Tarasque: Have you ever encoutered one?

[Deuce Traveler]

As a DM, I treated the tarrasque as a doomsday device. The party's land was being swarmed and destroyed by an invading orc army. They had an adventure where they infiltrated deep into orc lands, fought their way into some forgotten catacombs in a dormant lava mountain next to several important orc military villages, then performed a ritual which caused lava to flow into the center of the mountain in order to wake the 'Lord of Fire Mountain'.

They booked it out of the mountain as it began to collapse around them. When they got out they saw the 'Lord of Fire Mountain' break loose from its mountain. It was a tarrasque, it was pissed, and it proceeded to tear apart the orc lands so badly that the orcs had to stop their invasions and rebuild their society.

So they encountered a tarrasque at level 4/5 but did not fight it.

 

[Tamlyn]

We played a 3.5 20th level one-off where power gaming was encouraged. We encountered the tarrasque and an army of drow before we got to our ultimate goal. Much to the DM's chagrin, we hid.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Once, I DM'd a game that took my roommate to level 20 and at the end of the campaign he became a demigod. I think the encounter was right before his ascension to becoming the demigod of magic. He obliterated it pretty quickly if I remember correctly. He attacked it with an army of undead (being a necromancer) and his big-arse hard hitting barbarian sidekick along with his crazy high level spells. He went looking for it to see what it would be like to fight it and I accommodated him. This was back in 2E.

I'd like to face one as a player some day, but running it as a DM was pretty fun too even if it was a pretty quick fight.

 

[amerigoV]

No, I have not played or DMed one. I have two ideas that I keep around in the hopper:

1) Eberron - the Tarrasque is the avatar of the Devourer. In Eberron, the gods do not interfere, but there is no reason someone does assume it is an aspect of that god. Nothing is so good that you cannot add some cultists in to make it more fun.

2) Instead of a Tarrasque rising up to feed every x number of years, it is reborn. It starts small and grows until it could devour the universe. In 4e, it would be easy to adjust him up or down levels to represent a few points in time that the PCs would have an shot at destroying the big T before he gets out of hand. Other editions would be a bit more work, but nothing a few mods on a T-Rex could not handle for lower level play.

 

[Treebore]

I've used it a couple of times, but I have used their "larval stage" versions far more often. I first "encountered" one back in my 1E days, my PC lost its left arm. We had a wish spell on a Luckblade in the party, so were able to ultimately defeat it, but it was a difficult and ugly fight. Several PC's lost limbs.

 

[Minicol]

No, but IMo that is kinda the point : you're not just supposed to encounter it ... you're supposed to write a whole adventure around it.

same as with gargantuan Elder wyrm Red Dragons

 

[Dice4Hire]

Way way long ago, when I was in college (1989 or so), my party ran into one of the beasties. They found an ancient elven cloud city, and were able to climb up the hideously long ladder that lead to the city. (Non-elves had to take every rung one at a time, but elves only had to use every hundredth rung. Lucky guys.

So the party got to the top of the ladder eventually, and started to explore the ruined (and I mean RUINED) city on the clouds.

And found the dear beastie in the main temple.

Needless to say the party was totally overmatched. I do not remember their level, but they had no prayer of beating it.

But they were smart. One player got the tarrasque to chase him and ran towards the edge of the cloud. The character was able to stop and turn at the edge and the tarrasque was not.

Of course a 10,000 foot fall did not faze the tarresque much, and when the party went down to look around, all they found was a big hole, and evidence the tarresque had burrowed deeper.

My only experience with running one.

Never played against one.

 

[El Mahdi]

Yes. We encountered it once in a 2E game. We survived by using a very tried and true tactic...we ran!

 

[Yalius]

We never actually interacted with one, but I recall in a Spelljammer campaign we flew over a herd of them. It was pretty much just window dressing, though.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I've been playing D&D since the late 70s - 1E, 2E, basic, expert, 3E, 3.5E, 4E...

never once have I encountered a tarrasque as a player, nor have I run one as a DM.