(This post is based on playing the Open Beta 1.5 and listening to the pre-order update video)
Today, I woke up thinking this would be a normal morning. And by that, I mean I would shovel breakfast into my face, forget to pack at least one thing, stumble into the office, and then piece together what I would do.
Then my Discord blew up with this news.
After I recovered control of my (slightly lighter) wallet, I realized there was more and booked a very important meeting on my calendar
I’m still relatively new to the Daggerheart scene, so I missed out on how dramatic previous beta changes were. However, this was my first chance to see how this game, which I am now two sessions and way too much social media deep into, is evolving from what I know.
I dutifully jumped on the livestream to see Spencer and Matt gush about the game and show off the new mechanics.
Of course, they talked about a lot more than mechanics. Maybe I’m doing this wrong to be so obsessed with the mechanics. Still, it’s what I had the strongest opinions on, so let’s hop in.
Action tracker is optional
Daggerheart, of course, isn’t just the action tracker. However, it was the biggest mechanic that jumped out at me after the duality dice. As such, I was pretty shocked that they cut it.
Briefly, the action tracker was a new system for managing actions and initiative. Instead of fixed turn order and limited actions per turn, players can just do what they want. However, whenever they make an action roll, they add their token to the action tracker. Whenever the GM acts, they can activate each adversary by removing a token from the action tracker.
I liked the action tracker. I didn’t use it specifically to count which player played how much. It just provided a way of balancing PC versus adversary actions with a little bit of accounting. If someone is on a roll, they can keep going, but at some point, karma strikes back.
My reaction here is totally artificial because they didn’t really explain what the new system is. They said that the current Daggerheart simplifies everything by using Fear as the only thing for GMs to track. However, they didn’t really explain what the GM can use Fear for other than vaguely “spotlighting” adversaries.
Anyways, I suspect this change will be fine. It will feel clean to GMs who have known nothing else, and I’m not really concerned about the player versus GM action counting. As a GM, I usually have enough leeway to create appropriate tension in combat even without exact action accounting. If I want to ramp things up, I’ll take harder moves. If the players are getting wrecked, I can ease up or spread the damage around.
Just kidding. There’s no mercy rule at my table.
Armor adjusted
Another major mechanic from Daggerheart is armor. In D&D 5e, armor just increases your Armor Class and makes you harder to hit. Daggerheart separates armor from evasion, and you can use it to reduce damage.
Briefly, they changed armor so that it (rather than your class) sets your damage thresholds, and armor slots always reduce between thresholds.
I do really like the conversion from total damage to damage thresholds to hit points, and I think this overall is a good change. I loved that armor gave players something to do when they got hit.
And I think they’re right that the math about armor damage reduction was a little finicky. It’s a choice, but not a really big choice since there are some reasonable heuristics for whether it’s worth spending slots to reduce damage.
That being said, I’m concerned that armor slots function like extra hit points. In flavor, it actually makes sense, but mechanically, it’s not quite as elegant.
Campaign frames have mechanics
In the open beta rules, the Environment mechanic caught my eye. Specifically, Environments have Features similar to 5e lair actions. I like the idea to codify how places are unique: it makes a GM prepare in a different way. However, it can be hard to integrate and consistently use these sorts of mechanics live at the table.
Similarly, Matt pitched that the Age of Umbra would have a unique mechanic around rest. It feels like a good way to encode house rules as part of a campaign world, but again, I’m not sure whether it would be usefully persistent.
Final thoughts
I have been running games for awhile, and in all that time, I have actively avoided house ruling and homebrewing content. I made my own worlds, but I filled them with stock monsters, and I pretty much played according to the book.
I’m not sure what it is about Daggerheart, but I’m very excited to homebrew for this system. Maybe it’s because I’m seeing it as a plastic, work-in-progress that I could do differently. Maybe the creators have just created a system that invites doing things differently.
Either way, I can’t wait to see what the final form is, then immediately ruin it for my players by pretending I know better.
Elsewhere in Daggerheart
Of course, go to https://www.daggerheart.com/pre-order/ to pre-order your copy of Daggerheart.
For a very short recap of the pre-order update, see BladeBound Saga
And for a longer conversation, check out The Faint Divinities
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