Tarasque: Have you ever encoutered one?

[Bedrockgames]

I think pretty much every D&D player knows about the Tarasque* and how impossible they are supposed to be to defeat. But personally I have never encountered one. And I don't believe I know many who have. Has anyone here had a Tarasque encounter. If so how many and how hard was it in actual play?

*Thinking of the 2nd and 3rd edition Tarasque. Not familiar with how they are handled in 4E.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Yes. And it brings back painful memories of nonsensical modules. I believe it was AD&D module H3 (could be H2; the "H" stands for "high-level" yay!). There were a series of chambers with tests for the various classes. The clerics test included a room in which the administers of the test had captured the Tarrasque. And this was not meant as a comedy module.

 

[Asmor]

Yes. In 3.5. I think we were in the late teens at the time, 17-19 or so.

We drowned it by forcing a water elemental to take residence in its lungs, I (the monk) beat on it while it was down to counteract its regeneration, and the rest of the party used some ritual to kill it once and for all.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Twice.

Once in 2e in a time-traveling FR module. We beat it in one round.

Once in 3.x. We beat it in like 3 rounds. I was a one-shot adventure where we knew we were facing the tarrasque, which unfortunately meant a lot of metagaming. One character had a teleporting helm, so being swallowed was no problem. Another was resistant to acid, and had short swords to cut his way out. A cleric just used Air Walk or whatever to "fly" and never had to worry about the tarrasque. Etc.

 

[Crothian]

Yes, in 1e and 2e we faced it and were able to defeat it. In 3e though when it was encountered it was a stalemate. The PCs could not kill him but they were able to keep out of range of him.

 

[wedgeski]

Nope, the beast remains mythic and unchallenged in my D&D universe.

When we abandoned Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil after the fourth TPK, the DM revealed to us that he had tied the module in with many outstanding threads from his campaign world and that, at the very end of everything, we would have faced the Tarrasque with the fate of the world at stake. Now that would have been sweet, but unfortunately the volcano did for us way before that was ever going to happen.

 

[kitsune9]

No, never encountered one and never ran one as GM. Hmmmm....I'll have to rethink that one for later.

 

[Stumblewyk]

Never faced one, never ran one. But I do have an entire campaign world based on the tarrasque awakening being a recurring once-every-couple-millenia event. Maybe I'll run a game in it some day.

*shrug*

 

[Halivar]

I played in a game that started at level 20, and handed out divine ranks instead of levels. Around divine rank 5, the DM threw two tarrasques (just using that name in plural form makes my head explode) at us.

One had twenty levels of fighter, and the other had twenty levels of wizard.

Needless to say, some people were rolling up new characters.

 

[Spinachcat]

Never fought one, but played in a GM's campaign of a world post-Tarrasque that had been ravaged and now in ruins. It was very fun and there was a constant concern that the Tarrasque would return because we knew during the campaign it was still stomping about on the other side of the world.

Too bad the campaign ended before we got high level enough to confront the beastie.