Daggerheart Discussion

[zakael19]

Very interesting, could you expand on this last bit, please?

Sure, I’ve actually been ruminating on this a lot recently but my players highlighting stuff during the session crystallized it in my mind.

In short: my contention is that adversary design is generally pretty boring and rarely implicitly does any of the following for the players:

• force a dilemma.
• remake the situation.
• create interesting choices.

(You can argue that “the environments” are supposed to handle some of this, but)

Amplification:

IMO I don’t think it’s contentious to say that DH is primarily a power-fantasy game focused around character portrayal. There’s relatively little trade-offs inherent to the combat subsystem (loose movement, no engagement, minimal baseline conditions that change the decision space, etc); beyond resource expenditure. Compare to something like DS! or 4e that inherently design this broad tactical decision space (with an emphasis on mechanical teamwork).

But also, games like PBTAs don’t have much of that either - however what they bring in is a much greater regard for the fiction of the moment. Can you even clash to hurt the monster? What are the risks you face? How can you manipulate the fictional moment to adjust the agreed upon outcomes of a Move?

I guess I’d draw the line over to something like Fabula Ultima here: similar loose narrative focused gameplay, with a combat mode that has juuust enough complexity to make turn order & working together matter.

on the DH adversary side, I find the following things to be true:

• they’re designed mechanically heavy with rare payoff (exception based design baking a bunch of stuff into individual profiles, features that cut against the strengths of the game in character portrayal and power fantasy without doing much for actual difficulty).
• the math is bad. Patchwork Paladin & one of the main community adversary designers have recently done long posts on how the guidelines are both overly complex for encounter building but also miss the mark.
• it’s far more interesting to know what the baseline expectations for the tier are and say interesting fiction that drives drama and materialize the mechanics to push a scene vs look at the sheet.

I put my thoughts down in a couple of blog posts as I’m kinda trying to work through what I think does and doesn’t hit right for me in DH’s combat (the non-combat stuff has been and is still great): here on trying to get through what I think my players found exciting, and here on where I’m trying to go as I keep working on my hack.

 

[ErisIndomina]

This is just a first draft for a homebrewed Ancestry, and I'm looking for feedback. Too weak, too strong, too niche, needs tweaking?

 

[TheHand]

This is just a first draft for a homebrewed Ancestry, and I'm looking for feedback. Too weak, too strong, too niche, needs tweaking?

I’m by no means a big expert, but that looks fun and doesn’t seem overpowered. Is the web restraint a ranged situation, like a Spider-Man webbing or is marking stress just to make binding strong enough to restrain?

 

[ErisIndomina]

I’m by no means a big expert, but that looks fun and doesn’t seem overpowered. Is the web restraint a ranged situation, like a Spider-Man webbing or is marking stress just to make binding strong enough to restrain?

Aha, exactly the kind of thing I didn't think to address! I didn't put a range in, and now I'll think a bit on what range would be best. Thank you!
Update: Decided that Close range was the sweet spot.

 

[zedturtle]

A Stress to automatically Restrain a target with no roll is pretty powerful. You probably want to at least specify 'temporarily' (indicating the GM can spend Fear or have the adversary take an action to end it) or make it so the PC needs to roll against their Difficulty.

 

[ErisIndomina]

I did specify temporarily.
Making it a roll against difficulty was an idea I thought about, but then I'd have to specify which trait to roll with, and I didn't want to make it less useful for some character builds.
Instead of marking a stress, what if it was a once-per-rest thing?

 

[zakael19]

Once per rest would balance that nicely; or you could make it a rider ("on a successful attack/etc"). The features hit the something you are/something you do well.