Daggerheart Warrior Class Guide

Introduction

Warriors are the iconic martial warrior, combining the Bone Domain and the Blade domain and not one drop of magic. Pure martial capability brought to bear to produce a durable and high-damage character. Warriors are simple to build and play, supporting basically any arrangement of weapons and armor that you might want to use.

The Warrior is a sturdy Defender and a powerful Striker, allowing them to both endure and deal damage in great quantities. However, their Domain Cards offer little utility and few support options. The ones they have are good, but they are few in number.

Understanding RPGBOT’s Rating System

RPGBOT uses a 4-tier rating scheme which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
Green: Good options. Useful often.
Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

Warrior’s Hope Feature

No Mercy: Simple, reliable, effective. Use it immediately after resting if you expect a significant amount of fighting. The only drawback is the Hope cost. A consistent +1 to attacks is fantastic, but compare that to spending the same 3 Hope to apply a +2 Experience three times.

Warrior’s Features

Attack of Opportunity: A passive way to keep adversaries in melee with you and ideally to prevent them from engaging your less durable allies. Default to preventing your adversary from moving away from you, but consider dealing damage instead if there’s a decent chance that you could reduce them to 0 Hit Points.
Attack of Opportunity notably only works against enemies within Melee range, which means that it’s not useful if you’re using ranged weapons or if you’re attacking from Very Close range using a weapon like a polearm.
Combat Training: This feature provides two benefits that need to be considered separately: ignoring Burden when equipping weapons and the damage bonus.
I’m not certain what it means to “ignore Burden”. The rules for Burden state that “when tracking burden, each character mechanically has two appendages capable of wielding weapons” and then weapons have a Burden of either 1 or 2. If you simply ignore Burden, does that mean that you can hold any number of weapons? My best guess is that the intent is to allow two-handed weapons to be used in one hand, but even that gets weird when you consider using a weapon like a Longbow.

The scaling damage bonus is an easy, consistent buff. It’s not enough on its own to keep up with scaling damage thresholds as you gain levels, but it helps a ton. With automatic increases to your Proficiency and a decent weapon, your attacks can consistently deal Major damage without much other effort.

Warrior Subclasses

Call of the Brave

While less offense-focused than Call of the Slayer, Call of the Brave isn’t so much defense-focused they are focused on surviving whatever may come. They’re not automatically a tank, though that is certainly an option. Instead, Call of the Brave is about gritting your teeth and pushing through whatever challenges you face no matter how hard things get.

Foundation Features
- Courage: A decently reliable source of Hope. This means that of the 5 possible outcomes of a roll (crit success, success with Hope, success with Fear, failure with Hope, and failure with Fear), you generate Hope on 4 of them. Courage also encourages you to attempt skill rolls which your character isn’t good at, or at least lessens the frustration when you’re forced to do so. However it also becomes less useful as you become more effective, and your GM still generates Fear.
- Battle Ritual: Guaranteed clear 2 Stress and gain 2 Hope once per day. Simple, reliable, effective.
Specialization Features
- Rise to the Challenge: You are at your best when situations are at their worst. 2 unmarked Hit Points is one hit away from death, which is a terrifying place to be, but upgrading your Hope Die from d12 to d20 means an average of +4 to all of your rolls, plus you’re more likely to generate Hope and considerably less likely to generate Fear.
  If you can linger in this state intentionally and mitigate the risk of doing so, this can be exceptionally powerful. Armor can help with this, but watch out for anything that can deal Direct Damage, as it can’t be reduced by armor.
Mastery Features
- Camaraderie: Tag Team Rolls are exciting and can deal a lot of damage, but they’re frequently an expensive way to turn 2 or 3 Hope into 1 additional Hit Point of damage. Even with this, don’t rush to use Tag Team Rolls.

Call of the Slayer

The Slayer is the more offense-focused on the Warrior’s subclasses, using a pool of Slayer Dice to empower their attacks and damage. Because you choose to gain Slayer Dice instead of Hope, you’ll generate less Hope than most characters, so you’ll need to manage that resource much more carefully.

Foundation Features
- Slayer: Hope is really good, but so is this. As a quick comparison: you can spend 1 Hope to apply an Experience, which will typically be a +2 bonus. Adding 1d6 to an attack is 3.5 on average, which is nearly double. There’s always the possibility of rolling a 1, of course, but that’s a 1 in 6 chance.
  Note that you choose to add the Slayer Dice when you make the attack or damage roll, not after making the roll. This means that you need to decide to use them ahead of time.
  
  Combining this with the Seaborne Community creates a fun synergy: if you roll with Hope, you can get either Hope or a Slayer Die. If you roll with Fear, you get a Seaborne token. Either way, you get something nice.
Specialization Features
- Weapon Specialist: There are two benefits here, so I’m not sure why they didn’t split it into two features. First, the interaction with your secondary weapon. Second, the reroll for your Slayer Die.
  The ability to add a single damage die from your secondary weapon is very minor most of the time, and spending a Hope to do so is too expensive to make it a go-to option. The largest damage die for secondary weapons is d8, and you don’t get flat modifiers or anything like that, so you can only expect a few extra points of damage. Plan to use this when you know that doing so is likely to get you into your target’s next highest damage threshold or when you’re targeting multiple enemies, such as with Whirlwind. This is a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
  
  The reroll is nice insurance against bad rolls of your Slayer Dice, but it’s only once per day, so you want to save it for when you’re rolling multiple dice.
Mastery Features
- Martial Preparation: If we assume that a Slayer Die is comparable to a Hope, this is roughly equivalent to the Downtime Move that lets you generate Hope. If you’re anticipating a big fight against a tough enemy, this can be a great way for your party to go into that fight ready to make some big attacks. Many characters will prefer to get Hope instead, but you can use both Hope and a Slayer Die on the same attack, so your party might be persuaded if everyone already has some Hope to throw around.
  The text doesn’t specify how this interacts with your usual maximum number of Slayer Dice. My best guess is that it works independent of that maximum, but talk to your GM about how to handle this.

Warrior Ancestries

Clank ^(CRB): Improving one of your Experiences from +2 to +3 will have excellent long-term results. The ability to take a Long Rest Activity during a Short Rest means that you can fully clear your Hit Points, your Armor, or your Stress, making it easy to spend those resources freely. If you take the Recovery Domain Card at level 6, you can take two Long Rest Activities, potentially clearing two of them (or helping an ally). For a durable front-line martial character, this is a great combination of features.
Drakona ^(CRB): Scales provides an additional way to protect your Hit Points, which combines very well with Call of the Brave’s Rise to the Challenge feature, allowing you to more safely linger at low HP. Elemental Breath is interesting, but since it’s an Instinct weapon it will likely be less accurate that whatever weapons you’re using, which are more likely to use Agility or Strength. Still, if you’re building to use Know Thy Enemy, you’ll have enough Instinct to make Elemental Breath usable, which makes it a good way to handle groups of enemies without needing a Domain Card like Whirlwind. Since it’s a weapon, it can benefit from things like the Reckless Domain Card and Call of the Slayer’s Slayer Die and Weapon Specialist features, as well as the Warrior’s flat damage bonus from Combat Training.
Dwarf ^(CRB): The Dwarf’s whole deal is spending resources to mitigate incoming damage. The options are good, but they are very expensive to use, so you can’t use them constantly.
Elf ^(CRB): An easy way to boost Reactions Rolls, plus an extra Downtime Activity whenever you rest, making it easy to recover Hit Points, Armor, and Stress, or to generate Hope.
Faerie ^(CRB): Flight is excellent if you’re building to fight at range.
Faun ^(CRB): If you want to leap, consider the Faerie so that you can fly. Kick is neat, but if you’re building for melee you want to stay there and keep your enemies in range for Attack of Opportunity.
Firbolg ^(CRB): Charge is fantastic for melee builds. The damage doesn’t scale, but it will still deal Minor Damage. If add the Whirlwind Domain Card, you can charge into crowds and deal a huge amount of damage to everything foolish enough to be close together.
Fungril ^(CRB): Instinct isn’t a good Trait for the Warrior, and Death Connection isn’t good enough on its own.
Galapa ^(CRB): Shell is a nice boost you Damage Thresholds which will stack with several available Domain Cards, making you exceptionally durable.
Giant ^(CRB): A simple and easy choice. An extra Hit Point is always helpful, and Reach allows you to use high-damage weapons like the Greatsword with extended range, as well as expanding the range of Attack of Opportunity. Combined with the Warrior’s Weapon Training feat, you can use weapons like a greatsword weapons in one hand, leaving your other hand free for a Secondary Weapon like a shield for more Armor or a short sword for more damage.
Goblin ^(CRB): If you’re building around Agility, the ability to ignore Disadvantage on your Agility Rolls is really good. The once per rest reroll is also a great way to mitigate incoming damage.
Halfling ^(CRB): A simple, reliable choice for any class, and welcome in any party. The ability to give everyone Hope gets more useful in larger parties, so Halflings are more appealing as your party grows in size.
Human ^(CRB): An additional Stress is helpful on any character, and the ability to reroll checks which use your Experiences means that you can reroll the rolls which matter most to your character.
Infernis ^(CRB): The ability to change a roll with Fear into a roll with Hope means that you can generate Hope more easily and prevent your GM from gaining Fear. In combat, it means that the spotlight doesn’t automatically pass to the GM, allowing players to continue to act. If you can afford the Stress to use Fearless, it’s absolutely worth it. Dread Visage is fine.
Katari ^(CRB): An easy choice for Agility-based builds.
Orc ^(CRB): Sturdy is great if you’re leaning into Call of the Brave’s Rise to the Challenge feature, giving you an extra layer of protection around that very last Hit Point. Tusks is fine, but not worth the Hope unless you’re certain that it will get you into another Damage Threshold.
Ribbet ^(CRB): Amphibious will rarely matter, and Tongue is only situationally useful.
Simiah ^(CRB): Nimble’s +1 to Evasion is fantastic for high-Evasion builds.
Mixed Ancestry ^(CRB): Mixed Ancestry is an easy way to optimize, but you need to look for a mix of Ancestries that complement your build. The options below are not a comprehensive list, instead focusing on options relevant to the Warrior.
First feature:
- Drakona: Scales ^(CRB): The ability to mitigate Severe Damage with Stress means that you can always reduce incoming damage to Minor Damage so long as you have slots to spend. The level 1 Domain Card Get Back Up provides the same function, and it appears that you can use both on the same attack.
- Dwarf: Thick Skin ^(CRB): Good damage mitigation, but it is costly.
- Firbolg: Charge ^(CRB): Charging into melee and dealing automatic damage can be very helpful for an aggressive melee build.
- Galapa: Shell ^(CRB): A convenient and scaling increase to your Damage Thresholds. An easy choice to combine with basically anything.
- Giant: Endurance ^(CRB): +1 Hit Point is always good.
- Goblin: Surefooted ^(CRB): Nice insurance for Agility-based builds, but only situationally useful.
- Human: High Stamina ^(CRB): +1 Stess is always good.
- Orc: Sturdy ^(CRB): Synergizes very well with Call of the Brave’s Rise to the Challenge. Combine this with the Goblin’s Danger Sense or the Simia’s Nimble to give yourself some additional protection so that you can linger at 1 unmarked Hit Point as long as possible.
Second feature:
- Clank ^(CRB): Efficient is really good if you’re in melee taking a lot of hits and need the ability to quickly recover Armor or Hit Points.
- Dwarf: Increased Fortitude ^(CRB): Good damage mitigation, but it is costly.
- Elf: Celestial Trance ^(CRB): The ability to take additional Downtime Activities means that you can more easily recover Hit Points, Armor, and Stress.
- Faerie: Wings ^(CRB): Flight is really good, especially if you’re building to fight at range.
- Firbolg: Unshakeable ^(CRB): If you’re building around spending a lot of Stress, this can help reduce that resource cost. This combines nicely with the Drakona’s Scales, the Dwarf’s Thick Skin, and the Human’s High Stamina.
- Giant: Reach ^(CRB): Nice for melee builds, especially if you’re building around a Trait that doesn’t work with melee weapons that have Very Close range.
- Goblin: Danger Sense ^(CRB): Good damage mitigation for a big, scary hit, but it only works once per rest.
- Simia: Nimble ^(CRB): +1 Evasion is always good. You can combine this with literally anything.

Warrior Communities

Highborne ^(CRB): You probably aren’t building around Presence.
Loreborne ^(CRB): You’re definitely not building around Knowledge.
Orderborne ^(CRB): Rolling a d20 for your Hope die is great. Save it for important rolls since you only get to do it once per rest.
Ridgeborne ^(CRB): Only useful in campaigns where you expect travel to be difficult.
Seaborne ^(CRB): Simple, reliable, and useful for literally any character. If you consider any other Community, ask yourself how it will be meaningfully better than Seaborne.
Slyborne ^(CRB): Situationally useful for hiding. Sneaking and hiding are Finesse rolls, so look elsewhere if you’re not building around Finesse.
Underborne ^(CRB): Only situationally useful, but a lot of adventuring happens in dark places.
Wanderborne ^(CRB): Very fun, but also heavily dependent on your GM giving you something good.
Wildborne ^(CRB): Sneaking and hiding are Finesse rolls, so look elsewhere if you’re not building around Finesse.

Warrior Traits

The Warrior isn’t locked into any specific Traits, making them very flexible. You’re likely to select Traits based on what weapons you plan to use. For example: the official class guide recommends +2 in Agility, which makes you effective with broadswords, longswords, bows, and shortswords. If you wanted to use greatswords, you would instead want +2 in Strength.

You can easily build your Warrior to depend on a single Trait, but increasing Traits when you gain a level always allows you increase two of them. This makes it easy to have a secondary trait that you increase to support specific options. For example: you might build around Agility to support your weapons and the majority of the Warrior’s Domain Cards, then you might invest in Presence so that you’ll fare well in social situations.

Agility: The best Trait for the Warrior. Many of the Warrior’s Domain Cards interact with Agility, especially those in the Bone Domain.
Strength: If you want a durable Warrior with lots of armor and poor Evasion, building around Strength is an easy choice. Big weaons like greatswords frequently use Strength. However, none of the Warrior’s Domain Cards specifically benefit from Strength.
Finesse: There are weapons which use Finesse, but they’re generally worse than those that use Agility or Strength. Nonr of the Warrior’s Domain Cards specifically benefit from Finesse.
Instinct: There is exactly one Domain Card available to the Warrior which depends on Instinct and exactly one non-magic T1 weapon. The Warrior doesn’t get access to Magic Weapons by default, and no Physical Weapons use Instinct.
Presence: None of the Warrior’s Domain Cards depend on Presence, so it’s a natural dump stat. There are some Physical Weapons which use Presence, such as the Rapier, but that’s not enough to justify building around it. Presence may still be useful because it’s used in social situations.
Knowledge: There is exactly one Domain Card available to the Warrior which depends on Knowledge: Strategic Approach. The Warrior doesn’t get access to Magic Weapons by default, and no Physical Weapons use Knowledge.

	Agility	Strength	Finesse	Instinct	Presence	Knowledge
Guide Recommended	+2	+1	0	+1	-1	0

Warrior Experiences

Experiences in Daggerheart are intentionally freeform, giving the player and the GM a lot of room to create so long as they can agree that they work. The guidance in the core rulebook says that Experiences should not be overly broad, nor should they be too mechanically-oriented. A sidebar accompanying the Experiences rules suggests one combat-focused Experience and one non-combat Experience, and I think that’s good advice.

We can’t rate or compare options because Experiences are so freeform and subject to GM interpretation. We recommend picking an Experience that supports how you plan to fight (ex: Eagle Eye for an archer) so that you can reliably use it in combat, then use your second Experience for something interesting.

Warrior Equipment

Warrior Weapons

Because Attack of Opportunity only works on enemies with Melee range, weapons with a range of Very Close are less appealing for melee builds, but there are also some really great Domain Cards that benefit from that extra range.

Combat Training also allows you to ignore Burden, so you have the ability to use two-handed weapons in one hand, allowing you to use more powerful primary weapons while still using a secondary weapon. But that assumes that I am correctly interpreting Weapon Training correctly, and I’m not entirely certain that I am.

Warriors do not have a Spellcast Trait, so they can’t use magic weapons by default. If you want access to magic weapons, you’ll need to multiclass.

Warrior Armor

Your armor choices depend heavily on your specific build and preferences. You can make nearly anything work

Warrior Multiclassing

Multiclassing into a class or subclass with a Spellcast Trait will grant you access to Magic Weapons in addition to whatever other benefits the class provides.

Guardian ^(CRB): Several of the Warrior’s Domain Cards benefit significantly from the Guardian’s Unstoppable feature.
Seraph ^(CRB): The Seraph uses Strength as a Spellcast Trait. If you’re built around Strength you can get a lot of value here because you’re benefiting from both access to Magic Weapons and from the Seraph’s Strength-based spells.

Warrior Domain Cards

Blade Domain by Level

Get Back Up: This is only situationally useful because Severe Damage shouldn’t be a common occurrence. But it is very helpful insurance when it does happen. Combined with armor, you can reduce damage from Severe to Minor.
Not Good Enough: Rerolling 1s and 2s doesn’t increase the average roll of a die very much, so mathematically this adds very little. But the value grows as you add additional damage dice, so it’s at least worth considering.
Whirlwind: Absolutely spectacular when you’re using a ranged weapon at close range or a weapon like a polearm that has Very Close range. The additional targets take half the damage dealt to your first target, but that will still likely deal at least Minor Damage, which eats through the resources of multiple enemies at the cost of a single Hope. Even better, this has a Recall Cost of 0, so you can rotate it into your Loadout mid combat if enemies position themselves for this to work.
Call of the Slayer’s Weapon Specialist feature complements this very well, allowing you to add your secondary weapon’s damage die on every target of this attack.
A Soldier’s Bond: 3 Hope for you, 3 Hope for a friend. Fantastic, reliable, simple. Just be sure that you have good options to spend that Hope. After you use this, rotate it out of your Loadout at the earliest opportunity since it’s dead weight once you’ve used it for the day.
If you chose Call of the Slayer as your subclass, remember that you can instead choose to gain Slayer Dice.
Reckless: Advantage is good, but you can’t afford to use this constantly unless you have an easy way to recover Stress like Swift Step.
Scramble: Severe Damage? How about no damage instead? (once per rest, but that’s plenty).
Versatile Fighter: There are weapons which support every Trait, but you might find a weapon that you absolutely want but just can’t get the trait to line up with your build. In those cases, this is nice. But on its own, it’s only situationally useful. The ability to mark Stress to max a damage die is nice, but enough to make this broadly appealing.
Deadly Focus: Pick the biggest thing in a fight, then go solo it.
Fortified Armor: Simple and effective, even if it’s not very exciting.
Champion’s Edge: The benefits are really good and this is really fun, but it only applies when you crit on an attack roll, which is inherently unpredictable. You will crit 1 in 12 times, which is often enough that it’s not a rarity, but not so often that you can count on it happening at a time when this will be useful.
Vitality: Simple, effective, and it explicitly locks itself away in your Vault so that you never need to think about it. This is an easy pick on any character as you advance because it won’t try to compete for space in your Loadout.
Battle-Hardened: You should not be nearly dying so often that you need a high-level backup plan to prevent making Death Moves.
Rage Up: Traits don’t scale enough that this is worth the resource cost to use it.
Blade-Touched: Fantastic if you’re building around the Blade Domain. Remember that this card counts as one of the 4 to qualify.
Glancing Blow: Even if you deal absolutely pitiful damage, it’s still a nice consolation prize. Against enemies with high Evasion or enemies who are barely standing, this is fantastic.
Battle Cry: Only oncer per day, and the duration is unpredictable, but the effect is absolutely fantastic. Any important fight should start with this.
Frenzy: That is a massive damage bonus, but you really need to be built for this. You want high Evasion, lots of Hit Points, and options to mitigate damage like Scramble. Strongly consider multiclassing into Guardian to get the Unstoppable feature or taking Bone Domain’s On the Brink.
Since this only functions once per day, be sure to rotate it out of your Loadout once you’ve used it.
Gore and Glory: Good benefits, and they’ll occur more frequently if you’re built to deal lots of damage so that you’re killing enemies frequently.
Reaper’s Strike: Very good, very simple, and it doesn’t care what weapon you use. Use a Tier 1 crossbow or something just so that you have better range than a melee weapon.
Battle Monster: Very powerful, and it gets more powerful if you’re built to make it work. 4 Stress is a significant resource cost, and that is enough to justify looking elsewhere. But if you have increased your Hit Point slots and your Stress slots as you gained levels, this can be a defining tactic worthy of your character’s precious level 10 Domain Cards.
This can synergize well with Call of the Brave’s Rise to the Challenge feature. If you have a big pile of Hit Points, you can wait until you’re below 2 unmarked Hit Points, then you start rolling a d20 for your Hope Die and use Battle Monster to dump huge amounts of damage on your enemies without giving a single thought to their damage thresholds. Add Reckless to the mix for another easy way to boost your attack, maybe spend Hope to apply an experience, ask an ally to Help.

The highest Difficulty in the Core Rulebook is 21. If you use this combo, you’re rolling 1d20+1d12+2d6 before accounting for your Trait, your Experience, and other possible bonuses. The dice average to 24 on their own, so not only are you likely to hit, it’s a near certainty once you add the static bonuses.

A Warrior can have as many as 12 Hit Points by this level before accounting for Domain Cards like Vitality or any other possible source of Hit Point slots. Imagine hitting something for 11 Hit Points in a game where 3 is difficult. The highest number of Hit Points listed for Adversaries in the Daggerheart Core Rulebook is 11, and just two Tier 4 Solo Adversaries reach that loft height. These are campaign-ending boss fights.

Now imagine one-shotting them.

Also, this has a Recall Cost of 0, so you can keep it in your Vault and pull it out when you’ve taken a few hits.
Onslaught: Not nearly so flashy as Battle Monster, but extremely reliable. You can combine this with Splintering Strike to deal a minimum of 2 Hit Points to every enemy in your weapon’s range every turn for as long as you have Hope to keep triggering Splintering Strike.

Bone Domain by Level

Deft Maneuvers: Only situationally useful, but a great boost your mobility if you’re built for Melee but not built around Agility. This also has a Recall Cost of 0, so it’s a great option to leave out of your Loadout once you’re high enough level that you have more than 5 Domain Cards.
I See it Coming: Only situationally useful, and you need to use it before the attack is rolled, so there’s a good chance that the d4 won’t matter.
Untouchable: A boost to your Evasion that will scale as you improve your Agility over time. Combine this with armor that boosts your Evasion and you’ll be very difficult to hit. Remember that you round up in Daggerheart (see page 107 of the Core Rulebook), so your bonus from this will increase at 1, 3, and 5 Agility. If you take this at level 1, you could get another +1 Evasion as soon as level 2.
This is also very tempting for Agility-based builds multiclassing into Warrior. Since you can’t multiclass until Tier 3, your Agility could be as high as +4 when you take this, and the +2 to Evasion is nice.
Ferocity: Unpredictable and expensive. If you’re building for incredibly high damage with little reliance on Hope, this might be great. Otherwise, skip it.
Strategic Approach: The only Domain Card available to the Warrior which depends on Knowledge. If you’re planning to increase Knowledge over time, this can provide a powerful resource pool. Removing a Stress or gaining Advantage is roughly equivalent to a Hope, so you can think of this like starting each day with a pool of additional Hope with very specific usage limitations.
The additional d8 of damage is fine, but it’s the least impactful of the options listed. If you’re attacking Minions, it might clear out another Minion or two, which is worth the cost unless your party had another easy way to clear Minions in a hurry.

Because the tokens for Strategic Approach are only restored on a Long Rest, rotate this into your Vault once you’ve spent your tokens for the day.
Brace: Good, especially if you’re leaning into Rise to the Challenge, but expensive.
Tactician: Potentially very powerful if you’re investing in your Experiences to increase their value. The benefit to Tag Team Rolls is nice, too, but only worth considering if your party routinely spends Hope to use them.
Boost: Excellent for melee builds. Normally you can only move to Close range unless you risk an Agility Roll to go further. This removes that risk and adds a nice damage boost on top.
Redirect: This only works against some types of attacks, has a good chance to fail, and is only usable when you’re lucky enough to have an enemy to redirect this toward. Too many failure points.
Know Thy Enemy: This is the Warrior’s only Domain Card which relies on Instinct. The benefits of the effect are good; learning a bit of the target’s stats can inform your party’s tactics. However, you’re not guaranteed to succeed, you’re risking generating Fear on the check, and the resource cost can be high. Spending a Stress to remove a Fear can be great, but if you Rolled with Fear, you’re spening a Hope and a Stress to learn some information. Be mindful of the resource cost, and don’t spam this thinking that it’s an easy way to clear out your GM’s supply of Fear.
Signature Move: Improving your Hope die makes it much more likely that you will hit and that you will Roll With Hope, plus you get to clear a Stress. It’s only one per rest, unfortunately.
Rapid Riposte: Unless you’re built to dump your Evasion (very heavy armor, etc.), enemies are going to miss attack against you, allowing you to to turn Stress into damage. You don’t even need to roll to hit, which makes this especially useful against particularly powerful enemies.
Recovery: Easy and reliable. If you’re low on Hit Points, armor points, or Stress, you can use the Long Rest Move to clear all of them. If you’re not, you can generate 2 Hope or work on a project. If you have an ally who wants to take a Long Rest Move, you can use the Prepare move to gain 2 Hope, then spend 1 Hope to enable your ally.
If you have the Clank feature Efficient, you can replace both of your Short Rest Moves with Long Rest Moves.
Bone-Touched: Only appealing if you’re building around Agility. Agility is the Warrior’s suggested high Trait, so that’s definitely possible, but certainly not a guarantee.
Cruel Precision: Easy, reliable damage.
Breaking Blow: 2d12 manage might be enough to move an attack up one damage threshold, but you’re in Tier 4 play at this point and damage thresholds can be as much as 40 damage apart, so it’s certainly not a guarantee.
Wrangle: Only situationally useful, but you might be able to force enemies into useful positions or rescue allies from dangerous ones. Movement and positioning in Daggerheart is extremely vague, so it’s hard to make abilities like this matter consistently.
On the Brink: Normally this would be rated orange, but combining this with Call of the Brave’s Rise to the Challenge feature allows you to fight much more safely when you have 2 or fewer un-marked Hit Points. Use armor to reduce damage down to Minor, then ignore it.
Splintering Strike: The wording of this ability is extremely confusing, and I’m not entirely certain that I’m interpreting it correctly. If I’m reading it right, this will require a huge number of attack and damage rolls, will generate a mountain of both Hope and Fear, and will essentially sideline the rest of the table while you spend a ton of time resolving your turn. It feels strongly against the spirit of the game.
The first sentence of the ability is enough to rate this blue on its own. You can begin any encounter by using a ranged weapon to wipe out every Minion in the encounter and deal Minor Damage to everything else. But it’s not clear if you make a single attack roll and apply it to each enemy, or if you roll a separate attack against each enemy. If you do, you’re likely to generate a pile of both Hope and Fear, easily paying for the 1 Hope to activate this. Of course, the GM then has a big pile of Fear which they can then use to retaliate

I think the second and third sentences are intended to be a single once-per-day effect. If I understand things correctly (and, again, I don’t know that I do), you roll damage separately for each target that you hit, total the number, and divide it as you see fit. Deal 1 damage to each Minion to eliminate them, then try to focus damage on the bigger monsters to get better than Minor Damage. Even if you only apply 1 damage to a target, Minor Damage will still mark a Hit Point (or an armor slot).

Assuming things work as I’ve described them, Splintering Strike’s biggest problem is that it disadvantages melee attacks. If you’re built for melee, consider drawing a ranged weapon specifically to use this.

Call of the Slayer’s Weapon Specialist feature complements this very well, allowing you to add your secondary weapon’s damage die on every target of this attack.
Deathrun: If you’re using a ranged weapon, this is Splintering Strike, but worse because the damage scales down as you hit additional targets. The only advantage is that you get to move and potentially target more enemies, but that’s not worth 2 additional Hope and the dramatically reduced damage.
If you’re using a melee weapon, this is damage in a wide, straight line. Line AOEs rarely hit more than two creatures, but you can widen the path by using a melee weapon with better range. A character using a polearm with Very Close range would create a line 35 feet wide (15 feet to the left, their own space, then 15 feet to the right), carving a large swath and hopefully hitting numerous enemies. However, the Hope cost is high and this will only be effective if enemies are positioned to support it.

Call of the Slayer’s Weapon Specialist feature complements this very well, allowing you to add your secondary weapon’s damage die on every target of this attack.
Swift Step: Unless you have dumped your Evasion, this is basically free Stress recovery and then free Hope. If your Evasion is good, go run into crowds of enemies and intentionally draw fire so that you can farm this.

Example Warrior Build – The Officer

This build combines front-line martial capabilities with support options to empower your whole party. We’ll help generate Hope, we’ll be an effective front-line Defender (remember: we don’t use the word “tank” on RPGBOT, but you’ll have to enjoy a DnD article for the detailed explanation), we’ll provide some cool buffs to the party, and we’ll be everyone’s best friend in combat. We’re going to enjoy Tag Team Rolls, too!

Also, at level 10 we can one-shot bosses.

Subclass

Call of the Brave. It gives us an additional way to generate Hope, and the final subclass feature improves our Tag Team Rolls. It exactly fits our build both thematically and mechanically.

Traits

This build doesn’t depend heavily on specific Traits, but we’re building around Agility to support a few cards from the Bone Domain. If you want to build around a different Trait, you can easily replace those cards without much impact.

Agility	Strength	Finesse	Instinct	Presence	Knowledge
+2	+1	0	0	+1	-1

Ancestry

Halfling. We want the ability to hand out Hope to the entire party because it makes them more likely to spend Hope on Tag Team Rolls. If you’re interested in a Mixed Ancestry, Clank is a great choice so that you can more easily recover spent Hit Points, Armor, and Stress.

Community

Any. Seaborne is a safe default, as always.

Experiences

Lead from the Front. We’re a military leader accustomed to fighting on the front lines. We like to get into a fight, throw swords about, and lead our allies to victory.

Officer Schooling. We have formal military training, which includes tactics, history, and a bit of diplomacy.

Advancement

Level	Advancements and Cards	Notes
1	– Blade: Get Back Up – Bone: Deft Maneuvers – Ancestry: Halfling – Community: Any	For your starting equipment, take a broadsword, a tower shield, and chainmail armor. That gives us a total armor of 6 Armor slots, but it does reduce our Evasion to 9, so we’ll get hit more often but can easily mitigate the incoming damage. We can also use Get Back Up to mitigate damage, effectively turning our Stress into a second pool of Armor. I like the broadsword for the +1 to attack rolls. Combined with our No Mercy Feature, you have a +2 attack bonus compared to everyone else, so you’re going to hit consistently. We get a scaling damage bonus from our class, too, so the +3 damage from the longsword is less important. Deft Maneuvers is only situationally useful, but it helps us get around quickly in melee. It will be useful as a fallback at higher levels.
2	– Blade: A Soldier’s Bond – +1 Agility, +1 other – +1 Stress Slot – New Experience at +2	A Soldier’s Bond lets us generate 3 Hope for ourselves and a friend. You know what would be a great use for that hope? A Tag Team Roll! We also gain access to Tier 2 equipment at this level. It’s not very exciting, but an Improved Broadsword is sitll a great primary weapon for us. Remember that Attack of Opportunity only works if we hit, so being accurate is crucial if we want to make it as effective as possible. For your secondary weapon, stick to shields. Your choice of round of tower. For armor, I recommend Improved Chainmail. The damage thresholds are incredibly high. You might instead take Elundrian Chain Armor because subtracting 5 or 6 damage (depending on what shield you picked) is nice, easily covering the 2 point difference in Damage Threshold. Harrowbone is worth considering, but Resilient is a gamble, which makes me nervous. Improve Chainmail is the safe option, but the others might be more fun. If you have a chance to pick up a chance to pick up a ranged weapon, a Finehair Bow shares our Broadsword’s +1 to attack bonus and also uses Agility.
3	– Bone: Tactician – +1 HP slot – +1 to two Experiences	Tactician is a fantastic support ability which makes us exceptionally good at Helping an Ally. We’re increasing Lead from the Front (and any one other Experience) at this level, so allies can spend one Hope to add +3. That will eventually get up to +5, and I don’t know about another way to turn a total of 2 Hope (one from you, one from them) into a 1d6+5 bonus to a roll.
4	– Blade: Fortified Armor – +1 HP slot – +1 Stress slot	Fortified Armor has a Recall Cost of 0, so it’s great to trade in when you’ve taken a few hits and you’re worried about your Hit Points. You’ll note that we’re ending Tier 2 and haven’t increased out Proficiency. This is intentional for this build. We’re not heavily focused on high damage output. Our attacks are reliably accurate and we’re great at supporting and defending our allies.
5	– Blade: Vitality – +1 Agility, +1 any other – +1 HP slot – New Experience at +2	At this level we now have enough Domain Cards that we need to decide what goes into our Loadout and what remains in our Vault. For now, Deft Maneuvers goes into the Vault. It has a Recall Cost of 0, so we can swap it in whenever it might be useful. Vitality is a permanent passive that goes straight into our Vault. Grab the +1 HP, then your choice of +1 Stress or +2 to Damage Thresholds. I lean toward the Stress, personally. We have both the Armor and the Hit Points to manage the occasional times when a +2 difference results in one additional Hit Point, and the bigger Hit Point capacity will work for us at level 10. At this level we can start looking for Tier 3 gear. Once again, the Advanced Broadsword remains our easiest choice. For a more damage-focused build, the Flickerfly Blade is a good choice. For your secondary weapon, either upgrade your shield or switch to a Buckler. A Buckler will be more complex, but your Armor Score will be at least 5, and adding +5 to Evasion at the cost of one Armor slot could mean avoiding an attack entirely. Personally, I would go for the reliability of an Advanced Tower Shield.
6	– Bone: Recovery – +1 HP slot – +1 to two Experiences	Recovery is fantastic. It has a Recall Cost of just 1, so you can easily rotate it into your Loadout immediately before resting. We’ll primarily use it to recover Armor or Stress so that we can linger at low HP with Rise to the Challenge.
7	– Blade: Blade-Touched – +1 Stress slot – Upgrade Subclass	The vast majority of our Domain Cards are from the Blade Domain, so Blade-Touched is an easy fit. The attack bonus makes us exceptionally accurate, and raising our Severe Damage Threshold makes it even harder for enemies to do more than Major Damage to us. Call of the Brave’s Rise to the Challenge is very powerful, but also inherently risky, which is why we’ve delayed taking it for as long as possible. At this level we have 11 hp slots, 10+ armor slots, and 9 Stress slots. We can take a ton of hits, and we’re really good at mitigating damage.
8	– Blade: Battle Cry – +1 Agility, +1 one other – Upgrade Subclass – New Experience at +2	Battle Cry only works once per Long Rest, but it’s great for big fights. It only ends when an ally fails with Fear, so your whole party should Help each other and be aggressive about spending Hope to add their Experiences to attacks. If it’s not a reasonably safe roll, don’t try it. We again upgrade our subclass, making our Tag Team Rolls better and allowing us to initiate them more often. Remember to bring out Tactician so that we can roll a d20 for our Hope die. At this level we can start looking for Tier 3 gear. Once again, the Legendary Broadsword remains our easiest choice. A Dual-Ended Sword could also be fun For your secondary weapon, either upgrade to the next Round/Tower Shield or grab a Braveshield. The Braveshield doesn’t provide more Armor slots, which is really hard compared to 4 or 5 more Armor, but the ability to protect our whole party against multi-target attacks is really good. For armor, Legendary Chainmail is our safest choice. 7 Armor slots and good Damage Thresholds. We should also consider Full Fortified Armor, but we’re going to take On the Bring at next level, which will make Full Fortified Armor less useful for us. Full Fortified Armor is also really good, but it only has 4 Armor slots, which can be a problem. Combining that with a Braveshield means that you can reduce incoming damage by 2 steps for your whole party, but only 4 times, which is a huge problem in fights against multiple enemies, so a Round/Tower Shield is much safer. 8 or 9 Armor slots with double effect is really good, and means that we can reduce Severe Damage to Minor Damage, then use a Stress with Get Back Up to negate it entirely if we want to.
9	– Bone: On the Brink – +1 to two Experiences – +1 Stress slot	On the Brink lets us linger at 1 or 2 unmarked Hit Points much longer. Our damage thresholds are really high, so taking Severe Damage will be rare, and we can use Get Back Up to reduce it to Major. Then we have a huge pile of armor that we can use to reduce Major Damage to Minor Damage, which we can then ignore. So when we’re down to 2 HP, lingering on the brink of death, we’re borderline untouchable. If you took Full Fortification Armor instead of Legendary Chainmail, you can instead mark 1 Armor slot to reduce Severe Damage to Minor before ignoring it or you can negate Major damage. This will let you take Get Back Up out of your Loadout in favor of something more interesting. If you have a Tower Shield, you have 9 Armor slots, so you might ask your allies to slap you around a bit so that you can walk into battle at 2 HP.
10	– Blade: Battle Monster – +1 HP slot – +1 HP slot	Battle Monster lets us turn our low HP into a very dangerous problem for our enemies. We have a +1 attack bonus from No Mercy, +1 from our weapon, +2 from Blade-Touched, and +5 from Agility for a total flat bonus of +9 to hit. The highest Difficulty listed for Adversaries in the Core Rulebook is 21. An average roll on the Duality Dice is 13, which means that our average to hit is 22. But we’re rolling a d20 Hope Die thanks to Rise to the Challenge, so our average dice roll is actually 17 for a total average of 26. If that somehow doesn’t feel safe enough, use our +5 Experience Lead from the Front to add another +5 to hit. Your minimum roll is now 16, automatically hitting most Adversaries in the game, and your average of 27 will reliably hit everything else. We also have a total of 13 Hit Point slots (we took every advancement, plus the Vitality Domain Card), so we can sit at 2 unmarked Hit Points, use Battle Monster to hit almost unerringly, and one-shot every Adversary in the game. Use Battle Cry to let your allies clean up the minions, then go solo the boss.