When is a monster/enemy too big for 5e combat? How would you run truly enormous ones?

[NorthernPhoenix]

Most DnD combat, in my experience, takes place in a relatively small room, be it a forest path, dungeon room, drawbridge or whatever. Great DMs spice these up with all sorts of environmental factors, but no matter how interesting, they're nearly always physically small in terms of truly epic fantasy. This extends to spells and monsters as well. Most spells have a range of 100-300 feet, while even "colossal" (gargantuan+ in 5e) creatures rarely go above 50-60 feet in height. More than that seems to make the "grid-based-combat" of DnD creek and strain.

I know DnD is not a video game and has different limitations, but here are a few examples of fantasy fights against truly titanic beasts that make the Tarrasque or Tiamat look tiny.

Final Fantasy XV VS Leviathan: https://youtu.be/AWcFVn8u6Do?t=5m52s
God of War vs Kronos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki-Nj6WRtw4
World of Warcraft Vs Deathwing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpBYiJzt2AI
Shadow of the Colossus vs Phalanx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsedVypewuU&t=263s
Final Fantasy X vs Sin: https://youtu.be/Q5RFh07O5v4?t=5m13s

My question for the forum is, how could you make DnD accommodate fights with these kinds beasts with no more than a small amount of changes to the rules?

[krugaan]

At that point, the monster probably becomes a giant series of traps, and attacks should be resolved as saves.

I mean, thematically. You can do a lot with saves and legendary actions.

A lot of raid bosses (in WOW, at least) are a lot of "don't stand in circles" and "I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up".

[nickl_2000]

Most DnD combat, in my experience, takes place in a relatively small room, be it a forest path, dungeon room, drawbridge or whatever. Great DMs spice these up with all sorts of environmental factors, but no matter how interesting, they're nearly always physically small in terms of truly epic fantasy. This extends to spells and monsters as well. Most spells have a range of 100-300 feet, while even "colossal" (gargantuan+ in 5e) creatures rarely go above 50-60 feet in height. More than that seems to make the "grid-based-combat" of DnD creek and strain.

I know DnD is not a video game and has different limitations, but here are a few examples of fantasy fights against truly titanic beasts that make the Tarrasque or Tiamat look tiny.

Final Fantasy XV VS Leviathan: https://youtu.be/AWcFVn8u6Do?t=5m52s
God of War vs Kronos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki-Nj6WRtw4
World of Warcraft Vs Deathwing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpBYiJzt2AI
Shadow of the Colossus vs Phalanx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsedVypewuU&t=263s
Final Fantasy X vs Sin: https://youtu.be/Q5RFh07O5v4?t=5m13s

My question for the forum is, how could you make DnD accommodate fights with these kinds beasts with no more than a small amount of changes to the rules?

If you put in the optional rule where creatures that are 2 sizes smaller can occupy the same space as the larger creature, there shouldn't need to be much else changed (aside from making the monster)

[Malifice]

Most DnD combat, in my experience, takes place in a relatively small room, be it a forest path, dungeon room, drawbridge or whatever. Great DMs spice these up with all sorts of environmental factors, but no matter how interesting, they're nearly always physically small in terms of truly epic fantasy. This extends to spells and monsters as well. Most spells have a range of 100-300 feet, while even "colossal" (gargantuan+ in 5e) creatures rarely go above 50-60 feet in height. More than that seems to make the "grid-based-combat" of DnD creek and strain.

I know DnD is not a video game and has different limitations, but here are a few examples of fantasy fights against truly titanic beasts that make the Tarrasque or Tiamat look tiny.

Final Fantasy XV VS Leviathan: https://youtu.be/AWcFVn8u6Do?t=5m52s
God of War vs Kronos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki-Nj6WRtw4
World of Warcraft Vs Deathwing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpBYiJzt2AI
Shadow of the Colossus vs Phalanx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsedVypewuU&t=263s
Final Fantasy X vs Sin: https://youtu.be/Q5RFh07O5v4?t=5m13s

My question for the forum is, how could you make DnD accommodate fights with these kinds beasts with no more than a small amount of changes to the rules?

What I've always found hilarious is that spells dont scale. A fireball is always a 20 foot radius.

Meaning your average pixie wizard is dropping a spell big enough to nuke a whole pixie city with fireball, while a colossal Giant is conjuring a a spell barely big enough to heat his morning coffee with same.

[krugaan]

What I've always found hilarious is that spells dont scale. A fireball is always a 20 foot radius.

Meaning your average pixie wizard is dropping a spell big enough to nuke a whole pixie city with fireball, while a colossal Giant is conjuring a a spell barely big enough to heat his morning coffee with same.

I just imagined a giant mage apprentice practicing magic by making tiny puffs of acid using acid spray.

To be fair, it's not said that size matters for magical power.

[Malifice]

I just imagined a giant mage apprentice practicing magic by making tiny puffs of acid using acid spray.

To be fair, it's not said that size matters for magical power.

'Its not the size of the wand that matters, it's the skill of the wizard'

[LordEntrails]

Get off the pre-printed battlemap or wet erase board and you won't have any problems making the monsters as big as you want. If you go digital, your battlemap can be hundred or thousands of feet across, not the typical ~20 or 40 squares (100-200 feet) across because that's what fit on your dining room table.

Sure, you've got to then allow for and probably make rulings to allow your PCs to climb around and get thrown from the creature.

[LordEntrails]

What I've always found hilarious is that spells dont scale. A fireball is always a 20 foot radius.

Meaning your average pixie wizard is dropping a spell big enough to nuke a whole pixie city with fireball, while a colossal Giant is conjuring a a spell barely big enough to heat his morning coffee with same.

Sure, but then you have a 5th level titan wizard that can do 10 times the damage of a 5th level elf wizard. Just because her fireball is scaled to her size and can target more creatures. Or a firebolt that shoots x times farther. All for what is thematically the same amount of skill and energy expanded.

Yea, it's a disconnect, but what the solution? To say a titan has to use a 4th or 5th level slot to cast fireball? Or...?

[Thrudd]

In the case of something like Kronos in God of War, who is the size of a mountain, I wouldn't really call that "combat". The enemy is basically a living dungeon. He's an environment that requires you to climb and jump and make saving throws when he tries to brush you off, and fight human-sized fleas that crawl around on his body. When you reach the apex of the dungeon, probably his head, it will require a certain amount of damage done to break into a vulnerable area, like get in through his ear drum or cut a hole into a sinus cavity or get in under his eyelid, and then hack away at his brain stem, or inject a neurotoxin directly into his ocular nerve or something.

[Regitnui]

A monster is too big for 5e combat when it can be described with the word "terrain". I mean, the example that comes to mind for me is from an earlier edition; 3.5e's Leviathan in the Elder Evils book. You don't ever fight it directly. You have to fight its "aspects" (giant plesiosaur "white blood cells") while getting close enough to its heart to throw in the McGuffin the BBEG was using to wake it up. The whole thing is treated like a dungeon as you climb down one of its hollowed-out spines filled with boiling saltwater. In other words, like most people recommend here.

[MaxWilson]

My question for the forum is, how could you make DnD accommodate fights with these kinds beasts with no more than a small amount of changes to the rules?

The main change I'd make would be to assign HP to multiple locations within the leviathan's body, and it doesn't die unless all of its HP are deleted (or at least a critical mass of vital points). You cannot kill a 20-mile-long shark by stabbing it repeatedly in the tip of its dorsal fin, no matter how much you try. You have to take out at least four of the nodes within its brain, half a mile apart and each with 300 HP and guarded by antibodies.

It goes without saying too that the monster inflicts massive damage on anything it directly attacks, so much so that its damage is "don't bother rolling." But that isn't new rules, just new stats.

[Zippdementia]

The main thing in most video games that do this kind of fight is that they treat them almost like separate levels, with navigation puzzles and smaller fights. Kratos scaling the Titan Cronos; every fight against a colosus in Shadow of the Collosus; even in FFX you fight pieces of sin most of the time (the other times, size honestly doesn’t matter as combat reverts back to the “let’s line up and hit each other” format).

So in DnD it would seem that for truly gargantuan boss fights, you do the same thing, where you are scaling parts of the boss, maybe attacking small pieces of it... that’s another question: how do you kill such a thing? It wouldn’t make sense to just stab it to death, that’s like a flea slitting a human’s throat. It just wouldn’t happen. But maybe they have to carry a magical bomb to the creature’s maw, leap inside of it, and plant the bomb inside its stomache. Crazy **** like that makes these kind of bosses living dungeons.

[UrielAwakened]

The living dungeon thing always feels like such a copout when this question comes up.

I don't know about you OP but when I imagine this sort of fight I imagine it as an actual fight, not a dungeon.

Here's an alternative idea to that tired "living dungeon" suggestion that everyone always gives.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByYaNG8Oqb3kbENKazZUQW1RY1k/view

[MaxWilson]

The living dungeon thing always feels like such a copout when this question comes up.

I don't know about you OP but when I imagine this sort of fight I imagine it as an actual fight, not a dungeon.

Well, the issue with that is that 5E PCs just aren't powerful enough to fight e.g. one of the Rimtursar (Norse Frost Giants, as big as mountains). A monster with 30,000 HP (say, 1000 HP in 30 different locatiosn) that does 24d20 HP of damage in an area hundreds of yards across with each blow may technically have combat stats, but it isn't an actual combat in any meaningful sense. It's just the DM murdering the PCs if they don't run away.

So the "invade its brain and set a bomb" approaches aren't driven by a lack of stats but rather by a DM's desire not to murder the PCs in cold blood without giving them a chance to defend themselves.

[UrielAwakened]

Well, the issue with that is that 5E PCs just aren't powerful to fight e.g. one of the Rimtursar (Norse Frost Giants, as big as mountains). A monster with 30,000 HP (say, 1000 HP in 30 different locatiosn) that does 24d20 HP of damage in an area hundreds of yards across with each blow may technically have combat stats, but it isn't an actual combat in any meaningful sense. It's just the DM murdering the PCs if they don't run away.

So the "invade its brain and set a bomb" approaches aren't driven by a lack of stats but rather by a DM's desire not to murder the PCs in cold blood without giving them a chance to defend themselves.

You can give them the situational tools they need to combat it directly.

Powerful siege weapons, advanced magic spells that can only be cast due to the power inherit in the land, ancient weapons capable of dealing significant damage to it, etc..

It's all a numbers game but it makes the PCs feel powerful.

[MaxWilson]

You can give them the situational tools they need to combat it directly.

Powerful siege weapons, advanced magic spells that can only be cast due to the power inherit in the land, ancient weapons capable of dealing significant damage to it, etc..

It's all a numbers game but it makes the PCs feel powerful.

I see where you're going with this, but I'd caution you against giving out siege weapons or spells that can deal thousands of HP at a time. And more importantly, if the monster turns its attention to you, you're still going to be dead in less than twelve seconds, long before you could climb up it and start dealing damage. So you'd need some kind of plot device to give the PCs thousands of HP too, and that... doesn't fit into 5E well. If you try to make an interaction with a mountain-sized giant into an equal combat with attack rolls and everything, it is probably a campaign-ender one way or the other.

BTW, anyone who is interested in truly gigantic creatures should have a look at GURPS: GULLIVER (http://www.gamesdiner.com/gulliver) to get an overview of what sorts of issues are worth considering when you adapt a game system to larger scales. You might wind up switching your 5E game from d20 to 3d6 afterwards though!

[Unoriginal]

While it can be fun to use large-scale attacks from time to time, I don't think that siege weapons or OP special spells, neither relying on your own power, make the PCs feel powerful.

[Zippdementia]

The living dungeon thing always feels like such a copout when this question comes up.

I don't know about you OP but when I imagine this sort of fight I imagine it as an actual fight, not a dungeon.

Here's an alternative idea to that tired "living dungeon" suggestion that everyone always gives.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByYaNG8Oqb3kbENKazZUQW1RY1k/view

That may be because you are thinking of a dungeon as a static environment which just sits there waiting for you to traverse it. In my mind, the inside of such a creature would be a constant danger, having to dodge tidal waves of stomache acid and bile, fight to "swim" down the right passage or end up expelled through a blow hole or... somewhere... less pleasant... with constantly changing "corridors" and "passages."

You can also treat the outside of the creature as a "dungeon" in this case having to climb around it placing magical bombs or sealing tokens on certain parts of its body, the whole while its trying to shake you off or brush you off as you cling to hair the size of small trees and climb inside gigantic pores to hide.

[UrielAwakened]

That may be because you are thinking of a dungeon as a static environment which just sits there waiting for you to traverse it. In my mind, the inside of such a creature would be a constant danger, having to dodge tidal waves of stomache acid and bile, fight to "swim" down the right passage or end up expelled through a blow hole or... somewhere... less pleasant... with constantly changing "corridors" and "passages."

You can also treat the outside of the creature as a "dungeon" in this case having to climb around it placing magical bombs or sealing tokens on certain parts of its body, the whole while its trying to shake you off or brush you off as you cling to hair the size of small trees and climb inside gigantic pores to hide.

Mechanically that's the same as any other traps or terrain hazards though.

It just doesn't match what I expect when I think of fighting a titantic-sized creature.

I think taking a page out of the Eldrazi arc of the Magic: The Gathering most-recent Zendikar set is a good way to handle it. It's a titantic creature with more HP than you could ever deal on your own, but it has a lesser HP threshold you need to overcome mechanically. Use its HP as a timer of sorts, and once you reduce its HP by whatever X is, instead of dying, it means you've bought enough time to launch the epic spell that kills/imprisons it. Then that spell serves as the plot-method of killing it.

In the meantime, you have to avoid its attacks to the best of your abilities or otherwise distract it. Make its attacks target areas of the battlefield instead of players. Telegraph what squares will be affected, or otherwise cause damage across a wide area but in lower amounts. Instead of smashing you, cast a shadow that the players need to escape before next round, or else the attack will cause a tremendous amount of damage. And in between those attacks, have it cause shockwaves or tremors that do less damage. Auras, or weather that it causes are other good ways to get across those sorts of effects.

[Zippdementia]

Mechanically that's the same as any other traps or terrain hazards though.

It just doesn't match what I expect when I think of fighting a titantic-sized creature.

I think taking a page out of the Eldrazi arc of the Magic: The Gathering most-recent Zendikar set is a good way to handle it. It's a titantic creature with more HP than you could ever deal on your own, but it has a lesser HP threshold you need to overcome mechanically. Use its HP as a timer of sorts, and once you reduce its HP by whatever X is, instead of dying, it means you've bought enough time to launch the epic spell that kills/imprisons it. Then that spell serves as the plot-method of killing it.

In the meantime, you have to avoid its attacks to the best of your abilities or otherwise distract it. Make its attacks target areas of the battlefield instead of players. Telegraph what squares will be affected, or otherwise cause damage across a wide area but in lower amounts. Instead of smashing you, cast a shadow that the players need to escape before next round, or else the attack will cause a tremendous amount of damage. And in between those attacks, have it cause shockwaves or tremors that do less damage. Auras, or weather that it causes are other
good ways to get across those sorts of effects.

It all comes down to preference, I suppose. See, to me, that just sounds like whacking away at a bag of hitpoints. I'm much more interested in something that forces me to approach the combat as if it literally is a piece of living environment.

But that doesn't mean either approach is bad. Knowing your group would be the key thing!

Which did remind me suddenly of the final fight in Carrion Crown's Trial of the Beast (Pathfinder).

The final monster is a huge beast way beyond the capabilities of the party who will be facing it, so instead they have to mind control a similarly powerful Flesh Golem to take down the monster. It's a pretty awesome finale which terrifies the players with the sheer size of the monster only to offer a really unique way to deal with it.

Drawing on that, it could be interesting to have to take out such a titanic monster by attacking it with ANOTHER titanic monster or construct. Maybe a fantasy airship or tank.