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Tarrasque 5e: The Numbers Behind the Unkillable Monster
The tarrasque is a CR 30 Gargantuan Monstrosity (titan) with AC 25, 676 hit points (697 in 2024), +19 attacks and Legendary Resistance, worth 155,000 XP. In the 2014 rules it can deal 232 damage (average rolls, every attack hitting) between one turn and its three legendary actions, ignores fire, poison, and bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks, has Advantage on saves against magic, and shrugs off Magic Missile, line spells and ranged spell attacks, reflecting them at the caster on a 6. It has one big hole: no ranged attacks and no way to fly, so parties beat it from the air. The 2024 tarrasque closes that hole with a 150-foot Thunderous Bellow, a 60-foot climb speed and a shock wave that breaks Concentration, which ends the Fly spell.
Legendary Resistance (3/Day).If the tarrasque fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
Magic Resistance.The tarrasque has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Reflective Carapace.Any time the tarrasque is targeted by a magic missile spell, a line spell, or a spell that requires a ranged attack roll, roll a d6. On a 1 to 5, the tarrasque is unaffected. On a 6, the tarrasque is unaffected, and the effect is reflected back at the caster as though it originated from the tarrasque, turning the caster into the target.
Siege Monster.The tarrasque deals double damage to objects and structures.
Actions
Multiattack.The tarrasque can use its Frightful Presence. It then makes five attacks: one with its bite, two with its claws, one with its horns, and one with its tail. It can use its Swallow instead of its bite.
Bite.Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 36 (4d12 + 10) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 20). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the tarrasque can't bite another target.
Claw.Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 28 (4d8 + 10) slashing damage.
Horns.Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 32 (4d10 + 10) piercing damage.
Tail.Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 20 ft., one target. Hit: 24 (4d6 + 10) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 20 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Frightful Presence.Each creature of the tarrasque's choice within 120 feet of it and aware of it must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, with disadvantage if the tarrasque is within line of sight, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature's saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to the tarrasque's Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.
Swallow.The tarrasque makes one bite attack against a Large or smaller creature it is grappling. If the attack hits, the target takes the bite's damage, the target is swallowed, and the grapple ends. While swallowed, the creature is blinded and restrained, it has total cover against attacks and other effects outside the tarrasque, and it takes 56 (16d6) acid damage at the start of each of the tarrasque's turns. If the tarrasque takes 60 damage or more on a single turn from a creature inside it, the tarrasque must succeed on a DC 20 Constitution saving throw at the end of that turn or regurgitate all swallowed creatures, which fall prone in a space within 10 feet of the tarrasque. If the tarrasque dies, a swallowed creature is no longer restrained by it and can escape from the corpse by using 30 feet of movement, exiting prone.
Legendary Actions
The tarrasque can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The tarrasque regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.
Attack.The tarrasque makes one claw attack or tail attack.
Move.The tarrasque moves up to half its speed.
Chomp (Costs 2 Actions).The tarrasque makes one bite attack or uses its Swallow.
Stat block from the SRD 5.1 (2014 rules) by Wizards of the Coast, licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Check an encounter with this monster in the encounter calculator.
The traits that matter, in plain terms:
•Legendary Resistance (3/Day): it can turn three failed saves per day into successes.
•Magic Resistance: Advantage on every save against spells and magical effects.
•Reflective Carapace: when a Magic Missile, a line spell (like Lightning Bolt) or a ranged spell attack targets it, roll a d6. On 1 to 5 the spell does nothing. On a 6 it bounces back at the caster. Either way, it never works.
•Damage immunities: fire, poison, and bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks.
•Siege Monster: double damage to objects and structures, including city walls.
What it doesn't have matters just as much: no ranged attack, no fly speed, no climb speed, a walking speed of only 40 feet, and a passive Perception of 10.
The Tarrasque in the 2024 Rules
SRD 5.2.1 rebuilds the tarrasque around the strategies that beat the 2014 version.
Legendary Resistance (6/Day).If the tarrasque fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
Magic Resistance.The tarrasque has Advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Reflective Carapace.If the tarrasque is targeted by a Magic Missile spell or a spell that requires a ranged attack roll, roll 1d6. On a 1–5, the tarrasque is unaffected. On a 6, the tarrasque is unaffected and reflects the spell, turning the caster into the target.
Siege Monster.The tarrasque deals double damage to objects and structures.
Actions
Multiattack.The tarrasque makes one Bite attack and three other attacks, using Claw or Tail in any combination.
Bite.Melee Attack Roll: +19, reach 15 ft. Hit: 36 (4d12 + 10) Piercing damage, and the target has the Grappled condition (escape DC 20). Until the grapple ends, the target has the Restrained condition and can’t teleport.
Tail.Melee Attack Roll: +19, reach 30 ft. Hit: 23 (3d8 + 10) Bludgeoning damage. If the target is a Huge or smaller creature, it has the Prone condition.
Thunderous Bellow (Recharge 5–6).Constitution Saving Throw: DC 27, each creature and each object that isn’t being worn or carried in a 150-foot Cone. Failure: 78 (12d12) Thunder damage, and the target has the Deafened and Frightened conditions until the end of its next turn. Success: Half damage only.
Bonus Actions
Swallow.Strength Saving Throw: DC 27, one Large or smaller creature Grappled by the tarrasque (it can have up to six creatures swallowed at a time). Failure: The target is swallowed, and the Grappled condition ends. A swallowed creature has the Blinded and Restrained conditions and can’t teleport, it has Total Cover against attacks and other effects outside the tarrasque, and it takes 56 (16d6) Acid damage at the start of each of the tarrasque’s turns. If the tarrasque takes 60 damage or more on a single turn from a creature inside it, the tarrasque must succeed on a DC 20 Constitution saving throw at the end of that turn or regurgitate all swallowed creatures, each of which falls in a space within 10 feet of the tarrasque and has the Prone condition. If the tarrasque dies, any swallowed creature no longer has the Restrained condition and can escape from the corpse using 20 feet of movement, exiting Prone.
Legendary Actions
Legendary Action Uses: 3. Immediately after another creature’s turn, the tarrasque can expend a use to take one of the following actions. The tarrasque regains all expended uses at the start of each of its turns.
Onslaught.The tarrasque moves up to half its Speed, and it makes one Claw or Tail attack.
World-Shaking Movement.The tarrasque moves up to its Speed. At the end of this movement, the tarrasque creates an instantaneous shock wave in a 60-foot Emanation originating from itself. Creatures in that area lose Concentration and, if Medium or smaller, have the Prone condition. The tarrasque can’t take this action again until the start of its next turn.
Stat block from the SRD 5.2.1 (2024 rules) by Wizards of the Coast, licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Check an encounter with this monster in the encounter calculator.
2014 Tarrasque
2024 Tarrasque
HP
676
697
Legendary Resistance
3/Day
6/Day
Speed
40 ft.
60 ft., Burrow 40 ft., Climb 60 ft.
Initiative
+0 (Dex)
+18
Weapon damage
Immune to bludgeoning, piercing, slashing from nonmagical attacks
Resistant to all bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, magic or not
Dexterity save
+0
+9
Passive Perception
10
19
Attacks
Bite, 2 Claws, Horns, Tail (5 attacks)
Bite + 3 Claw or Tail (4 attacks)
Reach
Bite 10 ft., Claw 15 ft., Tail 20 ft.
Bite 15 ft., Claw 15 ft., Tail 30 ft.
Area attack
Frightful Presence (120 ft., DC 17 Wis, frightened)
Bonus Action, DC 27 Str save, up to six creatures inside
Legendary actions
Attack, Move, Chomp (2 actions)
Onslaught, World-Shaking Movement
Reflective Carapace
Magic Missile, line spells, ranged spell attacks
Magic Missile and ranged spell attacks only
Extra immunity
None
Deafened
The changes that matter most:
•Flying no longer makes you safe. Thunderous Bellow reaches 150 feet. World-Shaking Movement makes every creature within 60 feet lose Concentration, which ends the Fly spell mid-air, and knocks Medium or smaller creatures Prone. And a 60-foot climb speed puts it on the castle wall with you.
•Magic weapons are halved. The 2014 tarrasque takes full damage from a +1 sword. The 2024 version resists all bludgeoning, piercing and slashing, magic or not.
•No weak save. The 2014 version has Dexterity +0. The 2024 version is proficient, so its worst save is Intelligence (+5).
•It goes first. Initiative +18 means it beats almost any character's Initiative roll.
•Lightning Bolt works again. Line spells were removed from Reflective Carapace.
How the Tarrasque Fights
The tarrasque has Intelligence 3. Don't run it as a schemer; run it as a disaster that hits whatever is closest and keeps walking.
The 2014 damage engine. Multiattack is Frightful Presence, then Bite (36), two Claws (28 each), Horns (32) and Tail (24): 148 damage if everything hits. Its three legendary actions add three more Claws (84) or a Chomp. Against AC 20, +19 hits on anything but a natural 1.
Damage per round vs AC 20 (95% hit chance, critical hits ignored)
2014
2024
Main turn
148 max, about 140 expected
120 max (Bite + 3 Claws), about 114 expected
Three legendary claw attacks
84 max, about 80 expected
84 max (Onslaught ×3), about 80 expected
Total per round
about 220
about 194
For scale: a level 20 wizard with Constitution 14 has about 122 hit points. A level 20 fighter with Constitution 20 has about 224. The tarrasque can kill one character per round even before the Swallow.
Swallow. In 2014, the tarrasque bites (the target is grappled and restrained), then on a later turn uses Swallow instead of its Bite, or spends 2 legendary actions on Chomp to swallow right after another creature's turn. In 2024, it can Bite and then Swallow as a Bonus Action on the same turn (DC 27 Strength save), holding up to six creatures. A swallowed creature is blinded and restrained, has total cover from everything outside, and takes 56 (16d6) acid damage at the start of each of the tarrasque's turns.
Area control. The 2014 Frightful Presence (DC 17 Wisdom, 120 feet) frightens characters, who then can't move closer and attack with Disadvantage while they can see it. The 2024 Thunderous Bellow is worse: DC 27 Constitution in a 150-foot cone, 78 thunder damage on a failure and half on a success, plus Deafened and Frightened until the end of each target's next turn. A level 20 character with Constitution +5 and save proficiency (+11) needs a 16 to succeed. Without proficiency (+5), success is impossible.
Concentration breaker. World-Shaking Movement (2024) is a legendary action: move up to 60 feet, then everything within 60 feet loses Concentration. Every buff, wall and flight spell in that radius ends. A creature that loses Haste this way is incapacitated with Speed 0 until the end of its next turn.
Why the Tarrasque Is So Hard to Kill
Each defense on its own is beatable. Stacked, they leave very few ways in.
Hitting AC 25. A level 20 fighter with Strength 20 and a +3 weapon attacks at +14 and hits on an 11 or higher, 50% of the time. With a +1 weapon (+12), that's 40%.
Spell attacks never work. Reflective Carapace stops every ranged spell attack and every Magic Missile. A melee spell attack still works, but that means standing in Claw range.
Saves. Against a DC 19 spell from a level 20 caster, with Magic Resistance's Advantage:
Save
2014 modifier
2014 chance it fails
2024 modifier
2024 chance it fails
Strength / Constitution
+10
16%
+10
16%
Dexterity
+0
81%
+9
20%
Intelligence
+5
42%
+5
42%
Wisdom / Charisma
+9
20%
+9
20%
And each failure can be erased by Legendary Resistance. To land one Wisdom-save effect on a 2024 tarrasque, it has to fail seven times (six refusals, then the real one). At 20% per cast, that's 35 spells on average.
Hit points. 676 hit points of damage at 50% accuracy is a lot of swings. A level 20 fighter with Dexterity 20 and a +3 longbow (four attacks at +14, 1d8 + 8 each, 12.5 average) deals about 26 damage a round against AC 25. Alone, that's 26 rounds. In 2024, resistance halves it again.
No way to make it stop. Immunity to charmed, frightened and paralyzed removes most "end the fight" spells. Banishment targets Charisma (+9, with Advantage). It cannot be persuaded, scared off or reasoned with.
How Players Beat the Tarrasque
These are the approaches that work by the rules, roughly in the order a level 20 party should try them.
1. Stay out of reach (works best in 2014). The 2014 tarrasque's longest reach is its 20-foot tail and its speed is 40 feet. The Fly spell gives 60 feet of flying speed. A party hovering 60 feet up with magic bows and save-based spells can't be touched except by Frightful Presence. Make the DC 17 Wisdom save once and you're immune to it for 24 hours. This is the classic tarrasque kill: slow, safe and a little dull.
Against the 2024 tarrasque this needs adjusting. Stay more than 120 feet away so World-Shaking Movement can't end your Concentration (it moves up to 60 feet, then the shock wave reaches another 60), spread out so a 150-foot Bellow catches one or two characters instead of four, and remember it climbs 60 feet. Flight that doesn't need Concentration (flying mounts, a roc ally, magic items) is far safer.
2. Burn its Legendary Resistances cheaply. Every Legendary Resistance it spends on a low-level spell is one it can't spend on a fight-ending effect. Against the 2014 version, Dexterity saves fail 81% of the time, so cheap Dexterity-save spells eat through three uses fast. Don't waste Fireball: it's immune to fire.
3. Finish with Power Word Kill. Power Word Kill kills any creature with 100 hit points or fewer. No attack roll, no save. Magic Resistance, Legendary Resistance and Reflective Carapace don't apply. Bring the tarrasque under 100 hit points and the fight ends on one 9th-level spell. Under 2024 rules, if it still has more than 100 hit points, the spell deals 12d12 psychic damage instead of nothing.
4. Fight from the inside. A swallowed character is in a bad spot but not a hopeless one. Dealing 60 or more damage in a single turn from inside forces a DC 20 Constitution save. With +10, the tarrasque fails on a 9 or lower, 45% of the time, and throws up everyone it swallowed (though it can spend a Legendary Resistance to keep them down). In 2024, a swallowed creature can't teleport, so Dimension Door and Teleport won't get you out.
5. Use damage types it doesn't resist. Against the 2024 version, prefer force, radiant, cold, lightning and psychic damage over weapons. Thunder and acid work too. Only fire and poison do nothing.
6. Change the goal. The best way to beat a tarrasque below level 20 is not to fight it. Redirect it, delay it, evacuate the city in its path, or wake something worse for it to fight. Siege Monster means walls fall twice as fast, so buying time for a city usually means moving people, not stone.
Running a Tarrasque Encounter
The XP math is clear. Under the 2024 budget (SRD 5.2.1), High difficulty for a level 20 character is 22,000 XP. Four level 20 characters have a High budget of 88,000 XP. The tarrasque alone is 155,000, about 1.8 times that. Even seven level 20 characters (154,000) fall short. By the book, there is no standard party for which a tarrasque is a fair fight.
The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines (used by our encounter calculator) say the same: the Deadly threshold for four level 20 characters is 50,800 XP, and the tarrasque is three times that.
That's by design. Run it as one of these:
•A final boss for a level 20 party, with a plan, preparation days and allies. Let them scout it, research it and pick the battlefield. The fight is the payoff for three sessions of planning.
•A disaster to survive, for a party of any level. The tarrasque is walking toward a city. The adventure is everything around it: the evacuation, the cult that woke it, the artifact that can put it back to sleep.
•A dungeon. A dead tarrasque, or a sleeping one, is a location.
When it does fight, play it relentlessly. It targets whatever is closest, swallows whoever is Large or smaller, and uses legendary actions every round. Holding back makes a CR 30 creature feel like a pushover.
Tarrasque Encounter Ideas
The five-hour evacuation. The tarrasque is heading for a coastal city and will arrive by nightfall. The council needs five more hours than that to get everyone onto ships. The party's job is to slow it down: dig a canyon in its path, lure it with a herd of cattle, start a rockslide, or anger a purple worm in its way. Each delay buys an hour. Players who try to fight it learn quickly why the council only asked for a delay.
The hill that breathes. A farming town sits on a grassy hill that shakes every few years. The hill is a 2024 tarrasque, half-buried and sleeping. A mining company has started blasting into its side for "ore." The party arrives on the day the miners hit something soft.
The carcass. A tarrasque died a century ago in a desert. Its body is now a dungeon: the stomach is a lake of acid, scavengers nest in the ribs, and a cult scrapes the carapace for spell components. If you want a magic-item hook, rule that a carapace shard still reflects spells. The party goes in to retrieve something swallowed long ago. Running a campaign this long means a lot of lore to keep straight; Loreify records each session and builds the notes for you (see how).
Frequently Asked Questions
What CR is the tarrasque in 5e?
The tarrasque is CR 30, the highest challenge rating in the game, and is worth 155,000 XP in both the 2014 and 2024 rules.
How many hit points does the tarrasque have?
The 2014 tarrasque has 676 hit points (33d20 + 330). The 2024 version has 697 (34d20 + 340). Both have AC 25.
Can you kill the tarrasque in 5e?
Yes. By the rules its hit points can be reduced to 0 like any creature's, and Power Word Kill kills it outright once it's at 100 hit points or fewer. The SRD stat block has no rule that brings it back after death.
Can the tarrasque fly or attack at range?
It can't fly in either edition. The 2014 tarrasque has no ranged attack at all, which is why flying parties beat it. The 2024 version has Thunderous Bellow, a 150-foot cone, and a 60-foot climb speed.
What is the tarrasque immune to?
Both versions are immune to fire and poison damage and to the Charmed, Frightened, Paralyzed and Poisoned conditions. The 2014 version is also immune to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks. The 2024 version resists all bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage and is also immune to Deafened.
Does Magic Missile work on the tarrasque?
No. Reflective Carapace stops Magic Missile and any spell that needs a ranged attack roll; on a d6 roll of 6 it reflects the spell back at the caster. The 2014 version also stops line spells like Lightning Bolt.
Stat blocks: System Reference Document 5.1 (2014) and 5.2.1 (2024), Wizards of the Coast, CC-BY-4.0. Tactics, encounter math and ideas are Loreify's own.
This page includes material from the System Reference Document 5.1 and 5.2.1 by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Loreify is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast.