How to Build Wakka from Final Fantasy X in DnD

by Brandon Gregory

In Final Fantasy X, Wakka is as essential as characters come—he’s a powerful attacker, and his ability to hinder his foes can turn the outcome of a battle. While Wakka’s blind religious devotion and racism toward the Al Bhed may initially turn some gamers off, he has a fantastic character arc where he grows past these flaws and learns to think for himself. Wakka’s a powerful character that translates well to DnD, so read on if you want to build a character like him!

Picking a Class and Subclass

Mechanically, Wakka has a few things he excels at. He’s a ranged attacker who hits like a truck and rarely misses. He’s also a debuffer, being able to easily inflict blindness and silence on enemies or take them out of the fight for a brief time. Thematically, Wakka doesn’t have a high Intelligence, and he’s always being bossed around by others, showing a lower Charisma, but he’s amazing at knowing what to do in the moment, pointing toward a higher Wisdom.

All of this points to Wakka being a Ranger. While Rangers can be competent melee characters, their skills with a bow are what they’re known for, and they do great damage. Wakka’s skills as a debuffer can be accomplished with some of the Ranger spells like Fog Cloud and Silence (great analogies for the Darkness and Silence conditions in FFX), along with some other spells like Ensnaring Strike, Plant Growth, and Wind Wall (some of which require a higher Wisdom, so be aware of that when building the character). Wakka’s high accuracy can be accomplished by giving him the Archery fighting style.

The core Ranger features and spells cover a lot of what makes Wakka unique, so there’s some flexibility in what subclass to choose, but two stand out. The Hunter conclave is probably the most straightforward, and excels at doing more damage and taking less. The Monster Hunter conclave is similar, but trades some of the raw damage potential for the ability to be a little more tricky, foiling enemies’ harmful effects and learning more about their weaknesses. Either can work, but be aware that the Monster Hunter conclave has a lot of flavor built in; Hunter is more of a blank slate that can fit a wider variety of characters.

I did think about multiclassing this Wakka character into Cleric for the spell Blindness/Deafness and to further emphasize his religious leanings, but decided against it. Wakka is religious, but he is definitely not an expert on religion, nor does he commune directly with the gods—he listens to what others tell him about religion. To get the spell Blindness/Deafness, you’d have to get 3 levels in Cleric, which seems like too much of a stretch for this build. Additionally, I think Fog Cloud does a sufficient job of simulating the Darkness condition.

If you want to complete Wakka’s trifecta of debuffs with the Sleep spell, it’s easiest to get this by taking the feat Magic Initiate and getting it from another class (it’s a 1st level spell). As Rangers are not full casters, meaning you wouldn’t be able to easily up-cast this spell at higher levels, the usefulness of this combination is limited (Sleep is primarily useful at lower levels and quickly falls off), but the option is there.

Picking a Race

Wakka doesn’t have a lot of abilities that his class and subclass don’t already cover, so there’s little need to get more features from a race. This gives us some flexibility in what race to choose without any clear winners. Story-wise, Wakka would probably be a Human, but there aren’t a lot of races in Final Fantasy X, so an argument could be made for many other options.

Hill Dwarf could be useful because of its extra hit point on each level, playing into Wakka’s high survivability. Go with the custom origin and move the stat point in Wisdom to Dexterity, as it’s more beneficial and thematic for this build.

If you’re less concerned with the theme of the race and just want some more useful features for a Ranger, the Goblin might be a good choice. Being able to Disengage or Hide as a bonus action are useful to ranged characters, and Fury of the Small can add some more damage to most creatures.

Background, Alignment, and Personality

Wakka is a professional athlete, so that provides a pretty easy analogy for the background: the Athlete background from Mythic Odysseys of Theros. This grants proficiency with both the Athletics and Acrobatics skills, both of which can be useful for a highly physical character. Athlete characters also start with a leather ball, which can be your trademark blitzball.

If you don’t want to be a professional athlete, Wakka is also a small-town boy who grew up isolated from the larger cities and aspects of civilization, making him a good fit for the Outlander background. This also grants proficiency in Athletics, but goes with Survival as a second skill—useful and thematic for any Ranger. This background works particularly well with the Hunter conclave, if you’re choosing to tailor your character’s story to that.

Wakka is definitely a good-aligned character and remains that way throughout the story, but his position on the lawfulness scale changes as he grows. He begins as a very lawful character, even to a fault. He knows what’s good, but will go with what’s lawful most of the time, especially if the command is coming from the church. A big part of his character growth is learning to think for himself and make decisions for good even when they contradict with lawfulness, so by the end of the story, he’s moved to a Neutral Good alignment.

Wakka is a simple man. He looks for the simplest and most efficient solution to a problem and rushes in to do it. This makes him great at solving problems as long as they’re not complex puzzles. His religious inclination makes an interesting base for a Ranger—he’s embedded in the system and trusts it implicitly, even when he doesn’t fully understand it. This can make him an interesting foil for a Cleric, or for a character that has little regard for the laws of society. Mechanically, though, a character based on Wakka works well and would be a fantastic asset to any party—particularly one that explores outdoors and ventures out of the city areas.

Wakka Character Sheet

Level 3 Hill Dwarf Ranger - Hunter Conclave

Stats (Standard Array)

Background: Athlete

Skill Proficiencies

• Acrobatics
• Athletics (expertise)
• Perception
• Stealth
• Survival

Archery fighting style

Spells

Level 1:

• Ensnaring Strike
• Fog Cloud
• Hunter’s Mark
• Speak with Animals

About the Author

Brandon Gregory

Brandon Gregory is a web developer and writer in the Kansas City area. He's been playing TTRPGs since 2020 and is involved in the disability-related TTRPG podcast Tales from the Crips. He's into classic movies, mental health, and, of course, DnD. Also, he's in a band. One time, they rocked so hard it killed a man.