We stopped playing Daggerheart

[Scribe]

It's still a mechanic designed to facilitate storytelling rather than represent something specific in the world.

I mean yes, it is a narrative/story leaning game, but the outcome of actions, as you said, are still determined by the dice. Success is a state, dice driven, as is Fail. There are just additional variables, potentially narrative, tied to those dice.

It still is at it core, heck nothing is more foundational to the rules of the game, a game with dice, and rolls that drive the results and narrative.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hope/Fear are resource pools for the PCs/GM respectively. The dice determine when those points are gained - basically any action roll by a player is going to generate one or the other. The player(s) and GM then each choose when to spend them to power abilities, get bonuses on rolls, and such.

Whether you feel it is a dissociated mechanic or not will depend on whether you feel hope and fear are real things in the game world that people can have. Characters in the fiction certainly aren't going to refer to having some number of units of hope.

Yeah, that's definitely disassociated as far as I'm concerned.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

I had the same impression when reading and when doing a 1-shot. The being too complicated and narrow for a narrative game and not tactical enough for being a D&D clone makes it feel just not right for me.

Still some friends want to try it so we do a short campaign. It has some good ideas (mostly fear and hope) and trying something new can be fun (I see it as a exercise in game design, and learning from other games errors is better than doing them yourself), but I hope our mini campaign ends fast, and then we can maybe try something else.




Maybe I am missing something here, but how can you do make an enemy lose more than 4 hit points? Even 4 hit points needs the optional rule or some special ability.

"On a successful Tag Team attack roll, both players roll damage and add the totals together to determine the damage dealt, which is resolved as if it came from a single source. If the attacks deal different types of damage, the players choose which type to deal."

So if you do a tag team you have a good chance of doing 3 damage, but you will not do more. The damage is added together and then this combined damage compared to the threshold and if thats higher than severe you deal 3 damage. (And with massive damage rules up to 4 if its higher than 2 times severe).


Still this damage feels wasted, because if you would do 2 attack rolls separately you would do with high chances deal 2x2 or 2+3 or even 2x3 damage.

Actually, this analysis does not seem like a fair comparison. If you wanted to compare the damage output, you should probably weigh the damages by appropriate probabilities.

Landing two separate attacks has a lower probability than a single tag team. If we are talking about two consecutive attacks landing, it's even worse since the first attack has to land with Hope.

Just for simplicity, let's say the probability that a single hit is 50% across the board and it's 50% to roll hope (I know it's more but just to make numbers nice).

In this simple world, probability of team attack hitting is 75% ( = 1 - .5^2). If we say that a tag team attack does like 4 damage, then the average damage would be 3.

If we want no GM turn between two attacks, the first attack has to land with Hope which is ~25% (assuming GM chooses not to act in between). Say the individual attacks do 2 or 3 damage. Then we get like 0.25 * 2 + 0.5 * 3 = 2 or 0.25 * 3 + 0.5 * 2 = 1.75. Even if both attacks do 3 damage, it's 0.75 * 3 = 2.25. Overall, we get like 1.75 ~ 2.25 for average, which is lower than 3.

If we allow a GM turn between two attacks, then we get like 2.5 ~ 3.

So Tag Team is probably better on average than doing two separate attacks, though I don't really know if it's worth the 3 Hope cost.

 

[Umbran]

So Tag Team is probably better on average than doing two separate attacks, though I don't really know if it's worth the 3 Hope cost.

Whether it is worth it is situational.

It is for the case of a finishing move against an opponent with high damage thresholds, such that single attacks tend to be ignored. Late in the fight, when everyone's armor is chewed up, you get them before they finish you off.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

Whether it is worth it is situational.

It is for the case of a finishing move against an opponent with high damage thresholds, such that single attacks tend to be ignored.

All attacks that land do at least 1 damage by default no?

 

[Agamon]

"Worth it" is less meaningful in a cooperative game. It's worth it if it creates a cool scene that adds to the narrative.

 

[Tigris]

Actually, this analysis does not seem like a fair comparison. If you wanted to compare the damage output, you should probably weigh the damages by appropriate probabilities.

Landing two separate attacks has a lower probability than a single tag team. If we are talking about two consecutive attacks landing, it's even worse since the first attack has to land with Hope.

Just for simplicity, let's say the probability that a single hit is 50% across the board and it's 50% to roll hope (I know it's more but just to make numbers nice).

In this simple world, probability of team attack hitting is 75% ( = 1 - .5^2). If we say that a tag team attack does like 4 damage, then the average damage would be 3.

If we want no GM turn between two attacks, the first attack has to land with Hope which is ~25% (assuming GM chooses not to act in between). Say the individual attacks do 2 or 3 damage. Then we get like 0.25 * 2 + 0.5 * 3 = 2 or 0.25 * 3 + 0.5 * 2 = 1.75. Even if both attacks do 3 damage, it's 0.75 * 3 = 2.25. Overall, we get like 1.75 ~ 2.25 for average, which is lower than 3.

If we allow a GM turn between two attacks, then we get like 2.5 ~ 3.

So Tag Team is probably better on average than doing two separate attacks, though I don't really know if it's worth the 3 Hope cost.

Of course tag team is better than 2 seperate attacks. Especially since you can still do another attack after the tag team in most cases.

I just say with the damage thresholds it does not feel that good. And it costs 3 hope and is a 1 time use.

And you see the rolls. So if both players rolled well, which can happen then it can feel like doing seperate attacks would have been better. Or if one player rolled a crit and rolled well in damage then you may see "oh the 2nd players damage was not even needed". But this is a good reminder that we should in our game implement the massive damage rule and maybe only for tag team.


Its a cool idea and an easy way (even if its a bit artificial) to add teamplay to a game which does not have team teamwork often occure naturally. (Mostly only weakness and some rare abilities like the bards 3 hope feature).

narratively it is also cool, but it has a huge overlap with the "help other by spending 1 hope" feature.

 

[Teemu]

Tag team rolls are absolutely worth the Hope cost in high stakes situations. In my game Tag team rolls were also often used for non-attack rolls. DH recommends the use of countdowns and Tag team rolls can be excellent in ensuring a success before something unwanted happens.

 

[zakael19]

Tag team rolls are absolutely worth the Hope cost in high stakes situations. In my game Tag team rolls were also often used for non-attack rolls. DH recommends the use of countdowns and Tag team rolls can be excellent in ensuring a success before something unwanted happens.

Yup. My Thursday group did two Tag Teams in a row to first open a weakness in the matter of a giant elemental tearing open a portal to let an invading army through by combining divine and elemental magics; and then hold that open while the final party member pierced its warped and smoking heart.

Tag Teams let you fish for Success w/Hope + Crits when you have a Goal that you really want to hit, not just "we want to deal Severe damage here."

 

[DarkCrisis]

My DH game has its last session on Sunday. The new are playing VtM.

As the GM I liked it but I probably shouldn’t have picked Motherboard for the setting. Added a whole other layer I had to deal with on top of learning as running the basics.

Probably come back to it using a default fantasy setting at some point.