Let’s Play D&D With The Leprechaun
If you take this Leprechaun’s gold you’ll end up with some bad wishes, a small stalker, and a memorable session of D&D.
Remember the hilariously bad Leprechaun movies? Of course you do. Eight of them were made with the most recent coming out in 2018, and as of 2021, they’re not-not talking about making more? These horror-comedy movies are terrible to a memorable degree, but that’s what makes them great. And this week we’re trying to add a little of that same feeling to our next D&D adventure.
The Leprechaun
Made on The Homebrewery.
There’s a unique challenge with creatures like this one. I’d like these monsters to be as playable as possible, they should make for an amusing game session. But they also need to stick to the spirit of the source material. And in this case the source material is ridiculous. The Leprechaun has been to space! So I guess you can put him in your Spelljammer adventure…. if we ever get a Spelljammer update.
To give him some more grounded roots, I looked up Leprechauns in D&D, and no great surprise they’re there. Or, they were, most recently in 4E. And even then only briefly for Dungeon Magazine #211. They’re not terribly strong and didn’t have a lot of abilities that I wanted to take for this specific Leprechaun, but I borrowed some of he basics. Stats and languages all come from 4E, and then I took our guy in a slightly different direction.
He’s tougher than the official Leprechaun, for starters. Throughout the movies characters try to kill him in all sorts of normal horror movie ways and none of it works. So our Leprechaun has all sorts of damage immunities and resistances. His hit points maybe low, but his armor class is decent and you may not even do any damage anyway if you try with something he’s immune to, anyhow. He can also regenerate; the version in the movie can put limbs back on and our D&D version can recover hit points.
What I’m most excited about though, and what I think has the potential to be fun in an actual game, is his pot of gold. Of course, every leprechaun folk-tale has their pot of gold and the wishes you can make. And the movie has a take on this as the Leprechaun’s powers are diminished when his gold is taken and strengthened when it’s in his possession. But he also sometimes grants wishes. Of course these turn into monkey-paw curses, and I think that would be very fun in practice.
I imagine players finding the treasure and taking it, unknowingly, and beginning a very weird adventure of wrongly fulfilled wishes and an evil Leprechaun who’s stalking them and seems to get stronger with every retrieved coin. What strangeness could the DM add to the session with twisted wishes? Would player think to trust the tiny fey at first? That is, until he starts biting them.
How would you make the Leprechaun from Leprechaun for D&D? How many of these movies have you seen and would you see more if they were produced? What movie, show, game, or comic should I make sheets from next time? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
