D&D 5E Making tortles interesting

[Blue Orange]

Basically, what we're saying is that the kind of person who would play a tortle will make the tortle interesting.

From what I'm seeing on this thread, a lot of people on here want to play teenage mutant ninja turtles. Which is fine, IMHO; copyright prevents us from doing anything with a lot of interesting characters everyone knows in a book or movie, so we can do it in roleplaying games.

One of the things that always struck me about RPGs is the gap in seriousness between the published material and the actual play. The books will have all sorts of suggestions about building motivations for your character and writing a backstory and then you get to the table and the characters have silly names and everyone's making fun of the monsters and the shape of the dungeon.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Tortles are awesome! However, 5e doesn't do a great job making them interesting (as others have brought up, I've never liked them being a short-lived race).

In my games, I have a subrace/variant of Tortles that are more like Turtles than Tortoises, they trade their claws for a swimming speed. I also have a sub-culture of Tortles that live inside lakes in underwater houses on the floor of the lakes made of a sandy-concrete material, and they have tubes that go up to the surface that they can suck air out of (due to the fact that Tortles can hold their breaths for 1 hour underwater, they only visit these once an hour and sleep with face-masks that let them breathe. The Tortles spend their days walking at the bottom of the lakes for protection from land-animals (typically dinosaurs), catching fish in nets, hunting Plesiosaurs, and using tamed Giant Crabs as beasts of burden.

And, yes, Tortle Monks are kind of the default, due to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Master Oogway. However, I also quite like Tortle Rangers (with the Druidic Warrior Fighting Style for Shillelagh as a TCoE Beastmaster Ranger, you can have a Giant Turtle/Tortoise animal companion and be a Wisdom-focused melee-ranger with a Staff that wanders the world), Tortle Druids (Moon Druid to turn into Giant Snapping Turtles and can eventually use Shapechange to turn into a Dragon Turtle), Tortle Barbarians (Path of the Beast with the Bite attack to be a Snapping Tortle), Tortle Clerics (Krull is awesome! As are Tortle Tempest, Nature, and Peace Clerics!), and Tortle Sorcerers (Draconic Bloodline to be a Dragon-Tortle).

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I seem to have decided that my Tortles are loosely based on Krogan from Mass Effect. They are long lived and very hardy. They have a lot of old traditions and respect the savage lands they call home, but they are also drawn towards magictek and psionic-like magics.

 

[Mecheon]

Turtles actually have pretty long lifespans for their size--giant turtles can live to be over 100. A lot of the tropes about elves or dwarves and their long lifespans could easily apply to tortles, who presumably would have medicine and cure disease spells in a fantasy world.

For some strange reason, D&D Tortles have always had short lifespans. Back in 2E they had the 'if you lay eggs you'll just die' which is, a thing.

Its one I pointedly ignore. I want ancient turtle people who complain about elves these days and how back in their day things were different

 

[DammitVictor]

Tortles are awesome! However, 5e doesn't do a great job making them interesting (as others have brought up, I've never liked them being a short-lived race).

For some strange reason, D&D Tortles have always had short lifespans. Back in 2E they had the 'if you lay eggs you'll just die' which is, a thing.

It is really inexplicable. I don't like the lifespan on thri-kreen, either, but at least that has some sort of appeal to real life.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It is really inexplicable. I don't like the lifespan on thri-kreen, either, but at least that has some sort of appeal to real life.

Agreed. Same with Aarakocra.

Tortoises/Turtles are pretty famous for having long life-spans. Why TSR and WotC both chose to make the Tortoise/Turtle-people have life-spans comparable to a Goblin eludes me.

 

[Blue Orange]

For some strange reason, D&D Tortles have always had short lifespans. Back in 2E they had the 'if you lay eggs you'll just die' which is, a thing.

Its one I pointedly ignore. I want ancient turtle people who complain about elves these days and how back in their day things were different

Indeed. I feel the biology of a non-primate sentient species offers all kinds of interesting roleplaying ideas. Strong family ties are a mammalian thing; lizards abandon eggs after laying them. Would that mean lizardfolk would be loners, or would they form 'chosen families'? Poikilotherms such as reptiles function slower at lower temperatures, but require a lot less food; wouldn't we see reptilian species fighting wars with mammals focus heavily on siege warfare and the like, and tend to prefer ambush tactics due to their inability to maintain sustained exertion?

Even other mammals have all kinds of neat ideas; tabaxi might make fun of 'monkey-peoples' for eating roots and tubers, and have nasty wars with wererats they try to eat.

 

[Casimir Liber]

So one thing is real-word biology growth - warm-blooded creatures grow quickly to an adult size and then remain at that size, whereas some cold-blooded critters just keep steadily growing bigger and bigger. Reminds me in a first edition dungeon where troglodytes were of all different sizes. Could do same with tortles and other critters, like lizardmen I guess.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Tortles are baby dragon turtles.

Give them a few thousand years and they look like this:

 

[Ancalagon]

this thread puzzles me. It's like someone had written: "pizza is bland and flavorless, let's make it taste good".

although, the short life is... yeah.