Let’s Play D&D In Pacific Rim
Find your most drift compatible friend and hurry to your Jeager, this week we’re spending our D&D session fighting kaiju.
Pacific Rim is one of those movies that’s just fun. There isn’t much to it, it’s little men in giant robot suits punching monsters with enough sprinklings of lore, human strife, and good old fashion pseudo science fiction; but at the end of the day it’s one of those times you walk out of the movie theater knowing that your brain was able to take a little vacation while you enjoyed something silly.
The anime adaptation, The Black, recently premiered on Netflix and it was surprisingly good, utilizing the technology in ways that were smart and interesting and showing parts of the world we hadn’t had a chance to see in the two existing movies. To celebrate animated PacRim coming to Netflix, and just because it would be fun, let’s see what it would be like to battle a Kaiju at the D&D table.
Monster Sheet Created Using The Homebrewery.
There’s no two ways about it, kaiju are basically just giant monsters. There are different categories to mark danger and battle difficulty, but I decided to keep it simple and make one generic kaiju to fight. Also, unlike other monsters such as Godzilla, the kaiju of Pacific Rim don’t seem to utilize any sort of a breath weapon. I think one may have been shown with corrosive saliva, but that seems like a bit of a stretch. Instead, I leaned into making a gigantic monster with some of the standard gigantic monster attacks, and add kaiju flavor where I could.
My knee jerk reaction was to give them a high charisma, not because they’re charming or well spoken (they don’t have any discernable language at all from what I can tell), but because charisma is also linked to frightfulness and kaiju are frightful. This was easily remedied with the apply named Frightful Presence, making sure that most living creatures in the kaiju’s wake will want to be not there much longer.
From there the attacks are honestly pretty standard fare for giant monsters with bite, claws, and tail moves as well as the ability to use a combination of these attacks in one turn. I also gave the kaiju Siege Monster and Legendary Resistance, normal abilities that every humungous monster should probably have.
My favorite addition to the sheet with special inspiration from the movies is the Kaiju Blue, a final stand of a dying or dead monster to continue the battle after they have fallen. In the movies their blood is toxic, poisoning the Earth and water around them if their wounds aren’t properly closed. While general poison damage to anyone nearby isn’t exactly in line with this power, it felt pretty close for the purposes of Dungeons and Dragons and adds a layer of responsibility and urgency after the fight is done and the players think they can count their treasure and go home.
How would you make a kaiju for D&D? And maybe more importantly, how would you make a Jeager? Have you seen Pacific Rim: The Black yet? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!
Today we are cancelling the apocalypse, Adventurers!
