Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[darjr]

My box shipped!

 

[Agamon]

My box shipped!

Yeah, I woke up to the email this morning...

 

[Imaro]

I guess we'd also need the encounters themselves to see if they were overbudgeted or under.

On paper none of those guys seem particularly unusually dangerous (not that it was claimed they were AFAIK), just looking through without double-checking the numbers. There are some which maybe have pretty good synergy, others which seem a bit ineffectual, but that's to be expected. I would say his Tier 1 solo is less dangerous than the two-stage Tier 1 solo I used.

I think the main thing is there's really a lot of "marking a Stress" from monster attacks (and similar) so any PC whose class/Domain cards rely on marking Stress to do stuff will be significantly disadvantaged compared to any PC where that isn't the case - and that is something that's not evenly distributed. It's quite possible to largely avoid "spend a Stress" stuff and have an effective character.

If I'm remembering correctly there were 2 versions of the monsters released... a standard Daggerheart version and an AoU version that was souped up specifically for Matt's game. Which again i find interesting that he used more powerful versions vs. standard.

 

[Imaro]

I would add that Age of Umbra has 7 player characters, so that definitely impacts balance concerns in a meaningful way compared to tables with 3 or 4 PCs.

Yeah I'm running with 6 players... does the game comment on adjustments for larger group sizes?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The other caveat I want to advance is that I’ve only run level 1 combats. D&D combats slow down at higher levels and I am unwilling to generalize my experience of Tier 1 DH combats to higher tiers.

Yeah we shall see.

However, I don't think that going from 2 Domain cards to 5 is particularly likely to cause slow-down, and I don't see any Domain cards at higher levels that cause slow-downs.

The biggest causes of higher-level slowdown I'm aware of are:

A) Analysis paralysis or analysis slowdown becoming a bigger and bigger issue as people get larger and larger arrays of spells/abilities. 5E mitigates this a fair bit and it helps it to slow down far less at higher levels than 3E and 4E did. We'll see pretty quickly if five cards causes a problem two doesn't but I'll be very surprised if it does. And that's the max.

B) Out-of-turn actions (Reactions, AoOs, Immediate actions, Interrupts, etc.) gradually becoming more common as you go up levels. This absolutely clobbered 4E and hit 3E too, and hits 5E a little bit.

C) Math getting more complicated. This clobbered 3E and hit 4E too (though not nearly as hard), and 5E mostly but not entirely escapes it.

None of that would be expected to hit DH, but maybe there will be some unaccounted-for factor?

That being said, I think my son’s usage of Fear was more typical of a less-experienced GM porting over from 5e.

Yes I suspect so. However I do wonder if the typical GM of DH will be from that background. I wouldn't expect someone new to RPGs to do that, because the book explicitly says not to do that lol. I also wouldn't expect someone with varied RPG experience to do that. Definitely some people will though. But even with them, I think it'll be a phase that they go through and eventually get past as they get better at DH specifically. There's always a learning curve with a new system.

If I'm remembering correctly there were 2 versions of the monsters released... a standard Daggerheart version and an AoU version that was souped up specifically for Matt's game. Which again i find interesting that he used more powerful versions vs. standard.

You got any evidence for that? I mean, again, I don't have the exact figures but I do remember when someone wrote Velk up from the game he appeared in he did 1d12+3 just like he does in the PDF on the site. And I don't remember Matt saying that or anyone previously claiming he did, rather than he juiced the fights by using a higher encounter budget. I'm not saying it's definitely not true, but it seems like it might be misremembering of the encounter budget thing.

 

[zakael19]

Yeah I'm running with 6 players... does the game comment on adjustments for larger group sizes?

Not really, it notes it's designed for 2-5 players + GM.

You got any evidence for that? I mean, again, I don't have the exact figures but I do remember when someone wrote Velk up from the game he appeared in he did 1d12+3 just like he does in the PDF on the site. And I don't remember Matt saying that or anyone previously claiming he did, rather than he juiced the fights by using a higher encounter budget. I'm not saying it's definitely not true, but it seems like it might be misremembering of the encounter budget thing.

It's right in the adversary document posted above on the DH site. There's two versions, one using the standard adversary guidelines and then the one Matt used (probably because of the number of players) that's dialed up a bit.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's right in the adversary document posted above on the DH site. There's two versions, one using the standard adversary guidelines and then the one Matt used (probably because of the number of players) that's dialed up a bit.

LOL I'm illiterate, I see that now. Will have a look.

EDIT - Hah Velk does 1d12+3 in both so I wasn't wrong there. The only difference I can see between the two is that the AoU version has 10 Health and 4 Stress and the "standard" version has 9 Health and 3 Stress. Too lazy to check the rest so I shall assume similar applies to all of them unless informed otherwise. That would make sense as an easy player-size adjustment.

 

[Imaro]

You got any evidence for that? I mean, again, I don't have the exact figures but I do remember when someone wrote Velk up from the game he appeared in he did 1d12+3 just like he does in the PDF on the site. And I don't remember Matt saying that or anyone previously claiming he did, rather than he juiced the fights by using a higher encounter budget. I'm not saying it's definitely not true, but it seems like it might be misremembering of the encounter budget thing.

just looked at the PDF... the regular versions start on page 6... the souped up versions are presented first and it's stated at the beginning of the pdf.

 

[Vael]

Yeah I'm running with 6 players... does the game comment on adjustments for larger group sizes?

Not really, the formula is (3x number of PCs)+2, so 20 pts to spend. Thing is, it's mainly spending Fear that determines the difficulty, as the GM can focus fire more easily than the players, if they spend the Fear.

 

[zakael19]

Not really, the formula is (3x number of PCs)+2, so 20 pts to spend. Thing is, it's mainly spending Fear that determines the difficulty, as the GM can focus fire more easily than the players, if they spend the Fear.

Assuming the d20 doesnt screw ya.

I need to use more Fear on making PCs vulnerable. Scary, prompts actions, and if they don't fix it time to punish via Advantage.