Warning! SPOILERS for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves!
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves recently found its way from the table to the big screen, but did the film put all its experience points in accuracy? Dungeons & Dragons is a famously complex game because of how much flexibility it gives its players. Dungeons & Dragons' spells and abilities are numerous, and there are player races and classes, subclasses, weapons, and magical items, let alone the complexity of a collaborative narrative. With this wealth of source material, Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves had more than enough to work with, with the caveat that telling a story that is both exciting and feels true to the spirit of the game does not have to perfectly apply the mechanics.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves tells the story of a disparate group of adventurers, including Edgin the bard (Chris Pine), Holga the barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon the sorcerer (Justice Smith), and Doric the druid (Sophia Lillis). Together, the ragtag group works to save Edgin’s daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman), and battle a powerful arcane evil. This quest takes them across the world from the city of Neverwinter to the depths of the Underdark as they unravel the plot surrounding them.
Honor Among Thieves Gets Simon’s Wild Magic Right
In Dungeons & Dragons, sorcerers are people who can cast magic innately. However, some of these characters' access to magic comes with a cost, as the power they have within can sometimes be too powerful to control. These wild magic surges can cause unforeseen effects, and Simon experiences a surge just like this while performing in a local theater. Although this game mechanic does not come up often in the film, Simon attributes his accidental gravity reversal to wild magic, triggered when he tries to cast a normal spell. This is accurate to Dungeons & Dragons, as wild magic sorcerers must occasionally roll a die to see if their powers surge out of control.
Honor Among Thieves Gets Speak With Dead Right
Another magical accuracy in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is when Simon and his friends cast the spell ‘speak with dead’ to locate the Helmet of Disjunction. Simon’s notes on the limitation of the spell were entirely accurate, as the game version of ‘speak with dead’ calls forth a dead creature to answer five questions, after which the spell cannot be cast on them for another 10 days. How finicky a question can be is also accurate, as many players have run afoul of accidental and mistaken queries, depending on how nitpicky their game master is.
Honor Among Thieves’ Magic Items Were A Bit OP For The Game
Speaking of Simon’s ‘speak with dead’ spell, which he cast with an elven token, many of the magical items were a bit stronger than they typically are in the game. Granted, many Dungeons & Dragons games include homebrew items that can vary wildly in power and scope, and there’s typically no ‘wrong’ way to make or use a magic item. But most items come with a certain amount of ‘charges’ or uses, per day, depending on the power and rarity of the artifact. Such limitations such as these would apply to Kira’s necklace or Simon’s Hither Thither staff, but instead, both characters seemed to be able to use either item an unlimited amount of times per day in Honor Among Thieves.
Doric’s Druid Powers Were More Limited In Honor Among Thieves
Doric’s abilities as a druid were particularly different in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. In the game, druids as a Dungeons & Dragons class use far more magic than their wild shape abilities. To be fair, a druid’s shapeshifting is one of the main features that distinguish their class, but they all can cast powerful elemental spells, heal their friends, speak with animals, and more. As well as this, Doric was able to use her wild shape far more often than most druids can while in the game. Depending on how long they have been playing, most druids can only transform into animals twice per day, instead of Doric’s fluid shifting into several animals in minutes.
Chris Pine’s Bard Didn’t Have The Powers He Could Have
Another character whose powers were somewhat limited in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in comparison to his tabletop counterpart was Edgin. In Dungeons & Dragons, bards are not just clever speakers and strategists, but they are also often this. Bards are jack-of-all-trades casters and can use spells that are typically limited to the other classes. If the movie had followed the game’s mechanics entirely, Edgin could have had the ability to create illusions or lightning through his music while remaining an inspiring leader.
Honor Among Thieves' Attunement Was Way Harder
Finally, one key difference in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was Simon’s difficulty attuning to the powerful Helmet of Disjunction. Usually, when a character needs to attune to a magical item, they simply need to spend 30 minutes to one hour working with it to learn its properties and bond to it. Simon’s self-imposed mental block that had the helmet violently rejecting him is not typically the norm. However, this process was more engaging than a typical attunement, and a game master could very well choose to make attuning to such a powerful item a roleplaying exercise with similar results to the film, making the player’s eventual success all the more gratifying.