Synopsis: While waiting for the rest of the party’s schedules to synch up, a player and I decided to try a Daggerheart pick-up solo adventure. We played a largely improvised session that involved some social interaction, exploring, and combat. The final encounter against a solo monster went down to the wire, and the PC’s luck ran out on a “risk it all” move. The character died, but in the context of the moment, the player and I enjoyed it as much as a victory.
Context: The player and I have been gaming together for decades, mostly D&D (all editions), but plenty of other systems (Shadowrun, Cortex, C/WoD). We both recently acquired Daggerheart, and have been looking for a chance to try it out with/on the larger gaming group. So, the session was off the cuff, but we’re as well read in the system as we can be, and really used to sharing a table.
The Set Up: The player really wanted to try out the warlock (1.5), and I have been in a Weird West mood. I suggested a cowboys and dinosaurs kind of adventure in Eberron (my go-to setting when I want to improv), in a town on the Karrnath-Talenta border. The player made up an orderborne human warlock, described as an Audairan Knight Phantom (a prestige class from D&D 3.5) recently demobilized and traveling east as a hero for hire (“Have wand, will travel”).
The plot developed pretty rapidly: the warlock met a hobgoblin archaeologist who wanted to sneak into a taboo ruin deeper in the Talenta Plains. I was hoping to exercise the Knight Phantom backstory, maybe get the warlock to run into some Valenar raiders or dino-riders. Instead, they ended up rolling successes with Hope on stealth and critting on navigation, pretty much riding through the plains like a phantom (as advertised). So, I rapidly switched focus to the ruins.
The warlock and their NPC charge had been riding all night, so even though they didn’t mechanically need a rest to recharge, it narratively fit to take one. The warlock did the tithing for their patron (might as well get a little more Favor) and camped out in the ruins for a long rest. This turned out to be a great turn of events, because during a long rest, I got to roll 1d4+1 for Fear. I rolled a 5, instantly boosting the pool from 2 to 7. “What the hell just happened?” the player asked. I answered, “The ruins just woke up.”
With a pool of 7 Fear, I decided to go full haunted house. I made the archaeologist disappear (lured away by Dhakaani spirits), summoned up a whole bunch of angry Dhakaani ghosts (6 skeleton dredges), and immediately swarmed the warlock. The warlock was able to defeat them quickly, but the encounter felt tense, largely because he kept succeeding with Fear and giving me ammo to keep swarming him.
After dealing with the initial surprise, I set up a couple countdowns: could the warlock find the archaeologist before the ghosts rallied and attacked again? Rather than mapping the ruins room by room, we talked through the warlock trying out different approaches: trying to decipher carvings, taunting the spirits in Elvish, following the architecture. The player had good ideas AND hot dice, and rather quickly ended up in the hidden chamber where the ghost of a Dhakaani general had possessed the archaeologist. I chose the minor chaos elemental to represent the ghost: I really liked the potential to use its reality warping powers as phantasmagoric time shifts. Historic battles erupted around them, and the warlock quickly discovered he had to shift from using his scepter to using his cutlass (as the elemental has resistance to magic damage). There was some good back and forth, but in the end the ghost was hitting much harder than the warlock. It looked like it could be close– the ghost was down to 2 hit points, and the warlock was down to one… but the warlock got hit first.
In retrospect it’s kind of funny, but of the 3 options (blaze of glory, avoid death, and risk it all) available, we kind of immediately skipped avoid death and really only discussed the other two. The player had gotten to like the NPC, and I conceded that sure, if the warlock went out in a blaze of glory the ghosts would let the archaeologist go. But, the previous couple rounds of combat aside, the player had been rolling hot, and felt good about their chances. They decided to risk it all, and… Fear beat Hope by one point. We both cried “Nooooo!” and let the camera zoom out as the warlock fell on a ghostly battlefield, while the archaeologist hovered in a wraith aura that continued to grow…
So, technically, we lost the day. But we felt like the adventure really succeeded, even with the downbeat ending. Maybe it’s because the PC was only a couple hours old by the time the session ended– sort of like the Decoy Protagonist trope, in which this was just the pre-title sequence. While mourning the warlock, the player was really eager to follow up with a new character to pick up the thread– maybe the warlock’s sibling or the archaeologist’s colleague, out to investigate their disappearances.
Observations
There’s probably a lot of things we could have done more efficiently on both sides of the GM screen, but for a pick-up session it was pretty memorable.
Context: The player and I have been gaming together for decades, mostly D&D (all editions), but plenty of other systems (Shadowrun, Cortex, C/WoD). We both recently acquired Daggerheart, and have been looking for a chance to try it out with/on the larger gaming group. So, the session was off the cuff, but we’re as well read in the system as we can be, and really used to sharing a table.
The Set Up: The player really wanted to try out the warlock (1.5), and I have been in a Weird West mood. I suggested a cowboys and dinosaurs kind of adventure in Eberron (my go-to setting when I want to improv), in a town on the Karrnath-Talenta border. The player made up an orderborne human warlock, described as an Audairan Knight Phantom (a prestige class from D&D 3.5) recently demobilized and traveling east as a hero for hire (“Have wand, will travel”).
The plot developed pretty rapidly: the warlock met a hobgoblin archaeologist who wanted to sneak into a taboo ruin deeper in the Talenta Plains. I was hoping to exercise the Knight Phantom backstory, maybe get the warlock to run into some Valenar raiders or dino-riders. Instead, they ended up rolling successes with Hope on stealth and critting on navigation, pretty much riding through the plains like a phantom (as advertised). So, I rapidly switched focus to the ruins.
The warlock and their NPC charge had been riding all night, so even though they didn’t mechanically need a rest to recharge, it narratively fit to take one. The warlock did the tithing for their patron (might as well get a little more Favor) and camped out in the ruins for a long rest. This turned out to be a great turn of events, because during a long rest, I got to roll 1d4+1 for Fear. I rolled a 5, instantly boosting the pool from 2 to 7. “What the hell just happened?” the player asked. I answered, “The ruins just woke up.”
With a pool of 7 Fear, I decided to go full haunted house. I made the archaeologist disappear (lured away by Dhakaani spirits), summoned up a whole bunch of angry Dhakaani ghosts (6 skeleton dredges), and immediately swarmed the warlock. The warlock was able to defeat them quickly, but the encounter felt tense, largely because he kept succeeding with Fear and giving me ammo to keep swarming him.
After dealing with the initial surprise, I set up a couple countdowns: could the warlock find the archaeologist before the ghosts rallied and attacked again? Rather than mapping the ruins room by room, we talked through the warlock trying out different approaches: trying to decipher carvings, taunting the spirits in Elvish, following the architecture. The player had good ideas AND hot dice, and rather quickly ended up in the hidden chamber where the ghost of a Dhakaani general had possessed the archaeologist. I chose the minor chaos elemental to represent the ghost: I really liked the potential to use its reality warping powers as phantasmagoric time shifts. Historic battles erupted around them, and the warlock quickly discovered he had to shift from using his scepter to using his cutlass (as the elemental has resistance to magic damage). There was some good back and forth, but in the end the ghost was hitting much harder than the warlock. It looked like it could be close– the ghost was down to 2 hit points, and the warlock was down to one… but the warlock got hit first.
In retrospect it’s kind of funny, but of the 3 options (blaze of glory, avoid death, and risk it all) available, we kind of immediately skipped avoid death and really only discussed the other two. The player had gotten to like the NPC, and I conceded that sure, if the warlock went out in a blaze of glory the ghosts would let the archaeologist go. But, the previous couple rounds of combat aside, the player had been rolling hot, and felt good about their chances. They decided to risk it all, and… Fear beat Hope by one point. We both cried “Nooooo!” and let the camera zoom out as the warlock fell on a ghostly battlefield, while the archaeologist hovered in a wraith aura that continued to grow…
So, technically, we lost the day. But we felt like the adventure really succeeded, even with the downbeat ending. Maybe it’s because the PC was only a couple hours old by the time the session ended– sort of like the Decoy Protagonist trope, in which this was just the pre-title sequence. While mourning the warlock, the player was really eager to follow up with a new character to pick up the thread– maybe the warlock’s sibling or the archaeologist’s colleague, out to investigate their disappearances.
Observations
- Rolling a 1 on the Hope die feels dire; subsequently rolling a 1 on the Fear die to make it a crit feels great. This happened twice! In fact, the player got 3 crits in this brief session, although always outside of combat somehow. You can maybe see why they were willing to risk it all-- rolling the dice feels cool.
- Letting the player see a big pool of Fear tokens sitting there is almost as much fun as spending it.
- The player didn’t use their chosen Grace power (Enrapture) at all, and only used their Dread power (Voice of Dread) once. But between using the patron’s mantle and invoking their War sphere (of Love & War) a bunch, they were content with their warlock feeling like a warlock.
- The minor elemental’s direct damage attack (remake reality) was what really did the PC in. The player was banking on using the Patron's Mantle as armor to mitigate hit point loss, and I kinda blew right past that. I only used that attack once, but a subsequent severe hit with the regular attack revealed that the warlock was way more prepared to deal with stress than HP loss.
- The swinginess of the d20 really worked in the player’s favor during the minion encounter, though. Evasion of 11, and I only hit them once in four attempts!
There’s probably a lot of things we could have done more efficiently on both sides of the GM screen, but for a pick-up session it was pretty memorable.
