Homebrew - Fighting Against the Colossal
Fighting massive creatures can be a bit meh, you put down your gargantuan miniature, maybe a tarrasque for a classic murder-monster, and then you watch as those 676 hit points immediately circle the drain when the level 20 evocation wizard casts meteor swarm and deals 140 points of damage in the first turn. With the tarrasque’s +0 Dexterity save, that’s a guaranteed spent legendary resistance right out of the gate, turning that damage to a measly and pathetic… 70 points of damage. Yup, that dino is going to down real quick, especially when the paladin steps up and can deal 34 points of damage on a smite, or if they get a crit, 62 points of damage. And they get two attacks and can blow smites at their top level 5 times.
Of course, all this is going on and then you realize that the paladin is only standing up to the tarrasque’s big toe and that the creature is going to die from the paladin poking him really hard. This epic fight turned out to be incredibly one-sided, even with the tarrasque’s ability to dole out an average of 148 damage in a turn. A paladin with a +1 Constitution will have 144 hit points and has a fair chance that the tarrasque might roll a little low on one of those attacks, don’t get started on how well barbarians will fair.
Sadly for these great gargantuan monsters, their stint of freedom and devastation ends just as soon as it began to a group of 4 adventurers who are best described as ‘murder-hobos’ and ‘sometimes aren’t the worst’. Of course, this is all for building up for the main part of this post. Massive, gargantuan creatures… are kind of boring to fight. Here’s my attempt to turn them into something rememberable and suitably epic, all the while stealing inspiration from old video games and movies.
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What are Colossals?
Before we start digging into this bit of homebrew, let’s first go over what I mean about colossal creatures and exactly what they are. A colossal creature is any creature that is a threat to your party, is massive, and you wish to turn into an epic fight.
A colossal creature is largely a huge or gargantuan creature, because most characters are medium-sized, and can be anything from a lowly, idiot hill giant to the aforementioned tarrasque stomping its way through France. All that matters is that the creature is larger than the characters by two categories or more and that they are of a higher CR.
The higher CR simply makes the monster stronger and is supposed to be a ‘threat’ to the party. You could use a hill giant against a level 20 party, but that would be a bit silly. This is for creating epic feeling combat, not watch the evocation wizard cast magic missile at 9th level and laugh as the hill giant gets turned into swiss cheese.
Second thing, the creature needs to be larger than the characters. This whole system is based on video games like Shadow of the Colossus or movies where regular people are trying to take on a huge horror like Godzilla, and your party probably doesn’t even have fighter jets.
A colossal creature is ideally at least two size categories larger than your characters, so a huge or gargantuan creature, and should be a real threat to the party to keep up the epic feel of the fight.
Colossal Defenses
One of the big problems facing the life of a massive creature is that, unless they are outright immune to normal weapons, your party could easily get 100 commoners together and send them off with longbows and they’ll eventually kill the creature. Death by a thousand paper cuts is a very real possibility for a massive creature and that feels a bit anti-climatic. I love the idea of a monster covered in thousands of arrows but paying no attention to them, that even guards who are given weapons like a thousand longbows with a thousand clerics casting magic weapon on them, still can’t take down a massive and powerful creature. Guards shouldn’t stand a chance against a threat to the party because adventurers should feel special, that only they can bring down this world-ending threat.
This is why colossal creatures get to reduce all damage against them based on their size. If they are only two size categories larger than you, so a huge creature, they get damage reduction equal to half their CR. If they are three size categories larger than you, they get damage reduction equal to their CR.
This is horrifying at first blush, but before you freak out about a monk being completely useless when fighting a tarrasque, let’s go over the rest of the rules. As a side note, this amount of damage reduction can easily make a monster far harder to defeat and is something that DMs should keep in mind upon using this system.
Climbing Colossal Creatures
I keep bringing up Shadow of the Colossus, but there are several other video games, movies, and RPGs where you must fight massive creatures that would make a mere mortal run away in fear. Those games focus on taking the fight, quite literally, up to the colossal and climbing around them and tearing them apart.
The biggest thing about this system is that it is meant for players to climb onto the massive creatures and start stabbing the creature in delicate locations. This provides a greater battle than “I run to its big toe and stab it until it dies”. Instead, your players are having their characters crawl around its body, their characters stabbing it in the legs, the eyes, and more. The plan is to get the party on the colossal monster, and describing the arduous climb and feats of strength and dexterity to climb up a massive creature, to bring more cinematic excitement to the table.
Characters are encouraged to climb onto a colossal creature because they get bonuses for doing so. They are given advantage on attack rolls, they can lower the damage reduction of the monster, and they can start damaging it in more ways than just stabbing it to death. Climbing onto the head, players can attack the eyes, blinding the massive monstrosity, or they could go for the ears or the jaw or strange, otherworldy tentacles. If they stick to the legs when they are eventually knocked off the creature and plummet to the ground, they’ll be a lot closer and the damage won’t be so great.
This entire bit of homebrew is focused on climbing and bringing down massive creatures in a cinematic fashion, and the damage reduction is a way to encourage players to take risks and jump on there. There are three parts of any colossal creature, the legs, the body, and the head. Each section provides it’s own reasons for a character to go there and parties can strategize how they wish to take down a colossal.
Climbing Up
A character must use one of their attacks to begin climbing up a colossal creature and this is abstracted out to an Athletics or Acrobatics contested by the colossal’s Acrobatics check. Upon success, characters can move off the ground and climb onto the legs of the creature, freely moving about as they please. If a character wishes to move higher, to the body, they will have to repeat the check once more, and on a success, they move up to the next section of the creature. On a fail, they fall - maybe to their death, maybe only 1d6 damage, all depends on the creature.
The Legs
So why would a character want to go to the legs of a colossal? Well, that’s how you tumble them down to the ground. Characters can attack the legs, muscles, and tendons, slowly destroying the creature’s ability to move around the battlefield. In Lord of the Rings in the final film, massive elephants are storming across the battlefield and we get a beautiful shot of calvary horses charging them down and the riders cutting and slicing through the legs of the elephants, sending them toppling to the ground where their head and body are far easier to get to and poke to death.
Same here, a colossal can eventually get their full movement reduced to 0, at which point they fall prone and can only climb unless they have some other means of movement. This is of great help if you want to keep your wizard out of range or simply don’t want to climb up 30 feet to get bit by a nasty set of teeth.
The Body
Why would a character want to go to the body of a colossal? It gets a lot easier to hurt them. If a character can climb up to the mid-section, they treat the colossal creature as if it is one size category smaller than it actually is for the purpose of damage reduction. This means that if you get on the mid-section of the tarrasque, even though it is three size categories larger than you, and gets to apply damage reduction equal to it’s CR, you treat it as if it is only a huge creature and it only gets damage reduction equal to half it’s CR. That’s a major benefit for any martial character and the idea of fighters climbing up a great empyrean to sink their blades into its stomach is a beautiful image, almost reminiscent of Attack on Titan… though a lot less naked giants running around - at least I hope so.
The Head
Why would a character want to go to the head of a colossal? If you’ve ever noticed, the head of a creature has a lot of important things up there. You got eyes, ears, nose, jaws, and more, all asking to be struck from the face of the colossal creature. Those who make it to such heights can start doing lasting and horrible debuffs to a colossal creature, blinding it permanently to breaking its jaw and more. While not every encounter with a colossal will see everyone storming for the head, it can be a powerful motivator to blind a creature who is throwing massive rocks at the wizard for sport.
I provide a chart of sensory organs and recommended hit points and effects in the homebrew, which range from blinding a creature to ripping off tentacles and more.
Targeting
Regardless of your talents and abilities, you have to be on the colossal to gain any of these benefits. Sitting in the back with your bow isn’t going to be good enough unless you are willing to get a bit dangerous and bold. Targeting specific parts of the colossal’s body is only for the benefit of those willing to take risks and are climbing up the creature to create a more cinematic experience for the table. Describing yourself jumping from one rocky outcropping to the next, the massive creature trying to brush you off can make a memorable combat sequence to be talked about for years to come.
So, while there isn’t targeting in 5e, for the sake of a more cinematic nature, certain creatures that the DM decides are colossal, are exposed to the hazards of targeting. It only makes sense really, if you are clinging to the head of a storm giant, its eyes are right there are probably several inches to almost a foot big! They are just begging to be hit, and at the size, it makes sense to go out of your way and specifically target them.
Running Colossal Creatures
The DM has the say when a creature is considered colossal, not every gargantuan or huge creature makes sense to be a colossal creature because these encounters should be memorable. If this is your 10th hill giant, having them treated as colossal creatures doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If this is your first purple worm, it might make sense to treat it as a colossal creature to provide a greater atmosphere around the fight.
In an effort to help simplify combats where you are climbing all over creatures, I recommend having a second battle map with the creature drawn out, or use one of the pages I include in this homebrew. When climbing a colossal creature, the character’s token should be moved to the secondary battle map and placed on what part of the creature they are currently climbing up, they can then move around that battle map to provide everyone a better understanding where they are in the fight and help provide greater immersion.
I provide a few monsters with grids already drawn out at the correct scale of a monster to help DMs run colossal creatures and to provide examples of what the secondary battle maps could look like.
Variant Rules
Now, this wouldn’t be one of my homebrews without any variant rules that I thought of that could help certain tables. Taking on a tarrasque with its damage reduction is going to be a problem for many due to how high CR they are, especially if you aren’t giving out artifacts to your party but still want them to fight a tarrasque. When a creature takes the Attack action, the colossal only reduces the damage against it once for the creature’s extra attacks. This means the paladin with their two attacks will swing and deal damage twice while a tarrasque will only reduce the cumulative damage, not individual damage.
This is especially helpful for monks who rely on doing lots of attacks, but little damage on each strike. If they attack the same spot, it makes sense that pummeling the same location can help them really bruise up the creature and bypass some of that reduction.
Colossal Creatures and Cinematics
When fighting colossal creatures, remember that this is all meant to provide a greater cinematic experience with the help of visualization and provide a greater threat from the monster. It is to treat these epic encounters against massive (or just huge) creatures that pop up once in a while during a campaign and to act as big moments of excitement. Not only does it provide the monster a bit more spotlight as the characters are literally clambering over it, but it can also provide a bit more immersion for the players.
That’s this week's homebrew, a (relatively) simple system to create more cinematic fights and to really show how massive some of these gargantuan monsters are for the players. Tarrasques are supposed to stand 50 feet high, but their base is only 4 squares wide and 4 squares deep. By having a secondary battle map for the characters to climb on, they can truly get the feeling of just how massive this creature is and provide some crazy encounters and shenanigans.
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