Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[overgeeked]

Bonus Action and Knights of the Last Call as well.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I watched a review and the reviewer said it had the same issue that D&D has and that the PCs are never really in danger in combat. Now, I dont mean they die, that was covered earlier in this thread, I mean combat is a breeze for the PCs.

Any truth to that?

 

[zakael19]

I watched a review and the reviewer said it had the same issue that D&D has and that the PCs are never really in danger in combat. Now, I dont mean they die, that was covered earlier in this thread, I mean combat is a breeze for the PCs.

Any truth to that?

Depends on what you mean by "Danger." I believe the CR actual play has ramped up difficulty pretty significantly as the episodes have gone on. THere's also a deliberate discussion of working in multiple objectives that are more interesting/important than just "kill em all" which the GM can really poke at using Fear as interrupts and Environmental features and all that.

It's certainly not "oops all dead" levels of OSR style play, and the Death Rules + damage thresholds give players more of a chance to react before things go absolutely south, but the relatively tighter math and good tools for creating encounters & adjudicating attrition mean that if you (the table) want a grittier game you can spin it up.

 

[overgeeked]

I watched a review and the reviewer said it had the same issue that D&D has and that the PCs are never really in danger in combat. Now, I dont mean they die, that was covered earlier in this thread, I mean combat is a breeze for the PCs.

Any truth to that?

Not really, no.

I ran a playtest game with six PCs. I did the math on the encounter and even shaved off a few points to make it easier. The fight was in two waves, a bunch of mooks and a solo monster. The PCs grinded through the mooks in two easy rounds, with minor damage at worst. Then the solo stepped in. Three PCs were at one HP each, two PCs were at about half, and one PC was at full. The one at full was a bit of a cheesy tank build so worked as intended. Almost everyone burned through what hope they had and some or most of their armor slots. Could be a lot of factors, but combat struck me as somewhere between a 5E cakewalk and an OSR slaughter. But, as before, the death moves gives the players control over the actual moment of death or surviving.

 

[zakael19]

Not really, no.

I ran a playtest game with six PCs. I did the math on the encounter and even shaved off a few points to make it easier. The fight was in two waves, a bunch of mooks and a solo monster. The PCs grinded through the mooks in two easy rounds, with minor damage at worst. Then the solo stepped in. Three PCs were at one HP each, two PCs were at about half, and one PC was at full. The one at full was a bit of a cheesy tank build so worked as intended. Almost everyone burned through what hope they had and some or most of their armor slots. Could be a lot of factors, but combat struck me as somewhere between a 5E cakewalk and an OSR slaughter. But, as before, the death moves gives the players control over the actual moment of death or surviving.

With 3 players, we were pretty ground down by the time we wrapped up the Quickstart/Beta adventure final encounter.

The real upside of the HP + Stress + Armor + Hope currencies is that the GM can quite quickly assess how much the group still has in the tank. Another way to make things grittier would be to simply lean into "cost vs roll" or even "cost on roll" and take Stress; since once that's gone any further stress is HP loss...

 

[overgeeked]

With 3 players, we were pretty ground down by the time we wrapped up the Quickstart/Beta adventure final encounter.

I haven’t read it yet. How many fights are in that one?

The real upside of the HP + Stress + Armor + Hope currencies is that the GM can quite quickly assess how much the group still has in the tank. Another way to make things grittier would be to simply lean into "cost vs roll" or even "cost on roll" and take Stress; since once that's gone any further stress is HP loss...

Yeah. There’s a few more moving parts to Daggerheart than 5E and it came out less than a month ago so most people are still getting used to it. A lot also comes down to the rolls. If the PCs are rolling with fear a lot, like mine were, you’re going to be swimming in fear and have lots of free GM moves. If they’re rolling with hope a lot, it’s going to be a lot easier on the PCs. Maybe a good way to think about it is lots of hope rolls pushes things closer to 5E while lots of fear rolls pushes things closer to OSR.

 

[Reynard]

The real upside of the HP + Stress + Armor + Hope currencies is that the GM can quite quickly assess how much the group still has in the tank.

I am not sure I understand this. It seems like it would be easier to assess the party's remaining strength with one metric (HP in 5E). Can you explain why you think the DH way makes the GM's job easier in this regard?

 

[zakael19]

I am not sure I understand this. It seems like it would be easier to assess the party's remaining strength with one metric (HP in 5E). Can you explain why you think the DH way makes the GM's job easier in this regard?

Because there's less overall moving pieces, and those that are have a clearer balance. In 5e, you've got all the complexity of spell slots (these are possibly the most important thing to attrite if you want to avoid nova - your long thread on Save vs Suck was pretty obvious there)/piles of HP/per rest abilities/HD/consumables/more healing in 2024/etc.

My read of DH is it leans into open attrition mechanics far more like 4e did, where you can pretty easily gauge how burned down a party is based on simply Surges/Dailies. Here you've got HP+Armor+Stress as the main ones, and a lot of the Domain Card healing is pretty limited.

 

[zakael19]

I haven’t read it yet. How many fights are in that one?

One two stage with a rest after (and maybe a long rest at the settlement? I forget), and the final multi-stage fight with a Countdown that summons enemies in as some are defeated until the countdown is reached.

 

[overgeeked]

Because there's less overall moving pieces, and those that are have a clearer balance. In 5e, you've got all the complexity of spell slots (these are possibly the most important thing to attrite if you want to avoid nova - your long thread on Save vs Suck was pretty obvious there)/piles of HP/per rest abilities/HD/consumables/more healing in 2024/etc.

My read of DH is it leans into open attrition mechanics far more like 4e did, where you can pretty easily gauge how burned down a party is based on simply Surges/Dailies. Here you've got HP+Armor+Stress as the main ones, and a lot of the Domain Card healing is pretty limited.

Also the Daggerheart resources are more explicitly connected to each other so it’s easier to see what fits where and how they can change the fight.

HP is your standard death (move) timer. Armor slots are temporary HP.

Stress is pew-pew fuel, but also acts as a kind of HP that overflows to actual HP.

Hope is also pew-pew fuel.

HP, armor, and stress are all fixed. Hope is quite variable but the bigger effects cost more, like 2-3 hope, so you have to save up to fire your big guns.

I really do like that they replaced HP bloat with threshold bloat. You still get to throw big numbers for damage but don’t have to deal with anywhere near as much math.