Quote Originally Posted by Ripptor View Post
Alright, updated to Version 1.1 as follows:

  • Removing Weapon Finesse and Endurance
  • Unarmed Strike as Monk (Implies IUS bonus feat)
  • Skill Bonuses aligned to +8, added +Skill per level
  • LA as +3 (RLA as +2)


Also added in the Tome of Battle variant, and the Racial Class variant for those that want to play with those options, and the original PC build this was based off of in the Balancing Act section for reference!

Agreed, she can drop Weapon Finesse and Endurance to think things up a bit. Decided to keep Iron Will though, to maintain the number balance and keep one of the two "filler" feats for Prerequisites. Downgrade.

Also removed the explicit calling out of IUS as a bonus feat to rely on the Unarmed Strike block to state it (as Monk).

That leaves us with two of the most common racial feats: Track and Iron Will, which is nice and neat!
Tidy! I like it.

Where it hurts her the most is in Grappling. A Large creature with a +6 Grapple Bonus and +8 Strength has a +14 modifier from these. Losing +6 Grapple and +4 Strength drops that down to a mere +6 bonus, dropping her success rate by 40%.
Well, yes, but grappling is a suboptimal and headache-inducing tactic, so any incentive to not do it is kind of a good thing. I'll readily concede reach is a bigger issue, but extending that is just two easy to take feats away, so I wouldn't worry all that much about it.

But this isn't an optimization challenge, Dungeonbread just fit the whole "Breed them but smaller" flavor of a human-sized Tarrasque that doesn't consume everything in it's wake
Heh, yes. Yes indeed.


I knew this would be easy to miss, so I put it at the top of all the lists, but the first ability a Tarresque has is Paragon of Nature,


So the Flaws and Traits actually ARE assumed for the Tarresque, and are forced as Aggressive, Quick, Bestial Instinct, and Love of Nature. I just gave the Troll Totemist the exact same ones as the Tarresque already had.
Um, about that. I'm not sure I like it. Baking things based on optional rules (fun as those may be) into the very statblock of a critter is a bit of a clunky design that might end up causing all manners of compatibility issues. I'm not saying you should drop Paragon of Nature because it's cool as all hell, but divorcing it from the trait/flaw system, ven if at the cost of increasing CR, LA or both would strike me as a more fortunate creative decision.

As for the Troll Totemist, it has two more levels to play with, so you actually can't add the same amount on top of one as the other. The "Stronger Race" here just has those two levels of Totemist baked in (Four +2 Claws, +6 Grapple, +6 Climb, Immune to Disease, Poisoning, Sickening, Nausea, Pushback, Wild Empathy). You can;t really "optimise" the Tarresque the same way, since adding Immunities again, or gaining a Bite when you already have one, doesn't actually do anything (And it already uses up those two HD levels).
In the same way? No. In some other crazy way? I'm sure that one's possible. That's what 3.5 does.

This I'm gonna hold out on for now... CR 6 is two Bugbear Vampires (Drakthar's Way), or just looking at the top of the alphabet: Assassin Jelly, Black Recluse, Blood Elemental. All 3 have multiple immunities (poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, polymorphing, sonic, mind-affecting, critical hits, illusions, stunning, flanking, all verbal spells...), their poisons cause paralysis or drowning/nausea to lock down PCs, with powerful spell-like abilities (Invisibility, Cause Insanity) and comparable DCs at 17-18.

At CR 7 we have the Argent Spider (Huge): Immune to Mind-Affecting, 1d8 Con Poison DC 20, with at-will free action teleportation and a +27 Grapple check. One of these could teleport in, Bite grapple a PC for 20 damage and 1d8 Con and drag them away 40' in a single round, before run/teleporting around with their hapless prey. An Argent Spider would solo or escape the Tarresque here:

Spoiler: Just like the Simulations!
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The Spider is faster than the Tarresque (40' Move plus a free 30' Teleport per turn vs only 60') so it gets to decide whether to Chase or Escape, assuming it can't be grappled or incapacitated. The Spider outgrapples her (+27 vs +17) to slip grapples 80% of the time, and can teleport out when it fails as a free action.

A Tarresque's attacks would miss 50% of the time due to Love of Nature (+4 vs DC 15), then miss another 55% of the time due to the spider's AC (+13 vs AC 25), averaging to-hit 25% of the time, or once every 4 rounds. The Spider can continuously kite her (Move/Attack/Teleport), avoiding Full Attacks while dealing damage 100% of the time (+17 vs AC 18) for an average of 12 damage after DR but ignoring Poison.

This gives the Tarresque 5-6 rounds before it falls unconscious due to damage, at which point it will be eaten and die to the Acid in the monster's stomach. In this time the Tarresque will average 1.5 successful attacks (Move+Attack), assuming Gore (~20 dmg) for 20 or 40 dmg to the Spider's 104 HP. On average the Tarresque will die after hitting the spider once or twice.

In order to "win", a Tarresque would have to either:
(0.09% Chance) Land 4 attacks (0.30%) while rolling near-max (26+, 2.75%)
(0.05% Chance) Land 5 attacks (0.09%) while rolling over-avg (21+, 50%)
(0.02% Chance) Land 6 attacks (0.03%) while rolling okay-ish (18+, 75%)

For a combined 00.16% Chance (a sixth of one percent), about 1/600 odds to kill the Spider.

Survival odds are higher, if we assume the Spider is willing to escape if things get dicey, lets say four hits landing (0.30%), which give 1/300 odds that the Tarresque "scares" the Spider off without either of them dying. A more careful Spider might leave early, instead at 3 hits landing (1.55%), for an average of 0.9% of the time (Assuming half Careful, half Daring).

Final Odds, then:
99.0% - Spider Feasts
00.9% - Spider leaves hungry
00.1% - Tarresque wins

This is despite the Tarresque having relevant DR (soaking up 30 Dmg) and being immune to it's 1d8 Con poison, which is the Spider's usual hunting advantage. Love of Nature is a disadvantage, but even taking that away only doubles the Tarrasque's Survival rate from 1% to 2%, still far from an even fight where only 0.33% is the Tarresque truly "winning" and killing the Spider.

I may have to look further than the first CR 7 "A" encounter that isn't all about Spellcasting, but I'll keep her at CR 6 for now.
Numbers! I like numbers! And you're sure making some convincing arguments there. Nevertheless, I'm not sure a web-only monster is the best point of comparison we can use here. The numbers on those are off as often as they aren't. Let us, perhaps, take a look at core and a couple of the better monster books out there (I have a certain fondness for FF and MM3)!

At CR 7, we find sad, hopeless stuff like bulettes, huge elementals, hill giants, flesh golems, dire bears, red slaadi, lesser flame snakes (beatsticks with inferior offense, insufficient defenses and not much else), slasraths (its poison doesn't work, it's "I sunder your armour" trick ditto), hellcats (tremorsense IN YOUR FACE! (not that these things aren't kind of bad even before that)), dragonnes (immunity to exhaustion IN YOUR FACE!), chuuls (they can hope to get lucky with their paralysis thing, but if it fails, they are toast), arrow demons (it can use its SLA to stay away from melee range but that bites deep into its damage output and its defenses are on the weak side), naitioan rakshasasToB and eight-headed hydras (these can be sporting, but not invincible by any means). Nymphs and succubi are also CR 7, of course but they don't seem to set the norm.