Critical Role's 'Daggerheart' Open Playtest Starts In March

On March 12th, Critical Role's Darrington Press will be launching the open playtest for Daggerheart, their new fantasy TTRPG/

Using cards and two d12s, the system plays on 'the dualities of hope and fear'. The game is slated for a 2025 release.

Almost a year ago, we announced that we’ve been working hard behind-the-scenes on Daggerheart, our contribution to the world of high-fantasy tabletop roleplaying games.

Daggerheart is a game of brave heroics and vibrant worlds that are built together with your gaming group. Create a shared story with your adventuring party, and shape your world through rich, long-term campaign play.

When it’s time for the game mechanics to control fate, players roll one HOPE die and one FEAR die (both 12-sided dice), which will ultimately impact the outcome for your characters. This duality between the forces of hope and fear on every hero drives the unique character-focused narratives in Daggerheart.

In addition to dice, Daggerheart’s card system makes it easy to get started and satisfying to grow your abilities by bringing your characters’ background and capabilities to your fingertips. Ancestry and Community cards describe where you come from and how your experience shapes your customs and values. Meanwhile, your Subclass and Domain cards grant your character plenty of tantalizing abilities to choose from as your character evolves.

And now, dear reader, we’re excited to let you know that our Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest will launch globally on our 9th anniversary, Tuesday, March 12th!

We want anyone and everyone (over the age of 18, please) to help us make Daggerheart as wonderful as possible, which means…helping us break the game. Seriously! The game is not finished or polished yet, which is why it’s critical (ha!) to gather all of your feedback ahead of Daggerheart’s public release in 2025.

 

[Campbell]

So the bonuses are supposed to outweigh the roll? Because that's the only way 15 as a medium DC makes sense.

You are rolling 2d12 (which averages to 13) to meet or beat the Difficulty with all doubles being critical successes (even if they would have been failures).

 

[SteveC]

So the bonuses are supposed to outweigh the roll? Because that's the only way 15 as a medium DC makes sense.

Here's the difficulty chart from the playtest:
5 - Very Easy | 10 - Easy | 15 - Medium | 20 - Hard | 25 - Very Hard | 30 - Nearly Impossible

Now you add an ability to the test, you can spend Hope to add an Experience to the test and another character can spend Hope to add +D6 to the test. And, looking at the examples, a lot of the time difficulty is going to be 10-15. I don't expect that there would be too much trouble to hit 15 if you knew that was the normal target you were trying for. I have only run a combat so far, and we didn't have trouble hitting. I honestly don't remember the opponents' Evade scores, though.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Here's the difficulty chart from the playtest:
5 - Very Easy | 10 - Easy | 15 - Medium | 20 - Hard | 25 - Very Hard | 30 - Nearly Impossible

I noticed earlier that this is literally exactly the same than in 5e.

 

[Reynard]

So the bonuses are supposed to outweigh the roll? Because that's the only way 15 as a medium DC makes sense.

Wait, what? The average on 2d12 is 13, so an average difficulty assumes characters are able to must +2 on stuff they are good at. That doesn't seem onerous given the potential bonuses. Remember, you are supposed to be spending Hope all the time, just like thr GM is supposed to be spending Fear. The pools are intended to be dynamic in order to ramp up the cinematic action and narrative flourishes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I had it in my head it was 2d6 for some reason. My bad.

 

[FrogReaver]

But in most games you cannot give your turn to a more effective character, so you doing poorly doesn't actually make the situation worse! In DH it does. It is absolutely a design problem, and quite unique one.

I recall Blades in the dark letting players act however and whenever. It never really was a problem in practice. But theoretically I can see how it could lead to a single expert handling his chosen area of expertise while everyone else watched.

 

[Stalker0]

You are rolling 2d12 (which averages to 13) to meet or beat the Difficulty with all doubles being critical successes (even if they would have been failures).

I think this is a very important point to remember. Any roll automatically has a 8.33% chance to succeed REGARDLESS OF MODIFIERS.

So its very important for DH to not allow rolls for things that truly should not be an option, its not like 5e where you can set a high DC and truly is impossible for the player to succeed without some crazy magic boost or XYZ. But in DH, even the most impossible of checks has a chance to succeed.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

Everyone: let’s not do too much ascribing motives to other posters, please and thank you.

 

[ruemere]

Could someone explain to me why Evasion scores of martial classes are low? Especially the Guardian, the supposed tank, and Seraph, somewhat magic fighter are low. Warrior is just 1-2 points above casters.

I would think that the first step toward mastering melee is not to get hit. And only the second to would be to reduce it/heal it.

 

[FrogReaver]

Could someone explain to me why Evasion scores of martial classes are low? Especially the Guardian, the supposed tank, and Seraph, somewhat magic fighter are low. Warrior is just 1-2 points above casters.

I would think that the first step toward mastering melee is not to get hit. And only the second to would be to reduce it/heal it.

It’s not a d20 game, right? If so 2 points in a 2d6 or 2d10 style game is typically much larger than in a d20 game.