Daggerheart has a MAJOR flaw 

SUPPORT THE WANDERING TAVERN ON KICKSTARTER! www.kickstarter.com/projects/homieandthedude/the-wandering-tavern?ref=d0ayk6

Honestly I think they can ditch armor slots and double down with their wound threshold system: • Wearing heavy armor? Each damage threshold increases by +2 (so the x2 damage increases by +2, x3 increases by +4), but evasion decreases by -1 • Wearing light armor? Increase thresholds by +1 instead, but no evasion penalty • Wearing no armor? Increases your evasion by +1 instead Honestly I don’t think we need EVERY part of: • Attack roll • Damage roll • Armor option check • Threshold check D&D is famously one of the slowest TTRPGs out there. One of these steps should be shaved off. Fabula Ultima, Cloudbreaker Alliance, and DC20 have variable damage but use your accuracy roll as part of the damage. Most new modern titles don’t deal with all of this.

It seems like armor slots should be connected to the armor type and not an arbitrary “everyone has 6” armor slots. If it was the amount of slots as damage reduction number Maybe that would make better armor better?

In my experience, a lot of players enjoy making more decisions. I think if armor was passive complexity it would be annoying. But since its an active element, my players REALLY enjoy having an additional decision to make during combat. Its just more game for the players to play. And importantly, it doesnt pile anything onto the gm. The added complexity is player-sided. As a gm, i definitely find daggerheart to be a rules lite narrative experience. All the complexity is player-sided, which is wonderful imo. I always thought the balance of gameplay is too gm centric for dnd. I really feel likez as a gm, I'm playing much more game than a player, and i find being a player very mechanically boring. I think daggerheart addresses this well by spreading the load more evenly between gm's and players.

Hmm I havent followed Daggerheart closely, but my impression was that they want it to be easily playable. This armor system seems closer to something youd see in a 2002 ish tabletop system, which is to say, fairly cumbersome. There are simply too many numbers to keep track of just to determine how much damage you are taking.

thumbs up for the extensive testing, this what they need to make the game great

You know, Dungeons and Dragons would also have this issue if it weren't for the restrictions around wearing Heavier Armor, since then they'd be able to have an AC of 18 without doing anything to their dexterity. Additionally, Wizards have their own version of armor called Mage Armor, which caps out at the same value using Dexterity, but can't even have enchantments. So maybe adding an armor spell like Mage Armor that temporarily increases all damage thresholds could incentivize lighter, or even no armor could help ease the problem, while giving armored classes better bonuses for using Heavy Armor, like regaining hope when they reduce damage below a threshold.

It is funny that one of the Wizards builds is literally a wizard in full plate behind a tower shield. Yeah, it drops your evasion by 3 (1 for the Armor, 2 for the Shield) but gives you an armor score of 9. And you are still able to do Wizard stuff behind that. Yeah, you are going to get hit, but you can spend at time one armor slot to go from Severe to Minor in some cases. Since the DM only rolls a d20 to attack, that not actually that big of a difference. I am not certain how they can fix it without just removing armor score and keep it at all balanced. I think incentives and disincentives for armor could work.

Instead of reducing damage after the threashold, armor could just increase the thresholds. I imagine that the point of being in a tin can is to prevent damage in the first place, and it would benefit everyone equally

Instead of each person having the same ammount of armor, maybe make the armor have more armor slots? And instead of armor redycind the threshold it reduces hp damage? Example, light armor has 2 armor slots, heavy has 5. If you take 10 damage, it goes through your medium threshold and you take 2 hp damage. That means you need to use 2 armor slots to reduce those 2 damage to 0.

Ngl the whole armor slots/damage thresholds feels like an awesome idea... For a completely different game. It's the type of mechanic i could see working in an MCDM highly tactical fight simulator, not a psuedo-PoweredByTheApocalypse-5e blend. A lot of the design decisions have the feel of two different leads fighting for control of the ship.

Honestly, I think giving warriors (and other more martial classes) a feature that improves armor minorly might help. For warrior, they might improve the damage reduction of 2-3 damage by 1, 4-5 by 2, etc. This probably doesn’t sole the problem but maybe it mitigates it.

You've pointed out a serious flaw in Daggerheart, in an effort to simplify combat in order to make it less mechanical and more narrative they've make it more complex (i.e. more mechanical). In D&D (not that the D&D combat system is good, but just in comparison) you roll damage and more is better. In Daggerheart you roll damage, adjust it by these factors, then the target adjusts it further, then compares it to this table, then adjusts it further then in the end it does none, one, two, or three points. Then there is the hope/fear mechanic, which just adds more mechanics to the game in order to encourage the narrative. When you add in the ability to use hope die to lessen damage taken all you're creating is a game where the players will mine hope between combat... It's telling that a "rules-light" system that supposedly focuses on theatrical story telling and narrative driven gameplay has a 377 page core rule book.

Maybe remove the math entirely from using armor slots. Change the system so that: -each of the 4 armors increasingly bump your damage thresholds (1,2,3,4) -each armor has an evasion modifier (+1,0,-1,-2) -spend either 1 or 2 armor slots to knock damage down to a lower threshold (2 for lighter, 1 for heavier) I'm not sure how shields would factor into that, though. But making the armors mainly effect the thresholds with an added evasion penalty would make the choice more intuitive for warriors/wizards. And taking out the math of the armor slots removes the disjointed graph of possibilities for different armor basically being the same effectiveness. Basically, there are other ways to do this armor system, and the added math doesn't align very well with the stated goals.

The Armor/Threshold system and Fear mechanics are probably the most discussed aspects of the current playtest and the ones I'm confident we'll see the most iterations of during the public beta. I really like the ideas for both but they absolutely need tuning and refinement.

My thought about this issue is that they could incorporate proficiency bonuses/penalties to the armor. They already have proficiency for weapons, so it wouldn't be a big leap. Perhaps if a wizard isn't proficient with heavy armor they would need to spend more armor points to reduce the same damage that a warrior would reduce with 1 because they are proficient with the armor. Alternatively, maybe by having proficiency with an armor you could reduce more damage taken for each armor point you mark.

The problem with armor seems pretty clear cut: since you have to spend armor slots in multiples and there you lose so much value due to that, that can be solved by not having armor slots to begin with and replacing them by an hp pool for the armor whose hp scales with the armor type (so instead of 6 armor slots each reducing damage by 5, you have 30 damage reduction total that you can allocate as you please) Armor slot mechanics (like gaining or losing them) can be changed to adding or reducing that much hp from the armor This gets rid of the issue of efficiency All that's left is to give heavy armor types some requirements so that wizards can't just rock them willy nilly

You forget when talking about damage reduction you cannot decouple Evasion from the discussion since evading an attack is full damage reduction. And every point of evasion is essentially +5% chance of every hit taken to miss (since enemies use d20 to hit). You can't discount every Evasion point. Chance to hit has to be taken into account for the math.

My first thought was to make it so the damage threshold was lower but it was also the limit to what armor you can wear. Something like, "when you wear armor you add to your damage threshold equal to tye armors value up to a max of your unaided damage threshold." Then you kinda make the armor gaps nice and wide and make it so its relatively expensive to scale up your damage threshold as a wizard. Maybe if you upgrade your armor slots 3 or 4 times in a row its fine if you have the ability to use some heavy armor, you are giving up other powers to do so. Meanwhile the damage threshold increase for a warrior might be much higher so it takes 5 levels for a wozard to be able to use plate but it takes one or two for fighters. Either because thendamage threshold starts off higher or because you gain threshold much faster. Maybe 3at a time. Idk its a funny system that's strangely simulationist imo. Armor Doesnt really vibe with the rest of the system. Same system, you could make it so you take a penalty to evasion for every point your armor is above your damage threshold. (Also why dont you just have one threshold!?!) If its so your penalties are exactly the same and you dont need a chart to figure them out. Youre a wizard eith a damage threshold of 3? Plate is a +7 so you'll have a -4 evade. I really want damage threshold and armor to be the same thing. And every hit that doesn't deal damage to do damage to your threshold until youre just overwhelmed and take damage every hit.

Maybe you can have the brawnier classes ignore the armor penalties for heaviers armors, signifying their extensive training to overcome such hinderances.

I would make 2 major changes. First I would add requirements for "medium" and "heavy" armour just like the magic weapons have. To use medium armour you need to have one domain with the "Martial" tag, to use heavy both domains need to have the "Martial" tag. That way we can avoid full metal wizards unless they multiclass. Secondly I would make armour always reduce damage by the armour score then you can use armor slots to reduce it further. Of course that would need another armor/armor slots/thresholds rebalancing but hey it's beta. You still have the ability to reduce damage and use the armor slots but characters going for heavy armours now will feel hard to damage and don't have to use armor for 3 dmg goblin stabs.

One simple way to de-couple it is to decouple the number from the armor type. Make it so light armor takes two armor slots to reduce any damage by one threshold, and progress to 1 slot per threshold for things like full plate Then make heavier armors add stress costs for spellcasting, and that makes wizards able to use it, but makes it more challenging to manage stress.

Hope may be a fluid resource, but while you should, generally, have enough to use BRACE most of the time, it will come at the expense of your other abilities that use HOPE, so there will still be a need for resource management, which seems to be the selling point of this game.

It sounds like everyone’s in the comments wants no armor and just more threshold numbers. Which could definitely work, widening the cap of wounds. More attacks just doing no damage going under the minor wound.

I like being able to wear any armor for any class. I don't see why my wizard can't be armored to the teeth.

While I do think there is some interesting stuff to keep in mind and at a glance, since I have yet to play the game, I did worry about the armor damage reductions being so close to each other and the damage thresholds (especially minor just being 1 across the board for all classes) would affect the game, I also feel like JUST looking at how much it takes to reduce the armor down one threshold and not factoring in the actual amount of HP lost and who can actually afford to take hits vs needing to use the armor more between the warrior and wizard would be better to tell which is actually better in well, actual play. I feel like having decent evasion is being undersold a bit too as at least from what I looked at (I'm not really a math guy, so I just did everything at the average) it did feel to me the wizard would want to burn more armor and run out faster vs the warrior so perhaps dodging as much as you can and using armor slots less would be more beneficial to the wizard actually staying in a fight longer (although I was also factoring in the tower shield which reduces evasion more). I like the armor system, I like that any class could theoretically use any armor and have a reason for it, and that it's not so restrictive with kind of no straight upgrades really. Furthermore, I like the player agency of when to use armor vs not, and I feel like people are overselling how much it would actually take to figure things out while at the table in play and wouldn't really slow stuff down as much as people think here (at least going off my groups unplayed thoughts/what I have heard in other reviews of the game that like the armor). Finally, while I personally have always cared more for the RP/story of my games over any of the combat/tabletop aspects, the reason I still play things like D&D is that I find the combination of an actual game to represent the role-playing and the role-playing itself to be a fun blend that keeps you from getting bored doing too much of one or the other by switching between the two (and if done perfectly they elevate and tie into each other). A lot of the suggestions here sound like they want the game to lean even more and more into simplicity and pure role-playing. While of course I can understand that some people would prefer this, I PERSONALLY would be less interested without the fun additional mechanics/complexity especially in certain aspects of character creation/combat where I find that complexity matters more and instead want this game to try to find that perfect blend between a fluid rules-light system for role-play and a somewhat more complex side for combat (although It's honestly still a lot less complex than D&D combat for example). From what I have heard watching Critical Role's discussions of the game and the two sides of the coin so to speak, from what I have read about the rules in the daggerheart playtest material about the subject, and especially just from what I believe to be the reason D&D has got such a stranglehold on the TTRPG market being that it has both sides to appeal to all types of players (with one only needing to tweak how they run the game in each campaign/session to appeal more to wherever their players are on the dial of combat vs roleplay), Daggerheart would be best for both me and general appeal by continuing to work on a middle ground between the "true neutral and not super connected" state of D&Ds combat vs roleplay balance and a completely role-play focused experience. Of course though I recognize this is my opinion, but I feel from what I have heard and seeing in other reviews about the game being (not everyone is going to like it if you are more into the wargamey/super indepth side of things) that it doesn't mean it should automatically be made for only the most dedicated theater kids either if that makes sense? I feel there is a preference everyone has along the sliders of the "dial" here and that a market for each point probably exists, but I am happy with Daggerheart in its current place where others might want it moved even further towards the roleplay side of that dial.

Having warriors add their profincy to armor or evasion (maybe rogue for evasion) While mages can use armor to cast shield but use an action to do so. So they give the dm an action poit or stress . Maybe.

Bumping up the Armor values might help. Or giving Warrior and other 'tough' classes a bonus when wearing heavy armor. Like: At level 1 a Warrior can chose an armor type to specialize in. [] Light armor: +1 to Evasion [] Medium armor: removes the agility penalty [] Heavy armor: +1 armor slot and +2 armor rating [] Full armor: +2 armor slot and +3 armor rating When you level up you can change what sort of armor you are specialized in, but you can only specialize in one kind at a time. That way the warrior can choose light armor to be evasive (which work well with the Bone school anyway), medium armor to be balanced, or the heavier armors to be more tanky. Or just eliminate armor all together and base Armor Rating on class.

Nicely presented. I think wizard player would naturally choose light armor because they would think its what they are supposed to wear, and assume the game knows best, even though it's not best, which strange. If they are SUPPOSED to wear heavy armor by design intent then they really need to rename the armors to make them feel more natural for casters or martials alike. I'm fine with heavy armor being best for either wizards or martials, but it should be obvious what they should choose, and it shouldn't be the same armor for everyone.

I've never played DH (but I did read the 1.2 document though) but it definitely seems like flattening all minor DT to 1 was a bad move. I wonder if taking a hint from Fate might be good. In Fate if you roll an attack that doesn't generate shifts (a 0 damage hit) you get a +1 bonus on your next attack, since you still unbalanced them in some way. Maybe next attack against a target of a 0 damage hit gets advantage or getting hit with a 0 damage hit makes you vulnerable to the next attack. Another option would be to tie base Damage Thresholds completely to what armor you're wearing, with class and/or ancestry adjustments, and probably restrict which classes can wear certain types of armor (or have ability prerequisites). Then you could have light armor have much smaller DTs than heavy armor.

I think your armor should increase your minimum damage number, give more armor slots, but be restricted to a minimum ability score modifier per type. Maybe light armor has no minimum strength modifyer but heavy is +2 or maybe even +3 which would require you to increase your strength at level 2. I think adding some variety would be beneficial and yes, not making everything available to everyone. I dont think straight up restricting you from casting magic if you wear armor is a good idea like some classic role play games, but it wouldnt make sense for a skinny character with no strength to wear full plate imo.

Allow me to make a counterargument! Interesting take, definitely something that from observation alone didn't seem like a problem to me and I can see how it cladhes eith your typical fantasy. However! Mages wearing robes that are light as paper is a staple in fantasy. But why? When you think about it logically, what in the eorld is the purpose of them being lighly armored? In dnd its clear, you can't wear armor and cast, cause you can't use armor. Yet a very solid and favourite thing to do is play a mountain dwarf where you get access to better armor. If logic is what guides the decisions and there aren't any rules in place to artificially oppose this, then unless the robes are better than armor in any regard, mages wouldn't use them, what for? To look cooler? To be more sneaky when at the same time shouting an incantation that can be heard from a mile away? And then in the regard to fighters on the frontline. Yes the flaw is apparent, it feels like the frointline would have way too hard of a time with smallfries but a single heavy hitter is something they are equiped if they use the heavy armor. But logically speaking different enemies require different aproach. Just as fighting in a narrow corridor isnt really a fitting place for a flail or any sort of long weapon heavy armor isnt good against light and nimble attacks, but its great against blunt force. Hystorically too.

Mork Borg figured out the armor problem.

I think that Daggerheart's main focus is on RP not "efficency" BUT let me add before people get me, I still enjoyed this video and the good research.

it's an abstraction problem. armor slots should just be 1hp worth of damage reduction. Instead of spending X armor slots to reduce incoming damage by Y amount, spend armor slots to reduce X HP loss by X slots.

Yeah I noticed this major armor flaw in the way damage is dealt. D&D allows for death by a thousand paper cuts. Vs. Daggerheart has more of a death by 12 papercuts. I am just saying if an armor gives you a disadvantage or makes you easier to hit. It should also be able to shrug off a certain minimum anmount of damage A heavily fully armored character with full plate should be able to shrug off some minimum amount of damage vs an unarmed or partially armored character. Maybe full plate armor needs to take a minimum of 3 damage for it to be considered a hit. Or roll a percentage die based on how much of your body is protected by the armor for certain minimum damage thresholds. (The example being a paper cut shouldn't hurt a character in full plate unless they are hit in the face more or less. so roll a d10 a 10 hits and they mark off a slot. ) Sam's super armored character had these massive damage thresholds but still was marking off things for 1 damage because he was so easy to hit. I get someone in a chainmail shirt would still be able more susceptible to a paper cut than someone fully covered. So say 30 percent of their body can withstand avoiding marking anything within that minimum damage threshold of like 1 or 2 damage.

Fantastic video. I've seen many people twist the rules so wizards can wear heavy armor in 5E for optimized characters so I'm not sure it's a bad thing and the idea of faster warriors with lighter armor being more deadly in warfare does have a lot of historical antecedents. Heavy is not always better in real life. I do like the idea of light armor giving some benefits and heavy having some strength recquirements.

If armor came with a free slot for each hit, and damage was adjusted accordingly, this would mitigate the first problem. The second one would be solved with an armor proficiency system.

To me, just hearing you describe how armor works, it feels too crunchy to me. Crunchy mechanics does not feel like the right formula for promoting what I like about Critical Role.

i don't have any idea who daggerheart is trying to attract by being both a story game and a crunch game. their main fanbase is 5e, not mathbinder.

I think that the most obvious way to separate who wears what, is to make armours and their values become related to stats. This could either mean that wearing heavy armour requires high strength and wearing light armour requires high agility, or they could become slightly more complex like: "The armour value of heavy armour increases based on your strength", etc. I also love how it creates a tactical choice of changing your armour type as you level up based on the stat you choose to raise. My point here is that the most obvious way with which to assign specific armour to specific classes without actually prohibiting the choice, is to tie it to the base stats each class normally uses. How this will then mathematically play with the class's evasion and damage thresholds should not be what players have to worry about. This could also create more various and interesting armour types like "magic robes" or "arcane tattoos" for example, which could gain power through knowledge or instinct and so on. It could also create a niche situation where a Wizard could raise strength just to wear heavy armour (and that would be even cooler if heavy armour is better on wizards mathematically, as it is now). One of the coolest things provided by the variety of weapons in dagger heart, is that they can potentially allow any type of stat distribution on any class to be viable. Armour should be helping with that as well.

The drawbacks could scale proportional to a relevant stat. The higher a character's strength, the lower the agility penalty for wearing heavy armor. A 100 lb gymnast is much more agile than a 250 lb running back, but the running back retains more agility as he carries more weight.

Heavy armor could give some points of "free" damage reduction, so in some cases where it is close, they could reduce damage without spending armor slots. I think that would make "heavy armor better". But it would further incentivize others to take heavy armor over other types.

Really good Observation

I'm actually disappointed they took stress away from damage. I always hated the idea that you fight/act at 100% until you lose your final hit point

I feel like you're misunderstanding the benefit that higher armor ratings give. Its not that heavy armor is meant to reduce more damage than light armor, its that heavy armor allows you to much more consistently trade armor slots for HP on a 1-to-1 basis. That consistency means that a heavily armored character can stay in the fight far longer than a lightly armored character.

As much as people mad at wotc I don’t think dagger heart will challenge dnd

It goes against the fantasy, but it is hard to feel like you shouldn't deck out the squishier characters. I suppose the solutions would be about encouraging/discouraging the role in combat. A type of encumbrance probably enforce the fantasies better -- strong people can take hits and wear armour while frail wizards can't so well (So perhaps your strength score affects how much it'll affect agility?). Well-articulated video 👍 This is exactly the kind of game design analysis I love. What mechanics ultimately encourage/discourage is the core of it all.

its in beta and a year or so from release. it will get rebalanced.

I don't see a major issue with the armor types. It means armor choice for this "sweet spot" is more a matter of choice - which fits a more narrative focus over a simulationist approach that I think you are taking. The mapping is still good in order to see how it works in order to make the design decision.

This looks very confusing to play for a new TTRPG player

If it takes a 20 minute vid and charts and graphs… it may be broken 😂

❤️🥳👍🏿

Daggerheart's major flaw is that it is trying to square the circle of narrative forward (rules-light) systems and tactical combat (rules-heavy) ones. Put players in a situation where their character's survival is dependant on tactics and they will act tactically (especially if the players enjoy tactical combat). The bucketing/quantization of armor and hp creates a new problem that wasn't present before; there's a reason why HP has been an abstraction (for unit health) since Chainmail. For an actual play all these constantly flowing variables will make it hard to follow for the audience. If I'm watching a 5e game I know what it means when a player holds up a few fingers on one hand for their remaining HP. To get the same feel for DH you'd need to know HP, Armor, Hope, Stress at a minimum - in other words a cluttered overlay in stream. 5e works because it front-loads all the calculation to the level up process (typically off-screen for the audience).

Dagger heart has many flaws. But hey, that's what beta is for.

They should consider going old school and limiting armor choices by class - wizard spend all day reading books - not practicing how to effectively maneuver in plate - in old dnd a wizard in plate even if trained had a chance for spell failure. 5e removed all that in an effort to be easier to use and reduce the number of times you can say no to players. But it’s the same issue - in 5e there is rarely a benefit to a wizard to not find a way to wear heavy armor

It does seem like a poorly designed product. It's both overly wordy while still being confusing, and it's attempting to be a rules light, highly narrative forced DnD, by combining aspects of DnD and Powered by the Apocalypse, but does both poorly. It seems to me that there are already well established systems that do what it's trying better. Dungeon World, Shadowdark, and Mork Borg all being examples. It feels like if he had just made it a Powered by the Apocalypse system it would have gotten what he was wanting far better. Just have enemies do between 1-5 damage and have armor reduce damage by 1-3, and if you'd want to spice it up you could use Alien RPG's random card attack mechanic. DaggerHeart is overly simplistic on the wrong things, but still overly complicated on others.

The more I hear about daggerheart, the less interested I am.

clickbait title, didn't watch

Yeah, it’s major flaw is it is not D&D, lol

Daggerheart is garbage. This is what happens when you try to be "rules light" and "narritive focused".😅 Matt Mercer the grifter thought DnD was too crunchy so he made up another convoluted system where you have to take extra steps to calculate how much damage your armor is absorbing. Its like they are really trying to make this trash work but without clearly defined rules/mechanics this will end up being a disaster. DnD DMs already have a hard time learning/following RAW/RAI if they even want to but the "light rules" which arent so light will exacerbate those problems and each Daggerheart table will feel like a compeltely different game table to table. Narritive story telling does not belong in a game where fate/chance provide the tension. Players are either masters of their own fate and succeed/fail based on their actions and the die roles or the DM/Players get to try and control the narritve directly. Daggerheart is the worst of both worlds. 😅

Yeah. It's woke.