King Shark as a D&D Character (The Suicide Squad D&D Party Part 4)

This article was changed from its original version.

Spoiler Warning: This article discusses characters from the movie The Suicide Squad (2021).

The first section of this article outlines the series of articles that present characters from the movie The Suicide Squad (2021) as D&D character builds. If you have read this part in a previous article, skip ahead to the build here.

Building popular fiction characters in D&D

Movies are great inspiration for our Dungeons & Dragons games. We can steal plots, scenes, villains, items and characters directly from our favorite movies. The movie The Suicide Squad (2021) has a cast of anti-heroes that are great fodder for creative D&D character builds. So let’s see how we can go about building the whole party. The characters we are going to try to emulate are:

Bloodsport – a sharpshooter in a suit of hi-tech body armor
Harley Quinn – a chaotic assassin in a court jester outfit
Ratcatcher – an orphan with a special affinity to rats
Peacemaker – a ruthless marksman
Nanaue – a shark who will eat anyone except for his friends
Polka-Dot Man – a man infected with a interdimensional virus by his mother

The goal in making these characters in D&D is to create a D&D player’s rendition of each character. We will not be able to capture each unique facet of the fictional characters in the mechanics of D&D. But, not everything needs a mechanic. We will try to create mechanically effective characters, designing them to evoke the feeling of the characters of The Suicide Squad in play. As we will see, this is easier for some characters than it is for others.

All of the character builds cap at level 17. The core abilities that define them come online much earlier though. All of them use the Optional Class Features and the Customizing Your Origin rules from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.

King Shark: Lizardfolk Barbarian 12 / Fighter 3 / Monk 2

Concept

King Shark, also known as Nanaue, is a bestial warrior who tears his foes apart with natural weapons.

Level 1: Lizardfolk Barbarian 1

Our choice of race for Nanaue is lizardfolk. We want a potent bite attack to snatch heads and limbs off of our enemies. Lizardfolk gives us a fanged maw as natural weapon with which we can make unarmed strikes for 1d6 + our Strength modifier piercing damage. This and many other features of lizardfolk fit perfectly for a shark character. If our DM is OK with it, we should be able to customize the appearance of our character to make him look like Nanaue.

Our starting Ability Scores for King Shark are 17 Strength (+2 from lizardfolk), and 16 Constitution (+1 from lizardfolk). We also take a 13 Wisdom and 14 Dexterity for multiclassing requirements. Otherwise, our mental stats should be as low as possible. Nanaue is a prolific warrior, but not the smartest, or most charismatic of characters.

As the son of “The King of All Sharks”, the Noble background might be an interesting choice that lets us play against type. Otherwise, Outlander or Far Traveler are appropriate backgrounds for King Shark.

If there is any barbarian character in The Suicide Squad, Nanaue is one. As a barbarian we gain Rage and Unarmored Defense. From the outset, King Shark can walk into battle bare-chested, ripping enemies apart with his bite attack.

Level 2-5: Barbarian 5 (Path of the Beast)

We stay with barbarian until level five for now. At level two we can attack recklessly, tearing the flesh off of our foes with no regard for our own safety.

At level 3, we choose Path of the Beast as our barbarian subclass. This will further improve our fighting with natural weapons. At this point, King Shark chooses to try out some different fighting methods. Maybe he has grown tired of only ever biting enemies to death. Maybe he has a chipped tooth. For whatever reason, Nanaue now prefers to fight with his clawed fists when he is raging.

The Form of the Beast feature allows us to make an additional attack with our claws whenever we attack with them using the Attack action. We are getting closer to our vision of the frenzied King Shark tearing enemies apart in a cloud of blood, rage, and fear.

For our Ability Score Improvement, we choose the Piercer feat. This will bump our Strength to 18, increase our critical hit damage. Unfortunately, our claw attacks, which we’ll be using mostly while raging, deal slashing damage. So this feat will only trigger when we use our bite attack. Alternatively, we could choose the Slasher feat, but we will be attacking with our claws and our bite starting next level. Also, it feels right to lean into the bite attack more than the claws. After all, Nanaue’s maw is about 30% of his entire body mass.

At level five, we gain Extra Attack. Now we can make one attack with our claws, an additional claw attack thanks to our Form of the Beast feature, and follow it up with a bite as our second attack. Already, while raging, Nanaue deals significant damage. 2d6+12 from our claws, plus 1d6+6 from our bite. That is not including the potential benefits to our bite from the Piercer feat. But the King Shark is just ramping up. Soon, no bad-guy heads will be safe from our maw.

Level 6-7: Monk 2

We take two levels of monk to lean into Nanaue’s unarmed fighting even more. At level one we gain the Martial Arts feature which allows us to weaponize our bonus action. Our lizardfolk bite counts as an unarmed strike, so it qualifies for the Martial Arts attack.

At second level we gain two Ki points. These will be mostly used for Flurry of Blows, which lets us make two bite attacks as a bonus action.

Now Nanaue makes two claw attacks, and three bite attacks when he uses his Flurry of Blows. While raging, that’s 2d6+12 slashing plus 3d6+18 piercing damage. Now the Piercer feat is really paying off. King Shark can now make a minimum of four claw/bite attacks each round. Not many enemies will be left with their head, or any other limbs, still attached to their body after that. And it’s about to get even wilder.

Level 8-10: Fighter 3 (Rune Knight)

Nanaue continues to hone his martial skills. We reflect this growth by taking three levels of fighter. The Interception fighting style lets King Shark protect those lucky few who he calls his friends.

At second level, Action Surge provides an immense boost to our damage output. Note that the Form of the Beast extra claw attack can only trigger once per turn, so for our second Attack action, we are better off making two bite attacks, utilizing the Piercer feat.

For our subclass, we choose Rune Knight. The Fire Rune from the Rune Carver feature lets us restrain an enemy and deal 2d6 fire damage to them. The target takes 2d6 fire damage on each of their turns, as long as they are restrained. Now, fire might seem counterintuitive for our King Shark. We could talk to our DM, and see if we can change it to a more appropriate damage type like cold damage. Maybe the power of our ancestral aquatic home empowers these special strikes.

We also gain the Giant’s Might feature at level three. The Medium size of our character has been a thorn in our side from the beginning. Now we can use a bonus action to become Large, and deal an extra 1d6 damage on a hit once per turn.

While raging, with Action Surge, the Fire Rune, Giant’s Might, and Flurry of Blows, we now potentially deal 2d6+12 slashing damage from our claws, 2d6 fire damage from the rune, an extra 1d6 damage from Giant’s might, plus 5d6+30 piercing damage from our five bite attacks we will be making. There’s a good chance that after that round of bites and claws, all that remains of our foe is a fine mist of blood which will drive Nanaue further into his battle frenzy.

Level 11-17: Barbarian 12

After level 10, we can choose multiple paths for King Shark. We could go fighter to pick up a third attack, more Ability Score Improvements and a Runic Shield which lets us protect our allies. More monk levels seem suboptimal due to the meager d8 hit dice, as well as the reliance on Wisdom.

Therefore, we will stick with barbarian all the way to level 17. Advantage on initiative rolls lets us tear through our enemies before they see the giant shark-beast that’s charging them. Brutal Critical lets us roll an additional damage die on a critical hit which stacks with the additional die from the Piercer feat.

Unfortunately the 6th-level feature Bestial Soul only makes the natural weapons from our Form of the Beast count as magical. As we reach higher levels, more and more monsters are going to have resistance against our lizardfolk bite attacks. We might be able to convince our DM to let this feature apply to our lizardfolk bites as well. If not, we need to use our claws whenever we face an enemy with resistance to nonmagical damage.

For our final two Ability Score Improvements we improve our damage output by increasing our Strength to 20. We also pick up the Tough feat. Eventually, we want to be able to survive a building collapsing on us. And non-magical bullets should not so much as tickle King Shark.

King Shark: Blood-Frenzied Beast

This version of King Shark, Nanaue, as a D&D character focuses on making many attacks with claws and bites. The lizardfolk bite attack, and the Path of the Beast claws combined with Flurry of Blows and Action Surge fulfills the dream of a frenzied monster in combat. When King Shark enters the battlefield, any foes that are slow or stupid enough to stay around will quickly lose heads and limbs.

Next: Polka-Dot Man – The Infinite Flamethrower

Next week, we come up with a way to re-create Polka-Dot Man as a D&D character. The character who’s been infected with an interdimensional virus by his mother shoots his polka dots to turn enemies into piles of ashes.