I hope they haven’t wasted a 3rd page on a monster I’m never going to use. I’d rather see three pages on orcs or vampires or lycanthropes. These are the kinds of monsters that, with a bit of diversity and clever writing over three pages, a DM could use over and over again. Godzilla, you only use once.
Bah, no need to have anti-kiting measures baked into the monster. While a cunning plan to outwit and vanquish the beast is awesome, if I had players actually try to Kite the thing I’m pretty sure holy bolts of anti-munchkin power would rain down from the heavens immediately producing a TPK.
Agreed. The Tarrasque doesn’t even belong in the type of game I play. It belongs in a different (and equally valid) style of DnD where you open up the Monster Manual to see what monster you can kill next. I’d argue that those guys calculating the minimum possible combo to kill Tarrasque had more fun doing that than anyone will actually get out of fighting it at the table, so it served its purpose. Its like Football and Fantasy Football, they’re both fun, but they’re not the same thing.
My issue with the Tarrasque is that it doesn’t really have a place in my imagined world of DnD. (I know DnD is a set of rules, not a setting, but lets face it DnD ends up creating a certain type of setting unless you try hard to subvert it). Dragons and liches are good Big Bads, Tarrasque is just a nostalgic stat block. For a much better imagining of Godzilla-likes in a fantasy world, check out the Koru Behemoths of 13th Age. They belong in that world like Dragons do in DnD.
The Tarrasque has pretty much always been a concept. Something horrible you keep from happening or deal with the aftermath of. They stat it out so you can fight it if you’re max level or whatever, but ultimately it’s not really meant to be fought. It is rather odd they made it so easy to deal with in 5e. In previous editions it was basically unkillable (which was the point of the thing), but 5e makes it look very killable, especially considering it’s insane CR.
Pathfinder has a plethora of things like that. 4e had a ton as well (though one could argue they actually were meant to be killable - things like Orcus and Demogorgon or whatever, I think many gods even had stat blocks).
They added some extra pages, so I’ll just pretend they cover the Tarrasque or something and we’re getting it for free.
Considering the monster manual is over 350 pages, if they use less than 1% of the pages (3 pages) on the Tarrasque I will be ok with it. It is an iconic creature for D&D even if very few campaigns ever use it.
The Tarrasque is a legendary creature. If your encounter with a legendary monster happens in a huge flat plain with plenty of time for you to plan your attack, then the DM is really just queuing bosses up for you to slaughter. Any reasonable encounter with the Tarrasque has it destroying stuff rather than waiting for you to plink it to death. Some of the stuff it is destroying might get flung up into the air, or directly at a player, and if a building is falling on you, you are making a dex save to avoid death, and still taking damage when you succeed the save. A building isn’t an improvised throwing weapon. Likewise, if it gets low enough on health, it will find (or create) a place where you can’t hit it from above. Not to mention that there’s no way the DM should let you cast cantrips for 130 straight rounds. I know they are “at-will” abilities, but there has to be more to casting acid splash than just some gestures, not to mention the dashing back and forth every round. Even world-class boxers need to conserve energy mid-round and take full breaks every few minutes. More importantly, since it’s a legendary creature that is worshiped as a god by some, you will never encounter it at 8th level, and you will probably have to deal with cultists who want to help it any time you encounter it at all.
But as someone pointed out, the whole point of having a stat block for a legendary opponent like this is for someone to figure out how to cheese it because the “Rules As Written” are clearly dumb if I can find a way to exploit them, no matter how nonsensical that way is.
The best was the 3.5 Tarrasque that could be brought low by Commanded Allips that even (IIRC) a L7 character could muster easily (they dealt Wisdom damage, which Big T wasn’t immune to. Hitting 0 Wisdom renders you unconscious, and the Allips could attack from under the ground or air and were immune to non-magical weapons).
Uh, part of the point is that all the planning required for a level 7 sorcerer/rogue to beat the CR 30 monster is “Ok, I cast fly,” and then plinking it to death because you move faster than it does. The sky is typically a flat plain if you’re not in a crazy chaos dimension. There’s no meticulous preparation or cheese required beyond being sorcerer 5/rogue2. And don’t forget 130 rounds in D&D is 13 minutes, so it’s not like it’s taking all day long either. Everything else you’ve described is ways of the DM saying “No, you can’t do that!” which is fine, I guess. I imagine having the “Why can’t I keep attacking it until it dies?” “Because I said so!” conversation at a table would be fun though. :P
So I’m trying to make another dwarfcop character in 5e (background would be a combination of soldier and criminal) and I see there are manacles in the “adventuring gear” list. The description starts “These metal restraints can bind a Small or Medium creature.” I look through the Conditions appendix, but I don’t see a bind or bound anywhere. Do they mean Restrained, Grappled or Immobilized?
Sorry that isn’t actually a cool question though. What are they planning on coming out with, rulebook-wise, after the MM and DMG are released?
Ooh, it’s like a celebrity sighting from my past! Hi Djscman/Thufir! I would guess that bind is like restrained, except that it wouldn’t reduce your movement to zero.
That would make sense, if you used one set of manacles to bind a creature’s arms. Or maybe, if you used a second pair of manacles between the monster and a nearby portcullis or statue or something, that would immobilize it too.
Hi Rob! I’d love to play in your 5e game but I still get home too late to join you guys.
Perhaps a huge storm with high winds could roll in, causing Dex or Con saves to stay in the air every round. 130 saves is a lot to hit, plus potential lightening strikes. Or maybe a Blue Dragon happens by, pretty sure they fly. Of course the real answer is don’t play with munchkins (unless that’s the kind of game you like).
Or if you do, throw a building at them and watch them fume.
Won’t work. Everybody knows that if you throw a house at Munchkins, you miss and only hit the witch instead.
You win one internet.
So as a twist of fate, with Rob going on vacation this coming week, I am considering with great trepidation running an adventure on Sunday(s). I would need players who would be patient with a DM that isn’t as skilled as Rob, but are there any takers? (Obviously Rob gets first dib…someone has to give him a chance to play…)
The point I was making was that asking the designers to factor in all possible reasons for “no you can’t do that” is worse than discussing at the table/the DM prepping what he could. But really, I think a more sensible legendary creature mechanic would be “can only take damage from a legendary weapon” and then rules on how to incorporate legendary weapons into the campaign.
So it’s worth noting that WotC showed off the table of contents for the Bestiary (err, Monster Manual) today, and the Tarrasque is indeed but two pages. Unless details of its lair bleed over to a third page, I’m afraid that it might just be kite-able to death, RAW ;)
Every other version of it basically had that. 1e I think only +5 weapons could hurt it, 2e I forget but something similar, I think 3/3.5 it had epic/adamant DR or something.
Plus in every version it regen’d like a MFer so death by a thousand cuts would never work, you had to hit it really hard to make a dent in it.
Well there’s a scale from “all possible reasons” to “blindingly obvious”. Like ShivaX points out, you don’t even have to use any creative cycles to fix the problem if you look at the other four editions where the blindingly obvious problem was not a problem. 5th edition has a bunch of things they included that are pretty neat/good ideas, and then things like the Tarrasque that suddenly turn around and make me question the design chops of the team.