What do YOU plan on doing with Daggerheart?

[Imaro]

Running horror with Daggerheart is probably slightly harder than running the experience in D&D. Whether either is worth the time doing it is probably up to the needs of the individual.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Would Daggerheart make things notably worse? Probably not.

I think it'd be surprisingly similar to D&D in that characters with magical and social abilities are likely to be wildly more useful and engaged than ones without those. Experiences will factor in a bit of course, and the dominant factor will likely be how engaged the players (not PCs) are, as is the case in most games.

Ironically one of the games where I feel like the rules do make mysteries notably worse isn't D&D or Daggerheart but Call of Cthulhu, especially earlier editions!

Using the rules that the game presents you with in ways that are entirely in line with the intent of the rules for a result that takes minimal effort and is significantly better than handwaving is the literal opposite of fighting the rules.

I mean, I don't see how that's what you're describing, particularly "intent"-wise but...

with serious penalties for wearing armour for serious tension.

Seems like it would be hard to give "serious penalties" for wearing a gambeson (which literally gives you a bonus to Evasion, so presumably cannot be cumbersome) without seeming vindictive. And I notice that even unarmoured "social" NPCs have damage thresholds like they're wearing light armour, absolutely consistently. Not a single one of them has damage thresholds which suggest that they're actually unarmoured. It'd be a bizarre double-standard to say NPCs get to have armoured thresholds but PCs only get to have their level. (NB all NPC damage thresholds are lower than PCs in equivalent armour, but that's intended to the math of the game.)

Seriously go look - Courtesan's thresholds are barely lower than the same-tier Assassin Poisoner. Merchant, Courtier and Petty Noble have higher thresholds than the same-tier Jagged Knife Sniper and the same as Jagged Knife Shadow (the latter of whom is presumably wearing leather or similar).

This suggests strongly to me that you implied claim that it's okay to strip armour from PCs regularly (which, remember, forces their damage threshold just down to "level and level x2") is "rules as intended" is flatly incorrect, that the game does not expect you to do that, nor is it balanced accordingly.

If it was, those social NPCs would have much, much lower thresholds. But in your game, they'll be massively higher than identically dressed PCs, even ones who are from tiers of play above them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think it'd be surprisingly similar to D&D in that characters with magical and social abilities are likely to be wildly more useful and engaged than ones without those.

I'm going to disagree that the difference is wild here. Your Hope is a limited resource - and from Tier 2 onwards those without magical abilities can normally devote a single tick to get two experiences up to +3 and they are right there in the game while those with magic tend to spend it on that. It's like the difference between 3.5 and 4e in terms of the engagement of non-casters. Also there is always the help action. The gap is nowhere near as extreme as 5e.

Seems like it would be hard to give "serious penalties" for wearing a gambeson

"You're not allowed in the room if you're wearing armour".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The gap is nowhere near as extreme as 5e.

Maybe, we'll see if I run a mystery at some point.

Your Hope is a limited resource

An awful lot of magic doesn't require Hope or Stress though, or is relatively socially/practically powerful for the 1 it does. Certainly more powerful than +2 to a roll would be. Druids I suspect will be very useful.

"You're not allowed in the room if you're wearing armour".

You can do that, but it doesn't seem to be intended, because it will make the PCs weaker than less-armoured NPCs damage threshold-wise, which is not at all how the monsters are intended to be balanced. It also potentially conflicts with the fact that PCs are supposed to be able to reflavour armour significantly, which include into forms of armour which were not easily detected in some cases.

 

[Reynard]

We have run into this discussion regarding horror before (usually in context of D&D) and I think it comes down to what people mean when they say "horror." Is Buffy horror? If you feel the answer is yes, then it is no surprise that you think DH can do horror out of the box. But if you don't, then the question gets thornier.

I do agree that you can use DH for horror of a certain type by taking away the utility of all the PCs toys. And that could be a good adventure within the context of a DH campaign. But if you wanted to run a whole campaign of horror, I can't see what benefit you would get out of using DH.

 

[Neonchameleon]

An awful lot of magic doesn't require Hope or Stress though, or is relatively socially/practically powerful for the 1 it does. Certainly more powerful than +2 to a roll would be. Druids I suspect will be very useful.

I'm not sure how right you are here - more accurately you need to hit the numbers. Druids will be useful but the gap between a druid and a warrior will be significantly less than between e.g. a 5e druid and a 5e fighter.

You can do that, but it doesn't seem to be intended, because it will make the PCs weaker than less-armoured NPCs damage threshold-wise, which is not at all how the monsters are intended to be balanced.

And in these situations there isn't supposed to be a normal fight. You are literally saying "You should never put the PCs in a tough spot".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And in these situations there isn't supposed to be a normal fight. You are literally saying "You should never put the PCs in a tough spot".

Obviously I'm not saying that, least of all literally, so why claim I am? All you're doing is undermining your own position by casting yourself as someone not engaging in good faith.

I'm saying that particular approach is mechanically completely unsound and the game is specifically not designed around you randomly deciding the PCs have to be unarmoured at times.

Also you're flatly wrong - if there "wasn't supposed to be a normal fight", the NPCs would not have damage thresholds identical to those of NPCs who are explicitly combat NPCs, but in fact they do - and in some cases they're even higher than the combat NPCs! If they're for "non-combat" situations where everyone is unarmoured, they should be at absolute most 1/2 for Tier 1, for example - so Merchant, Courtier, Petty Noble should absolutely be 1/2 (or less!). You can't have it both ways. You're effectively giving NPC's Schrodinger's armour (i.e. they're not wearing any unless the fact is tested, in which case they are), which is dumb and anti-fiction in a fiction-first game.

Now, if we're being real, we know they just have those numbers for if a fight breaks out - but it's ridiculous to break the game in this way and attempt to force PCs into using unintended numbers, especially if you do it repeatedly.

You're continuing to illustrate how DH is a poor fit for this weird take on horror where the PCs have to really easy to kill all of a sudden, which is not how horror works generally. A better solution might be to make it so the base thresholds for unarmoured PCs were 3+level and 7+level instead of level and level x2. This would only match unarmoured NPC numbers instead of being above them but might at least be mildly balanced.

 

[zakael19]

As @Campbell noted, you can run something that looks like mysteries very well in a fiction-first game using a set of procedures I don't think DH would struggle to support. If you can do it in FITD (Bump in the Dark is a "better in basically every way" version of Monster of the Week, using a version of the Brindlewood Bay clue system ported over), you can do it here.

If you wanted to really lean into horror and vulnerability, I think you'd need to think a little bit about the Hope and Stress economy. Maybe do more restricted resting like Age of Umbra introduces with "bonfires," so you can't buffer Hope or Stress without some effort. Maybe use more countdowns of pursuit or tick up a crushing darkness thing or whatever. Maybe lean into some more monsters of shadow or something that deal Direct damage, or consistently have Fear abilities that deal direct damage (or again do it off Light or consumable resources - perhaps they need to spend Hope to fuel some sort of beacon during clashes?).

It would take thought and intention if you wanted to, but I think the interaction of resources and fiction gives you some space to play with if you really want it. Oh, and player buy in.

 

[Reynard]

As @Campbell noted, you can run something that looks like mysteries very well in a fiction-first game using a set of procedures I don't think DH would struggle to support. If you can do it in FITD (Bump in the Dark is a "better in basically every way" version of Monster of the Week, using a version of the Brindlewood Bay clue system ported over), you can do it here.

If you wanted to really lean into horror and vulnerability, I think you'd need to think a little bit about the Hope and Stress economy. Maybe do more restricted resting like Age of Umbra introduces with "bonfires," so you can't buffer Hope or Stress without some effort. Maybe use more countdowns of pursuit or tick up a crushing darkness thing or whatever. Maybe lean into some more monsters of shadow or something that deal Direct damage, or consistently have Fear abilities that deal direct damage (or again do it off Light or consumable resources - perhaps they need to spend Hope to fuel some sort of beacon during clashes?).

It would take thought and intention if you wanted to, but I think the interaction of resources and fiction gives you some space to play with if you really want it. Oh, and player buy in.

Again, the point isn't that you can't do these thing in DH. The question is why bother when you can use a system designed for them?

 

[SteveC]

Again, the point isn't that you can't do these thing in DH. The question is why bother when you can use a system designed for them?

I think for the same reason I've seen games in nearly every genre for 5E: it's what people are comfortable with. Back in the 3.0 era, there was this terrible book called Foundation, which was purported to be a super hero game using the 3E rules. That's the benchmark I use for the worst RPG supplement I've ever seen.

For what I'd consider a reasonable answer, I think people have games where they like the vast majority of the game and they just don't like other systems as much. I have Gumshoe (and, more to the point, Swords of the Serpentine) but I don't know as I'd play it for an investigative game, or a sword and sorcery game with investigation. Would I use Daggerheart for that game? At this point, no I wouldn't. If I started playing it and loved it, that might change.

Frankly, I love the Hero system, and I'd use it for just about every game I ran if my group would let me get away with it, but they won't.