Daggerheart Character Creation | Alpha Playtest 

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I'm in that closed beta, signed the NDA a couple of days ago and everything. So my immediate thought when I saw this video was "damn, how is he getting around the NDA?" Lol

My group loves picking ancestry first

Depends on the idea you have

I prefer making a character first and then give them a class that fits their style and personality 😊 guess everyone is different.

IDK I just do character concepts first, then I just search for ways to make that concept work mechanically. Like, "I guess if I want to play as a dryad, I should only pick druid spells that affect plants. Or reflavor other spells to make them more plant-y.

I tend to always start with the class, sometimes based on die rolls. The rest like race and background just fills in the gaps.

PRAISE THE MACHINE SPIRITS AND THE OMNISSAH!

you do the same thing magic the gathering did - make more circles. You can easily pair up domains differently to allow more classes.

@@votch2798 so I never played magic and maybe it’s no problem. But would it maybe take something that was supposed to be simple and start making it overly complex? Or does it not pan out that way?

I don't see why that seems hard. You just make another circle. It doesn't need to make it more complex.

Aside from combining two domains across the circle, I think the minimum requirement for expansion would be 1 domain and 2 classes. it would be like: existing domain - new class - new domain - new class - existing domain So the circle would start to form a sphere

it can grow as any game... more circles... think Last Airbender moving on to Korra... or Rock paper scissors, going into ROCK PAPER SCISSORS LIZARD SPOCK .... there is ALWAYS room for growth :D

Am I crazy? I found his handwriting very easy to read

Side note. Bob, I think you were a pharmacist in another life. That handwriting is kinda rough 😂

I'm also in the private beta. I haven't had the time really to sit down and really build a character, but it's a very interesting system so far. It feels kinda like 5e with less math.

!! Friend, there are class specific character sheets out there! By Emmet Byrne on Dungeon Masters' Guild, for a pay-what-you-want fee. They are form fillable in a pdf format, and have the base class(With open blocks for subclass abilities to be added). Happy Adventuring.

It seems very "First Timer hoping it will be like CR..." friendly. But in a year or so when you are playing your fourth fighter and having to answer the same three f"+£ing questions with the same stat array, (because you worked out the rather obvious "optimum/meta" on your first character) it has the potential to get stale. But they'll probably have Kickstarted 2E for 20 million dollars by then...

@@andrewtomlinson5237 The backstory questions are excellent actually. The full rules have plenty of guidance that would address your specific complaint. I was disappointed by the way damage works (I had a previous, wrong idea of it) and I think their two Heritage steps are super bland despite their potential.

@@qarsiseerI still think that after a while most RPG groups and players will eventually ignore them as a gimmick in favour of either writing their own standard 12 page bio. or just put a line through and get on with playing, and thats assuming the mechanics of the game system stand up to regular campaign play and they relase enough supplementary content to allow the sort of people who want to play "The Critical Role" game to copy their favourite RU-vidrs. This is the thing people forget about "Narrative" roleplaying... its not about a system that accomodatesthat, or box ticking or form filling, its about having a good story in the first place. You can do that in ANY RPG. The best way that happens is if the players roll with what the DM provides them with and feed into it, rather than competing with each other for the spotlight. THIS is the main thing "Critters" get wrong when playing "other games". Once you understand that, it just comes down to the game system and mechanics and whether the game itself plays well over long periods of time..

I mean, let's not forget this is super early, very beta, pre official playtest material. You can't expect it to be fully refined.

@@brewdaly1873 Then tell people to stop raving about it as well.

The Princess Bride. Also, The Court Jester. There are likely others.

@@tomkerruish2982 Would you call The Princess Bride unironic? I suppose there's an argument to be made, though it's still _very_ '80s. Danny Kaye... I'm not as sure about that one. (I'm not arguing there aren't people around who could _do_ the role, BTW - it's just they seem to be cast in superhero movies instead. Which isn't necessarily bad; just different.)

@LordJazzly I may easily be missing your meaning. At any rate, in both movies, the sword fights are presented as serious affairs and are well-choreographed. It is in those regards that I consider them to be unironic.

@@tomkerruish2982 Ah, that's fair, and I suppose 'ironic' is a bit of a broad word to use for what is quite a narrow intended meaning. As for what that meaning is - eh; I think Princess Bride is a good stopping point. A lot of people love it, and I'm happy for them to love it, even if I _really_ don't enjoy it at all. But it's come up, and I feel like getting into the weeds here would therefore probably not end up in a good place, so I'd rather not; sorry about that.

@@LordJazzly No worries. Peace out!

I think that’s much of what they are going for. Thank you for articulating this so well. How effectively those different styles of mechanics hold together to help the table create fun stories remains to be seen. I’m hopeful though that they will all mesh well together.

Comic sans wins

This comment incentivizes me to name my first Seraph character Garamond. I approve.

Right, his handwriting is surprisingly almost not eligible 😅 I’d slow down and try a little harder if I knew I’d be making a video with my character sheets later.

Have yet to play it, but the rules from it seem to have informed or are shared by the more modern game systems that eschew specific feet measurement for ranges, provide touchpoint backgrounds instead of skills, and provide room to tie narrative choices to mechanical advantages (icons). Not sure whether those mechanics were originated in 13th Age, but those all seem to be popular design choices among the designers of Shadowdark, Daggerheart, etc.

13th Age suffers from its attempts to be unique. Escalation die? Awesome. Having powers that vary based on rolling even or odd or if its a tuesday or friday? not so much. Also, high-level you roll WAY TOO MANY dice and its a slog. Its a cool system, don't get me wrong, but it took a few wrong turns that became pretty big obstacles to new players. (Icons are another big one that turns a lot of people off to running the system).

@@noraptorshere8206 That's a fair criticism. I house-rule a bunch of stuff for the game. What I LOVE is that they try to make mechanics to get the players to add to the story...Icon relationships, background abilities, One Unique Thing, "Fail Forward". I think too many TTRPGs focus on the "TT," boardgame, "move a piece on a board and roll dice" aspects of the game rather than the "RPG" aspects.

In an ongoing campaign when a new player joins or an existing player rolls up a new character does the character have to have history with all the PCs? That sounds really limiting. If they don't, why do they have to if multiple characters are being introduced? That also sounds limiting? It makes sense for the start of a campaign to build characters that have prior knowledge of each other to simplify the rational of why they're adventuring together, but that eliminates many role playing options. I prefer to go with the rule that your character has to have some kind of history with at least one other PC and then let the players work out who knows who and how. It usually works out that everybody in the party knows everybody else or knows somebody that knows them and no one is a complete stranger to anybody. To rephrase, everybody in the party is a friend or the friend of a friend.

quick example: ... >self (sage) -- self & rise >rise (chaos) -- rise & fall >fall (midnight) -- fall & dark >dark (grace) -- dark & light >light (splendor) -- light & perserverence >perserverence (valor) -- perserverence & bend >bend (blade) -- bend & break >break (bone) -- break & self >self ... if you imagine the first ring (of 8 classes) as the top layer, and the 8 domains as the second layer, a third layer would be 8 more domains, and the bottom layer would be the 8 new classes you could piece together from this, and you can keep going, creating a gradient tunnel of domains and classes that can even loop back around like a tubular band or you could even have 6 separate flat rings of 8 that all connect around the 8 domains, and at the intersection of their contact points, each intersection produces a domain meaning the rings/classes can be traversed through these shared domains/contact points

second ring example: (if the first ring was for domains that link between the other domain, this would be the classes those domains produce) monk -- self & rise enchanter -- rise & fall illusionist -- fall & dark elemental mage -- dark & light zealot inquisitor -- light & perserverence oathbound fighter -- perserverence & bend berzerker -- bend & break painbearer -- break & self (the class names are just hinting at the kind of utility/specialization the class would have based on the 2 domains it has)

(and the way they would connect is, if they're all offset the way they are, then monk lines up precisely where the sage domain is, meaning monk can share that as a sort of split-domain, as well as the self & rise domains, and likewise the ranger class lines up down to the self domain, meaning it can share that as a split-domain)

Whatever works for you and them is the right way.

My understanding is that this is open ended similar to the “Background” choice in 13th Age. You select different Experiences that reflect a part of your backstory, and any time a relevant challenge comes up, the player can ask the GM if they can add the bonus from that Experience. Spenser Starke explained this as choosing “Pirate” as an Experience +2 and any time you had to roll to keep your footing on a boat, swing from a rope, navigate the sea, or maybe even fast talk a guard, you could ask the GM if you could add that bonus to your rolls.

That’s a fair criticism. The prompts may be more for newer players to help codify some personality pillars. Like Ideals, Bonds and Flaws in 5E. But since they hold real-estate on the character sheet, I think they could get stale as you say if all Warriors have the same type of concern/goals.

For a system that stresses character customization to require that all fighters have been left for dead seems a lot stereotypical. I imagine Rogues will have to detail the time they got caught sleeping with a noble's wife and had to jump out of a second story window, naked!

@@fred_derf While it’s true that the prompts might run out of steam between characters, or with multiple instances at the table, I’m sure the guidance would be that you can use whatever you like. My impression from watching Spenser’s interviews is that all of the more narrative elements at character creation are less requirements and more meant to provide structure for those who might need some inspiration.

@@matthewsnow-zj1cu If you want a section of the character sheet with areas to fill in goals, fears, dreams, etc. Even "Why did you decided to become an adventurer?" I have no issue with it. But when the character sheet has a question on such a specific scenario in your past, *"Somebody defeated you in battle years ago and left you to die. Who was it and why did it seem like such a betrayal?"* it isn't there for guidance -- if it is it's doing a really bad job of it. It's a statement of who you character is -- and if you want to play an overconfident fighter who was the best in her village and has never lost a fight (because she's always fought people weaker than her) and is going to have to come to grips with not being the best when she inevitably gets her butt kicked -- well poor you, you can't. If this was just for the playtest, OK, but it was still a stupid question. Better questions would be things like, "what is your biggest failure?" "what is you biggest regret?" etc.

​@fred_derf You can just write that scenario down if you want. I doubt that's precluded. As far as what is or isn't a "good guiding question", I submit that has to do with how different people think. Your example of a good guiding question is, to me, an absolutely useless and frustratingly vague question. There's no guidance there. I suspect their intent is by offering the hold-your-hand guidance they make it accessible for people like me whereas someone like you can just ignore or replace that stuff. I haven't seen anything beyond previews though so it's just conjecture.

In hardcore AD&D you started by rolling stats, 3d6 in order and chose your class and race based on those stats. This resulted in a lot of players stuck with characters they didn't like. We quickly changed to rolling 4d6 pick best three and order anyway you want. It still resulted in people getting stuck with lousy characters, but far less frequently.

can you explain more about Nature & Nurture, it's the first time I came across it?

Would love to hear more about this “ Nature & Nurture”

You mean like splitting ancestry and culture? Instead of just lumping them together like most RPGs do? Isn’t that what Daggerheart is doing here?

If you're talking about terminology, I see your point, however "Nature" is already an established term in e.g. D&D, so it might confuse some people to start using it differently. "Nurture" also sounds a bit like a skill or spell or something a player can DO in this context (as does "Culture," potentially, but we're more used to defaulting to that as a noun rather than a verb in everyday English). Of course & as always - there's nothing stopping anyone from using these terms at their own tables, if it makes sense to everyone playing! Or any other words. I'm a dog trainer which means I have my own biases for which conceptual hooks I hang these sorts of hats on, and how I view their interplay (in fiction/fantasy realms). If I were to ever design a game system that would probably influence my choices!

@@buld0z0r50 Nature and Nurture is a way to describe the different factors that influence an organism’s (often a human) development and behavior - consider a male lion - big muscles, a mane, competes with other males for a pride - these are features that will develop in “on their own” - genetics are the major contributor to its nature - Nurture refers to external factors - you could starve the lion or give it anabolic steroids to affect its muscles - you could raise it with other creatures to make it more comfortable around them - you could train it to be more submissive - these are all nurture - this is a common short hand that appeals to me more than using “race” and “culture” in RPGs

He mentions elsewhere in the comments that this was from when he got to play at the con.