Unless you bite them down to a nub, all you need is a normal, close trimmed fingernail.

Ridiculously terrible and potentially dangerous to remove a tick with your fingernail? I scoff at the ignorance. The great majority of ticks will be unknowingly scratched off before you even notice you have one dug in. So I guess you could use special tools to remove those last 10% that you happened to notice before scratching them off.