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.

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.

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!

>Dragon Like >Razor Sharp Teeth >Turtle-like Shell >Scorpion-like tail >Lion-like face MFW Bowser is a Tarasque.

"Mage are you going out there to fight that thing!" "No. It would be easier just to teleport the town out of its way."

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.

Tarrasque video: *image of a deathclaw* Well you arent wrong

I heard you can summon one of these with bad karaoke

“Good luck clothies” I love it 😂😂😂

Since the base 5e tarrasque is so weak mechanically, I gave it back its regeneration and added a godzilla style breath weapon.

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.

Of course the catapults didn’t work. They should’ve used trebuchets!

I love how a local legend of a rock in France became the most powerful feared and iconic monster of D&D

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.

I know what triggers its awakening. The tarrasque awakens in game whenever the cat walks up on the gaming table.

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'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!

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

The tarrasque cant be charmed Saint martha laughts at the gm

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..

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)

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.

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 watched this video while high and looking for ideas and the description of its digestion legit terrified me

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".

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.

The Tarrasque would certainly humble the most haughty of adventurer.

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.

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.

Tarrasque: **ROAR!!!** Clay Golem: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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.

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.

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?"

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!!

In my evil camping we lured a Tarasque to a very populous city so we could become gods

Ah, yes, the Tarrasque. Ultimately, the major inspiration for the Death-Claws of FALLOUT.

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

9:22 makes me think of FO4's deathclaw

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.

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.

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.

i saw tarrasque and stopped everything im doing to watch this :)

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.

The Tarrasque: Godzilla for D&D

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.

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.

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.

Looks like something that evolved on planet with long-long droughts, and huge feast during rains.

Love the Deckard Cain reference at the beginning!

I remember this thing being the end game boss in a 90's Dark Sun PC game. He was savage in that.

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

YES!! I have been waiting for this video!! Thank you!

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.

Can we safely say that it's a DND version of Godzilla?

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

Deathclaw.

Do one on centuars plz! Loved the vid.

One of my favorite D&D monsters. I plan to use it in my next Pathfinder session.

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.

Anyone notice in alot of these images the terrasque looks like 1998 american Godzilla

This is why you don’t buy real estate in D&D.

The Tarrasque actually has a little known weakness which is acid

This made me so happy. Good vid AJ

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've been waiting for this one!!🤘🤘🤘

If you kill this make a shield named sorcerers bane since it reflects spells

What would happen if the Tarrasque were somehow transported into The Abyss or The Nine Hells?

I was debating on doing something humourous with one. Make it act like a good, but disobedient dog lol.

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!

"Stay awhile, and listen!" Deckard Pickett? Or AJ Cain... AJ is horadrim confirmed.

Can you do the Sigil and the lady of pain sometime soon please?

Hey bud, just found ur channel. Already a fan :) well done. Thanks

lol you're using a deathclaw from fallout as a terraques XD made my day

It can consume all. But can it see why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?

This is why we don’t buy real estate in the D&D universe: location, location, Tarrasque!

SCP 682- the hard to destroy reptile.

WOOO! (I saw that first picture not 10 minutes ago looking up paleo creatures when the thought of a giant turtle struck me)

Did you really try to pass off otochi from pacific rim and a death claw from fallout as a tarrasque?

How to kill a Tarrasque? Axe-Poison!

Shame you can't summon it to fight monsters like Tiamat. Now THAT's a monster movie I'd watch!

So this is where the DotA item heart of tarrasque came from.

Beat one of these once don't want to ever try it again

Aww he's cute. I think I'll name him, "Mr. Chompy." :3

The doom bringer unless you bait it into a gate that leads to juiblux's lair

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.

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.

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.

I want to run a high level campaign centred on the existence of the Tarrasque

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.

Having a Tarrasque animal companion would be awesome ;]

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.

Me: look at godzila, look at tarrasque wait and i sey let them fight pleas let them fight

I plan to create a lizardfolk that worship the tarrasque as some kind of enlightenment that can be reached by consuming enough flesh and acting only on their instinct.

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.

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.

Basically, d&d godzilla :)

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).

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