Let’s Play D&D With The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Cowabunga dudes, this week we’re playing D&D with the four-and-only heroes in a half shell, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been kicking butt and saving day as heroes in a half shell since 1984. I barely remember having a Ninja Turtle themed birthday party (at a pizza place, of course) as a very little kid, and in high school a good friend had the entire theme song play as her voicemail message… It was strategic so people wouldn’t leave her messages. Fast forward nearly twenty years and Mutant Mayhem is out and doing very well with audiences, and I still want to visit these four martial arts experts turtle heroes and their rat teacher-slash-father-figure.
So while we check movie times and deal with the fact that the theme 80’s song is collectively stuck in our heads, let’s invite these dudes to the table to play some D&D.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
via Paramount
The first thing you may notice is that there is only one sheet while there are four turtle–or in this case, tortle–brothers. I’m going to be honest with you, making four mostly-identical-but-slightly-different sheets sounded exhausting. So I made one that would work as the base for any of them or an amalgam of the four depending on which direction you’d want to go in. As a team who’s been raised and trained together their whole lives, they have a very similar core skill-set. But each is a little different and should be duel-classed out accordingly. Personally, I’d also make Raphael a Barbarian or Fighter, Michelangelo a Bard, Donatello an Artificer, and Leonardo a Paladin or Fighter.
Separating them out also means that they’ll all want their own various specialty weapons. On this sheet, I gave a bo staff and short sword as a stand-in for a katana as well as a feat in duel-wielding for Leo and Donny’s twin katana and sai fighting styles. But this is probably something that they would each individually know, even if it isn’t their preference. And of course, the amalgam-tortle can do it all.
Stepping away from all of that, this is one of those rare times when D&D has the perfect player-race for our characters. Turtle people already exist in the form of Tortle. With a shell that gives them good natural armor, we’re working against our Monk pick’s unarmed defense a little. But I think we can work with that. Way of the Shadow Monks are basically on-the-nose ninjas, after all.
I rolled pretty decently and made the tortles pretty top-heavy in physical skills over mental ones. They are however weirdly charismatic for what should be terrifying turtle people. Of course, if you’re making a Donny-specific sheet, I’d recommend prioritizing Intelligence a little more than I did.
Monks also have a fairly limited weapon proficiency list. So to give these guys a more complete list and to be sure they could be masters of their preferred weapons, I gave them the Weapons Master feat. Not all of these weapons appear in the standard D&D rules, so have a chat with your DM about your pointy stick of choice.
How would you play the Ninja Turtles in your D&D campaign, and would you play a combo character or one of the individual turtles? Which generation of TNMT is your favorite? What movie, show, comic, book, or game should I make sheets from next? Let us know in the comments!
Cowabunga, adventuters!
