Kawa'bonga (Patreon)

Greetings adventurers!

You meet all manner of folks in my line of work, so when a team of 4 tortles eating pizza coupled with a ratman walked into our shop, I didn’t really bat an eye. What was a bit odd is the shield they were carrying with them. They mentioned something about a fallen 5th member that they hoped to commemorate. I hadn’t had much experience in working with tortle shells, but I promised to make them something worthy of their friend. With a bit of protective magic and a heaping helping of wax, I think I delivered just what they wanted… The fact that they haven’t returned to collect it is a bit concerning.

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Design notes from Matthew:

Okay this is just purely Fernando and I being two goofballs. We love a lot of different fandoms and were the perfect age to be big into TMNT. We also loved Lord of the Rings and have a strong desire to slide down a set of stairs on a shield due to it, Legolas style. I think in reality, everyone would want to feel that cool and graceful. That was the entire concept at the start of this, a shield that lets you slide down stairs and feel cool. Fernando came up with the initial idea of staying still allowing it to get more powerful. Literally turtling in this case. I just had to make it happen.

In 5E, the building of the sliding mechanic was the hard part, while the turtling was actually quite easy. There’s a few things out there that give you bonuses for staying still and AC is a very common addon for higher level shields. I just basically made this a situational +3 shield with the addition of the sliding function to give it proper balance. The sliding was a bit odd as I wanted to give it the ability to go downhill a bit faster, but really the only way to accomplish this is increasing movespeed. It’s hard to write anything too specific so instead I opted for cool.

For Pathfinder 2E, well the opposite was true. Shields don’t really give AC bonuses in PF2E, instead they are focused around absorbing damage when you raise your shield. In which case, I thought it would be better to opt toward situationally increasing Fortitude saving throws. This accomplished something different, but equally useful from AC. The sliding portion was super straightforward for this. Just give 3 strides for the price of 2 and increase the distance on each. It makes for a super zoomy action once per combat. Great initiator for melee!

I just freaking love making shields and when it came time to do something turtle themed, I knew we had to lean into the TMNT love rather than try to avoid it. This is a great example of how we often dream up things based on specific action sequences that we have in mind and use that to build out something cinematic. It’s a method that works well for us.

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Kraken's Kohorts ($3 tier)

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Booyakasha!,

- Fernando & Matthew