was a spellcaster, they can’t use verbal components as Clay Golems cannot speak. Also, a clay golems does an average of 15 hp in an attack, the average Tarrasque has 676 hp, meaning this meathod would take you 45 turns to accomplish. Plus, it’s a concentration spell, so unless someone else cast that spell, your making a TON of saves. And lastly, a Tarrasque has an AC of 25 and a Clay Golem only has a +8 to hit, so you would have to roll a 17 or better for EVERY attack to connect.
Thats just kind of cripplingly OP. Canon wise the acid is supposed to be able to dissolve anything. This is just looping an oversight in the rules and IMO, you’d be a bad DM not to interfer and just say ‘Well you’re immune to bludgeoning damage but the Tarrasque crushing you into tiny bits so there is no time to be immune. Or saying the acid does kill you.
Does anyone know why Tarrasque Experipent has regeneration, but the real thing doesnt? Because technically you could just rain damage against a Tarrasque from the air until it dies, not to mention it somehow doesn’t have immunity to exhaustion, so you could just have a bunch of casters spam Sickening Radiance on it.
1) evry 5 lvls grants +1 as if it was magic atack 2) acid inside desolve magic all resistances evrything at wht rate is question yor golem will roll evry turn resist to magic on fail reduce all resist % by 1+_% etc.. this acid desolve gods and artifacts 3) yor golem inside wil be under heavy presure with -5 to atacks and -% dps he wont be in 1 spot 4) if by any lucky crit from inside some how you deal him unpleasant fatal hit he can chooose to use legendary feat to avoid and save it ( duno how he so smart if he got 3 int ) enjoyyyy
Do clay golems heal from poison or acid? You said they heal from poison but the tarrasque does acid damage. I can’t leave a comment on the can’t touch this article but that combo doesn’t work. As per the 2018 errata spirit guardians ends sanctuary no matter who cast it the first time spirit guardians deals damage.
Yeah, but thats a 9th level spell slot right? Which means you need to be capable of casting Wish or Meteor Swarm. I have a better one. Teleport to a planet full of Terrasques. Surely one exists. If not. Locate the area with the most terrasques, doesnt matter where its located. Go there. Ok. Get at least 5 casters with Meteor Swarm. The more the better. Now proceed to deal 200d20 damage to the Terrasque as magical damage, across a one or two mile area. Meaning you’ll kill every single terrasque within that range. Thus, you will gain an absolutely immense amount of experience and hit level 20 if you werent already. Or. You’ll gain an epic boon or something. Im just saying, this is where you go at level 17 to power level and get ingredients to craft terrasque armor and weapons and other things.
I agree, I love these shorts, many content creator’s make them about DnD, but no article ever explains the ultimate curve of doing this in a DM’s game for DnD. Likely cuz it would defeat the purpose of these articles and break everyone’s hearts. Well- Here it is. No DM will allow this, because the mythical fair, balanced, and wonderfully interactive, thoughtful, and caring DM, which rewards their players for creativity, are only a myth. Matthew Mercer, should not be included, as a counter argument. Myth’s and Ledgend’s, are not the same. Lol. A DM will always become petty and finally get sick of the shit the party is trying to do, let alone doing, and find a way to stump that plan, as a meta game, strategy. It isn’t because the logical, practical, and realistic choice is that the monster would figure this out of game plan out. It’s the DM caught on, and is going to ruin that moment of fun and intensity, because the challenge isn’t as challenging as they wanted it to be, or the battle isn’t going the way they thought it would, so they will kick that sand castle to death, until they have the party right where it pleases them. And that usually never is where victory, joy, and satisfaction are. Hard truths, with a random stranger. 👉🏼😎👉🏼
Maybe I am missing something. Isn’t the tarrasque suppossed to be inmune to slashing, bludgeoning and piercing damage from non magic weapons? Does true polymorph transform your damage to magical or something? Or maybe the tarrasque loses it’s inmunity inside? Please, help, it’s not a troll question, I actually don’t get it.
Yeah. I love your shorts dude, but the Tarrasque stomach acid dissolves artifacts. Not the super common stuff in magic cards, no. Proper epic story artifacts like the One True Ring, Horcrux’s, Excalibur&Guenwyvar. Clay golem inhabit the Elemental plane of Earth&there are no legends of the tarrasque just not going there or getting it’s ass kicked regularly there. So ima call foul on this one. Entertaining and fun for certain but in this situation the Dm should have just grinned at the parties idea of getting swallowed with the dreaded “….are sure you wanna do that?”. While reaching for blank character sheets.
If your DM is breaking out a Tarrasque he or she is just looking to tpk you at that point and no amount of trickery will stop them house ruling you into extinction. Just pack your dice and sheets and walk away. It only hurts if you insist on fighting back. Just leave and black list the guy. Be done with it. The Tarrasque isn’t a monster, it’s a punctuation. A big middle finger to players that shouldn’t exist but WOtC kept around for nostalgia sake. It’s not fun or interesting any more than stun lock mechanics are in MMOs. Don’t rob your players of agency like that.
There are a few things wrong with this plan. 1. You can not polymorph your self or an item of equivalent size into a clay golem. They are created by a level 10+ magic ritual provided only by a vary rare magic item. So a DM would have to be very lenient or uninformed. 2. The very lore of a tarrasque states that their FOUR stomachs are capable of DEVOURING GODS AND LEGENDARY ARTIFACTS. So slowly, if not immediately, the spell polymorphing you into a golem WILL be eaten away. 3. The same lore states that the tarrasque are actually immortal and do not die, UNLESS it is by another task in which they will fight Highlander style to the death. So after “killing” a tarrasque it is more likely to actually flee back into the Earth and hibernate until the next feeding cycle. So in short, just because a creature has a stat block does not mean it can be killed. Just because a spell says you can do something does not mean you can do everything. To do something like this you must discuss with your DM beforehand, because what you might think is possible may not line up with the lore the DM has in place. This has been my TED talk thank you for your time.
A bit of lore goes a long way. Not sure why they didn’t include this in the rules, but the Tarrasque’s stomach acid canonically strips away magic. Disjunction isn’t a thing anymore, but I’d treat it as basically jumping into an area where a 9th level dispel magic is being constantly cast at all things inside it, and unattended magic items (including constructed golems) are also stripped of their magic properties. The Tarrasque’s stomach destroys even artifacts. A cheeky golem really doesn’t stand a chance.
Using the power word kill/polymorph trick would probably be quicker. I mean, grab a high level draconic, or storm sorcerer (for that natural fly ability), fly above the tarrasque, out of its reach, and start casting polymorph. Use heightened spell to burn through those legendary resistances. That would give you 11 chances, on a 45% chance of success (so long as you burn your lower level spell slots for more sorcery points), so high likelihood that you will get the polymorph off, even if it takes a little while. Then, once the tarrasque turns into a turtle, or a whale, or something like that, you break out the 9th level spell you’ve been saving, and solo kill the tarrasque.
Interesting idea, but it would take a horrible DM to let this work. It’s fun to talk about this stuff for shits and giggles, but let’s be real. If any of our characters were ACTUALLY able to beat something like THE legendary Tarrasque in such a cheapass way? We’d absolutely hate it. There would be no fun in it. It would take all of the piss and threat and suspense out of the game and just turn it into Benny Hill. No one wants that.
“You can’t polymorph into a clay golem because you aren’t familiar enough with that creature to magically replicate its physiology.” Nice try though. On top of that, The Tarrasque (there’s only one) is an unaligned creature, not an evil monster. I’ve always found it far more interesting to include it as a potential ally to help the players fight gods and other titans, rather than just another thing to kill. It’s not like some massive brute with a brain the size of an acorn, it’s millennia old. It has deeply rooted connection to the world and its history. This whole “big dumb monster” characterization of The Tarrasque is so boring to me.
Except that we put only a 5% realism into this, juuust a bit -> Tarrasque is a Gargantuan monster, meaning it’s stomach is huge. Even if Clay Golem doesn’t die, I would have ruled there is no way the golem can effectively keep punching the tarrasque and deal aaany real damage. Bludgeoning punch against a slippery lining of a thick stomach? It’s like trying to punch the wall of a bouncing castle… You’re NOT going to do any damage to it with a bludgeoning punch, it just bounces back and forth as it’s too flexible.
Now this is what I want,more exploits.Cause WotC is stupid when it comes to gamemaking & balance (& PR given they got a bit woke over the years) it means you can completely cheese some encounters. Lots of people don’t even realise clerics can do more damage than barbarians,cause inflict wounds + guardian spirits is a cancer & people don’t use creativity enough…
1 st of all tarrasque attacks are considered magical so you don’t have nothing against him 2 nd of all if you reach 50+ damage in one roundon the tarrasque it stats to puke – but you it has tou be in one round so you never go out and you can kill ot inside it -the cache here is tha the tarrasque it doesn’t it only one it its everything so there will be always someone who gonna hit it because that person wants to go out and if you hit it also there is a high chance to reach the amount of damge in one round to puke . That is all sorry for my English
You’re meta gaming. Not cool bro. As the DM I’m going to treat you as a structure and the Tarrasque as a seige beast. You take double damage. Edit: And you now have the int of a clay golem… So enjoy that. Edit2: And it’s immune to non-magical bludgeoning damage anyway, so you won’t be chipping down it’s HP (even if it wasn’t regenerating). Your theory is full of holes. They may have nerfed the tarrasque, it doesn’t mean the DM has.
I had heard tales of a tarrasque homeworld, lost somewhere in the outer planes, an expansive wasteland inhabited by ‘docile’ tarrasques. Roaming about like scaley cows, feeding on what remains of the landscape, indifferent of each other or stray wanderers that pop in. Don’t Warp one out however, supposedly it’s the planar displacement that throws it into the iconic frenzy the tarrasque is known for
Game Idea: A party of lvl 20 adventurers have found the secrets to slaying the Tarrasque. This party goes around as heroes and always seems to know where the Tarrasque spawns because of their unique scrying abilities created by one of 2 of their lvl 20 wizards (some sort of op ritual exists that only they know about (supposedly)). Your party (the one you’re dming for) learns that they aren’t actually scrying but instead wishing in the next place that it will regenerate/ pop up on the surface. In this way they use the Tarrasque to farm hella money and hecka amounts of prestige but at the cost of millions and millions of lives, with the risk that one day they might not be able to defeat the Tarrasque. The party you’re dming for then has to wish for the regeneration to stop, defeat the party of lvl 20 adventurers and then get rid of the Tarrasque permanently. (Could be a one-shot of lvl 20 party that found this out based on some insane guy theory crafting about the scrying abilities (make it some sort of nerdy yet low level wizard that sounds crazy but actually makes perfect sense) and then go from there) (OR you could have this be a starting point in a random campaign and then once the party reaches level 20 you bring up for the 2000th time that the Tarrasque slaying party has killed them yet again in some other place when suddenly they’re stopped by a recurring NPC who acts like the theory crafting guy in the first point).
I do have to contradict one point. In The Forgotten Realms of Fearun, yes there is only one. In Ebberon, there is only one. It seems in each crystal sphere there is only one of these guys but in the spelljammer setting there is actually a planet with multiple Tarrasque that many theorize is the homeworld of these monstrosities. Now, that just creates more questions if it is true but there is certainly more than one in the mutliverse. Still great article and I love that detail of the diamonds beneath its shell.
When you have a stealth mission pop up in a campaign: Ok… When the DM tells you you have to sneak through a town that was ravaged by a Tarrasque(which is the main thing you need to avoid): well, shit. Edit: Put the stealth mission in an Antimagic Field and/or give the Tarrasque a fricken Beholder head.
one thing i heard is that in the sp(elljammer setting, there’s a whole planet of these things and they’re perfectly peaceful gentle giants. it’s only the nitrogen/oxygen rich atmosphere of planets like say… the setting where humans live that make them go into super hungry mode and ultra charges their regeneration.
One of my favorite stories from a DM is that one player spent almost the whole campaign being very focused in meditations and a spell he was trying to learn. When they encountered the terrasque, the beast began to charge and the player started an incantation. Just before the beast got to the party, a giant portal opened up to another dimension and it couldn’t stop itself before plummeting into the portal being banished to another dimension.
I once had a DnD section with a Tarrasque at the end of our campaign and we had not much that could stop it until I thought: “nothing in THIS world can kill it” I asked then. “what if said thing is not from this world?” It was a bit homebrewed but it got really epic and it was a great fight with an awesome ending. So it was “killed” but it was said that it would keep it down and gone for many eons. So the DM was wanting to have it around for the exciting comeback.
Listen. MrRhexx, you have such a way of explaining in detail DnD lore. You make me excited about these monsters, Im on the edge of my seat waiting to hear how op this thing is. I love your articles so far! Going on a binge perusal them. Thank you for the content! You really do have a special way of explaining everything, and getting new people excited for DnD
ive got a custom campaign setting, where the BBEGs plan includes resurrecting the Terrasque; which in this world, was properly defeated, and enchanted not to regenerate. The idea is to use the devastation to empower a ritual to release Therizdun from his prison. The method of resurrecting it is to use a similar idea to how a Dracolich is born, if their soul is attached to another body. For anyone unfamiliar with that, it creates an undead dragon, whose driven to find and consume its original body, and theus become a proper Dracolich. So, the undead Lesser Terrasque would go rampaging across the continent to the burial site of its original defeat. Consume its corpse and be reborn.
19:37 Karsus’ Avatar didnt kill a god. It momentarily robbed Mystryl of a portion of her divine being, severely weakening her connection with the Weave. This caused the Weave to surge and fray without Mystryl to control it. In order to save the Weave from being permanently damaged, Mystryl sacrificed herself to cut off the source of Karsus’ spell’s power.
I literally watched this article because I recently started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and like to learn the lore of games I play BUT I’ve been a huge fan of DotA 2 for the longest and noticed the name of Tarrasque so I thought I watch this. The fact you mention DotA’s “Heart of Tarrasque” is SO cool to me considering how rare it seems for DotA 2 to get any recognition. And when built on certain heroes, it really does make you feel like an immortal beast. Just don’t go into a 1v5 fight unless you know what you’re doing. I personally love building Heart of Tarrasque on Position 3 Earthshaker. His second ability “Enchant Totem” will increase your next right-click attack by 400% at max level but only your BASE damage so items providing bonus damage aren’t taken into account but damage gained from your primary stat, Strength, is and Heart of Tarrasque provides +45 Strength. Add that along with other high Strength items and Daedalus and you can literally one-shot enemy heroes. The satisfaction of seeing your enemy’s health bar turn completely white is sublime. Just walk around and delete some sorry support out of the game. 😂
The original story of the Tarasque comes from the 1st century AD. They say a monster was sinking ships on the Rhone river in southern france. St Martha found the monster, which had the features of many different animals like a chimera does, and sprayed holy water on it. She then led the monster to the town of Nerluc (now called Tarascon after the Tarrasque) and the villagers killed it. Interesting that such a fantastical story comes from a time and place that isn’t very far away from our own. I’ve heard of crazier things turning out to be real.
Technically you can kill the tarrasque in the 5th edition. It may be applicable to other versions depending on the wording. Also, it is an established fact on how these spells work only by members of the 5th edition. Older editions might work differently. Simply put, you use spells to blow through the daily 3 legendary resistances (it can just choose to not fail a saving throw.) Then you polymorph it into a creature with less than 100 hp and use Power Word Kill. Members of the 5th edition team have established that, though it would revert back to original form, power word kill is not a damage ability but rather a spell of absolute death. It would take a whole squad of lvl 20 spell casters to do this, but it would technically work according to the rules. Source: youtube.com/watch?v=B7hdqSiGpB8&t=736s
Nicely done. The only times I’ve seen a GM use this beast in game (I’m talking about home games, not modules or anything) was as a kind of walking catastrophe. The whole point wasn’t to defeat the creature at all, merely to evacuate innocents and save everything they could; the way in which the beast moved was very simply to walk in a straight line, snatching up everything in reach. Sort of like a slow moving landslide, or maybe a walking F5 tornado, was the way she described it. This same GM implied that there was a single Tarrasque in the entire multiverse: not just the planet, the whole cosmos! That would probably stretch out the space between incidents on specific worlds – or not… I think she also decided to describe the creature’s hibernation as taking place (effectively at least) in an extradimensional space. The particular incident of its arrival in her game was triggered by some idiot evil wizard managing to summon it (she didn’t explain HOW) which of course woke it up, and it was somewhat annoyed…and promptly ate the wizard. Then stayed up a while for a snack…
Screams heard in the distance Lord Arthur: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE THIS TIME!!! Ash: I DESTROYED the Necronomicon. You’re welcome. Wise Man: YOU AWAKENED THE TARRASQUE!!! Ash: All part of the plan… travel back in time back when someone had some idea where the beastie was, wake it up… give it a supplement of dietary fibers. Lord Arthur: dietary… what? Ash: Helps you shit… but you know… seeing it stomping around the countryside… gobbling up entire villages… I realize I didn’t think this all the way through. Wise Man: You don’t say… you replaced an inexhaustible army of evil with an unstoppable force of nature! Ash: What? No, I honestly couldn’t care less about what happens to this kingdom… you tossed me down a hole full of demon possessed zombies before I even did anything and then sent me off to get my hand bitten by a psychotic book with no back up. perusal your country crushed beneath its feet is downright therapeutic if I’m going to be completely honest. No, it was that I forgot to write down the instructions for travelling back to my time before I tossed the lizard that book. Lord Arthur: And now we’re stuck here with you.
5:47 I’m pretty sure the creators of the game confirmed that If you manage to get the Tarrasque’s health low enough, either by damaging it or polymorphing it, Power Word Kill would permanently kill it because it doesn’t do any specific damage, it just kills the target creature as long as it has less than 101 hitpoints.
Hi, I recently discovered your website after involving in BG3. It allowed me to catch up with DnD lore, after 10y of break. I’ve just wanted to give a feedback that when you mention spatial dimension such as feet, could you also add the metric values somewhere in the article around that timestamp. This would help a lot to get the feeling and scale of things intuitively for people in Europe 🙂 Thanks for the content, it is superb.
This I like! I’ve also thought about what would a world that constantly has to deal with the tarrasque would look like. Nomatic, maybe, maybe civilization only builds up for ten year periods before being destroyed again. Maybe the only place that stays a bastion of civilization is a sky temple City that barely has. A link to the ground bow it? I’ve been thinking about running a tarrasque based campaign that starts at low level, but the world building would be an epic ordeal!
Thanks again my friend. I’ve always enjoyed hearing about the Tarrasque. Sure, there’s multiple ways to kill it, especially since it has no ranged attack but I like the idea for a campaign that has it as the BBEG at or near the end. It’s a lot of fun doing prep work to set up for the confrontation. You might even have the opportunity to establish the hiring of an Ancient Dragon that can essentially circle above it and nuke it from orbit. That quest ( or similar type) could be as much fun as the battle itself! (keeping in mind that speed is of the essence, since it’s eating people while you are in prep mode, heh).
I must mention the Tarrasque’s field of aerial denial. Everyone always clowns on the Tarrasque with a lvl 1 aarackokra with a bow, but the Tarrasque is meant to project an aura with a radius of 600 feet around it that halves the flying speed of anything that has it, and nothing can be more than 20 feet off the ground. Within perfect slapping distance of the Tarrasque’s knock-prone tail slap.
It’s pronounced ter-ras-cue. I hate Wizards of the Coast. EDIT: I suppose that’s just how I’ve always pronounced it. My first DM…don’t know how he pulled this off, but he had a high-level Magic User (somewhere around 45th – HIGH level campaign) who polymorphed this thing into a snail. He would keep it in a small glass vial, and if anything too macho presented itself to him, he would throw the vial behind his enemy, dispel it and simply polymorph the thing back into a snail after it was done with its snack. He told me one day, the polymorph spell failed and he became the dang thing’s dessert.
6:13 “there is only one Tarrasque on the planet” Which planet? Forgotten Realms is to Dungeons and Dragons as the Earth is to the universe. Could you please make it more obvious that you are usually very specifically talking about that campaign setting? I only mention it because this may be causing some confusion for players who are new to the game. Also, I wonder if you’d consider adding some discussion of where the monsters came from before they were included in Dungeons and Dragons. I had no idea the Peryton was not an original Dungeons and Dragons invention until I saw this article: youtu.be/umPksOzbXj4 (relevant content in first 30 seconds).
Use a cleric with the following: – The Magic domain allows our cleric to cast arcane spells off scrolls. – The tried-and-true mighty composite +4 longbow, enchanted to +5 with Greater Magic Weapon. – Fifty +5 arrows, similarly enchanted. – our cleric will be polymorphed (from a scroll) into a Girallon, which has 26 strength and 17 dexterity (And four arms!). – Our cleric will also read a scroll of Maximized Cat’s-Grace; this will boost dexterity to 22. – Our cleric will wear a mithril chain shirt with the “of Speed” enchantment from Defenders of the Faith. This makes cleric permanently hasted. It’s a little pricey, but really should have one anyway. – The Fly spell, from a scroll, and the Expeditious Retreat spell, from another scroll, gives a base flying movement of 180. – The Improved Invisibility spell doesn’t provide protection since the Tarrasque can spot invisible creatures, but it does grant +2 to-hit. – Divine Power is a fourth-level cleric spell that grants the caster a base attack bonus equal to their total character level – in this case, 13. It lasts one round per level. – Divine Favor is a first-level cleric spell that grants the caster a +1 luck bonus to attack and damage per three caster levels. It lasts one minute. – Righteous Might is a fifth-level cleric spell that doubles the caster’s size, granting -1 to-hit and increasing weapon damage die by one. It lasts one round per level. – Bless is a first-level cleric spell that grants a +1 morale bonus to-hit. It lasts one minute per level.
I did a campaign on this where it’s actually called a drask, which is a legendary race only found deep in the elemental plane of earth, but one found its way into the prime material and humans asked what it was and misunderstood thinking it was tarrasque. Basically the story is the party finds the remnants of the destroyed tarrasque( already defeated) and come across a portal and complete the extinction of these creatures
Thanx for a great overview with some not-so-well-known lore about it. I am planning to introduce the Tarrasque for the first time ever as the pet of the main villain in our high level campaign that we are getting to. I can’t wait for the revelations and situations that it will lead to by installing this monster legend.
in some words the tarrasque is a force of nature just like a tornado or a tsunami, and i say that that if you managed to defeat it it will come back not the same place, but it will come back because is a force of nature, so if you want it in your campaing is going to have to be a final boss for level 20, incredible article i loved it
years ago, i dont remember which version of D&d at the time. there was an adventure module designed for characters up to level 100. Had the party go into the abyss and in one of the levels I am pretty sure, admittedly not certain, that you encountered a level of the abyss with multiple tarrasque in it. Can’t for he life of me remember name of the module but that is how i remember it.
I would like to point out one thing that comes up that is annoying with DMs that don’t understand what a carapace is. the Carapace is specifically the hard up shell that on the back. I have had several DMs apply the reflective nature of carapace to all of the hide in general. This does not mean the belly is highly vulnerable to make, you still have crazy spell resistance and some immunities you have to work against.
My DM ran an epic campaign and this was one of the encounters. After much struggling we “defeated” the Tarrasque ending his feeding rampage. The kicker, the one who struck the final blow was cursed to become the next Tarrasque. Thus the rule of one continues. His favourite means of ending over power characters. Lol