Tag: Star Wars

This Is The Way

I have been a big fan of the Disney series, The Mandalorian, and have been re-watching the series in anticipation of season 3.

One of the aspects of the show I love is the Mandalorian code. As an orphan, adopted by an offshoot religious cult called the Children of the Watch, the main character Din Djarin is raised under a strict warrior’s code.

Mandalorians cannot remove their helmet in front of other beings, and as Din Djarin comments “weapons are part of my religion”. It is a strict, inflexible religion in many ways, but the Mandalorians believe it is also their source of survival. Even after as the season progresses, and Din Djarin’s character evolves, he still strives to keep this code as much as possible.

This idea of sticking to a moral code is very interesting to me.

Personally, I am not interested in being a warrior, and as a middle-aged dad working an office job, it probably isn’t realistic anyway. In any case, I have been a committed Buddhist for almost 20 years, and I suppose in a way that’s become my code. Things such as the Five Precepts, the Bodhisattva Precepts, and a commitment to help all beings, these are important to me.

I think it’s important to have some kind of moral code in one’s life. It’s important to be able to commit to something beyond oneself, and live a life beyond simple indulgence. The flip side of course is that one has to uphold that code too, even when one doesn’t feel like doing it.

But that tension between the realities of one’s life, one’s code and one’s nature is how a person grows. 😄

P.S. If you look at the progression of Mr Spock as a character too, you can see how he gradually changes from a staunchly Vulcan, driven by logic, to something more well-rounded in the movie series, and later in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Yo Mando! The D&D Version

Lately, I’ve been re-watching The Mandalorian and while I enjoyed it the first time through, I enjoy it a lot more the second time around. I’ve been thinking about how I might make a Dungeons and Dragons character for Adventurer’s League that mirrors the Mandalorian, Din Djarin.

I wrote recently about hobgoblins in D&D and how they mirrored Klingons in some way, and at that time I made a character named Kargoth toward that end. I played a couple tier-1 sessions, and it was fun, but the character wasn’t as interesting as I would have liked.

Then, after re-watching The Mandalorian, I got an idea. Since the new, season 11 rules allow for much easier rebuilding of characters, I decided to use the opportunity to rebuild Kargoth as a Mandalorian-style hobgoblin fighter, eldritch knight:

Kargoth’s backstory is that he was adopted after being a child on the losing side of a war by a fanatical cult of warriors (e.g. Children of the Watch), but hides his hobgoblin identity in public using a helmet, as well as following the religious ethos he was raised with. Helmet is cosmetic only and provides no additional armor class. Kargoth also has the hermit character background unsurprisingly.

Eldritch Knight as a subclass made surprising sense because first and foremost he would have to be a warrior anyway, but as an Eldritch Knight he would have many additional tricks up his sleeves that can be approximated as magic spells:

It’s fun to be a little creative here since every Mandalorian will be a little different anyway.

The real challenge is the hobgoblin racial character stats. A bonus to Intelligence helps with playing an Eldritch Knight, but the bonus to Constitution doesn’t have an overt benefit beyond more hit points.

I debated back and forth and opted to make Kargoth mostly a ranged fighter, to match the Mandalorian as a crack-shot. I gave him the Archery fighting style, equipped him with both a hand-crossbow (for later Crossbow feat) and a heavy crossbow. But, I also gave Kargoth enough Strength to handle melee combat too.

For armor I settled on Medium armor with the goal of getting good half-plate someday. The Mandalorian seems to wear half-plate rather than full-body armor and this allows me to continue focusing on Kargoth’s Dexterity based build.

Lastly, the kid. I debated using my “free spell choice” as an Eldritch Knight to cast _Find Familiar_ but a pet raven is a lousy substitute for Grogu (a.k.a. baby Yoda). So, for now Kargoth doesn’t have a sidekick … yet. Then again if I want to rebuild I can certainly do that too.

Enjoy!

This is the Way.