D&D 5E WUBBA LUBBA DUB DUB!

[ParanoydStyle]

"Whatever you're asking the answer is I'm amazing."


And awayyyyyyyyyyyy we go.

Yo, DMs, any of you guys running a campaign with PCs of unreasonably high level? When they kill a Lich are they more like "welp we killed another Lich" than "HFS! WE JUST KILLED A LICH"? (or replace Lich with Balor, Pit Fiend, Ancient White Dragon, Ancient Black Dragon etctera etctera)! Or so you just want to mess with your Tier 3 or Tier 4 PCs in ways they've definitely never been messed with before? Well here's the schwiftiest menace around.

Rick Sanchez, ladies and gentlemen, CR 27 planeswalker.

DISCLAMOR: I am aware there are official D&D/Rick & Morty crossover products. I have not seen or read any of them but I did gather the vague impression that one was a starter set, which are generally for for beginner level characters (Level 1~3). If this productinvolves stats for Rick Sanchez (dunno) and have him at a CR where he can meaningfully interact with first through third level characters, IMO, WotC is already doing it wrong. HENCE:

Ladies and gentlemen, Rick Sanchez, CR 27.

" “I don’t like it here Morty. I can’t abide bureaucracy. I don’t like being told where to go and what to do.
I consider it a violation.
(half-beat)
Did you get those seeds all the way up your butt?""
-from the Pilot​

" "I'm a scientist; because I invent, transform, create, and destroy for a living, and when I don't like something about the world, I change it." "
- from Pickle Rick
​

I'm not in love with the name "Murderdance", any R&M fans want to suggest alternate names preferably ones that reference the show I'm all ears. (Mechanically, it's almost identical to the Bladesong class feature which is what I modeled it on because it was the only class feature I could find in fifth edition that let you add your INT to your AC (I thought there'd be one that let you add it to your AC permanently, not as an activated ability, considering the barbarian PC at my table is like adding his Strength and Con bonuses to AC or something and thus has AC 22 stark friggin' naked). Anyway the main difference is Bladesingers can only Bladesing twice before they need a short rest; the Rickster can Murderdance (again, not in love with that name, it is not my "Pirates Of The Pancreas" so to speak, I'm not precious about it) 8 times before he needs a short rest.

This content brought to you by Dragons In Dungeons. This one's Patrons only but I felt like posting it up here public & free. If you want to see more cool crazy dnd 5e shizzle please consider pledging your support to Dragons In Dungeons. I have reward tiers for the $1, $2, $3, and $4 levels so there's no need to make a big commitment, folks. (If you feel like giving a little more, I've also got $6 and $7 tiers crammed in between my $5 tier and my $10 tier. Basically, almost every dollar amount under $10 bucks has its own reward tier is what I'm getting at, then I have tiers for people that really have disposable income they're lookin' to burn. : D

Questions from fans of the show about why I did this or that this or that way are more than welcome. Purely D&D based opinions are also very welcome. For instance, I think that this is a "reasonable" 27th Level encounter, I just think that Rick is much harder for the DM to play than an Ancient Red Dragon or a Tarrasque due to his low hp and incredibly open ended suite of abilities.

 

[Len]

When they kill a Lich are they more like "welp we killed another Lich" than "HFS! WE JUST KILLED A LICH"?

In our current campaign it's more likely to be "welp, there goes a party member." We may need to recruit Rick...

 

[ParanoydStyle]

Excellent. With friends like Rick, who needs enemies!

 

[Mirtek]

Where is the murderdance and the powerful melee coming from? I've not watched the 4th season, but so far I do not recall Rick showing any insane melee skills. He sure had some fistfights, but only against other "ordinary" guys (the president, the alien scientist, where there any others?)

 

[Seramus]

Where is the murderdance and the powerful melee coming from? I've not watched the 4th season, but so far I do not recall Rick showing any insane melee skills. He sure had some fistfights, but only against other "ordinary" guys (the president, the alien scientist, where there any others?)

Every once in a while, Rick demonstrates some absurd acrobatic dodging abilities. The most memorable was Pickle Rick of course, but in an earlier episode he explains it as his unmatchable intellect deducing where every shot is going to be fired and making sure he doesn't stand there.

Basically, Rick can do Gun-Kata.

 

[ParanoydStyle]

Rick can do "laser built from scavenged office supplies" kata, lol.

The most dramatic, immediate and obvious point of reference for Rick being absurdly skilled at hand-to-hand and ranged combat is like Seramus said, Season 3, Episode 3, "Pickle Rick", the scenes where Pickle Rick seemingly effortlessly dispatches a horde of (relative to him, gigantic) rats in melee combat, and his subsequent epic battle with Jaguar (Danny Trejo). He also shows moments of astonishing badassery in S3: E1 during his take down of the Galactic Federation, although fisticuffs play a small role if at all. Other moments of Rick being a combat badass (he fluidly weaves in and out of using his Portal Gun as a weapon and using energy weapons/ray guns (mostly acquired from dead enemies) and his environment with incredible evasion and I think occasionally unarmed attacks but it can be too fast to follow): S2, E6: The Ricks Must Be Crazy* you mentioned Mirtek his fight with the Stephen Colbert the alien scientist, and my reading of that fight has neither of them as "ordinary guys", they're both skilled fighters and both very willing to fight very dirty; S3:E4 implies indirectly that he is deadly in hand to hand combat (the fact that he kills world ender while blackout drunk, the fact that when he (quite accurately) lists his powers as "ability to do anything, but only whenever I feel like it" implies deadly hand to hand skills because they fit as a subset into the set of "anything", and finally he may or may not show sick combat skills in S3:E10, which is by far the episode of the show I have watched the least.

Rick's ability to not get hit is much more impressive than his ability to hit people, so my priority was to find a way patterned after a canonical class feature that let him add his Int to his AC. His AC is still a bit lower than I'd like but I do need to point out that 1d10 + 3 bludgeoning does not really qualify as "powerful melee" at CR 27.

There are additional examples in Season 4 (thus far, E2 "The Old Man And The Seat") that strongly informed Murderdance but I don't want to spoil anything. It is the one scene in the series where Rick does the most damage in hand to hand combat, though.

The way he works his way up the tech tree during his ongoing science duel against Stephen Colbert in "The Ricks Must Be Crazy" reminds me of something I forgot to put on the character sheet, expertise with all tools and proficiency with all weapons.

But yes, if not for Pickle Rick and the rat scene, the Murderdance ability wouldn't be on there. It's worth noting that Rick is a prime example of power creep. Season 2 Rick is more powerful than Season 1 Rick and Season 3 Rick is more powerful than him and Season 4 Rick is more powerful still. Personally, I think the writers have done an excellent job of making him not feel invincible in spite of that his growing omnipotence and thus are doing an excellent job of what I think of as the Superman problem, i.e. why should I ever care about any fight Superman he is so powerful that he will inevitably always win, and not by virtue of being the protagonist, but by virtue of well, his ability to do anything and his invulnerability to virtually all damage (except when the writers decide he can be beaten to death by an angry punchmonster from outerspace).

 

[Mirtek]

Personally i would discount pickle Rick as he was essentially wearing an exo-suit. That's like giving naked Tony Stark super strength because he can stand up to Hulk in the correct suit

 

[Coroc]

Ayywee this guy has only 97 HP a simple Power word kill will annihilate him!

 

[ParanoydStyle]

I didn't read pickle rick's "rat parts and sewer garbage" exosuit as being the equivalent of powered armor (his um...powered armor is that), like I didn't see it as enhancing his capabilities, just enabling him to move around and fight in pickle form. That said, S4: E2 robot wars scene establishes Rick's melee dominance in his own unaugmented (except for his mysterious cyberware) body. It's not much of a spoiler since the gags and plot both come from the surrounding context, so: he basically kills four Croc-u-Bots in less than a minute with his bare hands.

Again I don't think that 1d10 + 3 bludgeoning counts as "super strength". His Strength is still 10. In my regular game one of the PCs is a Level 9 Barbarian and I'm pretty sure his minimum damage with an average attack is several points higher than the maximum damage of Rick's unarmed attack.

Ayywee this guy has only 97 HP a simple Power word kill will annihilate him!

Yeah, he's not invincible. He's not supposed to be. Lots of Ricks die over the course of the series, often in one hit. It be all like:

You do have kind of a point though. I forgot wizards don't have access to silence, the 2nd level spell that's a hard counter to PWK (IIRC in 3.5E which I know much better than 5E, they did). Rick would. I mean assuming he knew he was in a dimension where necromancers can kill you by speaking a word, he'd have some kind of deployable white noise generator the size of a golf ball with the effects of the spell silence, or, considering the show's sense of humor, more likely a BROWN noise generator.

 

[ParanoydStyle]

Did anyone see the latest episode? It's the one where RICK AND MORTY GO TO D&D LAND so it's pretty damn relevant to this discussion (as it turns out, in worlds where magic (which Rick hates) innately trumps science and/or technology doesn't work, Rick can kind of get pwnt by actual wizards) but mainly

Spoiler

learning way more about the sex lives of dragons than you ever wanted to know

Also, if there's one thing I'm sure should be on the sheet that isn't, is that Rick can cast remove curse. The whole plot of "Something Ricked This Way Comes" turns on this ability.