It’s Showtime! Let’s Play D&D With Beetlejuice
It’s time to consult your handbook for the recently deceased. This week we’re playing D&D with the bio-exorcist himself, Beetlejuice!
With trailers dropping and more information being released, we’re getting pretty excited for the upcoming sequel to Beetlejuice. It looks like it will be the right blend of fun, campy, and a little spooky… but just for the aesthetic. We only have to wait a few months until the September premiere date. But until then, let’s pester our D&D characters with the world’s most famous poltergeist for hire. This week we’re playing Dungeons and Dragons with…
Beetlejuice
via Warner Bros.
Character sheets are fun. But I love an excuse to make a monster sheet. Even when they’re not terribly difficult or dangerous and just a little annoying for our characters to have to deal with, something about monsters is just really fun to play around with. And Beetlejuice definitely falls into that ‘not terribly dangerous, just annoying’ pocket.
He’s not an enemy that will outright attack anybody. But he will make himself into a nuisance or a horror movie setting at worst. He doesn’t have a particularly high AC or a ton of hit points, and not a single action or ability is designed to inflict damage on an adventurer- that would be left to the Sandworms. But he is designed to make most living things want to leave whatever house Beetlejuice happens to be haunting at the time.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
As a bio-exorcist, Beetlejuice wants to terrify and torment livings into leaving wherever they happen to be. So we loaded him up with poltergeisty abilities. Levitating, invisibility, warping reality, and shape-shifting all make him a presence that you probably wouldn’t want to have in your house. And may even want to leave said house to get away from it.
Possession is the only real ability on the list that could be harmful; who knows what an unstable ghost would have you do when he’s in the driver’s seat? But if we’re sticking to the spirit of Beetlejuice as a franchise, this is another power that would likely be used for goofs and annoyance. Of course, if the DM decides to go a little dark with it, that’s their prerogative.
via Warner Bros.
And of course, there’s a matter of his mediocre AC and lowish hit points. There is a better-than-good chance that your party will absolutely destroy Beetlejuice, send him back to whichever level of Hell he’s from, and feel pretty darn good about that. That is until he comes back the next day with the same jokes and creepy party tricks. Y’know. Because he’s already dead. But that’s part of the fun. And anyway, you can figure out how to trap him somewhere… hopefully.
How would you make Beetlejuice for a D&D setting? Are you excited for the upcoming movie? What movie, book, comic, show, or game should we make sheets from next time? Let us know in the comments!
It’s showtime, adventurers!
