8 crazy treasures in Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is one of the most delightful fantasy adventure films in recent years. Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) the roguishly charming bard-turned-thief assembles a heist team – including incompetent half-Elf sorcerer Simon Aumar (Justice Smith), shapeshifting Druid Doric (Sophia Lillis) and (eventually) noble Paladin warrior Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) – after he and Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), the exiled Barbarian warrior, escape prison together. Their quest? To find Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) and the resurrection stone that’ll allow Edgin to bring his wife back from the dead.  

Edgin’s heist plan will take them to the edges of the map, and reunite them with an old friend, Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) the con man, who’s now the massively rich and powerful Lord of Neverwinter. 

It’s a family-friendly (13VL) treat, with all the actors delivering charm in spades, wardrobe and effects teams competing to see who can put on the best show, and a plot line filled with surprises and clever twists. And that’s even if you’ve never rolled a D20. 

For D&D players, though, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is a Monty Haul of treasures, so rich we hardly know where to start. It gets even better when you rewatch. Here are just eight D&D delights. 

1. In perfect alignment 

The film takes the D&D staple characters like noble Paladins, glass cannon Wizards, charming Bards and invincible Barbarians, and brings them to life the way a great player would. While Paladins’ lawful good nobility can make them come across as dull and plodding on paper, Regé-Jean Page brings a warmth, humanity and a twinkle in the eye to his Paladin, Xenk.

Yes, he spouts motivational phrases, and yes, he has that Paladin’s trick of speech that gives him a blind spot for metaphor, sarcasm and any of the other trickeries of language … but he’s such a straight man that his character even walks in straight lines, marching over boulders instead of around them. 

2. Charisma, check 

With each obstacle that arises during the quest, you can practically work out what turned up on the advantage/disadvantage/ability-check roll of the dice as the characters overcome it, work round it, or take damage. It’s all done organically, with each character type’s weaknesses and strengths coming through in the perfect ways for their type. Will Edgin manage to charm Holga into shaking off her gloom and heartbreak? Cue him taking out his trusty lute and playing her a rollicking drinking song for the road that speaks to her Barbarian joy in thumping back people and tankards.

As Chris Pine pours charisma into the performance it’s easy to understand how it works, and what really makes Bards special. And if you watch each of the characters, their strengths and weaknesses are brought to life so specifically that it’ll bring to mind your favourite moments around the D&D table.  

3. A noble quest 

There’s no such thing as a straightforward quest in D&D, and the film really gets that, with our band of heroes having to go on all sorts of side quests that see them do everything from raise the dead on an old battlefield for question time, to fighting Themberchaud the morbidly obese red dragon in a city suspended by chains above a field of lava in The Underdark.

Yes, okay, it’s kind of funny to sideline the Underdark to a side quest, but it works! In classic D&D fashion, one quest does spark another, and by the end, they all tie together and unite the characters, their knowledge, goals and experience so that they each have a stake in the final battle with a powerful enemy that none of them could defeat alone. 

4. A menagerie of monsters 

Our favourite and most dreaded monsters are all here! While a few like a Lich (undead spellcaster), giant spiders, rust monsters fighting over scraps in a blink-and-miss it scene, and Intellect Devourers (looking like brain-butts on spindly little legs) pop up throughout the film, things really heat up during the High Sun Games.

At the games, a magical arena transforms into a maze crammed with monsters. A Mimic pretending to be a treasure chest gnashes its jaws. A Gelatinous Cube the size of a bathroom cubicle sucks in and dissolves hapless heroes like a 1950s dessert gone rogue. And even the bizarre Displacer Beast is on the prowl like a sleek giant panther with squid tentacles and magical abilities. For D&D fans, it’s a scene to watch with your Monstrous Manual at hand to check what our heroes are up against, or if you’ve had an unlucky encounter before, to yell at the screen and tell everyone to run. 

5. Dungeons and mazes 

The directors and scriptwriters are the ultimate Dungeon Masters. Along with the promised dragons (so many dragons, each perfectly realised), oh boy, do we get dungeons and mazes filled with monsters and traps. Neverwinter castle has an extensive dungeon filled with passages and gold and glittering treasure room. We get the ultimate “dungeon” in the Underdark.

And at the High Sun Games, we even get a Dungeon Master’s overview of the stone-walled maze that the players are scurrying through, which we see in a map that the high rolling noble gamblers are using to bet on the Games.  

6. Relics, artefacts and trinkets 

Whether it’s a Red Wizard’s blade, enchanted Sending Stones (with a new word limit) that our heroes use as walkie talkies, a Pendant of Invisibility (which works like an invisibility ring), or, at the high and dark end of the magical knickknack world, the Horn of Beckoning Death, the film makes great use of D&D’s magical objects, while adding a few of their own to the collection. And props to the prop makers, because everything looks like it came from a real treasure hoard.  

The more you know about D&D, the more you’ll spot, and the more you’ll be able to guess about how our heroes can or can’t use the artefacts, or what they might be up against when they’re in enemy hands. But the real magic comes in how they play by the rules when it matters most. For example, there are only two things in the D&D universe that can bring a player back from the dead once they’re cut down by a Red Wizard’s blade, and that’s a literal god, or a Tablet of Reawakening. 

7. Spellbinding spells 

Spoiler alert! While some rules are tweaked, allowing Doric the Druid to transform into a mighty Owlbear (a monster, not a beast), or extending the range of the Arcan Gate spell, the film brings plenty of classic D&D spells like Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum to life in a way that’ll have Wizards cheering. We see even mighty magic users draw on low-level and basic spells creatively, like Disguise Self.  

Wild magic sorcerer Simon’s use of Reverse Gravity (a 7th-level spell) while he’s trying to rob his audience at the beginning of the film hints that he’s far more powerful than he realises, which perfectly sets up the grand duel between Simon and Red Wizard Sofina (Daisy Head). The film also perfectly showcases the way that some spells can be cast using enchanted objects, others need a spoken element, and others like Animate Object need focused concentration to keep working. 

8. Plans and improvisation 

There’s no chaotic good character more chaotic or more good at heart than Chris Pine’s Edgin the Bard, a master of plans within plans. What does he bring to the party, though? He can barely hold his own in a fight compared to Holga. And, strangely for a Bard, he barely uses his Bard’s spellcasting abilities. But perhaps he’s drawing on every crumb of magical ability he has to charm people into doing things for him instead (his min-max on the character sheet would make for an interesting read).

Edgin really showcases the Bard’s role in uniting a team, figuring out everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and coming up with ways to use them on the fly, as the ground literally shifts under their feet. And at the heart of the game, that’s an idea that’s critical to D&D – that you don’t need to be all-powerful to succeed at a quest. It’s about how you roll with the dice.  

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