Action Rolls
When the GM (or your spell, attack, or ability) asks you to make an action roll, you’ll do so by rolling your two Duality Dice.
Rules
For Players
Activate a Hope Feature
Spells and abilities may also allow (or require) you to spend Hope to activate certain effects. A Hope Feature is any effect that asks you to spend Hope to activate it.
Adjusting Abilities and Spells
Just as there is no set style for weapons combat, there is no set style of casting within Daggerheart.
Advantage & Disadvantage
Some features let you roll with advantage or disadvantage on an action or reaction roll.
Armor Statistics
Armor is defined by three details: a name, a base value, and (sometimes) a feature.
Attack Rolls
When you make an action roll with the intent to do harm to an enemy, you’re making an attack roll.
Background
Explore your character’s background by filling out the “Background” section of your character guide. Several prompts are provided to jumpstart inspiration, but you or the GM can modify or change these questions to fit the character you’re looking to play.
Calculating Damage
After rolling your damage dice, add all their values together then add any modifiers to determine the result. The GM will mark the corresponding Hit Points based on that damage.
Character Traits
These values reflect your natural or trained ability in each of the core six stats—Agility, Strength, Finesse, Knowledge, Instinct, and Presence.
Characters of Mixed Ancestry
Families within the world of Daggerheart are as unique as the peoples and cultures that inhabit it.
Class
A key step of character creation is to choose the class you want to play, then take the character sheet and character guide that corresponds to that class.
Conditions
Some moves may cause a target to take a condition. Conditions are effects or circumstances that change the way a target may function.
Connections
These represent the relationships and personal history between you and the rest of your party members.
Cover, Line of Sight, and Darkness
Rules regarding cover, line of sight, and the effects of darkness.
Critical Successes
Whenever you make a Duality roll, if both dice roll the same number, you automatically roll a Critical Success, even if you would’ve otherwise failed because the total is lower than your roll’s difficulty.
Damage Rolls
When you succeed on an attack roll against an enemy, you’ll then make a damage roll to determine how much damage—and thus what tier of Hit Points—your attack inflicts on that target.
Difficulty
When a player makes an action roll, you’ll often have to set the difficulty of that challenge to know whether they’ve succeeded or failed.
Downtime
A party may choose to rest before they continue forward on their journey, and when they do, each PC has the chance to make a few downtime moves.
Duality Dice
The core dice in Daggerheart are a pair of d12 dice called Duality Dice. These d12s are different colors, one representing Hope and the other representing Fear.
End of the Scene
Sometimes certain effects, bonuses, or conditions state that they last until the end of the scene.
Equipping, Storing, and Switching Equipment
As a player, you can equip weapons and armor to your character by recording them on your character sheet in the “Active Weapon” and “Active Armor” sections.
Evasion
Your evasion score represents your ability to avoid attacks and other unwanted effects from adversaries.
Experience
An Experience is a word or phrase used to encapsulate a specific set of skills your character might have because of the exciting life they’ve lived.
Fear
When you roll your Duality Dice and the Fear die rolls higher than the Hope die, you “roll with Fear.” When this happens, even if you succeed on your action roll, there are consequences or complications that come from it.
Gold
Gold tracks how much wealth a character has with them on their journey, and can often be spent on things like items, consumables, and equipment.
Help an Ally
You can spend one Hope to help an ally who is making an action where you could feasibly aid them.
Hit Points & Stress Points
Your character’s health and well-being are represented by Hit Points and Stress Points.
Hit Points and Damage Thresholds
Hit Points represent the physical injuries and discomforts experienced by a character during your adventures.
Hope
Hope is a currency that represents the way fate can turn in your character’s favor during the game.
Hope and Fear
Hope and Fear represent the duality of the world beyond the characters, and how the world around them impacts the action they’re attempting.
Inventory
As you acquire new gear throughout your journey, you can carry one additional weapon (either primary or secondary) and one additional armor in the “Inventory Weapon” and “Inventory Armor” slots.
Leveling Up
When a party has accomplished something of significance in a campaign, the GM may tell them that it is time to Level Up.
Locations
Daggerheart includes a number of locations for you to pull inspiration from, repurporse for your own game, or use whole cloth.
Long Rest
A Long Rest is when player characters are able to make camp, relax for a few hours, and get some sleep.
Loot & Items
Loot in Daggerheart consists of the additional items and consumables you might find along your journey.
Magic and Spells
Magic in Daggerheart is both very powerful and incredibly dangerous. It permeates the land and dwells within the people here.
Movement
When you’re not in a dangerous, difficult, or time-sensitive situation, you don’t generally need to worry about how fast you move.
Ongoing Effects
Once an effect is in play, it continues until a PC or the GM ends it, or until the fiction changes in a way that would naturally stop it.
Player Principles
A list of principles for all players to keep in mind while engaging with Daggerheart.
Primary Weapon
Primary weapons are the main weapons you’ll likely be fighting with during an encounter.
Reaction Rolls
Some moves will prompt a reaction roll. This is a roll in response to a threat or attack, representing the character’s effort to avoid or withstand the effect.
Reading Domain Cards
At character creation and as your character levels up, you’ll gain increasingly powerful domain cards, which provide abilities and spells you can utilize during your adventures.
Refreshing Features During Downtime
Taking a short or long rest may also trigger the refresh of some moves for players.
Resistance & Immunity
Some abilities, spells, items, or other effects in the game might limit the amount of damage being done to a player through resistance or immunity.
Resurrection
It is possible to resurrect a dead character, though it will likely be a long, difficult, and costly process– and they likely won’t return the same as they died.
Scars
If you choose to avoid death, you might take a scar. If you do, permanently cross out one of your Hope slots.
Secondary Weapon
Secondary weapons are typically ancillary pieces of equipment that augment your fighting, like shields, daggers, small swords, etc.
Short Rest
A short rest is when player characters are only able to stop and catch their breath, taking a break for about an hour.
Simultaneous and Stacking Effects
If any two effects are happening simultaneously, and the rules don’t tell you which order to apply them in, the player (or GM) controlling the effects can do so in any order.
Spellcast Rolls
Spellcast rolls are a type of action roll that’s used when you’re creating significant magical effects (often via a Domain Card).
Spending Resources
If a rule tells you to spend a resource, you lose that resource when you spend it.
Stress Points
Stress Points represents the mental and physical strain put on your character during their adventures. Some effects require you to mark a Stress Point.
Swapping Cards
If you want to switch a card from your vault into your loadout, you can do so immediately by marking Stress equal to that card’s Recall Cost.
Tag Team Rolls
Each player can choose one time per session to spend 3 Hope and initiate a Tag Team Roll with another PC.
Targets & Groups
To affect a group of targets, these targets must be clumped together in an area within Very Close range of the others in that group.
The Action Tracker
When a combat scenario is likely to last more than a couple rolls, when play moves to maps and miniatures, or when seconds count in the narrative, the GM should place the action tracker card on the table within everyone’s reach.
The Flow of the Game
In a session of Daggerheart, the players go back and forth describing what their characters do in the fictional circumstances the GM lays out for them, building on each other’s ideas and working together to tell an exciting story.
Throwing a Weapon
When you are using a weapon that could be theoretically thrown (like a dagger or an axe), you can throw it at a target within Very Close range, making a Finesse attack roll.
Trait Rolls
A trait roll is an action roll that specifically calls for a certain character trait to be used.
Unarmed Attack Rolls
This attack often uses Strength or Finesse, but could be any trait depending on how you describe the attack.
Unarmored
While unarmored, you don’t have access to armor slots unless you have a way to increase your armor score.
Utilize an Experience
You can spend a Hope to utilize one of your relevant Experiences on an action roll, adding its modifier to the dice results.
Weapon Statistics
Each weapon presented in this book includes its name, trait, range, damage dice, damage type, and burden, and (sometimes) a feature.
Weapons
Weapons are defined by several details: the trait they use, their range, damage dice, damage type, burden (how many hands it needs), and sometimes a feature.
What Counts as an Action?
You only place a token on the action tracker when you’re either making an action roll or using another move that tells you to “use an action.”
What Do You Need to Play?
Most of what you need to play a session of Daggerheart is included in this book, but there are a few additional components you’ll need to gather before you begin.
For GM
Adversaries
Adversaries don’t have as many statistics and abilities as player characters, which makes it easier for you to coordinate multiple adversaries in combat.
Adversary Balance
If you want to utilize existing adversaries but adjust them to a different tier, here are some guidelines.
Adversary Types
Adversaries in Daggerheart are listed with types to represent the role they play in a scene.
Calling for Action Rolls
When players make moves during the game, sometimes you’ll want to ask them for an action roll to determine how the scene progresses.
Campaign Frame
When starting a campaign of Daggerheart, you might choose to begin with a campaign frame.
Chase Countdown
You can use dynamic countdowns to track the progress of a chase scene, whether the PCs are pursuing or being pursued.
Countdowns
ou can use a countdown to track progress toward a certain event, adversary move, or consequence.
Dynamic Countdown
When a certain situation is being actively influenced by the players, you may choose to use a dynamic countdown to track it.
Faction Relationships
Use a campaign sheet to track the relationships between the nations as well as their major assets and problems.
Flight and Other Features
When building your battles, consider the abilities and spells your PCs have.
GM Critical Success
Whenever you roll a 20 on the d20, your roll automatically succeeds regardless of the PC’s evasion score.
GM NPCs
When you run NPCs as the GM, you should always strive to follow your GM principles, make the NPCs act in line with their motives, and use them to bring the world to life.
Gold, Equipment, and Loot (GM)
Within your campaign, it’s up to you and your players how much importance you place on gold, equipment, and loot.
Group Action Rolls
When multiple PCs are taking an action together—such as sneaking through the enemy camp—the group nominates a leader of the action, then each player describes how they collaborate with the other PCs on the task.
Lines & Veils
First developed by Ron Edwards, Lines and Veils are a safety tool designed to be first employed in a Session 0, and revisited as much as is needed throughout a campaign.
Long-Term Countdown
Countdowns can also be used to track long-term events during a campaign; you could count down towards the overthrow of a nation, the death of a powerful mage, or anything else that might take more than a few sessions to come to bear.
Making Moves
Just like the players have moves they can make during the game, you also have GM moves that help drive forward the fiction in response to their actions.
Maps
At any point, players or the GM may call for a map to be brought to the table. This might be to clarify positioning, showcase an environment, or simply because the table enjoys using maps and miniatures.
Objective Countdowns
Completing major objectives requires a 10-step Countdown, while minor objectives and steps to address problems have 4 to 6 steps, depending on the scale of the endeavor.
Open Door Policy
The Open Door Policy is a safety tool that is as simple as it sounds. Tell your players that they are welcome to leave the game at any time, for any reason, and reassure them that they will not be punished or judged.
Optional Tool: Turn-Based Initiative
If your group prefers tactical play or structured player turns, you can limit the number of action tokens each PC can use on the action tracker at a time. I
Optional: Conflict Between PCs
An optional GM rule, sometimes a player might want their character to act against another PC in the scene.
Optional: Falling Damage
If a character falls a long way to the ground you can use the following as a guide.
Optional: Fate Rolls
An optional GM mechanic, sometimes the GM wants to use randomness when deciding something that is not dependent on a particular character’s capabilities or some other existing measurement.
Optional: Moving & Fighting Underwater
An optional GM mechanic, for any creatures that can’t breathe underwater, if you want to create tension around how long they can hold their breath, you can create a Breath Countdown die.
Safety Tools
Introducing safety tools into your game can help you to better navigate any difficult scenarios together, should they arise.
Session Zero
When preparing to embark on a long campaign that will tell the story of a group across months or years, it’s important to get everyone on the same page and set expectations as early as possible.
Standard Countdown
Many enemies and events use standard countdowns, in which the die begins on a specific number and ticks down every time a player makes an action roll, regardless of the result.
The GM's Die
The players use two d12 Duality dice as their primary dice for action resolution, but as GM, you’ll instead use one d20.
Using Environments
Environments represent everything in a scene that is not the PCs or the adversaries, from the physical elements of the space to background characters and forces of nature.
Using the Action Tracker (GM)
The action tracker should come into play whenever an encounter will likely last longer than a dice roll or two.