The Tarrasque: Unstoppable killing machine?

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@NonSequitur:
I have to agree with you on the 3e version. They really super-charged it. It does make it look a lot more like something you just don't want to mess with, period. The 2e version, though, is just another monster. An extremely tough monster that can easily rip apart a 20+ level party (you did notice that more than half of them died, didn't you?), but in the end, it's still a monster.

I think the Tarrasque was meant to be the ultimate monster. Something that could beat any dragon; it would be the king of all monsters. They designed it well, but they could have overpowered it if they wanted to. The fact that they didn't tells me that they wanted it to be a supreme challenge, but still a beatable one, provided you had the firepower.

If you want something unbeatable, go with an avatar. After all, what's more powerful than a god? You could even make a super-Tarrasque avatar that's 100 feet tall, or something like that. With the divine, anything is possible.

 

I agree with all of you, but I think there is one thing that could be more dangerous than that. An intelligent tarrasque. Now that will be frightfull

 

I created something like that once. It had more hit points and a lower AC. A single, more powerful medium-range attack, as well as a magic jar contingency upon death, made it very overpowered. I even cut out some of the abilities I had been planning to give them, just so they wouldn't be invincible.

As a quick exercise, I unleashed 100 of them on the occupants of one of my campaign worlds. Losses were ~1 million to 1. The campaign world was abruptly depopulated, with only 14% casualties for the bad guys. Needless to say, I never used them again.

 

@ Felinoid:

I wasn't trying to take a shot at you, I was just putting forth an opinion. I always thought that for something like the Tarrasque to be credible, you'd generally need the sort of artillery necessary to commit a war crime to stop it. This thing can annihilate whole armies with relative ease; I always viewed as less of a monster and more as a force of nature.

Then again, I come from the Lovercraft/White Wolf school of thought, which pretty much holds that the "legendary destructive ones" (eg: the Old Ones, Antediluvians, the Wyrm) are impossible to defeat directly. IIRC, the V:TM book puts it pretty explicitly - it doesn't give stats, it just says that in the event of a direct confrontation between a party and an Antediluvian, the Antediluvian will inevitably win due to its phenomenal power.

Still, that empowered Tarrasque sounds like nasty, nasty business... hey, at least it can't fly, right?

Uh, right?

 

I didn't think you were, I was just trying to make my own opinion clear. That Antediluvian thing is a perfect example. If you don't want something to be beat, don't give any info on it that someone could find a loophole in, much less give them a specific way to beat it.

Yeah, that was one of the abilities I took out. With MV 18, run 72, swim 15, and what amounted to a double-strength Jump spell, I figured it didn't even need fly 48 (A).

 

@Felinoid
How did you run that simulation? In a computer or something?

 

No, I used BATTLESYSTEM rules, and I called it a simulation because I didn't let anything actually happen to my campaign world.

 

Anything can be killed. And tarrasques (CR20) aren't that tougth! Way tougther examples are:

Solar (CR23)
Red Dragon Great Wyrm (CR26)
Gold Dragon Great Wyrm (CR27)

And there are even tougher creatures in MM2 and MM3.

 

Someone from one of teh old places i used to live made 4 level 20 characters to try to fight that thing. of corse, they started with position of the tarrasque, 1000x arrows +5 (wich i dont belive is even posible thought) and invisibility (useless) and fly spell on all of them as cast by the wizard.

needless to say, the dm (wich also played the wizard) didnt figure out the tarrasque might burrow down to avoid arrows... all in all it was just a big shooting practise.


Regarding making an inteligent Tarrasque.... you can add the "dragon template" to any sort of monster *evil chuckle* (yes i have a character sheet with a half reddragon/tarrasque lying in my rpg papers incase i just REALLY wanna slaughter a team someday...)