Let’s Play D&D With John Wick
Grab your sharpest suit and be very careful around dogs, this week we’re inviting John Wick to play some D&D.
John Wick is the sort of D&D character you want to play when you start character creation. He’s competent, strong, deadly, and a literal legend in his field. Unfortunately, most of us end up playing something a little closer to your-uncle-playing-a-shooting-fame-at-the-county-fair. But we can dream of skillful characters who never accidently roll natural ones. This week we’re playing D&D with…
John Wick
via Lionsgate
John Wick is a pretty simple man. He’s good at making people dead and he has quite a few ways of making this happen. But he doesn’t use any special tricks aside from a lifetime of training and movie magic. It turns out, the real magic was the gun he found along the way.
So my goal with this character was to make somebody who’s good at brining the pain in as many ways a possible. My initial thought- and the one I ended up going with- was an assassin / gunslinger double class. And for John Wick it’s perfect. He used to be a contract killer and he’s one of those action heroes who are unreasonably good with a gun. But this felt perhaps too on the nose, so I also played around with a few other ideas.
One thought I had was Monk. He’s fast and a formidable martial artist, after all. But that would make more armed attacks a little harder to incorporate. I had also considered perhaps a Barbarian… but he’s never not in control, I can’t think of a single example of a John Wick rage. He’s a simple gunslinging assassin who’s very quietly competent at what he does.
But this meant that I had a few blanks to fill in. I gave him a bit of a boost to hand-to-hand combat with the Tavern Brawler feat. This also lets him utilize improvised weapons. Alert helped offset the low passive perception a little. His head is always on a swivel and it’s very difficult to surprise him. And then Menacing helps us take advantage of the reputation John Wick has. He’s terrifying, people are scared to know he is coming for them and he has numerous nicknames that all amount to, “Oh no bro, you’re dead.” Menacing gives us that exact dynamic at the table.
All of the feats gave us quite a few ability score boosts and a few opportunities to take Expertise in some of the skills. And then the Rogue table let us take a few more. So if there’s a proficiency on this sheet, it’s probably a skill we have Expertise in.
Finally, you may have noticed but this is a character with a very high level and quite a few hit points. John Wick is at the top of his field. He’s the assassin the other assassins get their behinds kicked by and his name is literally legendary. There aren’t many characters who deserve to have their levels maxed as much as John Wick. But he’s also a squishy human. But thanks to the power of feats I made sure he was a little extra “Tough” and had even more hit points. And he’s going to need them, he doesn’t exactly come out of his fights unscathed.
How would you make John Wick for D&D? Have you seen the latest movie and what did you think about it? What movie, show, comic, or game should I make sheets from next time? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
