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Method 1: Well, it works in Starcraft...
Tarrasque has some nasty Spell Resistance, meaning that our Level 13
wizard has only a 20% chance of affecting him with any given spell, even
with the Spell Penetration feat. That's assuming that he can get
underneath Tarrasque's carapace and attack him point-blank from underneath
- which is usually a bad idea anyway since most high-damage spells tend to
be area effects. But there are a lot of spells that bypass Spell
Resistance entirely since they don't directly affect the enemy. A good
example of this type of spell is Illusions. No amount of Spell Resistance
will let Tarrasque see through an Invisibility spell, nor will it tell him
that any illusions you create aren't actually there. And with an
Intelligence of only 3, he's not likely to figure it out on his own.
How does this help? Well, the obvious tactic would be to augment your
army with illusionary warriors. If you maneuver your troops right,
Tarrasque will waste his time trying to kill the fake creatures while the
real ones hit him from behind. The trouble is, no pure-illusion spell has
the power to take damage - the Tarrasque's attacks will go right through
it, and it won't be long until he figures out something is up.
* Simulacrum
There is, however, a solution. There's a seventh-level spell called
Simulacrum which creates an illusionary double of a creature. The double
is real enough to take (and to deal) damage, but it exists under your
absolute control. The catch is that it only has 51% to 60% of the
original's "hit points, level, skills, speech, and personality". Well, no
loss - we aren't cloning the Tarrasque for its personality anyway.
(One worrisome point: do abilities like Regeneration count as a "skill"?
It would be really nice if our duplicate had a way to regain hit points.
A Simulacrum can be repaired by a process requiring "one day, 100gp per
hit point, and a fully equipped magical laboratory". This seems to imply
that standard healing has no effect on it, so the Regeneration ability is
really important. If your DM brings this up, you might try to bargain
that the Regen is still there, but only operating at 51-60% capacity.)
There are other hurdles to clear. Creating a Simulacrum requires a piece
of the original creature - nails, hair, et cetera. Blood would probably
do. You might be able to find some shed scales or something near its
tracks; if you can't, you'll have to remove them from Tarrasque itself.
With Invisibility to guard your approach, Flight to let you charge up to
Tarrasque before he can spot you and react, and Contingency Dimension Door
to let you escape, this ought to be possible without _too_ much trouble.
You'll need a +5 axe (a caster-level-15 scroll of Greater Magic Weapon
costs 1125gp) and a True Strike spell in order to actually dent the
creature's hide; if you target the tip of one of its toenails, you ought
to do okay.
Simulacrum also costs 1000xp per casting. This is a small price to pay
compared to the 46800xp you'll get if you're thirteenth-level, but still
nothing to sneeze at. You only need to create two Simulacra if you're
generous with the magical support - but when creating an unstoppable army
of illusionary Tarrasques, there's no point in being stingy. Create as
many as you can afford; once you finish the Tarrasque off, you can take
over the world as an encore.
* Combat
Now, your Tarrasques are somewhat weaker than the original. They have
a crucial advantage, though: magical support. You can cast Improved
Invisibility on all your Tarrasques, letting them avoid 50% of the enemy's
attacks. (Tarrasques have +52 to-hit and only AC35, so this is the only
way your creatures can avoid attacks. Tarrasque himself will get hit by
every attack you make.)
If your Tarrasques didn't gain the 25/+5 Damage Reduction ability the
original had, you'll need to correct that too. (25/+5 Damage Reduction
means your creatures can hurt other creatures as though their attacks were
+5 weapons.) You could cast Greater Magic Fang on your creatures at
caster level 15 (using spell scrolls) if you have a Druid in the party.
Failing that, you'll want to equip your creatures with weapons (similar to
brass knuckles but much much bigger) and cast Greater Magic Weapon
to make them all +5.
How, then, is this going to work?
Tarrasque's attacks deal an average of 112.5 damage each round if you just
add the damage up. After accounting for critical hits on 18-20 and
automatic misses on a 1, the damage goes up to 140 - but half of his
attacks will miss every round due to Invisibility, so the actual value is
70 per round. (It's probably okay to work with the average damage: when
you're rolling as many d8's and d12's as Tarrasque is, the actual damage
will probably be very close to the average.)
Your creatures have approximately 440 HP each, so even if they're not
regenerating, one of them can survive Tarrasque's attacks for 6 rounds
before going down. (If your creatures have the full Regeneration: 40,
they can absorb his attacks for more than twice as long. If some of your
creatures have it but others don't, make sure to put the ones that do have
it in front.)
Your creatures, on the other hand, are each dealing the full 140 damage
per round. With only two Simulacrums you can deal 280 damage per round;
even with Regeneration, Tarrasque will go down after only four rounds.
(You won't even have to Wish him dead! Just set a Simulacrum to stand
over him and keep beating him down. After two weeks, he'll still be
alive, but with negative 20 million hit points; every day your Simulacrum
spends costs Tarrasque three days to heal.)
Summary.
Cost:
1500gp - focus for Contingency spell (you should have one of these anyway)
1135gp - longsword and Greater Magic Weapon scroll
200gp, 2000xp (OR 14550gp for scrolls) - two Simulacrum spells
6000gp - 12 brass-knuckle-equivalents, Tarrasque sized
13500gp - 12 spell scrolls Greater Magic Weapon
Total: about 22000gp, more if you don't want to spend xp on Simulacrum,
much less if your Tarrasques inherit the original's Damage Reduction
ability. A-.
Level: Level 13 is a must for Simulacrum. A.
Time:
one day (hopefully) - acquire a piece of Tarrasque
two days - create two Simulacra
one day - defeat Tarrasque
In the best case, you could do this in four days - not _too_ much of a
stretch. B-.
Experience: You get the full 46800, no need to share. A+.
Sensibility: How were we going to acquire those Tarrasque nail clippings
again? B.
Legality: If the spell wasn't supposed to do that, it wouldn't be
in the PHB. A.
Overall: Sounds good to me. A.
----------
Method 2: An Exercise in Logistics
The illusion idea from Method 1 was a good one, but the Simulacrum idea
wasn't entirely faithful to it; the creatures we created with Simulacrum
were real, not fakes. That technique also cost a bunch of experience to
prepare: 1000xp per Simulacrum created. There's another, more common way
to use illusions that can serve us well in this method: the illusionary
floor.
The idea is this. Dig a big hole. Put an illusion over the top so
Tarrasque falls in. Fill the hole with water. Tarrasque falls in.
Tarrasque drowns. We'll work on this one step at a time.
* Step 1: Dig a big hole.
How big a hole do we need? Tarrasque is 70 feet long and 50 feet wide, so
he's about 90 feet along the diagonal. He has a reach of 25 feet beyond
that. We'll make the hole 140 feet in diameter for reasons described
below. A 140-foot-diameter hole is 15393 square feet in area, and if the
hole is 200 feet deep then we need to remove about 3.1 million cubic feet
of earth.
We'll want to dig the hole in solid stone so that Tarrasque can't dig his
way out of it. There's a fifth-level spell called Transmute Rock To Mud
that transmutes two 10-foot cubes of rock per level into mud. We can use
a sixth-level spell, Move Earth, to remove the earth from the pit. Our
13th-level wizard can cast five Transmutes and one Move per day if he uses
his higher-level spell slots as well; that's just enough to deepen the
hole by ten feet. He should be able to finish the hole in about three
weeks.
We'll see later that the hole doesn't need to be quite so deep: Tarrasque
isn't going to be in any condition to climb out of it, so all that matters
is that the water be over his head. Our wizard can get away with one
week's work instead of three if he's in a hurry. The principle is the
same, though.
* Step 2: Put an illusion over the hole.
This part is easy: the fourth-level spell Hallucinatory Terrain targets
one thirty-foot cube per level. We can cover the whole thing with two
castings. They last two hours per level, which at 13th-level works out to
one day.
* Step 3: Fill the hole with water.
This could be a bit of a problem, actually. Probably your best bet is to
divert a river into the hole - not too difficult a task compared to
creating the hole in the first place. Four Transmute spells and two Move
spells can create a 10ft x 10ft channel 1000 feet long in solid rock; if
you can find a suitable river five miles away, you can finish digging the
channel in three weeks.
If you can't find an area of rock that's near a river, but the season is
summer, you can use the sixth-level spell Control Weather to change the
weather to "torrential rain". The duration is 4d12 hours, and you can
cast the spell three times per day, so you can keep the rain up as long as
you like. It's not clear from the rules how long it will take until you
have 200 feet of water in the hole, but it shouldn't take too long.
If neither of the above conditions applies, you may have to settle for
digging a hole in standard dirt near a river. Or you could use Move Earth
on a lake that's already there, making the sides much steeper and the
bottom deeper.
* Step 4: Tarrasque falls in.
This step is really easy. Shoot an arrow at Tarrasque; keep shooting
until you have his attention. Run away, very fast, using a Fly spell.
(Your base move with Fly is 90 feet; you'll have no problem evading
Tarrasque. If you're worried about his Rush ability, you can polymorph
someone into a Pegasus and add Horseshoes of Speed, granting a base fly
speed of 240.) Eventually Tarrasque tries to run over the empty air, and
falls in.
...Wait a second here. Isn't there some sort of Reflex save associated
with falling into a pit? Well, ordinarily there would be. However, if a
character is "running or moving recklessly" on encountering a covered pit,
the save is negated.
* Step 5: Tarrasque drowns.
This step is much harder. Here, for your reference, is the drowning rule:
Any creature can hold its breath for a number of rounds equal to twice
its Constitution score. After that, it has to make Constitution checks;
the DC starts at 10 and increases by 1 per round. When it fails a save,
it dies in three rounds.
Now, Tarrasque's Constitution score is 35, so Tarrasque can last between
9.5 and 11.5 minutes underwater. During this time it can do any of
several things. It can try to dig at the sides of the hole. It can try
to swim to the surface. It can also try to climb the side of the hole.
We need to make sure that none of these things will get it out of the
water within, say, 15 minutes.
The easiest variable to control is Tarrasque digging at the sides of the
hole. The walls are made of stone, which has a hardness of 8 and has 15HP
per inch of thickness. (Presumably these numbers are for one five-foot
square of rock, but the table doesn't explicitly state this, so we won't
assume it.) If Tarrasque can deal 100 damage per round to the rock (after
subtracting 8 hardness for each of five attacks), that's 6 inches of rock
per round, so Tarrasque can tunnel through 60 feet of rock in 12 minutes.
The pit is 200 feet deep, and Tarrasque is only 70 feet long, so no matter
what he does he's still underwater.
The other possibilities, swimming and climbing, are harder to control.
The Monster Manual doesn't give us any indication of how well Tarrasque
can swim or climb. Both of these abilities are based on Strength, though,
and Tarrasque has a Strength of about 45. How can we make sure that
Tarrasque won't be able to get out of the pit?
* Never Swim on a Full Stomach
Tarrasque has a strange habit: he likes to swallow whole anything that
attacks him. Usually this doesn't hurt him, as he has a Fortitude save of
+38, making him immune to all types of poison. In certain cases, though,
this can work against him.
Suppose that we craft an iron statue and place it in Tarrasque's path as
it approaches our trap. Perhaps we create an illusion so that it seems to
be shooting arrows at Tarrasque. Tarrasque eats it, of course, and
continues chasing us. How does this affect Tarrasque's ability to swim?
Tarrasque can swallow one Huge creature at a time, so let's make our
statue Huge. A Huge creature is twice as large in every dimension as a
Large creature, which is twice as large as a Medium creature - so our Huge
statue has a volume 64 times the volume of an equivalent Medium-sized
statue.
Actually, we can do better than this - we cast Reduce on the statue before
Tarrasque sees it. Reduce will decrease all of its dimensions by 50%, so
if the statue is Huge when Tarrasque swallows it, it will grow to be
Colossal after the spell wears off, with a volume of 512 times that of a
medium-sized creature.
Now, a medium-sized human can weigh 200 pounds or more - we assume our
statue is somewhat portly. If our statue was a Colossal human, it would
weigh a little more than 100000 pounds, or 50 tons. It's not human,
though; it's iron. A human's density is approximately 1, the same as the
density of water; iron has a density of 7.874. Our statue weighs 800,000
pounds when the Reduce spell has worn off!
...Wait, now. How would we buy such a statue? We don't need to pay for a
great work of art - actually, we'd prefer a cube or a sphere, and our
illusion spell can make it look like a creature just the same. But where
are we going to find 400 tons of iron? How are we going to transport it?
Well, it turns out there's a fifth-level spell called Wall of Iron which
can create a wall with area one five-foot square per level. The thickness
of the wall is three inches at caster level 13, so one casting will
produce up to 80 cubic feet (or about 20 tons) of iron. We'll want to use
Shrink Item on the iron as we produce it, decreasing its mass and volume
by a factor of 1727; we can then use use the fifth-level spell Fabricate
to mold it into any form we please.
(This might actually be an abuse: Fabricate doesn't work on magic items,
and it's a bit unclear whether magically shrunken iron counts as a "magic
item". The alternative is to melt down the shrunken iron in a forge and
re-cast it - not too impractical, actually, provided you can be certain
the spell won't dispel itself partway through.)
We have no lack of spells, so let's be extravagant: we'll use 43 castings
of Wall of Iron to create 3375 cubic feet of iron. (This is enough to
make a 15-foot cube of iron.) This will take a little more than a week.
We'll cut the walls into manageable 26-cubic-foot sections (four five-foot
squares of iron three inches thick) using whichever method is simplest
(perhaps some Fabricate spells targeting the small amounts of iron between
the sections we want). We can then cast Shrink Item on each individual
section. Our 13th-level caster can cast Shrink Item 16 times per day
(assuming an 18 INT), so this will take nine days, at the end of which all
the iron will be less than two cubic feet in size. We'll only need one
more Fabricate spell to collect it into a nice 18-inch cube, and we'll
then have three days until the Shrink Item spells wear off. (The spells
would wear off over a period of nine days, and they're all mixed together
in that little iron block. The process would be interesting to watch.)
We should cover the block to a thickness of another six inches or so with
some of the leftover unshrunken iron. Shrink Item spells are a little
finicky - they sometimes dispel themselves when they suffer an impact, and
we don't want that to happen too soon. We should probably also put the
block inside a cow or something so Tarrasque won't get confused when
eating it.
How can we make sure the block will expand just after Tarrasque eats it?
Shrink Item can be deactivated with a command word. Once Tarrasque falls
in the pit a simple Shout spell should be audible inside his stomach,
which will expand the block quite nicely. We'll use the same command word
for all the spells.
* Tarrasque drowns.
Okay, so Tarrasque is stuck at the bottom of a pit with an 844-ton iron
block in his gullet. Anything in Tarrasque's stomach takes 2d8+8 acid
damage and 2d8+10 crushing damage per round; we need to make sure that he
can't digest the block before he drowns.
The Tarrasque has a strength of 45, and he's a Colossal sized creature, so
his maximum load is roughly 200000, or 100 tons. If he tries to carry
more than that, he "can only stagger around with it", meaning he can't
move more than 5 feet per round. Our cube will weigh 100 tons when its
diameter is 5.85 feet; we want to show that it won't get smaller than that
before Tarrasque drowns.
Iron has a hardness of 10 and 30 hp per inch of thickness. It also takes
half damage from acid attacks. We'll ignore the acid damage as
negligible, but the block is taking 9 crushing damage, destroying about a
third of an inch of iron on each side, per round. After 15 minutes
(150 rounds) the block will have lost 50 inches, or a little more than
4 feet, from each side, leaving it with a diameter that's a little less
than 7 feet. It'll be close.
(Well, actually, if you think about it, crushing damage shouldn't _really_
be able to harm a block of iron, should it? The DMG says the DM can rule
that certain items are immune to certain types of damage. But a true
munchkin does not rely on his DM for favorable rulings; accordingly, we
have performed the calculation as though crushing dealt full damage.)
(Actually, there's one more thing we might worry about. Tarrasque is
known for rampaging across the landscape, eating entire towns when it
encounters them. Who's to say it can't just drink all the water? Sure,
the volume of the water is much greater than that of the Tarrasque - but
so are all those towns it eats. Also, when water encounters a strong acid
(such as exists in Tarrasque's stomach) it produces a great deal of heat.
Can Tarrasque's stomach acid boil the water in fifteen minutes' time? One
would hope not.)
After Tarrasque has been at the bottom of the hole for fifteen minutes, he
will be thoroughly drowned, which automatically reduces him to -10 hit
points. (There's some question here about his regeneration. The
regeneration effect gives him +40HP at the start of each of his moves, and
it's not clear when the drowning effect drops him back to -10. Is
Tarrasque jerked back to consciousness every six seconds? One would hope
not.) All that remains is to go down there and put him out of your
misery. You need to drop him to -30 hit points in order to kill him; if
you have a +2 STR mod, you can do this with coup-de-grace with a +5 heavy
pick. Immediately after you hit him, you use a Haste partial action to
finish him with Wish. (There are some details here about spellcasting
underwater. Make a diving bell or something.)
...Actually, why bother with the Wish finisher at all? Tarrasque is
stuck, unconscious, at the bottom of a deep pit. He's not going anywhere.
Why not leave him there?
Well, eventually he's going to digest that iron block you fed him.
Presumably his stomach action slows down after he drowns, but you
shouldn't bet on it stopping. Once the iron block is gone, he might float
to the surface and start breathing again, and you really don't want that
to happen.
If you go down there and attach some kind of shackles to him, though, he
won't float to the surface no matter what happens. If you cast Wall of
Iron some more, you can probably bury him under enough iron that he won't
come to the surface for quite some time. (And the water will turn a
pretty red color from all the rust. Years from now, Tarrasque Pool will
be a tourist attraction...) You'll also need to make some provision for
keeping the water level above his head: there's a 9000gp item called a
"Decanter of Endless Water" that can produce 30 gallons of water every
round, but you're probably better off diverting a river. You might also
want to worry about theft of the Decanter or sabotage of the Shackles by
various evil types; we will leave precautions against such occurrences as
an exercise for the reader.
Summary.
Cost: 2500gp if you have the spells already. A+.
Time:
21 days - dig a deep hole
?? days - fill hole with water
7 days, 2500gp for spell components - create 840 tons iron
? days - break iron into chunks
9 days - cast Shrink Item on the iron
1 day - fabricate, illusion spells
15 minutes - showtime
This would require much planning. D.
Level: We never actually use any spell above sixth level, but we need a
13th-level caster to cast all the Shrink Item spells before they start
expiring. A specialist (or someone with Extend Spell) might be able to do
this in less. A.
Experience: You get the full 46800, no need to share. A+.
Sensibility: Is Tarrasque vulnerable to drowning? Uncertain. B.
Legality: Can you use Fabricate on Shrunken iron like that? Can your
Shout spell be heard inside Tarrasque's stomach? C.
...But if you've got time to burn, and your DM is okay with the legality,
this is a fine method.
----------
Method 3: Flying Army
One thread common to every method we suggest is this: it's _very
important_ that you not let Tarrasque get the chance to attack you.
Tarrasque has a lot of maneuverability, but there's one thing he can't do
at all, and that's attack air units. So why come near him at all? You
can just cast Fly on everyone in your party and shoot him from the sky.
The only problem you have then is finding a way to deal Tarrasque more
than 40 damage per round.
Tarrasque has an Armor Class of 35, 30 of which is from his Natural Armor
bonus. In order to hit him with a roll of 19 you would need an attack
bonus of +16. With a +4 DEX, a +5 weapon, and Weapon Focus, you could get
that at Fighter level 6. But it would take a lot of level-6 Fighters to
deal Tarrasque 40 damage per round. Fortunately, you don't have to hit
Tarrasque on a 19 in order to hurt him. Why bother with Level-6 Fighters
when a Level-1 Fighter can still automatically hit Tarrasque every time he
rolls a 20? If he takes the Rapid Shot feat, in fact, your Level-1
Fighter has two 5% chances to hit Tarrasque every round.
If your fighter is using a +5 strength longbow with +5 arrows he can deal
1d8+14 damage with every hit, for an average of 1.85 damage per fighter
per round. If you have 50 archers shooting each round, you can deal an
average of 92.5 damage, of which Tarrasque will heal 40 and suffer 52.5.
At that rate, you'll finally kill him after 17 rounds, or about 34 arrows
per archer.
** Outfitting an Army
Wait! There's a problem. How are you going to equip 50 people with +5
longbows? Where are you going to get 50 people with 18 strength in the
first place? Who can memorize enough Fly spells to get them in the air?
Well, as to the manpower question, there's a feat called Leadership that
allows you to collect followers as you gain levels. A 16-Charisma wizard,
at 13th level, has a Leadership Rating of 16, which is enough to collect
28 followers of first-level or better. If you have two such characters in
your party, that's fifty people right there. If you don't, you have to
hire people. A first-level fighter doesn't cost very much at all to hire
out for a day, but you do have to be careful not to give him anything he
might be tempted to steal.
You certainly can't cast all the spells you need to outfit your army in
one day. If you're creative, though, you can get most of them for free.
Need 18 strength? There's this great spell called Polymorph Other that
permanently changes the target into another creature... There are some
funny restrictions on what you can choose, but one of the allowed
creatures is the Annis Hag, an ugly-looking creature with a strength of
25. That's plenty strong enough to use a strength bow.
Need your army to be flying? Polymorph some warhorses into Pegasi; once
they get used to the idea of flying, they'll be the best mounts you could
ask for, moving 240 feet per turn with no trouble. Your DM may give you
trouble about retraining your new Pegasi. Natural pegasi are supposed to
require 3000gp and several months to train; you might point out that
natural pegasi have like a 12 intelligence, and your polymorphed ones only
have a 2. If this is a problem, you can recruit some commoners as
polymorph subjects. The experience you're offering is totally unique:
your subjects will become magnificent winged horses, able to fly under
their own power, able to return to human form when it's over, PLUS they
get to be first-hand witnesses to one of the greatest battles ever fought,
PLUS they're defending their families from the Tarrasque's attack! What
girl, boy, or adult could resist? You can probably sell tickets.
There's one last problem: you need everyone in your army to have +5
strength bows and +5 arrows. Sadly, Polymorph can't help you here; you'll
have to cast Greater Magic Weapon yourself. This is the expensive part:
you can get a pair of wands to cast the spell (you need 100 castings, one
for bow and one for arrows, for each of 50 soldiers), but your wands need
a caster level of 15 if you want your arrows to be +5. Market price on
this is (750*3*15) = 33750 gold pieces per wand. If you're caster level
15, you can make the wand yourself for half that (and try the Magical
Artisan feat from Oriental Adventures to deduct 25% from that cost), but
this still isn't cheap.
On top of that, you're paying 25000gp to outfit all your people with
mighty composite +4 longbows. (Hold on there, says the DM - you can't use
a longbow while mounted! Ordinarily you couldn't, but Annis Hags are
Large size, which means that a longbow to us looks like a shortbow to
them. Again, if your DM gives you trouble, you can replace the Pegasi
with a wand of Fly.) Be sure to remind your soldiers that the longbows
are a LOAN, not a GIFT, and anyone who tries to steal from you will suffer
the same fate the Tarrasque did. It could be a major pain to find this
many longbows, since they take forever to make; fortunately, there's a
fifth-level spell called Fabricate which lets you create them yourself, if
you have at least a +15 to Craft: Bowmaking. (This also cuts the price by
two-thirds.)
So, the plan is simple. You use your two wands to give all 50 of your
people +5 bows and arrows. Then they all get on their pegasi and fly over
to wherever Tarrasque is, staying a good 100 feet up in case he can jump
higher than it looks. They open fire, with the Pegasi pacing Tarrasque so
it doesn't get away, and it takes a little less than two minutes until he
collapses. Once he's collapsed they fire a few more rounds to make sure
he's dead, then you finish him off with Wish. What could go wrong?
** What Could Go Wrong
There's a little problem you might run into, particularly if your DM is
(justifiably) feeling annoyed with you. This plan hinges on the rule that
a natural 20 is an automatic hit - but, for every roll of 20 one of your
soldiers makes, somebody else is likely to roll a 1. On a natural roll of
1, bad things can happen. If you haven't been careful in arranging your
soldiers, they might shoot each other in the backs - but even if they
avoid that, they're hovering high in the air, and if they drop their bows
it will be tough to get them back. Make sure to tell your DM the soldiers
have their bows attached to their wrists by straps, have covered quivers
that they open one at a time so that they won't lose all their arrows if
they turn upside down, et cetera.
Tarrasque has an Imposing Presence ability which can scare your soldiers,
giving them -2 to damage. Fortunately, to use this ability he has to
"charge or attack", which he can't do since your soldiers are in the air.
So this, at least, shouldn't be a problem.
** Optimizations
We've played fast and loose with the logistics involved here; you don't
need quite the damage output we described, so some tinkering with the
figures could make a big impact on your budget.
- You could use magic of your own (Prayer, for example, and bardsong) to
increase your soldiers' damage rate; you could then save some money by
using a cheaper wand of Greater Magic Weapon on the longbows. (The arrows
need to be +5, though, or they won't hurt Tarrasque at all.)
- A caster-level-5 wand of Enlarge can boost your soldiers by a size
category, increasing their base longbow damage from 1d8 to 2d6;
unfortunately, this only works if they're not riding Pegasi. (There's
some funniness here since annis hags are just barely Large creatures
anyway; best to work out the details with your DM.)
- If you have good damage per soldier, it will let you get by with a
smaller number of soldiers. Your wands won't be totally depleted after
the battle, so you can sell the spare charges and make back some of what
you spent.
- Your soldiers run out of magic arrows after 25 rounds, so you need to
make sure the Tarrasque dies before then. How close you want to cut it is
up to you.
Summary.
Cost:
67500gp - two wands of Greater Magic Weapon
25000gp - 50 mighty +4 composite longbows
1000gp - 20000 arrows
32650gp - Wish finisher (from Ring of Three Wishes)
Total cost: 126150gp. This isn't _too_ outrageous, as a 13th level
character should have about 110000gp worth of equipment to start - but
it's not good. D.
Level: No problem; a seventh-level wizard could cast the Polymorph spells
needed, and everything else is just wands. A+.
Time: A thirteenth-level wizard gets ten Polymorph spells per day, so
figure ten days to polymorph the entire army. It takes about 34 days to
craft a wand of GMW, though. C.
Experience: Well, if you could afford the price tag, you wouldn't need any
other party members... except, wait. You just got help from fifty other
people. 46800 experience split 50 ways is 976 experience. F.
Sensibility: This method relies on the fact that anybody, no matter how
weak, can always hit his target 5% of the time. This is probably not the
case. C.
Legality: This method is entirely legal. A.
Summary: This is the sort of method a government would use: lots of cash,
no finesse at all.
---------
Method 4: Flying One-Man Army
...But wait. Using Method 3, you're going to kill Tarrasque with FIFTY
OTHER PEOPLE? Sure, they'll bring down the average level of the party
somewhat - but do you really want to end up splitting the experience for
this kill fifty ways? The most you can say for that method is that you
rid the country of a threat. Unless you're a government, a much better
way is to kill Tarrasque by yourself. Assuming, of course, that you
happen to be a thirteenth-level cleric.
We've only got one person, so we need rather a lot of damage output.
Fortunately, we've only got one person, so buff spells are cheap. Our
cleric will use the following:
- The Magic domain allows our cleric to cast arcane spells off scrolls.
- The tried-and-true mighty composite +4 longbow, enchanted to +5 with
Greater Magic Weapon.
- Fifty +5 arrows, similarly enchanted.
- Our cleric will be polymorphed (from a scroll) into a Girallon, which
has 26 strength and 17 dexterity. (And four arms!)
- Our cleric will also read a scroll of Maximized Cat's-Grace; this will
boost his dexterity to 22.
- Our cleric will wear a mithril chain shirt with the "of Speed"
enchantment from Defenders of the Faith. This makes him permanently
hasted. It's a little pricey, but he really should have one anyway.
- The Fly spell, from a scroll, and the Expeditious Retreat spell, from
another scroll, gives him a base flying movement of 180.
- The Improved Invisibility spell doesn't provide protection since the
Tarrasque can spot invisible creatures, but it does grant +2 to-hit.
- Divine Power is a fourth-level cleric spell that grants the caster a
base attack bonus equal to their total character level - in this case, 13.
It lasts one round per level.
- Divine Favor is a first-level cleric spell that grants the caster a +1
luck bonus to attack and damage per three caster levels. It lasts one
minute.
- Righteous Might is a fifth-level cleric spell that doubles the caster's
size, granting -1 to-hit and increasing his weapon's damage die by one.
It lasts one round per level.
- Bless is a first-level cleric spell that grants a +1 morale bonus
to-hit. It lasts one minute per level.
- The Weapon Focus (composite longbow) feat grants +1 to-hit.
- The magic item "Bracers of Archery" grants the wearer +2 to-hit. It
also grants +1 to damage, but only at close range.
- The Rapid Shot feat grants our cleric an extra attack at his highest
bonus, but inflicts -2 to all attacks made that round.
Previously, we've needed to get Greater Magic Weapon on scrolls in order
to reach caster level 15. Here, that won't be needed. There's a magic
item called a Necklace of Karma Bead that, when activated, grants a cleric
a +4 boost to caster level for ten minutes. That will increase our
cleric to caster level 17, which is plenty for our purposes.
We'll try to kill the Tarrasque in two minutes or less, which poses a
small problem since most of our spells don't last quite that long. To
solve this we'll use the Extend Spell feat, which makes a spell one level
higher and doubles its duration.
This gives us values of:
To-hit Damage
Base attack bonus +13 1d8
Rapid Shot -2
Divine Power -1 +2d6-1d8
Strength +4
Bow enhancement +5 +5
Arrow enhancement +5 +5
Divine Favor +5 +5
Dexterity +6
Invisible +2
Bracers of Archery +2
Weapon Focus +2
Bless +1
--------- ---------
+38 26 (average)
Our cleric gets a total of five attacks, at +38/+38/+38/+33/+28. Of
course, the Tarrasque will probably be moving, so he'll need to use his
Haste partial action to give chase; this means he usually gets four arrows
per round, at +38/+38/+33/+28. The third arrow has a 95% chance to hit
the Tarrasque's 35 AC, and the fourth one has a 70% chance to hit, for an
average of 3.65 hits per round. At 26 damage per shot, that's an expected
yield of 94 damage per round; the Tarrasque heals 40 damage, so we get 54
damage per round of firing. That kills the Tarrasque in under two
minutes, during which time our cleric fires about 80 arrows. As usual, he
uses a Miracle finisher. He can cast the spell off a scroll since he's
caster level 17 anyway (though that doesn't save much money).
Summary.
Cost:
17250gp - +1 mithril chain shirt of speed
6000gp - necklace of karma bead
5100gp - bracers of archery
500gp - mighty composite +4 longbow
1125gp - scroll of maximized cats-grace
700gp - scroll of polymorph
700gp - scroll of improved invisibility
325gp - scroll of fly
100gp - scroll of expeditious retreat (caster level 4)
various cleric spells - free
28825gp - Miracle finisher scroll
28850gp for equipment we should have anyway, 2950gp for scrolls, and
28825gp for the Miracle finisher. B.
Level: Everything works with caster level 13. A.
Time: You'd need to prepare spells specifically for this, so figure about
a day. A.
Experience: 46800 experience, all to one person. Perfect. A+.
Sensibility: Everything more-or-less works. A.
Legality: This method is entirely legal. A.
Summary: If you're going to build your D&D character into a one-man army,
this is the way to go.
----------
Method 5: The Macross Way
There's an extremely cheesy anime called "Macross" in which we learn that
the power of song can defeat any evil. This example demonstrates the
truth of that lesson.
Bards have an ability called "Inspire Courage" which grants all who hear
it a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. This ability is usable even at
Level 1. So, get an army of 50 bards with slings and march, singing, on
the Tarrasque. Each of your bards has +50 to-hit and deals something like
1d4+50 damage. Since your weapons aren't magical, Tarrasque's damage
reduction will ignore the first 25 points of damage, but he still takes at
least 25 damage per hit. 50 hits at 25 damage each is 1250 damage total,
which puts him way into the negative hit points in one round.
Now, you could follow this up with a 30000gp Wish spell. But why bother?
Let each of your fifty bards draw a knife and, singing happy
chopping-up-the-Tarrasque songs, cut the monster into hundreds of little
pieces, each of which can go in its own little jar. (Actually, you'd need
a whole lot of jars. Tarrasque is a Colossal sized creature, and he
weighs 130 tons. That's 2.5 tons of Tarrasque per bard. Maybe you'd
better invite some guests from the nearest village.) Tarrasque meat is
one of the rarest things in the universe, even if there's rather a glut of
it on the market just at the moment - in a hundred years, each of these
pieces might be worth a fortune.
Cost: Hiring a bard costs a gold piece per day. Getting that many bards
to come to one place might be a problem unless you lure them there with
the promise that they'll witness the demise of Tarrasque. This exercise
is cheap (or free) to implement, and if you hold onto your chunk of
Tarrasque for a while before selling it, you can probably turn a hefty
profit. A+.
Level: A level-1 character could do this. Fifty level-1 characters are
equivalent to approximately a level-8 party, but that's still way below
the Level-13 experience threshold. A.
Time: Figure about a week for the bards to gather in one place. B.
Experience: The experience would get split fifty ways or more; a bunch of
Level 1 bards would go up to Level 2. D+.
Legality: ...Unfortunately, morale bonuses don't stack. This tactic is a
complete fraud, as you have hopefully realized long before now. F.
Sensibility: See Legality. This only works in bad anime. D-.
-------
Method 6: One-Hit Finisher
A lot of our efforts thus far have been concentrated on reducing Tarrasque
to -10 HP through some death effect, then using coup-de-grace to drop him
to -30 so we can kill him. This method does things the other way around.
Tarrasque is kind of a heavy sleeper. He usually sleeps for five to ten
years at a time in between devouring helpless villages. If you're quiet
about it (and if you can find his lair - tricky at best), you could sneak
right up next to him while he was asleep - close enough, in fact, for
coup-de-grace.
Coup-de-grace is an interesting action. You hit the enemy and
automatically deal a critical, plus Rogue Sneak Attack damage if
applicable. With most mundane enemies this is enough to finish them -
but, if it's not, they still have to make a Fort save (DC 10+damage) in
order to survive. Tarrasque has a +43 Fort save, so we need to deal him
54 damage if we want to be certain he won't make his save.
What weapon shall we use? We have two nice options. A Heavy Pick has the
best critical in the game - 1d6 points of damage but a x4 multiplier. A
bow, on the other hand, gives us a x3 multiplier but lets us stack weapon
enchantments on both the bow and the arrow. We'll assume we have at least
an 18 strength:
Bow:
1d8 damage (mean 4.5) 4.5
+5 arrow enchantment 9.5
+5 bow enchantment 14.5
+4 strength bonus 18.5
x3 critical 55.5
Pick:
1d6 damage (mean 3.5) 3.5
+5 weapon enchantment 8.5
+4 strength bonus 12.5
x4 critical 48.5
The bow seems to be the better choice. Note that we can also apply such
benefits as Point Blank Range, Bracers of Archery, and Weapon
Specialization to the bow damage - and it's probably a good idea to apply
as many of these as possible, since the 55.5 damage figure is only an
average, not a guarantee. There's an Icy Burst enchantment we can put on
the bow if we like, dealing an extra 1d6+2d10 cold damage. (Actually,
there's a question here: does Icy Burst get negated by spell resistance?
Spell resistance has no effect on weapon enhancement bonuses, but it might
work against magic damage from weapons.) If you're a Rogue, your Sneak
Attack bonus will also add to the total.
...That brings up an interesting question. What class are we dealing with
here? We need a Wizard to cast Greater Magic Weapon on the bow and
arrows, but we've made mention of effects like Weapon Specialization and
Sneak Attack that aren't available to Wizards. We also have to have a
Silence spell to cover our approach to Tarrasque, and only Clerics and
Bards can cast Silence.
Well, it turns out that we're going to need more than one character anyway
if we're going to pull this off. Once we finish the coup-de-grace,
Tarrasque will fail his save and drop to -10 hit points. His Regeneration
effect will then kick in, boosting him back to 30 hit points. This is
bad. Clearly we need an accomplice to hit Tarrasque as well. The
accomplice can also coup-de-grace, since Tarrasque will be at -10 hit
points until his turn. But he only needs to deal 30 damage or so, so he
can just as easily be a wizard, and the first attacker can be a fighter.
We can pay a cleric 60 gold to cast the Silence spell.
...So, both players coup-de-grace the Tarrasque on the first round,
dropping him below -30 hit points. (Actually, there's some question of
whether you can coup-de-grace during a surprise round, before Tarrasque is
aware of you. If your DM gives you trouble about this, your characters
can take the Death Blow feat from the Fighter/Monk handbook, which makes
coup-de-grace into a partial action which you can easily perform during a
surprise round.) On subsequent rounds the players continue to
coup-de-grace, dealing more than 40 damage total, so Tarrasque's hit
points drop until he's at -100 or so. Then one of the players leaves the
area of Silence and uses the Wish to finish Tarrasque off. That's really
all there is to it.
Summary:
Cost:
1000gp - two mighty +4 composite longbows
4500gp - four scrolls Greater Magic Weapon (caster level 15)
32650gp - Wish finisher (from Ring of Three Wishes)
Total cost: about 40000gp, plus you have to find where the Tarrasque
sleeps. That last could be tricky. B.
Level: The wizard should have a high caster level in order to use the
scrolls. The fighter should have an 18 Strength (though this can be
augmented with Bull's-Strength if needed.) Level 13 will certainly
suffice. A-.
Time: Tarrasque never stays awake for more than about a week at a time.
On the other hand, once he's woken up, it's probably too late
to stop him from destroying the city. C.
Experience: 46800xp split two ways isn't too shabby. A-.
Sensibility: Wait - you're going to kill a monster the size of a village
with _one arrow_? Maaybe if you shot through its eye and into its brain.
Maybe. B.
Legality. This is completely legal. A.
---------
Method 7: The Big Sleep
The Tarrasque has 35 AC and 840 hit points, which is pretty impressive.
However, most of that AC is from natural armor. There are some attacks
that ignore natural armor, and against those the Tarrasque has a total AC
of 5. Most importantly, incorporeal touch attacks ignore natural armor.
This method will describe how to kill the Tarrasque, not through hit point
loss, but through Wisdom drain.
There's a particularly nasty kind of undead creature called an Allip.
Allips are noncorporeal, which means they can travel through the ground
beneath your feet to attack you. They don't deal normal damage, either;
instead, when an Allip hits its target, the target takes 1d4 permanent
Wisdom damage. Unlike hit point damage, this damage doesn't heal
naturally; only a Restoration spell (or some higher-level variant) can
cure it. And an Allip makes its attack at +3 to hit, so it will hit the
Tarrasque's touch AC of 5 ninety percent of the time.
How can we get some Allips? Well, the most obvious way is through Rebuke
Undead attempts. Allips are 4HD creatures, though they count as 6HD for
purposes of turning; if you roll a Rebuke attempt powerful enough to
rebuke 12HD creatures or better, you can use it to control the Allips
instead of rebuking them. You can control up to your cleric level worth
of undead at any one time, so that's three Allips per cleric. Not a bad
start, but Tarrasque can kill an average of three Allips every round (he
misses half the time because they're incorporeal), so you'll need
more than just that to finish him off.
One way to handle this would be to use two thirteenth-level clerics, each
with the Magic domain so they could cast arcane spells off scrolls. Each
cleric would cast Haste off of an arcane scroll on each of his three
allips. Tarrasque gets three attacks of opportunity as they charge; even
if all three attacks hit, the other three allips can make two attacks
each, for an average of 15 wisdom damage. Tarrasque only has 14 wisdom,
so this probably finishes him.
There's a little problem we haven't discussed. Allips are LOUD: an Allip
"constantly mutters and whines to itself, creating a hypnotic effect."
The hypnotic effect won't actually harm the Tarrasque, since it's a DC15
will save, but it will certainly alert it to your presence. One way to
handle this would involve a few well-placed Silence spells; with that,
your shadows could travel underground and attack the Tarrasque from
underneath. Otherwise, Tarrasque will hear you coming, and you have to
hope it won't run away. Seems like a fair bet, since Tarrasque is the
most powerful thing in the world as far as it knows, but better not to
take chances.
A more interesting way to deliver your Allips to their target would
make use of the "Master of Shrouds" prestige class from Defenders of the
Faith. A thirteenth-level cleric can have six levels of Master of
Shrouds, which among other things gives him the ability to summon four
Allips at a time (as a Summon Monster spell), (3 + CHA mod) times per day.
(The summoned Allips are a little hard to control if you don't have
something for them to attack, but a thirteenth-level cleric should have no
trouble with it.)
Unfortunately, there's some messiness involved in spellcasting in
Tarrasque's presence. Ordinarily you'd just do it while flying, but you
have to summon to a stable surface even though Allips don't need one; you
might try a Wall of Force spell to create a stable surface high in the
air. Otherwise, you can do your summoning somewhere safe, then send your
Allips into battle as in the above method.
Once Tarrasque drops to zero wisdom, he falls into a coma; he doesn't wake
up until his wisdom returns. The only way for this to happen is if some
cleric is (a) skilled and wise enough to cast a Restoration spell, (b)
clever enough to get around Tarrasque's spell resistance and Will save,
and (c) stupid enough to think Tarrasque won't kill him when he wakes up.
This seems very unlikely, so Tarrasque ought to be down for quite a while.
Summary:
Cost: YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL! Well, not necessarily that - but dealing with
the undead is definitely an evil act, so this route isn't available to the
good-aligned. Monetarily - well, finding Allips isn't easy, and creating
them involves a lot of messy torture. But you don't have to spend any
gold on this method at all. B.
Level: You'd need level 12 to command three Allips, or to summon four per
round with Master of Shrouds. Fortunately, level 13 is still the
standard. A+.
Time: The only time needed is that to find (or create) the Allips. If
you're summoning them, you don't need any preparation at all. A+.
Experience: 46800xp split two ways, or you can keep it all for yourself
with Master of Shrouds. A.
Sensibility: Is the Tarrasque vulnerable to wisdom drain? I don't
see why not. A.
Legality: There aren't any rules for finding or creating Allips (though
what we've suggested seems reasonable), but you can summon them just fine.
A.
Re: Tarrasque killing challenge!
