The whole "giant dragon turtles speaking aloud would cause severe damage" thing does actually have a scientific basis, since the echolocation of whales can cause severe internal damage if you're close enough, to the point of broken bones and internal bleeding.

So every 10,000 years or so all the nature conservation adventurer's guilds gather together on the dragon turtle egg beach to help the babies reach the water by having an apocalyptic smackdown with everything trying to eat them.

In case you missed it, the zaratan is a huge turtle that's definitely done justice! It's the elder elemental for earth, and is an absolute behemoth and silly looking dude. I'm currently in a campaign where we live in a city built atop the zaratan's back. Very fun monster, perfect for big turt vibes

Honestly, the concept of a dragon turtle hatchling hunting free for all is a stupendously hilarious mental image and high-level adventure in itself.

Peak fantasy animals are just big versions of real life ones. I mean, they made a gorilla big and now he’s got another movie coming out in a few days

5:25 Those clusters of wizards also like to invade local burger joints and cause havoc to the tune of Electric Avenue

That grand turtle beach hatching sounds like such a cool idea! I feel like it could fun to have adventurers want to protect the babies until they reach the water, like if the local giant/dragon turtles played a vital role in protecting the local townsfolk, so every couple of decades they have to protect the babies from the mob of hungry predators.

when you mentioned the "naturaly occuring cluster of 700 mages" i was immediately taken back to the MMO Rift, where one of the elemental "dragons" of the water plane is basically a shark with tentacles called Akylios, that used to be a 20 man raid boss but was later revealed to actually be just A SINGLE ONE of what is considered the Akylios shark school that made up one of the 3 forces that battled for dominion over the water plane, so jeah, one of them was an endgame raid boss, would love to see that being put into D&D

Honestly, I think the funny part of an attack scenario with the dragon turtles is that a large, armored ship moving through the water would probably resemble another dragon turtle; it would be incredibly funny to set up such an attack on a ship as either the turtle seeing the ship as a rival to fight, or worse, as a potential mate. (There is an infamous piece written years ago from the blog Tetrapod Zoology titled "The Terrifying Sex Organs of Male Turtles.")

A setting I run has a massive island sea turtle that’s friends with a primordial titan thing. The titan mainly sleeps on its back while the turtle goes around doing turtle stuff. Everyone things it’s a mysterious island that disapears with a huge frickin mountain. But nah, it’s to super huge buds just hanging out in the ocean.

There is a 5th edition version of this asian-themed game (I think it was 5 Elements or something) where this whole country was on the back of a giant turtle. Parts of the turtle's back are overrun with a dark corruption that takes the form of dark crystals that spread like cancer and corrupt mortal races. The mortals have walled off the area to try and stem the tide of corruption. What's neat is that the turtle can be a warlock patron.

One correction: Dragon Turtles' natural predators also include each other. They are extremely territorial and will fight a Dragon Turtle of the same gender to the death once spotted.

I see your giant lumbering beast with a city in its back and raise you a city inside it. In my setting, dwarves are the blood cells and antibodies of the Titans. Their Titan's circulatory system is their road network, and it's organs are their city-districts. Imagine launching your dragon-slaying ballista at that walking mountain, and open a cut in it's thigh. But instead of a river of molten blood or lava, a horde of dwarven berzerkers pours out instead. Each of the subraces come from a different one of the Titans and their traits reflect the bodies of their ancestral home.

“Making them turtle enough for the Turtle Club” 😂😂😂 that reference had me dying, what a blast from the past

the Zaratan didnt show up in the video, but its one of my favorite monsters. just a large turtle lad with a bunch of fun tricks you can use. More turtley than the dragon turtle. Throw it at a city and watch the building drop just from it stomping around, or just have it walking around a desert as a friend.

6:38 The Armored Escape is useless for combat (and escaping) due to the prone condition, not only can it no longer escape, because its movement is down, the advantage on attack rolls against it completely negate the AC bonus

Nothing beats the fantasy trope of B I G T U R T L E

I ran a sea based campaign where the group were pirates and the pirate base on the back of a giant dragon turtle. The pirates feed it treasure and it lets them live and keeps them safe from the law. There were also 4 different pirate groups who provided adventures they could pick from. Went pretty well!

In a game of mine a VERY large dragon turtle made a deal with some pirates and in exchange for monthly tribute and never having to hunt for food (and also having lots of minions to run errands) that they can build a city on her back.

I have a fun dragon turtle story. I was DMing Ghosts of Saltmarsh (with a lot of changes), the party members were a monk, warlock, ranger and druid and they'd just finished a quest and were going back to port on a small rowboat. I was using a DM's guild supplement that adds random encounters to the campaign, highly recommend it, and they got a fun one, so I start narrating: "As you row you can start to see the shape of the port in the distance. Suddenly the water becomes agitated (roll perception checks). A wster mephit, clearly panicking, runs over the waves and crashes onto your ship, dropping a golden crown. The mephit then screams "SHE'S YOUR PROBLEM NOW" and jumps into the sea. A huge dark shape swims very fast towards you, by the shape of the shell that starts to break the wave you know you are in the pressence of a massive dragon turtle... what do you do?" Now... the intention here is for the players to have a tough social encounter with the monster. Maybe they can bargain with her and get some info or loot in exchange for money or favors... but no. In the previous quest I had given the monk a silly homebrewed item. It was a +1 dragonslaying staff. There are no dragons in the entire book, so I thought it would be kind of a joke item. Still. They are level 5 here, no way in hell they are beating that thing, not even with a couple extra d6s of damage per turn. The monk looks at the warlock. They nod. The druid and ranger start to f*cking panick. "Guys, we can't do this". I've never seen the monk player so determined before. So. Turtle is about 120 feet away, 2 party members are trying to row as fast as they can. That leaves the monk and warlock alone against desth. The warlock casts dissonant whispers twice, giving them some time. As the turtle gets closer, but not close enough to use its breath, the monk f*cking jumps out of the ship, moves like 80 feet or so and punches the sh*t out of the turtle. Stunned. The mood changes... maybe they can actually pull this off. Hunger of Hadar. Punch, Staff. Stun. Toll the Dead. Punch, Staff. Stun. Turtle fails its con save 4 timew in a row, fifth time... she gets it. Breath weapons all over the party and their ship. Warlock goes down, ranger and druid survive, taking half damage by jumping into the water and run to heal the warlock. Monk lives at lesd than 10 hp. Turtle is at 25 hp. Monk deals 25 hp exactly. The party erupts, I can't believe they've been able to pull this off. I gave them an entire treasure hoard for that AND they dragged the turtle to Saltmarsh, crowning them as legends. When they built their ship they used the turtle's shell for the hull, her scales for fireproofing and her skull as figurehead.

Not a single Pratchett quote about Great A’tuin? Preposterous! [jowly wizard grumbles]

This makes me remenber the reshi Islands of Roshar

I remember there was an episode of High Rollers where they went to an island of frog people who worshipped “Croakatoa” and the island turned out to be a dragon turtle

Giant turtle islands really are a great concept, now I’m picturing a campaign with some Majora’s Mask influences in which you need to awaken a huge turtle to reach a temple. But in this case the turtle IS the temple, rising to the surface after millennia. And yes I agree, having a massive slow moving animal of some sort carry settlements across the world is a really great concept

Turtle power 🐢

In my homebrew world, I used a dragon turtle in the creation myth of the tortle race. It was just a really big dragon turtle who died in the ocean and his body became the island where tortles are born every 50 years.

Dragon turtles are one of my favorite creatures! I have one in my homebrew campaign that my players haven't interacted with....but I know it's there, and that makes me happy enough lol

Yoooo if you have a party with long enough lifespans and enough levels and spines to try and pull it off, the Lion Turtle Doomsday Beach-thing is absolutely EPIC. Firstly, even if you have performed the necessary preparations and have the skills for it, fighting your way onto this beach is the easy part. Once you've found a turtle and try to escort it away through the chaos while your druid/ranger is trying to buddy it up, you have to fight off all the creatures who go after the baby. You might be strong enough as a prepared party to fight off a mature dragon, but driving it away quickly enough to not get bogged down and swamped by everything else that's there? That ain't easy! Secondly, as long as the party is long-lived enough for it, you can take one to a handful of sessions having a bunch of laid back mini-adventures at different points of the Lion Turtle's childhood as the party is raising it while idk, a hundred years of it growing up passes. Once it's fully grown it'll probably be far more open to just vibing wherever you "park" it for however long you need it to stay there, before carrying you to the next location. After all, what island-facsimile turtle wouldn't be sun/moon-bathing for a default when given the opportunity? Finally, as a consequence of the party having been largely inactive as adventurers for as long as they have after this, the DM has had a LOT of in-world time to change up the worldstate. Wars can have been started and won, country borders can have changed, heroes and villains can have risen and fallen. It's a great way to transition into a fresh world to explore, filled with familiar sights turned foreign by time's passing. This can definitely give a campaign that's winding down a second wind, should the DM and party feel that they don't actually want to let it go just yet. EDIT: "My last couple of videos didn't do that good and I don't know why.." Yeah I didn't get them pushed for some reason. I'm only here because I went "Hmm it's been a while since I saw a Runesmith-video. Did he take a break?"

For my high seas campaign I’m having the treasure island the party is looking for is on the back of a dragon turtle. The dragon turtle has been napping for most of 100 years.

Stanislaw Lem made story where whole civilization lived INSIDE of such turtles.

Didn’t know the Wildaback was your work in particular, loved that section and have had two campaign parties visit it as it wanders back and forth along the Goblin Tribal Empire territories. Thanks for all your efforts here and in textbook formats RS.

Turtle Dragons wouldn't use their breath strategically as suggested in the video. They prefer using their sheer strength over their breath, only using the latter if absolutely necessary. They prefer to ram the bottom of ships with their shells to tip it over rather than risk destroying any treasure.

in my campaign setting, i have an archipelago made from the fragmented shell of a long dead dragon turtle who was so powerful his innate magic created life. in addition, I added a cool mountain island that's actually the sail of a long dead sea serpent, and it's so tall it pierces the clouds.

The giant baby turtle egg flight to the sea is a brilliant idea! I also love the Avatar dragon turtle concept as something to work into a campaign.

I laugh that Aremag is just Gamera backwards. Now I want to have a dragon turtle use their steam breath to launch themselves through the air.

The T.U.R.T.L.E. Power insert took me back 30 years in an instant, nice :)

I'm imagining a dragon turtle variant that either swaps "scalding breath" out for this or just has both, drawing on the snapping turtle's bite and pistol shrimp's signature skill, where if both the turtle and their target(s) are underwater they can use their bite attack to hit at range for some fire damage and concussive force that can stun or push the target.

"What if turtle, but bigger". Shows a tortoise on a pond/lake where it would outright drown.

I hate how the wizard part legit made me stop and go, "Wait, does magic missile have a gold cost?"

Reminds me of the giant turtle from Aladin 3

Going off on how such a huge creature making noise would cause harm, I'd give it a sound based ability. Either a roar that does thunder damage or a deep, vibrating rumble that can stun creatures within a certain distance

I think dragon turtles should have a sonic attack similar to how blue whales singing will destroy divers swimming too close

The island turtles are their own thing in D&D with the Zaratan...which has a terrestrial cousin. Other editions have age categories for Dragon Turtles...the main reason that they aren't forming islands is that they tend to fully submerge and are way more alligator snapping turtle there with additional dragon theming

You know what we need? Owl turtles with a smattering of tree and phoenix.

You should also take a look at the Zaratan and the Ancient Dragon Tutle. They are a good starting off point to build what you were talking about.

1:02 I'm glad I'm not the only person who remembers Master of Disguise.

I too like the idea at 7:20. I think I'll include that in my next campaign.

A great combo I love with these guys or Krakens is an appropriate lair. I go either basically the Mariana Trench is its home and force my players to figure out how to survive in basically the most hostile environment possible. No traps, no nonsense, just sheer remoteness. The other is the opposite, a big ship graveyard full of deep chasm with the monsters lair at the center. Real from the depths potential. Also just regional control weather because the real BBEG of ocean adventures are storms.

I use my peoples creation myth in my games all the time. But yeah there should be more turtle islands. Thanks for uploading this video, and sadly the youtube crusades are effecting many channels in negative way's. Anyway, I love the concept of a turtle dragon half dragon.

Giant turtles are peak fantasy.

fun fact: snapping turtles, which you mentioned are what dragon turtles are based off of, cannot hide in their shells

I used a Dragon Turtle in my campaign that had entered into a symbiotic relationship with a legendary pirate. The pirate had flipped a ship upside down and attached it to the shell of the turtle, essentially creating a submarine. The captain was able to communicate telepathically with the turtle to guide it towards ships carrying large amounts of gold. After each successful mission, they would return to their lair - a huge underground lagoon. The haul would then be paraded in front of the Dragon, who would select the shiniest and most impressive items to decorate it's lair with. Any coinage would be split between the crew and the turtle, with the latter's share being painstakingly attached to its shell by the crew.

I literally just watched The Master of Disguise for the first time again in years last night, so the Turtle Club joke had me in stitches.

The whole hatchling apocalypse reminds me of the first disc world books, this awful apocalypse just a mating season for them. Super fun

honey wake up, new runesmith video

So we’ve got legendary turtles of the sea with dragon turtles, legendary turtles of the earth with the tarrasque, now we just need sky turtles and fire turtles for the whole set!

I have one dragon turtle encounter in my campaign I’m planning out where there’s a castle on its back and the dragon turtle is piloted by a Genie pirate with a bounty on his head. The castle itself is a whole dungeon and I was thinking of making the turtle blind so the party has the option to stealthily infiltrate and scale it or fight it head on .

Nice to see you uploading again man great work 👍

Let's not forget about the Zaratan which is a gargantuan dnd elemental tortoise that was featured in a previous video.

I am loving this One Piece everywhere mod he installed on his videos

Fun fact, One Piece movie seven "The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle" actually takes place on an island that is a slumbering giant sea turtle. (but that's a spoiler so don't tell nobody.)

In my setting (which is my version of the Forgotten Realms), like Dragons, there is two type of Dragon turtle: good aligned and evil aligned. The evli ones are the standards DT. But the good ones are like the Lion Turtle in Atla, 'cause, yeah that shit is awesome.

This makes alot of sense, i would at the very least set a relatively high damage threshhold before they could actually have damage done to them

Plus you can live in the eggs they leave behind

I take your "giant slow living creature with a city on top of it" and raise "giant slow dead creature with an army of dead inside and a lich piloting it"

I’d imagine a creature like this would talk like Jormungandr in God of War

Plot twist island turtles photosynthesized and use the plant life on their back for in sustenance so they don't have to eat, unbeknownst to a party of travelers, they start cutting the forests to create a settlement inadvertentionally angering the turtle and sending it on a rampage. Js

That was fun & informative. I love turtles, but I have few options for putting things in games that don't experience death. You may have opened a path to righteous turtle wisdom. Thank you

Dude,you have been putting out more content recently. Your awesome!

7:20 Now THAT is a great idea.

Here is my pitch: If the Shark is a predator of Turtles, and D&D has Sea Turtles that hurt people, then make a Island-sized (or smaller, Island sized is pretty big thinking about it) Hammerhead that has a village or town built on it's wide head, that defends the humans and other species living there from the Dragon Turtles and Krakens. Bonus points if you name the village Remora.

Love to hear your take on monsters

700 wizards joke being a natural forming ball cracked me up real hard

oh man I want to see a collab between runesmith and pointy hat, you two are my favorite dnd content creators on youtube

Thank you for reminding me. I'm gonna go check on my dragon turtles. Feed them some more lore.

My current campaign is in an apocalyptic wasteland of endless sunlight. The oceans are mostly evaporated away, turned to acid, or to salty to support life. One player found a petrified dragon turtle egg. Thanks to a celestial, the egg has been revitalized, and needs to be nurtured in boiling hot water to hatch. With no living dragons, the world's demise is accelerated, maybe this will start life again... maybe

COWABUNGA 🤘🔵🐢🔴🐢🟣🐢🟠🐢

My Dragon Turtles would all be split into either evil terrapins, neutral sea turtles, and good tortoises. Mostly because I’m terrified of terrapins due to a bad encounter in the past, have no strong emotions towards sea turtles aside from "majestic sea creature", and think tortoises are pretty chill and alright.

Slight adjustment suggestion Snapping turtles and Sea Turtles actually can't retract into their shells like many other turtles can It would make sense if Dragon turtles (since they're based on these) wouldnt be able to retract into their shells either! Love the world building ideas in this video!

The Zaratan in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is a tortoise-themed take on this.

Your getting me with these call backs. Jak 3 and now dragon tails

In d&d 2nd edition spell jammer there's the gammaroid. A giant space faring snapping turtle.

Admiral Yi of Korea and his Dragon turtle ships were awesome

I have big plans for a titaninc dragon turtle "siege fight" in my current D&D campaign, and I fully plan to make it near untouchable. The "near" is because the players will be given a Dragonator right out of Monster Hunter. Yes, this was partially inspired by Zorah Magdaros.

Theres an even bigger titan turt in dnd called the zaratan that are as big as mountains or islands and sleep for so long people build whole cities on them and have no idea

Morla the Ancient One is my favorite too. My pet tortoise is named Tortellini though.

For the longest time I've been trying to reflavour Merfolk, Tritons and Deep Ones (fish people generally) in my Fantasy games to be nomadic seafaring tribal societies living in limpet like huts on the backs of enormous whales, spending their time underwater hunting and herding fleets of Tuna and Gamefish and surfacing near seaside towns to trade (or raid still not sure). Big Turts will be an excellent addition to this.

If you want a big turtle, check out The Book of Extinction. Along with the normal nonmagical Pinta Island Tortoise, we have Lonesome George, named after the last Pinta Island Tortoise, who is a tortoise with an actual mountain on its shell. Also, it's considered a Celestial-type creature.

This was some damn nice ideas. Thanks for the vid!

yknow, there's very little that a high/low fantasy person could say about tectonic plates that wouldn't result in it sounding like a really massive turtle you're on the back of...

so now i have to have a session where plyers protect the dragon turtle hatching, yes thank you this will be fun.

7:35 a turtle made it to the water a turtle made it to the water the cycle of life can be so cruel

In terms of views maybe it's this. Your 100k viewed ones like the Xvarts, Immortal Goblin, and The Ultimate Authority, all have epitome words and concepts. I guess people just wanna know what also makes them interesting to have that title

The Dragon Turtle hatching beach apocalypse sounds so cool and fun what the hell!? ;-;

I turtle idea i made was a turtle whos layer is so deep down it crosses into the shadowfell, turning it into a shadow dragon turtles with necrotic breath that negates necrotic resistance because thats really scary. Also shadows help it hunt. ALSO in forgot realms dragon turtles are true dragons so they actually can become shadow or lich variants.

I have a gigantic turtle goddess in my main campaign she is called Julietar(name taken from my pet river turtle Julieta) she is a goddess of the sea fertility and harvest/fishing as such the sirens have built what is essentially the largest whorehouse on her back around which a city was built by sea dragons Julietar periodically dives underwater for about 7 months at a time before surfacing for another 7 months during the time that the city is above water the sirens exchange their bodies for food while the sea dragons get hired to protect fishing ships or traders as they go to and fro the many isles there’s also a pirate friendly port near her back

A day that has new Runesmith is a day that I’m happy

Gamera clips made me think about CG turtle Celestial from somewhere like Arborea

Having a dragon turtle egg McMuffin fetch quest would be excellent

In my early years of playing dnd my dm used a dragon turtle to get us stranded on a remote island by having it sink our ship. It was scary for me specifically because my character was the fisher and accidentally got their hook stuck on its shell.