Fridge / Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Doric butchers "Mordenkainen" into "Morty Keening" because her player barely succeeded on their Perception check. Or the player either couldn't actually remember or couldn't pronounce "Mordenkainen," and the DM insisted they recall/say it to the best of their ability.
• When the group descends into the Underdark and encounters a couple Intellect Devourers, Xenk tells them that they are attracted to higher intelligence, leading to a gag where Edgin is put off that they don't attack. But why would they attack a group consisting of a Bard, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Druid, and Paladin? Not a single one of which is a class that needs a good Intelligence score.
• When Sofina puts her finger in Forge's tea after he requests she cool it down, he's disgusted and refuses to drink it. Now, this is fine to show he's fastidious. This makes more sense when you realize that she's actually undead and thus her rotting finger was in it and she knows it, which means it's a way of her striking back at him treating her like a servant.
• Xenk is a famed hero who briefly joins the heroes' party for the sole reason of advancing their quest, gives crucial background information with very little prompting, is an impossibly pure moral paragon, utterly outshines the entire cast in two action scenes back to back (able to stun Theumberchaud and take on the Red Wizards in the dungeon long enough for the party to be able to escape; it's implied the party would not have been able to take either on without him), and then exits the story entirely once they've gotten their item save for tying up a loose end in the epilogue (that doesn't involve any of the other members). In other words: He’s a DM PC.
  • Xenk has a super weirdly straight walk away from the party whenever he departs from them. While this is also a joke about him being weirdly rigid, does the DM ever usually pull a character off the map/board in any way other than a straight line?
  • All of Xenk's legendary exploits could also allude to adventures the DM played in other tables. What DM hasn't pulled one of their own playable characters from a past campaign and dropped them into their own as a fun easter egg?
  • An alternate interpretation is that he is a pre-existing character played by a guest at the table for one session. This also explains his sudden departure, with the implication being that the guest has too many commitments to play long-term.
• Xenk's Famed In-Story status and superior skill to everyone else makes sense with the fact that Thay becoming The Necrocracy took place centuries ago. He's had a chance to develop his skills and has clearly gained some form of immortality.
• Xenk trusting Edgin to keep his oath when he's clearly reluctant isn't just his own honorable personality. His high Perception implies a very good Wisdom score, which would also help his Insight checks.
• Why is the dragon so obese? That's because he's been eating incredibly large numbers of people if that skeleton pile is any indication. Doubles as a Continuity Nod to the adventure that Themberchaud originally appeared in, which mentioned he was deliberately overfed by his 'assistants' during his previous life in a duergar Gilded Cage. He's kept up his unhealthily-large appetite.
• Simon being a descendant of Elminster Aumar isn't quite as impressive as it sounds since Elminster Really Gets Around and has had dozens of children over the centuries of his life with multiple generations of their own descendants. Many of whom aren't magical at all, like the ex-Queen of Cormyr. It's just another sign that he's suffering from Overshadowed by Awesome in his mind and his crippling self-esteem issues. Elminster appears in the film as the voice of Simon's self-doubt, which explains why in Simon's mind, Elminster looks exactly like him.
  • That might also explain the Race Lift. The art of the games and book generally show Elminster as a bearded white man. (In fact, since Elminster is an ancestor of generations past, and a figure of legend, its possible that Simon is misinformed about what Elminster looks like!)
    • Given Simon says Elminster is his great-grandfather at one point, he could still be a bearded white man, and Simon is just more (their equivalent of African) than he is (their equivalent of European), thus having darker skin.
• Why does Sofina let Forge go despite the fact he has outlived his usefulness and openly infuriates her? Well, the Red Wizards of Thay are in-universe Lawful Evil - meaning she openly desires to conquer and enslave, but if you make a deal with her and deliver, she's honor-bound to provide you what you asked for, even if she finds you an annoying irritant. She may either find Forge Not Worth Killing- sure, he’s obnoxious, but not a threat to her in any way or she's become so fed up with him she doesn't want him as an undead minion anywhere near her.
  • It can also be interpreted as an example of Pragmatic Villainy: by letting their co-conspirator profit from the scheme as promised, the Red Wizards encourage evil-aligned people in other city-states to also strike deals with them, thus maybe letting them pull off a similar coup elsewhere (which would serve them better than having to fight an all-out war of conquest with only Neverwinter as their base in the Sword Coast).
  • Killing Forge right then would also be a tricky proposition due to them being in a public area surrounded by plenty of people. Attacking him head-on will cause a panic, her Dead Beckoning spell needs time to charge and following him to kill him and Kira would be a waste of time.
  • With his cunning, intelligence, charisma and wealth, Forge may also have had further use to Sofina and/or the Red Wizards of Thay, and would make a useful ally to call upon in the future.
• The bizarre choices for Doric's arm-mounted sling might be a nod to Dungeons & Dragons' less-stringent weapon rule that often allows Rule of Cool design in terms of roleplaying.
  • Alternatively, if the meta of the movie was interpreted as an average tabletop session, her player would not have been aware of rope slings during her character creation process but DM decided to allow her idea out of pity or the aforementioned justification.
• The portal staff. It is not an item in the game. So what happened? Well, the DM set up an overcomplicated puzzle for the bridge but didn't expect the players to fail it at step 0. Not having prepared an alternative way for them to cross the gap but not wanting the party to fail the quest in such a dumb way, they suddenly made Simon roll a very easy Arcana check and upon passing it retconned the mundane walking stick into the Hither-Tither Staff—which is even called out when Doric calls it a "Good save."
  • Hilariously, it winds up being more useful than the Helm of Disjunction they're questing for. Why? Because the Helm of Disjunction is a brute-force way of dispelling enchantments; it's a wizard's artifact. The portal staff creates an opening from Point A to Point B, and you can be pretty creative with where you place them; it's a thief's artifact.
    • Which also makes sense- what GM hasn't accidentally come up with a game-breaking item by pulling something out of their ass to get the party past their puzzle?
    • And it explains why the portal ends up somewhat failing them in the end when the painting it's on gets knocked over, causing the team to waste time and split up to get into the vault. The DM forced that contrivance once they realized the team had a shortcut through the whole heist because of their last-second item creation.
• When Doric uses a portal-painting to get into a wagon, the scene of her passing through the portal ends with a small "thunk" as she hits a wall face-first. But instead of recoiling in pain, she just comes to an abrupt halt, before turning away to recon her surroundings. Why didn't she react? Easy; it's a relatively low-speed impact, no more painful than a Head Desk, and there only being one "impact" means any pain or disorientation passes during the brief moment she looks around.
• While for the most part fairly accurate to the real-life game, the film does play fast and loose with the rules here and there, primarily for cinematic purposes, which could easily be justified if you consider this to be a campaign by a bunch of casual players, who are themselves playing fast and loose with the rules for the fun of it.
• Simon's performance has a lot of it.
  • From a mechanics standpoint, it makes sense that Simon's lack of confidence and self-esteem is hampering his magic abilities when you realize it's harming his charisma. Sorcerers are Charisma casters, and of course a lower Charisma is going to weaken his magic!
  • In the scene at the theater, his show isn't just going poorly because of the weaker, unimpressive cantrips he's using. His low Charisma meant he failed his Performance check!
  • But another thing to note is that in that same scene, he almost successfully committed mass petty theft by using his poor show as a distraction. That seems to have been a pretty successful Deception check...and Deception is also based on someone's Charisma. Maybe a hint that Simon's Charisma, and magic, are better than even he might believe.
  • His bad performance actually makes sense, by using his primary action to maintain the spell that's robbing the crowd it means he can only use minor spells and cantrips while he keeps it up. The performance is bad by design as a distraction.
  • His attempt to rob the crowd only fails when he's distracted by Edgin and Holga arriving. He failed his concentration check!
  • Simon is a half-elf, which naturally gets a +2 Racial Bonus to their Charisma stat (equating to a +1 to the modifier). This adds an additional layer to the idea that he has more power than he thinks he does.
• Xenk's personality is perhaps not entirely due to his being the classic stick-in-the-mud paladin. He was a Thayan before becoming a paladin. A previous sourcebook for the Forgotten Realms (from Third Edition) from before Szass Tam's takeover described free Thayan culture as being somewhat cool and dignified, showing their emotions as little as possible but secretly enjoying watching people enjoying themselves and/or being foolish. All of this fits Xenk.
• It makes sense that the Intellect Devourers ignored the party. None of them are a class that requires a high Intelligence stat.
  • According to the official statblock, all but Holga have mid to high Intelligence, and even she is average. Of course, Intelligence is also how you resist the psychic assault of an Intellect Devourer, so it's possible the Devourers simply decided that their delicious brains simply weren't worth the risk of attacking a group of people who could all withstand and kill them.
  • Or they'd sensed that Themberchaud was approaching the ruins, and were more interested in not getting burned alive or eaten than in stopping for snacks.
  • Another aspect is Xenk is a high level Oath of Devotion Paladin, which canonically makes him constantly under the effect of Protection From Evil and Good Spell, gives one a huge advantage against aberrations like Intellect Devourers and allows him to No-Sell their attempts to eat his brain and possess him. It's not surprising Intellect Devourers wouldn't want to tangle with him.
• Even though there is no talk about "honor among thieves" in the movie itself, the entire plot hinges on it. Forge is the only thief who betrays his long-time companions for a chance at even more wealth, and said betrayal (plus his refusal to honor his promise to Edgin) drives them to oppose him, ultimately destroying his plans and leaving him jailed and penniless. Meanwhile, a paladin they just met trusts Edgin to keep his vows, even though Edgin himself doesn't plan to. Sure enough, by the end of the film Edgin has honored his vows to said paladin and the Harpers as a whole, stopping the Red Wizards and saving an entire city. All the paladin has to do is arrest an exhausted Forge as he tries to flee everyone he betrayed.
• Why does the paladin Xenk constantly appear exactly where he needs to be to hide a powerful artifact or capture a fleeing betrayer?
  • Divine intervention, perhaps.
  • Or maybe it was him shadowing the group the entire time. He probably didn't want to get directly involved because he had faith in the group for a sink or swim trial, and quite possibly because his Paladin ideals would consider combatting Sofina to be too much of a grudge match to be altruistic (Or may be concerned being marked he's particularly susceptible to Red Wizard spells). But he's not an idiot. Best to be in the vicinity, whether he needs to step in as a last resort or, as it turned out, for clean-up duty.
  • GM fiat.
• Themberchaud's almost consistent inability to properly use his Breath Weapon can be interpreted as the DM rolling terribly on the ability's recharge die.
• Similarly, the guards not noticing the portal under the cart with a person sticking out could be chalked up to them literally Failing a Spot Check (or as it's called in 5e, a Perception Check).
  • As for the guards not investigating the very suspicious sight of Holga trying to yank someone out of the ground head-first... their job is to guard the treasure, and splitting off to investigate a flagrantly odd activity nearby would normally be exactly something they should avoid doing.
• The tablet of resurrection actually was used to revive Kira's mother, but not Edgin's wife.
• If it seems like the team was having an easier time with their skills after Edgin had given his speech, there is a good reason. He had just given all of them his bardic inspiration, and he gave his last one to his daughter at the end.
  • This happens frequently enough throughout the movie: if Edgin is there to give a speech or shout compliments, they tend to do better at whatever the task is. Edgin might behave closer to a Rogue, but he earns his Bard status by just how well the party does with him... not because he's attacking with them but because everyone gets the extra literal Inspiration for whatever they're doing.
• The entire Highsun games displayed the general rule of "never split the party". One team gets its members scattered and picked off by the Displacer Beasts — or in the Barbarian's case, dissolved in a gelatinous cube — while Edgin's team and the characters from Dungeons & Dragons survived as they try their best to stick together.
• In the tabletop game, many maps are drawn up on a grid, where each square in the grid represents a 5' square area. In the High Sun Games sequence, the maze is made from a set of adjustable square pillars, which makes the structure of the mazes a literal grid of about 5' square areas.
• In the tabletop game, bards are full spellcasters like sorcerers and wizards, but Edgin never casts any magic that we see. Considering how he leans on being a "planner" that leads the team, it's possible he does have magic, but its uses are offscreen due to being used for support or social encounters rather than combat - which, as a cinematic movie, is going to be most of what we see.
  • Alternatively, given how much he behaves like a rogue, it's possible he's not actually a bard at all but instead is a rogue that can simply play the lute, or he's a multiclass that doesn't have very many levels in bard.
  • The official Magic: The Gathering card lists him as a Human Bard, but it's possible he's a College of Eloquence bard, a subclass that specializes in enhancing and finding alternate uses for Bardic Inspiration.
  • His official statblock is heavy on spells like charm person, suggestion and friends — subtle enchantments that would be totally useless if they were accompanied by glowing special effect displays.
  • Given all that, Edgin is a bard, and a bard's main class feature is Bardic Inspiration. One thing Edgin does do, throughout the film, is give speeches to inspire his teammates to succeed. Most prominently, he convinces Simon to figure out his magical niche of "succeeding when the chips are down", inspiring him to successfully attune to the Helm of Disjunction at just the right time.
• A Running Gag is Edgin handing things to Simon to hold onto, despite their importance (such as the book he swears a Harper oath on, and the Helm of Disjunction). Clearly Simon's the one carrying the team's Bag of Holding.
  • That's probably also why they took Simon on the heist of Korrin's Keep, despite having Sofina, a vastly more powerful caster, along.
• Simon's performance when Edgin and Holga come by to get him consists of holding a candlelight on his finger, creating the scent of fresh cut grass, and making himself look blurry. The first two of these can be done with Prestidigitation, a cantrip that is specifically noted in the description as being used by novice spellcasters for practice. The blurry effect could also be Prestidigitation if the DM is lenient on description interpretations, or it could be Minor Illusion, another cantrip that isn't much more complicated. When a woman says her five-year-old child can do the things Simon's doing, it's not an exaggeration; those spells are effectively the D&D equivalent of the "pretending to remove your thumb" trick.
• It seems odd that Sofina would be killed by being thrashed into the ground by an Owlbear and thrown across the room, given how much damage the assassins took and got right back up from... but she was also wearing something that neutralized and weakened her magic. Her official stat block reveals most of her AC comes from a magic robe and Mage Armor, and thus her defenses were likely reduced to next to nothing when magic was negated, and likely included her ability to reanimate.
  • In addition, spellcasters (even high-level, undead ones) tend to be the Squishy Wizard; a few well placed Multi-attacks from an Owlbear and some environmental damage can be devastating to them if the damage dice roll high enough.
• Right at the start of the movie, Edgin triggers an alarm by grabbing a valuable treasure without checking to see if it was trapped. How many gamers have Facepalmed when they or their fellow players forgot to declare they were checking for traps? Bonus points because not making sure something was safe to take had already bitten him in the ass once, but since he hadn't had his Character Development by that point, he hadn't really internalized that lesson.
  • It also makes sense because the rogue of the party, i.e. the only one who can detect traps - the others being bard, barbarian, sorcerer, and wizard - is actively in league with the villain.
• A couple of random occurrences make things more complicated for the players, whether it be Simon getting his foot stuck in a pothole, Edgin being dragged when a rope snags his feet or the painting the party has cast their magical portal into to fall face-down on the floor. Bad die rolls can mess with even the smartest player plans, forcing them to improvise with an Indy Ploy.
• Why did the party from Dungeons & Dragons make it to the center of the maze completely untouched and well before the main characters? They've been at this for a ''very'' long time, and this isn't the first time they've had to take on a dangerous adventure without access to magic. For the other parties this is a dangerous maze filled with death traps, for them? It's just another Saturday morning.
  • There's also the matter that the Young Ones are not really Sofina's problem. Venger might get annoyed at anyone trying to step on his territory and outright kill them or turn them into undead (and in the series, the Young Ones have invoked Always a Bigger Fish by warning Venger of upstarts trying to take what's his), but he isn't past making deals with another Lawful Evil party to capture them so he can handle the matter. As for how they likely escaped the trap? Well, we didn't see Uni, so it's likely she found them and they got away.
• While it's certainly not a good idea, the idea of fighting a beholder with a sharpened gourd isn't completely absurd. Beholders don't have resistance to nonmagical attacks or anything of the sort, and their antimagic cone shuts down magic items, but also provides protection from their own eye rays, which are much deadlier than the damaging but relatively clumsy bite. If the beholder couldn't fly away, say if he encountered it in a dungeon corridor rather than its natural lair, Xenk could well have closed with it by staying inside the antimagic cone from its central eye!
  • The animations that play during the closing credits include one of a beholder being stabbed in the central eye by a gourd.
• A key part of the heroes' plan to defeat Sofina relies on her believing that she's successfully pulled off a Time Stop spell against them, when in fact it was actually counterspelled by Simon. Under 5e rules it's possible that Simon, as a sorcerer, has access to the Metamagic ability Subtle Spell — which could allow him to stop performing the hand gestures for Counterspell at the moment Time Stop was supposed to take hold of him, completing his spell while still making the deception believable.
  • It's also possible for a low-level Counterspell to counter a high-level spell, like Time Stop, if the caster passes a spellcasting ability check. For sorcerers, it's a Charisma check, so it makes sense that Simon literally needs to muster his self-confidence to counter such a high-level spell!
• On a meta level, the filmmakers clearly went out of their way to showcase D&D's unique slate of creatures. Apart from mundane animals, every critter to appear in the film, from displacer beasts and a gelatinous cube in the Games maze to Doric's owlbear form to rust monsters squabbling over a padlock in a Funny Foreground Event, is something invented for the game: there are no griffins, manticores, medusas, or other stock mythological beasties. There are dragons, but one is an acid-breathing black rather than a fire-breather, while the other is a named individual with a unique look and established in-game backstory. Plus, there's a tiefling main character and notable appearances by Aarakocra, dragonborn, and tabaxi, while the classic fantasy races are largely relegated to background shots.
• Why can't Doric pull her own hand out of the Gelatinous Cube? In game terms, because she's Restrained by it engulfing her. In biological terms, because the Cube's fast-acting natural paralytic agent is holding her. The recess her Wild Shape creates gives her leeway to escape her later plan to use the Cube.
• Sofina's illusion breaks as she gets closer to Edgin. While this might have been done on purpose for intimidation, it's very likely a hint that her magic has been blocked.
• Edgin's comment about Sofina's breath when her illusion fails: likely Vicious Mockery.
• Edgin is a Bard, but despite his stat block mentioning spells, he doesn't use any in the movie. Bards get their power from their ability to perform, and while he's still good, Edgin has been locked up for two years with no practice. It's entirely possible he can use magic, but is too out of practice to actually do it at the moment and doesn't have enough time to get back into practice before the mission starts. Not to mention how there are wanted posters with his face on it all over the North, so regaining his skill by performing for an audience isn't an option either.
• Although Edgin was mostly joking when he said he and Holga were "model prisoners", using it as a pretext to explain their "grace", there are plenty hints it was actually the case. Besides the fact they were actually graced, unbeknownst to them, they were allowed to share a cell despite being known associates (and male and female). Plus, Holga was given her favorite food (potatoes) and Edgin had access to knitting implements (you'd think pointy things would be avoided around inmates). Despite how hellish overall is the frozen prison, those are clearly boons granted by the gaolers to encourage good behavior.
• While the prison might have been so crowded it would explain that the hobgoblin prisoner seen at the start be put in a cell with two other inmates already, one of them female, it is much more likely that the guards did it on purpose, knowing full well he would try to assault Holga and that she would respond violently. Thus getting them rid of (or at least humbling) a dangerous, potentially troublesome prisoner. That may even count in their eyes as the "good behavior" mentioned above.
  • Or the Hobgoblin was another player's first character and their... over-zealousness to cause trouble got them killed, forcing them to create another that fit in better.
  • Maybe he was Doric's player's first character.
• On the other hand, maybe the prison was that overcrowded... which would explain the increased willingness of the parole board to grace some of the least dangerous and well-behaving inmates.
• It has been mentioned plenty enough times that Xenk's sudden exit from the story makes perfect meta sense if he's a DMPC or a player that couldn't stay for the whole campaign. But him simply walking away still works in-universe: being a paladin, he's fine with lending his help to Edgin's team overthrowing a cruel tyrant and allowing them to retrieve the Helm of Disruption. However, he would be uncomfortable with getting directly involved in a heist (plus, technically, a kidnapping), even for a good cause, since those are unlawful acts that could lead to a paladin's fall from grace. He probably would have involved himself more directly if he'd known about Sofina's true plans, but even the protagonists had no clue till they found an empty vault.
  • It's confirmed in background material that Xenk took the Oath of Devotion, one of the tenets of which is to never lie or cheat. While he could get involved with something straightforward and martial like the adventure into the Underdark, his inability to deceive anyone would make him a liability in a heist.
• Holga's conversation with her ex will parallel Edgin's decision at the end. While Edgin still loves and will always love Zia, she wouldn't be able to have a bond with Kira like Holga would (at least not for a long time), so he has to let her go.
• The party getting caught by a trapped item in the Harper stronghold makes a lot of sense when you remember who the party rogue was: Forge. Forge and Sofina's whole plan relied on them getting caught and Forge knew that was the item Edgin wanted so he intentionally didn't point out or disarm the trap. This served the purpose of getting them caught while making it look like Edgin's fault, which is completely in line with Forge's manipulative personality.
• For a good stretch of the movie Doric goes Out of Focus, present but not doing or saying much of note. Her shapeshifting had previously been established as quick and very versatile, but it doesn't come up at all for a while - if nothing else, "turn into a bird and carry a rope across" is a reasonable guess for how the party could have crossed the chasm after Simon dropped the bridge. But, using the logic that the film is a visualization of a tabletop campaign, maybe her player couldn't come to a session and the DM just handwaved that Doric was following along so she wouldn't be separated from the party when her player returned.
  • Alternately, Guest-Star Party Member Xenk was a PC they'd played in a previous campaign and they took him up again for this part of the adventure, and just couldn't manage to engagingly play both characters at once.
• At the beginning of the film, the delay in Jarnathan's arrival, the Absolution Council's repeated insistence that Edgin stop fixating on said missing councillor, and Jarnathan's arrival just as the party's escape plan has been rendered officially unnecessary, smacks of a DM's efforts to deter their players from taking an extremely stupid course of action.
• Sofina's performance in the final battle pretty perfectly matches how a good DM would use such a high level baddie against a (comparatively) low level party. She opens with a 9th level spell (meteor swarm) for pure intimidation, and in the fight itself focuses on concentration spells (animate objects and Bigby's hand) to combat the players, thus minimizing the amount of actual damage she can do while also giving the players good opportunities to score victories by breaking her concentration.
• The trailers being misleading about the movie, making it look like it was darker and with higher stakes, would make perfect sense if you imagine that was the tone aimed by the DM for the campaign, except that it ended up constantly derailed by the players goofing off and focusing on the wrong things. Which is something that happens all the time in a D&D game.
• We never see Edgin cast any spells, even when they'd be useful. He's avoiding spellcasting because they need Simon, as a powerful sorcerer, to do the heavy lifting on that front and Edgin knows that if he did anything like that it would hit Simon's already fragile self-esteem.
• Edgin's recounting of his history omits the fact that the Thayans came for their marked gold which is actually foreshadowed in the same flashback. If they did come after him for vengeance like Edgin tried to imply in his narration, they would have at least made eye contact with him when they did cross paths. The fact that they didn't even bother acknowledging him cuts deeper into Edgin's guilt, as his greed truly was the cause of his wife's demise.
• Tabaxi are the only fantasy race subjected to Special Effects Failure, being exceedingly unrealistic practical effects while every other non-human race are convincing CGI or done with subtle costumes. Perhaps "furries" are a sore spot for one or more players (thinks they don't fit into the Standard Fantasy Setting, resents how they're almost always used as Fetish Fuel, etc) and the GM crammed them in anyways, shaking the player(s)' suspension of disbelief.
• Xenk's odd Ice-Cream Koan about how "You may have abandoned your oath, but your oath has not abandoned you" makes a bit more sense when you realize that he's a paladin. A paladin who breaks their oath is not completely freed from it, but instead becomes an Oathbreaker paladin with a different set of dark powers. For Xenk, oaths aren't just words but an actual mystical force he can draw power from, and so it makes sense that he'd anthropomorphize them.
• When they first enter the Underdark, Edgin and Holga carry lanterns, but Simon and Doric don't. Which make sense, considering half-elves and tieflings have darkvision and wouldn't need a light source.
• Forge wants the party to just be executed rather than put into the High Sun Games because, despite everything, he doesn't want his former friends to be turned into undead thralls of Sofina.

Fridge Horror

• It's extremely hard for the Thayan assassins to get Killed Off for Real due to their undead nature, as evidenced by them reanimating and putting themselves back together shortly after Xenk gives them wounds and amputations which would have killed any other warrior. And they end up gobbled by Themberchaud, a dragon who's nigh-invincible, extremely fat and implied to usually be sedentary since he rolls about to move around his nest. This further implies he may have a slow digestive system/metabolism... which means that they're doomed to being digested and dissolved at an excruciatingly slow rate, unable to tear their way out of his stomach, all while they're still sentient and aware. It's hard to say they didn't deserve it, though.
  • They may have eventually come out the other end, so to speak. Or if Themberchaud was killed in the explosion, they might be able to climb out of his corpse.
    • He's a Red Dragon so the fire in the explosion will do nothing and he's an Ancient Red Dragon so he has hitpoints to spare and can certainly survive any damage from concussive force alone. That said he might have drowned although probably not (he's a canon character, they're unlikely to kill him off). As for coming out the other end they'd have to be digested first. That being how digestion works.
  • Undead are immune to pain.
    • Pain, yes. But even if you can't feel pain being digested is still going to be horrific.
• We didn't get to see if the protagonists of Dungeons & Dragons were able to get out of the arena before it was destroyed by Thayan necromancy. In their favor, however, they do have a VERY forgiving Dungeonmaster and we didn't see any sign of Uni.
  • Furthermore, almost every shot of the VIP box where the ritual began/the only place where it actually took effect shows servants in the background, serving drinks, acting as croupiers for the gambling and so on and so forth. While they don't appear in the shot which shows the Beckoning Death actually taking effect, what are the odds that any of them were able to get away in time?
    • The servants are seen running away as Sofina starts floating so going by the speed and spread of the cloud before the spell collapses from lack of victims and assuming they didn't stop running there's a decent chance they escaped.

Fridge Logic

On the headscratchers page.

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