Customizing Your Game
CHAPTER SIX
A large portion of TTRPG play includes the act of customization based on the needs and desires of your table–personalization doesn’t stop after the act of character creation. Below you will see the beginnings of some recommendations for ways to modify Daggerheart based on your needs and desires.
You’ll notice portions of this section are currently unavailable. As our team continues to refine mechanics, we’ll update and expand upon this text.
Adversary Balance
As adversary/system balance is a work in progress, this section is under heavy development and might not fully reflect the current ruleset and math in the previous chapters. Use at your peril.
Scaling Attack Modifiers
When creating or scaling adversaries, you can default their attack modifier to the tier you’re creating them for and adjust up or down depending on how likely you want them to be to hit and the evasion scores of your party. An adversary’s attack modifier might be as much as 4 points lower or higher than their tier when the foe is meant to be especially likely or unlikely to land a blow. You might balance an adversary with an especially powerful attack by giving them a lower attack modifier (especially if they’re a Bruiser-type) or give an adversary that doesn’t do as much damage a higher attack modifier so that they wear the PCs down a bit at a time.
Baseline attack modifiers by tier:
Tier 1 (level 1): -4 to +5, averaging at +1
Tier 2 (levels 2-4): -3 to +6, averaging at +2
Tier 3 (levels 5-7): -2 to +7, averaging at +3
Tier 4 (levels 8-10): -1 to +8, averaging at +4
Minion adversaries often have a lower attack modifier than the average, with a Tier 1 minion often having a -3 or -2 modifier. Leader, Solo, and Skulk type adversaries often have a higher modifier than the average, with a Tier 1 leader having as much as a +4 or +5 modifier.
Scaling Damage
In Daggerheart, you’ll find yourself needing to create a dice pool for damage from a threat or foe that you hadn’t already prepared. In these situations, here are some guidelines to follow:
Tier 1 Damage
At level 1, most classes have damage thresholds of Major 7, Severe 14 or below.
Recommended damage pools to reliably deal Minor, Major, and Severe damage. For a quick choice, take the bolded option.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| — | — | — |
| 1d6+1 | 2d4+5 | 3d4+10 |
| 1d4+2 | 2d6+3 | 2d8+5 |
| 1d8+1 | 1d8+7 | 2d6+8 |
In a group of tougher characters (Guardian, Seraph, Warrior), the average damage needed for each threshold is higher. Add +1 to all values to get the same results in a group where the average threshold is 8/15.
Additionally, class, foundation, and heritage features can impact HP thresholds, so keep those in mind when tailoring adversaries to your game’s needs.
If you want an attack to have a high variance of damage and a high ceiling, consider using a smaller # of dice that have a higher number of sides (d10s, d12s, or d20s), and avoiding flat damage bonuses. Note that this higher range of results can reduce how consistently useful armor is.
If you want an attack to hit consistently within a certain range of damage, use a larger # of dice with a smaller number of sides (especially d4s, d6s, and d8s). Alternatively, adding a flat bonus to damage can help more consistently deal damage with a minimum result.
If you want to ensure that an attack cannot do Severe damage to any characters in your party, set the maximum damage value of that attack to be lower than the party’s lowest Severe threshold.
To ensure that an attack will always deal at least Major damage, set the minimum damage value of that attack to be equal to or greater than the party’s highest Major threshold.
In a party where the highest Major threshold is 8, you can ensure a hit will always deal Major damage with a dice pool of 2d4+6, since 8 is the lowest possible result.
In a group with a large spread of damage thresholds (a Stalwart Guardian in a group with a Wizard), the damage needed to cause Minor damage (1 HP) to the Guardian might cause a Major injury (2 HP) to the Wizard. You might want to use dice pools that will generate more reliable averages to avoid swingy results that could deal an unwanted Severe blow to one of the more fragile characters. However, in a group with this large range of thresholds, characters with protective instincts/abilities have the opportunity to shine by protecting their comrades.
Damage at Higher Tiers
As characters grow in level, their damage thresholds increase as well. Characters’ damage thresholds will diverge more over time through players choosing different advancement options as well as through special items and abilities. But here are some tips & benchmarks for scaling impromptu damage.
Find below a chart for Tiers 2, 3, and 4, with suggestions for damage pools that will usually deal Minor, Major, or Severe damage, respectively.
Example damage pool suggestion:
| Major Damage |
|---|
| — |
| 2d6+3 (5-15) |
At Tier 2, the damage pool of 2d6+3 will generally deal Major damage. The (5-15) listing shows the full range of results for that damage pool, where the lowest roll on 2d6+3 will be 5, and the highest result will be 15.
Tier 2 (Levels 2-4)
Characters will have Damage Thresholds that rise to an average of Major 8 / Severe 19.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| — | — | — |
| 1d8+2 (3-10) | 2d6+3 (5-15) | 2d6+15 (17-27) |
| 2d4+3 (5-11) | 2d10+4 (6-24) | 2d8+12 (14-28) |
| 1d6+2 (3-8) | 1d8+3 (4-11) | 2d10+10 (12-30) |
Tier 3 (Levels 5-7)
Characters will have damage thresholds that rise to an average of 10 or 11 Major and 26 Severe. Use the following chart for damage suggestions, with each column suggesting damage pools to deal Minor, Major, or Severe damage, respectively.
The numbers in the parentheses show the range of results for that damage pool.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| — | — | — |
| 2d4+3 (5-11) | 2d4+7 (9-15) | 2d8+20 (22-36) |
| 1d8+4 (5-12) | 2d10+5 (5-25) | 2d10+18 (20-38) |
| 2d6+2 (4-14) | 4d6+5 (9-29) | 2d12+15 (17-37) |
Tier 4 (Levels 8-10)
Characters’ damage thresholds are likely to have diverged substantially, but the benchmark for this tier is 15 or 16 Major / 39 Severe.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| — | — | — |
| 1d8+6 (7-14) | 2d6+10 (12-22) | 2d8+30 (32-46) |
| 2d6+4 (6-16) | 2d8+8 (10-24) | 2d10+25 (27-45) |
| 2d10+3 (5-23) | 2d10+6 (8-26) | 2d20+12 (14-52) |
| 2d8+3 (5-19) | 4d6+8 (12-30) | 4d6+20 (24-44) |
| - | - | 4d8+20 (24-52) |
Scaling Difficulty
An adversary’s difficulty sets the standard target PCs will need to meet to succeed in actions against them. If your party is level 4 (the top of Tier 2), you might use a higher difficulty and higher thresholds than if you were making the adversary for them at level 2. Most adversaries should have difficulty numbers that the party can consistently succeed against over 50% of the time.
| Adversary Statistic | Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | — | — |
| Difficulty | 11 | 14 | 17 | 20 |
If the adversary has a passive feature that adds to their difficulty in certain situations, it’s usually best to give them a slightly lower default difficulty.
GM Difficulty vs PC Evasion
Difficulty for NPCs and Evasion for PCs have some cross-over, but their main difference is functionality. The PCs have an entire character sheet and hand of cards that define the scope and power of their characters, and Evasion is a way to measure how often they are hit by an attack. As a GM, you’re often creating (or improvising) many characters throughout the course of a session that interact with players in a multitude of ways. Therefore, NPCs have a simplified Difficulty as a catch-all for any rolls made against them, and you can add their relevant Experience for anything they are particularly adept at. So, in a way, Evasion is bundled into Difficulty for the GMs to help make your job running the game easier.
Scaling Damage Thresholds
Adversary damage thresholds represent how much damage is required to deal HP to them. The chart below gives some benchmarks per tier depending on whether you want an enemy to be more fragile (like a Skulk, Social, or Ranged adversary), average (like a Standard, Horde, or Support type), or tough (like a Leader, Bruiser, or Solo type).
| Tier | Fragile | Standard | Tough | Extra Tough |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | — | — |
| 1 | Major 5 | Severe 10 | Major 7 | Severe 12 |
| 2 | Major 8 | Severe 16 | Major 10 | Severe 20 |
| 3 | Major 15 | Severe 27 | Major 20 | Severe 32 |
| 4 | Major 20 | Severe 35 | Major 25 | Severe 45 |
Things to Keep in Mind
- If an adversary has a healing ability, consider dropping their damage thresholds to reduce the chance of the fight dragging.
- If your party does not have any abilities that grant temporary proficiency bonuses, they will have a hard time hitting the Severe thresholds of Extra Tough enemies without a critical success.
Example Adversary Scaling
Mike is preparing an encounter for their level 1 group but wants to use the Assassins writeups. Mike could just tweak the Tier 1 Bandits, but decides to scale down the assassins. They start with the Assassin Poisoner, planning on using a poisoner and some minions for this first encounter.
They start with the Tier 2 writeup:
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 2
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 14
Attack modifier: +3
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d8+12 phy
Major 10 | Severe 19
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Grindletooth Venom Blade - Passive
Targets that mark HP from a Poisoned Throwing Dagger attack are made Vulnerable until they clear one Hit Point.
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within Close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
First, the difficulty of the Poisoner drops 14 to 12 so that level 1 characters can frequently succeed against them when using their stronger traits and closer to a 50/50 chance when using their other traits. The attack modifier drops by 1 since Tier 1 characters will have lower evasion.
Then, their damage drops from 2d8+12 to 2d8+5, still capable of dealing notable hits to a level 1 character.
The Poisoner’s damage thresholds drop from Major 8 / Severe 16 to Major 5 / Severe 10. The Poisoner is not meant to be tough, but it will still take a strong blow from a level 1 character to deal a Severe injury. Mike leaves the HP and Stress as-is.
Finally, Mike decides to drop the Grindletooth Venom Blade feature entirely for Tier 1, but leaves Fumigation as-is, since it does not deal damage or have a reaction roll with a difficulty.
The Tier 1 version of the Assassin Poisoner now looks like:
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 1
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 12
Attack modifier: +2
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d8+5 phy
Major 5 | Severe 10
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
Tier 3
If instead Mike was scaling the Assassin Poisoner up to Tier 3, they would increase the attack bonus, damage, difficulty, and damage thresholds.
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 3
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 16
Attack modifier: +4
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d12+15 phy
Major 14 | Severe 27
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Grindletooth Venom Blade - Passive
Targets that mark HP from a Poisoned Throwing Dagger attack are made Vulnerable until they clear one Hit Point.
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
Tier 4
If adapting the Assassin Poisoner to Tier 4, Mike would substantially increase their damage, difficulty, experience, and their damage thresholds, raise the attack bonus, and add one or maybe two features.
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 4
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 19
Attack modifier: +5
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d8+30 phy
Major 21 | Severe 35
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Grindletooth Venom Blade - Passive
Targets that mark HP from a Poisoned Throwing Dagger attack are made Vulnerable until they clear one Hit Point.
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
Stinging Gas - Action
Toss a sachet up to a Close distance that erupts into stinging gas that grants disadvantage to all targets within Very Close of the eruption. The effect ends at the end of the scene or when the target clears HP.
[Playtesters: We invite your constructive feedback on how the adversaries included work at your table, as well as your experiences with this scaling framework. This extends to difficulty ratings, damage, damage thresholds, features, etc.]
List of Adversary Features
The adversaries in this book are written with various features, but when you’re creating adversaries, you may not have an existing writeup that makes sense to adapt and need to make your own. Here are some standard adversary features to use or modify as needed.
[coming soon]
Environment Balance
Creating Environments
If there isn’t an environment close enough to adapt, but you’d like to use a stat block, you can always make your own, much like you’d adapt an existing environment or create a new adversary.
First, consider the concept for the environment. For example, Mike is preparing a session where the party will be visiting a town with a marketplace. Mike wants a marketplace environment to organize their thoughts and prepare some surprises for the PCs to enrich that scene. The party is level 1 (Tier 1), so the marketplace environment should be Tier 1 to match. Mike then looks at the “Adapting Environments” section and decides on difficulty 10 -this is one lower than the 11 recommended in that section, but Mike doesn’t want the challenges from the market to be that taxing.
The next step is to consider the environment’s type -what role do you want the environment to play in the scene? What type of scene is this going to be and what challenges do you want to represent in the environment stat block? For the marketplace, Mike wants to focus on social play, so they choose the social type.
So far, the environment looks like:
Bustling Marketplace
Description:
Tone & Feel: **
Tier: 1
Type: Social
Difficulty: 10
With the tier, difficulty, and type decided, pick out some potential adversaries, create features, or take notes on description, tone, and feel. These can be done in any order depending on what makes sense for you.
Mike decides to detail some features next and trusts that those will then let them know what is needed for potential adversaries and the descriptive notes.
Mike decides to create one passive feature, one reaction, and one action, giving them the full spread of features to use as needed throughout the scene.
First, Mike decides to set the passive feature, asking themselves “What is a feature that represents how things operate in this environment and should always apply?”. They decide to lean in on the economic/mercantile element of a market and go for a passive that spotlights how the flow of money is fundamental to getting what you want in a marketplace. They call the feature “Tip the Scales” and decide that PCs can gain an advantage on any Presence rolls by offering a bribe or greater price of a handful of gold as part of their interaction.
That feature then reads:
Tip the Scales - Passive
Any PC may gain advantage on a Presence roll by offering a handful of gold as part of the interaction.
Mike decides to jot down some prompts to draw on during the session. Will any coin be accepted or only local currency? How overt are the PCs in offering this bribe?
The completed feature looks like so:
Tip the Scales - Passive
Any PC may gain advantage on a Presence roll by offering a bag of gold as part of the interaction.
Will any coin be accepted or only local currency? How overt are the PCs in offering this bribe?
Bustling Marketplace
Description: The economic heart of the settlement, with local artisans, traveling merchants, and patrons across social classes.
Tone & Feel: Crowded and vibrant, a cacophony of smells from food, herbs, spices, and textiles.
Tier: 1
Type: Social
Difficulty: 10
Features
Tip the Scales - Passive
Any PC may gain advantage on a Presence roll by offering a bag of gold as part of the interaction.
Will any coin be accepted or only local currency? How overt are the PCs in offering this bribe?
Next, Mike thinks about a good reaction feature to escalate or give shape to a scene. They think about the kinds of things that happen in crowded markets and decides on a reaction to separate the PCs, calling it “Crowd Closes In”. If and when a PCs splits off from the group momentarily, the flow of people will cut them off more thoroughly, presenting an opportunity to spotlight that one character and/or put them into danger. Then Mike comes up with some prompts for a completed feature that looks like:
Crowd Closes In - Reaction
When one of the PCs splits from the group, the crowds shift and cut them off from the party for a moment.
Where does the crowd’s movement carry them? How do they feel about being alone but surrounded?
Building on the idea from Crowd Closes In, Mike decides on an action to tempt a character with something from their background questions. They don’t know who it will be, so they spend some time thinking about an appropriate item for each PC so that they can decide in the moment:
Unexpected Find - Action
Reveal to the PCs that one of the merchants has something they want or need—food from home, a rare book, magical components, a dubious treasure map, a magical key.
What cost beyond gold will the merchant ask for in exchange for this rarity?
Mike considers adding another feature to initiate a chase scene, like a thief stealing something from a PC’s pack or maybe running off with the item from Unexpected Find. They like the idea of using these features in order to shape the scene, so they sketch out an action for that thief.
Mike looks at the Tier 1 adversaries and decides that the potential adversaries are Merchants, Bladed Guards and a Guard Captain, and a Katari Burglar for the thief (even though the thief is a higher tier. Mike makes a note to lower their difficulty if they come into play).
Finally, they write some descriptive text to keep on-hand to narrate to the players and some notes on tone & feel. With that, they have a full environment stat block:
Bustling Marketplace
Description: The economic heart of the settlement, with local artisans, traveling merchants, and patrons across social classes.
Tone & Feel: Crowded and vibrant, a cacophony of smells from food, herbs, spices, and textiles.
Tier: 0
Type: Social
Difficulty: 10
Potential Adversaries:
Merchant, Bladed Guards, Guard Captain, Katari Burglar
Features
Tip the Scales - Passive
Any PC may gain advantage on a Presence roll by offering a bag of gold as part of the interaction.
Will any coin be accepted or only local currency? How overt are the PCs in offering this bribe?
Crowd Closes In - Reaction
When one of the PCs splits from the group, the crowds shift and cut them off from the party for a moment.
Where does the crowd’s movement carry them? How do they feel about being alone but surrounded?
Unexpected Find - Action
Reveal to the PCs that one of the merchants has something they want or need—food from home, a rare book, magical components, a dubious treasure map, a magical key.
What cost beyond gold will the merchant ask for in exchange for this rarity?
Sticky Fingers - Action
A thief tries to steal something from a PC. The PC makes an Instinct Roll (10) to notice in time to stop the thief. If they roll a failure, the thief succeeds and runs away to a Close distance. Retrieving the stolen item is a Progress Countdown (6) that must be completed before the thief is able to reach their bolthole.
What drove this person to pickpocketing? Where is the thief’s bolthole and why has it avoided notice?
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