Honor Among Thieves Already Teased A Classic D&D Mistake

In the latest trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Chris Pine’s Edgin the Bard leads a cast of medieval misfits on an epic quest, but despite having the look and feel of a typical D&D campaign, the movie already shows a glaring misstep for the party. The group, which includes Sophia Lillic’s druid, René-Jean Page’s paladin, and Michelle Rodriguez’s barbarian, must work together to retrieve an ancient relic, and half the fun is seeing how they take on each new challenge. When they’re spread all over the kingdom, however, it’s difficult to enjoy the collaborative style of facing threats that D&D is known for.

In the trailer, Edgin is trying to redeem himself with this quest, gathering a crew with specific strengths to face the dangers together and restore their reputations. Honor Among Thieves teases their spells and abilities, but there are several shots that indicate members of the party will be taking on separate threats without using them collaboratively. Isolated by fellow thieves, monsters, and magic users, the party is forced to beat incredible odds while being split up.

Honor Among Thieves Splits The Party

By splitting up the party, Honor Among Thieves makes a classic D&D mistake, disrupting the traditional mechanics of the tabletop game and showing too many tertiary threads. At this point, it’s a running gag in the D&D community that the party is never split up because it not only changes the game’s cooperative nature but also makes it harder for the DM to keep track of what the players are doing in the campaign. The party in this Dungeons & Dragons movie no longer appears to have a joint goal but many separate adventures, which would normally leave players vulnerable to threats they can’t beat alone, and often can’t progress from.

Why Splitting The Party In Dungeons & Dragons Movie Is Inevitable Storytelling-Wise

While it might seem like splitting the party in Honor Among Thieves doesn’t make sense from a strategic point of view, it makes sense for the plot of the movie. Instead of keeping the party together so that the skills and abilities of all characters can be utilized against increasingly dangerous threats, the movie seeks to raise the stakes by having them unable to help each other as a unit. By not having characters able to coordinate attacks, the story has more tension and lets some weaker characters develop into themselves, like Pine’s bard, who might be scarier than he seems.

Given that there isn’t a DM to get upset at having to manage multiple groups moving through a campaign, it makes more sense for the characters to seem like they’re making their own choices. Players and DMs may see separating characters as a classic D&D mistake, but putting them in separate dangerous situations without being able to use their skills together contributes to more excitement in the long run. Hopefully, the risk is worth it when Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves charges into theaters on March 31.