How to soup up the tarrasque

[danzibr]

How do you pronounce that thing, anyways?

So I was looking at the tarrasque and I noticed... he took Toughness 6 times!? That's ridiculous. Without simply adding HD or silly abilities, what's a good way to toughen up (no pun intended) the tarrasque?

[Emperor Ing]

IMPROVED toughness 6 times. :smalltongue:

And I always pronounce it as Turr (as in 'turn') ask

[Eldan]

Well, a few suggestions:

Bind Vestige. Martial Study. Shape Soulmeld.

[Undercroft]

Half-Ilithd template (from fiend folio) is beastly for it.
58 Spell resistance, as well as some spell-like abilities to deal with flying targets. Mind blast is near worthless. Plus an int score of about 7 (i think) means it isn't completely stupid, just mostly stupid.

Loses it's awesome bite attack though, but can extract brains instead (made a houserule so it extracts gargantuan and larger brains and just swallows the smaller stuff whole).

Adding the template mostly hinges on whether or not you want to house rule it being allowed, since it normally is only applicable to humanoids i think. But then again after reading lords of madness and seeing that they try sticking their tadpoles in all sorts of things made me houserule it to be allowable.

[Ravens_cry]

Well, first you get a Colossal+ pot.:smallbiggrin:
As for pronouncing it, I always pronounced it like Tear and Rask, 'ask' with an 'r' in front.

[Eldariel]

This thread may be relevant to your interests (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87000). Long story short, pump the Will-save with Steadfast Determination, get it some way to soar in the air, and some epic feats for za lulz.

[HalfDragonCube]

Paragon template, if there is no real problem with the CR (and if you're trying to soup up the tarrasque then I doubt there is).

That template is pretty much cheese on a plate.

[Mr.Smashy]

Tarrasque-(Tar, Ask) big thing that will kill you, the party, and all manner of things you rode/flew/swam in on. Has serious eating disorder, binging without the purging. Likes long walks on small cities, laying dormant for decades at a time, and eating. Did i mention eating?

Seriously, to make this guy stronger, just throw all manners of templates on him. If the PC's state that the template is wrong for his monster type, tell them a wizard was fooling around with wish spells. That will get them. :smallwink:

[Tvtyrant]

Give it the ability to plane shift at will and have it automatically do so to the location of anyone who sees its sign. Play it up as the embodiment of destruction, with a massive (400 ft.) sonic cone breath weapon that does 40d6 once per every 4 rounds and a dazing gaze.

[danzibr]

A half-Illithid tarrasque is pretty terrifying.

I must be the only one to say TAR-a-skew. Problem is, that's the first way I heard it so no I'm stuck with it.

[danzibr]

Give it the ability to plane shift at will and have it automatically do so to the location of anyone who sees its sign. Play it up as the embodiment of destruction, with a massive (400 ft.) sonic cone breath weapon that does 40d6 once per every 4 rounds and a dazing gaze.

Oh, and what do you mean by "sign"? Like, if you draw the wrong picture on the ground the tarrasque pops up and starts sonic cone blasting?

[Tvtyrant]

I was thinking attempts to explain its weaknesses actually; the party reads a book that explains how the thing works and then it appears soon after that. Trying to understand the Tarrasque automatically pits you against it; because without massive amounts of metagaming most people don't stand a chance against it. Most caster builds rely on either melee or control spells, neither of which work on it.

[faceroll]

Paragon template, if there is no real problem with the CR (and if you're trying to soup up the tarrasque then I doubt there is).

That template is pretty much cheese on a plate.

I like the pseudonatural template, as well. An insanely intelligent Tarrasque from the plane of madness? Ys plx.

[Draz74]

Yeah, Big T can get a lot scarier if you just re-select all those feats.

Martial Study x3
Martial Stance
Steadfast Determination
a bunch of Incarnum feats, including something for flight

If that, plus the obvious basics (Multiattack?) don't fill up all his Feat slots, there's always Improved Toughness and Dire Charge that you can add on.

[faceroll]

Just throwing on the Half-Fiend template makes him SUPER dangerous. He gains flight, Blasphemy at CL 48, SR 58 (there are ways around this, but SR58 is basically magic immunity as opposed to the trivial SR 32), and his int goes up to 7. The most dangerous bit is CL 48 Blasphemy, of course, usable 1/day.

[olthar]

The idea of a 70 foot long 50 foot tall creating only moving 20 feet is kind of crazy. Each step is probably about 20 feet. Increase the movement to something like 100 (or 5 steps). Also it has a wisdom of 14 to help compensate for the intelligence of 3. It should be smart enough to know to pick up a boulder and hurl it at the annoying flying thing over its head.

[HalfDragonCube]

The idea of a 70 foot long 50 foot tall creating only moving 20 feet is kind of crazy. Each step is probably about 20 feet. Increase the movement to something like 100 (or 5 steps). Also it has a wisdom of 14 to help compensate for the intelligence of 3. It should be smart enough to know to pick up a boulder and hurl it at the annoying flying thing over its head.

It can charge super-fast once per minute or something like that. Very difficult to escape from a colossal eating machine that just ran 400 feet in six seconds.

[ericgrau]

Give him immunities to any new splatbook abilities/tricks your group uses. I mean he's immune to almost every non-cheese trick in core so it makes sense. The party might still be able to avoid him but safely taking him down while doing so will be a problem.

Most of all hand him to a level 17 party, tops. Probably earlier if the group is at all optimized. Handing him as a CR 20 encounter to a level 20 party is a routine fight, which he should not be. Before level 17 the PCs can make an adventure of hurrying up to find a scroll of wish/miracle before the thing causes more damage.

[faceroll]

Give him immunities to any new splatbook abilities/tricks your group uses. I mean he's immune to almost every non-cheese trick in core so it makes sense. The party might still be able to avoid him but safely taking him down while doing so will be a problem.

Not really. He's not immune to flight. A spirited charger on a flying mount making diving charges with ride-by is going to drop it pretty fast, especially if he's using UMD to get true strike so he can power attack and having the party cleric use Heal on him after each swipe. Without any lockdown (like an improved trip ability) and the ease at which you can get freedom of movement by level 20, the tarrasque gets one, maybe two attacks/ round on the little man & his charges.

[ericgrau]

Hence the "avoid him" easily enough but not while also taking him down. It either gets really hard or you need to get closer with melee and so on once he's immune to all the trickier offensive tactics. Running away from him isn't the problem.

Ya some kind of tricky offensive tactic will help, but the party may not build entirely around it... so feats and skills shouldn't necessarily expected to be there. And ride by for example won't be enough damage by itself to keep up with regeneration and soon fails to readied actions, especially if by chance the mount gets hit instead of the rider. But ya something like that is a start, not just for him but for everyone. The cleric will have to contribute more than healing most likely too if the damage is going to be enough. The whole party will need good tactics and probably won't execute them flawlessly so it'll be challenging, which is what a fight should be.

[faceroll]

Hence the "avoid him" easily enough but not while also taking him down. It either gets really hard or you need to get closer with melee and so on once he's immune to all the trickier offensive tactics. Running away from him isn't the problem.

Diving spirited charge with full two-handed power attack (using a ring of spell storing or UMDing a wand) and 30 str with a large lance does 8d6+200 damage every two rounds. DR knocks of 15 (lets say that's the 8d6) and regen another 80. That's 120 damage every two rounds from one character. Takes him 14-15 rounds to bring big T down. A flying sorcerer firing melf's acid arrow takes longer, but each arrow does ~35 points over 7 rounds. After the 7th round of casting acid arrow, the tarrasque is taking 235 points of damage/round (195 after regeneration).

[ericgrau]

Besides chunking off 1/3-1/2 of that annoying mount's HP each round, that's built fairly specifically for this kind of fight and has drawbacks elsewhere, like enclosed dungeons. Heck most sorcerers wouldn't dare blow one of their spells on acid arrow for the same reason.

Yeah it's still plenty possible even if you don't build for it specifically, but it'll at least take the party a bit to get the bearings straight against an unknown foe. The first response of the melee will be to engage it in melee for example, then the party needs to regroup, then they say hey it's slow let's just keep our distance, then oh crud it ran hundreds of feet, jumped and swatted someone 30-40' in the air, more distance, more fly spells, come on Joe needs a fly spell too, "I'm busy tagging morty this round and that's my last one btw; Jill take this greater invisibility instead while you're here". Crud go heal Joe then cast fly on him so he can get out of there. Ah it made its listen check and is swatting Jill, Jill just get out of here we'll handle this.

Come to think of it the monster is so famous all you have to do is nix some special abilities and add others to screw with the heads of more experienced PCs. Then they'll be more surprised.

[Eldan]

The Tarrasque has really no defence against pretty much anything other than direct damage and targeted spells. Anything that changes the environment is a serious problem to it.

[faceroll]

Besides chunking off 1/3-1/2 of that annoying mount's HP each round, that's built fairly specifically for this kind of fight and has drawbacks elsewhere, like enclosed dungeons.

A core fighter 20 is going to have two of three feat trees: archery, mounted combat, and tripping. Mounted Combat is the best way to get damage inside of core, and against CR18+ monsters, it is entirely feasible. Giants, Titans, Demons, Devils, Dragons, and Big T are all too large for an average dungeon.

The best core paladins are halflings/gnomes, thanks to riding dogs & dungeons.

It's really not a niche build, more of an optimized build for core non-casters.


Heck most sorcerers wouldn't dare blow one of their spells on acid arrow.

In core? Acid Arrow is great vs. all those big dumb things that can't fly or see invisible. It's efficient no-save, no-sr damage (very rare in core), and acid isn't a common immunity or resistance. It's also useful vs. locks, traps, doors, walls, etc. Kind of a poor-man's disintegrate.

Outside of battlefield control and good teamwork, a sorcerer can solo most large monsters without flight using fly and acid arrow, if she has the spell slots.

[ericgrau]

Acid arrow damage is simply too low and too slow for most fights. Most of the time I'd want to metamagic a magic missile instead as it's (usually) more versatile against the harder to hit things. And besides the mounted stuff you have a UMD of +12 to +15 without blowing significant resources on it. Even the skill ranks might be annoying depending on the melee's int. And most of the time true strike is wasteful compared to doing damage faster by swinging every round, and thus not worth resources. Especially against other foes that can reach you.

The best battlefield control is walls and barriers which is difficult to do out in the open against a ginormous foe. Yet so awesome in general that a good sorc's list will be full of them.

But mostly the general answer is ya that works ideally and it can be done pretty well even not ideally, but it's still a challenge which is what a DM wants. EDIT: Or ya if all the PCs are crazy about flying and even the fighter has a wings via a cloak so he doesn't have to wait for the caster, then simply give the tarrasque some wings, take away another special ability or weakness, and leave the PCs guessing on which one is missing. If they even think of that, don't metagame it and experiment.

[faceroll]

Back when I played a lot of 3.0 core only, rings of spell storing were super popular, as only rogues & bards got UMD. Great way to get some minor spells as a non-caster and not having to dip a caster class.

True Strike, with multipliers from a diving charge and two handed power attack, is worth while, as each point of attack is +8 damage.

The most successful characters I've seen are ones that have a moderately optimized solution to all problems, as opposed to a hyper-optimized solution to one problem. Due to the nature of action advantage, being able to contribute 50% /round in every situation is much, much more valuable than contributing 100% some rounds and 0% other rounds.

/ramble

Um, but yeah, it'll be a challenge, but at CR20, a party should be able to handle what, 4 to 7 of those a day?

[Necroticplague]

Add gheden template. Since all damage it takes is nonlethal damage, and it's immune to nonlethal damage, it's now perfectly immune to damage in all it's forms.

[Mojo_Rat]

I've always felt the easiest way to buff the tarrasque is ti justvrefluff it xo your players dont know what it is. this gets around the essential problem of metagame knowledge ( which all the I beat the tarrasque at lvl 2 are based on)


if they don't know what it is they will do things like vast spells that don't work on it.


that said I like what pathfinder did with it.

[faceroll]

I've always felt the easiest way to buff the tarrasque is ti justvrefluff it xo your players dont know what it is. this gets around the essential problem of metagame knowledge ( which all the I beat the tarrasque at lvl 2 are based on)

The problem with that is flying and invisibility, which have been in use for 15 to 17 levels. Those things always work against enemies that have no way to deal with it, and there are a lot of those, at all CRs, so it's good to always have those abilities.

[danzibr]

I've always felt the easiest way to buff the tarrasque is ti justvrefluff it xo your players dont know what it is.

I'm sorry, but... what?

[Lateral]

What she said was, "I've always felt the easiest way to buff the tarrasque is to just refluff it so your players don't know what it is." There's probably something wrong with her keyboard.

[Darth Stabber]

Shape soulmeld(manticore belt) + open waist chakra + some feats that give essentia + martial study(some iron heart manuever) + martial study(IRON HEART SURGE) + bind vestige. Now he flies, and has a get out of jail free card, and has a vestige.

[Lateral]

Hmm.

Alertness sucks, Awesome Blow sucks, Dodge sucks, Imp. Bull Rush isn't effective here, Iron Will sucks, Great Cleave sucks, Toughness x 6 sucks, Blind-Fight is replaceable. That leaves at least 13 free. Take Martial Study (Wall of Blades), Martial Study (Iron Heart Surge), Martial Study (Mountain Tombstone Strike), Martial Stance (Crushing Weight of the Mountain), Mage Slayer, Martial Study (Shadow Blink), Steadfast Determination, Martial Study (Diamond Defense), Martial Study (Rapid Counter), Martial Stance (Hearing the Air), Pierce Magical Concealment, and some of those Incarnum feats for flying (that takes 2 feats, right?). Now the tarrasque's got teleportation, flight, a bunch of new tricks, an easy way to hose casters (Shadow Blink next to them, then Mountain Tombstone Strike or Swallow Whole says goodbye), a way to detect invisible foes, incredible AC and saves, and one way to say "NO."

Now add some templates. Half-fiend makes no sense, but gives some nice SLAs, Intelligence 7, and a metric billion skill points. (What are its class skills, anyway?) Dark template can boost the speed, which is nice.

[Draz74]

Unfortunately, Martial Study's text limits it to 3x per character. So the Tarrasque sadly has to pick and choose.

[gomipile]

Well, first you get a Colossal+ pot.:smallbiggrin:


Hmmm, what seasonings and vegetables would go best in a Tarrasque soup?

[Mojo_Rat]

What she said was, "I've always felt the easiest way to buff the tarrasque is to just refluff it so your players don't know what it is." There's probably something wrong with her keyboard.


thank you. it's an iPad actually a mixture of impatience auto correct and fumble fingers.


I'n regards to the thread though. pathfinder gave it ranged tail spikes and a silly high jump. It can use scent to locate enemies.

I really want to re-iterate I think one of the biggest issues with the tarrasque is metagaming. ( optimizing also but game designers cannot use optimized characters as the baseline characters as the baseline)

but I have no experience with it In play. we did one 2 session game at lvl18 as my only game over lvl 10.

[lrellok]

The most dangerous thing a GM can do is to play NPC combatants as if they have brains, goals, and the desire to remain alive.
-Abulafia from WOTC boards

But more seriously, introducing DADADADA!!! The Cult of the Flat World...who happily follow the tarrasque everywhere with a half dozen mages and clerics offsetting any disadvantages it might have/develop with well times (for them, not the party) spells.

[Ravens_cry]

Hmmm, what seasonings and vegetables would go best in a Tarrasque soup?
To decide that, I would need to know what Tarrasque tastes like. Crocodile tastes like chicken I hear, and they are the biggest extant reptiles, so I am basing my suppositions on that.
Well, chicken goes well with celery, potatoes, rice, noodles, garlic, a nice chicken stock broth, fresh peas, pepper, zucchini, bell peppers, hot peppers, ginger. It all sounds delightful.

[Darth Stabber]

If you go the incarnum feat route of gaining a fly speed and you have no essentia, then your fly speed is going to be 10ft (clumsy). Additional essentia gives 10ft per point. Since big T has a butt ton of hit dice he can get it pretty high, but he still needs to buy the feats. Trade his dodge for midnight dodge and there's 1, we're up to 20ft. If we could give him a level or 2 in totemist it would go down really smooth (though we still need to blow a feat for the waist chakra). There are 10 feats that give essentia that have no prerequisite other than ability scores, all require con 13 and one requires dex 13 as well (he has that covered). So depending on essentia capacity (I don't want calculate it right now) he could get up to 110ft (clumsy).

Honestly I think the best way to alter big T is just by swapping feats (that could even be a good optimization challenge).

We can give him incarnum stuff, martial manuevers and binding all via feats, and true speaking magic if we want to alter his skills as well. Incarnum related abilities are easy to give him since there is no cap (unlike martial study, capping out at 3 manuevers + any number of stances). Binding will use 4 feats max. There is a very limited amount of truespeech available via feats (1st level utterances and truespeak allways class) and given the difficulties that particular system has, I don't think that is a route any one wants to persue, though the mental image is awesome.

If we make him good, he can take a vow of poverty, since he doesn't use items that isn't terrible. Plus it's another awesome mental image. If we gave him stigmata he could heal a whole village.

[Gullintanni]

To decide that, I would need to know what Tarrasque tastes like. Crocodile tastes like chicken I hear, and they are the biggest extant reptiles, so I am basing my suppositions on that.
Well, chicken goes well with celery, potatoes, rice, noodles, garlic, a nice chicken stock broth, fresh peas, pepper, zucchini, bell peppers, hot peppers, ginger. It all sounds delightful.

And, because it regenerates, you could feed everyone forever! Yay!

[Quietus]

To decide that, I would need to know what Tarrasque tastes like. Crocodile tastes like chicken I hear, and they are the biggest extant reptiles, so I am basing my suppositions on that.
Well, chicken goes well with celery, potatoes, rice, noodles, garlic, a nice chicken stock broth, fresh peas, pepper, zucchini, bell peppers, hot peppers, ginger. It all sounds delightful.

Personally, I'd replace the zucchini with the petrified tears of baby angels. Call me old-fashioned, but I think they'd add that je ne sais quoi.

[nyarlathotep]

Personally I go by a very simple formula. Would godzilla be affected by it? If no then the tarrasque is immune. To do this I make it immune to many of the core-only cheese tricks like ability drain, mind effecting, and give it continuous freedom of movement. Were the Tokyo military's attempts at debuffing godzilla or battlefield control anything other than pitiful failures; of course they were why should the PCs be any different.

Next either give the damn thing wins or optimize its jump. This is simply essential in 3.5 core or not-core.

Next step give godzilla so of his own battlefield control. I personally make it so that every time the tarrasque sprints it triggers an earthquake as the spell and there is always a continually refreshing Storm of Vengeance centered on it as would befit an avatar of destruction.

[ericgrau]

Hmm.

Alertness sucks, Awesome Blow sucks, Dodge sucks, Imp. Bull Rush isn't effective here, Iron Will sucks, Great Cleave sucks, Toughness x 6 sucks, Blind-Fight is replaceable. That leaves at least 13 free. Take Martial Study (Wall of Blades), Martial Study (Iron Heart Surge), Martial Study (Mountain Tombstone Strike), Martial Stance (Crushing Weight of the Mountain), Mage Slayer, Martial Study (Shadow Blink), Steadfast Determination, Martial Study (Diamond Defense), Martial Study (Rapid Counter), Martial Stance (Hearing the Air), Pierce Magical Concealment, and some of those Incarnum feats for flying (that takes 2 feats, right?). Now the tarrasque's got teleportation, flight, a bunch of new tricks, an easy way to hose casters (Shadow Blink next to them, then Mountain Tombstone Strike or Swallow Whole says goodbye), a way to detect invisible foes, incredible AC and saves, and one way to say "NO."

Now add some templates. Half-fiend makes no sense, but gives some nice SLAs, Intelligence 7, and a metric billion skill points. (What are its class skills, anyway?) Dark template can boost the speed, which is nice.

Hmm, didn't notice awesome blow. That would actually let him swat melee fliers out of the air and lock them down, preventing hit and run tactics. Normally alertness is mediocre but he actually needs it to make DC 20 listen checks which makes invisibility much less of a threat, as does blind fight. In fact if you do anything violent to him invisibility effectively becomes a 25% miss chance as he'll find your square pretty easily. Given his low will save and shear number of feats he really needs iron will. Ya toughness is pretty bad. Probably cleave/great cleave/improved bull rush too, except against local armies and near cliffs I suppose.

[CTrees]

Hrm. In Pathfinder, the Tarrasque is immune to mind affecting effects, but checking the d20srd, I don't see that immunity listed, and the will save is only +20. So... The party tracks down the Tarrasque. What they don't realize is, a high level wizard used Magic Jar to possess the Tarrasque. Now it also has ninth level spells. Enjoy.

(in PF, add "that wizard cast a spell to remove the immunity to mind affecting, then used magic jar")

[Eldariel]

Hrm. In Pathfinder, the Tarrasque is immune to mind affecting effects, but checking the d20srd, I don't see that immunity listed, and the will save is only +20. So... The party tracks down the Tarrasque. What they don't realize is, a high level wizard used Magic Jar to possess the Tarrasque. Now it also has ninth level spells. Enjoy.

(in PF, add "that wizard cast a spell to remove the immunity to mind affecting, then used magic jar")

Magic Jar isn't mind-affecting, PF or otherwise. And it can be made permanent with multiple castings in both cases (Doc Roc showcases the "how-to" here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9186526&postcount=83)). Thing is, those gems are expensive. True Mindswitch from Psion is a bit easier, though yeah, Magic Jar is passable.

And yes, Big T's Will-save is pathetic; over 50% chance to fail against a level 20 caster even without any Spell Foci or so. Dominate Monster is a very easy way of making it your pet; day/level and simple recast before the last one's duration runs out. Of course, you need Enhancement to accomplish that so meh. Plane Shift is a time-tested means of disposing of Big T; Positive Energy Plane is quite capable of imploding it. It'd also drown on the Elemental Plane of Water and e.g. 9th layer of hell would likewise probably lead to its demise or becoming a Super Tarrasque Under Asmodeus's Bidding.

[danzibr]

[...] and e.g. 9th layer of hell would likewise probably lead to its demise or becoming a Super Tarrasque Under Asmodeus's Bidding.

I find this idea intriguing.

[Claudius Maximus]

At the very least it would be the easiest way to explain the half-fiend template idea.