A tanky flier ready to heal allies or hammer enemies!
The Seraph is the Daggerheart version of a Paladin, along with some Cleric elements. A frontline healer and attacker who keeps allies standing through prayer, divine intervention, and sheer force of devotion. This build aims to use that balance of healer and tank, creating a character who is genuinely hard to ignore on the battlefield but can keep team mates going under fire.
Concept: Aerial Divine Support
The goal here is a Seraph who can sustain the party through prayer dice management and healing, while using the freedom of flight to position for any situation. But this is not a passive healer standing at the back, it is more of an active support character who swoops in to protect allies and strikes when the opportunity presents itself.
Starting Choices
Seraph Class Abilities
The Seraph’s class feature, Prayer Dice, is a key part of the class. At the start of each session you roll a pool of d4s determined by your spellcasting trait, and those values sit in reserve until you need them. You can spend them to reduce incoming damage to an ally within far range or to generate Hope, giving you a useful toolkit that refreshes each session rather than each rest.
The key thing to understand is that the number of prayer dice scales with your spellcast trait score, so getting that as high as possible at character creation is really important. It is also worth noting that the feature specifies your spellcast trait rather than a fixed attribute, which means if you multiclass later, you can swap to a new class’s spellcast trait and your prayer dice adjust accordingly.
The hope feature, Life Support, is more situational. It lets you clear one Hit Point from an ally within close range when you spend Hope, essentially a small emergency heal that costs nothing beyond the Hope you are already spending. It is not flashy, but could add up over time, keeping allies topped up on health.
Ancestry: Winged Sentinel
The Winged Sentinel is an interesting twist on the Seraph’s support identity. The foundation feature, Wings of Light, gives you flight, a powerful positional advantage. Being airborne means you are harder to reach in melee, can reposition freely to reach allies who need healing, and can carry a willing ally out of danger by marking a Stress.
The offensive option, spending a Hope to deal an extra 1d8 on a successful attack, gives you something meaningful to do when dealing damage is the priority over healing.
Flight is generally going to be useful to reach enemies behind obstacles or high above, so you can catch up to snipers or squishy enemy mages who are striking your allies from above.
Subclass: Battle Mage
This subclass affords your wizard an additional hit point slot for a little more staying power, which is welcome as you won’t be using heavy armor or have invested in evasion. The more important part of this subclass is the fact that when you succeed with Fear on an attack roll, you deal an extra 1d10 magic damage. This will not happen all the time, but when it does the enemy force will really feel it. This almost goes without saying, but the more you attack, the more likely it is that this will happen, but the GM is stacking up Fear as you do, so its a bit of a double edged sword.
Community: Orderborn
Coming from an Orderborne community means that Seraph was raised within a collective defined by discipline and faith, and that upbringing has left a clear mark. The community feature, Dedicated, lets you record three sayings or values instilled by that background. Once per rest, when you describe how your current action embodies one of those principles, you can roll a d20 as your Hope die instead of the standard d12.
This is a powerful feature with a pretty flexible ceiling, depending on when and how it is applied A d20 Hope die dramatically increases your chances of rolling higher on Hope than Fear, which means more Hope generated, fewer Fear complications handed to the GM, and a better chance of triggering the Winged Sentinel’s bonus damage on key attacks. The once per rest limitation keeps it from being overwhelming, but timed well on an important action it can swing a battle significantly in your favour.
The roleplay requirement is also worth embracing. Building three clear principles into your character from the start gives you a framework for how your Seraph thinks and acts, which makes the feature feel earned rather than just a mechanical bonus. Something like “protect the vulnerable”, “hold the line” and “faith over fear” would all sit naturally on a flying divine support character and give you plenty of moments to invoke them genuinely in play.
Ancestry: Mixed Heritage
This build takes a mixed heritage, drawing one trait from the Infernis and one from the Firbolg. The combination is quite well suited to the Winged Sentinel Seraph and the way it generates and spends Stress.
Infernis: Fearless – When you roll with Fear, you can mark 2 Stress to convert it into a roll with Hope instead. For a Seraph who depends on generating Hope to fuel Life Support and the Winged Sentinel’s bonus damage, this is a solid safety net. Fear rolls are going to happen, and being able to flip them into Hope at a cost keeps your resource engine running even when the dice are unkind.
Firbolg: Unshakable – When you would mark a Stress, roll a d6. On a 6, you do not mark it. This pairs directly with Fearless. Every time you use Fearless you are marking 2 Stress, and every one of those Stress marks has a 1 in 6 chance of not landing. It also softens the Stress cost of I Am Your Shield, the rapier’s Quick feature, and the Winged Sentinel’s carry ability. Over the course of a session these small reprieves add up and meaningfully extend how long you can keep using your most expensive abilities.
Attributes
| Stat | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | +2 | Primary spellcast trait, drives prayer dice pool and the Winged Sentinel’s damage bonus, stat for attacking with your main weapon the tower shield |
| Presence | +1 | Rapier (secondary weapon) attack rolls use Presence, so having this positive is important for melee combat if looking to strike out at two enemies |
| Instinct | +1 | Helps with awareness and reactive rolls, useful for reading the battlefield from above |
| Knowledge | 0 | Neutral, not a priority for this build |
| Agilityu | -1 | Takes the hit from full plate’s Very Heavy penalty, but flight reduces the practical impact considerably |
| Finesse | -11 | Not needed, deprioritised in favour of core stats |
Strength remains the priority as your spellcast trait, but Presence earns its +1 here because the rapier uses it for attack rolls. The two stats work together rather than competing, with Strength powering your divine abilities and prayer dice while Presence handles your melee effectiveness.
Domain Cards
I Am Your Shield
When an ally within very close range would take damage, you can mark a Stress to intercept the attack and make yourself the target instead. When you take that damage, you can mark any number of armor slots to absorb it.
This card is great on this build and the synergy with full plate is ideal. With 6 armor slots and thresholds of 8 and 17, you are the best possible character to be absorbing hits on behalf of teammates. Flight means you can reach enemies on higher ground, that could be sniping your team mates.. Unshakable gives you a 1 in 6 chance of not even marking the Stress it costs to activate. In the right moment this card can save a party member from a hit that would have downed them.
Mending Touch
Spend a few minutes with a target and spend 2 Hope to clear a Hit Point or a Stress on them. Once per long rest, if you spend that healing time learning something new about them or revealing something about yourself, you can clear 2 Hit Points or 2 Stress instead.
This is your primary out of combat healing tool and will be very consistent. Spending 2 Hope to clear a Hit Point between encounters keeps the party topped up without burning spell slots, and on a build designed to generate Hope consistently through Fearless and smart Dedicated usage, you should rarely find yourself short of the resources to use it.
The once per long rest bonus is worth keeping in mind too. The roleplay requirement, sharing something personal or learning something new about the target, is the kind of moment that is very suited to Daggerheart and incentivises some inventive thinking.
Equipment
Tower Shield (Primary) – The tower shield is a one-handed weapon that uses Strength, deals d6 physical damage, and adds +2 to your armor score through its Barrier feature. On this build it is doing triple duty: it is a melee weapon when you need to attack, it boosts your impressive armor score and it uses your primary stat so nothing is wasted. With I Am Your Shield letting you intercept attacks on behalf of allies, having the highest possible armor score is really important.
Rapier (Secondary) – A one-handed melee weapon that uses Presence and deals d8 physical damage. The headline feature is Quick, which lets you target a second creature within range when you attack by marking a Stress. On most builds that Stress cost would make you think twice, but with Unshakable giving you a 1 in 6 chance of ignoring any Stress mark, using Quick feels much more sustainable. When you drop down to engage in melee, the ability to hit two targets in a single attack action is a good upgrade to your offensive capabilities.
Full Plate Armor – On most characters, full plate’s Very Heavy feature is a significant drawback. The -2 to Evasion and -1 to Agility make grounded characters sluggish and easier to hit. On a Winged Sentinel Seraph, the calculation changes considerably. Flight already handles your positioning, meaning the Agility and Evasion penalties are a bit less punishing in practice than they would be on a grounded character. Combined with the tower shield’s +2 armor score boost, you are sitting at 6 armor slots with thresholds of 8 and 17. That is a lot of staying power for a tier 1 character, and it is the foundation that makes I Am Your Shield so powerful on this build.
How it all comes together
This build plays as a durable support character who keeps allies safe from above. Prayer Dice give you a resource to smooth out the worst moments of combat, Life Support gives you an emergency option when things go wrong, and your domain cards cover both in combat interception and out of combat healing..
At tier 1 this is a straightforward but effective character to play. You are learning when to spend Hope, when to hold prayer dice in reserve, when to swoop in with I Am Your Shield, and when to lean on Dedicated for a crucial roll. The flight and armor combination does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of survivability, leaving you free to focus on the support role you are built around.
Key Strengths
- 6 armor slots with thresholds of 8 and 17 make you one of the most durable tier 1 characters possible
- I Am Your Shield turns your exceptional armor into a team resource, letting you absorb hits on behalf of allies
- Mending Touch provides reliable out of combat healing fuelled by Hope, with a meaningful bonus for good roleplay
Things to Watch Out For
- Evasion is noticeably reduced by full plate and the tower shield, when hits do land you are relying on armor slots rather than avoiding damage entirely
- I Am Your Shield costs a Stress to activate, so use Unshakable’s occasional free reprieves wisely and do not intercept attacks that the ally could have survived anyway
- Fearless costs 2 Stress, which is steep even with Unshakable softening the blow, do not use it on unimportant rolls
- Dedicated only works once per rest, so save it for a moment that genuinely calls for it rather than the first opportunity that presents itself
