Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[zakael19]

Shadowdark is grounded.

…I mean, if you accept “delving into dungeons that work within some sort of strange ecology and assuming magic and magical creatures are real” is grounded…

 

[overgeeked]

…I mean, if you accept “delving into dungeons that work within some sort of strange ecology and assuming magic and magical creatures are real” is grounded…

Grounded as in a passing attempt at verisimilitude. PCs can get hurt and die, PCs are mostly normal people in extraordinary circumstances, PCs do not have godlike powers, etc. Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green would also be grounded in that sense despite the unknowable alien gods.

 

[DarkCrisis]

My first time GMing this I will run the Motherboard frame because it's basically Horizon Zero Dawn. Looking forward to it.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Made characters and ran a short scenario to try out the rules.

I must not have done the combat building math right because 4 party members shouldn’t have had to tough of a time with 1 Ogre and 4 Dire Wolves but they were getting torn apart.

Guess I need to reread the combat building section again.

Still the system is cool and everyone seems to like it.

 

[zakael19]

Made characters and ran a short scenario to try out the rules.

I must not have done the combat building math right because 4 party members shouldn’t have had to tough of a time with 1 Ogre and 4 Dire Wolves but they were getting torn apart.

Guess I need to reread the combat building section again.

Still the system is cool and everyone seems to like it.

Oh, dire wolves are widely accepted to be brutal to start with due to their ability to scale damage + vulnerable. Filling the encounter cap entirely with a big damage solo + those guys is like an end-of-arc boss fight.

FWIW, the community consensus is that the encounter points are per-rest; so don't expect a party to fight multiple full-point encounters without rests in between.

Finally, it can be fun and dramatic to do something that's not direct damage (or directly damaging) if it follows from a creature's tags (motives & tactics). For instance, the ogre has the tactic "throw enemies." If somebody attacks one in melee and fails and I want to do something different, I might improvise an attack with a Fear spend - "as you swing in with your sword, the ogre just reaches out with a massive hand and grabs you around the waist and sends you flying off in a different direction. How do you try and catch yourself here? Oh, you twist in midair like the cat you are and try to land on all 4s? Ok, make a Reaction Roll with agility..."

 

[zakael19]

Thinking about how I can stop rolling the d20. The Evasion math seems pretty easy to turn into a "roll under" Evasion roll, I can simply say "add +whatever" to meet or beat their evasion, and then I can encourage the players to say how they try to evade before rolling the dice. I miss that sort of "say how you try to avoid the bad" that PBTAs demand before a dice roll happens.

 

[Reynard]

Exactly. If I told the referee I wanted a grounded world and the response was you’re playing demigods or superheroes, I’d honestly wonder if we were speaking the same language. To me grounded is basically the opposite of Daggerheart. Shadowdark is grounded.

I don't understand your disconnect here. The PCs (and their villains) aren't the world. The world is the normal people doing normal people things, while demigods run around doing demigod things. PC options do not need to be available to anyone besides the PCs.

 

[Aldarc]

Thinking about how I can stop rolling the d20. The Evasion math seems pretty easy to turn into a "roll under" Evasion roll, I can simply say "add +whatever" to meet or beat their evasion, and then I can encourage the players to say how they try to evade before rolling the dice. I miss that sort of "say how you try to avoid the bad" that PBTAs demand before a dice roll happens.

The GM rolling in Daggerheart always felt like it came more out of Mercer's own habitual desire to roll a d20 than anything else.

 

[Reynard]

The GM rolling in Daggerheart always felt like it came more out of Mercer's own habitual desire to roll a d20 than anything else.

I am very glad they preserved GM rolling in Daggerheart. As a GM, not rolling is a hard no for me.

 

[Aldarc]

I am very glad they preserved GM rolling in Daggerheart. As a GM, not rolling is a hard no for me.

I understand people have idiomatic preferences, but whether or not the GM rolls is, IMHO, a strange place to draw your line in the sand about TTRPGs.