Gargantuan

[Kingreaper]

I find it easier to not think about when I consider the squares the creatures reside in to be abstractions themselves.

Hell, I had to look -hard- for a 'one square is five feet' rule. Honestly, I just run it like I did 'turn length' in World of Darkness. How long is a turn? Anywhere between 3 seconds and 1 minute. It's 'as long as it needs to be.'

Yep. I like this approach because it allows things like having a tactically interesting battle in a realistically sized room.

You're in a small room, so everyone has to make do with less space. So the squares are smaller.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yep. I like this approach because it allows things like having a tactically interesting battle in a realistically sized room.

You're in a small room, so everyone has to make do with less space. So the squares are smaller.

Yeah, to a certain extent I think its pretty reasonable to just consider squares/cubes to be a bit abstract. On top of that a 5x5' area is large enough that often you can rationalize things based on where in the square the creature is. You don't have to assume someone has to reach 5' to hit something in the next square, they could easily need to reach 3" depending on where everyone is positioned. Height is kind of the same sort of thing. A square is "as tall as the ordinary medium sized combatants" etc. So something that happens a square up above the ground is "over everyone's heads", maybe that's not exactly 5' but whatever. Maybe sometimes people duck a bit. Maybe sometimes they get their hair scorched too.

 

[Verision]

Nothing in the Tarrasque entry itself indicates a specific size, so by RAW its AT LEAST 4x4 squares. .

There is one thing in the Tarrasque entry (unless there is errata that I am unaware of) that does give a good indication of size, though it is unspecific.

"Earthbinding: Auara 40; any flying creature in the aura has its fly speed reduced to 1 and maximum altitude reduced to 20 FEET (PUTTING IT WITHIN THE TARRASQUE'S REACH)"
(emphasis mine)

That, to me, makes it sound like the Tarrasque is about 20 feet tall, not hundreds of feet (or even 100') tall. Though, that doesn't mean you can't make it as crazy huge as you want to.

 

[Zaran]

"Earthbinding: Auara 40; any flying creature in the aura has its fly speed reduced to 1 and maximum altitude reduced to 20 FEET (PUTTING IT WITHIN THE TARRASQUE'S REACH)"
(emphasis mine)

Man, they couldn't come up with a better way to eliminate Flight as a bypass for this encounter?

 

[Camelot]

Or why fireballs are squares.

Still, if players at level 30 are getting a bit cocky, it's good technique to give 'em a bit of a scare.

PS: Shadow of the Collosus, very nice. I had thought of that earlier, just didn't mention it. Fun game!

 

[KidSnide]

There comes a point when a sufficiently large monster should be treated as terrain. Think of the Tarrasque as a moving cliff that your players need to climb and hang on to during combat. Except that they'll be trying to kill this cliff.

Exactly. Towards the end of my last campaign, my time-traveling PCs had a fight against the first dragon. I had already established the size of this beast, since my PCs had already had a major battle in the dwarven temple made out of this dragon's skeleton.

So, I used the dragon as a battlemap. The PCs on the back were safe from the dragons claws or bite, but were extremely vulnerable to being scraped off. If the PCs tried to get near a more vulnerable spot, they had claws and teeth to be careful of. And, of course, on other parts of the dragon, it was more difficult to stay on-board. Falling off wasn't deadly for flying PCs per se, but the dragon's tail was a considerable hazard. The scattering panic when the PCs realized that (A) the dragon could breath on its own back and (B) the breath weapon would take out level 15 Protection from Elements in a single shot was, IMHO, delightful.

-KS

P.S. Your players will like it if you run a battles in which they fight on a humongous monster. As for battles that take place in a humongous monster... not so much.

 

[Shin Okada]

By RAW, gargantuan = 4 squares x 4 squares x 4 squares or larger.

On the table. Use whatever mini which looks good and big enough to let players say "wow!". Then give it appropriately sized base which can support it (if it does not have already).

I have a nice dragon mini from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, which is about 2-foot long. When I use this mini as some wingless dragon (some kind of drake?), I will use at least 12-inch by 12-inch base so that 4 legs can be put on it.

 

[MortalPlague]

P.S. Your players will like it if you run a battles in which they fight on a humongous monster. As for battles that take place in a humongous monster... not so much.

What if the battle progresses from on the humongous monster to in the humongous monster?

 

[Davedamon]

I've been contemplating this issue for my d&d campaign I'm running. I want the players to fight a huge spider, but am being heavily inspired by Lost Planet 2, namely where you shoot out the legs of a giant creature. My idea is to have 8 'legs' models, each one large in size. The players can attack the legs directly, or make ranged attacks verses the main 'body' which is always 25 feet above the ground.
Each leg has its own hit points, equal to 1/4 of the spiders total HP, the idea being that 'killing' 4 legs is sufficient to kill the spider itself.
Each let has its int order and can make attacks focused on moving each leg (sweeping attacks/pinning attacks etc)
What's everyones idea on this? I'm working on a stat block for this as I type this.

 

[darkadelphia]

I've been contemplating this issue for my d&d campaign I'm running. I want the players to fight a huge spider, but am being heavily inspired by Lost Planet 2, namely where you shoot out the legs of a giant creature. My idea is to have 8 'legs' models, each one large in size. The players can attack the legs directly, or make ranged attacks verses the main 'body' which is always 25 feet above the ground.
Each leg has its own hit points, equal to 1/4 of the spiders total HP, the idea being that 'killing' 4 legs is sufficient to kill the spider itself.
Each let has its int order and can make attacks focused on moving each leg (sweeping attacks/pinning attacks etc)
What's everyones idea on this? I'm working on a stat block for this as I type this.

There's an XBox Live Arcade game called Limbo. In the first stage, you have a spider that you contest with throughout--each time removing one of it's legs. At the end of the stage, the spider crawls up behind you dragging its bulbous body on one leg. A well timed dodge allows you to grab and pull off the last leg. Then, the best part, you roll the body down a hill into a pit of spikes to finish the creature off AND use it as a platform to get to the next stage. A tangent, but perhaps inspirational?