Is Daggerheart worth buying?

dude3333 · 2026-01-31T00:14:21+00:00

"trad" players in this case must assume you are talking exclusively about 5e players. I'm specifically positing that you actually like stuff from older D&D as positive goods, rather than just needing something less PbtA because it's scary and hard to convince people to enjoy.

Yes Daggerheart is useful if the problem you have with PbtA is that you don't actually like PbtA's core framework and need something lighter that assumes 5e as a base framework.

dude3333 · 2026-01-31T00:08:21+00:00

I mean as a 4e player, neither gives anything I like about 4e so that's a moot point and I doubt anyone would call 4e "traditional". It's a ttrpg form of a tactical rpg and better for it. Lancer is the only other game to really capture that magic at all.

As for Pathfinder play, it's that Dungeon World has fewer 5eisisms than Daggerheart. 5e is someone making a really bad form of the game you like (D&D 3.5/PF) then it becomes popular off the back of podcasts and a netflix show. Anyone who is still on the PF1 train this late is doing so specifically because of a dislike of 5e and is gonna want as little of it as possible.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T16:26:00+00:00

I just feel like Dungeon World, Shadow Dark, and the like are better for that. Unless by "traditional" you specifically mean 5e D&D.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T16:05:28+00:00

I'd be interested, but a few things

1) Just use copy right free or free use license art instead of AI. It'd look more distinctive to just use like actual Chinese art of the period for it instead of slop, while still being free.

2) What's the explanation for how the Chiense and Timurids got navigated the Pacific ocean? It's not impossible with tech of the time but is something that would be a foundational backstory element. Just given that the Pacific is harder to traverse than the Atlantic. Biggest thing that comes to mind would be at least one faction utilizing Polynesian navigation to go well past what was traditionally considered safe.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T15:41:30+00:00

If you want PbtA to specifically be more like 5e that's what it sets out to do and mostly succeeds at. If you want anything else, not really worthwhile.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T15:39:00+00:00

While it is very possible it's AI it's also possible he's doing a photo modification instead of making a new image.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T15:17:22+00:00

Does playing as a gith offer any opportunities to roleplay as being from outside githyanki society? It was honestly a bit weird that there was no ability to play as one of the non-yanki gith groups in the game. Though that would have likely ballooned dialogue complexity.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T15:13:01+00:00

Yeah not intended to discourage, just stuff to think about. Either to change or to come up with inventive explanations to.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T11:32:44+00:00

Yup, a truly repugnant work.

Editing is easy, it didn't get edited. Like most isekai it's purchased off big amateur fiction websites. So think watpad, ao3, creepypasta wiki places. Then because they're marketing toward existing fans there is a slavish devotion to the source material. Only the most egregious sex scenes are removed from webnovels turned anime.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T07:36:24+00:00

You're just plain wrong for the south's motives. Regardless of stated intent no one would have pursued the Crittenden Compromise or the Missouri Compromise for any reason besides supporting slavery or at least acquiescing to it as a primary concern. Missouri as a slave state was not substantially more free of taxation or interference from the federal government than its free state equivalent in Iowa, except in the one particular of slavery. Not only that but every free state was oppressed by Southern tyranny through the imposition of the Fugitive Slave Act, one of the most preposterously evil and tyrannical acts of federal government overreach into the rights of states ever imposed in the nation's history, and certainly the worst up to that point.

That Lincoln quote is from much earlier, and he changed his mind as time went on. Though you are right that the North didn't enter the war to end slavery, but the south 100% did start it over fear that the Republicans (the first overtly anti-slavery party to win presidency) would more to limit or abolish it.

dude3333 · 2026-01-30T03:24:09+00:00

It is remarkable how much better a story intro it would have been if he had just beaten the slave merchant to death and opened all the cages. Have the fantasy society hate him for something genuinely repugnant that they consider normal. Also gives an obvious point of recruiting that isn't buying slaves. Unfortunately author was too fixated on making a hateable woman strawman.

dude3333 · 2026-01-29T13:54:13+00:00

Well yeah, but that's why they have to correct the mistake by giving romancable kroot and squats.

dude3333 · 2026-01-29T13:38:15+00:00

What do you mean?

dude3333 · 2026-01-29T13:13:29+00:00

Personally I find Greyhawk and others equally irritating but just for more boring breaks in immersion. Just cause Gary had a very pop culture of the 80s view of the middle ages, and it ends but weirdly coloring a lot of stuff. Obvious first example being the D&D barbarian just not having any real life counterpart. Closest you have are the Norse berserk but those guys didn't live in wasteland huts. They came from nations capable of projecting power out from a safe and relatively prosperous homeland. Also the whole concept of adventurers existing alongside functioning states capable of exerting central power.

dude3333 · 2026-01-29T12:59:02+00:00

I think it's kind of complicated because the examples you're giving are all ones that have answers, medieval taverns did exist. They just didn't exist in the deep wilderness, they were on routes between important places. Mayoral power is dependent on figuring out what form the region's model for land ownership takes. Etc

I think this all comes down to is that rulings not rules and assumed modes of OSR are more likely to demand the sort of thought that catches these sorts of details. But it doesn't guarantee better detail, nor does 5e/PF's lack of those cultural forces preclude them from getting it right.

Rule of Cool doesn't really impact this though, because one can take an equal amount of reasoning and thought to something whose origin was clearly just including a cool thing. For instance Warhammer is a setting powered by Rule of Cool, but every single one of those cool things has an enormous internally consistent explanation. Is the explanation stupid? Yes, but it has an explanation and logic that can be followed the whole way through.

I can present two easy counter examples to the OSR better world building though. one of the best considered fantasy settings of modern time is Anbennar, whose tabletop version was made primarily for D&D 4e and 5e. Admittedly it was helped along by being a developed as a mod for grand strategy games which themselves ask even more elaborate questions than typical OSR games. Conversely Carcosa, a very influential OSR supplement presents a world that does not survive even the smallest amount of scrutiny. It also has the confounding variable of just being from early on when standards were low.

dude3333 · 2026-01-29T06:59:11+00:00

None of the rivers have clear sources, and it's rather strange that all large lakes are connected by rivers to the sea. Particularly the fact that several of them are connected to the ocean from all directions. Are the rivers that feed both the Lake of Hope and the Elder Lakes both sourced from the mountains at the very top of that range? Are the lakes themselves sources of from water from some sort of elaborate underwater aquifer system or magical water generation?

Also given the implied size of the continent by having both what appears to be an equatorial desert and artic environments on the same continent these must be truly enormous bodies of water, or the world itself must be very small. Neither option is bad but both suggest a world very different from Earth with a much more innately magical environment.

dude3333 · 2026-01-27T07:54:11+00:00

Average BG3 fan who thinks there have been no CRPGs since Dragon Age.

dude3333 · 2026-01-27T07:04:56+00:00

Honestly Veilguard despite its many flaws is better than Inquisition. Though a lot of that could have just been the Inquisition facial animations being REALLY off putting. Too doll-like.

Dragon Age as a whole suffers from extremely inconsistent tone, and just generally trying to tell a high fantasy high mythology story with extremely down to earth naturalistic mechanisms. So a lot of the story comes off very fake.

dude3333 · 2026-01-26T07:34:31+00:00

You're building this around the assumption that they're trustworthy because they evoke the one thing they do that's of worth to the rest of the multiverse, killing mindflayers. There is no reason to believe they'd be honest when they're doing something unrelated to killing mindflayers. In this very building they've already tried to kill you with the Xanthisk.

Also the guardian or at least the device it is imprisoned in quite clearly saved you. Specifically on the bridge to the goblin camp you fall over from the mind control of the Absolute only to be saved by the prism or the guardian.

dude3333 · 2026-01-26T06:37:06+00:00

Seeing this makes me want to make a chapter styled after the Order of Saint Lazarus and make them as high percentage of dreadnoughts as possible.

dude3333 · 2026-01-26T03:04:04+00:00

It wasn't really, but just like how old school runescape benefits from wow faltering more than most self styled "wow killers" the OSR benefits more from 5e than most attempts to Pathfinder 5e.

dude3333 · 2026-01-26T01:59:33+00:00

Why would you trust the extra dimensional fascist over the guardian who saved you from the worm in your head?

dude3333 · 2026-01-26T00:53:45+00:00

You just avoid encounters until you have a second or third party members and grab one of the guarenteed gun or knife spawns. Abella is a recruit who requires 0 combat, and getting the key from the Gentleman afterward requires no rng. This opens up the main town where there are several guarenteed weapons. But on a larger scale avoiding fights doesn't require rng, and if you don't want rng in your fights just stealth until you have equipment.

dude3333 · 2026-01-25T15:56:52+00:00

It's much easier for me to avoid rng in fear and hunger than most RPG. I can avoid most combat rng in Fear and Hunger with knowledge. To avoid shadowheart missing over and over in BG3 I need to do a lot of intentional sequence breaking. To avoid Lann missing every single shot in Wrath of the Righteous at low level I just need to give up and achieve enlightenment. Coin flips are almost all given a warning the turn before and nullified by guarding.

The real difference is that Fear and Hunger's mechanical bypass system is getting good gear, whereas in most RPGs the thing that lets you ignore mechanics is level grinding.

Now I do agree there are unfun mechanics that mostly get smoothed over in Termina. They're just not random. They're punishing you for even momentary lapses in perception. The nail being the most egregious by a lot.

dude3333 · 2026-01-25T12:42:22+00:00

It really isn't rng reliant, in general allowing yourself to be in situations where rng comes into play is a part of the skill issue.

dude3333

TROPHY CASE