I had used one as the BBEG in a campaign I ran once. It was strictly for a their tier 4 climax and they had multiple side quests to help get some advantages like overcoming the spell resistance or temporarily stoping the health Regen. However, I also gave the Terrasque a ranged attack, and a few extra abilities so the players couldn’t metagame and fly and kite.
And they had to figure out a way to trap the monster in a canyon.
Even still I dropped every PC to 0 health at least once in that encounter before they won. A real nail bitter.
It was one of the top five boss fights I ever was a part of on either side of the screen.
Nice! I had a 3.5 campaign I was running once where one of the major plot points was going to be a guy who was cloning Tarrasques and experimenting on them, but the game fizzled out because of me falling down on the job.
Woah cool idea!
I had to look up what a tarrasque was. Good God, what a can of fuck you.
as far as I know they were nerfed for the 5th edition. It’s still a huge sack of health but AFAIK you can stay out of range by just flying over its head. Lore-wise, it’s a walking natural disaster that destroys anything that enters its maw, even magical artifacts.
I think that’s largely a consequence of the 5e design in general. It doesn’t leave a lot of room, natively, for exciting challenges from its monsters. You’ve got to go to third parties, like Colville’s “action-oriented monsters”, or other systems like PF2, to get that.
The main thing missing compared to the 3.x version that would hinder the flying archer strategy is its regeneration and needing to use Wish or Miracle to keep it dead. Trolls and Vampires have conditional regeneration, Zombies have Undead Fortitude that gives them a chance not to die when reduced to 0 HP, the concepts were there they just chose not to implement them.
Fun fact, MCDM’s Flee Mortals! book has its own stand-in for Tarrasque - Goxomoc. Fool’s Gold: Into the Bellowing Wilds also has Dire Tarrasque
I’m a little sad that that book took so long to arrive that I had gone from never even considering moving to another system (other than for some fun temporary one-shots & small campaigns to add variety) to basically not being able to imagine myself choosing to go back to D&D at all, between the time I paid for it and when it finally arrived 5 months ago. Because I really did love the idea of it when it was being Kickstarted.
Same. The monsters are amazing, and would be a big boost to 5e, but I haven’t been playing it as much lately.
This is because WotC designs for mass appeal, so their monsters need to be fair challenge even for an underoptimized group. Which makes them pathetically weak if you’re playing with anyone else.
Also, because playtesters at Wizards don’t use any magic items for some reason
Wait, they don’t use magic items!? What the actual fuck? Of course it’ll be hard if half the party literally can’t hurt it!
Yes, this baffles me as well.
if that’s the case for the campaign I’m currently a player in, the fight will have -7 tarrasques
Everyone gets their own Tarrasque Companion with some extras to spare
I was going to send this to my DM, but then I remembered that he would absolutely do it.
Someone please AI generate a Tarrasque riding a tiny bicycle.
