Daggerheart Discussion

[zakael19]

So I've been running two Daggerheart campaigns for close to 9 months. I was just thinking of doing something similar for my next campaign. My view was to make the powers like "magic items" that could be discovered, traded, etc. Equipping them with a limit of 5 would be like attunement in D&D.
One thing that is sometimes hard for me to remember as a Daggerheart GM is that difficulty doesn't matter anymore. Players decide their characters life or death. Balance doesn't matter. Let them get as OP as you want. You aren't there to challenge them in combat anyway.

I think this is very much not borne out at all by the larger community. Without a feeling of loss being on the table (not dying but losing), the narrative you're making together starts to kinda have less impact. My players have absolutely highlighted the "highs" they feel when they pull out an arc-concluding fight by the skin of their teeth with people making death moves; or the sudden right turn into a really difficult fight resulting from their choices in the moment. The consequences in both of those would've been narrative in nature - you lose the fight, things happen.

I love Daggerheart. It's probably the best game for my style that I've GMed this millennium (since the WotC era of D&D, essentially). But it's a "mid length campaign" system - nothing that could last a year or more.

We'll be at a year shortly, but that's somewhat meaningless since we could be playing once a month or weekly and have wildly different lengths. Instead, let me say that we're at something like 15 or 16 sessions for my in-person game and level 3. This is easily a system which supports the average WOTC AP length of 30-40 sessions. For my group, I anticipate at least 40+ sessions until we culminate the current narrative arc. They might be 7 or 8 by then?

So all I can do is damage. No secondary effects. Also with movement and range mostly abstract (and no opportunity attacks mostly), the movement part which normally adds some tactic also mostly falls away.

Movement has a role: the game is pretty strict about how far you can move on a spotlight without having the chance to pass things back (and in the GM's case, period unless it's a solo). Secondary effects are all over the game, they're just hidden in domain cards or wrapped into the base two with the tacit understanding that when you get away from grid-based movement, does it really matter if you're Prone or Exposed or Flanked or whatever or can we just call all that Vulnerable and handle specific cases in the fiction?

I do actually wish there was a little more depth on the damage type sides than just magic/phy.

 

[SteveC]

Just to talk a bit about why Daggerheart has so much combat focus for characters. It does because that's the kind of game it is. The rules themselves tell you what kind of a game you're getting:

WHAT KIND OF ROLEPLAYING
GAME IS DAGGERHEART?
Daggerheart is a heroic, narrative-focused experience that
features combat as a prominent aspect of play. The system
facilitates emotionally engaging, player-driven stories
punctuated by exciting battles and harrowing challenges.
The game takes a fiction-first approach, encouraging players
and GMs to act in good faith with one another and focus on
the story they’re telling rather than the complexity of the
mechanics. The rules provide structure when it’s unclear how
actions or moments will resolve within that story. The system
takes a free-flowing approach to combat to avoid slowing the
game down with granular rounds, and it doesn’t rely on gridbased
movement for maps and minis. These aspects coalesce
to create a game that allows for the terrain and map-building
that miniature-based systems are known for while facilitating
a streamlined, narrative experience for players.

And if you think about it, games similar to Daggerheart could all say that. There absolutely are games that are completely different: Blades in the Dark is heist-based, and getting into a lot of fights when doing a heist means you're not doing them right. And there are games that are almost completely combat-less (the recent Pumpkin Spice game comes to mind). Most popular rpgs fall into the combat-focused genre. D&D certainly does. Daggerheart is telling you what kind of games it's designed for.

 

[Reynard]

It occurs to me that what I really like about DH is the system and the experience it provides in play -- primarily the duality dice and Hope and Fear, but also the way damage and hit points and armor and stress all work, etc. The least interesting thing to me is the character generation system. I feel like you could rip.that out and replace it and as long as you still hit the math, nothing bad would happen.

 

[Tigris]

It is almost like the actual words I chose matter: I said TACTICAL combat focus.

In a game like D&D 3E or later, combat is designed so you can show off how well you play the combat rules game - making specific decisions, round by round, to test your ability to play a tactical wargame.

Daggerheart is less about those very detailed tactical choices, and more about having a cool dramatic time in a fight scene.

This can be seen, for example, in how D&D deals in 5' square granularity, and Daggerheart has broad range categories.

Daggerheart has specifically translations of the range categories into feet:

• Melee: 5 ft.
• Very Close: 15 ft.
• Close: 30 ft.
• Far: 60 ft.
• Very Far: Above 65 ft.
• Out of Range: "Beyond View"

And even without them its way more precise than 13th age which I used as a comparison, which IS tactical which is less detailed with just:

• “Engaged” – In direct melee combat
• “Nearby” – Within one move away
• “Far-away” – More than one move away

Daggerheart also has really specific rules for weapons and armor, unlike 13th age which has more general. Do you want the armor with +1 to evasion, or the one with +1 to damage thresholds? This is a REALLY DETAILED choice. Or look at all these weapons you could choose: https://daggerheart.org/reference/weapons (where other games like 13th age just abstract that).

Why would you need for dramatic effects in a fight a basic attack which deals 1d6 +3 damage and then also a once use ability dealing 2d10 damage? Do you want to use this limited ressource for a slightly higher average damage but with higher variance (2-10 damage vs 4-9)? This is a REALLY DETAILED choice, while dramatically both are "I sling magical enemy at enemy." So every turn (unless you have full stress) you can make this decision in combat.

Even more every turn in combat you first need to decide who is going to act. So even before doing a decision like the above on what your action is, there is also the decision on who attacks. You need to do this decision every turn!


Also the being hit is a lot more finicky than in 13th age. Needing to hit and damage roll is in both, but Daggerheart also compares with armor treshold value, and then deals damage, and then you can decide if you want to use armor to reduce the damage trading 1 ressource (health) for another (armor). This is a REALLY DETAILED choice.
Ressource management is absolutely typical for tactical play but not for dramatic.


It may do a bad job at being tactical, but it for sure tries to be tactical, full of small nifty numerical details and several choices you make every turn with a complex ressource management system and detailed equipment.

Movement has a role: the game is pretty strict about how far you can move on a spotlight without having the chance to pass things back (and in the GM's case, period unless it's a solo). Secondary effects are all over the game, they're just hidden in domain cards or wrapped into the base two with the tacit understanding that when you get away from grid-based movement, does it really matter if you're Prone or Exposed or Flanked or whatever or can we just call all that Vulnerable and handle specific cases in the fiction?

Yes movement is defined but if you are in range there is no real reason to move, because its mostly abstracted anyway.

And if its just "vulnerable" its just increased damage, so damage again which alone is boring.

The interesting part about flanked is, that you can get rid of it by movement, or forced movement of an enemy. The interesting part of prone is, that you also lose movement (needed for standing up), so players can move away from the enemy making them not reach you. These different conditions change the battlefield and do affect what actions you can do (or what their effects will be), that is what makes combat interesting. If the enemy is vulnerable or not, makes for me most of the time no difference (unless I have a rare attack which deals extra damage on vulnerable), since I will just attack them anyway, same action, just better outcome.

I do actually wish there was a little more depth on the damage type sides than just magic/phy.

No. Thats the one part where I think its fine. Damage types are pretty much never interesting in any game, since it hardly results in any interesting choices. You just use the damage type which is best (for you or against an enemy). It lacks conditions/effects which seriously alter decision making.

 

[Vael]

I've just joined an ongoing Daggerheart campaign as a PC, but I've also DMed Daggerheart a fair bit (one-shots, an ongoing campaign and a short 4-session adventure which is wrapping up this week), and tbh, this is my new fav system.

I don't find there's a lack in tactics. Freeform initiative, tag team rolls, managing Hope and Fear mean there's a decent amount to keep track of and rewarding clever tactics. Character generation and leveling up seem to fall in that sweet spot of interesting choices without being a drawn out process.

The main thing is I do wish I had the next expansion in hand, because I do want/need more toys and tools to work with, nearly doubling the number of Adversaries and Environments is something I would find very helpful. Hope and Fear can't come soon enough, lol.

 

[Scribe]

It occurs to me that what I really like about DH is the system and the experience it provides in play -- primarily the duality dice and Hope and Fear

Yeah, I really really really like that whole mechanic and how it is central to how the game runs.

 

[Umbran]

Daggerheart has specifically translations of the range categories into feet:

Explicitly listed as a "Optional Rule", meaning those definitions are not central or required for play.

And, the game's introduction has the following (bolding mine):

"As a narrative-focused game, Daggerheart is not a place where technical, out-of-context interpretations of the rules are encouraged. Everything should flow back to the fiction, and the GM has the authority and responsibility to make rulings about how rules are applied to underscore that fiction."

And even without them its way more precise than 13th age

Did you get some idea that I was picking a fight with 13th Age? Because I'm not. This thread isn't about 13th Age.

I don't find your repeated comparisons helpful, because I am happy with the idea that neither Daggerheart nor 13th Age are really aiming at tactical combat.

 

[Umbran]

I'm not sure the last there proves your point. Movement and distance in 13th Age are very loosey-goosey too...

I AM NOT PICKING A FIGHT WITH 13TH AGE!

This thread is about Daggerheart. I may have responded to a post that mentioned 13th Age, but my comparison was with D&D! My point is not about 13th Age! I didn't claim any comparison to 13th Age. I don't care about 13th Age.

 

[zakael19]

The main thing is I do wish I had the next expansion in hand, because I do want/need more toys and tools to work with, nearly doubling the number of Adversaries and Environments is something I would find very helpful. Hope and Fear can't come soon enough, lol.

Do you use environments right out of the book, or take them as ideas to build your own as applicable to your narrative?

…I'm kinda curious what if any seriously new mechanics they're going to add in the expansion for adversaries. The T3 Demons are probably the most "interesting" with the way they play with assumptions.

Im currently up to 63 profiles for my port of the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, and it's interesting how many of the T2+ profiles are actually more complex than basic 4e monsters. When you abstract out damage/defenses/conditions and then bake them in to individual profiles where appropriate, but then add in the Hope/Fear/Stress/Armor toggles to mess with there's a decent bit of complexity and narrative space available.

Like, nothing stops me from porting this over from 4e:

➶ Warping Gaze (illusion, psychic) ✦ Recharge when the power misses
Attack: Ranged 5 (one creature); +6 vs. Will
Hit: 2d6 + 4 psychic damage, and the target grants combat advantage (save ends). Until this effect ends, the nothic is invisible to every enemy but the target, and its claw deals 1d6 extra damage to the target. When this effect ends, this power recharges.
Miss: The nothic has partial concealment until the end of its next turn.

as

Warping Gaze - Action: Make an attack against a target within Close. On a success spend a Fear to deal 2d6+4 mag and the target is Vulnerable and the Mindwarp rendered Invisible to all other creatures until the target succeeds on an Instinct Reaction Roll.

What DH then lets me do is work with the player to find alternate means of lighting it up. Sure, it's invisible now...but what if I Cinder Grasp it so it's On Fire? Can my allies see the burning? Sure! It's that freedom to wander between the fairly clearly defined mechanics of Domain Powers & monsters and what makes sense in the fiction that's a really cool thing to sync up and feels plenty tactical from a "deciding what to do to face this situation" perspective.

Like, what does it mean for something to be yanked Prone? Well, we don't really care about square-based movement (burning some to Stand, maybe you provoke an attack); but we can abstract all that under the Vulnerable (which means adversaries have Advantage not deal more damage...). So we go from:

⚔ Pull Down (standard, at-will)
+9 vs Fortitude; 1d4+1 damage, and the target is knocked prone.

Stay Down
A bunch can make opportunity attacks against adjacent targets that stand from prone.

to

Pull Down - Reaction: On a successful standard attack, mark a Stress to make the target Vulnerable until they move.

Stay Down - Reaction: An adjacent Vulnerable target that attempts to move must succeed on an Agility Reaction Roll or take 2d4+2 damage.

So when I described the Gibberling swarm tonight yanking the Renegade Red Wizard down to the ground and well, swarming him - the Bard ran over and used Power Push (damage + push to Far on success) to yeet them away. Now the Wizard can stand up without worrying about being beset.

 

[SteveC]

I am going to run an in-person game this year, and ran a number of test sessions for the group. Two of them were Daggerheart and 13th Age. I found that for practical purposes, both games had equivalent movement rules. The difference is that Daggerheart has some optional rules for a more traditional grid-based combat. After they played both of them, my group told me that part of the two games were exceptionally similar. The only game we tested that had less rigorous movement rules was Fabula Ultima.

The key takeaway from this discussion for me is that games can be very similar, but interpretations can vary and make big differences appear to be the case.

But as far as Daggerheart goes, it wasn't a tactical minis combat game, but it had some of those elements we could have leaned into, if that was what my group wanted.