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I don't think they intend to stop. I think they just had plans for like a couple of things a week, and now feel that might not be a good investment of time if the rules are going to change that quickly. I think they are just saying they intend to slow down, maybe 'cut out' ideas like going over every single class and their abilities and such, and just do more 'overall' content that is less likely to be outdated a week or two after posting.
My group did not like the coin changes. Because it made it more granular all over again. So we're doing small coin pouches. Which contain a number of coins, usually 10 gold coins worth. But could be mixture of silver, copper and gold. And we are back to abstracting the money system. So if a character says, they toss the innkeeper a silver for his efforts. Nothing needs to be written down. An inn provides room and food for a day, as long as they have a small pouch of coins, it covers the expense, and we don't worry about it. But say the high quality Inn truly caters to your needs, offering a splendid room, and sumptuous food and drink, this could conceivably cost a small pouch of coins for a stay there for a day or more. The point is to handwave what is not worth a lot of time, or just say it costs a small coin pouch for x activities. Thus we move on.
Same. I think the core issue wasn't that people didn't know how many coins a handful was worth, but that people didn't know how much a handful was worth. They need at least a small table of "here's the kind of things you'd need a handful, a bag, a chest of gold for!" Like, a handful buys your party a night at a nice inn. A few handfuls will buy you a horse. A bag will buy a small plot of land. Then you can decide how much a health potion or magic weapon is worth in your setting- the cost of a horse? Or just the same as a few nights at the inn.
Your confusion on the three action tokens has a very simple solution, have more/spare action tokens. Sure, having exactly enough tokens to give three to everyone and none left over will cause problems when needing to restock everyone and keep track of the tokens the GM has, but the same thing could also happen when the GM uses one fear to generate two extra action tokens. The simple and obvious solution is to have a bank of extra tokens. Start of combat every player gets three tokens and to the side is a small stockpile/bank of extra tokens. As players make actions, they go to the GM on the action counter, when the GM uses actions he sends them to the bank and when the players need a refill (or GM generates extra actions) they come out of the bank. Think how in Monopoly the player who is the banker has separate piles for their money and the bank. If that doesn't work then their is one simple homebrew rule you could implement. Once all players have used their three actions, play immediately passes to the GM. That way action tokens can be used up to be ready to give back to the players.
Just a quick one - you mentioned that minion-level enemies are more dangerous now because it only takes four hit points to force a character to take a “death” action. I believe hit point totals have also been increased to six in line with armour and hope as a way to offset this? Hopefully that shifts the calculus to where minions might not cause TOO much trouble, but like you said, these rules might be outdated by next month anyways! Thank you for the content, really appreciate listening to your thoughts as experienced TTRPGers :)
Great discussion guys! I hope you don't get too discouraged with running the system while there are changes - I think it's great to have a channel that is making updated videos about the beta process. On your discussion about tokens - we ran the 3 token system and used the system that claurose (apologies for spelling) had suggested where my players placed their own coloured token on the action tracker. When I used actions I moved them off the tracker but left them next to it. When all the tokens were placed either on or near the token, they took them back. This felt pretty intuitive and easy to run in our game. We played in person though so I'm not sure how this would go for online games.
But the armor change is not really that much a balance change tho, it's more like a numbers change, for example, in 1.2 if you pick a Full Plate + Tower Shield combo, your AC would be 13, so with 3 Armor Slots you could reduce damage by 13 three times, with DH 1.3, if you use the same combo, your AC is 9, so if when you take damage you choose to spend 2 armor slots (which can be considered the equivalent of using 1 armor slots in 1.2, since you have double the amount now) you reduce it by 18 instead of 13, it's actually a buff i would say
@talscorner3696 oh got it, yeah big numbers can be fun, i like them too, but it's definitely not for everyone lol, like the CR cast, some of them are far from fast when doing simple math, especially Ashley, bless her heart lmao
(Fooooof, big response has gotten big.) I'd say anytime the player does a thing, which attacks, or changes the environment, it should be an action token. I agree that there's a lot of weirdness left. Also, the lack of defined 'reaction' type moves makes it a bit weird too. Like the Seraph class dice. They can throw those in whenever. That makes sense, but I don't know if being able to repeatedly do it and weave that with other 'free' things others could do does. Something like this player is moving, this other does a reaction, that makes sense, but like if there were a situation which was player a, then react, then react, then react, then react... feels weird. Feels like a bad round of MTG with counterspell kind of things. I'd actually disagree with the Seaborne ability. I too liked the old version better, but I feel like this new version is the OP one. One extra down time activity doesn't seem like a big deal. But a potential + and + and + and + to your dice, each number is +8% on a D12. So that feels like it would rapidly get out of control. Maybe I'm just over estimating how many fear rolls the player would make, especially since it's just them, but that's a theoretically infinite positive bonus compared to ONE extra down time activity. Plus, I don't know, then the player is getting some kind of token each time they roll, success or failure, feels like just more to micro manage. Also disagree about the mycelial network loss. That was a super fun ability. Sure, op how it was, but it seems easy enough to alter to it being a 'yes or no question' and maybe limit it to 'once per short rest'. I mean, sure, recovering 1 hp now and then is fine, but I think flavor wise there was a much better way to alter its base intent. Card swapping; I get why they do it, but I still think, personally, I'd rather see about 30% more cards for each deck, and only being able to swap on a long rest. (Or maybe just once on a long rest per secession or something.) Being able to pull anytime you want just feels like it would both be abused by the min/maxers, as well as if you have more than one player with the same class there wouldn't really be any mechanical differences between them since there are so few cards. With the swap as an option, I just don't know if I personally feel there is enough individuality options. "I feel like an appropriate story reason is unlikely to show up before level 5 enemies." I meeeeeannnn I guess it depends on how you view the character. It also depends on what kind of character you are thinking of and do they fit with the current decks you have mechanically. Like here are my top 2 character ideas, both would be MUCH better multiclassed. "Capn' Jack Fuzzybottun" (not Fuzzybottom because tha' t'wouldn't be proper) he's a "former" pirate captain who's ship sunk, his crew scattered (so he's Rogue with his crew being the "syndicate") and he's trying to re-amass enough gold to buy a new ship. Sure, you could argue maybe that's a 5th level character idea, but there are some really good abilities from Seraph what work really well with that idea. He's high Finesse, and high Presence, so support makes sense. Another idea I have is "Alseed Le'szarrd" (a seraph lizard from marquet). Sure, he works pure seraph, but again, as someone who encourages and supports others, splitting into bard for Rally and Inspiring Words just makes sense. Don't get me wrong, I like the way they did it, and it does make sense mechanically to not have 2 core class abilities so early, but I absolutely have character ideas which are MUCH closer to the character intent because of multiclassing. Multiclassing option - maybe what they need is an option, since for some ideas there aren't enough options currently. (Like above Capn' Jack could probably fit well into a "swashbuckler" class, but none exists.) Where players choose which 2 decks they want, then choose a single primary class ability and it's sub-class. Like again, using Capn' Jack as example, I could see myself going Rogue syndicate base options, but then take Grace and Splendor, and I'm done. That'd be fine. I'd lose prayer dice, but that's ok. Or with my Seraph with bard abilities, he could take Seraph core, but swap to bard class option, and as with Capn' Jac, go Splendor/Grace. Final note; pllleeeeassse don't be among the crowd of "the rule book is 350 pages" sticker shock people. Yes, it's a big book, but no, REALLY look at it. The player section is like 150 pages. The DM section is like another 100 pages. There are then monster stats and examples that take up the rest. Effectively this SHOULD be compared to, for say D&D, the Player Book AND the DM's Guide AND the Monster Guide, which off the top of my head are like 350 pages EACH. So no, this is not a lot of rules. And I'd even argue someone who is just an 'average player' does NOT need more than the like first 9 pages of their chosen class. (And really the first 2 of those can be ignored.)
I have been a playtester for several tabletop and computer games. I love seeing and being a part of the process. I use to print off countless pages of new cards on a monthly basis for both Ashes, and Mage Wars. having said that, I think daggerheart is more cinematic than what I am looking for in a game I think but who knows I may give it a try. EDIT: I think there are very valid reasons to have a more structured initiative system, and I dont believe the new fix in 1.3 addresses it. I am currently playing a game called TORG. in that system, there is a card flip for each round during which either the players take a turn first followed by the villains, or the other way around. on the players turn, they can go in any order. rather than players fighting to go first, most of our players are hesitant, not wanting to step on anyones toes. this hesitation causes a LOT of dead time where nothing is happening.
I can understand your feedback regarding minions. Now that the minor threshold is 1, if you activate 6 minions in one turn, they can do 6 minor threshold damage, which is 6 HP and kill a full HP PC in one turn; however, to do so, you need: 1. 6 tokens to activate all the minions separately. 2. Hit with all 6 attacks 3. The PC doesn't have any armor slots left or has very low armor value and only 1 armor slot left. If the GM already has 6 action tokens they can use, then the players should have already had enough turns to be able to deal with the minion threat so they either had extremely bad luck of missing 6 attacks already or decided to ignore the minions, in which case this will probably be the last time they make that mistake.
If you're DMing, always keep in mind that action tokens and fear are interchangeable. If your players are taking a lot of actions and never rolling with fear, turn some action tokens into fear to interrupt them. It's still slow that way, but there is a limit to how abusive luck can be to the GM turn economy.
The new optional rule for initiative is actually explained pretty well in the manuscript. Each player keeps their character token next to their character sheet. When the action tracker is activated, each player takes 3 action tokens and places them on their character sheet. Every time a player takes an action, they place an action token on the action tracker. When the GM activates an adversary, they hand the token back to the player and that player places it in their token pile next to their character sheet, NOT on their character sheet, meaning the player can not use it to act. Once the last character token has been placed on the action tracker and all of the players no longer have tokens on their character sheet, they each take 3 new tokens and place them on their character sheet and everything starts anew in regards to turns. So basically, all you have to do is look at a player's character sheet to know who has how many actions left.
16:30 - Honestly? Good. Bunch of minions already have major weaknesses to AoE and they rarely feel threatening in D&D. In D&D being surrounded by monsters is like that meme "Good, now I can attack in any direction". Most weak enemies won't even break your armor class. In Daggerheart your evasion scores are much lower than AC is in DnD so you will get hit if you're surrounded and it WILL hurt. That said, some classes and abilities can raise the threshold above 1 and armor of course can delay damage for a good chunk of time.
You are really overthinking the initiative "optional" rules, we get that the popcorn system works for you, but every table is different and it may not work for everyone else and some people like to have a structured system.
Recently found you because of DH I am excited for the game and feel you are on the same page so looking forward to engaging with the game together and I’ll stick around for the d&d too 👍 5:38
I strongly disagree on the minions- having played with 1.3 minions, I only had two action tokens at the time. I could maybe roll two hits and deal 3 damage each, but the players could reduce both of those to zero with an armor slot each. The draw of the group attacks was that 2 actions let me attack with 5 minions and hit the players severe threshold. They spent two armor slots to drop it to major and still took 2 damage... Individual minions wouldn't have dealt any.
I think the Fawn kick is pretty good since it’s basically 2D6 free bonus damage since it’s useable on a successful hit. So you deal damage which scales with level and then just throw on an extra 2D6 for good measure which can bump damage up a threshold.
Me and my group had like a half n hour discussion about the changes and how it’s really shifts the game. I think in general we really preferred 1.2. There’s many abilities we feel like have been made less fun and creative in the name of simplicity. The term “dnding” Daggerheart was thrown around a lot. I really love daggerheart and this idea of letting it evolve is fun but I worry they’re deviating from being original vs like 5e.
Honestly i disagree on the ability changes being less fun, i actually think they are doing a great job at making them more valuable, and being able to use that ability more often makes it more fun for me, like for example the Wordsmith's Heart of Poet ability, before it was just so stupid and niche, like be for real people are not gonna be using 3 rhyme words in a sentence when they are playing seriously, try doing that, it sounds so dumb lol, now u just pay the hope in the moment and that is great, way more useful, and me being able to use it now makes it way more fun. Same thing with the Inspirational Words spell, in 1.2 it was AWFUL, paying a Stress to do that was not worth it at all, Stress is too valuable of a currency to waste it on clearing ONE Stress or HP, or to give a hope, especially sinse you don't refresh Stress like you do with hope, in 1.3 now you just get a amount of uses equal to you spellcasting trait, which is great and quite powerful, but not too powerful since now you give the GM a action token to balance it, now when i make a Bard or Rogue i will want to take it
A warrior gets access to the Attack of Opportunity class feature. A level 1 guardian in our 1.3 test session this weekend, had a threshold of 3, 12, 22.
One thing you forgot " you said regardless of disadvantage or advantage crit chance is the same" But as far as I understand it. Advantage is a 1 In 6 chance crit as opposed to 1 in 12 like normal and disadvantage
Notably, in terms of your concern with Minions killing players, when you take the Minions attack together action, the damage is all summed together as one turn of damage, so you won't deal 6 hit points in 1 turn.
The issue I believe they are raising with minions is that you can ignore the group attack feature and just have each minion attack separately. Because the minor damage threshold is 1, each minion that hit will do 1 damage. So if you have 6 minions surrounding a player and they all hit, the character is oneshot if he doesnt have armor to save them. You might ask: "but that will cost 6 action tokens, so what is the difference between using then to activate each minion separately and activating 6 adversaries of different types?" And I would answer: "mechanically? None, it's the same thing. However, the minion adversary type should mostly find themselves surrounding one player often while a group of different adversary will most likely be more spread out across the battlefield and focus on multiple players". As a GM, if I want to activate all of the minions, I will never activate each one separately and will always use the group action because: 1. It costs less tokens 2.less rolls 3. I don't risk oneshot my players
Think that water ability always cost hope. and Honestly, if you can kill a mook by throwing them off a cliff then fine. spend the fear to cancel it with higher level monsters, sure. but if the fiction is not benefitted by drawing out the fight....don't draw it out. the reason we fight on cliffs and volcanoes is to throw people off cliffs and into lava. Good. let that happen.
Did they clarify how reactions work? In previous versions, I encountered characters with two different reactions, and I'm unsure if they can always use them whenever the criteria are met. Since there are no turns, it's unclear when these abilities recharge. If they can be used every time the criteria are met, it seems incredibly unbalanced.
I think the Faun kick is worth it all the time, just think you are like 4 dmg short of severe damage and add the kick, for the cost of a stress you increased the effect by 50%
A good alernative to the initiative system is, instead of discussing who gets to take a turn next, discuss what you collectively want to achieve in a turn. Keep it collaborative. I feel like some of the stringent opposition to no-initiative is not wanting to recontextualise what a turn is and get into the teamwork. If you're used to initiative, that's fair, totally. Still, it's a major mechanic of Daggerheart. It'd be like asking to roll a d20 instead of 2d12 because it's easier.
I think the point of playing it now even though its gonna change so much is the whole point to it. To make sure what version of the game is the right one (or the one people agree the most with). This take mainly affects people that try to make long campaigns with a system that's still in beta, if you know that it was gonna change don't do long campaigns YET, make a series of one shots and test each version as its own.
I would like a system where everything is a la carte. Race - pick up to 4. Mix and match physical characteristics. Then use your points to buy attributes from any of the races. You want to be a mermaid vampire? Cool, you can pick scaly skin and fangs. Then pick underwater breathing, blood sucking, and bat transformation. Background - use your points to buy whatever from any background. You grew up in a circus, so you have acrobatics; but then you went off to apprentice at an apothecary, so you know how to forage for medicinal plants and poisons. Class - doesn't exist. Or maybe it does exist, but you're not limited to it. You pick a class at start, and you can use your points to buy a feature in that class. Or you can buy a feature from another class with a higher cost (or there is no cost, and everything just has a cost). And you can bank points. So if you want to buy a 4th level ability at 5th level, and then a 7th level ability at 6th level, you can. Or don't buy an ability at 5th level at all, and then buy an 11th level ability at 6th level. (Maybe not that much, but you get the idea.) I don't like being locked into an upgrade path. If my brute melee fighter wants to be able to transform into a form that inspires fear in their enemies, they shouldn't need to dip into warlock for a Form of Dread.
There are too many ways, through no one's fault, for the "popcorn" initiative system to break, right now. The initiative system not accounting for those is essentially saying, "No matter how your table feels about it, this shouldn't be part of your game." You even mentioned two examples in the video, DMPCs, and active NPCs. The way it is now, you either force them into the initiative order--because the game does not allow them in without making it happen, or you don't include them. "Oh, the villagers are motivated to join you in this fight and a large crowd of pitch-fork wielding peasants might have some kind of impact, but we either don't do that, or I have to come up with rules for it on the fly and hope like heck I don't break this system in a profound way." ETA: They acknowledge the new initiative system doesn't deal with all the problems, only the one least likely to be a problem (unruly players), but it still feels like what they gave us is intended to be so unwieldy we won't want to use it, as though the problem is that we need to be forced to use the system that already exists.
I think everyone is worrying too much about the "no initiative" part, but Daggerheart is built for story flow more than mathing. Really, what is worse than "man, they just moved into the perfect arrangement for my XXX spell/attact, but too bad it is not my turn"
LOL... MCDM has done something very similar. They're trying different things that change the game drastically during their research and development. I guess it just part of making a new game...
54:30 lol at a man saying a woman is harsh about people needing to communicate and sort out things like people not being able to share and take turns. Even if you don't do our yourself, maybe take the lived in experience of someone that's very likely had to deal with it all their life.
About the damage threshold being lowered to 1: I agree that minions became more dangerous to the players now, which is a little frustrating to me. To me the cool thing about Daggerheart to me was that the system seems to value the idea that your characters are heroes fighting against insurmoutable odds and fighting a horde of enemies, while tough, isn't impossible for them, as they are just more powerful. It's a game that values giving players their power fantasy while creating challenge by making the enemies threatening by making them powerful and impressive while leaving the minions to be an annoyance in the path of the players but not an actual threat, unless they are in huge numbers or if the player characters are already spent. But now that minions can really cause some damage and even kill PC's just by focusing their fire it kind of doesn't feel like that anymore... This also incentivizes mages and other usually low armored classes to have a high value armor to lower the damage received while making lower value armor less important for everyone...
If it helps, usually the players go first- and they will absolutely fuck the minions up immediately. AOE? All dead. High damage hit? 2-3 dead. I had my players wipe out six minions before I got a turn, and had to spend a fear to summon more if I even wanted them to get a hit. And immediately after they did, the warrior whirlwinded through the lot of them in one blow
