Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[Pulpfan1971]

My first DH game schedule for tomorrow ballooned to 6 PCs. If you have run DH for a large group: what are some things I should be aware of or otherwise keep in mind? Thanks.

My group has six players as well

I find DH works both well with a larger group and when you “split the party”

Concurrent scenes can be tough but for some reason, we as a group, naturally fell into a TV show like rhythm and even the players pass the scene back and forth “I wonder how they are doing at the temple” as a bit of dialogue before shifting the spotlight to the others, type thing.

I totally concur with spend fear, spend fear, spend fear. It’s almost a limitless resource and again it’s the “killer app” of DH. Keeps things spicy.

 

[darjr]

Looks like the license has been updated.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I totally concur with spend fear, spend fear, spend fear. It’s almost a limitless resource and again it’s the “killer app” of DH. Keeps things spicy.

Yeah my biggest mistake in the first session was thinking I needed to like, be careful with Fear. The book kind of suggests you do with the "suggested spends" for incidental/minor/standard etc. encounters but those seem like they are numbers for maybe if you had a group of 2-3 PCs. I'm not saying we can necessarily linearly increase them but especially in session two I had to start spending a lot more than that to avoid capping out (esp. as the players seemed keen on Short Rests).

EDIT - Also good point re: splitting the party - I hadn't considered that but it should be easy to handle given the way spotlight shifts work and the lack of initiative/rounds.

 

[Reynard]

My group has six players as well

I find DH works both well with a larger group and when you “split the party”

Concurrent scenes can be tough but for some reason, we as a group, naturally fell into a TV show like rhythm and even the players pass the scene back and forth “I wonder how they are doing at the temple” as a bit of dialogue before shifting the spotlight to the others, type thing.

I totally concur with spend fear, spend fear, spend fear. It’s almost a limitless resource and again it’s the “killer app” of DH. Keeps things spicy.

Yeah my biggest mistake in the first session was thinking I needed to like, be careful with Fear. The book kind of suggests you do with the "suggested spends" for incidental/minor/standard etc. encounters but those seem like they are numbers for maybe if you had a group of 2-3 PCs. I'm not saying we can necessarily linearly increase them but especially in session two I had to start spending a lot more than that to avoid capping out (esp. as the players seemed keen on Short Rests).

I feel like I would rather run out too soon rather than hoard it, since every roll potentially gives me fear back.
I wonder, though, if more players messes up the individual character Hope vs GM total fear balance (if there is one).

 

[nyvinter]

Suggested spends are a good starting guideline. And then see how you need to change it depending on the players and how you run the game, fear spends is so much vibes based that it's silly.

 

[Aldarc]

Looks like the license has been updated.

 

[Imaro]

My main worry for tomorrow is my players managing the spotlight (I have 2 that I feel may assert themselves more than the two brand new to ttrpg players I have just added to my group)... for that I think I will start with the freeform spotlight but if I notice it happening regularly we switch to 3 action,


My other big worry is remembering the narrative facts/hooks/relationships we created in session zero for each individual character and making sure to weave connections to them during the game. I was thinking about maybe jotting one down for each character nd paperclipping it to my screen so I'd at least be sure to hit one for everybody. One of the things the game doesn't really talk in depth about (or maybe I missed it) is whether bringing these things in is mostly the responsibility of the GM or the individual players. Since we are new I want to kind of nudge the narrative elements into the story right now but I think it could get exhausting having to manage it in every game as opposed to the players prompting it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wonder, though, if more players messes up the individual character Hope vs GM total fear balance (if there is one).

I don't think it's really quite a "Vs" kind of balance on Hope and Fear, like they're kind of independent factors (despite the same roll being the theoretically primary generator for both), but I think more players will change them in a few ways. Like:

1) More players means it's more likely a PC will be able to do the "Get 2 Hope on a Short Rest" thing, because it's more likely they'll avoid feeling they need to use both Rest Actions to recover HP/Stress/Armour Slots. I think that's fine but it might mean PCs going into encounters with more Hope (probably not a big deal).

2) The total max Hope in the party will be higher - 36 with 6 players as opposed to 24 with 4, but your total max Fear will remain the same at 12 (I think!). Each PC starts with 2 Hope too, so there will be more around.

But the action economy, because it's not turn-based nor completely arbitrary (unlike some PtbA games for example), is a bit different to most RPGs - PCs who take more actions get more Hope and generate more Fear - and the de facto result - I think - with a bigger party will be the PCs able to absorb a lot of Hope, and choose when to spend it (assuming the spotlight is bouncing around a lot), whereas you'll be frantically spending Fear as they generate it to try and avoid capping out.

3) Tag-teams - 6 PCs means they can pull of 6 Tag-team attacks per session - that seems obvious but I think do be ready for any tough NPCs to get absolutely blown up by this if the players notice and don't like, spread out their Tag-teams. I guess any pivotal encounters may need really serious multi-stage bosses if you don't want them to get absolutely pounded. Esp. as the way tag-teams work is the PC get to pick which of the rolls to use, so are more likely to pick a "with Hope" roll (for obvious reasons), which means they get to keep going - so potentially you might see a tag-team into tag-team into tag-team situation if a the PCs have a lot of Hope (which I think quite easily could happen). How to deal with this? Probably try and encourage them to blow their 1 per SESSION Tag-teams early. I do think I am going to see a cool major boss just < snaps fingers > vanish to this sooner or later when they get wise lol. As Tag teams combine damage and pick the most favourable roll usually what happens is they manage to cross the severe damage threshold by a country mile and also get 1 Hope each and also can keep going because they didn't fail or roll with Fear (I guess in theory both rolls could be fails or with Fear, I don't know the odds on that - I didn't see it happen personally).

Probably more but my caffeine is running out and it's now too late in the day to drink more!

 

[Reynard]

I don't think it's really quite a "Vs" kind of balance on Hope and Fear, like they're kind of independent factors (despite the same roll being the theoretically primary generator for both), but I think more players will change them in a few ways. Like:

1) More players means it's more likely a PC will be able to do the "Get 2 Hope on a Short Rest" thing, because it's more likely they'll avoid feeling they need to use both Rest Actions to recover HP/Stress/Armour Slots. I think that's fine but it might mean PCs going into encounters with more Hope (probably not a big deal).

2) The total max Hope in the party will be higher - 36 with 6 players as opposed to 24 with 4, but your total max Fear will remain the same at 12 (I think!). Each PC starts with 2 Hope too, so there will be more around.

But the action economy, because it's not turn-based nor completely arbitrary (unlike some PtbA games for example), is a bit different to most RPGs - PCs who take more actions get more Hope and generate more Fear - and the de facto result - I think - with a bigger party will be the PCs able to absorb a lot of Hope, and choose when to spend it (assuming the spotlight is bouncing around a lot), whereas you'll be frantically spending Fear as they generate it to try and avoid capping out.

3) Tag-teams - 6 PCs means they can pull of 6 Tag-team attacks per session - that seems obvious but I think do be ready for any tough NPCs to get absolutely blown up by this if the players notice and don't like, spread out their Tag-teams. I guess any pivotal encounters may need really serious multi-stage bosses if you don't want them to get absolutely pounded. Esp. as the way tag-teams work is the PC get to pick which of the rolls to use, so are more likely to pick a "with Hope" roll (for obvious reasons), which means they get to keep going - so potentially you might see a tag-team into tag-team into tag-team situation if a the PCs have a lot of Hope (which I think quite easily could happen). How to deal with this? Probably try and encourage them to blow their 1 per SESSION Tag-teams early. I do think I am going to see a cool major boss just < snaps fingers > vanish to this sooner or later when they get wise lol. As Tag teams combine damage and pick the most favourable roll usually what happens is they manage to cross the severe damage threshold by a country mile and also get 1 Hope each and also can keep going because they didn't fail or roll with Fear (I guess in theory both rolls could be fails or with Fear, I don't know the odds on that - I didn't see it happen personally).

Probably more but my caffeine is running out and it's now too late in the day to drink more!

I was just thinking that assuming people share the spotlight, individual players get fewer rolls for the same amount of Fear going to the GM. That suggests that the PCs will indivudally have less Hope when there are 6 of them versus 4, or whatever. I am not sure how many abilities require more than one hope though -- the class foundation abiltiies I guess, and Tag team?

 

[Vael]

I do wonder if the size of the GM pool should scale with more/less PCs? 2 PCs vs 6 PCs are vastly different. I guess having getting more Fear means the GM is more pushed to spend them.