Tortlet
Tortlets are conniving cousins of tortles. They are foxlike to a fault, scraping for every crumb they can use to their advantage. With quick-witted, overly-analytical minds, and a thirst for exploitation, they are quite unlike their merry relatives.
Racing Minds and Crooked Streets
By their nature, tortlets can't help but always be planning out their next action. To a tortlet, every moment has a problem to be solved, and it must be solved correctly and efficiently. Furthermore, tortlets adore masterminding schemes. Rarely is a tortlet met without an ulterior motive behind their hand.
Places where tortlets commune are engrossed in a tense, otherwordly aura. Each turtlefolk is aware of the others' ill intentions. A sense of anxiety and one-upmanship hangs over such settlements like a blanket. As a result, tortle neighborhoods are often subject to exotic magic that bends the passage of time and space.
Buckled, Blemished, Misshapen
Tortlets are prone to a nutritional disease called "grubshell" that stunts them in awkward ways, largely due to a mismatch between their love of meats and blood and their herbivorous guts. Lucky untouched tortlets may be beautiful like their tortle cousins, but most end up as twisted gargoyles. Affected individuals may have gangling limbs, pyramidal shell scutes, and sickening scale discoloration.
A spell or effect that cures disease reverses the effects of grubshell over the course of 2d10 × 10 days.
Tortlet Names
Hatchlings live like animals until the age of 3, when they develop their faculties and choose a name for themselves. Tortlets have little reverence for their predecessors, so family names aren't conserved through generations. Instead, young tortlets opt for a name that's pleasing to say on their reptilian tongues. Such names are eerie to the ears of humans.
Tortlet Names: Aussl, Chonu, Mysteleesa, Ragbadoor, Ssatla, Terpah, Theeshi, Xarsaluu, Zishees, Zssatl
- Tortlet Ogskive
- Backdrop by Flavio Bolla
- Watercolor stains by Jared Ondricek
Creating your Character
If you choose the tortlet as your race, follow the guidelines set out in Monsters of the Multiverse during character creation.
Tortlet Traits
As a tortlet, you have the following racial traits.
Creature Type. You are a Humanoid.
Size. You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you select this race.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Analytical. You have a number of d4s you can use for this trait equal to your proficiency bonus.
Whenever you make an ability check using Intelligence or Wisdom, you can expend any or all of your d4s, roll them, and add the combined result to the total.
Additionally, you can use a bonus action to search for weak points on a creature that you can see within 30 feet of you. Make a Wisdom (Insight) check against the target's Charisma (Deception) check. If you succeed, you can expend any or all of your d4s the next time you hit that creature with an attack before the end of your turn, roll them, and add the combined result to the total damage. Creatures have vulnerability to the damage dealt by the d4s.
You regain all of your expended d4s when you finish a long rest.
Hold Breath. You can hold your breath for up to 1 hour.
One Step Ahead. When you roll for initiative and aren't surprised, you can change your initiative count by up to 5. You always go first when your initiative count matches a hostile creature, unless they also have this trait.
Soft Shell. Your AC is 14 + your Dexterity modifier, to a maximum of +2. You can't wear light, medium, or heavy armor, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield's bonus as normal.