D&D 5E Anybody actually TRY soloing the Tarasque...?

[GMforPowergamers]

That's not true. If you try it and the wizard loses, your next step would be to report back, telling us step by step what you did and exactly how the Tarrasque managed to win.

Then we'd tell you how you did it wrong, and you'd be welcome to take that knowledge and try again.

let me show you the problem...

Then we'd tell you how you did it wrong,

in another thread someone brought up the idea of High level PCs Vs a town... I had some old friends wanting to do something on an off night so I said "Hey I can totally test and see how that works..." and it ended in a TPK, a fun night but one where a little luck went bad.

SO I came back and gave a basic after game report... guess what, "Well the PCs should have done X or Y" or "You didn't give them enough magic items" or "The wizard had the wrong spells prepped even though they had no idea what was coming"

The best part was, my thread title and basic premise was that the wizard made using simple spells was both more complex and more powerful then the most complex fighter I could make... and people still told me the wizard should be more powerful...

let me look for a link

OK, so off the bat... one night 6 encounters and some putsing around= TPK... and not the way I would think.

10 things I learned
1st- the difference between trying to make a quick and easy to use wizard and a complex competitive fighter is still scary large, and gives me some fears of LFQW to be honest (I have had them through the playtest but this is my first experiment with lv18)

2nd- out of the first 2 encounters, the PCs went 7 rounds of combat (4 the first one and 3 the second) with a bit of time but way too little even for a 4e short rest let alone a 5e one in-between. The wizard used all 3 3rd level spells on fireball... and then used a round to recall (pearl of power) to use a 4th fireball. If we added up the number of people the other 2 killed for the entire 6 encounters they together didn't kill as many as the first 3 fireballs did. (To be fair the fighter did choose not to kill 3 towns folk when he could have)

3rd- That assassin was not as bad as I thought it would be. He got a perfect storm, he hit the shadow dancer for surprise crit (5d6+3)x2 + con save vs 7d6...and she failed the save. just over 70hp damage and she wasn't at full hp. However the wizard (not realizing that was a big surprise hit and thinking I could repeat the attack) Disintegrated him before he could do anything else.

4th- in the second to last encounter when the 5 guys jumped and took down the fighter it was pure bad luck... the fighter should have walked away, but I rolled a bit high

5th- the final encounter (still half the town to go) was just too much for 2 PCs, even when one had awesome spells.

6th- Spell mastery shield is evil... every round the mage used it.

7th- The way Identify works now was a major boon. The PCs shut themselves into a brothel long enough to cast identify and figure out what was going on, changing the game from kill to rescue the town.

8th- numbers matter in this edition, a group fo people with bows scare the PCs into fireballing towns.

9th- Pearl of powers should be capped, the 6th level one was a bit op (recalling disintegrate was a bad bad call on my part)

10th- even at 18th level some pretty common things over whelmed the PCs...

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...l-PC-vs-town-lFqW-reborn-or-not#ixzz3KsHxztWK

 

[Joe Liker]

[MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] I remember reading that thread. That's the internet for ya! There will always be someone telling you you did it wrong.

But let's be real. No one wants to do the Tarrasque test, and no one needs to. The result can be shown algorithmically, so rolling actual dice for it is moot.

It doesn't mean the discussion isn't valuable. Here, the conversation has highlighted the fact that many monsters in the MM don't have ranged attacks listed when they really ought to. I doubt we'll get anything out of WotC beyond the "use giant stats" advice, but it is useful for DMs to think about how monsters should behave in spite of the limitations of the printed rules.

 

[Authweight]

[MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] I remember reading that thread. That's the internet for ya! There will always be someone telling you you did it wrong.

But let's be real. No one wants to do the Tarrasque test, and no one needs to. The result can be shown algorithmically, so rolling actual dice for it is moot.

It doesn't mean the discussion isn't valuable. Here, the conversation has highlighted the fact that many monsters in the MM don't have ranged attacks listed when they really ought to. I doubt we'll get anything out of WotC beyond the "use giant stats" advice, but it is useful for DMs to think about how monsters should behave in spite of the limitations of the printed rules.

This exactly.

And the point of my posts above is that the result of the test is 100% situational - there's no disagreement as to what would happen given a particular situation, the disagreement is over what situation actually counts as a proper test.

 

[machineelf]

This is fine, but it's a ruling, not a rule, and many DMs may prefer not to do this for various reasons (they prefer to not add to RAW, throwing boulders doesn't fit their idea of what the tarrasque can do, etc). My point remains: what matters are the parameters of the test. If you decide to let the tarrasque throw boulders, then you have a dead wizard. If you decide to say the tarrasque can't do that, then you have an impotent tarrasque.

Oh yeah, I don't disagree with you at all. In fact I really liked your previous post above. I'll probably go back and give you exp for it. My argument was to the "ruling" not the "rule." In my opinion it seems plainly obvious that when a tarrasque picks up a "rock" or a piece of a building to throw, it's boulder sized, and should deal more damage than what a medium creature throwing a rock would be (or even a giant-sized creature throwing a large rock would be). But I'll let other DMs decide how they want to run their own games. For me, it would defy logic to not allow for boulder-sized damage. But to each their own. I view this as mostly theoretical anyway since I don't see this exact scenario happening. Even if low-level wizard did have a flying carpet or a fly spell, and acid splash, and could manage to survive all low-damage rock attacks, she will still have to watch as the tarrasque eats her friends.

 

[Fralex]

Nooo, even when I change forums, it follows me...

Screw it. I'm testing this silly battle out now. What do I need to do? Dribble acid on it from out of range? Doesn't sound too hard to test. I'll be back later.

 

[Thunderfoot]

My response to the original poster: No, but then again I haven't done a solo elective vasectomy with a butter knife and no anesthesia, either; and I have no plans to try either in the future.

 

[Fralex]

Okay, I'm back. That took less time than I thought.

Tarrasque v. Wizard Test #001
The wizard flew 60 feet into the air, the Tarrasque used frightful presence, the wizard failed her concentration check and took 30 falling damage upon hitting the ground. She died shortly after.

Tarrasque v. Wizard Test #002
The wizard flew 60 feet into the air, the Tarrasque used frightful presence, the wizard failed his concentration check and took 21 falling damage upon hitting the ground. He died shortly after.

Tarrasque v. Wizard Test #003
The wizard flew 60 feet into the air, the Tarrasque used frightful presence, the wizard made her saving throw and remained airborn. The Tarrasque reduced the town she had left from to a mountain of rubble. The wizard flew within 60 feet of the titan and sprinkled acid over it. The bubbling fluid was vaporized by the tarrasque's magic resistance. The wizard flew up to about 90 feet above ground. The tarrasque smashed the larger chunks of rubble into smaller chunks of rubble. Hundreds of people died. The tarrasque killed the few survivors shortly after and sauntered up a nearby mountainside. The wizard flew back to a height of 60 feet and approached the monster, throwing more acid at it to no effect. It reacted instantly to her, leaping off the mountainside and swinging its tale as high as it could in an attempt to swat her from the sky, but she was still just out of reach. The tarrasque lands in the pile of rubble with a massive, earth-shattering thud. The smaller rubble chunks become infinitesimal in size. Argh, I'm falling asleep. Gonna stop here for now...

If I have more time I'll try this a few more times, but right now I'm really tired. That's it for now.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think it's pretty well established at this point that if you go only by mechanics, you can conceivably beat the Terrasque with one character. Story-wise the Terrasque would probably destroy several towns and kill hundreds of innocents while you do it, though. Great Job, Hero!

 

[Tormyr]

Okay, I'm back. That took less time than I thought.

Tarrasque v. Wizard Test #001
The wizard flew 60 feet into the air, the Tarrasque used frightful presence, the wizard failed her concentration check and took 30 falling damage upon hitting the ground. She died shortly after.

Tarrasque v. Wizard Test #002
The wizard flew 60 feet into the air, the Tarrasque used frightful presence, the wizard failed his concentration check and took 21 falling damage upon hitting the ground. He died shortly after.

Tarrasque v. Wizard Test #003
The wizard flew 60 feet into the air, the Tarrasque used frightful presence, the wizard made her saving throw and remained airborn. The Tarrasque reduced the town she had left from to a mountain of rubble. The wizard flew within 60 feet of the titan and sprinkled acid over it. The bubbling fluid was vaporized by the tarrasque's magic resistance. The wizard flew up to about 90 feet above ground. The tarrasque smashed the larger chunks of rubble into smaller chunks of rubble. Hundreds of people died. The tarrasque killed the few survivors shortly after and sauntered up a nearby mountainside. The wizard flew back to a height of 60 feet and approached the monster, throwing more acid at it to no effect. It reacted instantly to her, leaping off the mountainside and swinging its tale as high as it could in an attempt to swat her from the sky, but she was still just out of reach. The tarrasque lands in the pile of rubble with a massive, earth-shattering thud. The smaller rubble chunks become infinitesimal in size. Argh, I'm falling asleep. Gonna stop here for now...

If I have more time I'll try this a few more times, but right now I'm really tired. That's it for now.

That made for fun reading, but I cannot find anything that would cause the Wizard to need to do a concentration check from Frightful presence. So the wizard could still fly but would be under the frightened condition.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Has anybody taken into account the fact that acid splash has a 60 ft. range--and the tarrasque, which is 50 ft. tall, has a reach of 10 ft.? So flying above it is useless for this particular test.

Fly 60 ft. in front of it? Sure, that works for a round. Then the tarrasque closes to within 40 ft. and uses it's 20-ft.-reach tail attack. Which knocks the flying guy prone.

There may be tactics where the "flying opponent" thing works (at least in white room theory-craft), but the much vaunted acid splash ain't one of 'em.