The Best Daggerheart Discussions So Far: Edition 1

ONE OF THE BEST parts of editing a newsletter-magazine like The Dispatch is getting to dig through the back issues and see what actually clicked—literally and figuratively—with readers. The Discussions have always been the heartbeat of that, where GMs hash things out, swap lessons, and make sense of the game together.

Going back through them, certain threads stood out not just for their popularity but for how they trace the arc of discovery every GM goes through.

A lot of that journey starts with coming over from D&D—unlearning old instincts, confirming new approaches, sorting out edge cases—before grasping the design philosophy behind Daggerheart itself. From there, scaling up and running the table: managing adversaries, tiers, and NPCs. Closely related is the question of money—two of the most popular conversations touched on it. And, just like in any campaign, one oddball thread managed to capture everyone’s attention.

So here they are—the Best Daggerheart Discussions So Far, Edition 1:

😈 BREAKING FREE OF D&D

Lost in Translation

On the sub, GMs reflected on the habits they’ve carried over from 5e and PF2e that don’t fit Daggerheart’s narrative-first play. Some key takeaways:

• Roll with stakes. Only call for a roll when the outcome will shape the story, when success or failure matter and create drama.
• Spend what you earn. Prompt players to spend their Hope and use their Experiences to drive the fiction. If players hoard them, the game stagnates.
• Narrating everything yourself. GMs should invite players to describe scenes, consequences, and details.
• Keeping DCs secret. Players need to know the target to make informed, strategic choices.
• Designing rigid encounters. DH thrives on improvisation and leveraging Fear and GM moves.

Overall? Don’t stress perfection. Just aim to shed a few habits each session.

Bonus: Have you been visiting Tadpole Thursdays? Newbies ask, experienced GMs answer.

Drama, not Dice

A D&D GM new to Daggerheart noticed they kept prompting instinct or knowledge rolls because they worried players would miss things. They asked “am I prompting the players too much?” to which u/WoDStoryteller replied:

"I don’t think you’re doing anything “wrong” here. You’re just still shifting gears out of the D&D mindset. Daggerheart wants the GM to act less like a referee checking if something happens, and more like a storyteller deciding when the dice make the moment more dramatic."

The rest of his comment is worth reading.

Insight Wreck

If you DO need someone to roll and you can no longer rely on D&D’s Insight check—what do you use as an equivalent? Instinct, often. Presence or Knowledge, if the fiction justifies it. But broadly—don’t use a roll as a 5e lie-detector test. Use it to juice the story and heighten the tension. Less like a judge, more like a film director. Bonus: A new DH GM asks the crowd: what are your “I wish I knew sooner” moments?

Straddling Strahd

RightToKnight did some coaching on the sub, this time helping an aspirant tackle, of all things, a Strahd conversion. (Note to Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford: hurry up). If you’re eyeing one of your D&D or Pathfinder modules for Daggerheart, worth scanning over their back and forth for tips.

🔮 UNDERSTANDING DH'S PHILOSOPHY

Daggerheart is a Single-Mode Game

What’s the difference between “dual” and “single-mode” TTRPGs? Everything, suggests u/Necessary-Grape-5134, who argues that D&D gameplay suffers from managing two separate-but-distinct modes—exploration and combat—which creates a binary that often forces non-combat encounters into combat. In contrast, Daggerheart’s single-mode design allows all encounters to remain fluid, following the story and characters rather than rigid mechanics. Of course, there were no other opinions to be heard.

Camera Ready

Daggerheart lead designers Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall spent an hour with the lads from Total Party Skill, dishing on the game, homebrewing tantalizing spells and weapons, and generally carrying on as the affable chaos goblins we’ve come to expect. What I didn’t expect was to hear about the failed RPG that led to Daggerheart, and how the game’s inspiration is a movie camera.

🎯 RUNNING THE TABLE

Tier 4 Trouble

Is monster damage scaling in Daggerheart smooth? Pretty much, until you hit Tier 4. That’s what Rob Donoghue found after mapping out average and max values from the Improvised Adversaries table: tiers 1–3 follow a steady pattern, but Tier 4 goes grande with significantly higher bonus damage, pushing more hits into major or severe wound territory. He keeps armor constant for clarity, though in real play that would likely scale too—as would magical items or other offsets. Worth a look if your GMing or designing.

Table for One

Is a Solo Adversary in Daggerheart meant to fight the whole party by itself? Not really—but there are ways to make it work. OneBoxyLlama points out that a Solo is just a self-contained threat, not necessarily a boss meant to handle 14+ BP on its own. To make single-adversary fights satisfying, they suggest three approaches: draining resources with lead-up encounters; designing multi-phase transformations; or overcharging a stat block with reactions, passives, and environmental twists. It’s a practical deep dive into making boss fights feel big without breaking the system.

Minion Mash

After deploying a bunch of minions only to see them thrashed by the party, a GM asked “does combat break with lots of enemies?” Good discussion about the role of minions, especially from u/Excalibaard, who noted “minions are built to die” and then offered some tactical advice on balancing a confrontation among adversaries, minions, and the PCs.

KPC (Kind-of-Playable Character)

After running three Daggerheart campaigns, u/Ok_Valuable8464 couldn’t find a smooth way to manage friendly NPCs in combat. Treating them like a player, handing them the spotlight at random, or letting the table decide all felt clunky.  

u/Dear-Ad-3361 offered a simple hack: give the NPC a couple of reactive triggers—aid a failed roll within Close range, or add a d8 to damage when a nearby PC rolls with Hope. Then cap it at three uses per session so the help feels special. Let players narrate the assist and voila—you keep the NPC out of the spotlight while still making them matter.

(Endearingly, in Dear-Ad’s game, that light-touch approach had an unexpected side effect: the party armed their little buddy, trained them from d4 to d8 damage, and now treat them like an adopted mascot, one they’ll defend to the death if an adversary so much as looks at them wrong.)

💰 MONEY

Show Me the Money

Imagineer examined the differences with money in Daggerheart vs D&D, noting that DH’s abstraction is to focus on the drama, not the denominations. The money quote:

“Instead, look at the money as a storytelling tool, and think about what would sound right if you were putting this in a screenplay for your animated series. Think about what it looks like to spend the money if you're watching a scene in a movie where the hero tosses the bag of gold to the shopkeeper, what it would feel like to hold that bag of gold in your hand and give it over, and whether that makes sense for what you're getting in return.”

Money Changes Everything

In sorting out how to use gold and silver in Daggerheart, OriHarpy’s homebrew splits the economy into flavor currency (silver) and meaningful currency (gold). Silver is untracked and always on hand for mundane expenses; gold is tracked and only spent when it changes the mechanical or narrative status quo.

The payoff of this tradeoff is clarity—“silver” means it’s just background color, “gold” means stakes, scarcity, and choice. In a system where narrative weight is the real economy, this distinction keeps resource pressure clean and intentional without nickel-and-diming players.

The full post dives deep into edge cases, loot handling, and GM guidance. Definitely worth your time.

🍄 ODDBALL

Fungal FaceTime

Fungril networks are mentioned only in passing in the CRB, but that didn’t stop these GMs from spitballing the many ways they could come to life. u/OriHarpy dropped this banger that’s worth a read.