Daggerheart live with Todd Kenreck

[Ruin Explorer]

As far as a niche goes, a witcher class will speak a lot to a specific subset of players. And hopefully it will not be a glass cannon such as the 5e version.

I mean, I really hope the Bloodhunter is drastically different because the original is a deeply confused vision which tried to be like, all (weird) things to all (weird) men, at once a Witcher and a far-out shapeshifter and a curse-monger and so on, with subclasses that were far too extreme for the limited chassis. I don't think a "Blood" domain even makes sense for what we saw in 5E with the Bloodhunter.

Also I think you could do a proper Witcher pretty easily in Daggerheart by just having a Warrior multiclass into Wizard and ignoring Splendor, only picking some Codex cards (primarily the "three ability" ones) from the multiclass. I don't think there's a single thing a Witcher does which would warrant a new Domain (nor a Bloodhunter, really, except maybe the shapeshifting one, but the Druid does that without a Domain). Or you could have an actual Witcher class Witcher whose Domains were Blade (or maybe Bone) and Codex, at the risk of annoying people who wanted a "Spellblade" (but I feel like that's more Blade & Arcana).

Honestly hearing that they were working on a Bloodhunter and Blood Domain was the only thing in those interviews which made me furrow my brow slightly. I'm not sure I entirely trust Mercer to come up with a cogent "Blood" Domain by himself (he's not really like, "a rules guy" imho), hopefully he got some help on that. The current quality of the classes on The Void is varied - like, the Brawler has really come together, and seems excellent. The Witch is solid but I'm not exactly sure who its for (people who like the theme I guess?). The Warlock is good and a bit more self-evident, but the Assassin is just like "What if a Rogue was somehow both more combat-focused and less combat-capable?", like I'm sorry but Blade is not going to save your ass when your class/subclass abilities are this subpar.

(This begs another question - why in The Many Faced God's name do TTRPG designers struggle so very much with Assassin classes and subclasses. Like, in the 1980s, I kind of get it, but in the 2020s? When we have dozens of pop-culture and videogame assassin characters, yet we're still bobbing around making them so they're basically only effective on the first strike and we always, always, always, always make sure they CANNOT I repeat CANNOT one-shot even one serious bad guy, even though that is literally their entire and complete raison d'etre - D&D and Daggerheart are merely the latest failures here. I mean okay Daggerheart isn't done but it ain't looking good for the Assassin class! Jesus a normal character in Worlds Without Number is a better actual assassin than these guys, just because the rules actually let you assassinate people!)

 

[darjr]

I think Todd is freelance rather than Darrington employee, but someone should snatch him up. He's really good at doing PR interviews and WotC laying him off like that was a huge mistake on their part.

I agree.

I’ll add though I’m not sure wotc gave him enough freedom to create great things. For example His quick response live streams are awesome and it would have been amazing to have them from within wotc.

 

[Aldarc]

I think Todd is freelance rather than Darrington employee, but someone should snatch him up. He's really good at doing PR interviews and WotC laying him off like that was a huge mistake on their part.

I would think that's a no-brainer pick.

 

[nyvinter]

I mean, I really hope the Bloodhunter is drastically different because the original is a deeply confused vision which tried to be like, all (weird) things to all (weird) men, at once a Witcher and a far-out shapeshifter and a curse-monger and so on, with subclasses that were far too extreme for the limited chassis. I don't think a "Blood" domain even makes sense for what we saw in 5E with the Bloodhunter.

Oh I agree. It's a mess and shapeshifter is being handled by the transformations so that's out from the class already IMO. But yeah, I think it's more of a monster hunter class than the ranger subclass, and I do think more melee classes would be good. I'm interested to see how it has changed and what could change even further.

Also I think you could do a proper Witcher pretty easily in Daggerheart by just having a Warrior multiclass into Wizard and ignoring Splendor, only picking some Codex cards (primarily the "three ability" ones) from the multiclass.

I think you only get one new domain when multiclassing anyways.

 

[zakael19]

As far as a niche goes, a witcher class will speak a lot to a specific subset of players. And hopefully it will not be a glass cannon such as the 5e version.

I don’t think any DH class feels especially “glass cannon”-y!

 

[Seramus]

I think Todd is freelance rather than Darrington employee, but someone should snatch him up. He's really good at doing PR interviews and WotC laying him off like that was a huge mistake on their part.

I want to give Darrington Press credit for immediately throwing him a paying interview.
The money has to help, and it says "Todd is still out here doing interviews!"

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don’t think any DH class feels especially “glass cannon”-y!

Yeah the current classes are balanced so none of them really are. Bard is I believe the easiest to kill with 10 Evasion and 5 HP. Literally every other class has more HP except Wizard (which has 11 Evasion). All of them have equal or more Evasion except the two classes which have 7 HP (which is huge amount more than 5 in practice). Not sure what about Bards made them make that decision - they don't seem to have anything obvious to make up for it nor is there an obvious thematic reason they'd be more vulnerable than a Wizard. Maybe the idea is just to make them more of a support class?

I think if you had 9 Evasion and 5 HP (which no current class does) you'd probably feel "glass" compared to others - cannon would rely on being able to output damage.

(On the Void the Warlock also has 10/5, but the rest are all higher and with Warlock it's obvious both their subclass and Dread abilities somewhat compensate for this. Assassin is 12/5, which no main book characters are.)

 

[Vael]

Yeah the current classes are balanced so none of them really are. Bard is I believe the easiest to kill with 10 Evasion and 5 HP. Literally every other class has more HP except Wizard (which has 11 Evasion). All of them have equal or more Evasion except the two classes which have 7 HP (which is huge amount more than 5 in practice). Not sure what about Bards made them make that decision - they don't seem to have anything obvious to make up for it nor is there an obvious thematic reason they'd be more vulnerable than a Wizard. Maybe the idea is just to make them more of a support class?

The homebrew kit says that both Wizard and Bard get reduced hitpoints due to access to the Codex domain, which is why they both start with 5 (Also Valor domain generally gets an extra hitpoint). Note that this is only referring to Core classes, while a few Void classes also have 5 starting HP, they are also still in testing phase. Why the Wizard gets higher evasion is a question that isn't explained.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

(Also Valor domain generally gets an extra hitpoint)

I mean extra isn't quite they right word. They get the exact expected number of HP for the total of 16, and because both the core Valor classes (Guardian and Seraph) have 9 Evasion they have 7 HP. Thus it's not an "extra" HP, it's just a different arrangement. Brawler in the Void which also gets Valor also totals to 16 (10/6).

I don't really get the logic re: Codex myself, especially as if it's supposed to be a limiting factor, because Wizards get the expected total (11/5) but are much more likely, I suspect to have more of their cards be Codex (theme-wise) than Bards (10/5), so surely derive more benefit from it? Maybe the buffs the Bard gives out will cause the other PCs to defend them? In the Void Warlocks get Codex so maybe that's why they're 10/5 also? Weirdly I feel like they'd actually be more typically Warlock-ish if they were Dread & Arcana than Dread & Codex though.

Maybe?

Warrior (11/6), Rogue (12/6) and Ranger (12/6) all break the 16 rule in the other direction, and that seems more about theme and likely position in battle than because their class/subclass/Domain abilities require it. We only had a Rogue in the group of those and he was indeed noticeably tougher than the other PCs except the Guardian (who was also a Tortoise-man and extremely hard to do more than 1 point of damage to and sometimes I couldn't even get that!).

BTW thanks for pointing out the section in the Homebrew Kit!

 

[Vael]

BTW thanks for pointing out the section in the Homebrew Kit!

Well, tbf, they also say these are guidelines that even they don't always follow. My guess is that they wanted a squishier Bard, and give the classes most likely to be off on their own a bit more resilience. Maybe when they do a Skald subclass it'll gain extra HP like the School of War Wizard.

I am loving the Homebrew kit. Chalk full of interesting information and helpful tips.