r/daggerheart

Daggerheart Class Packs have arrived! You can now dive into Daggerheart with ease with all the cards you need for your character in one handy pack. Plus, save the date for #Daggerheart Birthday Week kicking off May 18th!

New GM here. Everyone is level 2. I'm working in Foundry VTT.

One of my players chose a Seraph whose right wing got clipped as his backstory. I want to create a mirror image of the character whose left wing got clipped. I figured it would be a challenging foe for the players to face, would spotlight his backstory, and if/when defeated the PC can clip the left wing and attach it so he can fly again.

It seems difficult to create an adversary that can do everything a PC can do especially when factoring in that I roll a d20 as a GM instead of a hope and fear.

What would be your suggestion on the easiest way to translate this?

I want to create an adversary that has the Heavy Hitter - Reaction feature. The wording in the CRB (pg 195) says "When this adversary deals damage with a standard attack, you can spend a Fear to gain a +X bonus to the damage roll. I know that X is a number that "differs for each stat block" but how do I know what that number should be if I'm creating it myself? (Is there even an adversary that includes the Heavy Hitter reaction I can use for reference? I couldn't find one).

This also goes for the other Features that include X values. Is there some standard I should be noting, or do I get to decide? And how do I know what a good number is?

Also I know about the Homebrew kit and I also downloaded RightKnighttoFight's guide, I just can't find the answer to this probably stupid question.

Thanks!

Just wanted to share some stats/opinions from our filler DH game that evolved into a full-fledged campaign. Overall, we enjoyed it a lot and will likely return to DH sometime in the future (after our 5e DnD and Shadowdark campaigns finish). Since it wasn't pre-planned, the campaign was basic. The PCs had to collect all the mcguffins (gaining a level for each) to create a BBEG-slaying weapon that they used in the final session.

We used two optional rules: Spotlight Tracking (w/ 1 token essentially) and Defined Ranges (for gridded play).

All rolls were public and there was no fudging of stats/behavior/etc.

When increasing Tiers PCs had at least enough gold to purchase either an armor set or a weapon from the new tier. Usually they chose a new armor but there were exceptions. So they were underpowered at levels 2, 5 and 8. As a result, I used less powerful adversaries (but still Tier appropriate) and spent fewer BP on encounters at those levels.

Almost all of our combat was played on a grid. Adversaries target priority was determined first by the narrative situation, then motives and tactics, then proximity, then random roll. This would sometimes result in one PC getting heavily focused. I also reskinned and/or upscaled adversaries often due to a lack of adversaries in Tier 3-4. I used both https://www.daggerheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Daggerheart-Homebrew-Kit-v1.0-July-31-2025.pdf and u/rightknighttofight spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/document/d/12g-obIkdGJ_iLL19bS0oKPDDvPbPI9pWUiFqGw8ED88/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.mdjo15f06zjv. The latter resulted in "deadlier" adversaries.

Most of the 8 or less BP encounters also used an environment to make the encounters more interesting.

31 Sessions @ 2-3 hours each

• 10 adventures
• 1 hour of prep per adventure + 5-15 minutes per session.
• all sessions were online w/ Owlbear VTT (for maps and rolling) + Discord (voice).

61 Combat Encounters (3 PCs = 11 BP for Medium Encounters)

• 33 were less than 8 BP
• 17 were 8-10 BP
• 11 were 11 BP

43 Death Moves

• 4 Deaths (2x Blaze of Glory, 2x Risk it All)
• 3 Retires (1 from Max Scars)
• 1 "TPK"

Quick thoughts on DH in general from the group after the campaign:

Good

• Hope and fear dice resolution mechanic
• Experiences
• Team-ups
• Quick prep
• Art

Bad

• Gold system
• Most loot/magic items felt underwhelming
• Proficiency damage math gets pretty ridiculous in the higher tiers, especially brawler
• Some broken combos/abilities

Requests

• A full level 1-10 official campaign.
• More adversaries for Tier 3 & 4 and environments in general.

Also, here are some adversaries that punched above their weight class in our game:

Tier 1:

• Acid Burrower. Spit Acid + Relentless can get nuts if anybody is stripped of armor.
• Cave Ogre. Direct damage + AoE can be really nasty, esp. in Tier 1. Save up some fear before using them.
• Dire Wolf. Hobbling Strike is the most broken Tier 1 adversary feature.
• Giant Scorpion. Double Strike + Momentum can potentially generate a lot of Fear.
• Jagged Knife Hexxer. Cheap, Curse is a good Fear generator and always hits. Chaotic Flux can be okay if the PCs group up.
• Minor Chaos Elemental. Really good features. Remake Reality for no-roll AoE direct magic damage.

Tier 2:

• Cult Adept. Shadow Shackles could deadlock the PCs. Shroud of the Fallen ain't too bad either.
• Demonic Hound Pack. Drain hope with Dreadhowl. Good setup encounter.
• Failed Experiment. Double attacks till they're out of stress.
• Giant Beastmaster. Summon + Spotlight Dire Wolves? Nice!
• Gorgon. Momentum + Relentless. Potential advantage.
• Knight of the Realm. Cavalry Charge is just nuts (standard attack, also deal 2d8+4 phy and Stress on hit). Wouldn't bother with For the Realm!
• Mortal Hunter. Terrifying (Buffed Momentum) + Low Rampage CDs can generate lots of Fear.
• Siren. Stacking these can potentially totally shut down a party.
• War Wizard. It's kind of boring and costs a lot of Fear, but Arcane Artillery spam is pretty deadly. 5 Wizards + 5 Fear = ~5-10 HP/Armor Slots each PC before they go.

Tier 3:

• Adult Flickerfly. Never Miss and Uncanny Reflexes, damage + decent survivability. Needs a lot of Fear though.
• Demon of Despair with Demon of Wrath. d20 Fear die and d8 Hope die. So much Fear.
• Dire Bat. Fly around and Screech for always hit Stress, very cheesy. Good setup encounter.
• Dryad. Fill the battlefield with Bramble Patches.
• Young Ice Dragon. Momentum + Relentless + Rend and Crush to delete armor.

Tier 4

• Fallen Sorcerer. A lot of these with Shackles of Guilt triggering was way more effective than I expected.
• Fallen Warlord. Multi-Stage, Momentum + Relentless, good base damage.
• Hallowed Archer. Squishy, but really good action economy. Opening combat with multiple Divine Volleys can be scary.
• Outer Realms Abomination. Reality Quake can quickly drain player resources.
• Perfected Zombie. Two of these focused on a single target can be devastating.
• Volcanic Dragon. Multi Stage, good abilities, durable. Almost TPK'd my group.

Anyways, I thought I would share some of our DH experiences with y'all in the hope they can help enrich your games like you kindly folks have helped enriched ours.

TLDR: DH can be plenty deadly if you want.

I just wanted to make a quick post to say "Happy Birthday" to r/daggerheart and thank every single one of our members for being this such a joyful and informative community.

I'd especially like to acknowledge our mods who work tirelessly to keep everything running smoothly and enrich the experience here.

u/yerfologist, u/Tenawa, u/BounceBurnBuff

Thanks so much!

(With a special shout-out to u/Nico_de_Gallo who has be working on our wiki.)

And of course, thanks to u/Blikimor at u/DarringtonPress for their continued engagement.

Today we are just shy of 40,000 members, with over 20 million views in the last year.

April 4, 2026

Here's to a long future for Daggerheart the game and r/daggerheart the community!

That's the question.

Let's say that we add a new domain, blood, dread, or a new one, where would you put it in the wheel? Now, I know that we don't gotta respect the wheel and can do whatever with the domains, brawler and assassin proved that, but indulge me just for the sake of this thought experiment.

Now remember that you are not just adding something, you are also changing a class and adding a new one. If I put a new domain in between grace and midnight I'm giving rogue a new secondary domain and adding a new class there (Just an example)

First let's go with the unnoficial new pair: Dread and blood, where do you think they could go? I honestly would put blood either in between blade and bone, or blade and valor, although I don't like much either option bc for me blood's skills do not mix well with neither guardian nor fighter (almost feels like it was made for BH alone). Dread is funnier bc it can go a in a lot of places, I'd personally put it in between arcana and midnight, bc I think that it's a better combo for sorcerers that midnight.

Finally, the new domain I wanted to add -and frankly the reason of this post- is the one I made here the craft domain (Maybe I'll change the name in the future). I personally think it would go between splendor and codex, changing wizard and adding a new class with splendor (pending). I honestly thing that having skills/habilities that have to do with potions and tools fits more the wizard, rather than the divine theme splendor has going on.

So, what do you think? Sorr, Idk how to draw

https://preview.redd.it/ku6435holhwg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b344334762170c5af280134f581e4560ce624ec

Hey y'all! First-time poster, semi-long-time lurker. My group is switching from D&D to Daggerheart for our next campaign, and I’m looking for character build advice.

We just finished our first-ever TTRPG campaign in D&D, and the new campaign will pick up where we left off, now as level 3 DH characters. My current character is a Fire Genasi Druid, and I’d love to recreate that thematically in Daggerheart.

Right now, I’m thinking of going with Warden of Elements, but I’m unsure what ancestry + traits/feats (not sure on DH terminology yet) would best capture that concept. I’d like to lean hard into fire magic, fire symbolism, and elemental flavor.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Hey ! I'm in the process of creating a campaign in a setting that would include battles with big monsters, Monster Hunter style, and I know combat against one big adversary is something Daggerheart may struggle with. Do you have any advice on how to build that kind of encounter ?

Missed the Hope Springs Eternal Kickstarter? We have a small window before starting fulfillment, so we opened the Backerkit preorder store! This is truly the last chance to get the book (or the pdf at this price)! https://hope-springs-eternal.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/

Hello all.

This is my first post on this sub, and I decided to let my experience with Daggerheart fully sink in before posting my thoughts on the game as well as run several sessions as part of an ongoing campaign (which I may post more about seperately).

I want to be clear up front that I don't intend to hate on D&D or its players nor those who love it. I will forever be indebted to it for getting me through high school during the Satanic Panic years in the 80s where even my own parents didn't really support me getting into it. My first experience with D&D was with the 'Purple Box' set (you can look it up) with the three-ring binder book, Keep on the Borderlands module and set of dice. I own it (again) as I gave my original set away to a friend who couldn't afford it.

D&D was my lifeblood through the 80s and 90s before I discovered Star Wars, Marvel Super Heroes and even more niche games like the ill-fated Hercules and Xena RPG. When 5th Edition came out, I hadn't played in some time and eventually wound up running a three-year online only campaign during the Covid times. It was coincided with my 40th anniversary as a gamer (my first set was given to me on Christmas Day, so I can always date it) and it was a fun revisiting of the hobby that I'd come to live and inspired my writing and creativity.

Then came the period where at least in my view, the corporate ownership of D&D both undermined and undercut the product at the cost of community goodwill, my own included. This is inclusive of the modern day where in my personal opinion, decisions regarding the mentality of the game as its presented and sold to its customers seemed antithetical and very 'non-gamery'.

Then I was made aware of Daggerheart. Two of my players are Critters, and while I didn't watch Critical Role myself (I simply didn't respond to the presentation of the games whilst I appreciated their enthusiasm and ability to roleplay) and I was alerted to Daggerheart being made. It didn't hurt the product to know that two of the designers behind 5th Edition were joining Darrington Press. But that didn't necessarily make for a good game.

When it came time to return to fantasy gaming for my group, I decided to adapt a campaign of my own setting over to Daggerheart, but that meant investing in and learning the game. I was as one might appreciate, apprehensive about a brand new game system. And I was also wary of the Critical Role-associated hype.

So what swayed me? After I took the time to read a friends' PDF copy, I was struck by a system that I felt was for want of a better term.... relaxed. Where I struggled often to help players find a class, subclass or some combination of factors to help realize their characters in D&D, Daggerheart offered a broad and malleable canvas for a player to paint on and not be punished if their concept wasn't finished just yet.

D&D from my experience strongly deliniates what a character is in a lot of ways by what they're not. Skills particularly do this for me, and to a lesser extent classes. Daggerheart by contrast asks one to consider all the fuzzy things a character is. One of my players used a great example of someone with a farming background where the broad range of those experiences can be beneficial. Haggling for goods. Recognising an animal's droppings. Animal handling. And so on. These are experiences versus skills which I don't think properly reflects a person.

That particularly won me over as well as not 'rules managing' small things like cantrip-like spells or usage of armor or even what you 'can' and 'can't' do dictated to you by ruleset. This isn't advocacy of doing just anything, but rather working with the rules to tell your story better.

This meant for me (and my players have commented on this to me) that my GMing is more relaxed because I'm not having to consider the rules so often so that I can focus on telling my story more fluidly and be more aware of my characters and more importantly the world around me. This isn't to say that D&D doesn't do this, but I think Daggerheart is inherently more 'story sensitive' and rewards you for leaning into that.

I feel at this point in my gaming life that I can advocate for Daggerheart as the better introductory game system over D&D. D&D's linear class and play design is a template yes, but it's a hard template that doesn't allow a lot of deviation from the norm. Daggerheart by comparison is inviting that make believe energy we have as children where ideas are able to be explored without serious penalty nor compromise.

I've had a few people say and I agree with them that rules light systems are becoming more popular and I agree with that. The irony isn't lost on me that my original Purple Box D&D set had just four classes and you could do pretty much whatever the hell you wanted to do. No skills, no feats, not much of anything beyond your basic abilities and I loved the hell out of that. You made decisions and rules on the fly and I do think Daggerheart harkens back to that in some ways.

I don't think Daggeheart is the 'D&D killer' though. It needs to grow old and retain players and a fanbase moving forwards, but I do see its creation as a signpost we can look to and say 'this is a shift in attitude made manifest'. I won't remove my D&D books from my shelves....but now they just have to share.

Thanks for reading.

I've been working on setting up a oneshot although with very little DMing experience in general

The wise decision would absolutely be to find a oneshot module and just run that, but part of me just prefers the idea of it being something I've designed even at the impact of quality, it'll be modest expectations and all, just running it for 2 friends

I'm uncertain about exactly how much I should prepare, the balance between feeling like I'm overpreparing leads into preparing less for other things and then starting to question if it's underprepared etc...

To give a very general gist of it, I've got the overall goal being a sort of Casino heist, inspired by another one I saw related to a carnival heist, and I've "taken inspiration" for some things there

We want to experiment with the different tiers, and have previously done a start of tier 1 oneshot. I was thinking of making this be start of tier 3, level 5 or so

I've got a general introduction to the plot, a little shop I'm going to set up where they can get some magic items to select from probably favoring fun/creative items for it. Lead into casino, there is about 5-6 different settings to interact with. I don't expect any of them to go for long, and with the potential of returning to them later during an overarching countdown to see things changing a little bit

I've got some various hints for different routes they could take that I could plant around. Not sure if I should just leave them as general hints I can drop to point them towards things or if I should "preplant" them to specific things. The rough idea is that I've prepared 3 different routes I see it as most likely for them to go to do the heist, and then some improv as needed

I've got a NPC planned that will try to tag along with them with some ill intent to deceive them, planning some specific hints towards that along with options should they discover his intent early or later. Likely won't actively be hanging around them all that much so they're free to do stuff on their own

I've got one optional combat encounter "planned" (haven't done any statblocks or anything yet, just that I'll have to look over the encounter design rules and come up with something) + 1 mandatory combat right before the heist. Considering another optional combat with the deceiver, but not sure if I should make it a strict fight encounter or just something like an escape sequence, which would only make sense should he manage to stick around until the end.

Is there any general rules I should keep in mind for how many encounters is fine? It'll likely be 1-3 combats all depending, so is there anything extra I should check to ensure it doesn't go overboard?

I'm also not sure exactly how much I'll have them rolling for, since from what I've seen you don't want to do overdo it with the rolls in Daggerheart, right?

I know this post is very messy in general, but any tips or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

if you as a GM do not get the spotlight from the Players and have to spend a fear to do so, and you want to clear a condition. do you have to spend a fear to steal the spotlight and then another to clear the condition? or is clearing a condition just something you can do as a GM move after stealing the spotlight?