Let’s Play D&D With Grand Admiral Thrawn
Dungeons and Dragons is about to be done a little more artistically when we invite Grand Admiral Thrawn to the table.
Grand Admiral Thrawn was one of the most popular characters lost to Star Wars Legends. Unsurprisingly, fans rejoiced when it was announced that he would be coming back into canon as one of the main protagonists in Star Wars: Rebels. And since that triumphant return, Thrawn has been around quite a bit. With multiple newly canonical novels- all by original Thrawn author, Timothy Zahn- and a name-drop in The Mandalorian, we’ve all been wondering when the Grand Admiral would be coming back. And it looks like the answer is this August when Ahsoka premieres. Personally, I’m very excited and can’t wait for August. So until then, let’s see if we can make our next D&D session a little more artistic. This week we’re playing D&D with…
Grand Admiral Thrawn
From the beginning, I knew Thrawn was going to be a Mastermind. It’s almost too bad that this is a subclass of Rogue because Rogue itself doesn’t quite fit. But Mastermind was too perfect to pass up. He deals in secrets and information and makes it his entire job to know what’s going on so he can pull on strings later. Thrawn is the mastermind.
And then, there’s the character’s race. Obviously, Chiss don’t exist within D&D. But there are militaristic, serious-minded, space aliens who have a way of sticking out in a crowd… That’s right, I made Thrawn a Giff. Sure, this may not be my most popular move of the day, but I stand by it. It also gave us a firearm proficiency that I thought would be important as Thrawn is shown to be pretty good with a blaster.
On the same note, I gave him a quarterstaff as his other weapon. In Rebels we clearly see him demolishing a group of training droids with a staff. It’s clearly a weapon he’s good with. He probably wouldn’t carry one around wherever he goes, but one of the joys of D&D is that your character can.
I had the opportunity to pick five feats for Thrawn. And I chose four that increased his intelligence or wisdom and gave the sheet a few nice boosts to his various ways of noticing things. Because Thrawn’s number one ability is how good he is at noticing everything. For his fifth feat, I chose Inspiring Leader. This is one that I feel really strongly about, Thrawn is a good leader. In the books, we see multiple examples of him getting his subordinates to like and respect him and personally earning their loyalty just by having good leadership skills. If this is a skill we would have the remotest opportunity to use at the table, I wanted to be sure we could.
How would you make Thrawn for a Dungeons and Dragons setting? Are you excited to finally see him in live action on Ahsoka this summer? What movie, show, comic, or game should I make sheets from next time? Let us know in the comments!
May the Force be with you, adventurers!
