Let’s Play D&D With Monkey D. Luffy from ‘One Piece’
This week we’re taking to the sea and joining in on the hunt for the One Piece when Monkey D. Luffy joins us for some D&D.
For a really long time, One Piece has been the anime watched only by the longest-term fans and people brave enough to pour hundreds of hours worth of time into catching up on. But live action is changing that and even not-anime-watching family members of mine are talking about watching the wild new show to break records on Netflix.
If you’ve been a fan of One Piece, or even just the One Piece card game, and D&D for a while, you probably recognize the core crew as a pretty good representation of your average adventuring party. Everyone has a different, specific skillset, everyone thinks of themselves as the main character- and is for an arc or two- and everyone is a little goofier than the story really needs. But also, everyone is willing to work together towards a common goal. Usually. So let’s find a Devil Fruit and take our next adventure to sea by playing D&D with…
Monkey D. Luffy
Of all of the original Straw Hat Pirates, Luffy is easily the least straightforward to work in a D&D setting. Most of the rest of the group doesn’t have special powers and fits neatly into character classes and archetypes. Nami is a rogue, Zoro is a sword fighter, Usopp is a sharpshooter-fighter- probably with a duel class in Bard for all of his stories and tall tales, and Sanji would probably be a monk or a fighter with the flavor-text of kicking instead of punching. At least in the beginning, all of the characters grow in power and complexity throughout the show.
But there isn’t a clear pick for ‘guy who stretches his body’ in D&D. And unfortunately, that’s one of Luffy’s biggest defining characteristics.
Instead, we sort of worked backward with this one and took a look at Luffy’s fighting style. He’s a usually unarmored punch guy. Luffy is the sort of guy who sees a possibly literal god and decides to handle the problem by hitting it. And all of that combined makes him primarily a monk in my mind.
From there we narrowed it down, and this is where I think his gum-gum powers come into play a little. Way of the Astral Self monks can use ‘spectral’ arms to extend their strikes and create astral versions of their own bodies. This isn’t a perfect one-for-one for his stretchy powers, but it’s also not a bad place to start.
That said, this is just a start. I didn’t go into this looking to make episode 1,000 Luffy who has access to Haki (magic) or multiple evolutions of his power (which allow him to turn into a deity straight out of the Loony Tunes). This is basic, first-couple-of-arcs Luffy. Even in the beginning though, he’s pretty overpowered.
So while I made him a level seven character, he likely exists in a part of the map meant for players closer to level three or four. As he gets more powerful, I think you would see him duel-class into a spell-casting class and maybe even Barbarian as well. But for now we’re looking at early-adventure Luffy.
His Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma are all very high. Because Luffy is strong, fast, able to take a hit and literally bounce it back, and makes friends with everyone. But he’s also got the common sense of a stump, so Int. is a bit low. Wisdom is likely a bit higher than any of us expected, but monks need that higher Wisdom.
I decided on Variant Human for Luffy’s race because he is human, but the Gum Gum fruit also changed him on a pretty basic level. This gives us a couple of interesting boons, including a free feat, which I used for Human Determination, and later picked up the Inspiring Leader feat. As the character level up and grows though, there are so, so many feats that would really fit from Mobile, to Lucky, to Mage Slayer, depending on how you wanted to play him.
Have you seen the live-action One Piece yet? How would you make the Straw Hat crew for D&D? What movie, show, game, book, or comic should I make sheets from next time? Let us know in the comments!
Happy adventuring!
