World saved. The tarrasque is defeated.

[redking]

Let's say the heroes defeated a tarrasque. They get the accolades, barmaids (and barlads) throw themselves at themselves at the heroes. However, the heroes failed to dispose of the corpse.

Now an epic necromancer and his EVIL cult of baddies recover the corpse of the tarrasque. What exactly could a necromancer do to make the best use of the tarrasque corpse?

Finally, to give cultists some motives, the nation that defeated the tarrasque are blasphemers. They refuse to erect temples to the God of Death and tore down the temples that existed previously in a crusade against evil. Now the epic level necromancer and the cult members are epically butthurt.

What happens next?

[Beni-Kujaku]

"Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!"

Assuming you can't just resurrect the Tarrasque to True Mind Switch with it (what? That's what Tippy proposed (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=16028945&postcount=13), it's obviously balanced and a good idea!), the best way is probably to harvest some of the Tarrasque's skin and use it to create an army of Simulacrums. The Tarrasque really doesn't need so many HD, and having only half the HP is absolutely no problem when it just can't be killed except with a Wish. It is also under your absolute control, so you don't need to fret about wizards dominating it, and is still a Colossal creature with 45 Str and 35 Con. Pretty costly XP-wise, but an epic necromancer without liquid pain farms isn't worth the title. Simulacra retain the Tarrasque's Regeneration, negating the major drawback of Simulacra: healing, and just is a massive beast of city destruction that is easily replaceable. You may not kill any epic PC with one of these, but a few should do the job.

[sleepyphoenixx]

If he has above average intelligence and the "resurrect then true mind switch" is out he animates something that's actually useful against high level threats.
Because at any level where you could animate it it's a waste of your control pool to do so.
Remember that regeneration doesn't work without a Con score.

Even using it for Simulacrum isn't very helpful.
Being near-unkillable doesn't really help when any halfway-competent mage can just fly outside its range and use Flesh to Stone until he gets through SR.
Or Teleport it into space, or Temporal Stasis, or any other spell that isn't a ray, line or cone that disables an enemy without killing them.

Zombie dragons are a much better use of your Animate Dead pool, particularly if you awaken them.

[Batcathat]

Even using it for Simulacrum isn't very helpful.
Being near-unkillable doesn't really help when any halfway-competent mage can just fly outside its range and use Flesh to Stone until he gets through SR.
Or Teleport it into space, or Temporal Stasis, or any other spell that isn't a ray, line or cone that disables an enemy without killing them.

Not all enemies are mages though. If you're up against an army or two, having a few nigh-unkillable giant monsters at your command might be kinda nice.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Not all enemies are mages though. If you're up against an army or two, having a few nigh-unkillable giant monsters at your command might be kinda nice.

If you're up against an army or two pretty much anything halfway level-appropriate for someone capable of making a tarrasque-simulacrum will crush them.
You can if you want to, but i don't think something to clean up low level mooks is worth 4800xp if it doesn't help against the things that might actually threaten you.

If you can dodge the costs somehow sure, go ahead, but they're not going to do much beyond looking impressive.

[Beni-Kujaku]

If you're up against an army or two pretty much anything halfway level-appropriate for someone capable of making a tarrasque-simulacrum will crush them.
You can if you want to, but i don't think something to clean up low level mooks is worth 4800xp if it doesn't help against the things that might actually threaten you.

If you can dodge the costs somehow sure, go ahead, but they're not going to do much beyond looking impressive.

Even a Solar can be killed. 60 1st level wizards with Mage Hand and Boneblast, or 3rd level with black lightning would kill one after the first turn of combat. A Tarrasque will not. At worst, it can be slowed until your undead army comes to reclaim it. It's not a weapon against the PCs, it's a weapon to actually take over the world, who will make all your mooks basically invincible in a 60ft radius, break through iron walls and wooden doors like they're papier mâché, and especially be cheap, since reuseable and they don't take your control pool, they don't ask for a service in return, and the only way for them to die is for your enemies to use more XP than you did creating them. But that's not the reason why you pick the Tarrasque as your elite mook. No, the reason is that you have the corpse of a Tarrasque available. A Solar is hard to kill. A necromancer, even level 21 to 24, will not have an easy time finding and killing one of those for his simulacrum silliness. He will get bodied by a few angels and killed. You don't mess with outer planes without consequences. In this scenario, you already have a Tarrasque corpse. That's really the best you can easily have, and helps your undead army (of course controlled by a few death knights or undead anti-paladins) level countries while you deal with the pesky PCs attacking you in your castle.


Then again, I was initially thinking about the Pathfinder Tarrasque, a much more well-designed monster who would be actually scary as a simulacrum (and easier to create, as it only has 30 RHD. But even the 3.5 Tarrasque is not a bad choice, if you don't want to mess with Wyrms and high-end Outsiders.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Even a Solar can be killed. 60 1st level wizards with Mage Hand and Boneblast, or 3rd level with black lightning would kill one after the first turn of combat.
Solars have a constant double-size Lesser Globe of Invulnerabilty, so no, they wouldn't.
You know, in addition to SR 30, high speed flight and so on.



A Tarrasque will not. At worst, it can be slowed until your undead army comes to reclaim it. It's not a weapon against the PCs, it's a weapon to actually take over the world, who will make all your mooks basically invincible in a 60ft radius, break through iron walls and wooden doors like they're papier mâché, and especially be cheap, since reuseable and they don't take your control pool, they don't ask for a service in return, and the only way for them to die is for your enemies to use more XP than you did creating them. But that's not the reason why you pick the Tarrasque as your elite mook. No, the reason is that you have the corpse of a Tarrasque available. A Solar is hard to kill. A necromancer, even level 21 to 24, will not have an easy time finding and killing one of those for his simulacrum silliness. He will get bodied by a few angels and killed. You don't mess with outer planes without consequences. In this scenario, you already have a Tarrasque corpse. That's really the best you can easily have, and helps your undead army (of course controlled by a few death knights or undead anti-paladins) level countries while you deal with the pesky PCs attacking you in your castle.


All of your reasoning falls apart the moment your enemies have a couple mid-level casters. And if they don't you don't need a tarrasque to beat them.

Any epic level necromancer is better off making simulacra of himself instead of using the tarrasque. They're both cheaper and more effective.

[Jay R]

People who have defeated a tarrasque are right there. I will use any other plan than to re-use what they are already set up to kill.

[Seward]

If he has above average intelligence and the "resurrect then true mind switch" is out he animates something that's actually useful against high level threats.
Because at any level where you could animate it it's a waste of your control pool to do so.
Remember that regeneration doesn't work without a Con score.

Even using it for Simulacrum isn't very helpful.
Being near-unkillable doesn't really help when any halfway-competent mage can just fly outside its range

After the Simulacrum has eaten the rest of the party, you, the arcane caster with enough levels to create such a creature steps onto the stage and disjunctions the wizard. If the fall doesn't kill the wizard, the Terrasque will.

Or you cast cast quicken fly on the beastie and then dim-door it next to the wizard who thinks mere flight will protect him.

A party that can beat 1 Terrasque probably can't beat a bunch backed by the wizard that brought them all back (or even that wizard's cohort)

[sleepyphoenixx]

After the Simulacrum has eaten the rest of the party, you, the arcane caster with enough levels to create such a creature steps onto the stage and disjunctions the wizard. If the fall doesn't kill the wizard, the Terrasque will.

Or you cast cast quicken fly on the beastie and then dim-door it next to the wizard who thinks mere flight will protect him.

A party that can beat 1 Terrasque probably can't beat a bunch backed by the wizard that brought them all back (or even that wizard's cohort)

Yeah sure. Because obviously the wizard is incapable of casting dispel magic. Or counterspelling. Or preparing Feather Fall.

You're just proving my point.
All of your strategies assume that the defenders lack even half the magical ability the attackers have, in which case you don't need to blow nearly 5k XP on a tarrasque simulacrum.

A slow-moving melee beatstick simply isn't a viable threat at CR 20+ no matter how hard it is to kill. It's not even a viable threat at CR 10 unless you stack the odds so far in its favor that you no longer need a CR 20+ beatstick to win.

[smasher0404]

I think the counter-point to the fact that a Simulacrum Tarrasque only needs a few mid-level casters to stop is that it needs a few mid-level casters to stop. The only cost to making the Simulacra is an XP cost, which as Beni-Kujaku pointed out can be mitigated via a Liquid Pain farm (and even if you aren't mitigating those costs somehow, 5K isn't that much to an epic level caster). You can make a bunch of these, and the Kingdom will need to send out mid-level casters to handle each of them. Those are mid-level casters that they can't have defending other positions, or actively buffing your higher level warriors, or healing your wounded. Those are a lot more valuable than the six seconds than the evening you had your cohort spend making one of these things.

If the Kingdom needs to commit its resources towards stopping your Tarrasque army, then it has fewer resources that day to stop whatever your actual plan is.

[Telok]

1) Resetting trap of tarrasque simraculum onto...
2) Resetting trap(s) of teleport (go ahead and be inaccurate here).
3) ???
4) Profit

[King of Nowhere]

keep it tied up, chop its body to pieces, sell them. they can surely be used as magic item components, but even in the worst case, it's infinite meat (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0326.html).

use the tarrasque to make infinite money. use the money to fund whatever scheme you can concoct, evil or otherwise.

[Batcathat]

keep it tied up, chop its body to pieces, sell them. they can surely be used as magic item components, but even in the worst case, it's infinite meat (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0326.html).

I imagine tarrasque steak would start out as a fancy gourmet food, since it's so weird and exotic, but then the rich people would realize it's literally infinite and it would quickly devalue into poor people food.

[Jervis]

I imagine tarrasque steak would start out as a fancy gourmet food, since it's so weird and exotic, but then the rich people would realize it's literally infinite and it would quickly devalue into poor people food.

Still poor people food makes money when there’s a lot of poor people and the food is cheap to make.

[loky1109]

I imagine tarrasque steak would start out as a fancy gourmet food, since it's so weird and exotic, but then the rich people would realize it's literally infinite and it would quickly devalue into poor people food.
Infinite doesn't mean easy access. You can compare price for fish near sea and in the middle of continent.

[Batcathat]

Still poor people food makes money when there’s a lot of poor people and the food is cheap to make.

Oh, certainly, I didn't mean to imply anything else. With an infinite source you could sell it dirt cheap and still make a very nice profit (especially since the "you" in this scenario is a necromancer, so labor would presumably be very cheap as well, at least in the long run).