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Daggerheart – Hope, Fear, And A Lot Of Cards
Recently, since my Legend Of Five Rings campaign went into a hibernation for the winter takes a hiatus for about six-to-nine months (and not longer, hopefully), my group started looking for something else to play. Initially, we were supposed to follow Legend with Enemy Within Campaign (Warhammer RPG 4th edition), but then two of the coplayers got their Daggerheart rulebooks (deluxe sets, if I am correc), so we decided to give it a try...
Wait, what?
Daggerheart is a new fantasy roleplaying game from Darrington Press, a publishing company created by Critical Role, who made Candela Obscura, Tal'Dorei Campaign Settings, Vox Machina Art Books, and other products.
The First Impression
The game is beautiful. The graphics, both the actual color illustrations and the concept drawings are gorgeous. The tone is mostly heroic fantasy full of color (aside of concept drawings in the character creation section which look, to my dilettante eyes, to be pencil drawn).
The character sheets and tables are clean and readable without looking boring or ugly, and the ability cards, of which I will be speaking more later, help organize character information – the pictures on the cards are probably the darkest graphics (in the graphic sense, not their themes) in the game so far.
The Characters
The game stresses importance of Session Zero, the early meeting where the players and the game master share their ideas and expectations about the game, to make sure they see eye-to-eye about the game they want to play, the themes they want to cover and/or exclude, dividing the roles and specializations to avoid having all four coming with exactly the same build, and so on. It also involves making initial decisions about the setting – the core rulebook offers a few general frameworks that work as foundations on which the group can build their own world (we picked Five Banners Burning because the GM wanted a degree of politics in the background) and often defining what connects individual party members and deciding why they are keeping together.
Character creation is quick and simple. First you pick a class – there are nine classes, each combining two domains: Bard (Grace & Codex), Druid (Arcana & Sage), Guardian (Valor & Blade), Ranger (Bone & Sage), Rogue (Midnight & Grace), Seraph (Splendor & Valor), Sorcerer (Arcana & Midnight), Warrior (Bone & Valor), and Wizard (Codex & Splendor).
*Seraph is a basically a paladin, Guardian is the more tanky fighter, Warrior is the more fighty fighter.
Each class offers you some core features, including a way to spend Hope, access to two domains. You also pick one out of two (so far) specializations, for example druid has a rather disappointing healing specialization and an elemental-focused one, while rogue has a shadow-jumping Nightwalker and more socially focused Spider Syndicate. You get the starting specialization features at 1st level and get to select advanced abilities later on, though you sacrifice your access to advanced specialization abilities if you choose to multiclass (which gives you core features of another class).
Once you picked what you want to do, you create your Heritage, selecting your Ancestry and combining it with the Community in which you were raised. Each ancestry grants you two features, and you can make a hybrid by picking two ancestries and a single feature from each ancestry. Communities grant single features each. No mixing-and-matching here.
The ancestries in the core book are Clanks (sentient mechanical beings), Drakona (draconic humanoids), Dwarves, Elves, Faeries, Fauns, Firbolg (who are cowfolk for some reason), Fungril (sapient fungi), Galapa (turtlefolk), Giants, Goblins, Halflings, Humans, Infernis (tieflings), Katari (catfolk), Orcs, Ribbets (frog and toadfolk), and Simiah (monkey/ape folk). Each of the ancestries offers a lot of cosmetic variations when it comes to their concept art – probably my favorite part of the rulebook when it comes to graphics – presenting many different approaches to well-established ideas know from fantasy works.
Communities covered are Highborne (nobility), Loreborne (scholars), Orderborne (community focused on a conviction, faith, and discipline), Ridgeborne (community living in mountains or on cliffs), Seaborne, Slyborne (criminal communities), Underborne (those who live underground), Wanderborne (nomads), and Wildborne (forests and jungles).
After you decided on your origins, you get to assign your traits: Agility, Strength, Finesse, Instincts, Knowledge, and Presence. Your starting scores are +2, +1, +1, 0, 0, and –1. Each Almost every class has a spellcasting trait, which you will be using for tests of most of your abilities and some domain abilities rely on specific traits, so you want to keep that in mind. On the other hand, there is a selection of weapons for each trait to use, so you never make yourself incapable of fighting regardless of your trait spread unless you insist on using incompatible weapon.
*Agility vs. Finesse? Agility covers movement, speed, leaping, and maneuvers, and also bows, while Finesse is about precise control, hiding, tinkering, crossbows, and firearms.
Starting Evasion (the number that opponent needs to roll to hit you) and Hit Points are determined by your class, while everyone has starting Stress of 6. Ancestries, some class features and specialties, as well as domain cards and equipment can slightly modify this values.
You get to start with either a one-handed primary and a secondary weapon or a two-handed primary weapon selected from a list of tier 1 weapons. There is a choice for each trait, and you can even start with a magical weapon fitting your character style (returning blade, my preciousssss!).
Finally, you pick up two 1st level domain cards coming from either of two domains associated with your class. This can be spells or abilities, both active and passive.
The final step of the character creation is picking or inventing two Experiences with an initial value of +2. Those are descriptors of your characters skills, jobs, past achievements, values, and so on.
Myself, I went with a wildborne simiah nightwalker rogue, kidnapped by amoral wizard experimenters from the setting's magocratic city state, who bonded with a inferni sorceress who is their outcast scion.
The Game Mechanics
The game mechanics are simple. The players roll the Duality Dice: a pair of d12 in different colors and add them together. One of those is a Hope die (we decided on lighter one) and the other is Fear die. Depending on which die shows the higher result, the roll is said to be made with Hope, or made with Fear. If both dice show the same result it is critical success and counts as roll with Hope, deals extra damage (if it is an attack) and allows you to heal a point of Stress.
Rolling with Hope means you get a point of Hope (up to a maximum of 6). If it is success, it's a very good success, if it is failure, there are some mitigating factors. Rolling with Fear gives game master a Fear token (up to a maximum of 12), and something goes badly. If it is a success there is some consequence or side effect, if it is failure, it hurts.
You add results of both dice, and the most suitable trait and compare it to the difficulty of the roll (5 being very easy, 10 easy, 15 average, 20 hard, with 25-30 being very hard to nearly impossible results).
Before making the roll you can spend a point of Hope to add one of your experiences if it is relevant to the situation. We found it to be a dubious gamble at best: +2 on a 2d12 roll doesn't feel enough for a Hope point that is better spend on activating spells or class abilities, or even aiding others.
Various circumstances can also grant you an advantage or disadvantage on your roll. Advantages and disadvantages negate each other one-to-one, so getting more advantages is good. You roll number of d6 equal to remaining advantages (or disadvantages) with your normal Duality Dice and add (or subtract) the result of the highest d6 to the final result, which means that with at least net advantage you can potentially roll natural 30 (12+12+6) before adding other modifiers. The most common source of advantage is another character spending a point of Hope to aid you in some way.
The Combat
When attacking the players roll Duality Dice and adding a trait determined by weapon used, plusy any other bonuses they managed to apply and comparing to Difficult of the enemy, while the GM rolls d20 adding the attack bonus in the NPCs statistics and comparing to the PC's Evasion score (which is typically between 9 and 12).
On a successful attack, the attacker rolls damage dice of their attack, determined by their weapon or spell, their proficiency (Tier 1 is 1st level and you roll one weapon die, Tier 2 is 2-4 where you roll two weapon dice. Tier 3 is 5-7 with three weapon dice, and Tier 4 is 8-10 and four weapon dice, but various effects and enhancements can increase proficiency and thus the number of dice rolled by 1 or more), and abilities used. Or whatever is listed in the adversary's description. The total result is compared to damage thresholds which is based on armor worn, character level and special abilities (e.g. starting character might have something like 6/12, though starting full plate can give 9/18 while reducing Evasion by 2 and Agility by 1). If the result is lower than the lower threshold, the target loses 1 Hit Point, if the result is at least equal to lower threshold, but under the higher threshold, 2 Hit Points are lost, and if the damage equals or exceeds the higher threshold, 3 Hit Points are lost. Critical hit increases damage total by adding a bonus equal to maximum the weapon dice can roll.
After the actual Hit Point loss is determined, the target of the attack my decide to sacrifice one point of Armor to reduce damage by one step. Judging when to accept Hit Point damage and when to reduce it with armor is part of your resource management. The starting characters have between 5 and 8 hit points, with 6 being the typical value, and are likely to have between 3 and 5 Armor Points.
Notably, like in some games but unlike your typical D&D and its clones, character cannot die unless the player choses so. When you drop to 0 Hit Points, you can either chose to drop incapacitated until the end of scene (and likely get a scar in the process), go out in a blaze of glory, taking a single action that critically succeeds and then die, or take a risk and roll Duality Dice, recovering Hit Points and Stress on a roll with Hope or dying on a roll with Fear...
In addition to Hit Points each character has 6 points of aforementioned Stress. It is primarily used to activate various spells and abilities, though certain threats and special attacks can also reduce Stress. Once you are out of Stress you will start losing Hit Points instead so keep that in mind as another resource to keep track of.
Recuperation takes form of short and long rests. During either, each character picks two options: recover Hit Points, recover Stress, repair Armor points, or gain a point of Hope (or two if another character participates in the process). During the short rest recovery and repair restore 1d4+Tier points, while the long restores all points of selected category. Additionally various ability and spell uses are restored on a short or long rest, as noted in their description.
Resting is not without its drawbacks. Whenever the party takes a rest, the GM gains 1d4 Fear tokens (+number of PCs during the long rest), which is the resource GM can use to pay for opponents' actions, trigger special abilities, and add threats unexpected dangerous circumstances.
The Spotlight
Unlike some more traditional roleplaying games, Daggerheart doesn't use a fixed initiative. Instead, the players act passing the spotlight between each other as they see fit based on the narrative and roles. The GM-controlled adversaries get to act after a player character rolls with Fear, fails an action roll, the group lose the steam and look for what happens next, circumstances demand consequences, or when an opportunity opens. Apparently that approach is problematic for some groups that are used to fixed initiative order, but we had no serious problem with that, but we are used both to games with looser initiative order (2d20, Genesys), and games that explicitly permit the GM to interrupt regular initiative (again 2d20).
Here Fear tokens that GM plays a role, allowing the GM to "steal the spotlight" interrupting the players, take an additional GM move, activate a Fear-powered ability of an opponent, or a Fear-triggered environmental quality, or add adversary's experience to the roll (if there are any).
The Domains And (Lots Of) Cards
Domains are collections of abilities, both active and passive, spells, and grimoires (which are sets of two or three spells selected as a fixed bundle, and show, so far, only in the Codex domain). Each represents a theme of sorts, and each class is linked to two domains: Arcana (innate and instinctual magic, often elemental in nature – druids and sorcerers), Blade (weapon mastery – guardians and warriors), Bone (tactics and the body – warriors and rangers), Codex (intensive magical study – bards and wizards), Grace (charisma and influence – bards and rogues), Midnight (shadow and secrecy – rogues and sorcerers), Sage (natural world – druids and rangers), Splendor (life, vitality and healing – seraphs and wizards), and Valor (protection – seraphs and guardians). This gives a great potential for making additional classes that use new combinations of existing domains, though new domains are already on the way – a playtest of Dread domain with associated warlock and witch classes is available for preview on the Daggerheart website in the Void (playtest) section.
Each domain currently offers three cards picks at 1st level, and two each on 2nd through 10th level. Standard edition comes with a complete set of cards for all domains, class specialization features (core class features are printed on the sheets instead), and two cards for each ancestry and community (as the overleap between player characters is more likely there). This is a neat way of having description of your abilities without having to reach for rulebook every time you want to check the details.
The Summary
This game is a love-child of heroic themes from Dungeon And Dragons with the more player, story, and narrative-focused aspects of Apocalypse World (and its descendants), Forged in The Dark, Genesys, 2d20 (Dishonored), and others (in fact it explicitly says so in th every introduction).
It involves some resource management in the form of Hit Points, Stress, Armor Score, and Hope tokens, and, depending on abilities picked, might also include some additional tokens spread between your ability cards, but character sheets provided handle that well. In fact, character sheets even contain handy overlook of leveling, allowing you to advance your character quickly.
Daggerheart doesn't offer a ready campaign setting (at least yet), instead relying on players and GM coming together to build a world they will enjoy, using elements and tools given by the game.
Playing the game was fun, even despite some misgivings I have about specific details of the mechanics, such as starting ability scores ranging between +2 and –1 don't quite feel like they do meaningful contribution to 2d12 rolls or character build overall (there are some domain cards which give you a number of tokens equal to one of the traits, that can be spent on using specific ability, but I haven't picked any myself), and, as I mentioned earlier, spending your precious Hope to add your character's Experience (a +2 bonus on 1st level) to roll doesn't feel like worthwhile gamble. I suspect we might end house-ruling in the future that you can do that after rolling the dice, to be less of high-cost/low-return gamble and more of a you missed by inches problem solver.
I do look forward for the next session, as we finished the last one with advancing by a level and now I want to see if that extra point here and there will feel different.
