No Love for the Dragon Turtle?

[Aeolius]

Over on the 4E boards, in the "what 3.5 monsters need the axe?" thread, there seems to be no love whatsoever for the dragon turtle. I started wondering what one could do to these legacy creatures, having been denied "true" dragon status, to make them more awe inspiring.

 

[Gilladian]

I've always thought of the dragon turtle less as a "monster" and more as a "force of nature" kind of creature. It appears, attacks a ship, either destroying it, or badly damaging it and devouring some of the crew/passengers, and then departing. Leaving the PCs to deal with the wreckage in its wake.

I would make it bigger (lots more HP), give it the ability to do substantial structural damage to ships instead of just a capsize, and get rid of the silly superheated steam ability in return for swallow whole, maybe some sort of water jet to knock sailors out of rigging, and maybe a massive, snapping-turtle-type bite. And it should have some reach. Turtles actually have fairly long necks and can extend their heads quite a ways out of the shell.

It should be able to come up from below, deliver a ship-cracking blow, grab a victim or three, and sink below again without ever being clearly seen and without exposing itself. Two or three passes should leave all but the largest ships with broken keels and taking on water fast.

 

[Intrope]

You could also go for the lies-in-wait-as-a-fake-island style Dragon Turtle: it looks like an island, good for a stopping point on a long voyage. Then, Rarrr! (do turtles actually make any noise?) Chomp-chomp-chomp.

But on the whole, it's a creature of very limited utility (except for sea-going campaigns, of course).

 

[HelloChristian]

I love dragon turtles. In the 80's there was a module in Dragon mag called, "Can Seapoint Be Saved?" In addition to the excellent cartography, the module featured a dragon turtle. It had been charmed by a wizard and was used to intercept shipping. It was a fun module. After getting cooked by the dragon turtle's steam breath, I and my PCs had a new found respect for it.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I started wondering what one could do to these legacy creatures, having been denied "true" dragon status, to make them more awe inspiring.

One word: Bowser.

 

[Torm]

I had one in one of my homebrew campaigns set in a world of the 1940s, only with magic instead of science. It had been manipulated by the Nazis, both magically and by them getting it p*ssed off, and sent to go attack London. The party had to try to stop it, and it was a lot of fun.

I'ma have to go check on this 4E thread of which you speak.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Over on the 4E boards, in the "what 3.5 monsters need the axe?" thread, there seems to be no love whatsoever for the dragon turtle. I started wondering what one could do to these legacy creatures, having been denied "true" dragon status, to make them more awe inspiring.

How much Int do these things have? Not enough to plot anything by themselves, I think.

To use dragon turtles properly, you have to put PCs on a ship. In some campaigns, this doesn't happen often. In others (eg a pirate campaign) there might be sea-borne attacks every week. In any event, I haven't seen easily usable rules for ship-borne combat in the core rules. It doesn't help that any sea-going ship is probably going to be too large for the PCs to crew themselves (other than a pirate campaign, how often do all the PCs have the right nautical skills anyway?) which means the not-so-bright beasts are going to try to eat the low-level crewmen, and that means you need some kind of mass combat system, which also isn't in the core rules...

They need a hook, and it can't be just "attacks ships"; krakens already fill that hook, and more easily too (enough reach to conceivably pull characters off a ship).

 

[DragonTurtle]

Well I have some love for the dragon turtle

 

[Dragon Snack]

lol, nice one DT.

Back in my 1st edition homebrew, the dieties used Dragon Turtles to protect various artifacts. IIRC, this was mostly due to the fact that Dragon Turtles were nasty Mo-Fo's (although my 1st edition books were stolen when I was in college, so I don't remember exactly how nasty they were). They seemed to lose a lot of their Bad Assedness in 3.x, I don't think I've ever used them since...

 

[ephemeron]

Back in my 1st edition homebrew, the dieties used Dragon Turtles to protect various artifacts. IIRC, this was mostly due to the fact that Dragon Turtles were nasty Mo-Fo's (although my 1st edition books were stolen when I was in college, so I don't remember exactly how nasty they were). They seemed to lose a lot of their Bad Assedness in 3.x, I don't think I've ever used them since...

1e dragon turtles were the nastiest dragons; they had 12-14 HD and did 2-12/2-12/4-32 claw/claw/bite, compared to 10-12 HD and did 1-8/18/6-36 for gold dragons.