Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves reveals main cast character sheets

This is not the first time the characters of a Dungeons & Dragons movie are represented with stats for the tabletop roleplaying game. The first Dungeons & Dragons movie in 2000 had a Fast-Play PDF included in its DVD release. The adventure titled The Sewers of Sumdall included stats for Ridley Freeborn, Marina, Elwood, and Snails which were compatible with the D&D Third Edition rules of the time.

One key point with the Honor Among Thieves character sheets is that they do not appear to follow the exact format of D&D Fifth Edition player characters. Aside from unusually high attributes, they have unique abilities, traits, and have no character levels but are instead presented with Challenge Ratings (CR). In D&D, player characters advance through levels (from 1 to 20 for most campaigns or 20+ for Epic level games). Challenge Ratings, on the other hand, are more often used to represent monsters. As noted in the write-up:

The stat blocks in this collection use a presentation similar to that which is found in the Monster Manual. If you are unfamiliar with the stat block format, read the introduction of the Monster Manual before proceeding further. That book explains stat block terminology and gives rules for various monster traits—information that isn't repeated here.

According to Dungeons & Dragons Lead Designer Chris Perkins:

When it was decided that we were going to represent these characters in our game we hit upon the idea of doing them as stat blocks, because we thought the most likely use that they're going to see in a DnD campaign is as NPCs who show up.

While it's neat that Dungeon Masters can use the Honor Among Thieves cast as NPCs, it seems like a missed opportunity that players will not be able to play them or create a facsimile that closely matches their film counterparts without tweaking. Still, this does present an opportunity for cross-marketing with Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro, which is much-needed after the debacle regarding the Open Gaming License (OGL) also led to some groups of D&D fans calling to boycott the film.

Produced by Paramount Pictures and eOne (a division of Hasbro), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is set to begin the adventure when it releases in cinemas on March 31, 2023.