One of the most enjoyable parts of reading through the new Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is the discovery of its incredibly powerful artifacts - these are magic items you can easily built a campaign around.
Among them, the one that I keep coming back to is the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O.
This is an ancient machine of mysterious origin that, when activated, becomes a pilotable, huge-sized mech.
Let's get the downsides out of the way first: two creatures can attune to it at once, and while attuning, any creature or object within 50 feet of it has a 25% chance to be targeted by one of its attacks (which hit hard.) Next, every 24 hours while it's uncrewed, the ghostly spirit animating it will attack something at random (DM's discretion - both what to attack and whether to actually do this) especially if it'll cause a bunch of mayhem and destruction.
Also, if the construct loses half its hit points, the crew has to make a DC 20 Wisdom save or be charmed by it, and then go on a destructive rampage.
The device can also be set to self-destruct, which takes both pilots three rounds using their actions to pull all the levers and press all the right buttons in the proper order. While doing this, the device tries to charm them into attacking one another instead (using the same DC) and at the end of the third round, the thing explodes in a 100 ft. radius sphere, dealing (wait for it) 25d6 force damage, 25d6 lightning damage, and 25d6 thunder damage (got 75 d6s on you?) which a DC 25 Dexterity saving throw can reduce to half (a lucky Monk or Rogue will feel like a god if they succeed on that throw.) Oh, and anything inside, including its crew, is instantly slain and leaves no remains (though I guess if you leave the hatch open and jump out using your movement after your action you'll merely take 262 damage from the blast?)
The self-destruct is something you'll probably have a hard time pulling off anyway, but frankly, a lot of the downsides here (other than the once-a-day attack) are unlikely to happen, given that this thing is nigh-indestructible.
The construct is immune to acid, bludgeoning, cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, and radiant damage. Oh, and it's resistant to slashing and piercing. And that's not specifying "from nonmagical attacks." No, this thing is straight up immune to bludgeoning even if it was Thor smacking it with Mjolnir. In fact, I also think that means that it can't take falling damage (even if the ground's not magical, falling's not an attack, and so usually the damage gets around these immunities.)
So if I remember my damage types correctly, that means that only Force and Thunder damage will do their full amount to it, while you can chip away at it with piercing and slashing damage.
Oh, and it also has an AC of 22, 310 Hit Points, and regenerates 10 hit points at the start of its turn, unless it's at 0 - but don't worry, because 24 hours of repairs will get it back in shape or just hitting it with any lightning damage. Yep, my Dragonborn could just yell at it to fix it.
The crew also gets total cover from all effects outside of the construct as long as the hatch is closed.
Oh, and even if you self-destruct it, it's not permanently destroyed - instead, its various pieces land 2d6 days later within 1000 miles, and if you bring them all within 5 feet of each other, they reconnect and the thing is restored.
So yes, this thing is absolutely insanely powerful. And as such, I would highly recommend that if you're a DM, you only ever give it to a party that is either A: in the endgame of their campaign or B: with the understanding that you're going to take it away from them.
But, let's take a look at the Tarrasque and see how the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O would do against it:
First off, Leuk-O does an average of 36 damage per hit, with a +17 to hit (either at range or in melee.) Each attack takes an action from one of the pilots, so that's just two attacks per round.
The Tarrasque has an AC of 25, so the pilots need to roll an 8 or higher to hit, meaning that they're hitting 13/20 of the time, which is 65%.
The Tarrasque also has 676 hit points. Leuk-O hits for 36 damage on average, or crits for 62. So when it hits, that makes its average damage actually 38. We multiply that by .65 for average damage, hit or miss, and get roughly 25 damage per attack. Two attacks per round means 50 damage per round, so it'll take Leuk-O 14 rounds to take a Tarrasque all the way down on its own, on average. (The damage is Force, so it should get past the Tarrasque's resistances easily.) That's a tall order. How well can Leuk-O survive the Tarrasque's onslaught?
The Tarrasque does 5 attacks every round, and also has legendary actions, which adds in an additional claw and bite attack. (If we're assuming that it's purely the two pilots in the Servant vs. the Tarrasque, and the Tarrasque is smart enough not to try to use its tail for legendary actions.)
Now, because of all the different attacks, we'll have to calculate some things separately. First off, I'm ignoring the tail attack because the bludgeoning damage does no damage to Leuk-O. It could knock it prone, which introduces the complexities of advantage, but given that the tail comes at the end of the Tarrasque's turn, I think the pilots can always get Leuk-O up before that becomes an issue.
Also, the Tarrasque can't swallow the Huge Leuk-O (and it wouldn't be wise for it to do so, given that Leuk-O's immune to acid) so we'll ignore that.
So: the Tarrasque has a +19 to hit, and Leuk-O has 22 AC, which means that the Tarrasque only needs to roll a 3 to hit our big construct. 90% of the time, it hits. So let's go attack by attack:
The bite does an average of 36 damage (and Leuk-O can't be grappled or restrained, which makes my life easier.) A crit (this is easier thanks to the fact that it's the same damage as Leuk-O's attacks) is 62. But, thanks to resistances, this actually comes out to 18 and 31. Taking into account the chance to hit or crit, we then get roughly 19 average damage per bite attack. It can do this twice (once on its turn, and once as a legendary action, so our final "bite damage per round" is 38.
Claws do an average of 28 damage, critting for 46. Again, we half the slashing, making this 14 and 46. (EDIT: Whoops, forgot to halve the crits. If a crit is 23, that changes things). With the chance to miss, we plug these into the formula for roughly 16 damage per claw attack. Actually, With two claw attacks and a legendary action, this then becomes about 48 claw damage per round. (EDIT: Getting the crit right, this is reduced to 14.5 average damage, which brings the damage per round down to only 43.5 - though that's not really enough to change to overall conclusion).
Next, we get the Horns, which do an average of 32 damage. They do 54 on a crit. We'll halve both thanks to resistances, so that becomes 16 and 27. Plugging it in, we get an average of 17 horn damage per attack, which is also how many horn attacks happen per round.
So then, with the tail rendered (mostly) irrelevant, the total damage output against Leuk-O by the Tarrasque is 103. However, because Leuk-O recovers 10 hit points per round, we'll reduce that to 93. (EDIT: Make that 89.5).
Given that Leuk-O has 310 hit points, this means that the Tarrasque ultimately takes about 4 rounds to take down the mech in a melee brawl.
That is... well, holy crap. I think I understand a bit better why the Tarrasque is CR 30.
Now, I think that the thing to remember here is that Leuk-O has some advantages. For one thing, most adventuring parties have more than two members. You could buff the construct in a few ways - casting Fly on it, for example, works because as a construct, it technically counts as a creature. The range on Leuk-O's attacks is up to 120 feet, which means it can be well out of reach for the Tarrasque.
Also, Leuk-O getting taken down doesn't actually destroy it - if you have a constant source of lightning damage to keep zapping it, it regains its hit points at the start of its turn - meaning that you still get the rest of the turn to do stuff.
But it's also notable that for all the power of the Mighty Servant, 50 damage per round is actually fairly low for the kind of high-level adventurers that would expect to fight the Tarrasque. Clearly that damage goes way up against lower-armored foes.
Anyway, still super-awesome.
What about two mechs vs 1 tarasque?
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