Critical Role’s DAGGERHEART Explained | 2d12 Roll, Cards, DEATH & More! 

💥 Guillman's Guide to Speed: www.kickstarter.com/projects/onlycrits/guillmans-guide-to-speed?ref=dczo3l ✅ LIKE & SHARE: ru-vid.comvideos ✅ PATREON: www.patreon.com/bobworldbuilder

Can we talk about the most important thing Daggerheart brings to the table? The underused, under-appreciated d12.

I like that they are condensing rolling to hit and rolling for damage into one roll. Also making health less crunchy is nice.

My guess is the card system is there because the game is designed with a digital character sheet in mind. Like many have already pointed out, the cards can get damaged or lost, but a companion app remedies that problem entirely, especially if designed well. The cast of Critical Role also handles all of their character sheets on tablets already so it really just makes sense that the character sheet is designed to translate easily to a touchscreen device.

Splitting Dex into Agility and Precision is something I do in my custom games and it's very nice to see in a wide audience game!

I like the split between hope and fear, it makes everything feel more narrative and character driven rather than simply rolling to hit.

I actually really like the idea that action economy isn't predictable, and the fates can decide a solo villain gets to run circles (perhaps literally) around the party if they are fearful, or that the party gets to unload again and again on an enemy if they have hope in their hearts. Screw game balance, and let chaos reign! Other thoughts: Bell curves are awesome, small numbers are great, and most of all, having potential death moments result in even more player agency is fantastic. Everything described feels like a step in the right direction for a great game.

~17:00 Another comment just helped me figure something out about damage/combat. Here's how I think it actually works: With the apparent absence of Armor Class, maybe you just roll the weapon's damage as your to-hit roll? That would explain why a dagger is 2d10, lower than a normal weapon (2d12 presumably), and lower than a great weapon (2d20 which was also mentioned in the article). So your "damage" is your to-hit roll, and it immediately tells the receiver whether it caused stress, or 1-3 HP based on the thresholds.

Great video, Bob. I appreciate the laid-back, positive nature of your analysis on everything you choose to tackle. It makes it easy for others to digest and become informed, especially for those of us who dread reading rule books.

Honestly I think I would really like it if class features had unlimited uses, letting players lean in to the classes they've chosen is always fun

I REALLY like the HP threshold system that Daggerheart is setting up. It reminds me a lot of the Wound levels in Savage Worlds or WEG D6 Star Wars (remember that game?).

People are trashing it for some reason, but it honestly looks really fun. The card based system makes it way easier to introduce new players - which I love.

How are people feeling about the cards? I am very wary of that design choice. * Players already have a hard time keeping track of their character sheets. You know cards they are responsible for will be lost, damaged, and so forth. Based on an interview with the lead designer, you will continue to get more cards as you level. * How many duplicates will there be? What happens if two players want the same character archetype / ability? * If the DM wants to check a rule, they have to look through a deck of shuffled cards instead of just turning to page 56. * Does replacing a card mean buying a whole new set, or can they be bought individually? Maybe I'm the minority here, but I am very concerned about this. It's a shame because aside from the use of cards, I love everything I've seen about Daggerheart.

The cards on the character sheet are a cute idea - realistically I think I'll probably just summarise the ability myself and write it in the space provided.

Under Darkborne it has a feature named Scoundrel: You have advantage on any rolls where you're negotiating with criminals, detecting lies, or finding a safe place to hide.

Yes you're right it is a 1/12 chance to crit. Also I like Intuition and Knowledge, it's way easier to understand than the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom. Definitely gonna steal that death system

I love that Mercer and Crew are normalizing, adapting away from the DnD D20 into innovation realms... which open people up to all the other amazing designs...

I love the commentaries from Matt and the images in the background. Nice video, Bob :)

So overall this System looks really exciting and fun. I do have one problem though: Many features seem to be linked to hope points, Which is not a problem if the hope other players spend on you also counts for these abilities. But it doesn't take into account how much bad luck some players have. If you are already rolling really bad all evening, you not only hit nothing, but you can also not use the features your character has (or at least only with the help of others). I feel like you would get frustrated really quickly.

i’m a chronic dumbass who only just recently began getting into TTRPGs, and your content without fail has been my go to for understanding not only rules, but why they are in place, and how they operate in a greater game design context. this video is no exception to that. you create stellar content, and i appreciate it

Some other details: - Subclasses are apparently called foundations - we seem to know a number of other classes will exist, including bard, ranger, warrior and wizard. - when they say "melee" or "close", those are actual range categories. To my knowledge, the ranges are melee, close, far and very far.

Great update, sounds very interesting, love the editing in this one as always, Thanks Bob👍

I love that Matt is your new sidekick... kinda your very own Deathbringer :D

Very curious about Daggerheart. Not sure yet it will be a game for my group and me but I can't wait to see them and others play it. What I love is the design with the cards and the damage threshold system is super intriguing. Thanks for putting it all in this video. (love all the little side comments xD) In a way, the D12 has been around in CR for quite a while. In C2 a dodecahedron (aka. the D12 shape) is one of the major elements. It's been right there all along!

Very excited for Daggerheart, I can't wait to hear more about it. Great video as always !

The dice mechanic seems so smooth, I love it. It seems to combine a lot of the best parts of PBTA, Genesys, and Ironsworn (and Savage Worlds, with the damage-rolling mechanic). I love the sound of Hope points; they seem like a neat mechanic. Having PC options on cards seems like a good idea... except it looks like carrying your character "sheet" around could be a bit awkward, having to sort out your cards each time. All in all, I'm definitely intrigued by this game. 5:32 Yup, you have a 1/12 chance of rolling doubles on 2d12.

Hope & Fear dice is a great RP-adjacent mechanic to be implemented in a horror game.

This is so different that I’m honestly not sure if it would make sense for them to make a left turn and make this system be what runs Exandria. The only thing I can think of is if the apocalypse just actually happens in C3, which is very possible, and the laws of the universe and magic get rewritten.

I loved the slide show! Thanks for this Bob, I'm suggesting moving to this for our group (along with your coin ideas). Keep the good work coming my man!!

Having to mark stress really reminds me of sam's campaign 3 character FCG. They are using an homebrew cleric subclass and when the character reaches a certain treshold of stress, they panic and can even attack their friends. Maybe there will be some kind of "panic" mechanics to represent dire situations !

This video has me stoked for Daggerheart. I love the Hope and Fear dice determining the next active character. The one wish-list item I have would be 'damage reduces your stats', like Traveller, but in a combat-focused system, I get why that would become... too... number-y?

From what I heard from another source, when you hit a threshold of Stress, you take 1 hp. So stress are kind of like sub-hitpoints, but you can do things to reduce your stress before you take a hitpoint from it.

2d12? 😮 Dice pools always interest me more than single-die systems, because of the Bell Curve.

The hope/fear mechanic in combat sounds really cool! From what it seems like from the description, it seems like a great way to address the action economy problem, because on average, no matter how many creatures on either side, both sides are expected to have the same amount of turns! It would mean I can throw one big bad monster at the players and have it be a potentially hard challenge!

I was hoping you would cover this at some point @BobWorldBuilder . I was also able to play @ Gencon, however I had a much different experience. I have some strong feelings about how Darrington Press handled the Gencon experience, but i won't ramble here. If you really want to know, i'll send a DM. :) I really enjoyed the Character Creation process, and i also enjoyed the "mad-lib" we did for the one-shot. Both were simple, and easy. I really enjoy the "players have equal share" in the story progression. So MANY RPG's are one-way streets. This feels way more collaborative. I have no issue with the Duality mechanic (that's the 2d12 / Hope and Fear), and i can appreciate stats simplified as modifiers. I've always enjoyed Armor as DR, and i like the way it's incorporated here. I get hit, i reduce damage based on Armor value, i check a box on my armor. Wash/rinse/repeat. When armor boxes are filled, it's broke and i'll need to fix it at next Long Rest. I also like the Hit Thresholds too. I was able to learn that when your Stress is filled, you start taking 1 HP damage each time you would take stress. A rest is required to reduce stress. I am not 100% sure how to feel about NO INITIATIVE. I realize that mechanism is to make combat flow on GMs easier and if it simply turns into "lets go around the table"...ok. But when do monters react? When you fail or roll success /w fear? Makes all monster actions feel retalitory when some should clearly be proactive. More to come i suppose... TL:DR, I like the system and am looking forward to more info. I am a little soured on the game at the moment because i had a very bad Gencon experience.

5:45 as you kinda pointed out, this will make action economy kinda not a thing anymore. A party of 3 PC’s will have about as many turns on average as a hoard of 10 goblins. Because from the way it sounds, there’s no real initiative order between players and enemies. There’s about a 50/50 chance that either party will go next.

Been looking forward to this video for a long time, and you didn’t disappoint, Bob. Thanks for your great work. The DM in my main game is all Paizo all the time but I’ll definitely be looking for a daggerheart game to play in as soon as possible, this game sounds outstanding to me.

Dragonbane uses armor to absorb damage as well. It’s really cool honestly. Your ability to hit depends on you succeeding a roll against your attack stat.

Very well done and informative summary. As usual, very pertinent perspective. Thanks !

This system is shaping up to be great I think. I love the narrative tools between the hope and fear dice, as well as the option in death. It hands player agency even at the end for a character. I am really excited to try this system out. I'm here for the cards. That's so much easier than having one book and 6 player who are all newbies figure out what to write on a character sheet that doesn't have enough room to actually write in all your abilities.

Thanks for the summary! I'm liking how unique the system sounds, definitely looking forward to it's release and more information!

Cloak in this game seems way more fun than how it is in BG3. I mean it's like some Gintama/Naruto level hide and seek I love it.

I like that it is trying to be different than D&D. D&D exists. We don't need a slightly different version of it. I don't think any two DMs run the game the same exact way anyway. I love different mechanics. I love taking an underused mechanic and trying to give it more purpose. I (like many others) have found that players tend to opt out of short rests by finding ways to take long ones. So I created a magic item that uses hit dice to increase a players damage. There are other things around it to make it a more risky endeavor, but this got someone on the table using a piece of the character sheet that wasn't being used. It sounds like this has plenty of interesting ideas. I like the cards, because it seems like they are not necessary to play the game. We could always write the information on the character sheet. It makes it something that is nice to have, but not required. That's almost always a positive. A 2d12 system is good, and they took it even a step further. That alone makes me somewhat excited to give it a go.

I'm really interested in this when it comes out. The 2d12 system is something new to me, even though I'm sure this system has been done before. And I'm actually liking the hp and death system in this game too. I'm one of the DMs that likes to make the players feel like this fight can mean death, so this system already perked my interest. Great job on the video, keep it up!

Your math is off a bit. Rolling doubles means multiplying the chance of a roll by the number of dice. So that's 2(1/12) which equals 1 in 24. That's a chance of a bit over 4% for a crit, instead of D&Ds 5%

I love that Dagger Heart is moving to a more narrative dice system. The D12 has needed some love for years, lol, and the 2D12 system is simpler than a dice pool like the Genesys system from FFG(which I love) but has a similar feel and purpose(success with fear or failure with hope). The D6 Advantage/Disadvantage is also similar to the Advantage/Disadvantage system within Genesys and is seems more balanced than 5e's 2D20 method. I love that they've cut the unnecessary things like Ability score and gone with straight modifiers. I'm also super intrigued by including cards that can be swapped or changed as part of the character creation. Excited to see more, and hope that we can get our hands on some test material soon. Great video Bob! Thanks for the info!

Fluid initiative is very interesting, and i was trying to figure out how to do it. I really like how they worked it out. Now enemies react to the players' actions instead of just taking damage like a punching bag. Hopefully this will result in more interactive combats. Nice video as usual BoB 🇮🇹

I really like the thresholds opposed to AC. You only have to make one roll (with 2 dice). The lower hp and dmg number may feel less bombastic, but it makes hits more impactful.

The D12 is my favorite dice, and is terribly underused. I'm glad to see it getting some attention.

I immediately like everything about the Hope and Fear mechanic aside from the nomenclature itself. "Confidence and Concern" are far more open and significantly less limiting to both characters and their roleplayers. Also, consonance.

According to the Critical role wiki; Katari have already been refered to ~5 times on stream. In fact references to Katari out number references to Tabaxi however both have been referenced on stream. However as anyone who's watched CR enough can tell you, it's not uncommon for the cast to call things by the wrong name. Matt occasionally asks for reflex or will saves instead of Dex/Wis. Lotta rulesets floating round in that dude's noggin. CR (Vox Machina) started as a pathfinder campaign, they've been doing D&D5E for quite a while. I'd say they probably finish Campaign 3 in 5E so as not to jar the audience too much with a rule swap "mid season", but whatever they do next will definitely be run in their own system.

Matt Mercer being a whole mood on the monitor in your background is utter perfection.😂

fear and hope sounds a bit hokey

Great video, Bob. I think the game sounds incredible. Can't wait to try it out.

Great work as usual Bob!

Thanks for making the video! I didn't know about any of this info before just now. That being said, I'm having trouble deciding if the slideshow in the background made it harder to focus or helped me focus more on what you were saying.

Very intriguing. I think the cards on the character sheet is a very innovative design. Looks promising!

I dont love CR but I’m pretty hyped for the game’s mechanics! I think my only gripe is that I don’t like games where you roll for damage and kinda wish it just used degrees of success based on DC for hits or context instead. I also like the mechanic of coming back and reducing your maximum hope, but feel like they should refill hope or give an instant advancement or something. Thinking like how in Fate you exchange Refresh for an upgrade. Also the idea of little set booster packs for new table options would be really cute!

Thank you for this video. I really enjoy your calm and toned down way of presenting things without loud drama.

Darkbourne: Being part of the darkborn community means growing up in the underbelly of society surrounded by criminals and con artists. Scoundrel: You have advantage on any rolls where you're interacting with criminals, detecting lies, or finding a safe place to hide.

Every mechanics seems to be the homebrew system that I was trying to make, but better in some parts. It looks awesome, definitely an instant buy for me.

Thanks for the video, Bob. I respect what they seem to be doing here. Honestly, I'm not very interested in it and it's probably something I'll never play. But still, seems like a decent addition to TTRPG world. One possible benefit of the cards, is that it may take almost no time to level-up. It might be that DM hands just out the correct cards and "boom", you're ready to play at the new level. In contrast, leveling up a 5e character can take a few minutes, for sure! If the mechanics allow for more hits, that's a plus for sure. So boring when nobody hits in an entire round. I don't like the death option of simply taking a scar, that seems lame...should be more of a debilitating penalty so you might actually consider the other two options. The other two options are cool! I really like the DCC way of doing it.... at zero your dead, but you get a luck roll if another party member rolls over your character's body. As a DM, I almost always let the dying character have last words and sometimes I'll let them get an extra blow in the fight.

Dagger heart sounds awesome to me so far!

i love what we've seen of the hp/damage system! combining to-hit and damage rolls is always a good move imo, and the minor-major-severe damage feels like a good middle ground between "i have 500 hit points i need to individually track" and "every time i take a hit i take 1 Wound". i'm absolutely stealing this for my homebrew games.

Considering what's going on in Exandria, no death saves sounds like they could slot daggerheart directly into their main Campaign if they wanted to

I actually adore the card based system. Getting my friends into my one shots and handing them characters sheets with a wall of text outlining roughly what they can do (if they understand how the game even works) is the most daunting part of the game. Cards makes everything feel sort of nicely organized I think.

This is definitely intriguing. I want to read more! Thanks for covering this!

Awesome video Bob!

I like the death mechanic! Sounds fun.

Really cool game! I heard in a nother video that they have 27 RACES planned already, and about 8 or 9 classes. I am in love with the damage threshold/damage/death system. This Hope-Fear 2d12 is also really interresting. I think with this death system, character deaths will be more common I feel, but waaay more cooler aswell! Loved the vid Bob, great as always! (Also Matts small comments are great!)

From what I can tell, the darkborne card says someone to effect of: "being part of the darkBourne community means growing up in the underbelly of society, surrounded by criminals and con artists. you have advantage on any rolls where you're negotiating with criminals, detecting lies, or finding a good place to hide" (I don't know if I'm reading the hiding part correctly, but it fits so idk) After staring at it for a bit, it's weird how those pixels started to just make sense.

I like the hope & fear dice; it folds some of your resource management into your rolls instead of something always/never costing stuff (like Vampire: the Masquerade does with Hunger Dice), but still makes the success/failure number numerical like D&D, instead of counting the ups and downs like V:tM. Not too sure it should control initiative too, but we’ll see if it’s part of something cooler.

The HP & Damage Threshold features are easily the most interesting to me. I was beaming when you were describing that system, it’s so rad. This system was clearly made with love.

been trying to learn as much as I can about Daggerheart and it looks really promising. Thanks for making a video about it! One thing that I'm curious about is how hp and damage will work for enemies. Will they also have damage thresholds and stress or just a sack of hp that you whittle down like in 5e?

This new collaboration between you and Matt is cool.

The Daggerheart stuff has been surprising, almost entirely in a good way.

Something I never liked about FATE and PBTA system is that they're light on crunch and there's seemingly no good way to ADD crunch when you want it without adding new homebrew mechanics wholesale. Like in DnD it's easy for me to reward a player with a crunchy new magic item that uses tools and mechanics they're familiar with. I can't do that as easily in those other two systems. So far Daggerheart looks like a great middle ground. The simplicity of FATE and PbtA where needed, but with the ability to still add some great crunch without overcomplicating things

Damn it, I was designing a 2d12 system and hoping that was a unique enough twist! Drat

Great video Bob, appreciate you making a video on this. The system seems interesting.

The card system reminds me of Gloomhaven a bit, where all of the classes and spells/abilities were card based. Didn’t have any problems with that! I guess something that might be smart to do is including little folders / deck boxes or something to keep everything organized, but at least for gloomhaven I never lost / misplaced cards or got them mixed up, so I anticipate this being less of a problem than people think

always looking for new systems, and Daggerheart sounds very interesting. I really wonder if they're doing away with books entirely and moving to this card stuff. Anyway, thanks for the video!

I like the card concept. It keeps expansions more accessible in the future if you just need to buy a pack. The only downfall would be if you had to buy packs of randomly chosen cards like a collectible card game, which I am 99.99% sure they aren't doing that 🤣

Your Slideshow was iconic 😎

Whomever is the editor of this video is much snarkier than normal. I like it, keep it up.

Regardless of how close or not it is to D&D 5e, it will sell like crazy thanks to CR's massive fan base. I know I'll be buying it. Also, amazing video editing on this one Bob!😊

The cards!! I am very excited about the cards. I'm loving the way the hope/fear dice kinda build in the hope/fear cycle so necessary for modulating player emotions via story beats. Matt being a master of story beats, this is very cool to see. I'm also very excited about the extra crits and mechanics for helping your party members. It seems like gameplay will be extremely dramatic and character focused. Im definitely learning and running this! Thanks Bob for the excellent breakdown!

Your editor really had fun with this one

I'm honestly really excited about this. Having been struggling through writing my own system, it's interesting how many of the rules in Daggerheart seem designed to tackle the same problems with d20 that I wanted to change. Difference conclusions, obviously, but I don't dislike any of what they came up with. Even just at this early stage I can see it being a pretty solid system and with CR's popularity can absolutely see it starting to eat away at the big-name pie a bit. Here's hoping that it does! 😁

Looks great fun actually! I like the board game style cards. I am not sure how playing it with my group is goung to go... I might have to mail people their character cards? 😅 but i definitely want to try

I like the cooperative storycraft, and the bell curve of 2d12.

I love the Matt images switching in every frame swap.

I think it's really interesting, but (Bob) if you check out the video in the article, it contains some higher resolution documentation regarding a few things like character creation, druids, the turtle race, etc. in a little more in depth. I'm actually excited to get the chance to playtest it when the opportunity arises because, to me, it feels like they're digging into the heart of RPGs and I'm here for that.

Probably won't touch daggerheart at my table till I see it played. Seems convoluted.

Sounds promising. I like the cards. I like the 2D12 system with varying outcomes, doubles having interesting results. Both of the new systems for Daggerheart and Candela Obscura are interesting in ways I wasn't expecting.

Great video Bob, thank you!

If i had to guess about stress, it functions kind of like a non-combat hp total, a way to mark incremental consequence outside of damage. When you run out of hp, you die, but when you run out of stress you break down. Blades in the dark uses a similar system to this and even calls it stress, so i assume that's what they were referencing when they made daggerheart

daggerheart is not for me, I like binary pass/fail, I think 5e character gen could do with more granularity - not less, cards can be nice as an optional tool, but as a mandatory part of the system, it's just an extra thing to keep track of, I do approve of just having ability modifiers, and the move away from d20 is also good, I'm not sure how I feel about how daggerheart deals with death

I understand the fear and hope dice are supposed to be this intreasting way of dealing out bonuses and stuff. But I feel like this could rob a player of the creativity and agency regarding the way they navigate situations good or bad.

I love everything I've heard so far! I am extremely hyped!!!

I just hope they don't give up on DnD. One of the most fun and underrated parts of the campaings is trying to guess what type of characters they will play.