Daggerheart To Release Official Hope & Fear Expansion

Darrington Press has announced the first expansion for Daggerheart, which adds four new subclasses, a new domain, and several other new character-building options. At the onset of PAX Unplugged, Darrington Press announced Daggerheart: Hope & Fear, the first expansion for the Daggerheart TTRPG. The new expansion, which will launch in Summer 2026, contains 4 new classes - the Witch, Warlock, Brawler, and Assassin, each of which comes with two subclasses. Also included is the brand new Dread Domain, which is tied to Witch and Warlock classes. There will also be over 130 adversaries and 28 new environments in the books, along with four new Campaign Frame.

A Standard Edition and a Deluxe Edition will be released for Daggerheart: Hope & Fear. Both versions come with the book and associated cards, with the deluxe edition featuring a gold foil box, dice, alternate art covers, and a rip pad with various sheets for the game. The Standard Edition (which runs about 200 pages) will retail for just $39.99, while the Deluxe Edition runs for $119.99.

A full description of the new expansion is below:

Daggerheart: Hope & Fear comes with a book (around 200 pages) and a box containing cards and a rip pad of blank adversary sheets!

Inside the book, you’ll find:

• New character options, including 4 new classes: the Witch, Warlock, Brawler, and Assassin, each with 2 unique subclasses!
• 130+ new adversaries and 28 environments, plus a rip pad of blank adversary sheets to help you easily create your own
• 100+ weapons, armor, item, and consumable options
• 4 new Campaign Frames introducing new worlds and settings for you to explore

The cards include:

• A completely new Dread Domain, unlocking ghastly, macabre magic core to the new Witch and Warlock classes.
• Subclass Cards for all 8 new subclasses
• 6 Transformation Cards: A completely new mechanic, transformations represent changes or augmentations to characters in Daggerheart. During a campaign or at character creation, transform into a Vampire, Werewolf, Reanimated, Shapeshifter, Ghost, or Demigod!
• 6 new Community Cards: Duneborne, Hearthborne, Frostborne, Warborne, Freeborne, and Reborne
• 6 new Ancestry Cards: Skykin, Tidekin, Earthkin, Emberkin, Gnome, and Aetheris

 

[Crusadius]

Pre-ordered!

 

[Reynard]

I wonder how long pre-orders will be open. Or, rather, how much time before release pre-orders will close.

 

[Simon The Hunter]

At least with the pre-orders they'll have an idea of how many to print.

 

[Parmandur]

Todd makes the good point that the book has a certain "Xanathar's Guide to Everything" energy.

Mercer gives a really good pitch of the freaking cards.

 

[aramis erak]

Not yet in the Daggerheart fold. But, based on the criticisms I've heard from others - this seems to fix their complaints - need for more "monsters" and "classes" - to use 5e terms.

They're classes in DH, too.

But I thought Daggerheart was dead and that Darrington had no faith in the game since Critical Role isn't using it for the new season! At least that's what all the YouTubers told me. Was I misled about that?

The vloggers I'm seeing say that are also preachily pro-pathfinder or pro-D&D.

They have a vested interest in not wanting people switching... gamers tend to want to watch their own preferred system.

Plus, there's more DH content coming from Darrington Press/Critical Role with DH... it's just not the big adventure they already had scheduled at release time.

Good price for a book and the cards. Not my Jam, but at prices that low I might have to invest in the system.

Core set was $60, $80 if you went to scalpers during the shortage. Should still be $60.

It plays well, it's different enough from D&D that, while you can run a dungeon crawl with it (I just did... Three medusae vs a level 2 party of 5), it's not going to feel like D&D.

I've a dozen dungeon crawl focused games, and a couple dozen where dungeons are part of the setting (including Star Wars - see SW Ep I: TPM, Clone Wars, Rebels and Bad Batch)... Oh, Alien as a setting works really well as a dungeon crawl, too... see ALIENS, ALIEN: Earth (eps 1-3), Prometheus...

But I chose to include a dungeon in my DH campaign, just to see how different it feels. And the answer is... about as different as running a D&D dungeon using T&T and running a proper T&T dungeon. And those three are as different from each other as from a D&D dungeon.

Also, one of the included Frames is, literally, a dungeon crawl through caverns in search of things to eat.

 

[aramis erak]

At least with the pre-orders they'll have an idea of how many to print.

Ha! it will probably outsell their estimates. Preorders early in a game's life are almost always lower sales than the market will support; it's only late in the lifecycle that the preorder approaches capture.