I know, I know, this is a Daggerheart blog. But right now, I suspect that the vast majority of Daggerheart players have played at least 1 other TTRPG system, and most of those are 5e. Just last month, we got the new D&D 5th edition (2024) Player’s Handbook, and although it’s mostly the same, I got tripped up on details.
For the past few months, I actually was playing Lancer with my main group, but I decided to switch back to something more popular to help recruit more players. I was interested to see how the new D&D plays. Here were my takeaways.
Really? Grappling?
How, in the first hour, did grappling already come up?
However, grappling worked just fine. First, I immediately flipped to Appendix C: Rules Glossary to figure out the rules. Loved the re-organization there.
Second, the target was distracted, so I normally would have given the attacker advantage, but I was able to quickly switch that into disadvantage on the target’s save. That roll was a very dramatic 20 and 2, and we were able to move on to the next action.
Which skills for lockpicking?
I distinctly remember reading that you can apply Sleight of Hand to lock picking, but in the moment, I couldn’t remember where that was. I flipped to the rules at the beginning but didn’t find it, so I just ruled it from memory.
While writing this post, I found a very helpful reddit post collecting all references to lockpicking in the new rules. It seems that Rogues likely will get Advantage because they probably have two different proficiencies. I whiffed on that because my player didn’t see on his character sheet that he had proficiency with Thieves’ Tools, but it worked out anyways.
Not very inspired
I know they tweaked Inspiration to Heroic Inspiration for use on any roll.
But I still completely forgot to grant Inspiration when my players absolutely deserved it in retrospect.
WotC previewed some interesting changes to Inspiration in the playlets rules, and I’m actually disappointed that they didn’t go further. Perhaps we will see more optional rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Daggerheart made me a better 5e DM
As you all breathe a sigh of relief that I haven’t forgotten why this blog exists.
There were 3 moments in this game when I realized that Daggerheart is already rewiring my GM brain.
First, I started my players in a pickle: they were tied up and being interrogated for how they got into the Vault. Out of character, I also pressed my characters to come up with their own story for how the Vault worked and how they got in.
My DM brain would never have considered letting my players dictate lore, but my DH GM brain was excited to see what they would add.
Second, the rogue rolled and failed to pick a lock. Rather than letting it all fall apart, I applied some “Fail with Hope” logic and determined that since he had failed by less than 5, something good would happen out of it.
I know that degrees of success or failure are a common house rule in D&D, but I had never used it. However, having had it in DH, I felt like I need that flexibility to keep the story moving forward.
Third, the players got into a fight, and I didn’t call for initiative.
The situation was likely to resolve quickly, so I felt like I could do it without needing precise turn order and tracking a fight through attack rolls and damage. It felt very natural.
Final thoughts
As excited as I am about Daggerheart, I still have this 5e group running for the foreseeable future. Running both systems will also allow me to do direct comparisons between the systems.
I believe that the flexibility of almost all TTRPGs means that you can play any sort of game with any system with sufficient home brew hacking. The question really is: to what degree do the rules support the type of game you want to play?
I suspect that my style of running games will converge, and I’ll be able to test out both 5e and Daggerheart against my ideal. Or maybe I’ll come to run very different games led by the system. We will see.
Elsewhere in Daggerheart
More art from Darrington Press! These monkeys definitely have seen evil
I saw a reddit post about a new virtual tabletop (VTT) called Sending Stone, which has direct support for Daggerheart. I haven’t tried it yet, but it does look very, very slick. I love seeing more tooling and content specific to Daggerheart coming together.
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