Lantern Archons vs. DR

[Dr. Zoom]

Thanks Caliban. That little bit escaped me.

 

[Caliban]

Thanks Caliban. That little bit escaped me.

Yeah, it's easy to overlook. I used it in my Stirge vs. Tarrasque smackdown to have a flock of stirges take down the tarrasque.

 

[Gaiden]

Caliban,

I would really like to read that smack. Could you post it?

 

[Caliban]

Caliban,

I would really like to read that smack. Could you post it?

The basic concept is simple, but the execution can be a little tricky.

Have a 20th level wizard collect about 50 stirges, and put them in a cage over a teleport circle. Use Dominate Monster over the course of a week or so to put them under your complete control. Use Discern Location to locate the Tarrasque, then Scry to pinpoint it, and then Teleport the entire flock of Stirges to it's location and have them attack.

The Tarrasque a Dex of 16 and Combat Reflexes, so it kill's 4 of them as they land on it. That leaves 46 stirges.

The Tarrasque has a touch AC of 5, so the Stirges only miss on a natural 1. Let's say 5 miss, leaving 41 stirges that have attached themselves.

The Tarrasque kills 6 of them on it's turn (because it has 6 attacks). That leaves 35 stirges attached on the 2nd round.

The stirges drain 35d4 points of Con. Even if they all roll a 1 on the Con drain, the tarrasque is now at 0 Con. Anything else would be dead, but the tarrasque is still technically at -10 hit points.

At this point the wizard goes through the Teleport Circle and dumps about 20 flasks of acid on the tarrasque (to make sure it's at -30) and then Wishes it dead.

Cheesy, but workable in theory. (At least until the errata that required you to a certain amount of subdual damage to kill the tarrasque, but even then you just need a portable hole full of acid flasks to do the damage.)

 

[Spenser]

Such an ignominious death for the Tarrasque! Geez, Caliban, that's just Not Right.

Edit: And why doesn't the Tarrasque have Great Cleave? Now that would be something.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

If you advance the Tarrasque some more Hit Dice, doesn't it get more feats? Give it Great Cleave.

One of my 2e buddies said "Great. Take the toughest monster in 2e and make it 10 times worse." I had to disagree with him. My 2e party killed it in one round. The 2e monsters were a joke.

It's a good thing a Tarrasque can't regenerate Con...

 

[Caliban]

Such an ignominious death for the Tarrasque! Geez, Caliban, that's just Not Right.

Edit: And why doesn't the Tarrasque have Great Cleave? Now that would be something.

Yeah, Great Cleave would make it immune to this tactic. It would cost it 3 feats to get that though. Maybe the designers didn't want to make it that nasty, or they realized that most parties would choose to fight it at a distance.

The slightly less cheesy method is to use a group of PC's, and have the wizard cast Mass Fly, Mass Haste, and Improved Invisibility on everyone, then the cleric uses Greater Magic Weapon on the bows and arrows, plus assorted buff spells. Then have Rogue/Archers hovering 30 feet over the tarrasque's head (just out of it's reach but still within sneak attack range), thus able to to get sneak attacks on it with a full attack action. Meanwhile the wizard uses Telekinesis to pelt it with Acid Flasks. Assuming the archers don't run out of arrows before they do enough damage, the wizard then Wishes it dead.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Out of range till he jumps.