Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[IcyTea31]

You're going to have to explain that in detail. The Tarrasque can just grab the zealot in its mouth, reduce it to 0 HP in about 2 or 3 turns while forcing disadvantage on its every attack, then swallow it whole and wait for the rest of the minute until the rage ends and it dies.

[Kagus]

Except that you can start a new rage while raging, and a level 20 barbarian has unlimited rages.

[wierd]

So, the "So ANGRY! I HACK YOU ON INSIDE, STUPID DEAD MEAT HORROR! **I CUT WAY OUT!! WRAAAAR!!*" trope is totally applicable here?

[Kagus]

Yep. He's blinded and restrained, so is suffering one or two levels of disadvantage on attacks, but he's not technically prevented from making attacks.

Tarrasque is immune to nonmagical weapons though, which means you're only dealing the zealot's bonus 1d6+10 radiant/necrotic damage per turn on a successful hit, which means you're gonna be in there for a while unless you managed to sneak a magic dagger in there with you.

[IcyTea31]

Here's the loophole to that:

"Intrigued by this seemingly-infinite source of delicious blood, but annoyed by your pointy stick, the Tarrasque decides to subdue you for further study. It plinks you with its massive claw. As it reduces you to 0 hit points, it decides to knock you out. As you fall unconscious, your rage ends just before the Tarrasque strikes another curious claw into you..."

While you're raging, having 0 hit points doesn't knock you unconscious.

If damage reduces you to 0 hit points and fails to kill you, you fall unconscious.
--
When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. -- The creature falls unconscious and is stable.

The former is a state-based effect, the latter is a move by an actor. The real question is whether or not the Tarrasque is intelligent enough and not too rage-filled to consider dealing a knockout.

[wierd]

OR, it one-shot kills in the initial bite phase... (putting said barbarian into negative HP in one strike, causing unconsiousness and then death by bleed out upon ingestion)

[Kagus]

Well, sure, but a level 20 barbarian with natural constitution of 16 and no racial/feat benefits would have an average of (12 + (7x19) + (5x20)) 245 hitpoints.

The Tarrasque's bite deals 4d12+10, so even on a maxed crit they wouldn't be able to deal nearly enough damage to instakill the barb.


Unless you meant just reducing them to "below zero, but not instakill" hitpoints? Which I don't think is a thing. Might be wrong on that, I haven't been fiddling with 5e much. So long as the barbarian is raging beforehand (which, RAW, they should technically be able to spend all day every day in a state of permanent rage), there's not much outside of funny special effects (like a certain level 1 spell) that can put them down.

loophole

The loophole to that loophole is to have a friendly deal the "killing" blow on you, reducing you to 0 hitpoints before the Tarrasque can. Because this is a sensible system.


The really fun part? Even if the Tarrasque DOES manage to annihilate the barbarian in some way, your level 20 cleric/druid/whatever can cast True Resurrection and rebuild them from scratch without having to pay the 25,000GP diamond dust expense.

[IcyTea31]

There's no negative HP in 5e, and bleedout is done via death saves, which the zealot ability also protects against. To perform a one-hit-kill, you need to deal the character's remaining health plus their maximum health in a single attack, otherwise they just drop to 0. Which is unlikely for a 20th level barbarian with 12+19d12+20*Con health, with a maximum Con bonus of 7. That's around 275 HP on average. The Tarrasque's most powerful attack can deal 116 damage on a critical hit with maxed dice, so it's not possible (the multiattack can deal more than that, but it must be a single attack to count for massive damage)

[pikachu17]

Here's the loophole to that:

"Intrigued by this seemingly-infinite source of delicious blood, but annoyed by your pointy stick, the Tarrasque decides to subdue you for further study. It plinks you with its massive claw. As it reduces you to 0 hit points, it decides to knock you out. As you fall unconscious, your rage ends just before the Tarrasque strikes another curious claw into you..."

While you're raging, having 0 hit points doesn't knock you unconscious.

If damage reduces you to 0 hit points and fails to kill you, you fall unconscious.
--
When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. -- The creature falls unconscious and is stable.

The former is a state-based effect, the latter is a move by an actor. The real question is whether or not the Tarrasque is intelligent enough and not too rage-filled to consider dealing a knockout.

I am pretty sure the Tarrasque would be too rage-filled for that. Also, I don't see how that is a loop hole. Both of those are dependent on having 0 hit points being able to knock you unconscious, which they can't do to the zealot. This just seems like munchinistic examination of the wording of rules, but in the other direction.

[wierd]

You know, you make his "weapon" be some enchanted dentures (because barbarian, and totally cliche bad hygiene + being old at lv20+, and being successful enough to afford a "Real quality elven set" could TOTALLY be a thing here), and this has Green Text Pages written all over it.

[pikachu17]

Is that a reference to Discworld? Also what are Green Text Pages?

[Mephisto]

I was going to ask if the goal was to annoy your god enough that they just provide a free wish to get rid of the tarrasque but I now see that the 5e rasque doesn't have that little clause. This sucks.

[wierd]

Green Text as in, the "I told a story" type pages seen on Reddit and pals.  It commonly gets used to tell interesting yarns from tabletop RPGs, and this would be a very interesting one indeed.


Example:
https://imgur.com/gallery/eJCr7

[Kagus]

Greentexts are specifically a 4chan thing, the subreddit mostly just reposts ones from 4chan or follows the format defined by them.

It's a source of no small animosity; named accounts reposting someone else's anonymous telling of a story for the sake of points and social kudos. But I can't really complain, I tend to prefer keeping one or two degrees of separation between myself and 4chan anyways...

[Cruxador]

Green Text as in, the "I told a story" type pages seen on Reddit and pals.  It commonly gets used to tell interesting yarns from tabletop RPGs, and this would be a very interesting one indeed.


Example:
https://imgur.com/gallery/eJCr7

In addition to what Kagus said, most of those stories aren't even in a greentext format.