Fellow Paizonians, I need your help in crafting my current campaign.
The party is very warrior-centric, which is fine, and I am typically throwing higher-than-normal CR encounters at them. However, I would like to run this campaign all the way to level 20.
Anyway, the background: one of my players (using the Titan Mauler archetype) has in his background a family-relic weapon called Bloodreaver, which has been lost to his family but is rumoured to bring greatness to his line.
I am thinking about letting the sword be found, but is in the possession of a Terrasque (we are setting the campaign in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings).
Now, for the setup, I am thinking of this: the party is currently en route to Tien Xia to help out one of the party members (a samurai). Somewhere along the line, the existence of Bloodreaver is confirmed, as is its location, but obviously the party will be too low-level to handle a Terrasque until End Game.
My idea: Have the party fight 4 Imperial Dragons and amongst the hoard of each one of these will be a single Orb of Dragonkind. They can then set on a quest to Dominate 4 dragons and use them in their battle against the Terrasque.
My biggest worry is that the dragon hoards will give the party too much money at once and will unbalance the game.
So, my questions:
1. Given an APL of 20, plus a couple of Dominated dragons, can the party even have a shot at fighting a Terrasque? Remember, they are a warrior-oriented party and will probably NOT have a level-appropriate caster.
2. Does this type of quest sound even remotely exciting? I know that each battle will be VERY epic and am planning on making custom terrain for each of the dragon fights (Imperial as well as Chromatic, and Terrasque).
Can tarrasques use swords? Maybe find a CR 20-ish monster type that wields a sword?
Or maybe CR 16, and then give the PC a few levels to actually enjoy wielding the sword?
You can customize the items in the hoards for the PCs. Or make some of the treasure ungainly, like a 20 foot wide crown of gold with 10 foot wide corridors.
The real answer you're looking for is can a Tarrasque beat a single Imperial Dragon.
If we're talking about a Great Wyrm Sky Dragon here, the answer is "No". The tarrasque will do an average of about 18 damage a round, while the Imperial dragon will churn out an average of 85ish damage (30% chance of reflection). Even with regeneration and difference in starting health, the Tarrasque will lose to a single dragon CR'd 4 below it. Oh, and if it played smart and used wind wall and flyby's, it would take a grand total of 0 damage the entire fight.
The tarrasque vs multiple dragons, as long as the dragon's breath type works on the tarrasque is a woefully uneventful curbstomped.
The tarrasque is a monster very over CRed, while dragon's are under CR'd.
Thanks!
The real answer you're looking for is can a Tarrasque beat a single Imperial Dragon.
If we're talking about a Great Wyrm Sky Dragon here, the answer is "No". The tarrasque will do an average of about 18 damage a round, while the Imperial dragon will churn out an average of 85ish damage (30% chance of reflection). Even with regeneration and difference in starting health, the Tarrasque will lose to a single dragon CR'd 4 below it. Oh, and if it played smart and used wind wall and flyby's, it would take a grand total of 0 damage the entire fight.
The tarrasque vs multiple dragons, as long as the dragon's breath type works on the tarrasque is a woefully uneventful curbstomped.
The tarrasque is a monster very over CRed, while dragon's are under CR'd.
Please let me know how you came up with this. Where did you get that the Tarasque would only be doing 18pts of damage a round? The dragons AC is only 39, so most attacks are going to hit. That’s over 100 pts of damage per round for a full attack.
The dragon on the other hand has to contend with the T’s DR. The greaty wyrm doesn't have epic in it's DR so I'd believe that the dragon has to punch throught the T's DR.
I don’t see the dragon doing flyby attacks, either. That would be 1 attack, which would be reduced by DR, and the T would regenerate that damage by the time the dragon wheeled around for the next attack. In the meantime, the T readies his action, jumps, and grapples. T grapples at +57, vs great wyrms CMD of 58.
Isn’t the T also immune to the dragon’s breath weapons regardless of energy type? The tarrasque's scales deflect cones, lines, rays, and magic missile spells, rendering the tarrasque immune to such effects.
The dragon's breath weapon is a cone, so the T is immune.
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I would let your player get the sword at 16 so he can enjoy using it for 4 levels.
Also, i wouldnt use a Terrasque ´trivally´ as a CR encounter. I am not really a big fan of them myself but many like the oooh and ohhhh of the big wrecking ball. So i would build up to a major event about to happen, something that awakens / stirs the T into action, and what is the goal of this event?
Maybe it is a warrior/clan leader that wants to conqeror the whole area, but he needs to wipe out all of the kingdoms / clans in the area first so he can just plant his flag with some forces making him king. This wouldnt be an option for him otherwise as he just doesnt have a big enough army to do it, and once he starts attacking kingdoms others would ally against him. So solution, he has found a ritual/artifact that will allow him to summon and control the Terrasque for x hours a day, so he destroys the entire forces of a kingdom every other day or few days.
No one can stop this thing, and no one knows why it is happening. And please, dont make the BBEG a wizard, everyone assumes wizards are the only ones that can be bad guys. So have the group find these things out, around lvl 16 have the party be in the first kingdom to get axed by the T, but design the encounter as something for the players to witness the destruction, the death this thing causes, the wrath of it's wake, and give the players a taste of how powerful it is, that they just cant stop it. They need 'items' like legendary axe, samurai family armor/weapon ext. Customize this T, give it a breath weapon that is worse than any great wyrm dragon, fire as it just incinerates mass areas in a blaze but the 'special' item per character that is legendary items give immunity to the breath weapon. Now they have a way of fighting it.
Last fight is up to you, have the players fight the T first, then they take the final battle to the 'found out' warlord who is responsible for this. Let the players already have created a name for themselves in the area, so the titan mauler may show his family's new prominence ext and then they take the fight to this warlord and his forces.
Great opportunity to have some good CR's of guard squads as well as having waves of troops always showing up every so many rounds and at least once or twice during the big encounters like captain of the guard group, queen in waiting's evil band, ext, then they fight the warlord. Again waves of generic troops keep showing up every 3rd round or something so the players feel the pressure.
Then aftermath, the players can establish their legends as great family/clan in the area, claim some new land or divide up this guys lands as well as his new lands as there is no one alive to return them to the old kingdom ext. This will give the players a feel of completion as well as some lasting impression and i bet they will all be very estatic about your final campaign.
So this is my suggestion for an idea if you like it.
Cheers
Yeah, you can make the McGuffin sword epic, so it can fight the Tarrasque.
The real answer you're looking for is can a Tarrasque beat a single Imperial Dragon.
If we're talking about a Great Wyrm Sky Dragon here, the answer is "No". The tarrasque will do an average of about 18 damage a round, while the Imperial dragon will churn out an average of 85ish damage (30% chance of reflection). Even with regeneration and difference in starting health, the Tarrasque will lose to a single dragon CR'd 4 below it. Oh, and if it played smart and used wind wall and flyby's, it would take a grand total of 0 damage the entire fight.
The tarrasque vs multiple dragons, as long as the dragon's breath type works on the tarrasque is a woefully uneventful curbstomped.
The tarrasque is a monster very over CRed, while dragon's are under CR'd.
Please let me know how you came up with this. Where did you get that the Tarasque would only be doing 18pts of damage a round? The dragons AC is only 39, so most attacks are going to hit. That’s over 100 pts of damage per round for a full attack.
The dragon on the other hand has to contend with the T’s DR. The greaty wyrm doesn't have epic in it's DR so I'd believe that the dragon has to punch throught the T's DR.
I don’t see the dragon doing flyby attacks, either. That would be 1 attack, which would be reduced by DR, and the T would regenerate that damage by the time the dragon wheeled around for the next attack. In the meantime, the T readies his action, jumps, and grapples. T grapples at +57, vs great wyrms CMD of 58.
Isn’t the T also immune to the dragon’s breath weapons regardless of energy type? The tarrasque's scales deflect cones, lines, rays, and magic missile spells, rendering the tarrasque immune to such effects.
The dragon's breath weapon is a cone, so the T is immune.
Ah, my bad, I thought the Tarrasque's reflection chance was how often the ability triggered as a whole, not how only just how often it was reflected, and that it was always immune.
Regardless, the Tarrasque is still a horribly over CR'd monster.
A good fighter type character at level 20 should be churning out hundreds of damage a round vs a AC 40 DR 15 monster, and it looks like this party has at least two.
Let's take a Naginata Samurai (Ronin) who, with his party, comes up to the tarrasque. For the purposes of this discussion, we'll say he isn't first targetted when the tarrasque charges, they let him hang back, so, he makes a spirited charge with his naginata for double damage after challenging. He also decides to spend his 1/day free 20 and full power attack.
The Tarrasque gets a maximum of 4 AoO vs the Samurai, who now has at least DR 3 against him (because he should totally be wearing adamantium for this fight). Even with landing all four attacks, he's not gonna take out the Samurai or his horse, he isn't going to be able to use grab, and if he tries to trip then he provokes an AoO from everyone in reach.
Then let's take that Naginata Samurai's damage, because, on this charge he's almost certainly going to confirm that crit (Samurai bonuses to confirm crit and charges are like, +10?, if he's taken the right feats, and he gets a reroll if necessary). It's gonna be (4.5 (base wep avg) + 18 (two handed power attack) +4 (wep specialization and greater) + 9 (bare minimum two handed strength assumption) +20 (challenge) + 3 (bare minimum enhancement bonus)) * 8 - 15.. Or, the tarrasque has just suffered more than 4/5ths of it's health in a single attack, from one member of the level 20 party. If the rest of the part is able to do another 100 or so damage, they win.
If the Naginata Samurai gets buffed first, or can in general muster up another 10ish or so damage than my conservative assumptions above, god rest the poor tarrasque's soul. One shotted by a character so many levels below it's CR.
The tarrasque has very impressive stats, but it effectively runs up to the party and melees them as it's only option (because it will hardcore lose ranged battles. A single wind wall will entirely negate its ranged ability). Level 20 well built melee characters that know what they're up against will tear the Tarrasque a new one. Literally, if the tarrasque makes the mistake of trying to eat a melee character with swallow whole.
If a party has 2-3 well built martial characters and at least one good buffer, I don't expect the tarrasque to last longer than a single round.
Well if you can kill it as fast as Salvator says, then in your 'customizing' i would just double to triple the hp and double the DR. If you need to give it even more as to drag the fight out. Make the fight so it isnt something trivial, as really a T should be an epic fight, not a 1-2 round laugh. So you as gm have the ability to make this thing into a truly epic battle / encounter.
On, the other hand, if his party is composed of players who haven't optimized, they could get crushed. It's hard for us to give you balance help without knowing what the players have.
It's like trying to bet on one of two sides when one of the sides is currently no more than a name. You have no point of reference to make a judgment on.
Summary, with only knowing how strong the tarasque is, we can't make a judgment*.
*well, we could make a judgment, and it might even be right, but only by luck.
Thanks for the input thus far; it's been most helpful. NONE of my players are power gamers; thus, they will be sub-to-moderately optimized.
I have decided against using a Terrasque and will be using Fafnheir from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings supplement. Fluff-wise, this makes sense, as it is very likely that Fafnheir would have Bloodreaver in its horde.
Fafnheir is CR 24.
Regardless, the Tarrasque is still a horribly over CR'd monster.
Sorry, I should have mentioned that I wasn't necessarily arguing this point. I just wasn't sure if I missed something, or was misreading the rules.
Regardless, the Tarrasque is still a horribly over CR'd monster.Sorry, I should have mentioned that I wasn't necessarily arguing this point. I just wasn't sure if I missed something, or was misreading the rules in regards to the great wyrm vs. the big T.