3.5 was edition I played the most. It was a reason why I quit RPGs for nearly a decade because I hated it so much.
Every time I see another meme about how amazing 3.5 Tarrasque is, I remmember how amogn actual 3.5 players Tarrasque was the biggest joke. It was always brought up as definite proof designers have no idea how to make good monster. It was laughably easy to beat. A wizard could casually solo it, the same abilities people now miss in 3.5 amounted to ribbons. It was a laughingstock, forums had 100+ pages discussions how to fix it and general consensus was it';s beyond saving. It was first proof in 3.5 if you cannot use magic you're only good to roll over and die.
I honestly don't know if everyone claiming 3.5 Tarrasque is such a horrifying monster are trying to rewrite history or unintentionally proving what a broken, unplayable pile of garbage 3.5 was, if it's biggest punching bag is actually dangerous in a different, better designed game.
Could you give examples? I never heard of it being easy to beat, and I would love a laugh at it being easily handled
Yeah, I ran campaigns from first through 3.5, never really played 4th or 5th. I'm curious how 3.5 tarrasque is easy to beat with anything other than broken munchkin builds from conflicting source materials that no sane DM would allow, or would be reserved for epic level campaigns. Like sure, when you get to a point where you can casually cast things like hellball, then things like the tarrasque might be easy. But at that point you will be doing the tango with the outer realm creatures and Demi gods.
My personal favorite:
A 9th level druid (any druid) flies 40ft in the air and upcasts one of their summon animals spells to summon 8 giant owls, then makes them fall prone.
3.5 falling damage was both clear cut and bonkers. Your Owl MIRV would do an average of 679 damage.
Not munchkin, not a special build, just the base rules and a default druid. It's even easy to write off thematically as the owls kamikaze dive bombing it instead of just falling!
The 3.5 Tarrasque didn't have the 5.0 damage resistance to non-magic weapons, it has a flat 15 DR, which was the style at the time, but useless against the numbers falling damage mechanics would push out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/powergamermunchkin/comments/wjtvch/whats_the_easiest_way_to_kill_a_tarrasque/
I think a good DM would say the summoned animals aren't magic slaves and simply would not kill themselves doing this, but at the end of the day you could also just do this with large rocks so you might as well let them have kamikaze owls.
So it depends on the spell, but I think you are talking about summon nature's ally. That allows you to give instructions to creatures who can understand, and they will fight to the best of their ability, but as a DM I wouldn't interpret the spell as written to include suicide.
But even then, a good DM doesn't put a tarrasque into play and have it sit there and die. Once it realizes it is getting damaged and can't retaliate, it can burrow from we whence it came, etc.
So I think most of the strategies involve weak roleplay from the DM, munchkin builds, liberties with the rules, or both.
Even then, actually killing the tarrasque requires a wish spell, which is not something that a 9th level druid can do.