We want a tarrasque type creature

[Brannart]

I find that when players are having "easy" fights with what are supposed to be monsters challenging for their current level, the DM is to blame for forgetting that these monsters aren't simply HP and AC sacks that swing wildly at the player now and again. Dragons should never be easy fights, ever.

 

Oops what I found crazy was the sheer awesomeness of the Tarrasques abilities. Not what you were saying which is spot on.

[MichaelStuart]

I would like a challenge, so ok

[Aedelric]

"We want a tarrasque type creature"

 

I assume you mean the `royal´ we.

 

Honestly I do not care much, I prefer the bestiary to be handled by Obsidian, if they take everyone's ideas on this matter, it would be an eclectic mess.

[MantisDreaming]

 

During my dungeon I made for my 2 friends and I as an epic level reward

 

....

 

By this time, my character, Hypevosa, having dealt with my (essentially) evil twin who fled from on deck with an artifact we were supposed to protect, flew over and landed on the creature's head. Seeing Vortavian was clearly about to die, I used smite evil to augment my attack, and Vortavian began using his claws as a last resort. We barely reduced the thing to below 0 hp, and it fell unconscious from the sky to die on the ground thousands of feet below.

 

So wait, you are DM and also have a PC?? Just curious, how does that work exactly?

 

Seems like it would be pretty difficult not to be a bit bias. You know, knowing all the secrets of what the adventure holds.

[sodaTwo]

Whenever I hear tarrasque I remember the old City of the Tarrasque thread from RPG.net : http://forum.rpg.net...d-the-tarrasque .

 

That must be the best use of a tarrasque I have ever heard about in a setting.

 

I have cnp the initial post, but if you like it you owe it to your self to go and have a look at the +600 posts of awesomeness that follows..

 

"Once apon a time a nation decided to end the threat of the tarrasque once and for all. An army was assembled, led by the greatest heroes of the age. Most importantly, a number of powerful magical weapons were created for the battle. The monster was lured into a tight canyon and the battle began.

 

"At terrible cost, the tarrasque was defeated. But not slain. It was impaled by fourteen Immovable Harpoons (like an immovable rod, but spikey), each attached to a thick adamantine chain sunk deep into the canyon walls by magic. The tarrasque was restrained.

 

"A fortress was built around the tarrasque, to watch over it. Every day it's watchers hack away at the tarrasque with powerful magic weapons to keep it weakened in case of escape. Even so, there are casualties as they misjudge its reach, or as it's angry thrashing causes rockfalls.

 

"Of course, being a powerful magical crearture, the tarrasque's blood, flesh and other body parts have certain useful properties. A side effect of keeping the tarrasque imprisoned like this was a neverending supply of powerful magical components. A city grew up around the fortress to house the various wizards, scholars and alchemists that came to exploit the tarrasque's bounty. Eventually, it was almost as if the neverending stream of tarrasque blood, flesh and bone was more important than imprisoning the beast itself."</i>

 

I'm picturing decadant nobles made immortal by their continuued consumption of tarrasque flesh. Warrior-butchers wielding vorpal greatswords to hack away at the tarrasque and channels cut into the stone underneath the beast to channel the valuable blood away. The tarrasque's distant screams and roars would be a continuous background noise for the people in the city, with "tarrasque-quakes" common. Almost an industry of ludicrously expensive magic items crafted from its body parts - tarrasquehide armour, tarrasquebone spears and potions and other alchemical miscellania of course.

 

You could play up the creepiness of the whole thing, maybe eating the flesh and blood of the tarrasque has unwanted side-effects. I'm thinking of tarrasque blood being analogous to the spice from dune - in this city the blood's used in just about everything and it has unusual effects on the populous.

 

Even with the tarrasque mostly restrained, getting close isn't a good idea and there'll be pretty frequent casualties amongst the butchers. Because of its reflective carapace, mnagic is a no go so it has to be someone getting in close with a big knife. Every now and then the chains will need to be re-planted to make sure they've not been loosened by the tarrasque's thrashing about - what fun that'll be.

 

And there's the whole hubris angle - maybe the pressure to cut away more and more of it lets it pull free of one or more of the immovable harpoons. And an inevitable tarrasque-worshipping cult that is covertly planning to free their god.

 

And if you want to play up the "tarrasque as force of nature" thing, maybe its imprisonment is throwing the natural order of things out of whack. The tarrasque is a necessary part of the ecosystem and plays "natural predator" to something really nasty. Without the tarrasque killing off the nasties every X years they've had time to grow into their adult, even nastier form.

 

I mean, come on; a fortress built around a chained godzilla who's constantly being butchered is dripping with adventure hooks and just plain cool.

Edited October 19, 2012 by sodaTwo

[Shevek]

A super encounter for a group of low to mid level adventurers would not be very good design. They can throw Galactus at us in the xpack. I am pretty sure in part 1 we'll be fighting wyverns and maybe a couple giants.

[thidrums]

I know that this has very little to do with the original post, but here it goes

 

For D&D nerds, how to kill a tarrasque

[atn]

Since playing the IWD and the BG series I always wanted a super mega boss fight with a tarrasque type creature. Honestly, I think that in BG TOB there were too many dragons. That made the fights easier because the tactics were, sometimes, similar. With the inclusion of the mega dungeon maybe it's a good idea to include a tarrasque as the mightiest and deadliest creature of the dungeon. The tarrasque's lore and characteristics are different from a dragon's, and I think that it will add to the overall game experience.

 

ARE YOU WITH ME? TARRASQUE FTW!!!!

 

Dude, a Tarrasque basically eats the entire world when someone wakes it from its slumber... and it`s basically the size of an ancient dragon with resistances to all.

 

Basically, it was created by the primordials to screw up the gods' plans for the Prime Material Plane.

 

The only way to get rid of it is either to put it back to sleep near its resting place (the core of the world) or trap it in another plane.

 

No, I do not want such a powerful creature in the game (if my memory is not failing, it's actually the strongest Prime Material Plane creature).

 

P.S.: there is only one tarrasque, so it`s THE Tarrasque

Edited October 19, 2012 by atn

[atn]

Also, if my memory serve's me right, in 4th edition rules and later, when the Tarrasque's HP go below a certain level, it simply goes back to it's lair and sleeps (assuming this happens on the Prime Material Plane).

[Quadrone]

Hmm, a 48 HD CR 20 monster versus a party of 12th level characters? Sure, why not?

 

Are the characters in project eternity going to be limited do 12th level? If so, then forget about what I said. But if they are going to be high level like in TOB, then I think it would be a nice addition to the game

 

Officially? Yes and no, I believe Feargus made a comment saying that they were shooting for something akin to 12th level in D&D terms.

But personally I'm rather curious if this would even work anymore. Why? Since that comment they added a second city, a stronghold and several levels to the "Endless Paths",so with the overall content PE seems to offer I'm expecting a higher XP ceiling.

Edited October 19, 2012 by Quadrone

[Zoma]

Letting you encounter directly, fighting it and winning a supposedly scary monster.

 

That kind of monster isn't even scary at all if its winnable.

 

Just drop background lore of the monster. Small drops of hints in journals of dead adventurers, hints in carved stones of forgotten civilizations, obscure cults, ravings from mad men. Fill up the player's imagination of how terrifying this monster is and yet no one in the world even knows of its existence or believe in it. And the player's goal in the game is simply stopping the supposed monster from waking up / released from imprisonment because if it does, nothing in the world can stop it. Not even the Gods themselves who are themselves at a bottom food chain to this 'monster'. All you can do is simply buy time for the world to exist and the cycle endlessly repeats this spiral until someone one day fails to stop it.

 

Now that is one terrifying monster. Like Cthulhu.

[Takamori]

Instead of a huge monster how about a ancient caster with tons of spells to turn the players life a living hell, being one of the toughest encounter in the game?

[Deraldin]

What makes the tarrasque scary is when the DM actually remembers the thing's feats and unusual abilities... it has so many.

 

Wow...ok that is just crazy.

 

I find that when players are having "easy" fights with what are supposed to be monsters challenging for their current level, the DM is to blame for forgetting that these monsters aren't simply HP and AC sacks that swing wildly at the player now and again. Dragons should never be easy fights, ever.

 

You can take this same concept and apply it to anything. Tucker's Kobolds anyone?

[temporalTemptation]

I'm put in mind of Planescape: Torment, and the demon that was sealed inside a box. Long story short, if you took a certain quest and did the right things (or perhaps the wrong things), a very powerful enemy would appear at a later point in the game. You could easily walk past it and, considering that it was so absurdly powerful, most people chose to.

 

So if there was a "super mega boss fight", I'd prefer it to be something like that. A little out of the way, not exactly hidden, but optional and not completely campaign-shattering. Also placing it there just to be there makes it seem kind of hollow. However, all that said, I don't see why there would need to be one. Something powerful to test one's combat prowess against would be nice, but it needn't be a giant, rampaging monster of epicness.

[Jasede]

I should add that you should be able to romance this creature.

[metacontent]

A tarasque would be pretty cool, but the only problem is that it would be so insanely difficult that only a tiny fraction of players would probably ever be good enough to beat it, and implementing it well would take a lot of developer time and energy, so you'd have a situation where a ton of time and energy are being spent on something the majority will just never ever see.....

[bronzepoem]

Oh,yes.Tarrasque,Athach,Kraken,Remorhaz,Tendriculos...We do need to challenge those legendary creatures.

 

We have discussed it in this topic :http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60849-will-there-be-battle-with-huge-creatures-in-pe/

[J.E. Sawyer]

We like impressive boss battles as well and think they made for some very memorable moments in the IE games.

[bronzepoem]

We like impressive boss battles as well and think they made for some very memorable moments in the IE games.

Wow, great!

[bronzepoem]

Maybe a tarrasque like creature could be a challenge to your stronghold. You need a whole army and war machines to defeat it, not a six person team.

[.Leif.]

I really hope one of the gargantuan monsters is a Lovecraftian aberration. Sure Giants, Dragons, Elementals and a bunch of other classic D&D monsters make for some great boss fights, It'd be nice if a few of them were especially terrifying.

[Hypevosa]

During my dungeon I made for my 2 friends and I as an epic level reward

 

....

 

By this time, my character, Hypevosa, having dealt with my (essentially) evil twin who fled from on deck with an artifact we were supposed to protect, flew over and landed on the creature's head. Seeing Vortavian was clearly about to die, I used smite evil to augment my attack, and Vortavian began using his claws as a last resort. We barely reduced the thing to below 0 hp, and it fell unconscious from the sky to die on the ground thousands of feet below.

 

So wait, you are DM and also have a PC?? Just curious, how does that work exactly?

 

Seems like it would be pretty difficult not to be a bit bias. You know, knowing all the secrets of what the adventure holds.

 

It's simply like playing an NPC but you just have a little more personal investment in it - as long as you keep role playing there's no real problem. Discipline. You only really need to worry about a DM with a PC if they're the kind of DM who's there for a power trip ;D

 

We all traded off DMing some adventures, Arcan rarely kept his player in it because DMing was too much for him to coincide with role playing, Vortavian had very simple role playing (do good, kill evil) so he had little problem with it like I did.

 

In the interest of ensuring I was genuinely being fair though, I had Arcan write up my foil's exact characteristics that hadn't already been set in stone and run the battle he and I eventually had. It was narrow victory, I ended up needing to sunder his shield with a sonic mace I'd acquired to make the difference in the fight. It was something I'd always carried on my character but never actually used, my ace in the hole if you will should we meet a golem or I needed to sunder something. My paladin being a decent tactician and preparing for the odd situation ended up saving his butt.

 

 

I know that this has very little to do with the original post, but here it goes

 

For D&D nerds, how to kill a tarrasque

 

Problem here is metagaming... unless there's some explicit reason player should know what this thing is and what it does, they should not see any of what's to come. Spell casters who don't have true sight or arcane sight (or something similar) shouldn't be able to tell the carapace is magical and may reflect shots. Anyone who has encountered the tarrasque shouldn't really be alive to write about it... there really should be very hard found evidence if any at all of what to expect. Also, it does what I explained earlier, and completely forgets the tarrasque's abilities... let me negate that entire document for you

 

First Tactics listed: Illusions! Invisibility!!! Scent negates the first tactics listed. While it may not be the smartest cookie, at this point it knows that food smells (it specializes in eating all meat and vegitation after all), and it won't be trying to attack/eat anything that clearly doesn't exist since it's odorless (or will learn quickly that it doesn't exist since it has no odor). Invisibility doesn't matter when getting within 5 feet of it means it's scent ability points out your exact location. You can create illusions that have odor, but then its greater cleave ability means ALL the illusions get dispelled in the same round by a massive attack as it cleaves through every one.

 

Second tactics listed: Simulacrum You can’t create a simulacrum of a creature whose Hit Dice or levels exceed twice your caster level.... so your level 13 player is not level 24, so it can't simulacrum a 48 hd monster. This was never an issue. If you've level 24 wizards lying around you may as well just kill it straight out.

 

Third tactics: Drown it by having it fall in a giant pit of water! Aside from scent giving away a water trap, let's assume that the Tarrasque is being too quick for his own good and rushes into it. Even if your DM was cheesy enough to let you do such a thing, the beast clearly has the arms, claws, and legs, and claws and the strength score, to pierce anything you use to wall the hole and simply climb out... or at least enough that it can breathe.... I'm not going to touch the cheese that saying a tarrasque would eat an iron block is - it states the thing eats meat and vegitation, if it ate iron and dirt teleporting it to the plane of earth would more than satisfy it.

 

Fourth tactics: Flying army of archery focused guys with uber +5 bows! DR 15/epic anyone? So you need minimum +6 enchantment, which means each bow costs you 720,000 gp.... if you have enough money for that, there's tons of better things that would help you more with that kinda cash.

 

Fifth tactic: Same flaw as the last, still needs a 720,000gp+ item.

 

Sixth tactic: already admitted as a flaw since bonuses don't stack from bards >_>

 

seventh tactic: Still needs a 720,000 gp+ item....

 

eighth tactic: I would interpret immunity to energy drain and ability damage to also mean immunity to ability drain, but assuming we are allowing that little oversight, let's look at one of the allip's little special features:

 

Anyone targeting an allip with a thought detection, mind control, or telepathic ability makes direct contact with its tortured mind and takes 1d4 points of Wisdom damage.

 

pathfinder's knowledge check: It is dangerous to try to connect mentally with an allip, be that through thought detection, mind control or telepathy as an allip's mind is so tortured as to damage any other mind that touches it.

 

So commanding undead:

 

A commanded undead creature is under the mental control of the evil cleric. The cleric must take a standard action to give mental orders to a commanded undead.

 

So your cleric takes wisdom drain every round it sends the things a command, for every one it sends. Not to mention attempting to mentally control something that's completely lost its mind sounds... not so credible. in my book. I assume this is actually there on purpose since controlling something that drains wisdom would be entirely broken for the duration of any campaign until everything was immune to such hijinks.

 

The devil's in the details my friend - there's no easy way to kill a tarrasque... none.

Edited October 20, 2012 by Hypevosa

[Droogle]

 

Are the characters in project eternity going to be limited do 12th level? If so, then forget about what I said.

 

Why? Dream the impossible dream.

Edited October 20, 2012 by Droogle

[UncleBourbon]

Also, I think it would be cool for certain activities to confer bonuses to attacks/skills/abilities that don't depend on level so much. That aside, it iesn't really about killing a tarrasque, it is about somehow weakening it enough to the point that a deity will keep it down. Thematically, the difference impells - at least for me - a good bit more.

Edited October 20, 2012 by UncleBourbon

[Hypevosa]

Actually I just came up with a very easy way to "defeat" a tarrasque at any level, and it only requires money.

 

Here's your clues:

 

1. The highest level item it uses is CL 12.

2. It costs 22,500 gp total.

 

It's something I've mentioned previously on these forums.