Make Sure to Stick the Landing, We’re Playing D&D With Simone Biles
For some of us, cartwheels are hard. But the next guest to our party makes twelve-foot flips look easy; we’re playing D&D with Simone Biles.
Usually, we don’t make D&D sheets for real people. It feels a bit dicey, and we don’t know those real people’s real skills. But recently the internet has been sharing a meme translating Simone Biles’ gymnastic abilities to D&D stats… And unsurprisingly, she’s real strong.
So @Simone_Biles jumping approximately 7-8 feet above the ground (12 feet including her height) means we now know her strength score in #DND
A creature in DND5e has a vertical jump of 3 feet + strength mod. So since she jumped more than 7 feet, that’s STR of 20 fam
— Bard Rock Cafe, now streaming to YouTube (@BardRockCafe) August 1, 2024
Naturally, the question we saw over and over was “but what’s her class, though?” And we’d like to take an attempt at answering. So with a ton of respect, and love to Simone Biles and the entire gymnastic team, we’re going to try and figure out how to play D&D with…
Simone Biles
I love my black job 🖤 https://t.co/c5wPc6xOY3
Advertisement— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) August 2, 2024
A few parts of this sheet got away from me, while others I managed to keep in pocket. For example, I never meant to make this a level twenty sheet…. But also when you’re the best of the best in your field… maybe the level 20 fits?
I wanted to make sure that her character was as mobile, fast, and high-jumping as possible. So I started out with a few levels in Monk. If you want a character that can get around the field and get twelve feet of air, Monk is the character for you. Plus, the unarmored defense meant that we wouldn’t be adding a lot of heavy armor to a character who would be wearing something light and athletic.
Simone Biles making history as the first woman ever to land the hardest vault in the world
— Women Posting W’s (@womenpostingws) August 5, 2024
My next class pick was Bard, because Simone Biles is an athlete who we’ve all watched on the international stage. There’s a performance aspect to competing at the Olympics, and as a performer she’s captivating. So much so that I ended up giving her a ton of levels in Bard.
When I said that I never meant for this to be a level 20 character, I meant that I thought there’d be five or six levels in Monk, and maybe the same amount in Bard. But instead I looked through the abilities for College of Glamour Bards and thought, “Yeah, Unbreakable Majesty tracks.”
Bard also works so well because how many little kids are very suddenly inspired to start gymnastics classes?
This also gave me a lot of Feats to play with, so I made sure she was extra athletic with Acrobat, Athlete, Mobile, and Performer. If there was a way to make her faster, stronger, or higher-jumping, we were going for it.
fav tiktok of the olympics just dropped pic.twitter.com/AHqw6Uw1r0
— SUNI LEE 2X OLYMPIC CHAMPION (@jordynsleftbrow) July 30, 2024
Unfortunately, this meant that I had to pick a ton of spells, another thing I’d never originally intended on doing. I tried to pick a mix of things that would be useful, even if I have no way of knowing if they’re personally in-character or on-brand. Something like Feather Fall or Enhance Ability made sense, while Charm Person mostly represents how charmed and delighted all of us are with Ms. Biles.
But Shatter is just a decent offensive spell to have ready. Vicious Mockery was entirely for the fantastic “lack of talent, lazy, etc.” clapback. It’s perfect that it’s just a cantrip because it doesn’t need any real spell slots to result in a devastating burn.
Have you been watching the Olympics? What sport would you compete in if had the ability to get really good at it really fast? What show, book, movie, comic, or game should we make sheets from next time? Let us know in the comments!
Happy adventuring!