What do YOU plan on doing with Daggerheart?

[Reynard]

I think for the same reason I've seen games in nearly every genre for 5E: it's what people are comfortable with.

I get that, but DH is a little new for people to decide they must use it for EVERYTHING, isn't it?

 

[SteveC]

I get that, but DH is a little new for people to decide they must use it for EVERYTHING, isn't it?

I think people are just excited for it. It's the current shiny. Will that last? Well, Draw Steel and other games will be out in the not-too-distant future, so let's see. I, foolishly or not, have backed a lot of stuff that will get released this year.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Obviously I'm not saying that, least of all literally, so why claim I am?

You are saying using the rules as written is "fighting the system".

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.

And by claiming I'm "randomly deciding" rather than crafting a scenario that deliberately plays to the event in question you are making it pretty obvious that any claims of not engaging in good faith coming from you are pure projection.

Also you're flatly wrong - if there "wasn't supposed to be a normal fight",

There isn't. It's supposed to be a Sword of Damocles situation where if the PCs mess up badly enough to start a fight they feel glad to have escaped with their lives. A fight where the PCs are not armoured is 100% using the RAW - and it is also 100% not a normal situation. However by having the rules there in the rulebook it is something that the rulebook is explicitly enabling happening.

If it was meant to be a never event there wouldn't be an explicit rule for it. Daggerheart isn't some GURPSeque system which tries to have rules for everything. It isn't even some 3.Xesque system with massive piles of modifiers. It is a pretty lean system. And it is a pretty lean system which made the deliberate choice of having unarmoured characters being extremely vulnerable rather than e.g. starting them with thresholds of 4/10 and +2 to evasion (possibly even with 2 armour points).

So tell me in your own words why do you think Daggerheart made unarmoured characters so vulnerable? I see only three options:

• Because they didn't care.
• Because they thought it would be realistic
• Because it could lead to interesting and dramatic situations

Me, I think the only answer consistent with Daggerheart is the third option.

the NPCs would not have damage thresholds identical to those of NPCs who are explicitly combat NPCs, but in fact they do

It might have escaped your attention but NPCs do not use the same rules in Daggerheart as PCs. If the values were the same then armoured NPCs would have armour points.

- and in some cases they're even higher than the combat NPCs! If they're for "non-combat" situations where everyone is unarmoured,

And now you are creating a complete strawman. They aren't intended exclusively for non-combat situations. And why do you think a petty noble who literally has a rapier on their person in the statblock is unprotected given they made the deliberate choice to walk around carrying the rapier? Or the merchant, prepared for trouble with a club isn't wearing a gambeson?

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.

Nope. You're effectively assuming I do things the daftest way possible. And don't e.g. have all the nobles disarmed in the presence of the paranoid emperor, with his guards still wearing full body armour.

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.

Do you really think that there are any unintended numbers in the Daggerheart rulebook?

 

[Neonchameleon]

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?

And the simple answer is "because I want to do a range of things as part of a varied campaign where we get to keep the same characters rather than use a system that has one job". With this premise and it feeding into long term character growth doing things in 5e rather than a dedicated system makes perfect sense.

And if 5e makes perfect sense then "Will it do it better in DH than 5e (or PF2e, Shadowdark, Fate, or Draw Steel)" is a meaningful question.

 

[zakael19]

And the simple answer is "because I want to do a range of things as part of a varied campaign where we get to keep the same characters rather than use a system that has one job". With this premise and it feeding into long term character growth doing things in 5e rather than a dedicated system makes perfect sense.

And if 5e makes perfect sense then "Will it do it better in DH than 5e (or PF2e, Shadowdark, Fate, or Draw Steel)" is a meaningful question.

IMO any system with multiple resources opens the aperture to some really good play, FITD being my favorite example. About the only style of horror I think DH simply won’t handle is one where powerlessness/fragility is the core mechanism. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to consider what a “play to find out” high-fantasy mystery might look like though. DH gives you the baseline to handle that, and just needs a Frame mechanic.

Eg: take the Clue and Countdown mechanics from Bump in the Dark would be perfectly suited to DH investigation play with a time limit. A marauding monster, a murderous assassin, a cult’s dark plan. Etc.

 

[Reynard]

And the simple answer is "because I want to do a range of things as part of a varied campaign where we get to keep the same characters rather than use a system that has one job". With this premise and it feeding into long term character growth doing things in 5e rather than a dedicated system makes perfect sense.

And if 5e makes perfect sense then "Will it do it better in DH than 5e (or PF2e, Shadowdark, Fate, or Draw Steel)" is a meaningful question.

Sure. I read the initial post that started this thread as a "list of campaigns I would run with DH." It may be that I misread it.

I am absolutely on board with running genre divergent sessions/adventures as a change of pace -- regardless of the system. I was reacting to the idea of running a whole campaign that seemed to conflict with the basic design ethos of a system. I would have been just as opposed to running solar punk high fantasy campaign with Call of Cthulhu.