Daggerheart General Thread [+]

I built a generic Environment a few weeks ago ...
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The Masquerade effect feels a little weird to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Spending a fear to create an opportunity for the PCs doesn't seem quite right. I am not sure what I would do differently, and I think using the dance to communicate discretely, pickpocket the important key, or whatever are all classic tropes, but those should be in the hands of the players I guess?

Anyway, I am not trying to talk down your Environment. I like it. That one just makes my brain itch.
 

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The Masquerade effect feels a little weird to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Spending a fear to create an opportunity for the PCs doesn't seem quite right. I am not sure what I would do differently, and I think using the dance to communicate discretely, pickpocket the important key, or whatever are all classic tropes, but those should be in the hands of the players I guess?

Anyway, I am not trying to talk down your Environment. I like it. That one just makes my brain itch.
No worries, my thoughts are on a similar vein. I'm thinking of changing it to something like "Shall we dance" and make it a Presence Roll by the player to get an NPC onto the dance floor. And yeah, for all those reasons.
 



Hey, my local game shop is going to be running four weeks of Daggerheart over the holidays and I think I'm going to sign up.

I generally play little mischievous dudes -- my longest running character is a gnome illusionist charlatan in an urban campaign -- and would love to do something like that in Daggerheart.

What are some fun options, assuming we don't just get handed a bunch of pregens?
 

Hey, my local game shop is going to be running four weeks of Daggerheart over the holidays and I think I'm going to sign up.

I generally play little mischievous dudes -- my longest running character is a gnome illusionist charlatan in an urban campaign -- and would love to do something like that in Daggerheart.

What are some fun options, assuming we don't just get handed a bunch of pregens?
Kin: If your GM permits material from the Void? Gnome.

Illusionist: A lot of the illusion/trickster magic comes from the Grace domain. Grace + Codex (book magic) is the Bard class. Grace + Midnight (shadow and skullduggery magic) is the Rogue class. Codex does have an Illusion ability as well: Book of Sitil. The illusion-ish magic in Midnight is more about making yourself vanish.

As you would imagine though, bards tend to be more support oriented, with one subclass being music-focused and the other being a motivational speaker. Rogues are magical in this game, and one subclass is something akin to a shadowdancer while the other focuses on being a criminal with a criminal network.

The Sorcerer class, which is Midnight + Arcana (innate magic), does get the class feature of Minor Illusion. But there's not much else that supports the Illusionist playstyle.

Charlatan: Just make that one of your Experiences, depending on how you want to word it. Some suggested Experiences in the book that could work for your character: Prankster, Con Artist, and Liar.
 

Hey, my local game shop is going to be running four weeks of Daggerheart over the holidays and I think I'm going to sign up.

I generally play little mischievous dudes -- my longest running character is a gnome illusionist charlatan in an urban campaign -- and would love to do something like that in Daggerheart.

What are some fun options, assuming we don't just get handed a bunch of pregens?
Mischievous little dudes? You're basically spoiled for choice. No gnomes in the core book alas (there are some under playtest so they aren't forgotten) but in addition to halflings and goblins there are fey (flying insectile), fauns (with a leap), ribbets (frog folk with long tongues for grabbing), and simiah (anthropomorphic monkeys) plus a couple of other possibles.

Classes? There are a lot and even a properly built Guardian (tank fighter) can do a pretty good imitation of a D&D rogue's trickiness out of combat. The Daggerheart rogue is more magical than most D&D rogues with some shadow magic and some borderline mind magic - and one of the two rogue subclasses can shadow teleport at level 1 while the other has a network of contacts. Sorcerers can all illusion (creating illusions with a skill roll but no resources) and also take shadow magic and rogue skills as well as bigger flashier Arcana. Druids get wild shape/beastform nonsense. Wizards and bards get to be wizards and bards with a variety of spells.

And in Daggerheart it is very easy to keep two good stats rather than one and all characters are generally skilled, while characters can be built to reach Expertise levels in anything if they are willing to spend the Hope to use their Experiences. (Skill DCs roughly match 5e while the Duality Dice are roughly worth d20+3 which is why a 5e proficiency bonus equivalent is not wanted)
 

My current dungeon has a very schematic Environment:

Umbral Concentration Tier Ⅱ.
Terrain difficulty 10 - the complex was professionally engineered, and those original engineers are still maintaining it in their unlife.
Magic difficulty 18
Restless Dead: the dead rise automatically as "fresh zombie," and all embodied undead rise immediately on a 6 on 1d6. Newly dead take about 5 minutes to rise, unless rituals to give a permanent repose are used.
Shades, too: Each person dying has a chance of becoming a specter of themselves. Throw 1d6, on a 6, a spectre arrises, too. Use the best fit Spectre template.
Firmly Umbral: The magic difficulty is for spells affecting the environment; spells affecting adversaries or allies are unaffected.
Openly Magical: anyone can do minor magic effects, up to dismissing an incorporeal or semi-corporeal undead, by appropriate narration and a suitable difficulty 18 roll.
Troublesome presences: When resting, the GM rolls 2d12 on the umbral table and discards the higher. If there is a watch set, the roll is 3d12, keeping the middle die. Use the standard rest effect table.

Fresh Zombie: use the skeleton warror or skeleton archer templates but lack the "only bones" feature.

Now that I write it out, it's a bit stiff...
But that 18, well, the wizard has hit it for preventing the Ribbet raiders from rising. Several times. He's a Fungril, and is binding his spores into them to make them rise next month as new Fungril. His lore addition...
Our Warrior, Sir Vynčent, confronted with a Spectral Captain, the shade of a dwarven knight who died as the umbra descended, and was ordered to "hold until relieved," stepped up, said, "I relieve you, Sir."... and hit the difficulty... so, the spectre was able to discorporate and seek his afterlife...
 

My current dungeon has a very schematic Environment:

Umbral Concentration Tier Ⅱ.
Terrain difficulty 10 - the complex was professionally engineered, and those original engineers are still maintaining it in their unlife.
Magic difficulty 18
Restless Dead: the dead rise automatically as "fresh zombie," and all embodied undead rise immediately on a 6 on 1d6. Newly dead take about 5 minutes to rise, unless rituals to give a permanent repose are used.
Shades, too: Each person dying has a chance of becoming a specter of themselves. Throw 1d6, on a 6, a spectre arrises, too. Use the best fit Spectre template.
Firmly Umbral: The magic difficulty is for spells affecting the environment; spells affecting adversaries or allies are unaffected.
Openly Magical: anyone can do minor magic effects, up to dismissing an incorporeal or semi-corporeal undead, by appropriate narration and a suitable difficulty 18 roll.
Troublesome presences: When resting, the GM rolls 2d12 on the umbral table and discards the higher. If there is a watch set, the roll is 3d12, keeping the middle die. Use the standard rest effect table.

Fresh Zombie: use the skeleton warror or skeleton archer templates but lack the "only bones" feature.

Now that I write it out, it's a bit stiff...
But that 18, well, the wizard has hit it for preventing the Ribbet raiders from rising. Several times. He's a Fungril, and is binding his spores into them to make them rise next month as new Fungril. His lore addition...
Our Warrior, Sir Vynčent, confronted with a Spectral Captain, the shade of a dwarven knight who died as the umbra descended, and was ordered to "hold until relieved," stepped up, said, "I relieve you, Sir."... and hit the difficulty... so, the spectre was able to discorporate and seek his afterlife...

Right, so what I think DH has done that's pretty clever here is figure out a way to distill down what PBTA's would call "custom moves" into something straightforward to construct for GMs. Like this is just a collection of pretty simply mechanics you could cut down even further, but putting them together in an Environment helps you organize and then use/present to your players. That's cool!

It is less fiction-forward in general then PBTA execution (which holds true for the game in general), but that's ok.
 

I played in one the one shots over on startplaying. Found a great GM there who I might even be willing to pay to play with again if schedules can line up.
Someone liked this old post today and that got me remembering.

That GM never panned out. He offered up Beast Feast which is one of two campaign frames I don't care for and I felt awkward saying I didn't want to play a game focused on meat eating... (I'm a lifelong vegetarian - even as a baby I'd spit out meat. I just can't stand the stuff). The other was Age of Umbra. Next group I found switched to that as soon as they had a full group (they'd formed under the idea of the wilds CF) so I dropped out. I don't do grimdark fantasy.

Now I'm playing in 2 games I found through paid GMs on the same site as that first guy. In custom campaigns.

In my opinion DH is best there - in home made campaigns. But the company now seems focused on getting full campaign settings published.

I suspect that in a year or so I will have lost interest in Daggerheart as the classes are too strongly typed and they're going in a different direction than I want.

Druid being based on World of Warcraft and recent D&D rather than fantasy, folklore, or history made it a non-starter for me. And the same for Witch which seems based on 'make a Halloween themed class' rather than again - folklore, fantasy, history, or modern world.

Wizard being the only 'caster healer' feels weird. I like them as a healer. But having Druid be a 'bear tank' that can also cast when not in 'bear form' annoys me. (Ok, it's not a bear tank - but the beastform is so powerful that it's essentially what the class is).
 

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