Anyone here ever used the Tarrasque succesfully?

[Psion]

Well, they couldn't use Godzilla for copyright reasons...

(snip)

To sum it up, don't stage the appearance of the Tarrasque as a combat encounter. Stage it as a disaster movie!

Funny that you should mention Godzilla. Because I found the Kaiju template in Dragon to be a much better resource for doing this sort of thing.

 

[gizmo33]

I wanted to know if anyone has ever used the Tarrasque intentionly to confront the PCs and had them live.

That's "successfully" ? PCs who are high enough level to think about confronting the Tarrasque ought to be high enough level to (1) get away (2) get raised from the dead. The problem is most likely that the Tarrasque is not a good fit for your gaming style.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Funny that you should mention Godzilla. Because I found the Kaiju template in Dragon to be a much better resource for doing this sort of thing.

I don't read Dragon these days. And anyway, blatant references to Japanese pop culture would probably have been inappropriate in the core Monster Manual. A creature based on a French dragon is another matter...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well sure it doesn't solve everything. You'd need to give it wings too.

What for?

I think allowing the Tarrasque to follow the PCs everywhere is missing the point. By the time the PCs reach a level where they are a threat to the Tarrasque, they will be able to get away if they choose to anyway.

The trick to staging a fight against the Tarrasque is to make sure that there will be horrible consequences to not confronting it. The death of a PC doesn't count as "horrible consequence" - not at this level, since they can get ressurected in short order. The Tarrasque must threaten something that the PCs deeply care about - a village, city, or other major structure with lots of inhabitants should do nicely. Sure, they can run away at any time - but either their image as heroes or their pride will suffer for it, and possibly lots of innocent people as well.

The Tarrasque is not a cunning and sapient dragon. Once they get out of its sight, it is unlikely to try to chase them down - it is too dumb for that, and all those small figures look basically the same. It will soon revert to its normal behavior - eating anything it can see. Even diverting its course for some time should count as a minor victory.