Having played Daggerheart, here’s my thoughts on how the brand new TTRPG system stacks up.
I recently had the chance to play Daggerheart with my group and wanted to put together my thoughts on the game and my experience. There were 6 of us playing (5 players and 1 DM). Most of us are experienced D&D players and have been DMs before. There were also a couple of us that have played alternative RPG systems before.
I decided to play as a giant seraph and our party included a fungril rogue, a faun guardian, a ribbet druid and and a goblin ranger.
Our DM (Chris, who’ll be doing his own review from a DM’s perspective) ran a session created for playtesting Daggerheart. It was setup in a way to be able to easily introduce new players to the system with a fairly basic deliver a package through some dangerous woodland and handle an ambush kind of scenario.
Character creation
Character creation was really easy. It was mostly just a case of picking character options (which are mostly renamed versions of D&D options) but there’s less fiddling here with options.
Simplified character creation
For example, there’s no rolling for hit points, ability scores are flat increases (no rolling for stats) and even then, you just deal with a modifier (no working out a modifier from a score like in D&D). You also don’t have things like backgrounds or species (community and ancestry) influencing ability scores. They just give separate benefits.
There are less options than in D&D too. Each class has 2 subclasses. That means 9 classes and 18 subclasses to choose from. This is relatively small compared to D&D 2024’s 12 classes and 48 subclasses just in the Player’s Handbook.
While there is still an element of picking complimentary options (like the best kind of armor, weapons or ability scores that fit your character) there’s much less need to create great synergy here. In D&D we might talk about classes that are MAD, that need multiple ability scores to be high for that class to function well. However, it felt like in Daggerheart, that you only ever needed to worry much about one of these.
This seems to be because traits like evasion and HP are tied directly to your class rather than your ability score (in D&D, HP is influenced by both your class and constitution whereas AC is affected by your dexterity and armor). It feels like Daggerheart is trying to have one attribute influence one thing and it definitely simplified the process.
So character creation is definitely simplified, and as a new Daggerheart player, or someone who just wants to dive into role playing, I really appreciate that.
Less crunch, more vibes
Having said that, I actually like the interactions D&D brings. I like the relative complexity and depth of optimisation available and I do find that the systems work well together and have good synergy. I also like having so many options at my fingertips because it makes it easy for me to create the character I want to be.
Essentially, I think daggerheart is more beginner friendly and suits those that don’t want crunchy character creation, but D&D has more depth and tactical considerations which I think will appeal more to RPG veterans and those that enjoy tactical gameplay.
Gameplay
Gameplay in Daggerheart mostly revolved around the duality dice. This is the equivalent of your d20 in D&D and are used for all kinds of tests.
Some slight over-complifications
Interestingly, for all its attempts at simplifications, I did find checks with the duality dice a little slower to work out as I had to add both rolls together, add modifiers on and even sometimes add other dice rolls from benefits that would ordinarily grant advantage in D&D, all while working out which die was higher. This isn’t overly taxing, but it did slow things down a little.
Along this same kind of vein was working out damage. Where D&D has a 2 steps for hitting then damage dealt, Daggerheart has rolling to hit, rolling damage, working out damage thresholds then reducing that with armor. It essentially meant a 4 step process for dealing damage.
There’s also stress and hope mechanics to factor in here too. They were actually quite easy to keep track of, but it was just something else to always be keeping track of. And it was easy to forget that during my calculations for rolls that I needed to add a hope to my pool or when using an experience, I needed to expend a hope (normally in D&D, you don’t need to expend anything to use a skill).
Roleplaying combat makes for more epic moments
Minor gripes aside, I do think general gameplay is much simpler, mainly due to character options being much reduced and a greater influence from simply explaining how you’d like to do things.
And this permeated combat too where everything is much more vague and more roleplay led than mechanics led. For example, when our ranger spotted we were about to be ambushed, my character decided to duck behind a cart while asking our guardian to act as a decoy. As the ambushers ran past my spot, I jumped out and swung my battleaxe at the neck of the closest one. I hit and landed severe damage, killing the ambusher outright and severing his head clean from his body.
Such a manoeuvre is possible in D&D, but would have relied on working out things like readied actions and potentially making a hide action and, for the purposes of optimal combat, would have been challenging to make happen. In the more loosely defined spotlight system of Daggerheart, this was easy to accomplish. I think with players that are happy to share the spotlight and a DM that can manage what can be accomplished in a moment, it’s a good system for more epic moments.
But tactical gameplay is sacrificed
Having said that, I did miss the more tactical elements of combat. It also felt like I needed to be fair with the spotlight too so while I could attempt multiple things during my spotlight in theory, there were 5 other people to share it with. This meant that I often did one thing at a time anyway. I obviously don’t mind taking turns and don’t want to hog the spotlight, but it also meant that if I failed a check, I probably had to wait for the spotlight to swing back round before getting involved again. In D&D, I might still have a bonus action to attempt to do something meaningful on my turn.
This also meant that if others were closer to the action (which at one point they were as me and the guardian swiftly dealt with our foes), that the spotlight naturally fell to those closest to the actions rather than me perhaps trying to catch up or throw my axe. It happens in general role play in D&D, but without turn taking, ended up happening in combat in Daggerheart too.
What we played was basically a tutorial so the combat wasn’t tough. I’d be interested to see how these mechanics hold up on a longer adventuring day against tougher enemies, but we’ll need more game time to work that out.
A system geared towards role playing
It’s also worth pointing out that almost all of our group are experienced RPG players and are all very comfortable with roleplaying. But there’s definitely a knack to role playing that won’t come naturally to all players or groups. Players that tend to shy from the spotlight may find the lack of structure in things like combat leaving them with little they feel comfortable getting involved in.
Dungeon mastering
I won’t labour this point too much as Chris will tackle this in his own article with a DM’s perspective on Daggerheart. However, I do think that while Daggerheart is simpler for me as a player, and asks more of me in a roleplay sense, I felt it was more demanding of the DM.
Greater demands on the DM
The constant rolling of fear meant he always had to be able to throw consequences into the mix. Keeping these fresh and unique is challenging across a campaign. Chris did a really good job of this and his prior experience as a DM made this easier, but it still demanded more from him.
On top of this is the looser structure of combat. In D&D, having a structure allows the DM to fall back on known actions. In Daggerheart, you’ve got elements of this, but you’ve always got to be ready to react to use that fear and determine when to step in.
Lore
One of the players in my group was curious about what Daggerheart’s lore is like. She was keen to know this as she finds that the lore often provides a lot of inspiration when creating a campaign.
A lore-light system
I’ve already covered this in a fair bit of detail in my article on the world’s and realms of Daggerheart, but Daggerheart for the time being, is very light on lore. I’d probably describe it more as a broad set of worlds and planes where you can set whatever stories you like, wherever you like. There are also 5 example campaign frames that provide a bit more detail on lore, but this is a few pages of information (more like what you might get for an individual domain of dread in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft).
What you won’t get is a wealth of lore, locations, events and famous characters like you might get for D&D settings like the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance. This will be disappointing to some who may want more to inspire their adventures. It’s possible more of this will come in the future, but for now, Daggerheart remains a lore-light world.
Conclusion
Daggerheart is certainly a decent system. I think it’s great as a simplified system for newer RPG fans or those that care less about tactical, crunchy combat and more about roleplay and epic moments.
If you do prefer your combat tactical and with greater depth and consideration in character optimisation, then Daggerheart probably isn’t the right system for you. I’d also say that if you like to be in the spotlight less, then Daggerheart is either going to push you out of your comfort zone or leave you twiddling your thumbs for large segments.
Ultimately, while I enjoyed the ease of producing epic moments and enjoyed the session overall, I also felt I could have had a very similar experience playing D&D. I could also do this without learning new rules while getting the depth of tactics and character optimisation that I enjoy.
That’s not to say that Daggerheart isn’t a good system and a great option for certain types of players. However, while my group may choose to continue our Daggerheart campaign alongside D&D, I don’t expect it to replace D&D as our main system.
Have you had chance to play Daggerheart yet? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below.
