Daggerheart Discussion

[Reynard]

Its not necessarily that people can't deal with non-binary results; its a question of frequency and what degree of "complication" can go with an avowed success. As I said, if you present it as "failure with a consolation" I suspect some of them at least would have less of a negative response.

Hope and Fear should occur with the same frequency, and success should occur more often than failure, based on the relatively low DCs presented. So players should succeed with fear about as often as they fail with hope. If there is a frequency problem, it is likely one of perception rather than reality.

 

[Tigris]

Hope and Fear should occur with the same frequency, and success should occur more often than failure, based on the relatively low DCs presented. So players should succeed with fear about as often as they fail with hope. If there is a frequency problem, it is likely one of perception rather than reality.

I think this part is the what makes it feel in general good. Thats a nice design, especially since with crit its slightly in favour of the player with hope.


Fear and Hope are well balanced against each other. But thats why it starts to feel bad if each roll with fear also adds a consequence on top of the fear, then the balance is no longer there.


In other games you could also add a tick to a clock as a consequence, but the nice thing is in Daggerheart its not necessary, since you can also use the Fear as a clock which feels even more natural. Like reaching 10 or 12 fear triggers something (you spend fear then for it).

 

[Teemu]

Having run a 1-7 DH game as a GM who uses complications and twists derived from the duality dice rolls, the PCs are very much heroes and they always triumph in the end. The math favors the players, they will win in the end. The adversary math HEAVILY favors the players.

The PCs did a lot of cool and heroic and dramatic stuff, and at the same time I created obstacles and complications on the fly thanks to failures or Fear rolls, or just by using Fear. The duality dice help increase drama. The book tells the GM to add to the drama but not screw over the players or undermine them. The GM is a fan of the PCs.

 

[Teemu]

I think this part is the what makes it feel in general good. Thats a nice design, especially since with crit its slightly in favour of the player with hope.


Fear and Hope are well balanced against each other. But thats why it starts to feel bad if each roll with fear also adds a consequence on top of the fear, then the balance is no longer there.


In other games you could also add a tick to a clock as a consequence, but the nice thing is in Daggerheart its not necessary, since you can also use the Fear as a clock which feels even more natural. Like reaching 10 or 12 fear triggers something (you spend fear then for it).

No, the Fear results adding a complication is needed to maintain balance. PCs in DH are powerful and very capable, especially in combat. Sure, at level 1 it could be more difficult against specific adversaries, but once you get into tier 2 and especially tier 3, the PCs won't break a sweat against most enemies. You have to use simple complications like marking a Stress to maintain a semblance of balance, otherwise the game becomes a little boring and uneventful.

 

[Tigris]

No, the Fear results adding a complication is needed to maintain balance. PCs in DH are powerful and very capable, especially in combat. Sure, at level 1 it could be more difficult against specific adversaries, but once you get into tier 2 and especially tier 3, the PCs won't break a sweat against most enemies. You have to use simple complications like marking a Stress to maintain a semblance of balance, otherwise the game becomes a little boring and uneventful.

The hardest level is normally considered level 2 because enemies are tier 2 and players only got 1 levelup yet.

The reason why this may look needed in higher levels is just because the game balance of daggerheart is really really badly done. And part of it is the lazyness of only designing enemies per tier, which of course can't work well when players gain power every level.


But this does not solve the problem of rolls feeling bad if almost 3/4 of them have a bad consequence for players. This makes rolling dices unwanted, which is the opposite of what you want to do as a game. This throws away the best idea the game has, namely not needing to make rolls a pain because fear exists.



So rather to make the GM add unnecessary drama, making rolls feel bad, one should just balance combat better. Thats the clean solution and not GM dependant.

 

[Parmandur]

Having run a 1-7 DH game as a GM who uses complications and twists derived from the duality dice rolls, the PCs are very much heroes and they always triumph in the end. The math favors the players, they will win in the end. The adversary math HEAVILY favors the players.

The PCs did a lot of cool and heroic and dramatic stuff, and at the same time I created obstacles and complications on the fly thanks to failures or Fear rolls, or just by using Fear. The duality dice help increase drama. The book tells the GM to add to the drama but not screw over the players or undermine them. The GM is a fan of the PCs.

The odds are like casino odds, but the players are the House. And the House always wins even if the numbers rigged to make it exciting.

 

[Teemu]

The hardest level is normally considered level 2 because enemies are tier 2 and players only got 1 levelup yet.

The reason why this may look needed in higher levels is just because the game balance of daggerheart is really really badly done. And part of it is the lazyness of only designing enemies per tier, which of course can't work well when players gain power every level.


But this does not solve the problem of rolls feeling bad if almost 3/4 of them have a bad consequence for players. This makes rolling dices unwanted, which is the opposite of what you want to do as a game. This throws away the best idea the game has, namely not needing to make rolls a pain because fear exists.



So rather to make the GM add unnecessary drama, making rolls feel bad, one should just balance combat better. Thats the clean solution and not GM dependant.

In my game I added complications with Fear rolls and by using Fear. The players loved the game. The PCs still succeeded on successes, I didn't take away their victories. Yes, the mechanical balance is pretty bad, at least as far as the adversary math is concerned. That's the biggest flaw of the game, not the duality dice system with twists and complications.

The players in my game weren't afraid to make rolls because there were stakes that were clearly presented, and because there were stakes, successes are meaningful and allow the players to gain meaningful victories in the story.

 

[zakael19]

No, the Fear results adding a complication is needed to maintain balance. PCs in DH are powerful and very capable, especially in combat. Sure, at level 1 it could be more difficult against specific adversaries, but once you get into tier 2 and especially tier 3, the PCs won't break a sweat against most enemies. You have to use simple complications like marking a Stress to maintain a semblance of balance, otherwise the game becomes a little boring and uneventful.

This is part of why I did the extraction of the core stat ranges and Stress/Fear improv moves a couple pages back. I’ve been building a lot of adversaries (either on the fly or ahead of time) to suit the narrative at hand, and I’ve got a good handle generally on challenge. Concur that attacking Stress & HP is important not just to fray but also to make for hard choices on short/long rests.

I’m having no issues challenging a fully kitted out (plus some custom magic items) T2 party right now. However I’m definitely taking the median and higher for stuff like ATK/Difficulty, and if something is supposed to be the focal point of an encounter it’s getting a threshold for that tier to match.

And I think that matters because then those Tag Teams that come together to hit Severe and finishing a big magitech guardian off really feel like they made the difference.

 

[Agamon]

Remember, consequence doesn't always mean the PC gets hosed. It just means the narrative is moved forward. The level of the consequence equals the risk, the narrative is meant to inform how the story evolves.

So, in a trad game, if a PC fails their roll to pick a lock, the GM says, "You're unable to pick the lock, what do you do?"

In a narrative game, if the PC is being quiet, trying to pick the lock, and fails with fear, the GM might say, "You're unable to pick the lock. As you look at it in frustration, you hear voices down the dark hall. What do you do?"

Alternatively, if the PC is trying to quietly pick the lock while his fellow PC is unwisely yelling down the hallway to ask how its going, the consequence won't just be, "You hear voices."

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hope and Fear should occur with the same frequency, and success should occur more often than failure, based on the relatively low DCs presented. So players should succeed with fear about as often as they fail with hope. If there is a frequency problem, it is likely one of perception rather than reality.

That was presented a bit obscurely on my part. I was more referring to the general PbtA-adjacent sphere (where success might be on the right end of things with your most core capabilities but far from it with things outside that core competence) and some other offshoots. The only issue per se with Daggerheart I can see is how rough the suggested complications on a Success with Fear can be beyond the default Fear award (some people might react intrinsically badly to the Fear award too, but they need to kind of engage with the fact Fear is, on the whole, is a restraining element not an empowering one (not probably how people think of it, but as noted upthread, if the GM is using the system honestly (and I suspect players paying attention could probably tell after a while), Fear is often a surcharge for doing things GMs otherwise often do ad-hoc only restrained by their own sense of things).

So the question ends up turning on those Success-with-Fear complications (I suspect most people are less sensitive to the Failure and Failure with Fear cases; those that are particularly sensitive to the latter are also probably the people that have issues with fumble systems too, and that's a much broader issue (which, to be clear, does exist, but covers a rather large variety of systems).