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.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Emphasis mine.

Maybe not innate in the game, but with those two in your group there is definitely something that should make you want to run combats differently -- if not less frequently -- than 5E. Here you have one player telling you they want to stab things, and another telling you they want to burgle stuff. There is no reason in a narrative game you can't accommodate both without sacrificing anything.

So how this being a narrative game solves the issue of one character being massively better at combat than another, and the action system disincentivising this weaker combatant from taking actions at all in combat?

Like I don't know, you just seem to be repeating these sort of empty counters that do not actually address the quite real problem.

 

[Stalker0]

I was curious how much Proficiency acutally helped the Warrior so I reran the stats against the Volcanic dragon, and saw how things looked from Prof 1 all the way to 6. I removed Onslaught as that tends to level things out (in other words prof isn't all that important if you have onslaught).

Prof	HP/Attack	%Change from Prof 1	%Improve per Prof Point
6​	1.36​	88.89%​	17.78%​
5​	1.09​	51.39%​	12.85%​
4​	0.86​	19.44%​	6.48%​
3​	0.81​	12.50%​	6.25%​
2​	0.74​	2.78%​	2.78%​
1​	0.72​

What this shows is what you would expect when you have threshold bases games. Getting your prof to 2,3, or even 4 isn't a massive difference when facing Tier 3 threats like this (interestingly both the standard tier 3 zombie and the solo has similar thresholds). However, once you get your damage high enough to have a reasonably good chance to hit the severe threshold, your damage scales quite a bit faster.

For those curious, here is onslaught (an ability that if you hit you always do a minimum of 2 HP of damage). Basically prof isn't really even a factor!!!

Prof	HP/Att (Onslaught)
6​	1.53​
5​	1.52​
4​	1.48​
3​	1.44​
2​	1.44​
1​	1.44​

 

[ruemere]

I was curious how much Proficiency acutally helped the Warrior so I reran the stats against the Volcanic dragon, and saw how things looked from Prof 1 all the way to 6. I removed Onslaught as that tends to level things out (in other words prof isn't all that important if you have onslaught).

Prof	HP/Attack	%Change from Prof 1	%Improve per Prof Point
6​	1.36​	88.89%​	17.78%​
5​	1.09​	51.39%​	12.85%​
4​	0.86​	19.44%​	6.48%​
3​	0.81​	12.50%​	6.25%​
2​	0.74​	2.78%​	2.78%​
1​	0.72​

What this shows is what you would expect when you have threshold bases games. Getting your prof to 2,3, or even 4 isn't a massive difference when facing Tier 3 threats like this (interestingly both the standard tier 3 zombie and the solo has similar thresholds). However, once you get your damage high enough to have a reasonably good chance to hit the severe threshold, your damage scales quite a bit faster.

For those curious, here is onslaught (an ability that if you hit you always do a minimum of 2 HP of damage). Basically prof isn't really even a factor!!!

Prof	HP/Att (Onslaught)
6​	1.53​
5​	1.52​
4​	1.48​
3​	1.44​
2​	1.44​
1​	1.44​

Umm, Onslaught is Blade 10. You need pretty high level to get it.

 

[Stalker0]

Umm, Onslaught is Blade 10. You need pretty high level to get it.

The highest level! Which is why I noted it (because I was showing level 10 characters) but put it to the side because it certainly wouldn't be a common thing to see.

 

[FrogReaver]

So how this being a narrative game solves the issue of one character being massively better at combat than another, and the action system disincentivising this weaker combatant from taking actions at all in combat?

Like I don't know, you just seem to be repeating these sort of empty counters that do not actually address the quite real problem.

Scenario time.

Say in combat this rogue constantly skips turn for the fighter.

DM simply has monsters start targeting rogue instead of fighter.

Eventually Rogue can’t skip turns any longer and takes a defensive action or try’s to move away.

Alternatively there might be something the rogue can do in combat that the fighter isn’t good at. Maybe spotting a hidden enemy or stealing the macguffin from the monsters.

 

[overgeeked]

A new monster dropped for the playtest.

Daggerheart Playtest

www.daggerheart.com

 

[Zaukrie]

A new monster dropped for the playtest.

Daggerheart Playtest

www.daggerheart.com

Cool effects

 

[Stalker0]

Scenario time.

Say in combat this rogue constantly skips turn for the fighter.

DM simply has monsters start targeting rogue instead of fighter.

Eventually Rogue can’t skip turns any longer and takes a defensive action or try’s to move away.

Alternatively there might be something the rogue can do in combat that the fighter isn’t good at. Maybe spotting a hidden enemy or stealing the macguffin from the monsters.

When your answer is "The DM has to adjust their play to fix the problem".... that's a design concern.

Now of course we do expect the DM to change tactics, shake things up to keep combats interesting, target player X sometimes to make them sweat, etc. But it comes down to how often you are doing this.

If a group feels that the fighter is so much better in combat than the rogue that they feel compelled to use this method consistently, and the DM feels they have to adjust their tactics constantly.... than yes that's a design problem.

And that's OK! Its a beta, this is EXACTLY the kinds of things we want to debate. To me, this is a very simple fix. Just put in a little penalty if a player goes more than once in the series, which mechanically reinforces the default that "all players going in a round is the rule, not the exception"

 

[Stalker0]

A new monster dropped for the playtest.

Daggerheart Playtest

www.daggerheart.com

Hot damn that thing is nasty! Now I see why its a solo

 

[Reynard]

So how this being a narrative game solves the issue of one character being massively better at combat than another, and the action system disincentivising this weaker combatant from taking actions at all in combat?

Like I don't know, you just seem to be repeating these sort of empty counters that do not actually address the quite real problem.

Because it isn't the problem you think it is. Maybe Ffard beats on the guards while Grey Mouser gets the treasure. People seem to think this is 5E where every character has to have exactly the same amount of spotlight time in every fight and that doesn't have to be the case.

There are plenty of ways to deal with groups of characters who don't all have the same action screen time. There's a century or so of film and television to help you out on the matter.

I feel like the problem is that people are looking at DH like it is supposed to be 5E and be a 5E replacement, when it is obviously designed to be a actioned-up narrative game. If the players really want to have a big disparity in combat power output, look to things like Buffy or Superman and Lois and Jimmy or similar stories where there's one heavy hitter and their allies and support crew. But you absolutely have to get out of the mindset that they must be equal if the players are explicitly telling you through their character choices that isn't what they want.