[D&D] Defeating the Tarrasque

[AbusePuppy]

As an extreme example of how monster's power can change in your game with altering the power of the magic-using classes, a Tarrasque is literally unbeatable; there is no way to kill it.


Regeneration (Ex): No form of attack deals lethal damage to the tarrasque. The tarrasque regenerates even if it fails a saving throw against a disintegrate (http://srd.pbemnexus.com/spellsDtoE.html#disintegrate) spell or a death effect. If the tarrasque fails its save against a spell or effect that would kill it instantly (such as those mentioned above), the spell or effect instead deals nonlethal damage equal to the creature’s full normal hit points +10 (or 868 hp). The tarrasque is immune to effects that produce incurable or bleeding wounds, such as mummy rot, a sword with the wounding special ability, or a clay golem’s cursed wound ability. The tarrasque can be slain only by raising its nonlethal damage total to its full normal hit points +10 (or 868 hit points) and using a wish (http://srd.pbemnexus.com/spellsTtoZ.html#wish) or miracle (http://srd.pbemnexus.com/spellsMtoO.html#miracle) spell to keep it dead.
If the tarrasque loses a limb or body part, the lost portion regrows in 1d6 minutes (the detached piece dies and decays normally). The creature can reattach the severed member instantly by holding it to the stump.

BRR Edit: Right, I've moved this discussion to its own thread and cut a few comments which aren't directly relevant. Also, AbusePuppy, you're a sick monster for wasting gin by adding it to coke.
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[AbusePuppy]

By the way, drowning can't kill a tarresque. Neither can anything else except a Wish/Miracle, though I would assume Reality Bend could as well. You can be as clever as you want but it's still got almost a thousand HP, unstoppable regeneration and the strength to break a pure adamantium barrier in a few turns. Maybe with three or six dozen permanant Walls of Force...
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[Linklegacy77]

Wrong, the tarrasque can most definately be drowned, if you are intelligent enough to keep him down. See the rules on drowning, as it doesn't do any damage, it drops his hit points to 0, next round it drops to -1, and the next round he drowns. All you have to do is keep him down until he fails a save, and then another 2 turns while he dies. The tarrasque is not the big bad unstoppable monster people used to think it is. If you knock the tarrasque out, put his head in a pool of water, and put a very large weight over his head with minor creation, psionic. (Many combos to do that)

[BigRedRod]

Drowing the tarrasque is clearly rules abuse though. Nevertheless finding exciting ways to kill it is still a fun game.

[Linklegacy77]

Drowing the tarrasque is clearly rules abuse though. Nevertheless finding exciting ways to kill it is still a fun game.

How so? I always thought wishing away it's regeneration was kind of abusive, as it is not one of the things wish is deliberately described to be able to do. As a result, it depends on the DM as to whether or not that would be allowed, and requires you to pay an xp cost. I personally would try to do it any other way possible before using something like wish.

[BigRedRod]

D&D has always stated that the way to kill the Tarrasque is via killing it and then casting wish. It stated this and has made a big song and dance about how it is immune to everything else. Going around that due to poor wording of drowning is rules abuse.

[Linklegacy77]

No, it isn't poor wording of Drowning rules, not at all. He's got water filling his lungs, his natural regeneration rate wouldn't help against that, would it? Being able to heal wounds wouldn't help him if he can't breathe, you are basically suffocating him with water. How exactly, is that abusive, and how do the rules not make sense?

[akiko]

I think BRR thinks its cheap. I know I kinda do. But then again if I had to face it I would drown that sucker too if that's the means I had available to me.

[BigRedRod]

How so? I always thought wishing away it's regeneration was kind of abusive, as it is not one of the things wish is deliberately described to be able to do. As a result, it depends on the DM as to whether or not that would be allowed, and requires you to pay an xp cost. I personally would try to do it any other way possible before using something like wish.
The entry for the Tarrasque specifically states it requires a wish in order to be killed after it has been dealt damage equal to its HP. So your stance that doing this is abusive is incorrect, it is in fact the direct intention of the game designer that wish be used to stop the Tarrasque returning to life.

The intention of the rules is that this is a big evil monster to base a game around. It cannot be killed by conventional means, it requires using the absurd 9th level magic. This is what the people who originally created the monster intended, to sidestep this via a rules technicality based on the wording of how drowning and regeneration work in 3e is rules abuse. This is plain as day to me, I don't really believe that anybody can really think it is anything else.

[nightinverse]

I like this thread.

First, anybody who has ever played D&D at an Epic level will tell you that the Tarrasque is rather... passe. That said, Epic D&D campaigns are very few and far between, particularly good ones. Hard as hell to run.

I'm between link and BRR on this one. On the one hand, BRR is completely on about the intent of the monster. You aren't supposed to kill it with water - you're supposed to use powerful mortal magics and considerable effort. However, doing it the link way would also require absurd amounts of effort.

If the Tarrasque can't breathe underwater, you need to get it into the water. That would be hard, logically. Then there is the sheer difficulty of keeping it down... hell, the alternative to the standard method would use at least a Wish, if not a group of them.

Thus, this might be rules abuse if the DM doesn't play the Tarrasque to its strengths. Otherwise, it's a more inventive method that takes more effort.

[Benicus]

Ahh doesn't matter to me but if you want to be rule lawyering about it yes I do think that the absurd 9th level of magic must be used to kill the sucka

/2 cents

[AbusePuppy]

Ah, didn't realize drowning was a save/die thing now. Used to deal subdual damage. Doesn't matter, though; the tarresque specifically notes that things that would outright kill it instead deal damage equal to its max HP + 10.

(Also, you can't Wish to remove its regeneration- well, you can, in the same way you can Wish for anything else you want, but no guarantee you'll get it. The Wish is just used to "finalize" the kill when it's already at -10 HP. Humorously enough, back in 2Ed you could keep pushing it below -10, so if you couldn't find a high enough level spellcaster you could leave your magic sword +5 with the local guard and just have them keep hacking away, day and night, until you came back with a grand archwizard to finish the job.)

Benicus:
The point is that it can't be stopped without a wish/miracle. It's otherwise a somewhat weak monster, with virtually no special abilities and unimpressive damage (for a 20th level encounter, anyways).
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[Linklegacy77]

Of course it can be stopped without a wish/miracle. That's just the way YOU KILL IT. If you drown it, water kills it, lol. And fine, if you drown it, it takes full nonlethal damage equal to 10+max hp. Seems fine to me, as if you keep in underwater next round too, it has 20+2*max hp -40 nonlethal damage on it, and then it just keeps taking it, because it is still alive and still drowning. So it might not be dead, but it is permanently unconscious.

[AbusePuppy]

You can't go below -10 HP, no matter how much damage you suffer.

Oops.
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"Look, right, I have to organize my matches collection and my petrol collection. I might as well do them both at once."
"Ryan has a sickness, Shelly. Instead of keeping his booze mostly inside the fridge, he keeps it mostly inside his body."

[treehouse]

I'm gonna go with 'if you can get it in the water long enough to drown it, you can keep it in the water indefinitely until someone with a wish or miracle comes along to finish the job'. Drowning brings you to -10 hit points, so that's what it would keep a tarrasque at. It'd all be nonlethal damage, of course. Or a nonlethal drowning, if you will.

I'd love to see how someone could keep a tarrasque underwater like that, though. Purely by their high Strength score, they have a great Swim modifier.

[akiko]

If he gets to -10 wouldn't he be unconscious? IDHTBIFOM but does it have die hard where it can continue acting as normal while dying?

[Zeff]

Could one substitute a vacuum for the water in this scenerio?

[Mercutio]

I'd like to point out that Tarrasques are stupid. Getting it into a deep water filled pit wouldn't be that hard. Creating the deep water filled pit would be the hard part. I'd also rule that you'd still have to cast Wish/Miracle over the drowned Tarrasque in order to keep it dead. But since there is only one Tarrasque, and it doesn't really die (it just hibernates for long periods of time), I'd say killing it for once and all is impossible unless you're a deity.

[BigRedRod]

Stabbing it lots and then casting wish kills it for good. The hibernation thing is just its activity cycle.

[Doomsmile]

In 3.0, you could simply knock it over with a railgun effect, but Wizards (wisely) got rid of "passwall at will" as an intelegent item ability. However, the "at will" is no longer necceary if we assume a 20th level character.

A 20th level sorcerer can burrow can cast 30 5th-level or higher spells. If all but one of these spell slots is used to cast passwall into a mountainside, you can get 735 feet into said cliff face. The sorcerer places a suitable object, let's say an admantine spike for flavor reasons, at the end of the tunnel, then dismiss all but the end passwall. Sucker the tarrasque towards said tunnel. Once the dumb beast comes in front of it, throw up a resilant sphere or something similar with your remaining 5+ spell slot, and dismiss the last of your passwalls. The object is ejected (notice the word) out the far exit, i.e. the way it came in. It has to cover 735 feet in six seconds, which makes the speed neccesary to be ejected (not shunted) out about 367 meters per second. Mach 1 is 330 meters per second. The mach 1 hunk of admantine slag paired with a sonic boom should bring the beastie down.

Get your other mage-friend to either wish him dead or teleport him out to deep sea.

This is combo is a little questionable, to say the least, but is sure is an amusing concept that, in theory, works equally well against villiges and small armires.

[LynMars]

Aren't the drowning rules for D&D long and stupid though? I've only glanced at them, but the guys I group with disdain them and suffocation, etc rules constantly. Also, stupid or not, you gotta keep the huge thing underwater long enough...And most air-breathing creatures have a tendency to try to get back to where they can breathe again instinctively, smarts have nothing to do with it. As Treehouse pointed out earlier, keeping it there is enough of a chore, may as well do it the old-fashioned way.

[Mercutio]

Stabbing it lots and then casting wish kills it for good. The hibernation thing is just its activity cycle.Ah ha. Then I have my new house rule on that. I've always played that you can't kill it. Guess that will be what I do if I ever DM it (which is highly unlikely because I can think of dozens of better EL20 encounters.)

[BigRedRod]

Has anybody actually used the Tarrasque? Or considered using it?

[akiko]

I played it and put it back to sleep. This is so deja vu. We just had this conversation on threbb a few months back.

[BigRedRod]

I remember having the conversation about drowning it on the 3bb back before 3.5 existed :)

[Linklegacy77]

I have used it, it was dropped in 3 rounds. Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker went to town, followed by the psion's reality revision. Went pretty fast.

[nightinverse]

Doomsmile, the Passwall trick never worked. Shunting out objects does not accelerate an object in the direction it moves, it merely displaces it. I'm the only person from that group, aside from THC, that seems to keep the impossibility of that use of the spell in mind. I have half a mind to get a letter confirming that Passwall does not generate force and thus does not accelerate displaced objects.

I used it twice. Once to test my level 19 test party for a campaign I never finished, and once on level 16/17 players. The first time it was defeated handily, with one character death. The second the party lost four of six, but killed it after a dozen rounds or so.

[zachol]

I have never actually been in a game with the tarrasque.


Though, I have sometimes been in 'rp games' where I've thought 'huh. what would happen if we suddenly did encounter the tarrasque, with a rogue, a bard and a diviner? run?'

"Alright guys. Last week you all made it inside the castle, and Darrick encountered the princess. He was about to begin the sweet talking when we ended, so let's pick it up there."
She looks at you, slightly smiling, an eyebrow raised. 'So... this is when you try to stop me from screaming.'"
"'Oh yeah. In fact...'"
"'Wait, what's that?'"
"'What?' I look out the window."
"You see.... the tarrasque."
"What?"
"The tarrasque. It seems to be having a great time destroying the city."
"Bill?"
"Yes?"
"You suck."

[Doomsmile]

NI: The trick is that passwall doesn't shunt the object- the wording on the SRD says "ejected," not "shunted." The word "shunt" appears exactly zero times in the passwall spell description.

Oh, and I'm just glad the Tarrasque doesn't nip off limbs anymore. That seems like something that would really suck.

[AbusePuppy]

Er... Doom, what you just described was a high-level mage using ALL his spells to create one bullet. I'm not really sure I'd consider that a very impressive feat and I'm almost positive that a single bullet, even one larger than normal, won't kill a tarresque.

I suppose you could use something larger (up to the size of your Passwall) but why bother? Why not just drop six or eleven Maximized Empowered Admixtured Meteor Swarms on the person? Or, in the case of something immune to magic like the tarresque, why not just move a few thousand tons of rock above its head? Takes the same amount of effort and much more effective. Plus, you don't need a nearby mountain to do it with. If you wanna be really silly then make your Passwalls into a 700+ ft pit, drop the tarresque in and then release them- tarresque slingshot!
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"That looks painful."
"Well, a powerful man deserves a powerful wedgie."

[Doomsmile]

Because Spell Resistance aplies to meteor swarms, but not to a sonic booms. The point of this rail cannon isn't to shoot the target, it's to evicerate it with sonic force.
That, and I abhore direct damage spells once a mage gets beyond, say, 10th level- it's too bland, cliche, etc. Not to mention that it isn't terribly creatives.
Besides, the Tarrasque wouldn't fit in an 8-foot wide pit...
...though now that you mention it, the rail cannon could be built into the ground. Then it would score a guanteed hit if it walked over the trap. Yay!

[zachol]

That would make a mildly fun trap in any case.


Wonder if one could make that (as a one time, yet 'permanent' trap)?

[Linklegacy77]

Build a large horizontal magical portal leading to the moon on the ground. Then lure the tarrasque to it, and make him walk over it and fall in. Disguise it of course, and a nystul's magic aura should be cast just in case. If the tarrasque falls in, goodbye!

[nightinverse]

You're arguing on the basis of word choice that has absolutely no effect on the statement.

Doomsmile, the word eject still does not imply or direct force which is the only thing which allows for this theoretical railgun of magical loopholes to work. There is no force. It's displacement without acceleration. A mathematical impossibility of the most sickeningly uncomfortable form, much like that of Teleport. My point remains valid, the whole concept was erroneous and absurd from the first moment I heard it and particularly from a game mechanics angle.

Creativity is not tantamount to absurdity, even in D&D.

[Doomsmile]

But I like being a source of absurdity...
And "eject" sounds like a word with force behind it to me. It might not to you, but in that case, we may have to agree to disagree.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go to my room and cry.

[nightinverse]

Oh, it's not personal, and sarcasm is really bad in text.

If I really must though, I will get a letter on it. I mean, honestly. It's always been a cool gimmick though, but I think you should all devise some new spell-play, I mean, creative use of spells slowed down horribly when that idea came up - and it depends upon unwritten data to work.

[LeadPal]

Ah, that plan is ridiculously convoluted. Use a first level warrior instead. Give him a longbow, and have him fire at the Tarrasque while standing 1000 feet away. The arrow now has to travel 1000 feet in 6 seconds (since the attack deals damage in the same round as when it was fired), even faster than your admantine spike. Using your logic, the sonic boom will kill his arse dead, whether or not the 1d8 damage arrow itself hits (not likely at a -20 range penalty).

This is why science should never be used to justify anything in D&D, ever.

[Doomsmile]

Curses! Thwarted by rande incremednts!

Oh well. You could always hit Tarrasque with an iron body spell, then teleport him into the caldera of an active volcano.

[nightinverse]

Of course, the 1000 foot shot doesn't work because the arrow falls short, somewhere between 140 and 320 feet.

[akiko]

Why? Since a bow can go 10 range increments and IIRC the composite longbow has an increment of 110' how would it fall short?

[nightinverse]

Because missing doesn't imply that it actually reaches the intended range. Generally I've seen people miss with bows not because they don't have the target dead on, but because they can't get the trajectory and pull correct.

I mean, you don't honestly think that every ranged slingstone you ever slung that missed whizzed past the fleeing thief. No, most of them either dropped short or hit obstacles.

[akiko]

I just thought you meant that there was some mechanical limitation, not that you are likely to miss at that range. I simply wanted to point out that I see no such limitation.

[nightinverse]

No, given a natural twenty, the arrow might hit. However - I must stipulate that as it must be shot at an elevated angle and cannot be direct fire due to the mechanics of archery, there wouldn't really be a sonic boom. The force of the shot would be reduced as it rose to the apex of the flight path and then fell with gravity to hit.

[LeadPal]

Uh, the point is to kill it with the sonic boom, which means that the arrow hardly needs to be anywhere near dead-on. Besides, you could easily make him a 1st level wizard with true strike; the emphasis isn't on his build, but on the fact that he's first level.

EDIT: It's still moving at ridiculous speed, though, and with that logic only goes faster as it nears the Tarrasque, resulting in a good downwards boom. Besides, indirect fire technically only exists for arrow volleys; otherwise it's always direct fire, no matter how stupid that sounds. Remember, the other point of this is that it's a retarded way to kill it.

EDIT 2: Even if you use the optional missing rules, there's still an equal chance that the arrow actually goes too far over the creature, rather than falling short. So he could still take some decent damage there. Again, retarded faux-logic.

[Doomsmile]

Not all sonic booms are lethal and face-flaying. A high-powered rifle, I have been told, creates a tiny sonic boom when it fires, yet this boom doesn't flay anything. When your projectile's head-on dimentions are 5 feet by 8 feet, though, that would displace enough air to hurt someone.

[nightinverse]

The point I'm making is that given how bows work, there would be no sonic boom even given a natural twenty. No fire with a bow is ever direct beyond say... 120 feet, there is always a trajectory because you need to compensate for gravity. There is also always a change in speed, it accelerates downward with gravity while moving with a upward velocity on the way to the apex, travels an immeasurably small distance with no vertical velocity, and then becomes subject to downward velocity generated by downward acceleration. Component vectors of force and all. At best you could apply falling rules to the object, though given the size of our target you wouldn't have much damage to tag on.

I'm simply saying that this way to "slay" it also doesn't work. Once again, it might if the DM wasn't paying attention.

[LeadPal]

Good point, although I've never heard of rifles making booms. To make a significant effect, you probably would need to be dead-on, and likely moving at an even faster speed. Thus, we might need human wizards with point blank shot and far shot, for greater speed and distance, and true strike to make sure the smallish boom makes maximum impact. I don't particularly feel like calculating what kind of force you'd get, but I'm sure it would be organ crushing, at least.

Whatever, my point is that it's retarded. ;)

Also, although my knowledge of sonic booms is hardly extensive, as I understand it, to create a sonic boom you actually need acceleration to cause a build-up of pressure to release upon breaking Mach 1. The trajectory shouldn't hurt much, if at all. Otherwise, why couldn't jets just plan curved trajectories, instead of having to be carefully designed to not collapse upon passing Mach 1?

That's even if you accept that there is a trajectory, since D&D's rules are really screwed up, which is what allows this to work in theory anyways.

[nightinverse]

There must be a trajectory, as they are using bows.

The trajectory affects acceleration and final velocity both of which are crucial to creating the sonic boom pressure.

Here, let me use a graph. It's not to scale, or angled right, I'm just explaining vectors.

A is the beginning point. B is a middle point. C is the apex of the path. D is the Tarrasque, for sake of making the graph look a little more believable, its head.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y51/neddiedwarf/ORP/Graph.png

At A we have an initial force vector of X magnitude going along a line of Y degrees elevation. This can been reduced to two component vectors, one going Left at L1 value, the other going Up at U1. At B, L1 remains unaffected. However, the gravitational force, for simplicity, G, has begun to affect the upward velocity by competiting with U1 - giving us U2 as our new vertical force vector.

At the apex, C, G has reduced the original Upward force to zero and thus reduced U3 to 0. The horizontal vector, still of the L1 value, remains the same. Finally, at D, G has generated a D4 component vector of downward force - in conjunction with L1 forming a Final force vector. This vector is actually of lesser magnitude than the initial force vector, and thus the velocity is nothing approaching Mach 1.

Oh, and actually the velocity would be lower if I had counted air resistance long the path which would have dampened all initial force vectors over time, reducing L1 while probably causing the apex to occur sooner.

[Xaden]

Well, if an arrow was shot 1100 ft. in a straight line (which we know they aren't) and it traveled that distance in 6 seconds (one round, i.e. the minimum for an arrow to hit in the same round it was fired) it would need to travel at 183.3 ft./sec. Now provided the couple of websites I found were correct in their numbers, they found arrows to fly at about 220 ft/sec, which sounds about right for D&D (since the arrow actually has to arch and therefore travel a greater distance than 1000 feet in 6 seconds (since it's not traveling in a straight line)). Now things get a little weirder with Far Shot because then the arrow can go 1,650 feet in 6 seconds, and then you get an arrow going at least 275 ft./sec. Maybe a little fast (since these were hunting websites and therefore their bows were probably really nice using the latest in our technology which probably can't be duplicated in most midevil fantasy worlds) but close enough.

Now to give you a better idea of how fast this is, a bullet can travel at speeds between 500 ft./sec. and 5000 ft./sec. (depending upon the bullet and the gun etc. etc. etc.). Now the speed of sound is apporximated at about 1000 ft./sec. which is why many guns are VERY loud, the bullets are infact breaking the sound barrier (and some by a very large amount).

So in conclusion:
D&D arrow (composite longbow): 183.3 ft./sec.
D&D arrow (far shot): 275 ft./sec.
Real arrow: 220 ft./sec.
Real Bullet: 500-5000 ft./sec.
Sound Barrier: 1000 ft./sec.

Of course, if you say an arrow travels only 3 seconds (guaranteeing it's arrival in the same round) then the arrow is traveling at the speed of the slower bullets (more around 366.6 ft./sec. to 550 ft./sec.). Just to load you up with some (internet) physics.

[LeadPal]

Why does the board eat my posts?


There must be a trajectory, as they are using bows.We're in magical D&D land. Nothing makes sense here; that's the whole principal on which this technique is based. I'm not saying this should work, and certainly not that it makes sense, but only trying to point out the absurdity of the situation.

It doesn't matter anyways, because there's a problem with your explanation. You're forgetting that the average value of L1 must remain constant, no matter what U1 happens to be, so as to get the arrow 1000 feet horizontally in 6 seconds. Since said value happens to be in excess of Mach 1, any increase in U1 can only, at best, increase the total velocity of the arrow.

Unless the given air resistance is so great that it causes the final L1 to be less than Mach 1, it'll still work, trajectory or not. I honestly don't know if the air resistance could do that, though.

Xaden: if what you say is true, then I've been operating on some very, very wrong numbers. Hmm, need to look things up with more regularity.

[Xaden]

I think what I'm saying is true. I'm fairly certain of my numbers for D&D arrows, the math there isn't too complex (1100 ft./6 sec. = 183.3 ft./sec.), it's just all those other numbers, real arrows, real bullets, sound barrier. I just picked those up off the internet and as we know, internet information is only as realiable as the ones who posted it (and since it's very hard to say who posted it and more importantly how reliable they are...), but yeah, I think that stuph's about right.

[nightinverse]

Which is why the arrow falls short on all the missing rolls that comprise 95% of attempts. The other 5% are superhuman, and actually go the distance despite natural forces.

Not to mention they need to rewrite rules on passing four range increments.

[LeadPal]

What are you addressing, nightin? I can't figure out a context in which that last statement makes sense.

It isn't necessarily true that the 1000 foot shot has to be at the absolute optimal arc for distance. Theoretically it could be a high (or low) arc adjusted for wind speed, as any archer worth his base attack bonus would. Besides, we could just increase the available distance to the archer, say with Far Shot; that way, the archer actually must use an arc that is less than optimal to land on target. This bypasses any arguments about the sheer luck involved.

And that's only if you consider hitting the optimal arc superhuman--especially in a world where Tarrasques run around.

I guess it's moot at this point, though, since I haven't been able to find anything contradicting Xaden's numbers (yet), which make my idea impossible at 1st level due to my expected speed being insufficient, even with liberties taken. Now, on the other hand, if we factored sonic boom into the damage a Hulking Hurler can deal... :evil:

[Xaden]

Just to give you some more numbers, Turkish archers have shot arrows at least 874 yards (according to this one website I found), that's 2,622 feet and it is believed that the shot may have exceeded 950 yards (2,850 feet). I assume this discrepency may come from how they measure arrow flight distances. They don't actually measure from where the archerer shot to where the arrow landed (for what reason, I don't know) but instead from a deviation from a straight line, it's weird, but what it ammounts to is that flight distances you find for arrows are probably going to be shorter than actually shot. I did not make up any of these numbers and I did find them on a website: http://www.student.utwente.nl/~sagi/artikel/turkish/. You can go there to determine the validity of these numbers foryourself if you like.

But I think it goes to show, that if people are shooting arrows over 2,500 feet, then it's safe to say that an arrow can go 1,650 feet as they can with a composite longbow with the far shot feat. In fact, 1,650 feet is at least 1,000 feet short of how far an arrow can actually be shot, so I'd say that these distances are far from super-human. Arrows can fly far apparently (provided these websites aren't lying to me).

Here's another website and looking at these numbers around 1,000 feet seems about right. Some shots are a little shorter than that, some a good bit greater. 1,100 feet to 1,650 feet are good distances for arrows.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:RC35o5of-4EJ:www.usarchery.org/files/05_flight_champ_results.pdf+arrow+flight+records&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=7&ie=UTF-8

[Linklegacy77]

I'm an archer, and with a well-built longbow, I can fire over 1000 feet without too much difficulty, as long as I'm at full draw. The problem is doing it accurately, and I do have to arc, but I'm sure I don't get the optimum arc. Medieval archers typically fired at 300-400 yards.

[zachol]

I think the point of the sonic boom arrow was the fact that the arrow theoretically goes 1000 or whatever feet in six seconds - in the round.

It's not that surprising an arrow can be shot that far, but question is how long does it take to go that distance?

[Xaden]

D&D arrow (composite longbow): 183.3 ft./sec.
D&D arrow (far shot): 275 ft./sec.
Real arrow: 220 ft./sec.
Real Bullet: 500-5000 ft./sec.
Sound Barrier: 1000 ft./sec.


As I stated here, an arrow traveling 1,100 feet in 6 seconds is going 183.3 ft./sec. which is slower than arrows in real life can be shot at. Assuming it takes a D&D arrow 6 seconds to reach it's not traveling at any unrealistic speed. Now if you say it's traveling that distance in 3 seconds, then the arrows are traveling a little fast, but still at most half the speed of sound. You would have to say that the arrow travels it's entire distance in 1 second or less for it to break the sound barrier in D&D.

[zachol]

Ha ha, clearly I was way confused.

Nevermind that earlier post!



Edit: Wait, so is the point 'the sonic boom idea doesn't even make sense using science' or somesuch thing?

[nightinverse]

Yes, that was the point all along, particularly when I clarified that as the arrow proceeded to its destination it could not be in a direct line and thus would not generate enough pressure - which has all become irrelevant due to the required velocity to cause a Sonic Boom anyway.

The arrow falling short is simply how you would miss with all of your non-20 rolls. It wouldn't go the distance, it wouldn't even reach the speed that we know doesn't cause a sonic boom. It would miss, probably by multiple hundreds of feet, almost all the time.

[Xaden]

Yes, assuming that you're not assuming almost instantaneous travel of an arrow then the sonic boom thing is basically impossible with "D&D physics" compaired to real physics. A D&D arrow cannot create a sonic boom for it does not even break the sound barrier, even with far shot and a composite longbow. Even with a heavy crossbow and far shot you are still not reaching the sound barrier. Sonic booms with D&D weapons are basically impossible, unless you had some sort of magic that significantly increased the range increment of a weapon (and I'm talking like quintupling its range increment or more). Now wouldn't that be phun!?

[nightinverse]

Note that D&D bows apparently suck compared to modern ones, but are far superior to medieval ones.

[Linklegacy77]

Now, with the epic feat distant shot, which lets you fire an arrow at any distance within sight....

You can blow up the planet! Aim the at the most distant star, and fire. Watch the recoil go as the arrow moves much faster than the speed of light.

[Xaden]

There you go! Now we're thinking! Eat that Einstein! D&D:1 Physics:0 :fun:

[LeadPal]

Wait, so is the point 'the sonic boom idea doesn't even make sense using science' or somesuch thing?Sort of. I was trying to prove that the original passwall railgun idea was stupid by using a far simpler idea. Unfortunately in doing so I made the assumption that the principle worked in the first place. :x

Yes, that was the point all along, particularly when I clarified that as the arrow proceeded to its destination it could not be in a direct line and thus would not generate enough pressure - which has all become irrelevant due to the required velocity to cause a Sonic Boom anyway.Perhaps I'm just dense, but I still can't see how this "direct line" business was at all relevant to begin with. As far as I can tell, it makes, at worst, no difference.

[nightinverse]

The sonic boom would not follow a direct line, so in the case of a miss would not affect the Tarrasque as the arrow would direct its pressure elsewhere when falling short. And the trajectory would increase the interference with the bolt as well as the true distance traveled along the curve, thus *ahem* increasing velocity at all points... and the point has been lost.

[BigRedRod]

Perhaps I'm just dense, but I still can't see how this "direct line" business was at all relevant to begin with. As far as I can tell, it makes, at worst, no difference. Increasing the distance travelled within a fixed time period increases the velocity.

Still, given that Xaden has already said 1100ft in six seconds isn't nearly the sound barrier, I'm not going to bother working out the max velocity although it'll occur at release (the second maximum will be at the point of collision), as the increase wouldn't be nearly enough at any point to break the sound barrier and produce a sonic boom. Mechanics is a girl's subject anyhow.

[nightinverse]

Oh, bloody hell, I reversed it. Yes, increasing it does increase the velocity. The issue of course is that I would count the distance of the curve as part of the range increments and thus you would never even be able to target the Tarrasque from that distance. And you would still fire short.

Remember kids, brush up on your physics before using it. Whoever taught you was probably wrong, and you're too senile to remember anyway.

[AbusePuppy]

The issue of course is that I would count the distance of the curve as part of the range increments and thus you would never even be able to target the Tarrasque from that distance.

...

So in order to fire further you have to arc your shot... which increases the range increment? Am I the only one who sees this as being something of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" choice?

[BigRedRod]

...

So in order to fire further you have to arc your shot... which increases the range increment? Am I the only one who sees this as being something of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" choice? Using firing arc lengths in standard ranged combat, rather than direct distance, is just outright stupid and is neither in the lettering or the spirit of the rules. I'm not against making fun of the rules by trying to make sonic booms with a level one archer but trying to include arc lengths is just... stupid. I actually can't think of another word for it.

[Darken]

Bottomline is that Tarrasque is a sorry excuse for CR 20. It's dumb and it can't fly, that already spelled doom for any attempt as a fair challenge against a party of level 20 characters, or even lower. There are so many ways of killing him it's not even funny.

Have a flying archer slowly poke it to death with decent enough bow and arrow.

Take something heavy with Telekenesis or whatever and drop it on the big T. Falling damage is capped at 20d6 for the falling object/creature, but the impact damage is uncapped. Feel free to do a few thousand d6 damage here.

Pump up caster level check and Planeshift it somewhere random and he's stuck.

Same idea as above, but use Flesh to Stone, Polymorph Any Object to pebble, toss in bag of holding, then toss said bad into a portable hole.

Reverse Gravity into Gate, no SR or caster level required.

Druid or Bard with good skill checks, and tame the Tarrasque to be your b***h with 100% chance of success. This can be done before Epic.

Have in Hulking Hurler grapple the big T and toss him to the moon. The HH will have to use this tactic with caution to avoid tearing the big T to pieces while grappling and thus rendering the comical sight invalid.

Bringing in PunPun, and laugh at the Tarrasque for being defeated, in more than one ways, but a level 5 Kobold.

[zachol]

If the point is to get the arrow to break the sound barrier, I don't think you'd need to arc the shot.

As far as I can tell, the arc comes from the fact that if you didn't arc it, it would just hit the ground after a bit - it just wouldn't be moving fast enough to stay in the air.

If the arrow was going fast enough to break the sound barrier, I doubt you would need to arc it.

[Xaden]

Not to claim that anyone is stupid, but I doubt that the creators of D&D intended the players to mathematically calculate the distance an arrow truly travels on an arching path to determine the distance an arrow can be fired away from you (as in where it would land in the ground away from you). This would require a gross and unneccissary amount of calculations involving gravity, velocity of the arrow both along the horizontal and vertical axises, wind resistance and other crazy calculations that would make shooting an arrow a horrible thing to figure out at distances greater than 10-20 feet away from your character. The game was designed with a certain amount of abstraction to make it managable, it should not be a physics lesson where you have to specify ("My character shoots his short bow at a 37 degree angle with an initial velocity of 190.3 ft./sec to hit that target who is 265 feet away from my character cause that will allow the arrow to fly 315 feet which would cover the distance of its arching path to the intended target making me take 5 range increments penalties instead of 4 for the actual distance away from me the target is" (as a side note, I did absolutley no calculations for these figures, I have no idea if any of them are correct, I'm just trying to show the absurdidty of trying to calculate range increments over the arching path instead of the direct line between you and the target)).

The abstraction of range increments in D&D is clearly designed to represent how far away from you the target is you're trying to hit, not the overall length of the arching path your missile has to fly. If that were true, all ranged attacks (even with thrown weapons) would need lengthy calculations 'cause everything is affected by gravity and therefore everything you threw would need some sort of arching pathway to reach its intended target. Now as I've established already, arrows can infact be shot as far as 2,500 feet away from the shotter (not the length of it's arching path but the distance from where the archer shot to where the arrow landed in the earth), so having composite longbows reaching distances from the archer being as much as 1,650 feet (with the far shot feat) is in fact realistic while expecting people to calculate the distance 1,650 feet is in an arching path of an arrow's flight and seeing how far that actually is from the archer is rediculous.

[Linklegacy77]

I still like my idea of blowing up the planet.

[zachol]

I think the forces involved would destroy the arrow before it destroyed the planet.


But, maybe an adamantine or otherwise magical arrow could work...

[Linklegacy77]

Well, he is epic, probobly an epic arcane archer with a +1 seeking, speed, shocking, icy, flaming, keen composite longbow.

[LeadPal]

And he's using +5 greater magic weapon-ed defending arrows, granting +5 to AC for every shot he makes. That's almost as cheapass as destroying the planet itself :D

Oh, bloody hell, I reversed it. Yes, increasing it does increase the velocity.See, that's what I've been saying all along.

It doesn't matter anyways, because there's a problem with your explanation. You're forgetting that the average value of L1 must remain constant, no matter what U1 happens to be, so as to get the arrow 1000 feet horizontally in 6 seconds. Since said value happens to be in excess of Mach 1, any increase in U1 can only, at best, increase the total velocity of the arrow.Well, at least *I* read my posts. :yum:

[Doomsmile]

I have to agree that the Tarrasque is a highly over-rated beast. Not only would a same-CR dragon obliterate it, but it seems that really anything of its level can exept for the classic "blaster" mage (fireball! Lightning bolt! Disintegrate! Bwahahahahaw!), since you need to use means other than direct-damage spells to hurt it. That, I belive, is its pupose in life- to kill the blasters... though, honestly, a trio of beholders would do a much better job.