Review in Summary
Daggerheart is a high fantasy, fiction-first RPG with trappings similar to Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder, but with mechanics that focus more on telling stories and on what feels interesting than on thorough simulation. The game likely isn’t a fit for players who thrive within the mechanical playground of games like Pathfinder, but for players who play DnD with only loose adherence to the rules text, Daggerheart is a game for telling exciting stories.
Published by Darrington Press, Critical Role’s game publishing arm, Daggerheart is Darrington’s second full-length RPG, following Candela Obscura. Like Candela Obscura, Daggerheart’s design was led by Spenser Starke. Development on Daggerheart was made public following the OGL crisis in late 2022, and is widely seen as a direct competitor to DnD, offering Critical Role a way to continue making content if their flagship Actual Play series is no longer able to use DnD due to legal shenanigans from Wizards of the Coast.
Daggerheart takes some very novel approaches to systems which have been mostly unchanged in big name RPGs for decades. Dice are asymmetric between the GM and the players, initiative in combat is free-form, and much of the rules text encourages the players and the GM to act when something is interesting rather than when the mechanics strictly allow it. The game’s emphasis is much less on feeling consistent and fair, and much more on feeling exciting.
The game does accomplish its aim of a more narrative-focused alternative to Dungeons and Dragons, but the game also requires players to collaborate very well in order to keep the game running as intended. At tables with varying experience levels or with players who are soft-spoken or passive, players may find that some players dominate the game, while other players only get to participate when the more active players remember to prod them. I think this will be fantastic for experienced groups of players at a familiar table, but new players and groups of relative strangers may struggle.
High Fantasy Rolled with Hope and/or Fear
Daggerheart is a high fantasy game with many of the same trappings that players expect from games like Dungeons and Dragons: fantastic ancestries, diverse backgrounds, and classes which provide unique capabilities to the players. Players coming from other games may be able to directly adapt characters, though the names of many ancestries have changed.
The Hope and Fear mechanics are central to both storytelling and gameplay in Daggerheart, and their presence is felt constantly. Rolling with Hope means that things are generally going well, even if a check fails, while rolling with Fear means that there are consequences even if a check succeeds. A dice roll will generate either Hope or Fear to be spent as currencies, determine the success or failure of the roll, and progress the story in some way. All rolls are yes/no, and/but, rather than binary or even tiered success, so any given check can have significant impact on the story.
Spending Hope and Fear as a currency allows the players and the GM to shape the story. Hope powers player’s abilities, allows them to assist each other, and allows them to apply their character’s Experiences for bonuses on checks. Conversely, Fear lets the DM threaten the players more, such as by having additional enemies act between players’ actions. Both currencies will be generated frequently, encouraging both sides to spend them generously to impact the story.
I’ve Never Rolled a d12 in My Life, Now I’m Rollin Two of Them
“Daggerheart also utilizes an asymmetrical design, meaning that it plays differently for the GM than it does for the players. Players roll two twelve-sided dice for their PCs’ standard actions, including their attacks. The GM can make most moves without dice, but they roll a twenty-sided die for adversary moves that require a roll”
Players roll the “duality dice” when making checks, adding their results together, then adding any additional dice and flat modifiers and comparing them to a difficulty number to determine success or failure. If the “Hope” die is higher, they “Roll with Hope”, they generate hope and something good happens. If the “Fear” die is higher, they “Roll with Fear”, the GM gains a Fear, and something bad happens.
Rolling doubles is a critical success even if the total is lower than the difficulty for the check. Players gain a Hope, they succeed on the check, they clear 1 Stress, and the GM is encouraged to give them something else nice. If the roll was an attack, they also get the maximum value of their damage dice in addition to a normal damage roll. Rolling doubles on 2d12 is a 1 in 12 chance, so crits will be relatively frequent compared to DnD.
The GM instead uses d20s for adversaries. The GM can’t crit, and they can’t generate Hope or Fear. This is quick to resolve, mathematically simple, and passes the spotlight quickly.
Character creation and advancement
“Some of these decisions are purely narrative, meaning they only appear in the game
through your roleplaying, but others are mechanical choices that affect the actions you’re more
(or less) likely to succeed at when rolling your dice.”
Characters in Daggerheart are class-based with a ancestrie and background, and advancement is by level, going from level 1 through level 10. As characters advance, they’ll accumulate features represented by cards that are used in play. Managing your hand of cards (called your “Loadout”) becomes an important part of play, as you need to decide which of your character’s capabilities you’ll have ready and which you’ll keep in reserve to be brought out a resource cost.
Equipment is very important to all characters, even characters like wizards that might need only basic gear in other games. Weapons include everything from swords and spears to magical rings and scepters which allow you to attack using mental stats. Instead of gold costs, weapons and armor are divided across the 4 tiers of play and unlocking as players become more powerful. Low-tier items are things like broadswords and round shields, while high-tier items like a sword of light and flame which is functionally a lightsaber.
Magic items beyond weapons and armor are distributed as loot, but don’t have listed purchase costs, so things like potions aren’t guaranteed to be available. The gamemastery chapter discusses sometimes making these items available to purchase, but there’s no guidance on how much they should cost.
Armor, including shields, provides “armor points” which you can use to mitigate incoming damage. Armor also sets your damage thresholds, which determine how many Hit
Characters have both Hit Points and Stress, represented by empty boxes on your character sheet. Stress is typically spent as a resource to activate abilities, switch equipped weapons, or otherwise do strenuous things. Hit Points will be marked when you take damage. Both can be cleared by resting, by drinking potions, and by special abilities like healing spells.
Character advancement is by level, but there are no experience points to track. The rules don’t specify exactly when advancement should occur, but recommend roughly every 3 sessions at the end of a narrative arc. When characters advance, they choose two benefits from a small menu of options available to their class at that tier of play. There are 4 tiers, starting with Tier 1 and level 1, Tier 2 at level 2, Tier 3 at level 5, and Tier 4 at level 8. Each tier brings better items, stronger enemies, and fresh new character options. Players also select new Domain Cards at every level, gaining new options for their class every level.
Advancement feels extremely impactful, as your damage thresholds and other stats can increase to the point that low-Tier enemies may struggle to harm you even if they manage to successfully attack you. Conversely, higher-tier enemies might be so numerically powerful that player characters struggle to harm them without great effort, such as Tag Team attacks (which are a thing).
Multiclassing becomes available at level 5, granting access to features from other classes and their subclasses, as well as Domain Cards at a delayed progression rate. This can allow for powerful build combinations, but without the multiclass dipping of DnD or the constant availability of Archetypes in PF2.
Low Crunch, High Fantasy Violence
“Daggerheart is a heroic, narrative-focused experience that features combat as a prominent aspect of play.”
How do I Just Stab a Guy?
Every creature has an Evasion stat. For players, this is set by your class. Attack rolls are made against Evasion, and successfully hit if they meet or exceed the target’s Evasion.
If an attack hits, the attacker then rolls damage. This is based on the attacker’s weapon and their Proficiency stat which ranges from 1 to 6. Weapons have a die size (and sometimes a flat modifier), and the attacker rolls a number of dice equal to their Proficiency, then totals everything.
Once damage is totalled, it is compared to the target’s damage thresholds. Creatures have two thresholds: Major and Severe. Anything below major deals 1 Hit Point, 2 Hit Points for between Major and Severe, and 3 for anything equal to or greater than the target’s Severe Damage Threshold. Creatures can spend an Armor Point to reduce the damage by 1 step, potentially negating the damage entirely, which means that an Armor Point is effectively as good as an extra Hit Point.
When creatures mark all of their Hit Points, they’re defeated. Players with 0 Hit Points get to take a Death Action, choosing a heroic Blaze of Glory, relatively safety of Avoid Death, or gambling to either keep fighting normally or die outright. Avoid Death, despite being the safe option, can inflict permanent Scars which reduce your maximum Hope, gradually wearing your character down and locking them out of powerful abilities which require multiple Hope points to be spent.
Movement and Range
Daggerheart uses range bands, but doesn’t use zones like most RPGs that use range bands. Movement is considerably more vague, which may lead to arguments at the table. The rules discuss mapping 1 inch on a real-world map 5 feet in game and then using those distances, but at that point you’ve gone from vibe-based range to using a measuring tape.
Creatures can move a range equal to their Close distance during their turn and can spend their action to move further. NPCs can do this for free, but players must roll an Agility check, potentially suffering ill-defined negative consequences on a failure. This strongly disincentivizes moving longer distances unless your character is built around Agility.
A sidebar provides guidance for using a grid. Without even the loose guidelines of zones, I strongly recommend using a grid to avoid arguments over range and distance being measured arbitrarily.
Initiative System: Lol, Whatevs
“Daggerheart’s turns don’t follow a traditional, rigid format; you don’t have a set number of actions you can take or things you can do before play passes to someone else.”
Players act first in combat unless they’re surprised, but the GM can also spend Fear to act first. Players then continue to act, passing the spotlight between the players as they see fit, until someone either fails a check or rolls with Fear.
Play then passes to the GM, who selects which creature they’ll activate based on what makes sense for the story. They can spend Fear to activate additional creatures, passing play back to the players either when they choose to do so or when they run out of Fear. The chapter on running the game offers specific advice, but the actual rules here are intentionally loose.
It is theoretically possible for a very lucky party to have a long series of turns if no one rolls with fear, but there’s a 50/50 chance on any given roll, so more than 2 player turns in a row will be a rarity.
GMs might be able to activate a large number of creatures if they have a deep enough pool of Fear, but the GM is only allowed to accumulate 12 Fear and is encouraged to spend it frequently. Balling up resources in order to crush the players is discouraged in the rules text, and the gamemastering chapter offers guidance on how much Fear should be spent per encounter (it’s not 12).
The free-form initiative system doesn’t guarantee that every player gets a turn; instead, that’s left to the players to work out. Players might act several times in a row, then sit out for a bit. Many readers, myself included, are concerned that this will lead to quiet players being effectively ignored during combat.
The rules include a remedy for this called “The Spotlight Tracker”. Players each place three tokens into a pool at the beginning of combat, and remove one of their tokens each time they act. Tokens do not reset until the pool is empty, guaranteeing that each player acts three times before resetting. This is a nice system if your party struggles to share the spotlight in combat.
Building Combat Encounters
The rules for the GM to build and balance combat encounters are mostly straightforward, using a point-based budget to add antagonists to a combat encounter. There are a few exceptions which will adjust your budget up or down based on circumstances and the categories of antagonists in the encounter, but the expectation is that players will face multiple enemies with varying stat blocks in each encounter or will be facing a “solo” monster which can stand on its own. No “1d4+1 wolves” or anything like that.
The rules for selecting antagonists are on page 197 of the rulebook, and include point costs for adversaries depending on their type, as well as 6 additional rules for adjusting the point budget. I expect that the 6 extra rules will be a pain point for GMs trying to assemble encounters, but an automated encounter builder will certainly simplify things. I’m also concerned that the math for how many points to use will struggle for abnormally small or large parties. 3x+2 is probably fine for parties of 3 to 6, but the +2 is negligible in large parties and potentially devastating in small parties.
It’s hard to get a sense of how well this works from a balance standpoint without extensive play experience, so I can’t assert how effective this system is. It’s definitely easy to put encounters together, though.
Subsystems (dnds downtime rules, one ring’s journey rules, etc.)
Fear vs. Hope
Players use Hope, a metacurrency generated primarily when the Roll with Hope on checks. Hope can be spent to apply Experiences to checks, to Help allies with checks, and to activate abilities like your class’s Hope feature. You’ll generate Hope on roughly half of your rolls, so it’s an abundant resource and you’re expected to spend it.
GMs instead use Fear, which is generated primarily when the players Roll with Fear, but can also be generated when the players choose to rest.
- Interrupt the players to make a move even if the players have not failed a check or Rolled with Feat
- Make an additional GM move, allowing the GM to activate additional enemies in combat
- Use an adversary’s Fear Feature (not all creatures have these)
- Use an environment’s Fear Feature (not all environments have these)
- Add an adversary’s Experience to a roll (not all creatures have these)
This appears to be changed from the beta: GMs can no longer spend Fear to introduce additional enemies. That was an option in the beta, which could make combats infinitely long as fighting the additional enemies would generate additional Fear. I’ve seen several players complaining about this issue online, so it was clearly a problem.
Wombo Combos
Players have the option to use “Tag Team” moves to combine their attacks at the cost of 3 Hope. If I’m reading the rule right, this only uses one player’s action, and control won’t pass to the GM until the whole Tag Team action is resolved. Damage is combined before comparing it to the target’s damage thresholds, so two players combining their attacks gives them an opportunity to deal more damage before control can pass back to the antagonists.
This can be an exciting way to get through the defenses of powerful enemies, but it’s not a magic bullet that will win every fight. If two players do Minor Damage to the target, the target marks two Hit Points in total. If their total damage would instead be Major Damage, the target marks two Hit Points. If the players would both deal Major Damage, the target would mark four Hit Points in total. If they combine their attacks, their damage might get into Severe Damage, in which case the target marks just three Hit Points in total, actually dealing less damage at the cost of 3 Hope.
However, since the damage is totaled, your target only gets to spend an Armor Point to mitigate the damage once, potentially allowing you to sneak damage past your target’s deep pool of Armor Points. I’m not convinced that it’s worthwhile, but it’s there, and controlling the spotlight is likely more impactful than the actual damage mechanics.
I expect that this option will be a trap for many players. Do not rush to Tag Team. It’s a scalpel, not a hammer. Each player can only initiate a Tag Team once per turn, too, so save it for when it makes sense to use.
Resting
Characters can take both Short Rests and Long Rests, using those periods to recover, repair armor, and work on downtime projects. Each character chooses two downtime activities, allowing them to clear Hit Points, clear Stress, clear Armor Points, or generate Hope. You can heal your allies, too, so players aren’t rushing off to separate dark corners to lick their wounds.
However, taking a rest generates Fear for the GM, providing a clear mechanical incentive to push onward unless resting is actually necessary. Each point of Fear is an enemy attacking the party (it’s more complex than that, but that’s an easy shorthand), so a Short Rest is 1d4 attacks at some point in the near future.
I love this sense of pressure. A long-time issue in DnD dating back to at least 3rd edition is that players will rest after every encounter and return to full strength. Players in Daggerheart can choose to do that, but it comes with a clear, explicit cost rather than the nebulous passage of time and vague expectation that the DM might have things progress in the background.
Death, Dying, and Not Revivifying
“The Egyptians believed the most significant thing you could do in your life was die.” – Philomena Cunk, according to TikTok every 5 minutes for the past month
When players mark their last Hit Point, they choose a “Death Move”. No death saves, no recovery checks, no bleeding out on the floor. You choose one of three options, and everyone goes on with their day.
Players can choose a Blaze of Glory, allowing them to act one more time, critically succeed on whatever action they take, then immediately die. Players who want to keep playing their character can choose to Avoid Death, falling unconscious and making them untargetable for the rest of the scene. However, you roll to see if you gain a Scar, permanently reducing your Hope maximum, which can have devastating long-term consequences as you accumulate scars. Fortunately, low-level characters are less likely to develop Scars.
Finally, you can choose to gamble. Risk it All lets you roll to see if you die or if you heal and stand back up. Slightly better than 50/50 odds since doubles are a crit success, which counts as rolling with hope.
Coming back from the dead is discussed as a possibility, but the only explicit mechanic is the Resurrection spell available to the Splendor Domain. Otherwise, it’s let up to the GM to determine what is involved. Matt Mercer created some popular homebrew rules for raising the dead in 5e, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see something similar published in a future Daggerheart supplement.
The “Campaign Frame”
The Daggerheart rulebook includes several “Campaign Frames” which provide a setting, a map, some unique mechanics, and the general basics you need to get a game going. They don’t include a specific plot, but they give you everything you need to create one.
Part of starting a campaign involves selecting a Campaign Frame and having players add locations to the included map. This will help players engage with the setting by providing places that are meaningful to the players without expecting them to latch onto whatever megacity is already featured on the map, but which they know essentially nothing about.
The rulebook notably includes the Age of Umbra frame, which is the basis for Critical Role’s ongoing Daggerheart mini-series.
Pain Points
The movement and distance rules in Daggerheart are too loose, and that’s going to lead to issues at many tables, as discussed above. Introducing zones or just using the optional grid rules will improve things considerably, in my opinion.
The rules for Darkness are basically nonexistent. They encourage the GM to make relevant checks harder, but don’t even suggest how much. That means that it’s entirely up to the GM to decide if it’s +2 or +10, and that inconsistency is going to cause issues.
The currency system is intentionally vague to avoid counting copper pieces, but it introduces several new complications. Prices for items are hidden away in the gamemastery section of the book, which means that players who want to buy new gear, such as daggers to throw at their enemies, won’t know where to look. The smallest increment of currency is a handful of gold, which is all that level 1 players start with, and it’s enough for either a meal or a night at an inn for one person, which means that level 1 characters are one dinner away from being utterly destitute.
In effect, the currency system tries to do away with DnD’s copper, silver, gold, and platinum, and trades them for coins, handfuls, sacks, and chests which fill exactly the same role and come with the same “increments of 10” accounting. It’s not better, it’s just different, and hiding costs from players is objectively worse unless everyone is fine just pretending that money doesn’t exist. That might be the point, but then why have a currency system at all instead of a wealth stat like some RPGs use when minute wealth isn’t a focus?
Parts of the system also recommend using “player tokens” in a few places. In some parts of the book they feel very important, but you can absolutely play without them. Using generic tokens (pennies, small rocks, etc.) to mark counts of things or to help remember numbers is fine, and the need for a player-specific token is nearly nonexistent.
Beyond those mechanical issues looms the fundamental philosophy behind Daggerheart and this expected style of play: Heavy reliance on GM fiat and absolute trust between everyone at the table that they will always behave well at the table.
Many of the rules only work when the GM says that they do. Antagonists get to act in combat when players fail a check or Roll with Fear or when the GM says that they do. Players get to roll checks and generate crucial Hope when the GM says that they do. There is a lot of very well-written guidance on how the GM should run the game, but for players new to TTRPGs or at least to Daggerheart, there is a lot of room to fail, and it won’t be clear if it’s the GM or the system that’s the issue.
For the game to work, especially in combat, players need to be invested in each other’s characters and make sure that everyone is getting a chance to participate. There are no guardrails to ensure that everyone gets to take a turn unless you use the optional Action Tracker rule, and that might lead to situations where players don’t participate in combat. This likely won’t be malicious or intentional, but it’s no less of an issue. Tables will need to learn to pick their heads up, look at each other, and figure out who hasn’t had a turn recently, especially if quiet players are having trouble advocating for themselves.
Those issues can absolutely be overcome with experience, discipline, and friendly conversations with your table, but they are still issues. I’m already seeing many players online not interested in the system because of these issues. Of course, I’m also seeing players who shared my concerns, but still enjoyed the system as-written, so it’s entirely possible that I’m flat wrong here. I haven’t had enough time with the system to get a comprehensive feel for the reality at the table.
One Chest of Content
The Daggerheart Core Set (affiliate link) includes the full rules of the game and a full printed set of cards for all of the Ancestries, Communities, and Domains published in the book all packaged together in a nice box.
The Daggerheart PDF (affiliate link), available from DriveThruRPG, includes the full rules text and print-and-play copies of the cards. For an extra $5, you can get the PDF and also get the content on Demiplane so that you have the full character builder. They’ll apparently have an encounter builder at some point this year.
In addition, the rules recommend downloading free class-specific character sheets and class guides from Daggerheart.com. The page has download links for character sheets, blank maps, campaign frames, errata, and a free quickstart adventure. Basically anything that you would expect to write on, plus some free extras.
I strongly recommend looking at the quickstart adventure, as it has a load of pregen characters and I think it does a better job explaining some of the mechanics than the rulebook does. Don’t be intimidated by the page count; the vast majority of the 39-page PDF is character sheets and paper cut-outs to represent monsters.
So Are We Putting Daggers into Hearts?
Daggerheart is a fantastic game with a lot of great things to offer, but it is not a game for everyone. The core philosophy of the game requires a play style that simply won’t work for some groups, but will be absolutely thrilling for others. The focus on story over mechanics while still nailing the fantasy trappings that draw many players to DnD will make Daggerheart an excellent lower-crunch alternative for many groups that already pay loose attention to DnD’s rules.
The Darrington Press team has left themselves a lot of room to expand upon Daggerheart, and they’re already playtesting a ton of new content which I’m sure we’ll see in an upcoming supplement. I’m excited to see how they expand the game and if future supplements will provide fixes to some of my gripes with the game’s mechanics. I’m sure we’ll see an expanded roster of campaign frames, new antagonists, and new equipment added over time.
We’re planning a full how-to-play arc on the RPGBOT.Podcast, which we’ll begin recording this Sunday. If you want to join us live, join our Patreon. Otherwise, look for the episodes to be in your feed soon.
If you’re looking to explore Daggerheart, but aren’t ready to pay for the rulebook, strongly consider the free quickstart adventure available on Daggerheart.com.
