When my group battled the Tarrasque, my sorcerer cast True Polymorph on his fighter ally next to him, turning him into a tarrasque. The sorcerer then ran off to hide. What resulted was a godzilla like battle between two very hard to kill monsters. It ended with my friend eating the Tarrasque.
In my world (which is just an aduption of Spelljammer+Planescape), when ever one of the 64 worlds are destroyed the gods come together to build a new one. An unavoidable part of the planet creation process is that the waste products become an egg that will eventualy hatch into a Tarrasque and destroy the planet.
I've had my players create their characters for a campaign and told them to withhold their backstories, open to any types. I then had them create a high-level character (I gave them millions of experience points and a point system for picking magic items). Some of my players created the parents as friends or spouses to the other PC parents. I then had them play as the parent character, all of them, in a wealthy town. All of them in the rich guy's (retired adventurer's) tavern. They heard rumbling. They went outside to meet a great monster rising from the earth, really powerful and confident they could defeat it... never before seen such a monster (a Tarrasque, believed to be a myth). The party gets wiped out. I then switch to their main characters, meeting in the rebuilt version of that same tavern of that rebuilt town, sharing stories of how they lost their heroic parent to the monster. It was the only time I had them play out the tragic part of their backstory and directly interfered with character creation, but they loved it and each used that event to flesh out their characters. Tarrasques can be used for more than just top-tier character challenge. Great video AJ Pricket!
Thanks popechucky. It was the only time I had them basically role-play their tragic parental loss backstory part and it worked. I did not want to foul it up by making it a trope. I think it would have worked more than that one time, but I doubted it would have had the same magic. They added so much more, the only time they each had a big and colorful backstory for their characters of that level. I sparked personal interest in the parents from that horrible battle I assume. Maybe it was their process of creating the custom high-level character. Whatever it was, it worked. If you make videos and do this and it works for your gamers, please share the story. The Tarrasque is a great tragety monster for it, my friend. ;)
My party encounter a Tarrasque in a campaign one time. One of the party sacrificed themselves to stop it. They got underfoot and raised a warp marble to the underside of the foot and spoke the command word. Both the Tarrasque and the player, because they were still in contact with the warp marble, were sucked into the warp marble. The party was too low level to go plane hopping, so instead of emptying out the warp marble by placing it in a bag of holding (Thereby sending the contents of the warp marble to... I want to say limbo, but not certain. It was another plane that was highly dangerous) The party left them both in the warp marble and hide it way so no one would ever find it and release the Tarrasque.
I have always liked the idea that the tarrasque was created by the Gods to act as a guardian. If some horrible being or elder evil threatened to destroy the world, and nothing could stop it the Tarrasque might be awakened by the gods to deal with it. The gods of evil and chaos helped to create it on the condition that it be allowed to awaken form time to time to feed and cause destruction.
I personally think the Tarrasque has no business in any less than an epic/mythic/dragon/divine game. Its meant to be that gatekeeper where the limits of normal magic should be painfully clear.That oh you thought this was it? oh no no no no. You haven't even begun.This is where the mortal journey ends and the immortal journey of heroes begins. Or to put it another way. This thing should be munching young dragons like candy and great wyrms like a four course meal. For this reason I made it an elder evil.
I remember you sige Monster vid, I still think loading rot grubs in specialized bolts and arrows are a good way to take out this monster. But the resulting rot grub swarm would become a huge problem in of itself. Have lots of fire ready....;). Good job, yet again. You’ve become one of my most favorite channels for my D&D needs, keep up the great work..
One wonders how many published D&D games would have their storyline drastically changed if at a random point during the story the Terrasque suddenly awakened.
So when a Tarrasque shows up the following is to be done in order 1. shit pants 2. run 3. realize that running does nothing 4. re-shit pants 5 death (most likely)
There's always that one murderhobo in the group who will see the Tarrasque as a challenge. The only proper response to such a person is to very quietly knife them in the back, so that they do not wake the beast.
standard. XD "what, don't look at me that way. it's not like you could've been reasoned with. we wouldn't of won & i couldn't of stopped you. what else did you expect me to do." *drow party member shrugs shoulders*
Alafanatanalaemenam says it lacks a fundamentum, though it's second gut mimics the function, and it may be a creation of the sybriex at the behest of a major power from the lower planes.. Demogorgon, praps?
So pro-tip. One of the things the Tararsque is not immune or resistant to is Acid. Easy monster to defeat with proper levels and amounts of acid based attacks and you just gotta get clever. I’m imagining a illusionist mage with the ability to make their illusions real such as illusion terrain using the spell to contain the Tarrasque in a giant hill of Adamantium. Won’t do damage directly, but the Tarrasque will have to chew through that to moves. I’d then suggest players finding a way to summon giant acid based oozes on the creature and then casting enlarge spells on it. Catapults/trebuchets with vials of acid instead of rocks. Players with flight, dropping gallons of acid jugs on it. Best way to defeat it, isolate and melt it.
The Tarrasque's home-world could be a crystal sphere where the surface of the land is on the inside surface of the crystal sphere itself. That would make the land area large enough that several hundred Tarrasques could exist without depopulating all other life. There was a crystal sphere like this described in the Cloakmaster series of books, but I can't think of the name of it off hand.
By far my favorite monster. Like, yeah ok, there are fuckin volcano dragons, and ancient wizards who can go toe-to-toe with literal gods but at the end of the day theres just something honestly gratifying about trying to deal with a giant, nigh unkillable lizard. The challenge is a Tarasque fight shouldn't be "how hard do we have to hit this until it dies" it should be "where's the immovable object that can match this unstoppable force?"
Our GM decided that this was the big bad we had to prevent from awakening. And there are FOUR of them. He said they are the colors of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, red, white, black and green. And that's when I pointed out to him that those are the exact colors of power ranger that Tommy Oliver has been. He legit never saw the connection.
Great vid! However there is a cult which follow the Tarrasque. They are called the reckoners. Think I read that in a Dungeon or Dragon mag... will look it up
Go to Google Maps, or Google Earth, and type in "Chateau de Tarascon". In the grassy area just south of the castle, along the D80F roundabout, is the statue pictured at 0:25.
St. Martha would be a cool trope in D&D to reuse. A holy woman long ago once tamed the beast, and when it wakes again, the players must console it with the relics of her remains, or something. Also, gonna start praying to St. Martha and the Tarrasque.
I first started playing AD&D back in 1991(?) and the Tarrasque seemed really cool but now that I'm older and I look back on it, it feels as if it escaped the Homebrew website and went back in time. I think however it was made to deal with super minmaxing players that can basically do ANYTHING and kill ANYTHING and do it AMAZINGLY well, so that way the DM can say "Oh look at that, in the middle of battle after you've felled your fifteen thousandth Deathknight, a very hungry Tarrasque appears. Unfortunately despite your best efforts to defeat it, you were unable to and you get eaten. However thanks to your awesomeness and level of amazingness being so great, it's actually completely fed, so much so that it's too much for it so it returns to the earth from whence it came, full for five thousand lifetimes because of the sheer awesomeness that runs through you. Now that it's fed for many a lifetime, it has no need to feed for that long and as a result, your brave sacrifice has saved many a future generation and you're granted godhood and now you can rule over your own realm somewhere that isn't here".
My favorite bit of dnd lore actually comes from one of the Elminister books, in which the old wizard tells about his travels through the outer planes. In that he's apparently located "The elemental plane of tarrasque" where everything is made of flesh, and hundreds of tarrasques roam around constantly grazing on everything. Considering how deadly a single tarrasque is, sort of makes sense that Elminister is the only person to ever claim having seen the place.
Randal Jeffrey so..If I were to enter this land, the hundreds upon hundreds of Tarrasques that I find will nit attack me due to basically already having food?
@Kyle Dilbert ... maaayyyybeee? There isn't any lore about this whatsoever in modules or official source books, the only mention I can find is a throw-away line where Elminister is talking about his travels. He says like two sentences about what it's like, and then looks horrified when saying he will never, ever go back. It could be safe in theory? But the fact such a powerful wizard who routinely tangles with gods is terrified of the place, I'm willing to bet it's not safe at all.
So one game my friends and I were playing I rolled a Wizard and got amazing rolls for stats, including two 18s and a 17. So I had a pretty dexterous and hearty Wizard High Elf. Anyways, I had looted a bag of magic beans and was planting them all the time trying to raise an army of Treants. One day while fighting several Minotaurs in a labyrinth I started firing beans into opponents. Our DM rolled and said “I don’t feel like picking, someone name a creature.” I waited several moments for other players before slamming my hands down yelling “Tarrasque!” Everyone stares at me wide eyed as the DM rolls and just looks horrified. “10 Tarrasques burst forth from the Minotaur’s chest. Roll to dodge the ceiling coming down I guess.” The group is now in panic mode, I mean we are facing down 10 Tarasques at level 8. My Wizard was the only one to dodge out of the ceilings collapse and slipped away invisible. We ended the campaign there. My party had died but my Wizard stayed to watch the beasts overtake and destroy his world.
There is one thing that hurts the Tarrasque normally, and that's copious amounts of acid damage. Acid is the one damage type it has no outright immunity or resistance.
A further note on the Spelljammer planet of Tarrasques - something in the athmosphere is needed by them, and when removed from their homeworld, they go insane, and become the ravenous beasts we all know and are terrified by. On their homeworld, they are relatively peaceful and only dangerous if provoked.
In 7 of the 8 campaigns I've run, this beasty is part of the end. There's just something rewarding, to the player, to say they've faced one down. Win or lose. so far its been 3/4 on the win/loss ratio. Every group thought it was amazing. It truly made all the effort beforehand on my part, worth it.
I always loved to use this monster as a reason why Goblinoids/Orcoids are kept in check thru raiding of their villages by civilized races or nations. The idea is that Goblins/Orcs are actually sub-races of a overall race, but are different stages of that same race's life cycle, and the Tarrasque is actually the last stage of the race that comes about after they progressed thru the other stages. In this way the civilized races see the culling of the Orc/goblin races as a method of controlling the progress of this terror of a creature developing. Though also the idea that this creature in the same vain might be a member of the goblin/orc race that their patron deity has chosen as it's favored vessel, and so thru a process is transformed into this creature via a cocoon.
Honestly i could also see this thing being something like a bio-weapon or Armageddon type weapon created by the gods in thier war with the primordials. Or maybe the other way around would work too. Yet this creature might work in the idea that it can sense the faith, or worship of the divine or primordials upon the world it is living upon. When that faith/worship has progressed to a specific point it awakens an rampages over the world attempting to destabilize that group's faith/worship from the population. Though another really messed up idea would be that these creatures are actually physical vessel for some other being that either had been forcefully torn from the body leaving it physically powerful yet without the spiritual or mental power that had once inhabited it. Though what if in the past the Tarrasque had been actually more than a mindless beast an were sentient, but during/after the dawn war they had been punished/cursed with their intelligence stolen from them (maybe out of fear of what they could do.) leaving them as merely super powerful animals.
with that green skin idea maybe you could have an invasion through portals from annother prime material plane that had been overrun, where you just have a chaotic pure orcoid life filled wasteland, where tarrasques are ghe greatest influence on the shape of the landscape - where "their" the only thing that lives there anymore.
Idea for a campaign starting level 5-10 players start in a town inside a “mountain range” as they saddle up to help disposable npc the terasque awakens and the dm reminds their players that they have horses and should run. The rest of the campaign is focused on running from/ slowing down the beast this would work with any op monster-lich-warlords
had a thought for a op homebrew monster "The Beholder Dragon" all the beholder abilities with move/fly speed of a dragon. imagine the terror your players will feel as a dragon sized beast looms above them and they feel their magic weapons become useless in their hands >:D
I always found the existence of the Tarrasque kind of amusing. In DND there are all these hyper intelligent evil beings from black dragons to death tyrants all claiming to be the greatest, and yet they are nearly powerless against this one dumb animal.
Given that they are mindless eaters, I would think that coming together to mate would have to result in the death of one of the tarrasques. Could be that tarrasque are gender-less, and one tarrasque eating another could be how they become impregnated, which is why the primordials only brought one to each world, so they couldn't reproduce. This way, the young will be born from the strongest of the prior generation. Since the remaining parent is still a mindless eating beast, a period of hibernation would be necessary, allowing the pups to be born without the threat of being eaten by their own mother. After birth, the young would immediately start fighting and eating each other, like tiger sharks in the womb, till only one to three remained. That keeps the population at a certain level, growing extremely slowly if it can even grow at all. It could be that the feeding frenzy the tarrasque goes into upon waking is really it seeking out another of its kind out of an instinctual desire to reproduce, followed by a period of hibernation so it can birth pups. Since tarrasque not on their native world would never have the chance to devour another of their kind, they keep waking up knowing they failed and immediately go out to eat again. Maybe on their home world, they are less the constant voracious eaters, devouring everything in their path, and more like crocodiles on ours, really only eating things that cross their path, being lazy and subdued the rest of the time, until they're overcome by the desire to breed that is. Then, their hunger/"desire to breed" overcomes them, sending them into a feeding rage. That could also be why primordials only ever brought one to each world, so that each tarrasque would never be able to go from breeding blitz mode to non-breeding lazy super-predator mode. Another natural comparison is the raccoon. Female raccoons are generally mellow, but get quite aggressive when they go into heat. They don't leave that "heat" until they breed and get pregnant.
It'd be cool to have a low level story arch in which the group has to find a saint and bring her to subdue the thing basically completing the original story. They'd have no way to kill it otherwise.
I would use this as a reset on civilization build in by elder gods or primordials, attracted by lvl 9 spells and such powerful effects. Any civilization powerful to challenge the gods gets wiped out.
The 3.5 Manual of the Planes mentions Belierin (3rd layer of Elysium) as one possible resting place of a Tarrasque. "Belierin is the prison of some deadly creature or creatures. Some tales say the prisoner of Belierin is a powerful monster along the lines of a tarrasque or monster of legend." It wouldn't be that crazy for a Neutral Good character to be summoned (maybe by their deity) to Elysium to help the otherwise peaceful inhabitants calm the creature down (maybe with the help of some angels/guardinals).
In one of the Dragon magazines ( 3.0 or 3.5 run) there was a super fun prestige class called waker of the beast. It was for those deranged individuals and cultists who sought to find and wake the Tarrasque. Your type changed to abberation? as you took on features of your obsession. You always knew what direction it was in. When you found the big daddy you had a 5 or 10% chance of waking it up early. Your reward was being the first one eaten. One interesting thing was that your chance to wake it up increased if you could find other Wakers. It had some neat flavor and came at the game from a different angle, but I'm not sure it would really be playable in most groups. Anyway cultists of the Tarrasque and whatnot. Cheers and thanks for the lore.
Didn't know about the Spelljammer Prime Material Plane origin of Tarrasques. In my game, Mother Of Tarrasques was imprisoned in a bubble in Agathion, the 4th layer of Pandemonium. Like an alien hive mother, she laid eggs within her massive, slowly growing ( she's got to eat) bubble prison. Whichever race imprisoned her there, likely the rilmani, watch. When a Tarrasque is actually slain, they teleport to Mother's Cavern for a Tarrasque egg for that planet. Even a giant engine of destruction serves the balance of the cosmos
I hate the sizes that they use and always have in D&D. It said the tarrasque is 50 ft tall which is actually shorter than most pine trees. Just like a dragon is only 1200 ft long from those to tell. I don't know maybe I'm alone in this.
I always treated the Tarrasque as a creature created by the planet itself as a defense against the intrusion of the gods and the damage they caused to the natural order. Kinda like the Omega Weapons in Final Fantasy 7. I dont like the way they nerfed him in 5E, that takes away a lot from the mystique.
There are Tarrasques used in the war games and training of the infernal armies of the Nine Hells, where they source them from is diverse, and yeah, there may be some from worlds that have been swallowed up and corrupted by the Abyss.
If I ever put one of these in my game I would give it some kind of aura of annihilation that would extend 20 ft away from it in all directions. Creatures and objects that pass into the aura take damage and the Tarrasque can extend the aura up to 80 ft in any direction. Stone and metal crack and turn to dust, water evaporates and magic that intersects the aura can backfire or is nullified. (And I'd make it resistant to damage from ranged sources)
damn, Bro ..... you missed a golden oppretunity to use a Godzilla theme for your intro for this wee beasty. As for a in game use of a Tarrasque. lol, a long war was coming to a close. and I knew we were not going to win. So, I thought even if we lose, we will win, and found where this little beast was slumbering on Toril. I did not disturb it, I moved the earth from around it, but left it in a earthy egg. but magicly tagged it so I knew where it was. lol, 3 months of heavy gaming and the end was apon us, and we were losing your asses. So my Dm asked me what I was doing that round, and I smiled and said "I cant Teleaport Object" ...... he asked ok what object. I replyed, the egg. the egg from 200 feet in the sky. time to wake it up............. he had the look of egg, what egg. ........... till I said I was dropping into the battlefield. he just closed the books and said ok that will do. game is over , and your all dead. I cackled like Baba Yaga!
@@AJPickett That makes sense, and keep the fiendish ones in reserve. Also explains why Devils have them and Demons really dont. I mean, than again, do the demonic hordes of the abyss *need* Tarrasques? Something tells me if Demogorgon fought one, he would win. Still, maybe its just that no one has yet encountered what the demon lords of the abyss have warped a Tarrasque into, yet... But aye, Asmo has a few as pets. The use of them as training tools, makes a lot of sense. Haha. XD
I heard that the point of the Tarrasque was to allow the DM the opportunity to destroy the PCs if they w=got to powerful. Always a bigger fish if you will.
Robert Scardina in my 3.5 game it will be used as 1 of 3 ways the pc can end a war between good and evil that they help start (they don't know they doing it yet) the other 2 options I won't spoil. But this option means that afterwards they also have to deal with big T itself
The way the stomachs work implies they can, and should, rampage indiscriminately. That they may tear up the surrounding area but do not specifically target settlements. They just don't care if one is before them. Just a different kind of food. A trail of destruction where once we're verdant woods or thriving towns should be the calling card of such a being. Could be possible to have one devour all the landscape but spare a town simply because it is too full to fit it in. Of course this would still be terrible for even a city as having the surrounding environment devastated would be crippling. So putting down a Tarrasque would be priority one for any settlement even if the beast is not showing any signs of heading their way. The complete stripping of life and resources would be an incredible blow.
I love the pics you shared of potential Tarrasque ideas. It does sound like the new additions have killed the concept themselves tho. No regeneration?!? 😳 I gave mine Godzilla breath that even dragons were afraid of. There was an old DnD comic that a powerful evil wizard from the Cult of Tiamat needed one head of each metallic dragon to summon the Tarrasque for a "Ragnarok" type event. It was ok.
Do I gather all artwork that is a suitable match for the subject matter, particularly media that borrows heavily from the greatest resource of fantasy lore and artwork which predates all of the sources from film, games and such? Yes I do. :)
I wished for a tame slave tarrasque that does not ever have to eat or drink using a wishing vase and I got it and was so happy to destroy anything and everything in the campaign
When I was first introduced to the Tarrasque as a monster back in 2e ad&d, I was told that the only way to kill the thing was to bring it down to negative 20 hit points and then use 2 full wishes to kill it. (One to kill it and one to prevent regeneration). It was also theorized by the scholars of Faerun that the Tarrasque was a weapon of mass destruction or "doomsday weapon" created by a hyper powerful wizard in ancient times. I always liked the idea that there's a monster out there no player team could "easily" beat, no matter how much min-maxing you did.
On top of that, in order to bring it DOWN to -20 HP, you can only use spells with a level equal or higher to level eight. Meaning to hurt it, you have to use wish spells. To kill it, YOU HAVE TO USE WISH SPELLS. TO KEEP IT DEAD, YOU GOTTA USE WISH SPELLS. WHO CREATED THIS THING!
Fun fact, in 3.5 you can actually kill the Tarrasque if you’re a 3rd level wizard. If you’re using the Complete Arcane splatbook then you can do it at level 1. All you need is a controlled Allip and the unseen servant spell.
On their home world I imagine males fighting/eating each other over the normal things, females dying in child birth and taking an unusually long nap before birth and children of both genders fighting/eating each other. The 50ish years of hibernation most scholar's and sages know about would be from the singular males on each world. Males who might sleep for hundreds if not thousands of years if the urge to mate didn't awaken them. Their home world might not be as hectic as you might think.
I don't know why I was so shocked to find out the "Tarrassque" was French. It's got the most obviously french sounding name ever.
Ptff.....I should have known he was French.
Reminder that creatures have evoleved spikes to defend themselves from things that can usually eat a good portion of them *epic dragons intensifies*
When my group battled the Tarrasque, my sorcerer cast True Polymorph on his fighter ally next to him, turning him into a tarrasque. The sorcerer then ran off to hide. What resulted was a godzilla like battle between two very hard to kill monsters. It ended with my friend eating the Tarrasque.
Epic!
haha sounds awesome
Now that is badass. 😎
We all knew this day was coming and we are just now getting it. Goes to show that our dear AJ has a lot up his sleeve yet. Keep it up mate!
In my world (which is just an aduption of Spelljammer+Planescape), when ever one of the 64 worlds are destroyed the gods come together to build a new one. An unavoidable part of the planet creation process is that the waste products become an egg that will eventualy hatch into a Tarrasque and destroy the planet.
that's a great idea.
>Dragon Like
>Razor Sharp Teeth
>Turtle-like Shell
>Scorpion-like tail
>Lion-like face
MFW Bowser is a Tarasque.
now put the crown on the Tarasque
Of no
OHHHHH YEEAAAAA
@@waffielz3106 nice
i'd tip my hat but my dex is too low
I've had my players create their characters for a campaign and told them to withhold their backstories, open to any types. I then had them create a high-level character (I gave them millions of experience points and a point system for picking magic items). Some of my players created the parents as friends or spouses to the other PC parents. I then had them play as the parent character, all of them, in a wealthy town. All of them in the rich guy's (retired adventurer's) tavern. They heard rumbling. They went outside to meet a great monster rising from the earth, really powerful and confident they could defeat it... never before seen such a monster (a Tarrasque, believed to be a myth). The party gets wiped out.
I then switch to their main characters, meeting in the rebuilt version of that same tavern of that rebuilt town, sharing stories of how they lost their heroic parent to the monster. It was the only time I had them play out the tragic part of their backstory and directly interfered with character creation, but they loved it and each used that event to flesh out their characters.
Tarrasques can be used for more than just top-tier character challenge. Great video AJ Pricket!
That80sGuy1972 awesome idea
Thanks popechucky. It was the only time I had them basically role-play their tragic parental loss backstory part and it worked. I did not want to foul it up by making it a trope. I think it would have worked more than that one time, but I doubted it would have had the same magic. They added so much more, the only time they each had a big and colorful backstory for their characters of that level. I sparked personal interest in the parents from that horrible battle I assume. Maybe it was their process of creating the custom high-level character. Whatever it was, it worked.
If you make videos and do this and it works for your gamers, please share the story. The Tarrasque is a great tragety monster for it, my friend. ;)
perfect, the result of an innevitable defeat instead of a victory.
That is a wonderful idea! Playing out scenarios like that and incorporating them later on is so much fun!
Brilliant.
"Mage are you going out there to fight that thing!" "No. It would be easier just to teleport the town out of its way."
Sidenote could a high level wizard(or other such character) mentally dominate a terresque and then mind swap with it? That would be freaken awesome.
Joshua Bonesteel sadly no. It's a mindless raging gullet of endless hunger.
Since the base 5e tarrasque is so weak mechanically, I gave it back its regeneration and added a godzilla style breath weapon.
yeah that's just 'a must. 😈😄👌 maybe add some form of lighting storm cloud creation aswell.
Of course the catapults didn’t work. They should’ve used trebuchets!
I heard you can summon one of these with bad karaoke
Nice reference my dude
Dingo brought me here too.
I heard about the tarasque from her channel 😂
My party encounter a Tarrasque in a campaign one time. One of the party sacrificed themselves to stop it. They got underfoot and raised a warp marble to the underside of the foot and spoke the command word. Both the Tarrasque and the player, because they were still in contact with the warp marble, were sucked into the warp marble. The party was too low level to go plane hopping, so instead of emptying out the warp marble by placing it in a bag of holding (Thereby sending the contents of the warp marble to... I want to say limbo, but not certain. It was another plane that was highly dangerous) The party left them both in the warp marble and hide it way so no one would ever find it and release the Tarrasque.
The tarrasque cant be charmed
Saint martha laughts at the gm
I have always liked the idea that the tarrasque was created by the Gods to act as a guardian. If some horrible being or elder evil threatened to destroy the world, and nothing could stop it the Tarrasque might be awakened by the gods to deal with it. The gods of evil and chaos helped to create it on the condition that it be allowed to awaken form time to time to feed and cause destruction.
The saint rolled nat 20 animal handling
I personally think the Tarrasque has no business in any less than an epic/mythic/dragon/divine game. Its meant to be that gatekeeper where the limits of normal magic should be painfully clear.That oh you thought this was it? oh no no no no. You haven't even begun.This is where the mortal journey ends and the immortal journey of heroes begins. Or to put it another way. This thing should be munching young dragons like candy and great wyrms like a four course meal.
For this reason I made it an elder evil.
I remember you sige Monster vid, I still think loading rot grubs in specialized bolts and arrows are a good way to take out this monster. But the resulting rot grub swarm would become a huge problem in of itself. Have lots of fire ready....;). Good job, yet again. You’ve become one of my most favorite channels for my D&D needs, keep up the great work..
Tarrasque video: *image of a deathclaw*
Well you arent wrong
I watched this video while high and looking for ideas and the description of its digestion legit terrified me
Word.
One wonders how many published D&D games would have their storyline drastically changed if at a random point during the story the Terrasque suddenly awakened.
LOL.. Now I'm imagining that happening in Keep on the Borderlands. :D
“Good luck clothies” I love it 😂😂😂
So when a Tarrasque shows up the following is to be done in order
1. shit pants
2. run
3. realize that running does nothing
4. re-shit pants
5 death (most likely)
Very accurate
Get a magic carpet
Bring a bow
Win
Step 4 should be cast fly.
There's always that one murderhobo in the group who will see the Tarrasque as a challenge. The only proper response to such a person is to very quietly knife them in the back, so that they do not wake the beast.
standard. XD "what, don't look at me that way. it's not like you could've been reasoned with. we wouldn't of won & i couldn't of stopped you. what else did you expect me to do." *drow party member shrugs shoulders*
I love how a local legend of a rock in France became the most powerful feared and iconic monster of D&D
Chessenta is rules by an ancient red dragon who has a CR of 40.
All Im saying is:
make that Tarrasque half dragon. 😈
I pity the fool that messes with Mr. T
Alafanatanalaemenam says it lacks a fundamentum, though it's second gut mimics the function, and it may be a creation of the sybriex at the behest of a major power from the lower planes.. Demogorgon, praps?
So pro-tip. One of the things the Tararsque is not immune or resistant to is Acid. Easy monster to defeat with proper levels and amounts of acid based attacks and you just gotta get clever.
I’m imagining a illusionist mage with the ability to make their illusions real such as illusion terrain using the spell to contain the Tarrasque in a giant hill of Adamantium. Won’t do damage directly, but the Tarrasque will have to chew through that to moves. I’d then suggest players finding a way to summon giant acid based oozes on the creature and then casting enlarge spells on it. Catapults/trebuchets with vials of acid instead of rocks. Players with flight, dropping gallons of acid jugs on it.
Best way to defeat it, isolate and melt it.
The Tarrasque's home-world could be a crystal sphere where the surface of the land is on the inside surface of the crystal sphere itself. That would make the land area large enough that several hundred Tarrasques could exist without depopulating all other life. There was a crystal sphere like this described in the Cloakmaster series of books, but I can't think of the name of it off hand.
By far my favorite monster. Like, yeah ok, there are fuckin volcano dragons, and ancient wizards who can go toe-to-toe with literal gods but at the end of the day theres just something honestly gratifying about trying to deal with a giant, nigh unkillable lizard.
The challenge is a Tarasque fight shouldn't be "how hard do we have to hit this until it dies" it should be "where's the immovable object that can match this unstoppable force?"
Our GM decided that this was the big bad we had to prevent from awakening. And there are FOUR of them. He said they are the colors of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, red, white, black and green. And that's when I pointed out to him that those are the exact colors of power ranger that Tommy Oliver has been. He legit never saw the connection.
That's fucking funny.
Oh. So that's what the dragonzord really is...
Great vid! However there is a cult which follow the Tarrasque. They are called the reckoners. Think I read that in a Dungeon or Dragon mag... will look it up
Dragon #418.
The End Is Nigh. Followers of the Tarrasque P9-12
Go to Google Maps, or Google Earth, and type in "Chateau de Tarascon". In the grassy area just south of the castle, along the D80F roundabout, is the statue pictured at 0:25.
St. Martha would be a cool trope in D&D to reuse. A holy woman long ago once tamed the beast, and when it wakes again, the players must console it with the relics of her remains, or something.
Also, gonna start praying to St. Martha and the Tarrasque.
I first started playing AD&D back in 1991(?) and the Tarrasque seemed really cool but now that I'm older and I look back on it, it feels as if it escaped the Homebrew website and went back in time.
I think however it was made to deal with super minmaxing players that can basically do ANYTHING and kill ANYTHING and do it AMAZINGLY well, so that way the DM can say "Oh look at that, in the middle of battle after you've felled your fifteen thousandth Deathknight, a very hungry Tarrasque appears. Unfortunately despite your best efforts to defeat it, you were unable to and you get eaten. However thanks to your awesomeness and level of amazingness being so great, it's actually completely fed, so much so that it's too much for it so it returns to the earth from whence it came, full for five thousand lifetimes because of the sheer awesomeness that runs through you. Now that it's fed for many a lifetime, it has no need to feed for that long and as a result, your brave sacrifice has saved many a future generation and you're granted godhood and now you can rule over your own realm somewhere that isn't here".
My favorite bit of dnd lore actually comes from one of the Elminister books, in which the old wizard tells about his travels through the outer planes. In that he's apparently located "The elemental plane of tarrasque" where everything is made of flesh, and hundreds of tarrasques roam around constantly grazing on everything. Considering how deadly a single tarrasque is, sort of makes sense that Elminister is the only person to ever claim having seen the place.
Randal Jeffrey so..If I were to enter this land, the hundreds upon hundreds of Tarrasques that I find will nit attack me due to basically already having food?
@Kyle Dilbert ... maaayyyybeee? There isn't any lore about this whatsoever in modules or official source books, the only mention I can find is a throw-away line where Elminister is talking about his travels. He says like two sentences about what it's like, and then looks horrified when saying he will never, ever go back. It could be safe in theory? But the fact such a powerful wizard who routinely tangles with gods is terrified of the place, I'm willing to bet it's not safe at all.
So this thing is pretty much d&d Godzilla. Less of a creature and more of a force of destruction. Like a hurricane or a meteor.
Reptile Gargantuans are more like Godzilla.
Tarrasque lack a breath weapon.
Thank the gods for small favors.
Asmodeus: *FIENDISH Tarrasque*
🤦♂️
I know what triggers its awakening. The tarrasque awakens in game whenever the cat walks up on the gaming table.
LOL, so true!
Sean Sakamoto "Aww! Inspector Mittens has become Death, destroyer of worlds." 😼
So one game my friends and I were playing I rolled a Wizard and got amazing rolls for stats, including two 18s and a 17. So I had a pretty dexterous and hearty Wizard High Elf. Anyways, I had looted a bag of magic beans and was planting them all the time trying to raise an army of Treants. One day while fighting several Minotaurs in a labyrinth I started firing beans into opponents. Our DM rolled and said “I don’t feel like picking, someone name a creature.” I waited several moments for other players before slamming my hands down yelling “Tarrasque!” Everyone stares at me wide eyed as the DM rolls and just looks horrified. “10 Tarrasques burst forth from the Minotaur’s chest. Roll to dodge the ceiling coming down I guess.” The group is now in panic mode, I mean we are facing down 10 Tarasques at level 8. My Wizard was the only one to dodge out of the ceilings collapse and slipped away invisible. We ended the campaign there. My party had died but my Wizard stayed to watch the beasts overtake and destroy his world.
Legendary.
There is one thing that hurts the Tarrasque normally, and that's copious amounts of acid damage. Acid is the one damage type it has no outright immunity or resistance.
Pretty sure in 3.5 that non-magical damage can't hurt it at all. I think it needs to be by a +3 weapon or level 4 spells to even have a chance.
A further note on the Spelljammer planet of Tarrasques - something in the athmosphere is needed by them, and when removed from their homeworld, they go insane, and become the ravenous beasts we all know and are terrified by. On their homeworld, they are relatively peaceful and only dangerous if provoked.
Haven’t even watched the video and I don’t care. I’ve literally been waiting since I found this channel for this to be made!!
Love the Deckard Cain reference at the beginning!
In 7 of the 8 campaigns I've run, this beasty is part of the end. There's just something rewarding, to the player, to say they've faced one down. Win or lose. so far its been 3/4 on the win/loss ratio. Every group thought it was amazing. It truly made all the effort beforehand on my part, worth it.
9:22 makes me think of FO4's deathclaw
I always loved to use this monster as a reason why Goblinoids/Orcoids are kept in check thru raiding of their villages by civilized races or nations. The idea is that Goblins/Orcs are actually sub-races of a overall race, but are different stages of that same race's life cycle, and the Tarrasque is actually the last stage of the race that comes about after they progressed thru the other stages. In this way the civilized races see the culling of the Orc/goblin races as a method of controlling the progress of this terror of a creature developing. Though also the idea that this creature in the same vain might be a member of the goblin/orc race that their patron deity has chosen as it's favored vessel, and so thru a process is transformed into this creature via a cocoon.
Interesting.
Honestly i could also see this thing being something like a bio-weapon or Armageddon type weapon created by the gods in thier war with the primordials. Or maybe the other way around would work too. Yet this creature might work in the idea that it can sense the faith, or worship of the divine or primordials upon the world it is living upon. When that faith/worship has progressed to a specific point it awakens an rampages over the world attempting to destabilize that group's faith/worship from the population.
Though another really messed up idea would be that these creatures are actually physical vessel for some other being that either had been forcefully torn from the body leaving it physically powerful yet without the spiritual or mental power that had once inhabited it. Though what if in the past the Tarrasque had been actually more than a mindless beast an were sentient, but during/after the dawn war they had been punished/cursed with their intelligence stolen from them (maybe out of fear of what they could do.) leaving them as merely super powerful animals.
with that green skin idea maybe you could have an invasion through portals from annother prime material plane that had been overrun, where you just have a chaotic pure orcoid life filled wasteland, where tarrasques are ghe greatest influence on the shape of the landscape - where "their" the only thing that lives there anymore.
The Tarrasque would certainly humble the most haughty of adventurer.
Ah, yes, the Tarrasque. Ultimately, the major inspiration for the Death-Claws of FALLOUT.
Idea for a campaign starting level 5-10 players start in a town inside a “mountain range” as they saddle up to help disposable npc the terasque awakens and the dm reminds their players that they have horses and should run. The rest of the campaign is focused on running from/ slowing down the beast this would work with any op monster-lich-warlords
had a thought for a op homebrew monster "The Beholder Dragon" all the beholder abilities with move/fly speed of a dragon. imagine the terror your players will feel as a dragon sized beast looms above them and they feel their magic weapons become useless in their hands >:D
In my evil camping we lured a Tarasque to a very populous city so we could become gods
Ulises Casavantes how did that work out?
I always found the existence of the Tarrasque kind of amusing. In DND there are all these hyper intelligent evil beings from black dragons to death tyrants all claiming to be the greatest, and yet they are nearly powerless against this one dumb animal.
I'm pretty sure in older editions it was a beast, too, in 5e it's a titan
Given that they are mindless eaters, I would think that coming together to mate would have to result in the death of one of the tarrasques. Could be that tarrasque are gender-less, and one tarrasque eating another could be how they become impregnated, which is why the primordials only brought one to each world, so they couldn't reproduce. This way, the young will be born from the strongest of the prior generation. Since the remaining parent is still a mindless eating beast, a period of hibernation would be necessary, allowing the pups to be born without the threat of being eaten by their own mother. After birth, the young would immediately start fighting and eating each other, like tiger sharks in the womb, till only one to three remained. That keeps the population at a certain level, growing extremely slowly if it can even grow at all.
It could be that the feeding frenzy the tarrasque goes into upon waking is really it seeking out another of its kind out of an instinctual desire to reproduce, followed by a period of hibernation so it can birth pups. Since tarrasque not on their native world would never have the chance to devour another of their kind, they keep waking up knowing they failed and immediately go out to eat again. Maybe on their home world, they are less the constant voracious eaters, devouring everything in their path, and more like crocodiles on ours, really only eating things that cross their path, being lazy and subdued the rest of the time, until they're overcome by the desire to breed that is. Then, their hunger/"desire to breed" overcomes them, sending them into a feeding rage. That could also be why primordials only ever brought one to each world, so that each tarrasque would never be able to go from breeding blitz mode to non-breeding lazy super-predator mode.
Another natural comparison is the raccoon. Female raccoons are generally mellow, but get quite aggressive when they go into heat. They don't leave that "heat" until they breed and get pregnant.
Excellent reasoning!
Tarrasque: **ROAR!!!**
Clay Golem: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember this thing being the end game boss in a 90's Dark Sun PC game. He was savage in that.
Looks like something that evolved on planet with long-long droughts, and huge feast during rains.
It'd be cool to have a low level story arch in which the group has to find a saint and bring her to subdue the thing basically completing the original story. They'd have no way to kill it otherwise.
I would use this as a reset on civilization build in by elder gods or primordials, attracted by lvl 9 spells and such powerful effects. Any civilization powerful to challenge the gods gets wiped out.
The 3.5 Manual of the Planes mentions Belierin (3rd layer of Elysium) as one possible resting place of a Tarrasque. "Belierin is the prison of some deadly creature or creatures. Some tales say the prisoner of Belierin is a powerful monster along the lines of a tarrasque or monster of legend." It wouldn't be that crazy for a Neutral Good character to be summoned (maybe by their deity) to Elysium to help the otherwise peaceful inhabitants calm the creature down (maybe with the help of some angels/guardinals).
9:30 that is a death claw from fallout, still terrifying, but much smaller.
"Stay awhile, and listen!" Deckard Pickett? Or AJ Cain... AJ is horadrim confirmed.
Stay awhile, I'm pissing. Drunkard Cain.
Or the Mage.. I need a banana.. (I need more mana) Good times! good times!
In one of the Dragon magazines ( 3.0 or 3.5 run) there was a super fun prestige class called waker of the beast. It was for those deranged individuals and cultists who sought to find and wake the Tarrasque. Your type changed to abberation? as you took on features of your obsession. You always knew what direction it was in. When you found the big daddy you had a 5 or 10% chance of waking it up early. Your reward was being the first one eaten. One interesting thing was that your chance to wake it up increased if you could find other Wakers. It had some neat flavor and came at the game from a different angle, but I'm not sure it would really be playable in most groups. Anyway cultists of the Tarrasque and whatnot. Cheers and thanks for the lore.
Crazy cultitst! Thanks Lavender Dusk :)
Didn't know about the Spelljammer Prime Material Plane origin of Tarrasques. In my game, Mother Of Tarrasques was imprisoned in a bubble in Agathion, the 4th layer of Pandemonium. Like an alien hive mother, she laid eggs within her massive, slowly growing ( she's got to eat) bubble prison. Whichever race imprisoned her there, likely the rilmani, watch. When a Tarrasque is actually slain, they teleport to Mother's Cavern for a Tarrasque egg for that planet. Even a giant engine of destruction serves the balance of the cosmos
One of my favorite D&D monsters. I plan to use it in my next Pathfinder session.
I hate the sizes that they use and always have in D&D. It said the tarrasque is 50 ft tall which is actually shorter than most pine trees. Just like a dragon is only 1200 ft long from those to tell. I don't know maybe I'm alone in this.
Anyone notice in alot of these images the terrasque looks like 1998 american Godzilla
I always treated the Tarrasque as a creature created by the planet itself as a defense against the intrusion of the gods and the damage they caused to the natural order. Kinda like the Omega Weapons in Final Fantasy 7. I dont like the way they nerfed him in 5E, that takes away a lot from the mystique.
You mean like Godzilla?
The Tarrasque: Godzilla for D&D
Offspring of Godzilla and Gamera.
I`m sure i heard talk of an Abyssal Tarrasque.
There are Tarrasques used in the war games and training of the infernal armies of the Nine Hells, where they source them from is diverse, and yeah, there may be some from worlds that have been swallowed up and corrupted by the Abyss.
If I ever put one of these in my game I would give it some kind of aura of annihilation that would extend 20 ft away from it in all directions. Creatures and objects that pass into the aura take damage and the Tarrasque can extend the aura up to 80 ft in any direction. Stone and metal crack and turn to dust, water evaporates and magic that intersects the aura can backfire or is nullified.
(And I'd make it resistant to damage from ranged sources)
Can we safely say that it's a DND version of Godzilla?
Do one on centuars plz! Loved the vid.
I've been debating over whether to have my BBEG try to fight a tarrasque or even try to integrate one with itself; it's still in R&D right now.
WOOO! (I saw that first picture not 10 minutes ago looking up paleo creatures when the thought of a giant turtle struck me)
Another great video on an iconic monster, AJ. Can't wait until my players get strong enough to rumble with one of these big bads! Thanks a bunch!
Great! Tell your players I say "hi" Common Rattata :)
damn, Bro ..... you missed a golden oppretunity to use a Godzilla theme for your intro for this wee beasty.
As for a in game use of a Tarrasque. lol, a long war was coming to a close. and I knew we were not going to win. So, I thought even if we lose, we will win, and found where this little beast was slumbering on Toril. I did not disturb it, I moved the earth from around it, but left it in a earthy egg. but magicly tagged it so I knew where it was. lol, 3 months of heavy gaming and the end was apon us, and we were losing your asses. So my Dm asked me what I was doing that round, and I smiled and said "I cant Teleaport Object" ...... he asked ok what object. I replyed, the egg. the egg from 200 feet in the sky. time to wake it up............. he had the look of egg, what egg. ........... till I said I was dropping into the battlefield.
he just closed the books and said ok that will do. game is over , and your all dead.
I cackled like Baba Yaga!
What would happen if the Tarrasque were somehow transported into The Abyss or The Nine Hells?
That side loses the blood war
Tarrasques are unleashed on Avernus as a training exercise.
That would certainly be an interesting way to assault a demon lord like Demogorgon.
@@AJPickett That makes sense, and keep the fiendish ones in reserve. Also explains why Devils have them and Demons really dont. I mean, than again, do the demonic hordes of the abyss *need* Tarrasques? Something tells me if Demogorgon fought one, he would win. Still, maybe its just that no one has yet encountered what the demon lords of the abyss have warped a Tarrasque into, yet...
But aye, Asmo has a few as pets. The use of them as training tools, makes a lot of sense. Haha. XD
Tiamat or Yeenoghu would eat it.
i saw tarrasque and stopped everything im doing to watch this :)
I heard that the point of the Tarrasque was to allow the DM the opportunity to destroy the PCs if they w=got to powerful. Always a bigger fish if you will.
Robert Scardina in my 3.5 game it will be used as 1 of 3 ways the pc can end a war between good and evil that they help start (they don't know they doing it yet) the other 2 options I won't spoil. But this option means that afterwards they also have to deal with big T itself
Shame you can't summon it to fight monsters like Tiamat. Now THAT's a monster movie I'd watch!
You could always wake it up
Of course, that might have some unwanted results
Aparrently, as the Tarrasque is reptilian, it would be subject to Tiamat's controls, being a demi-god.
@@riffgroove That would be the king of nasty surprises.
lol you're using a deathclaw from fallout as a terraques XD made my day
I was debating on doing something humourous with one. Make it act like a good, but disobedient dog lol.
The way the stomachs work implies they can, and should, rampage indiscriminately. That they may tear up the surrounding area but do not specifically target settlements. They just don't care if one is before them. Just a different kind of food. A trail of destruction where once we're verdant woods or thriving towns should be the calling card of such a being. Could be possible to have one devour all the landscape but spare a town simply because it is too full to fit it in. Of course this would still be terrible for even a city as having the surrounding environment devastated would be crippling. So putting down a Tarrasque would be priority one for any settlement even if the beast is not showing any signs of heading their way. The complete stripping of life and resources would be an incredible blow.
If you kill this make a shield named sorcerers bane since it reflects spells
or use flail snail shell
Lewis Rush true but the flail snail shell doesn't give dragons PTSD flash backs.
Aww he's cute. I think I'll name him, "Mr. Chompy." :3
I love the pics you shared of potential Tarrasque ideas. It does sound like the new additions have killed the concept themselves tho. No regeneration?!? 😳 I gave mine Godzilla breath that even dragons were afraid of. There was an old DnD comic that a powerful evil wizard from the Cult of Tiamat needed one head of each metallic dragon to summon the Tarrasque for a "Ragnarok" type event. It was ok.
Did you really try to pass off otochi from pacific rim and a death claw from fallout as a tarrasque?
Do I gather all artwork that is a suitable match for the subject matter, particularly media that borrows heavily from the greatest resource of fantasy lore and artwork which predates all of the sources from film, games and such? Yes I do. :)
AJ Pickett fair enough
YES!! I have been waiting for this video!! Thank you!
I wished for a tame slave tarrasque that does not ever have to eat or drink using a wishing vase and I got it and was so happy to destroy anything and everything in the campaign
i take it, it was an unlimited wish spell attached to that wish vase?
EEVEEwolf1 no max charges
Beat one of these once don't want to ever try it again
It looks like Anguirus from the Godzilla movies.
Hahah. Godzilla would be killed by it.
This is why you don’t buy real estate in D&D.
Skyships. 😎
Deathclaw.
When I was first introduced to the Tarrasque as a monster back in 2e ad&d, I was told that the only way to kill the thing was to bring it down to negative 20 hit points and then use 2 full wishes to kill it. (One to kill it and one to prevent regeneration). It was also theorized by the scholars of Faerun that the Tarrasque was a weapon of mass destruction or "doomsday weapon" created by a hyper powerful wizard in ancient times. I always liked the idea that there's a monster out there no player team could "easily" beat, no matter how much min-maxing you did.
On top of that, in order to bring it DOWN to -20 HP, you can only use spells with a level equal or higher to level eight.
Meaning to hurt it, you have to use wish spells. To kill it, YOU HAVE TO USE WISH SPELLS. TO KEEP IT DEAD, YOU GOTTA USE WISH SPELLS. WHO CREATED THIS THING!
This is why we don’t buy real estate in the D&D universe: location, location, Tarrasque!
Fun fact, in 3.5 you can actually kill the Tarrasque if you’re a 3rd level wizard. If you’re using the Complete Arcane splatbook then you can do it at level 1. All you need is a controlled Allip and the unseen servant spell.
What's an Allip?
say what? you can fuck up a Tarrasque with two spells?!
The doom bringer unless you bait it into a gate that leads to juiblux's lair
Good call.
On their home world I imagine males fighting/eating each other over the normal things, females dying in child birth and taking an unusually long nap before birth and children of both genders fighting/eating each other. The 50ish years of hibernation most scholar's and sages know about would be from the singular males on each world. Males who might sleep for hundreds if not thousands of years if the urge to mate didn't awaken them.
Their home world might not be as hectic as you might think.
Me: look at godzila, look at tarrasque wait and i sey let them fight pleas let them fight
This made me so happy. Good vid AJ
The Tarrasque actually has a little known weakness which is acid
Basically, d&d godzilla :)
more like d&d shin go-jirra...
Can you do the Sigil and the lady of pain sometime soon please?
So a little bit challenging for low level characters then..
Anything below level 18 should probably just run...
Or cast good berries in a trail of crumbs and lead it to eat a sphere of annihilation.
I swear at 9:30 that's a death claw
it is
gosh what gave it away? was it the word "deathclaw" written on it?
skudzer1985 sarcasm 100%