Tarrasque Killed By Level 1 Creature

I am not sure why the Tarrasque  is regarded as such a formidable foe. As far as I can tell, it can be killed by level 1 characters. Yes, very specific level one characters but still level 1 characters. Take an Aarakocra or Winged Tiefling spell caster with the spells Toll The Dead and Expeditious Retreat. The Tarrasque is toast.

The Tarrasque is formidable in melee but it has no range capabilities except for its Frightful Presence. When hit by the frightful presence you keep making the save each turn until you make it and then you are immune for 24 hours. Tarrasque has Legendary Resistance and Magic Resistance but you have a cantip that you can just keep using until the end of time. Eventually it will use up its legendary resistance and fail the saves at some point. Yes, it will take a long time but you will slowly whittle it down. In a 16 hour period you have 9600 turns. Assuming that you are doing 1D12 damage (Toll the Dead on a hurt creature) then the average damage is 7. The Tarrasque has 676 HP so you need to affect it about 97 times. That means you need a little over 1% of your attacks to succeed.

If we ignore Legendary Resistance for a moment (because it gets only 3 of those per day) then against a 1st level DC of 13, the Tarrasque has a 12/20 change of failure (since it has a +0 WIS modifier). That is 60% chance of failure. However, it is rolling with advantage due to Magical Resistance so the failure rate becomes about 36%. That is well above the 1.01% we needed to kill the Tarrasque before the end of the day.

Now, lets look at Frightful Presence. It makes you afraid. It is an ability that it needs to use. That means if the character starts its turn outside its 120' Frightful Presence, casts Expeditious Retreat then the creature can move 90 feet (Movement 30', Dash Action 30', Bonus Action Dash 30'). That gets it with 60' of the Tarrasque to use Toll the Dead. Now if it uses Frightful Presence then I will be afraid of it. However, Frightened no longer makes you run away. You just can't get closer and you have disadvantage on attacks. Disadvantage on attacks is not a problem since we are using a save spell. The "cannot come closer" could be an issue if the Tarrasque moves away. However, you get to save each turn and once you do you are immune for 24 hours. The DC is 17 so if a character has say a +2 Wisdom modifier they have about a 6/20 chance of success. That is a 30% chance. So it should not take too long to make the save and become immune for 24 hours. Technically you can do the same without the Expeditious Retreat spell, it just means you need to succeed on the save before you can start dealing damage.

It should be noted that the Tarrasque has Reflective Carapace. This is why we chose a spell like Toll the Dead. Not only does it do D12 of damage after the target is hurt but it is not magic missile, a line spell, or a spell that requires a ranged attack roll. So this cantrip is unaffected by this ability.

Yes, I realize that this solution requires a flying creature which most GMs agree is a broken feature of the rules and the same solution can't really be done with the fly spell because the spell doesn't last long enough. However, looking at magic items, the Broom of Flying is a Uncommon Wondrous item and does not have a limit on the flying time. While such tables are only guidelines, it is suggested that a 5th level character should have around one common and one uncommon magic item. So with the right magic item, a non-flying creature should be able to do this around levels 5 to 10.

It should also be noted that this is using a single character for all of these calculations. This is intentional because a party is not likely to have multiple flying creature spell casters at level 1. However, if you defer the encounter to later levels where the party has had time to pick up magic items then it opens up the possibility of a lot more party members being able to help out. For example, with a Flying Broom and a magic bow, archers can be very useful. A longbow has a 150' short range which allows the archer to stay out of the Frightful Presence range and a longbow (say with a +4 modifier by 5th level) would do about 5+4 = 9 points damage on average (which is more than Toll the Dead). The Tarrasque is immune to piercing from non-magical attacks but it doesn't even have resistance to magic piercing attacks.

Am I missing something or is this just a case of setting up the right party combination to make a very deadly foe much less so. I totally agree that if you fight a Tarrasque in melee then you are going to have a very bad day but as long as you can keep out of it melee range, you are good to kill it.

Originally, I though that you might be able to do this from the ground by having more movement than the Tarrasque but I think that would not work. A normal character can move 3 times their speed (Movement, Action, and Bonus Action) if they have a method to use Bonus action for movement. The Tarrasque can move and dash but it can also move 3 more times using Legendary Actions. So you can't outrun a Tarrasque. This would also be how the Tarrasque can survive. If it flees the party then the party will not be able to keep up. Even if the party casts some spells like Haste they will only allow increased speed for a short duration whereas the Tarrasque can move 5 times its speed every turn.

This observation is not new. Probably that’s why the game developers gave the 24 tarrasque an attack with a 150’ range. 

The Reverse Gravity plan is a stretch too: it's a 1 minute duration, so unless the party could already kill it at range in a typical number of turns, it doesn't change the paradigm. And that's setting aside the fact that there's a DEX save to avoid the effect.

I did overlook one thing the WIS save is a +9. It has a WIS +0 modifier but a WIS +9 save. So the success of landing the Toll the Dead (taking into account Magic Resistance) is about 2.25%. That is a lot worse and the character will need to grind a lot longer but it is still well above the 1.01% needed to take down the Tarrasque before the end of the day.

I totally agree with the comments made. Most likely the Tarrasque would just run way. Using 3 legendary actions each turn it can run 5 times its 40' speed (Action, Movement, 3 Legendary Movements) so it can outpace most characters. Plus it can sustain that speed whereas characters that boost their speed with magic can't sustain it.

And, yes, the likely objective would be something other that straight forward killing it...this post was mostly about the survivability of low level characters facing a Tarrasque.

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Always attack bbeg with sone moderate saving throw spells to try and burn those legendary resistances.

And hope your DM just auto uses LRs instead of saving them for critical saves. I've seen several official articles that specifically point out that LRs should be reserved for save or suck effects.

Which spells would those be, exactly? It's immune to paralyzed and charmed, so Hold Monster and most other Enchantment or Illusion incapacitators are out. A +10 CON save with Magic Resistance means you're not likely to make Flesh to Stone stick, and Banishment is unlikely to do anything more than pause it for the duration. And especially with almost 700 HP, damage doesn't rate an LR until after there's already been the knock-down-drag-out fight this is supposed to circumvent.

You don't regard the Tarrasque as a formidable foe because you've never had one thrown at your party at the end of an adventuring day.  Not a party you built to fight a Tarrasque, the party you have, with the resources you have remaining.

Regarding Sleep and Hideous Laughter (2024 presumably) spells with saves cast by a level 1 PC—if we assume a +5 into their spellcasting stat, that's a DC 15 for spell saves (5 + 2 + 8). Both are Wisdom saves which the Tarrasque has a +9 to saves. That means they're rolling between 10 and 29 vs DC 15. They also have Magic Resistance, granting them advantage which is statistically equivalent to +3.4. So we're looking at the Tarrasque rolling between 13 and 32 (rounding that .4 down) on average vs a DC 15. This means it can only fail 10% of the time. If we assume a level 1 wizard, (or any other class with max spell slots) that's two level 2 spell slots available, meaning even a party of 5 has a maximum of 10 spell slots available vs a 1/10 chance of a spell getting through.

In theory based on expectation values 1 spell should get through, but the Tarrasque has 6 legendary resistances, meaning the odds of a party of level 1 aarakocra wizards getting a Sleep or Hideous Laughter in on a Tarrasque are very slim. And even if they do, the problem then becomes the fact that it's a party of 5 wizards who are probably reduced to pinging the Tarrasque with cantrips, which have a 1/6 chance of being pinged back at the caster. 

Oh, and any damage ends Sleep and THL is just one round. Overall it doesn't look great at a strategy.

Notes:

1. Obviously there might be ways to mitigate magic resistance and thus reduce that saving throw amount to 10-29, making it a 25% chance of failing a save. This would nudge the expectation value to 1 in every 4 spells getting through meaning the Tarrasque would have to burn 2.5 LRs to block them all.
2. Expectation values are just description of large numbers of events, not any given specific event. They don't factor context such as if there was some way to burn all 6 LRs first and negate Magic Resistance. Also the Tarrasque could just be rolling 1s that day
3. White rooms suck, the Tarrasque is not a white room monster

Quote from SunIsGettingRealLow96589 >>

Quote from Davyd >>

Regarding Sleep and Hideous Laughter (2024 presumably) spells with saves cast by a level 1 PC—if we assume a +5 into their spellcasting stat, 

 

That wasnt the assumption. The assumption is a high level party wants low cost features that will burn through legendary resistances before the party starts using its high-cost features. 

 
This thread is about a level 1 party being able to kill a Tarrasque. It is literally in the title of the thread.  It is a long-debated fact of the 2014 Tarrasque, that became such a meme Wizards intentionally fixed the lack of range weapon for the 2024 version.

Obviously a high level party can kill the Tarrasque, and obviously they have the tools to do so.  That’s how game design works - high level creatures fight high level parties and one of them wins.

Someone wrote something similar on Discourse, and all I could do is laugh. Especially when they said they flew out of range of his breath weapon and used a long bow, with some type of ammo, to keep shooting it until it eventually died.  Then it was obvious they were describing the 2014 version. 

The 2024 doesn't have any of the weaknesses of the  previous version. And while you are way out of range with some long bow, that would run out of ammo, unless you have replenishable magical ammo, lol.  Even then the monster just charges on to the town, eat the farmland, the farm animals,  destroys the town and burrows back into the ground. Long before you can deal a fatal blown.

Building characters for specifically known monsters makes it easier to defeat them. The problem is when you don't know it's the boss. In 2024 most of those 300 hp of damage optimizing classes, no longer function and would likely be negated anyway. So in a regular adventure if  you somehow awaken a Tarrasque, you can either flee or die valiantly. 😅

I think the Tarrasque mystique is based on earlier edition versions of the monster.  Originally, killing it involved reducing it to a huge negative HP number and using a Wish to kill it.  Now the Tarrasque is easier to kill while the characters are harder to kill.

Honestly, the Tarrasque is merely the most extreme example of a broader problem: attack ranges are too long. If one creature has a range of 300' and another has a range of 150', and the situation is one where it's possible to exploit that range, the longer range just wins. This usually isn't a problem inside of dungeons because you're often limited by the range of darkvision, and even if you aren't line of sight rarely exceeds 100', but it means outdoor encounters are frequently dysfunctional.

I once showed that a Tarrasque could be killed by the Sprite familiar of a Warlock, assuming the familiar has access to an unlimited number of needle/arrows. The last time I used a Tarrasque, I gave it a breath weapon with a several hundred foot range (as the attack was outdoors and the characters had access to a skyship). I also put a storm overhead making it risky to fly too high.

unlimited number of needle/arrows. 

Is this a spherical sprite in a vacuum?  😂

It's notable that the 3e tarrasque, despite having insane raw stats, is only CR 20, presumably because they recognized that people will just... not get into melee with it.

Power scaling in 3rd Edition was very different from 5E.  A 3rd Edition party at 20th level had higher AC, higher attack bonuses, more damage output, and considerably more spells than a 20th level 5th Edition party would.  Magic items could go up to +5 instead of +3, there were no caps on ability score maximums, high mental stats gave bonus spell slots, the base spell slot charts gave more spells per day at every level...  A CR 20 monster in 3rd Edition was ''expected'' to be something that was such a threat to a 15th level party that they'd get an automatic level up just from surviving the encounter, with no chance of actually winning.  In 5th Edition it's possible if difficult for a prepared party to beat the Tarrasque.