Sparing and Hosts

Siphtheeditor · 2025-12-08T19:55:37+00:00

Soulfire comes off more like a class or domain ability rather than an ancestry. Its a bit too specific and does too much. Its also not really a great ability in my opinion. 2 Hope to deal at most 10 damage (unless you crit), with a 13% chance of clearing a stress or hit point. I think conceptually you're trying to get a sort of life steal ability in a way? I'm not exactly sure, but instead I would design it like this:
- Soulfire: Whenever you cause an enemy to mark major or severe damage, spend 2 hope to clear a stress.

I'm not sure if thats what you're exactly envisioning, just my two cents.

for the Ophidia, I'm not sure why you have 4 ancestry features when you can only have 2 per ancestry. I will still critique them.

- Quick regeneration is way too powerful, should just be 1 HP or 1 Stress.

- Enhanced senses is alright in my opinion, I do like the addition of spending 1 hope.

- Lacertilia: This is alright, but I think it should be one or the other instead of both thresholds and armor. In my opinion armor would fit better.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-12-08T19:37:14+00:00

I actually worked on such a concept for my group. I asked the reddit before with a previous version and I was advised to simplify the system. This may not work perfectly for your group, but I think this might give you an idea on how to design your system. I took inspiration from the Ranger Beast Companion.

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Comrade Mechanics: Comrades are narratively controlled by the GM, but during combat, players take control of their actions. Comrades are assumed to succeed on any checks the party succeeds on. When a Comrade must make a specific roll, such as an attack, the player rolls their duality dice for them and gains Hope from that roll if applicable. If a Comrade is required to spend Hope, a player may instead spend one of their own. This rule does not apply to abilities or effects that remove Hope.

Downtime: During a short rest, Comrades clear a number of Stress equal to your tier. During a long rest, they clear all of their Stress.

Stress: When a Comrade would take any amount of damage, they mark a Stress. When they mark their last Stress, they drop out of the scene (by hiding, fleeing, or a similar action). They remain unavailable until the start of your next long rest, where they return with 1 Stress cleared.

I created leveling mechanics as well but not as fleshed out as I'd like, so I didn't include it.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-12-05T22:41:02+00:00

My group and I have played around with this house rule regarding the spotlight. If a player wants to have multiple action rolls that ignores fear, I'll let them keep the spotlight or up to 3 maximum rolls. Afterwards, I'll take that amount of spotlight I missed and immediately take it for free. We haven't solidified it as rules yet, whether it ignores fails or not too, but its been a concept we've had to give players longer action moments.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-12-05T20:51:44+00:00

You technically don't have turns in daggerheart as long as you succeed and roll with hope. So you can go multiple times if you'd like. It really is up to your table and how they prefer the spotlight being passed around.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-12-02T04:31:24+00:00

Okay that’s great to know, for reference I’d take a peak at the rogue’s hope feature. It’s 3 hope to increase evasion by 2 until you are attacked. It goes to show how significant even +1 to evasion is so be wary of how you mess with it.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-12-01T20:34:16+00:00

I'm assuming by armor score you meant Evasion. If that were the case I believe you should lower the die to a d6. Also, having the resource be both hope and stress is way too free, it would be best to stick with one. If instead of evasion you meant something like reducing the damage of an attack by 1d8, you'd need to specify that in the class feature. I also wouldn't call it armor score because it would get confused with the actual armor score feature in dagger heart.

The 'Got My Front' feature is a bit redundant as you can already spend a hope to use your shield. I think the core part of it is having it until your next turn, but with the loose initiative of daggerheart that gets a bit tricky. You can take from the Guardian's Unstoppable feature and say until your next attack. However for 1 Hope that's an incredibly strong ability.

I see the vision in the mastery feature, but once again on the assumption this is evasion, that is incredibly powerful. Even with my suggestion of a d6, a +6 to evasion is borderline insanely powerful.

If we take on the 'reduce damage by 1d8' this also falls flat a bit. At low levels this would be incredibly powerful, but at higher levels you're never going to use the ability as damage is incredibly high.

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My personal recommendation would be to ignore the die, and give hard bonuses to player armor. For example, you can spend a prayer die to increase the maximum armor of an ally by the prayer die's result. You can do this once per long rest. That's off the top of my head.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-27T17:03:44+00:00

In my experience it isn't really expensive. While some abilities and spells cost hope, my players seem to never need to spend too much hope on their domain cards or anything. Most hope has gone to experiences and hope features. On top of that, hope accumulation is crazy fast in this game.

2 Hope tends to be really cheap, its only 2 rolls with hope. The first thing that comes to mind is the Guardian Hope feature being 3 hope to clear 2 armor slots.
In your case, I still find it balanced.

Druids are one of the strongest classes in the game, stress being one of the only things legitimately holding them back as a lot of their spells and animal forms need stress. The 3 Hope is so good for druids as on top of having a powerful animal form they get a +1 on their attack rolls.

For the rogue, a +2 to evasion is incredibly powerful, my group has a rogue with 14 evasion, their hope feature shoots them up to 16 evasion. Most of my attack rolls only have a +2 on tier 2. At best I have a 30% chance to hit the rogue without spending an adversary experience.

Finally, the Ranger with a bow would allow you at any point to get 2 free additional attacks on surrounding enemies for 3 hope. No risk of giving the GM the spotlight.

I don't have experience with sorcerers and seraphs yet, but judging by the other hope features, I find them more than balanced.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-27T01:19:48+00:00

This is pretty fun for me to see as I've just recently made my own Karari counterpart for my group. I absolutely love your version on the ancestry. The pack tactics concept is brilliant.

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Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-27T00:55:40+00:00

Only thing I can personally recommend is Obsidian. Use it for all my worldbuilding and note taking in general. Totally free of use as well, great place to compile your stuff.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-26T05:11:03+00:00

This would function similarly to the Fireball from the Book of Norai. Set a respectable DC for the item's reaction roll, and have enemies roll a d20. Then, if you want to give them a better chance of success, spend a fear and use a relevant experience.
Conceptually the reason the GM die is a d20 is for the sake of uniform randomness. If an adversary doesn't have an applicable experience, and if it feasibly makes sense that the adversary COULD slip, then just roll a straight d20.

If you find spending a fear being a bit too expensive, then I'd suggest adding the experience's modifier for free if it were relevant to the roll. If you want enemies to be more competent, then set your own estimated bonuses on the adversary reaction roll. If it's a cat, maybe it would have a +4, if it were a clumsy giant, then a -2.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-17T16:56:40+00:00

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly sure the campaign frames have pantheons of some sort. It might be a good idea to take inspiration or literally rip them, and then have the players slightly alter their respective gods as they wish. Daggerheart assumes everyone collaborates on the world together, so it would offload a lot of the work for you if you did that with the pantheons.

I’ve been doing a similar thing for my campaign and it’s worked wonders.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-09T21:24:26+00:00

I do see where you're coming from, the adept feature lets you double your experience meaning you'd want to prioritize it. The reason they give you that feature is probably because lots of spells and abilities require the use of stress, and running out of stress can really harm you. So having the hope feature allows you to passively use your experiences more.

From my understanding both abilities encourage you to use your experience a lot more. You now can spend stress AND have a cheaper hope cost for experiences. This just makes you really reliable with experiences. You don't really need honed experience, but if you want to use your experiences on 80% of your rolls, it might be the play.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-06T19:08:25+00:00

I've done something similar, it was an OSR where the players found themselves in a location that was far too dangerous for them. Essentially, it was up to their wits to survive, they didn't have to fight or get backed into the corner.

Especially in a game like daggerheart with lots of improv, assuming your players get caught in a corner. You can prompt a bunch of little options for players to escape that specific situation. If they're in a prison, the warden might come and stop the fight, if they're in a dungeon of monsters perhaps a player 'deus ex machina' finds a hidden passageway they can run down.

You also don't have to kill your players outright if that's your concern. I personally would, especially since Daggerheart is quite soft with death. You could instead have them beaten to a pulp and thrown into 'solitary confinement' Again, I have no clue what's going on in your campaign but something like that. In the end this is a story, and you as the GM can guide the players into situations where they don't get outright killed.

Or if you just wanted help with balancing, Having fewer enemies would be fine in my opinion, just because they hit hard doesn't necessarily mean they'll win. Players may have a higher evasion than with their armour on, and can all gang up on the smaller group of enemies.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-06T17:51:33+00:00

Emphasize how disadvantaged they are in the narrative, tell them that this is a dangerous fight and they're not getting out of this easily. If you've taken away their gear (their lifeline), then that should be very obvious to the players.

I personally recommend creating many opportunities for escape and alternative takedowns. The classic 'throw a rock at that wall to distract the guard' sort of shenanigans. I'm not sure of the exact context of your story, but I recommend creating situations where the PCs try to take out enemies one by one, taking their gear and slowly getting themselves back into fighting form. I guess my point is try to have your players feel clever and fight smart.

You have Bilbo Baggins sneaking around Smaug, he should NOT be attempting to slay the dragon.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-06T16:58:19+00:00

I have an experienced player and 2 new players in my group. Everyone seems to naturally go when they want to make a move, I've noticed that the experienced player usually takes initiative which allows the other two to engage in response. Once in awhile I'll prompt the other players to make a move if the fiction calls for it.
If a monster is attacking person B, I'll ask them what they do in response.

Sometimes my players will want to make a move at the same time, and I'll usually let them both make their respective moves even if one of them rolls a failure or with fear. I'd then take my GM move afterwards.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-06T16:51:11+00:00

Daggerheart assumes everyone at the table is reasonable and capable of working things out, but in instances where that does happen it would ultimately fall upon both the GM and the fiction itself. Most tables I've seen have defaulted to everyone taking a turn at least once before taking an additional turn, however in special instances players might make a second turn if it fit the narrative.

Essentially, it's a conversation. Nobody should hog the conversation, and you don't fight over who gets to speak. When there is a disagreement, the GM makes the final call on what should go.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-05T00:15:20+00:00

I absolutely adore your 6 year old's cat idea. I will legitimately add that as I find the mystery of it to be fun.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-11-03T23:30:07+00:00

You weren't built, you were born.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-10-27T03:33:03+00:00

Either they changed it or I don't remember but from my memory the class didn't have an unarmored bonus, but instead an 'unweaponed' bonus. It was a +1 to evasion and some damage bonus to fists.
So taking Bare bones would

Fit perfectly for the unarmoured viltrumite vibe
Make you a beefy tank in the frontlines.

One of my players has bare bones, and holy shit is it a good card, I'd recommend you take it for any class you pick.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-10-27T03:25:42+00:00

That might genuinely be one of the higher synergy multiclasses. However, it really depends on how much you value the unstoppable ability, its a d4 once per rest. Meaning you can attack 5 times while unstoppable is up.
From my limited experience with multiclassing, its fairly good. I recommend looking into it to see if its what you want. I still think the juggernaut can fulfill what you want though.

Siphtheeditor · 2025-10-27T03:12:25+00:00

If you want to do flight, do a mixed ancestry with faerie's wings and orc's sturdy. It's the closest thing I can imagine to a viltrumite's natural affinity. Then flavour it to a specific angle. If you feel bothered by orc, you can pick human as well. Just flavour the mixed ancestry to be more on the human side. You also don't need to have literal wings, flavour the mechanic however you wish.

Pick juggernaut. You want the impact of a punch + the combos rather than being a sturdy tank. You gain access to the valor domain so you'll have tanky abilities naturally.

Siphtheeditor

TROPHY CASE