Box TurtleBeast
Armoured wildlife, and neutral. Wanders a few paces from where it hatched, stops to eat, and shuts itself into its shell when anything comes near. It snaps only at whoever has hit it. Killed for the meat. Rare Icon overworld wildlife.
Profile
Overview
Armoured wildlife, and the first creature in Rare Icon whose defence is a pose rather than a number on a sheet.
It never chases anything and it never starts anything. Come within a few tiles and it shuts — head, legs and tail in — and stays shut for as long as you are there. Stand on top of one all afternoon and it will do nothing about it.
Hit it and that changes. A blow riles it for eight seconds, and a riled turtle snaps at whoever is still standing over it, once every second and a half, for a point. Walk away and it forgets; a turtle holds no grudge. So the only fight one is ever in is a fight somebody else started, and a player who leaves them alone never learns they have a beak.
Left to itself it grazes, which is the same four frames as the snap. That is not a saving on art — a box turtle bites the way it eats, with the same jaw, at something that happens to be closer than it was.
Sixteen health is the most of anything in the overworld that is not a fight, and it wears no armour at all on this sheet. That is not an omission. The shell is worn rather than carried: two points, lent to the body for exactly as long as it is tucked in and gone the moment its head is out.
So a shut turtle turns aside three of a five-point swing and an open one turns aside one. Catching it crossing the grass, or with its head out in the four frames of a snap, is worth four times as much as hitting the shell, and that gap is the creature. A bare hand gets one point a swing either way, which is the usual argument for carrying something.
It is the slowest thing alive in the overworld, at a fifth of a player’s walk. That is not a handicap. A creature that could run would not need a shell.
Box Turtle
Armoured wildlife, and neutral. Wanders a few paces from where it hatched, stops to eat, and shuts itself into its shell when anything comes near. It snaps only at whoever has hit it. Killed for the meat. Rare Icon overworld wildlife.
- Family: beast
- Personality: passive
- Movement: random wander
- "The turtle snaps at {target} — {dmg} damage!"
- "A beak closes on {target}. {dmg} damage!"
- "The turtle pulls itself in one last time and stays there."