Daggerheart Discussion

[Umbran]

Honestly, I just don’t get litRPG. I get (and love) portal fantasy, but legit listing characters' stats and stuff in the novel is... not for me.

And that's fine.

But it doesn't answer my question. My question was not intended to get you to like the books, but to help you understand why they are popular.

We are not reading about Carl and Donut for the RPG number crunching. If you want to try to get why the books are popular, you have to look at other elements of the work.

If you are uninterested in listening to that, then the reason you don't get why people like the books is because you don't listen when we try to tell you.

 

[Reynard]

And that's fine.

But it doesn't answer my question. My question was not intended to get you to like the books, but to help you understand why they are popular.

We are not reading about Carl and Donut for the RPG number crunching. If you want to try to get why the books are popular, you have to look at other elements of the work.

If you are uninterested in listening to that, then the reason you don't get why people like the books is because you don't listen when we try to tell you.

There seems to be some confusion here, so I must have been unclear.

I don't understand why people like DCC, because I have tried the first book and I found it neither compelling nor funny, so I don't understand why so many people love it so much.

SEPARATE from that, I also don't understand the appeal of the LitRPG genre overall, with its mechanics intrusion into what would otherwise be just portal fantasy.

I hope that helps.

 

[Umbran]

I don't understand why people like DCC, because I have tried the first book and I found it neither compelling nor funny, so I don't understand why so many people love it so much.

Right. But I and others have offered to tell you why, but you keep coming back with this, effectively rejecting the offer.

Do you want to know? Or do you want to be able to continue saying you don't understand?

 

[zakael19]

Every time I run some more Daggerheart I'm enthused by how easy it is to just follow the dramatic beats and dial things up & down through twists and turns as the dice / players / actions require. I've been paring back what I do for prep to just hitting atmospheric vibes & a grabby situation and seeing what absurd stuff the players do next. The Armor / HP system + Stress really helps alleviate a worry about improvisation on the dangers/threats side too!

 

[SteveC]

I'm not going to tell anyone that they shouldn't dislike Dungeon Crawler Carl, much like if you don't like DH, play something you do like. I do find with both of them that there's enough going on with them to merit a more serious look. I don't like to "yum anyone's yuck," but I think both of them merit some additional investigation. I'd talk about it, but not in a DH thread.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

I'm not going to tell anyone that they shouldn't dislike Dungeon Crawler Carl, much like if you don't like DH, play something you do like. I do find with both of them that there's enough going on with them to merit a more serious look. I don't like to "yum anyone's yuck," but I think both of them merit some additional investigation. I'd talk about it, but not in a DH thread.

Psst. I started a LitRPG thread. Please carry on with the regularly scheduled programming.

 

[Agamon]

Hm.
Are you baffled by the popularity of The Hunger Games? Because if you look past the RPG trappings, Dungeon Crawler Carl has some significant genre similarities to that series.

Interesting take. I really like HG, really don't like DCC. What else about it makes it popular?

 

[Reynard]

Has anyone done a really in depth analysis of classes and domains to determine how easily or difficult it would be to either open up domain choices (maybe you are stuck with one but your second domain could be any domain?) or effectively eliminate them by allowing any character to take any level appropriate domain ability? Mostly I am curious how much design space there may be in trying to make DH less rigid in its class structure.

 

[Tigris]

Has anyone done a really in depth analysis of classes and domains to determine how easily or difficult it would be to either open up domain choices (maybe you are stuck with one but your second domain could be any domain?) or effectively eliminate them by allowing any character to take any level appropriate domain ability? Mostly I am curious how much design space there may be in trying to make DH less rigid in its class structure.

What do you mean with how difficult it is?

Classes lose their identity if you do it (since most of the class identity is the 2 "aspects" they have access to). But I guess thats not a concern for you.

2 classes have no spellcasting modifier, but thats an easy fix you can just give them one or allow one to choose.


Optimized Builds will become more similar since everyone can just pick the best things if they want. So like everyone will have counterapell, not just druids and wizards.

The druid could maye be even more broken being able to get easier (without multiclassing) even more evasion, but thats a small concern. Balance in Daggerheart is so bad to begin with and druid the class with the best class feature also has access to many of the best spells to begin with, so this might even make balance slightly less bad overall.


The biggest "risk" is that players will be even less likely to play a 2nd daggerheart campaign, because they could already try out all the cool things they wanted in the first one with a single class, but on the other hand this makes maybd the first campaign feel less boring/repetitive because you have more cool stuff.



But overall its easy to do.

 

[zakael19]

Has anyone done a really in depth analysis of classes and domains to determine how easily or difficult it would be to either open up domain choices (maybe you are stuck with one but your second domain could be any domain?) or effectively eliminate them by allowing any character to take any level appropriate domain ability? Mostly I am curious how much design space there may be in trying to make DH less rigid in its class structure.

There was just some discussion of this on Reddit. There's definitely some combinations that can break pretty hard.

OTOH multiclassing exists?

The generalized consensus is if you want to play within the balance intentions of the core game, don't mess with the "left" side Domain - the one that the HP/stats were kinda balanced off. The second can be tweaked.
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Did a bunch of work on "Project Shadowheart" last night. Playing around with a nudged slightly more heroic roll/array:

Trait Modifiers
You have two ways to determine initial modifiers on your traits, the first is to roll 2d12 down the line and record the modifier outcomes. If you don't have at least one +1, you can re-roll.

2-3: -3
4-6: -2
7-9: -1
10-13: 0
14-18: +1
19-22: +2
23-24: +3

Alternatively, you may assign the array below:
+2, +1, 0, 0, 0, -2

I've got "Class Features" for the Fighter (weapon mastery + Physical Conditioning [Adv on either contested str or agil rolls]), Thief (Backstab + Knacks [Adv on 2 of a list of Thief stuff]), Cleric (Channel Divinity). Struggling a bit to figure out what I want to give the Wizard. Cantrips, minus Light? Detect Magic or something?