Appropriately Hard Encounter or Unavoidable TPK?

[Angry Bob]

I want my PCs to fight the Tarrasque. I've asked them what they think, and they're convinced they'll be slaughtered.

To detail, since no one read the last post asking for help with this.

The (ECL 11, all LA bought off) party consists of:

A Lesser(Houserule, removes the stronger SLAs and lessens ability bonuses) Pixie Sorcerer with two levels of Initiate of the Seven Veils. Likes to spam Wings of Cover to protect himself and whoever's shoulder he happens to be riding on at the moment.

A Large Goliath Warblade with spiked chain and aoo stuff, including Thicket of Blades.

A Large Feral Shifter Monk/Tashalatora Psywarrior/Barbarian/Fist of the Forest/Weretouched Master built with a 51 AC and a charging fetish. Base unarmed damage is also higher than most spells at this level.

A Githzerai Targeteer(fighter variant)/Master thrower that shreds things with ten knives/full attack, with dex to damage twice on each one.

They are all well above Wealth By Level and have been almost(mostly altering existing items slightly) freely customizing items.

The party has also recently come into possession of an elemental airship.

With the above party, and ample prep time, could you bring the Tarrasque into negatives long enough for the plot device to cast wish?

[RaginChangeling]

The Airship or Pixie alone can guarantee they bring the Tarrasque to negatives if they play intelligently. The Tarrasque is slow, it can't fly and it has horrid skill modifier on things like Balance. They just have to stay out of reach and bomb it.

Even if they want to get in its face, they'll probably win if they have halfway decent manevuers/spells/powers. I'd say all of them, except maybe the master thrower, could potentially beat it on their own and if they have custom tailored feats and tons of extra magical items they should roll him.

[Diarmuid]

Do you think they can do it before they all end up swallowed?

Based on what you've described, the T should swallow one of them per round as he can power attack for 7 and still hit the toughest of them to hit with it's bite on anything but a 1.

Edit - Do you think the Pixie can keep up a >40 dmg output every round with a 30% chance of having its spells reflected back? I would argue that they dont have enough ranged dmg to take it down.

[dextercorvia]

That really depends on the ranged output. None of them can withstand a full attack from Big T, so they are going to want to stay in the Airship.

[Ruinix]

1 touch of idiocy and the terrasque is down, just 1.

[Lateral]

As long as they're smart and have ample prep time, they should be able to take it. Plus, they could always have the strongest one of them drop giant rocks on the Tarrasque's head until it's unconscious, have the sorcerer spam Flesh to Stone with Assay Spell Resistance until it gets turned to stone, then crush the statue into fine dust, put the dust in a container, and scatter the dust across a dozen planes.

[Cog]

After getting in range for a melee touch and overcoming SR, you run into this:

This penalty can’t reduce any of these scores below 1.

[Cartigan]

Fire superawesome orbs at it until it dies.

[Diarmuid]

1 touch of idiocy and the terrasque is down, just 1.

Delivered without provoking an attack of opportunity that likely results in being swallowed whole and that bypasses the creatures SR.

Sure the first part is doable, but at ECL 11...the 32 SR is gonne be tough.

[Lateral]

Fire superawesome orbs at it until it dies.

Regeneration 40 and high Reflex saves.


1 touch of idiocy and the terrasque is down, just 1.
It's a penalty and can't reduce below one point of Intelligence/Charisma/Wisdom. It has to be ability drain, because it's immune to ability damage.

[Cartigan]

Regeneration 40 and high Reflex saves.
Orbs are ranged touch attacks. You would just have to stick 2 or 3 metamagic feats on it. Maximized Empowered Orb of something or other is a ranged touch attack doing 90 + 7d6 damage.

You'll get eaten, but you will at least hurt it.

[Amnestic]

"Unavoidable TPK"? They have an airship! If they decide they can't take down the Big T they can just fly away and forget about him. I assume Big T will get distracted from trying to swat the annoying flies that are your party when he comes across something closer and easier to chow down on, like an innocent village of orphanages for puppies and kittens.

[Eldariel]

They could beat it with proper Sorcerer spell selection or rather extreme save DC maxing on something like Plane Shift. However, I highly doubt that's the case. They can mislead, poke and delay it but if they don't know what they're doing, they cannot actually kill it yet. However, it's by no means an unavoidable TPK and thus I'd consider it a fine encounter; if nothing else, they can always escape albeit with the sting of failure at their hearts. And learn forbidden arcana, come back and stop its rampage.

[Lateral]

Really, though, the Tarrasque is a threat to the entire world. A single encounter with it doesn't make sense just out of the blue.

You could go on a quest to find someone capable of casting Wish or Miracle, then find the Tarrasque, lower it to zero HP, and have that person use Wish/Miracle. Boom, threat annulled.

[Diarmuid]

That's kinda what it sounds like the OP was hoping for, as he did specify that the "plot device" would be casting Wish/Miracle if the party could reduce it to -10 HP.

[Tvtyrant]

Well a Warmage/Sand Shaper could use empowered off of sandshaper and maximize off a wand on a split ray Orb of Sonic and do 200 damage to it; if you had two such characters you could do it.