Okay, so this started as a joke.
“What if we just ran Bleach as a D&D campaign?”
At first I was mostly thinking about the obvious stuff. Everybody has a sword, the afterlife somehow has more bureaucracy than the living world, and people are legally required to yell the name of an attack before throwing it at somebody’s face. Normal Bleach shit.
Then I kept thinking about it, which was the first mistake.
A joke turned into a few notes, the notes turned into mechanics, and eventually I had a whole document sitting on my desktop because apparently I can’t wonder how Zanpakutō would work in D&D without creating homework for myself. My notes app has seen some things.
The annoying part is that Soul Society makes this way too easy. You’ve already got military divisions that don’t always agree with each other, noble families sticking their hands into everything, huge differences between how people live inside and outside the Seireitei, Hollows running around eating souls, Quincy causing their own problems, and humans developing powers nobody bothered to put in the rulebook. Half the swords can argue with their owners too, because apparently the party needed another source of interpersonal conflict.
Honestly, giving all of that to D&D players sounds irresponsible.
So obviously I kept going.
The Part That Most People Miss
On paper, Soul Society has a pretty straightforward job. The dead pass on through Konsō, Hollows killed by a Zanpakutō are purified, and the souls caught up in all of this keep moving through the cycle. Hell has its own rules for people whose sins were already bad enough before they became Hollows, but otherwise the system is supposed to keep things moving.
The problem is that Soul Society isn’t a machine. It’s an entire government full of people, which means you’ve got paperwork, politics, noble families, neglected districts, competing divisions, and plenty of opportunities for something to go wrong while everybody responsible insists it’s probably a clerical issue.
You can build a whole campaign out of the party slowly realizing that something isn’t adding up. Let them fight Hollows and chase all the cool Bleach power progression along the way, but three sessions in I want somebody staring at a soul they’re pretty sure shouldn’t be there and asking:
“Wait. Why is this soul here?”
If they start digging after that, you’ve got somewhere to go.
Before Anybody Makes a Character
I’m using 2024 D&D 5e underneath all of this, although most of the Bleach layer should move over without much trouble if your table is still playing 2014. I’d start everybody at level 5, which gives the characters enough of their class to already feel competent without putting them anywhere near the point where a lieutenant showing up makes the rest of the session decorative.
Your D&D class handles how you fight, whether that’s Fighter, Monk, Rogue, Paladin, Ranger, Wizard, Warlock, or whatever horrifying multiclass somebody found at 1:40 AM. The Bleach mechanics sit beside that rather than replacing it.
I’m also keeping the resources separate. Spell slots, Rage, Focus Points, Action Surge, and Reiryoku all belong to their own systems unless a feature specifically says otherwise. You can’t hand the Wizard a Reiryoku Die because they ran out of Fireballs.
I learned my lesson.
First Question: Where Do You Stand?
Before everybody disappears into species, classes, Zanpakutō abilities, Quincy bows, and whatever else they’ve already started building, figure out how each character feels about Soul Society when the campaign begins.
One character might still genuinely believe the system works, while another follows orders mostly because they’ve never known what else to do. Somebody else could’ve figured out years ago that something was rotten and has been quietly pissed about it ever since. You can even have somebody who benefits from the way Soul Society works and would really appreciate it if their new teammates stopped asking so many fucking questions.
Then put all of them on the same assignment and see how long it takes before the mission becomes the least complicated problem they have.
Pick Your Bleach Origin
Your Bleach Origin tells us what kind of spiritual problem you are, and it sits beside your normal class. I’m not rebuilding all of 5e because Kubo invented too many cool freaks.
Shinigami
Shinigami are probably the easiest starting point if you want to drop a character into this setting without getting too weird yet. You’re a Soul Reaper, usually connected to Soul Society in some way and trained in the basic Shinigami combat arts.
Spiritual Training: Gain proficiency in Arcana or Religion. If you already have the chosen proficiency, pick another Intelligence or Wisdom skill instead.
Zanpakutō: You begin with a sealed Zanpakutō. Choose a simple or martial melee weapon you’re proficient with and use its normal weapon properties until your releases start changing how it works.
Shinigami Arts: As the campaign progresses, you can learn Kidō and Shunpo using the rules later in this post.
I also wouldn’t shove every Shinigami into Paladin. It still works great for somebody who’s built around duty, but depending on the character, Fighter, Monk, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger, or something considerably stranger could work just as well. Your class handles the D&D side of how the character fights. Their Zanpakutō is where things start getting personal and probably inconvenient.
Hollows
Yes, somebody can play the monster. Honestly, letting a Hollow into the party creates enough problems on its own that I barely have to help.
Hollow Body: You don’t need to eat or drink normally, although hunger for souls can absolutely become a character problem.
Spiritual Predator: You can sense spiritual creatures and Reiryoku within 60 feet unless something is specifically concealing its presence. You know something spiritual is there, but you’re not getting its exact identity, abilities, tax history, and childhood trauma for free.
Fragmented Memory: You begin with 3 Memory Fragments, each representing some piece of the person still buried underneath the Hollow. After failing an Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma ability check, you can spend one Fragment to reroll it and must use the new result.
You can regain one spent Fragment after a long rest when something during the session actually forced the character to deal with their past, identity, hunger, or whatever humanity they still have left. The player and DM should be able to point to what happened. We’re not farming tragic backstory because somebody stared sadly at the moon for six seconds.
As the campaign goes on, story milestones can increase the Hollow’s maximum Fragments or turn a memory that keeps resurfacing into something permanent about the character. That can be helpful mechanically while making their life considerably worse, because a Hollow recovering too much of the person they used to be isn’t something Soul Society necessarily knows what to do with.
At some point, they stop looking like a monster that fits neatly into the paperwork.
Quincy
A Quincy is a spiritually aware human who draws Reishi from the
environment and uses it to fight.
Their problem with Soul Society is bigger than “we use bows and those
guys use swords.”
Shinigami purify Hollows and return those souls to the cycle. Quincy
destroy Hollow souls outright.
Do enough of that and the balance between worlds starts getting ugly, so naturally I’m letting a player do it.
Reishi Archer: You can form a spirit weapon. Pick a longbow,
shortbow, or another ranged weapon your DM approves as its mechanical
base. You don’t track mundane ammunition for it.
Reishi Draw: Once per turn when you hit with your spirit weapon, you
can spend 1 Reiryoku Die and add it to the damage.
Quincy Training: Gain proficiency in Arcana or Investigation.
Later, Quincy can develop movement techniques, stronger spirit weapons,
Gintō, and whatever other terrible idea they’ve inherited from people
with a historically complicated relationship with Soul Society.
Fullbringers
Fullbring is stranger than “my favorite object gives me powers.” Fullbringers can manipulate the souls inside physical matter, while their personal Fullbring usually develops around something they’ve spent enough time with for it to accumulate memories and meaning alongside them.
That gives us a pretty easy Session 0 question:
What object has been with you long enough that losing it would actually hurt?
And don’t give me “my cool sword because swords are cool.” Think about something your character would genuinely have a hard time replacing. It could be a battered pair of headphones, an old subway card, a camera, a cheap lighter that belonged to somebody, or that necklace they’ve repaired three times because throwing it away somehow felt worse than fixing it again.
Whatever you choose becomes your Fullbring Focus.
Soul Manipulation: As an action, you can manipulate a Small or smaller unattended mundane object you can see within 30 feet. You can move it up to 15 feet, open or close it if physically possible, or perform another simple interaction the DM approves. This isn’t telekinesis with a fake mustache. You’re pulling on the soul inside the object.
Fullbring Focus: Using the creation rules later in this post, build one Base Fullbring ability around the object and what it means to the character. Losing the focus shuts off that personal Fullbring until you recover it or establish a new focus through the story, but ordinary physical damage isn’t going to delete your character build. I am not giving the DM permission to cast Shatter and ruin six months of character progression.
The relationship with the object is the important part. If that changes, then we’ve got something worth messing with.
Bount
I will die on the hill that the Bount arc was good filler, so obviously Bounts are getting rules.
Bounts are spiritually altered humans who survive by absorbing souls and can manifest Dolls, sentient spiritual companions that exist somewhere between partner, weapon, coworker, and extremely dangerous relationship problem.
Long-Lived: You age extremely slowly.
Soul Absorption: When a hostile spiritual creature within 30 feet drops to 0 hit points, you can use your reaction to absorb some of the released spiritual power and regain one spent Reiryoku Die. Once you use this ability, you can’t do it again until you finish a short or long rest.
The ability says hostile spiritual creature because I need usable combat rules. Whether your Bount would absorb an innocent soul when they’re desperate is between you, your character sheet, and whatever argument is about to ruin dinner.
Doll: You begin bonded to a Doll using the companion rules below. The Doll is sentient and gets opinions about what you’re doing with its life, so don’t expect a Pokémon you can stuff back into its ball whenever it starts disagreeing with you. You chose Bount. Deal with your weird spiritual coworker.
Reiryoku Dice
Reiryoku Dice
We need fuel for all the Bleach-specific nonsense, so every character who uses spiritual power gets a pool of Reiryoku Dice equal to their proficiency bonus.
| Character Level | Reiryoku Dice |
|---|---|
| 5–8 | PB × d6 |
| 9–12 | PB × d8 |
| 13–16 | PB × d10 |
| 17–20 | PB × d12 |
A level 5 character starts with 3d6, while hitting level 9 bumps the pool to 4d8. You recover all spent Reiryoku Dice after a long rest and one spent die after a short rest. Most spiritual techniques cost 1 die, with bigger releases and more powerful abilities asking for more.
I’m starting a little conservative because D&D players can smell renewable resources through drywall. If your table keeps running dry before anybody gets to do the cool shit, loosen the recovery and see how it feels.
Spiritual Ability
When you gain your Bleach Origin, choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your Spiritual Ability based on how your character actually controls their spiritual power. You’ll use it for both spiritual attacks and the save DC of your Bleach abilities.
Spiritual Attack:
d20 + proficiency bonus + Spiritual Ability modifier
Spiritual Save DC:
8 + proficiency bonus + Spiritual Ability modifier
Put both numbers somewhere obvious on the character sheet because I don’t want to calculate somebody’s save DC for the first time while a Menos is stepping on the convenience store.
Spiritual Pressure
Reiatsu needs to do something at the table without making me calculate exactly how terrified somebody should be because your spiritual number is bigger than theirs.
As a bonus action, you can spend 1 Reiryoku Die to push your spiritual pressure outward. Choose creatures within 15 feet that can perceive spiritual power and have them make a Wisdom saving throw against your Spiritual Save DC. On a failure, a creature has disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the start of your next turn.
Power gaps still affect this. A creature with a higher proficiency bonus than yours makes the save with advantage, while one with a proficiency bonus at least 2 higher is immune unless the DM has a specific reason to rule otherwise.
That’s enough for somebody to flex their Reiatsu without turning every staredown in Bleach into its own subsystem. Please do not spiritually glare through the walls looking for free reconnaissance.
Shinigami Arts
Shinigami have four famous combat lanes: swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, movement, and Kidō. Your class already handles a lot of the first two, and I’m not writing a second Fighter inside your Fighter, so the Bleach layer mostly handles the supernatural parts.
Shunpo
Once per turn, you can spend 1 Reiryoku Die to increase your speed
by 20 feet until the end of the turn, and your movement doesn’t provoke
opportunity attacks during that movement.
That’s enough to make Shunpo feel like Shunpo without turning every map
into a suggestion.
Quincy can learn Hirenkyaku and Arrancar can learn Sonído using the same base mechanic unless a later feature changes it. They’re different techniques in Bleach. At my table, they’re sharing paperwork because my grid does not care nearly as much as Mayuri probably does.
Kidō Without Giving the DM Another Spellbook
Kidō is powered by Reiryoku and broadly splits into Hadō, the offensive stuff, and Bakudō, which covers binding, defense, communication, tracking, sealing, and all the other useful nonsense.
I’m not recreating every numbered Kidō when D&D already handed us several books full of spells. When a Shinigami learns Kidō, choose something appropriate from their class spell list or a short list approved by the DM and describe it as Kidō. If the spell comes from the character’s class, nothing changes mechanically. It still uses the normal spell slot.
Kidō learned through the Bleach layer works differently.
Bleach-Layer Kidō: Choose one 1st-level spell that fits Hadō or Bakudō. You can cast it by spending 1 Reiryoku Die instead of a spell slot. At level 9, you can learn one 2nd-level Kidō that costs 2 Reiryoku Dice, and at level 13, one 3rd-level Kidō that costs 3.
I’m deliberately keeping that progression behind an actual spellcaster. Learning Kidō does not mean the Fighter gets to wander into the Wizard spell list and leave with everything that looked cool.
Incantations
A Shinigami who knows Bleach-layer Kidō can spend an action reciting the full incantation instead of casting immediately. If they cast that Kidō before the end of their next turn, choose when the incantation begins whether it will add one Reiryoku Die to a single damage or healing roll or increase the spell’s save DC by 1.
Getting incapacitated before you finish means the spell never happens, so congratulations on delivering half a dramatic speech while somebody beat your ass.
More experienced Kidō users can eventually earn ways to shorten or skip their incantations without sacrificing power. Until then, you have to decide whether standing there reciting poetry is worth it when the thing across the room is already running at you.
Zanpakutō: How to Actually Run It
Everyone wants the cool sword. Obviously. The trick is making the Zanpakutō feel like an actual part of the character instead of a damage upgrade with emotional subtitles.
Canonically, Shikai comes from communicating and synchronizing with the Zanpakutō spirit. Bankai goes much further, requiring the wielder to materialize and subjugate that spirit, with mastery normally taking years. I’m turning that relationship into story-gated progression for the tabletop because I do not expect your campaign to pause for ten in-game years because Byakuya said so.
Start With the Sword
Before anybody starts designing Shikai abilities, answer four questions:
- What does the Zanpakutō spirit want from its wielder?
- What does it understand about them that they don’t?
- What does their inner world look like?
- What simple idea sits underneath the sword’s power?
That fourth answer is what you’re going to build the mechanics around, so keep it painfully simple. “My sword controls mist” gives you plenty to work with. “My sword manipulates atmospheric moisture, memories, fear, moonlight, the concept of loneliness, and Tuesdays” gives me a headache.
We can ruin everybody’s evening with the complicated stuff later.
Shikai
I’d make characters eligible for Shikai somewhere around levels 5–8, depending on the campaign, but hitting the right level doesn’t automatically hand them one. The character should’ve reached a point where communicating with their Zanpakutō spirit makes sense for whatever has been happening between them.
When that finally happens, the sword tells them its name.
I’m keeping that part exactly because it rules.
From there, you only need three things to get the first version of Shikai working:
Release Command: What does the character say?
Core Rule: What’s the simple idea behind the Zanpakutō’s power?
Base Ability: What’s one reliable combat or utility ability that shows what this sword can actually do?
For any active Shikai ability, write down the action, Reiryoku cost, range and target, along with whatever roll, save, duration, or end condition it needs. Most basic Shikai abilities should cost around 1 Reiryoku Die.
Example Shikai: Veiled Tide
Core Rule: The blade creates and controls mist.
Veil the Field
Action, 1 Reiryoku Die, 60 feet
Choose a point you can see within range. A 15-foot-radius sphere of heavy mist appears there until the start of your next turn, making the area heavily obscured. When you create it, choose a number of creatures up to your proficiency bonus who can see normally through the mist.
That’s enough to start playing with. Eventually somebody’s going to ask if they can move the mist, freeze it, hide their spiritual pressure inside it, or shape it into something. If an idea keeps coming up and still makes sense for the sword’s Core Rule, that’s when I’d turn it into an actual ability.
Shikai Extensions
You don’t need seven extra abilities sitting on the character sheet at Session 0. Let the player screw around with their Shikai first and see what they actually keep trying to do.
When one of those tricks becomes a regular part of how they use the sword, write it down as a Shikai Extension with whatever action, Reiryoku cost, target, roll or save, and duration it needs. Now the character’s moveset is growing out of how they’ve actually played instead of a giant ability tree they designed before meeting their Zanpakutō.
Bankai
Bankai shouldn’t just be Shikai with bigger numbers. This is the character bringing out a much more complete version of their Zanpakutō’s power, so I’d start making it possible around levels 11–13 and still require the character to earn it through the story.
Before Bankai becomes available, I want an established relationship with the Zanpakutō spirit, at least two Shikai abilities that have developed through play, and some major moment that actually changes or tests that relationship. There should also be training or a confrontation with the spirit involved somewhere. Hitting level 11 by itself isn’t enough.
Once all of that has happened, the actual release works like this:
Activation: Action
Cost: 3 Reiryoku Dice
Duration: Up to 1 minute
Uses: Once per long rest unless something later in the campaign changes that
When you’re designing the Bankai itself, take the Core Rule you’ve already been using and push it somewhere the Shikai couldn’t reach.
- Transform the Core Rule. Make the original idea larger, stranger, or more complete.
- Add one persistent effect that lasts while Bankai is active.
- Give it one major Bankai ability that still makes sense for this particular Zanpakutō.
When the release ends, the character suffers Spiritual Burnout until the end of their next turn and can’t spend Reiryoku Dice during that time.
I’d rather start Bankai here and make adjustments once somebody actually puts it through a few fights. The alternative is accidentally handing a player a supernatural chainsaw they can start every morning and then spending the next six sessions wondering why they keep reaching for it.
Damaging Bankai
Bleach treats damage to a Bankai much more seriously than damage to Shikai. I wouldn’t recreate every canon repair rule literally because I enjoy my players speaking to me, but destroying one should still cause an actual problem.
If an enemy ability or major story event wrecks somebody’s Bankai, don’t let them take a long rest and show up tomorrow like nothing happened. Figure out what that damage means for their Zanpakutō and go from there. Maybe it can be repaired, maybe the ability has to change, or maybe the damage forces the sword and its wielder into something neither of them expected.
Whatever you decide, losing a Bankai should give that player something to deal with beyond waiting for their hit points to come back.
Hollows Need More Than Claws
Hollow players need their own supernatural toys, so at level 5 they start with one Hollow Trait that helps establish what kind of nightmare they’ve become.
Cero: As an action, spend 1 Reiryoku Die and make a ranged Spiritual Attack against a creature within 60 feet. On a hit, deal 2d8 + the Reiryoku Die as force or necrotic damage, choosing the damage type when you create the character.
Hierro: When you take bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, use your reaction and spend 1 Reiryoku Die to reduce the damage by the amount rolled plus your proficiency bonus.
High-Speed Regeneration: As an action, spend 2 Reiryoku Dice and regain hit points equal to the total rolled plus your Spiritual Ability modifier.
Predatory Sonído: Use the Shunpo rules and call it Sonído because I value my continued safety around Arrancar fans.
More Hollow Traits can show up as the character progresses, so there’s no reason to cram every Hollow ability onto the sheet at level 5. Memory Fragments already cover pieces of who this person used to be. These are for deciding what horrible spiritual nonsense their Hollow body can actually do.
Arrancar
Arrancar are Hollows who have removed part of their masks and gained
Shinigami-like abilities.
Their Zanpakutō are not Shinigami Zanpakutō with Spanish DLC. An Arrancar seals the core of their Hollow power into the weapon, and Resurrección releases that sealed power and returns them toward their true Hollow combat form. For tabletop purposes, I’d treat that closer to the role Bankai occupies than Shikai. Start with the Hollow Origin, a sealed Arrancar weapon, and one Hollow Trait.
Resurrección
I’d make Resurrección available somewhere around levels 9–12, depending on how powerful the campaign is. Before you start throwing abilities at it, figure out what you’re actually releasing:
What did this character become as a Hollow, and what part of that is being sealed away right now?
Once you know that, build the release around the answer.
Activation: Action and release command
Cost: 3 Reiryoku Dice
Duration: Up to 1 minute
While released, the character gains temporary hit points equal to twice their level and their speed increases by 10 feet. One of their existing Hollow Traits also improves, and they gain one Resurrección ability tied directly to their true Hollow form.
The temporary hit points disappear when the release ends, and getting knocked unconscious ends it early. I fully expect the numbers to need some bullying once people actually start playing with them, but at least this gives the DM something concrete to run instead of inventing Resurrección in the middle of combat.
Also, no, everybody does not get Segunda Etapa because Ulquiorra did it. Put that back.
Visored
Visored are Shinigami who survived Hollowfication and learned to control the Hollow power inside them, which is why I’d treat this as something a character unlocks during the campaign instead of another Origin sitting on the Session 0 menu.
They need an actual story reason to survive Hollowfication and eventually confront the inner Hollow before gaining access to the mask.
Hollow Mask
Activation: Bonus action, 1 Reiryoku Die
Duration: Until the end of your next turn
While the mask is active, your speed increases by 10 feet, you have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, and once per turn you can add your proficiency bonus to one damage roll. You also gain access to one Hollow Trait chosen when the mask is unlocked.
At the end of each of your turns, you can spend another Reiryoku Die to keep the mask active until the end of your next turn. Otherwise, it comes off. Training can eventually stretch that limit or unlock more Hollow abilities.
That gets us the personal time limit without making me keep a separate stopwatch because Lisa gets three minutes and Ichigo gets eleven seconds while everybody else is ordering pizza.
Fullbring: Build the Power From the Object
Start with the focus object and figure out why the character gives a shit about it.
What does this object mean to you?
From there, figure out the stupidly simple rule behind its power. A camera could capture something besides images, shoes could manipulate movement, a lighter could control ignition, or a necklace could connect two things. You don’t need to map out an entire power tree before the campaign even starts.
Base Fullbring: Give the character one active ability built around that rule, usually costing 1 Reiryoku Die. Everything else can grow out of play as the character finds new ways to use it. At higher levels, the Fullbring can become more complete, change the focus object’s form, or expand what its Core Rule can affect.
I also wouldn’t forget the basic soul manipulation underneath all of this. A Fullbringer should still be able to interact with the souls inside physical matter even when their personal Fullbring isn’t useful for whatever problem is in front of them. The focus object is where their individual power gets weird and specific, but it isn’t the entire system. Otherwise we’re basically handing them a magic item with a tragic backstory and calling it Fullbring.
Quincy Techniques
The bow is only the beginning.
Hirenkyaku
Use the Shunpo procedure with the same cost. The movement is Quincy, the table math is already sitting right there, and I’m taking the free win.
Gintō
Gintō are silver tubes that Quincy prepare ahead of time by storing spiritual power inside them. For the tabletop version, a Quincy can prepare a number of Gintō Charges equal to their proficiency bonus after a long rest, choosing what each charge contains when they prepare it.
At level 5, those charges can hold 1st-level spells from an approved list of abjuration, evocation, or control effects. Using one takes the spell’s normal casting time and consumes the charge, but it doesn’t cost a Reiryoku Die since the Quincy already did the work of gathering and storing that spiritual power beforehand.
It gives Quincy something worth preparing before a fight instead of solving every problem with “bow harder.”
Quincy and Hollows
Hollow spiritual power is particularly dangerous to Quincy.
If the campaign introduces Hollow poisoning or direct spiritual
contamination, Quincy should have disadvantage on the first saving throw
against it unless a feature says otherwise.
I would not turn every Hollow punch into poison damage because that way lies madness. Use the disadvantage when the Hollow nature of the effect actually matters.
Bount Dolls
We said relationship meter, so now we actually need the damn relationship meter.
Every Bount Doll begins at Bond 2 on a scale from 0 to 4.
Bond 4: Perfect Tandem
Once per turn when the Bount or Doll hits a creature the other damaged
since the end of the Bount’s last turn, add the Bount’s proficiency
bonus to the damage.
Bond 3: Strong
The Doll follows commands normally and can take its full turn.
Bond 2: Stable
Normal starting state. No bonus or penalty.
Bond 1: Strained
When the Bount commands the Doll to take an action that directly
conflicts with its established personality or goal, make a Charisma
check against DC 12. On a failure, the Doll chooses a different
reasonable action.
Bond 0: Break
At Bond 0, the Doll isn’t under the Bount’s control anymore, and what happens next depends entirely on the Doll you’ve been playing this whole time. It might leave, turn on its Bount, or decide somebody else in the party is more competent and cause the most humiliating breakup in spiritual history.
Bond should change because of things that actually happen between them. Working together, protecting each other, respecting what the Doll wants, and resolving conflicts can raise it. Treating the Doll like disposable equipment, betraying it, constantly ignoring its goals, or nearly getting it destroyed can send that relationship in the other direction.
Basically, don’t wake up every morning and roll to see whether your Doll still likes you. This is a relationship, not weather.
Doll Turn
The Doll acts immediately after the Bount and can move and take a normal action from its stat block. If the Bount is incapacitated, the Doll keeps going according to its own personality, which may or may not be reassuring depending on what you’ve been feeding that relationship for the last six sessions.
Basic Doll Chassis
Start here and mutate it based on what the Doll actually is.
Armor Class: 13 + the Bount’s proficiency bonus
Hit Points: 5 + five times the Bount’s level
Speed: 30 feet
Saving Throws: Pick two when you create the Doll. It adds the Bount’s proficiency bonus to those saves.
Attack: Use the Bount’s Spiritual Attack modifier.
Doll Save DC: Use the Bount’s Spiritual Save DC.
Give the Doll a basic attack that deals 1d8 + the Bount’s proficiency bonus damage, with whatever damage type makes sense for the Doll you built. It also gets one Doll Ability, which can handle movement, control, defense, ranged damage, tracking, or whatever other weird thing fits its whole deal. If that ability is strong enough that you don’t want it going off every turn, have it burn 1 Reiryoku Die from the Bount when used.
Anything that scales off level should use the Bount’s proficiency bonus. If the Doll drops to 0 hit points, it collapses back into its crest and can’t be summoned again until the Bount finishes a long rest. That’s the normal consequence. A particularly nasty story event can absolutely make things worse because I’m giving you a safety rail here, not protecting your weird soul marriage from consequences.
Power Scaling Without Losing Your Mind
Anime power scaling can drive a D&D campaign directly into a wall if you try to translate every gap from the source material into numbers. A fresh Shinigami and a captain aren’t remotely operating on the same level, but I also don’t want to spend the next four pages calculating exactly how many level 5 characters equal one Byakuya.
So I’m using tiers.
Academy / Rookie: Levels 5–6
The party can handle normal Hollows and low-level spiritual threats, and Shikai may begin appearing. A lieutenant is still a problem. A captain is weather.
Seated Officer: Levels 7–9
The party gets real assignments here. Shikai is established, advanced movement and Kidō start showing up, and Hollow Traits, Gintō, and developed Fullbring abilities have room to grow. People in the Gotei know their names by now, which is not necessarily good news.
Lieutenant Tier: Levels 10–12
The party has enough power and political weight that major factions care what they do. Resurrección and Visored masks can enter play here, and Bankai development can start becoming a real problem on somebody’s training schedule.
Captain-Adjacent: Levels 13–16
Bankai is realistic here, and high-end releases or advanced techniques can become normal campaign problems. Captains no longer automatically function as “do not engage” signs, but they are still captains, so please behave accordingly.
Endgame: Levels 17–20
At this point you made your choices. Godspeed.
Levels only make the next piece of the power system available. Hitting level 11 does not mean your character wakes up, checks the sheet, and discovers Bankai got installed overnight. They still have to earn that shit in the story.
Build Bleach Fights Around Information
If an important Bleach fight is just:
large spiritual person has 240 hit points
I have failed myself. Give the enemy a rule.
Maybe their Zanpakutō only affects things reflected in water, or their Cero gets stronger every time somebody blocks instead of dodging. Maybe the Doll can’t move farther than 30 feet from its crest. Maybe a Fullbring only works on objects the user has physically touched.
Then give the players enough clues to actually mess with it. The first use can be confusing. By the second, somebody should have something to grab onto, and by round three I want at least one person at the table pointing at the map like they just solved a murder. If they’re right, let them be right.
Don’t move the supernatural goalpost because they figured out your cool mechanic before the villain finished explaining it. If that means your cool villain gets hit with a folding chair, respect the chair.
The Setting Is Bigger Than Seireitei
One mistake is treating the entire campaign like everybody lives inside
the Seireitei and occasionally leaves to kill a Hollow.
You’ve got multiple campaign worlds sitting right there.
Soul Society: Seireitei and Rukongai
The Seireitei is all walls, protocols, divisions, noble families, orders, records, and people with enough authority to make a sentence terrifying. Then you get outside those walls and Rukongai is enormous, uneven, and depending on the district, barely getting the attention it needs from the people running Soul Society.
If the party starts wondering why one district has food while another has people who’ve been waiting decades for somebody to give a shit, follow that question. Don’t drag them back toward whatever conspiracy or big bad you had planned because you think they’ve wandered off course. They haven’t. You just found out what your players actually care about.
Hueco Mundo
Endless desert, permanent night, no convenient backup, and things wandering around that used to be people. Hueco Mundo is great when you want the campaign to suddenly feel lonely.
Build it as an ecosystem too: one major predator, two factions that avoid each other, something ancient nobody wants to wake up, a group of weaker Hollows trying to survive, and a clock. Maybe the party has six hours before the Garganta they came through becomes unusable and they have to figure out another way home.
Getting stranded in Hueco Mundo should be enough of a problem by itself.
Karakura Town
The living world has a way of making all this spiritual bullshit feel a lot more personal. Soul Society can talk about Hollow attacks in reports and numbers, but that gets harder when the Hollow tears through a convenience store the party has visited six times and they actually know the cashier behind the counter.
Karakura also gives you an easy place to throw Quincy, Fullbringers, Bounts, spiritually aware humans, and Shinigami into the same mess without everybody needing permission from Central 46 first. It’s basically a supernatural collision point with convenience stores.
Probably a nightmare to insure.
How Player Actions Actually Change Things
I need actual tracks here because I know myself. If I don’t write down that the party has pissed off Squad 2 three separate times, six sessions later I’m gonna accidentally have them invited to brunch.
The Balance Track
Start Balance at 0. It tracks how badly the normal movement of souls between worlds has been disrupted, not whether the party has been morally good little citizens.
Keep it between -3 and +3. Most sessions won’t move it at all; save the track for major spiritual events.
Examples:
- Large-scale Quincy destruction of Hollows: move 1 step toward
instability. - A mass of souls prevented from passing on: move 1 step toward
instability. - Somebody deliberately rerouting or trapping souls: move 1 step
toward instability. - Correcting a major disruption: move 1 step back toward 0.
I don’t care which side of the number line you use for which kind of
disruption as long as your notes stay consistent.
At 2 steps from 0, weird spiritual effects start appearing.
At 3, something is seriously wrong and major factions notice.
This is for campaign-scale interference, not punishing the Quincy because Kevin shot one Hollow behind Walmart. The universe can survive Kevin.
Political Weight
For each major faction that matters, keep a number from -2 to +2.
-2: actively hostile
-1: suspicious
0: neutral / unknown
+1: useful
+2: trusted or politically valuable
You do not need all thirteen squads on Session 1. Please love yourself and track the factions the party actually touches.
When they do something visible, move one relevant faction if the action
would genuinely change how that group sees them.
Now “the Gotei is watching you” has somewhere to live besides my increasingly unreliable memory.
The Rukongai Problem
I’m not putting this on a meter because some things deserve to remain people. If the players start paying attention to Rukongai, follow them. There are souls who’ve been waiting, districts nobody important visits, and people who understand exactly how much the Seireitei cares because they’ve had years to measure the silence.
If the party decides that’s their campaign now, good. Apparently the setting survived contact with players.
Building a Soul Society Arc
Before an arc, prep five things.
One Authority
Who can make the party’s life difficult without drawing a sword? Maybe it’s a captain, a noble, somebody from Central 46, a Kidō Corps officer, or some terrifying administrator whose Technique is paperwork.
Two Interested Factions
Who wants different outcomes?
Do not make everybody agree about the problem.
One faction wants the anomaly destroyed while another wants it studied. There, now the party has choices.
One Spiritual Problem
Something supernatural is actually wrong. Missing souls, Hollow activity, a broken passage between worlds, an illegal experiment, a Zanpakutō doing something nobody has seen before. Pick the problem that makes the rest of the arc start sweating.
One Human Problem
Who gets hurt while everybody important argues? Maybe it’s a Rukongai district, a family in Karakura, an unseated officer getting used as the scapegoat, or a Hollow that remembers enough to understand what’s happening.
One Clock
What happens if the party does nothing? Records disappear tomorrow, the Hollow evolves tonight, a captain arrives in six hours, the gate closes at sunrise. Put time on the problem and run it.
Session 1: Run This
Keep it small. You don’t need to open this campaign with Aizen kicking the door down or some giant fight in the middle of Soul Society.
Start with a soul that hasn’t passed on.
There’s nothing obviously wrong with them either. They’re not threatening anybody or chained to some building while a Hollow circles overhead. They’re just refusing to move on, and your players get sent to deal with it because this should be a twenty-minute job, tops.
When they arrive, there’s no fight waiting for them. The soul is sitting somewhere quiet and weirdly specific, like an empty playground, a train platform after the last service, or the back steps of an apartment building. Somewhere that feels chosen.
And when the party finally walks up, the soul looks at them like they’ve been expecting somebody to come.
Then:
“I already went through this. Why am I back?”
Do not rush that.
Let the table sit in it.
What the Soul Knows
If the party talks to them, they remember enough to make this whole thing worse. A Shinigami performed Konsō on them. They arrived in Soul Society, went through intake, and remember being assigned somewhere. Somebody asked them a question they can’t quite remember.
After that, nothing.
The next thing they know, they’re back in the living world.
Don’t give them a complete answer yet. They know enough to prove something happened, and that’s plenty for Session 1.
Checking the Records
A character with access to Soul Society records can make an
Intelligence (Investigation) check.
DC 12: The record says the soul was processed normally.
DC 15: There are no ordinary processing notes or officer signature
attached.
DC 18: The entry is too clean. Fields that normally come from
different officers use identical formatting and timing.
If somebody has a background, rank, or faction connection that should
help, give them advantage.
That’s why they picked that shit.
Trying Konsō Again
It doesn’t work, and don’t make them roll twenty times hoping attempt number twenty-one suddenly fixes it. The soul has already been processed somehow, and the system doesn’t know what to do with them.
A character who spends 1 Reiryoku Die while examining the soul can make an Arcana or Religion check against DC 15. On a success, they realize something very specific is wrong with its spiritual state: the cycle recognizes this soul as already moved on.
That should be impossible, which is exactly the kind of problem I want sitting in front of the party.
The Order
Then the message arrives, short and with absolutely no useful explanation:
Resolve the anomaly.
That’s all they get. If the party asks what “resolve” is supposed to mean, whoever sent the order doesn’t elaborate because apparently Soul Society has decided ambiguity is everybody else’s problem now.
If They Try Force
The soul resists being moved, not violently. It just doesn’t go.
If somebody attacks them, they can hurt them like any other soul, which
should immediately turn this into a very different conversation at the
table.
Let it.
If They Investigate
The soul remembers one name. Pick somebody unimportant enough that the players can actually reach their records. That person’s file has the same problem: different entry, same suspiciously clean fingerprints.
If They Report Everything
The answer comes back fast enough to be suspicious.
Anomaly reclassified. No further action required.
Drop it.
If They Protect the Soul
Congratulations, somebody notices.
Move the relevant faction’s Political Weight down by 1 if they openly
disobeyed.
Do not move the Balance Track. Protecting one confused soul isn’t breaking the universe, although it is absolutely breaking somebody’s afternoon.
If They Obey
That is not the “bad ending.” Let them obey and then make them live with what they chose.
Maybe the soul disappears into custody, the records vanish, or three sessions later the party recognizes the same formatting somewhere else. Player agency includes making choices I personally would not make, which is rude but apparently necessary.
End the Session on the Decision
No boss fight required.
No Hollow crashes through the wall because we got nervous about ending
on dialogue.
The party chooses what to do with the soul, and I’d stop there. Whatever they picked, somebody now knows they touched this case.
Where the Campaign Goes From There
Do not write twenty sessions.
Know: – what caused the duplicate soul – who benefits from hiding it –
who knows part of the truth – what happens next if the party walks
away – what your important factions want
Then react. Maybe this becomes a conspiracy inside Soul Society, leads into illegal Hollow research, or sends the party toward Rukongai. Maybe a Quincy recognizes something the Shinigami don’t and suddenly the person Soul Society least wants involved has the useful answer.
Maybe the party decides none of that is as important as the fact that
District 64 has been waiting for supplies for three months.
Fine.
Apparently we’re doing that. Good thing I wanted a Bleach campaign instead of a reenactment.
One Last Thing
Don’t try to recreate the show. Seriously, the show already exists.
I don’t need my players standing around waiting for Ichigo to arrive and do the important shit. I want them making the choices the original cast never got anywhere near.
Maybe the Bount player ends up being the only person keeping the group together. Maybe your Arrancar causes a diplomatic incident in the Seireitei because of course they fucking did. The Quincy picks the worst possible moment to bring up the whole soul-balance problem, and now everybody’s arguing while something actively tries to kill them.
Your Fullbringer might lose the object their entire power revolves around and have to figure out why they cared about it in the first place. Meanwhile, the Shinigami finally learns their Zanpakutō’s name only to realize this sword has apparently been judging them for six sessions.
And somebody’s going to piss off a captain. I’ve already ranked these people by how terrible they’d be to work for, so I can tell you right now some choices are much worse than others.
I don’t even need to plan that part. Give D&D players access to Soul Society and it’ll happen on its own.
That’s really all I want from the setting. Give the players enough of Bleach that the world feels right, then get out of their way and see what they do to it.
Pull up a chair.
