Running a Session

This section provides guidance for preparing and running a session of Daggerheart.

If you’d like to start with a single-session adventure, the upcoming “Running a One-Shot” section can provide inspiration for your adventure’s setting and story. When you’re ready to dive into a longer campaign, see the “Running a Campaign” section on page 185.

Thinking in Beats

In storytelling, a beat is a moment that changes the trajectory of the narrative—a shift in the world, a significant action or reaction, an emotional revelation, or an important decision. As the GM in a collaborative game, you’re going to take turns with the players, narrating a beat and then letting them react and carry the scene forward with their own beats. It’s like a dance, a conversation, or a game of tennis. This focus on beats is very useful for preparation—rather than writing out every single detail of what’s going to happen, you can think in beats, the moments that give shape to the scene or sequence. The following is an example of thinking in beats to create a countdown. The GM is preparing a session where a mercenary company seizes control of a border town in a narrow mountain pass. The mercenaries are loyal to an invading army and this location will be an important step in their invasion.

Example Beats As a Countdown to Invasion

8 The mercenary company makes a partnership with the

neighboring kingdom.

7 One of the mercenaries arrives in town and gets a job

with the city guard.

6 The undercover mercenary is assigned to night duty, as

expected for new hires in the guard.

5 The undercover mercenary ambushes the other night

guards and unlocks the town gate.

4 The mercenaries rush through the open gate and attack

the guard barracks and the mayor’s house.

3 The mercenaries kill or subdue the city guard and

capture the mayor.

2 Under threat of violence to the townspeople, the mayor

pledges loyalty to the invading warlord.

1 The warlord’s forces arrive to resupply as the

mercenaries hold the town to protect the invaders’ supply lines.

0 The invasion begins. If the PCs are in the town, they can interrupt this sequence of events at any point. They might see the disguised mercenary attacking his fellows, or they might be in the tavern when the mercenaries stream down the main road, headed for the barracks and mayor’s house. Knowing the major beats of the mercenaries’ plan makes it easier to maintain the integrity of the fiction while the PCs are acting. The PCs might stop the attack on the barracks but not the seizure of the mayor. This could lead to the mercenaries fortifying the mayor’s house with him as a hostage while the members of the town guard ask the PCs for assistance. Thinking in beats is also useful for larger-scale planning and off-screen thinking. If the party is racing toward a city to prevent a coup, you can use a progress countdown to track their distance from the city and a standard countdown to represent the steps of that coup. Keep the pace of both countdowns in mind when setting the frequency of events. If the PCs need to travel five hundred miles (represented by the progress countdown), then the coup could take place over a week (represented by the standard countdown), with a countdown step occurring each day. As the PCs make action rolls to determine how far they can travel in a day, you can resolve the advancement of the Progress Countdown, then tick down the standard countdown by 1. Should the PCs need to travel a shorter distance, you can similarly shrink the time frame the coup takes place over, such as from a week to a few days, with each countdown step occurring every few hours. This format lets you know what’s happening as the PCs burst onto the scene, rather than having to improvise in the moment.

Example Countdown Steps to Coup

6 A band of assassins sneaks into the capital city. 5 The assassins infiltrate the homes of the prime minister

and other leaders of the majority party.

4 The assassins kill the prime minister and other party

leaders. Meanwhile, a fifth “assassin” stages a fake attempt on the minority party leader to throw off suspicion. The minority party leader is, in fact, the mastermind behind this whole plot.

3 The minority party leader parades the “assassin”

through the streets and pledges justice for his fellow ministers.

2 With the majority party leaderless, the minority party

takes power in the legislative council and the captured assassin is replaced by a nameless prisoner before being executed.

1 Under the guise of “security,” the new prime minister

pushes a slate of legislation to increase executive power and ensure he retains power.

0 The prime minister is now a de facto emperor.

Preparing Combat Encounters

In Daggerheart, it’s important to approach each encounter from the perspective of “What helps tell the story?” and build the hurdles the PCs face around that question. Through this lens, we can start to think about enemies and damage as more than collections of mechanics and stat blocks—they’re tools in our GM toolbox for heightening tension and creating drama. As you start GMing Daggerheart, balancing encounters and creating appropriate enemies for your players will often take guesswork during prep. However, the more sessions you run, the easier it will become. Adjust on the fly as necessary to find the right balance as you play, and you’ll naturally figure out what works best for your table. The most important element is to ensure that combat is being used to give players more information about the unfolding story—it reveals more about the world, the plot, or the characters. This section includes general advice for prepping encounters that will, hopefully, make your life easier. These tips are meant to help with creating narratively-grounded encounters and planning how to best challenge your party based on their current capabilities and circumstances. Where it comes to prepping encounters mechanically, chapter 4 has several sections to help, such as “Choosing Adversaries,” “Improvising Adversaries,” and “Using Environments.” Use the following guidelines as a jumping-off place, finetune the details with chapter 4, then tweak combat as needed while you home in on what works best for your group, both narratively and mechanically.

Battles and Narrative

Battles play an important part in high fantasy adventure stories. Many challenges can be answered through cunning and charm, but battle often serves as the primary vehicle through which obstacles are addressed. Dynamic battles create suspense—forcing players to choose between their various objectives, engaging their character’s motivations and weaknesses, and creating the crucible that the players use to forge their characters into legendary heroes. The following prompts guide you through building the story around the battles, ensuring each clash of swords feels poignant in the greater tale.

Narrative Function

The first thing to consider when building a battle in Daggerheart is the narrative function the battle is playing. Is this battle an obstacle along the way to a larger objective, designed to show the breadth of a villain’s influence? Is an ambush the result of failed rolls to notice that the party is being tailed? Is this fight the culmination of an arc for a character as they confront a figure from their background? Whatever the answer, that narrative role should stay with you throughout the process of building and running a battle.

Adversary Motives

The next thing to think about is motive. What are the motives of the adversaries arrayed against the party? What would it take for the adversary to surrender? To flee? What objective does the adversary have beyond survival? If given the choice between capturing the artifact the PCs have with them and delivering the final blow to a character, which way would the adversary act? Keeping these questions in mind can help you make quick decisions about what actions an adversary will take in combat.

Dynamic Environment

Battles become more memorable when you include compelling adversaries and dynamic environments the players (and the PCs) can interact with in interesting ways. If the enemies are on their own territory, think about how they’d manipulate their environment to stack the deck in their favor. Have they built fortifications on the high ground? Have they blocked off alternate routes to force attackers into a frontal assault with exposed flanks? How can the battlefield and terrain reinforce the narrative goal of the battle and show the adversaries’ motives? Chapter 4 presents environment stat blocks you can use to further bring your battleground to life.

Flight and Other Features

When building battles, consider the abilities and spells your PCs have. For example, if they can fly, consider adding enemies that can fly or attack distant targets, ensuring the combat remains dynamic and challenging for all PCs. Remember that your players probably chose their features because they want to use them! You have the chance to craft engaging opportunities for the players to show off those powers in exciting ways.

Example Battle Narrative

This example demonstrates how you might plan a battle that implements the previous narrative considerations.

Setup

Early in a campaign, the party is going to travel to a forest known to have especially strong nature spirits protecting it. The party includes Sprout Hilldweller, a Warden of the Elements druid who is being hunted by a corrupted Greater Earth Elemental. The party also has a ranger, Marigold Seok, who would be interested in any disruptions to the natural world and is eager to face the corrupted elemental. The GM, Ben, decides to start the arc with a bang by having the party attacked by Dryads and other nature spirit adversaries as they enter the woods.

Narrative Function

The fight is meant to communicate to the party that the corrupted earth elemental’s influence has already infected the nature spirits of these woods. It also introduces the enemy types that will play a major role in this arc, helping the characters and players learn their powers and weaknesses. Lastly, it provides an opportunity for the druid and ranger to showcase their Experiences, Sage domain cards, class features, and community features that will provide them with specialized knowledge and relevant abilities for the fight.

Adversary Motives

Ben decides that the corrupted Earth Elemental wants to sever all connections between mortals and nature so that nature can return to a primordial state of unchecked growth. The elemental corrupted the dryads and other forest spirits have been warped by capitalizing on their resentment of outsiders and stoking their fears about the forest being destroyed. Now the elemental can possess them at will without their knowledge or memory. The fight will take place in a former druid grove using the Abandoned Grove environment, the site of a bloody confrontation where the possessed dryads and other nature spirits killed most of the druids and drove out the others. Complicating the situation is the fact that the dryads don’t remember being possessed, only a violent conflict with the druids over a poorly remembered disagreement. Any substantial conversation with the dryads in the grove exposes that foggy memory and provides a thread to pull on. Ben plans to have the elemental assume direct control and attack the party after just a couple of beats of interaction, using a hidden countdown. When the fight starts, Ben plans to hint at the manipulation by describing the dryads and treants moving as if they were being controlled, with the Dryads weeping as they pull down trees to attack the party. This complicates the apparent motives of the adversaries and should prime the PCs to look beyond first appearances to find out what’s going on.

Dynamic Environment

Ben plans to let the PCs arrive alone in the Abandoned Grove so he can use the environment’s “Overgrown Battlefield” feature to encourage them to investigate and begin piecing together clues. After that, the dryad and their forces can arrive to confront the PCs. The PCs will likely explain themselves, exposing the weirdness around the dryads’ memories. Ben also makes a note to describe some oddities about the woods and dryads, signaling to the PCs that something is wrong. Next, Ben draws inspiration from the Burning Heart of the Wood environment (see the “Environment Stat Blocks” section on page 242). He utilizes its “Grasping Vines” and “Chaos Magic Locus” features and adapts them to Tier 2. This can make the scene more perilous and memorable—the vines can Restrain the PCs to escalate the stakes in a social or combat scene, and the “Chaos Magic Locus” feature further signals to the PCs that something is magically wrong with these woods. Alternatively, Ben could decide to skip the “Chaos Magic Locus” feature and develop another passive feature of his own. Maybe a certain species of animal is following the party and can be befriended for more information, or a pack of dangerous creatures will find them if they rest for too long before reaching the grove.

Session Rewards

The most common reward given out to players and their characters during a session of Daggerheart is information. The location of a bandit’s hideout, the magical ritual needed to break a curse, or the weakness of a powerful monster— this steady stream of information helps the players decide where to go and what to do. Information keeps the story moving by answering questions, introducing new questions, or complicating the party’s understanding of something they thought they knew. On a slightly longer time frame—every few sessions, at the end of an arc, or at special moments when it makes sense in the fiction—loot can be an exciting reward. For example, PCs might find gear in a mercenary company’s supply wagon after a few sessions of searching for missing mercenaries. Characters should get access to weapons and armor of their tier, usually within the first few levels of entering a new tier to keep pace with adversaries. Some players love getting new weapons and armor, while others may have established an emotional connection to an item (for example, a family heirloom sword or armor once worn by an old friend) and want to keep it. If PCs want to keep their current weapon or armor, consider other ways they could be enhanced. A clever witch could impart enchantments on a breastplate to make it more durable, a blacksmith could upgrade arrow tips to deal more damage, or a god could bless a sword with a deadly edge. You can employ a variety of narrative beats to improve or refurbish the PCs’ equipment, upgrading it to the appropriate tier.

Crafting Scenes

One of your main responsibilities as a GM in Daggerheart is to set the scene for your players. Whenever you start a session, arrive at a new place, or change the situation, the players are going to look to you for what they need to know. When you do this, think with all of your senses—not just what this place looks like, but what does it smell, feel, taste, and sound like? What is something unique or unexpected about this place, and what does that say about it? Your players will use these details to interact with the world, so give them enough to not only picture the scene, but make choices about what they do and where they go.

Example: “You step into the mouth of the cave and for a long moment you’re in pitch darkness. You can hear the soft tap, tap, tap of water in the distance suggesting there may be an underground river ahead. The stone is slick beneath your feet, as you gingerly step forward. At first, there’s only the dank smell you expect from a cave: the earthy tang of lichen on mold. But then there’s a gust of wind forced from deep within the cavern, and you’re overcome by the sickly sweet smell of rotting meat. Something died here recently… As you move deeper inside, you begin to make out sharp white stalactites bearing down on you…. No—these aren’t formations of stone. They’re teeth! You aren’t standing on slick stone; you’re balanced on the salivating tongue of a great beast. You feel that fetid wash of air come over you again—the creature is taking a deep breath and preparing to swallow. What do you want to do?”

Sharing the Spotlight

It’s rare that every PC will organically have the same amount of spotlight time during a given session. In any group, some players are more outgoing than others—and some PCs are instigators, while others are more cautious. As the GM, you can help ensure that the story’s focus rotates between the PCs, so each player has ample time in the spotlight.

Tie Together Story Elements

If you know that a specific PC is going to be in the spotlight for a session or an arc, you can try to involve the other PC by drawing on their ties to the spotlit PC and by including story elements that will excite them. For example, if the courtier bard is invited to a debutante ball that ties into his backstory, you might decide that the ball will also be hosting a fencing tournament (which you hope will excite the swashbuckler rogue) and social dancing (which should interest the noble- born sorcerer). You’re confident that the warrior will be excited about the scene already, as he has sworn to protect the bard and is not-so-secretly in love with him.

Engage Quiet Players

You can also engage a quieter player by directly inviting action from their character, rather than broadly asking the whole party what they’re doing next. Alternatively, you could ask how their character feels about unfolding events.

Use Visual Aids

Another approach to balancing play is to use visual aids. For example, you can draw out a space for each character on a sheet of paper to make an action tracker. When a player takes an action, they place one token on the tracker in their character’s space. Throughout a session, a quick look at the tracker will show you which players are taking more actions and help you remember to engage the players that haven’t acted as much. This visual reminder can also help the other players know who could use an invitation into the spotlight.

Encourage Unguided Play

Sometimes you might realize your NPCs and the wider scene have received a lot of focus. As the GM, you too can share the spotlight by creating opportunities to let the players or their characters speak among themselves. The players can carry out a downtime scene or interpersonal moment without your input while you listen and observe—and take note of story threads to weave into later scenes.

Using Conflict

Daggerheart is a game of perilous adventure, where conflict plays a key role in creating drama and provoking strong character choices. Conflict in Daggerheart results when the characters’ hopes and actions are met by opposition and uncertainty. If the group’s wizard seeks to become the world’s greatest spellcaster, her quest likely won’t be as satisfying if she’s never challenged along the way. Conflicts can be external (outside forces act against a character) or internal (a character struggles against themself emotionally or intellectually). Our wizard might face external conflict: tests of skill against other mages, magical puzzles that appraise her knowledge and cunning, and eventually trials against legendary beings who wield the most potent magic in the world. Meanwhile, her internal conflicts might include struggling with the ideologies taught to her in school, or even fearing the destructive power of her own magic. The strongest character arcs in Daggerheart emerge from a combination of internal and external conflicts. External conflicts can bring up unresolved tensions from internal conflicts, while resolving internal conflicts can provide clarity for a character that allows them to overcome external conflict. When designing conflicts for maximum emotional impact, challenge characters in a way that ties in their internal struggles. If a character struggles with self-confidence, challenge them to excel. If a character struggles with the ethics of using power, put them in situations where using their power has high stakes for other people, not just themselves. Conflicts like these push the characters to better themselves, forging them decision by decision until they emerge as unforgettable heroes.

Social Conflict

Battles and armed conflict are common in games of Daggerheart, but your characters may also trade barbs with courtiers, talk their way past guards, seduce rivals, and plead their innocence to an uncaring monarch. Always keep motive in mind, considering how the characters’ request or demand aligns or conflicts with the NPCs’ aims. When NPCs or creatures aren’t hostile but aren’t inclined to do as the party asks, it helps to think about the scene less as a conflict and more as a collaborative process where both parties are trying to get what they want while maintaining or improving their existing relationship.

Influencing NPCs

For everyday social obstacles, a single successful action may be sufficient to progress, such as haggling down a merchant or convincing a steward to let you into a noble’s estate. On a success with Fear, you can introduce a minor setback—for example, an NPC might demand a bribe or set other special terms before they’ll do what the character asks. When dealing with more formidable NPCs, a single action might not be enough to change their mind. A hostile countess couldn’t be convinced to send troops to help fight a necromancer with a single roll. Since an adversary or PC becomes Vulnerable while their Stress slots are full, you can use an adversary’s Stress slots as the meter for tracking an extended or higher-stakes social conflict. By default, one successful social action against an adversary (intimidation, deceit, bribery, etc.) forces them to mark a Stress. Some abilities (such as class or domain abilities) also force adversaries to mark Stress—these are highly useful in social conflicts so long as they’re narratively applicable. (Using an ability that forces an adversary to mark Stress upon a successful attack may be ill-advised in a noble’s court).

Example: A Petty Noble has a distaste for the party. The Petty Noble has 4 Stress, so if the PCs want to get back into the noble’s good graces or force them to concede a point, the GM could tell the party that if they fill the noble’s Stress track, they’ll change the noble’s mind.

Countdowns in Social Conflict

If a social situation has especially high stakes, you might set a consequence countdown or a time limit to represent the adversary’s patience. The PCs take actions to mark the adversary’s Stress, while trying to minimize consequences that tick down the countdown. If this high-stakes countdown triggers, the PCs lose the opportunity—or suffer a consequence, such as being kicked from a gala or having the guards called on them.

Example Social Conflict

The party is making an appeal to a Petty Noble to send troops to deal with a growing undead threat in the woods. The noble is disinclined to help, even if they did believe that the undead threat was real. Ben tells the party that the noble has 5 Stress, and if they can force the noble to mark the whole track, they’ll convince the noble to dispatch troops to investigate. The party’s wizard Barnabas goes first, producing the still-twitching tibia taken from a skeleton in the swamp. He describes the magical power needed to maintain a necromantic effect when a corpse is rendered into such small pieces. Ben calls that a Presence Roll, but Asa asks to roll for Barnabas with Knowledge, focusing on the arcane display and demonstration of intellect. Ben says that he would normally give disadvantage on a Knowledge Roll here, since Presence is usually better for persuasion, but that the evidence would give advantage on that roll. With advantage and disadvantage canceling out, Barnabas rolls a success with Hope, and Ben marks a Stress on the noble. Since Barnabas rolled a success with Hope, Ben invites the players to continue. Next, Jasper the bard takes the stage, recalling the story of when the party entered the swamp and first battled the undead raised by this necromantic force. Jasper uses their Enrapture spell and makes a Presence Roll, getting a success with Fear. Jasper’s player, Emerson, chooses to mark Stress to force the noble to mark a Stress, bringing them down to 2 Stress remaining. Ben gains a Fear and makes a move, describing how they can hear a carriage arriving outside, and it won’t be long until they aren’t alone anymore.

Since Jasper has the Petty Noble Enraptured, Ben asks

Emerson whether they want to continue. Emerson says they’ll weave the words of any party member that speaks into the spell if that’s okay. Ben agrees, wanting to involve the whole party. Next, the group’s ranger Marigold takes the economic angle, telling the noble that if they don’t act, the noble’s subjects will die and therefore be unable to work and pay taxes. Kate makes a Presence Roll for Marigold and critically succeeds! Since a normal social action would mark a Stress, Ben decides that he’ll mark 2 Stress instead on a critical success, which includes the noble’s last Stress. With the Petty Noble’s Stress exhausted, Ben describes how they finally agree to dispatch a patrol.

Armed Conflict

Chapter 4 presents rules for using adversary and environment stat blocks in combat—but as you plan for combat, remember that the most resonant battle scenes aren’t about violence, they’re about people and motivation. Violence conveys underlying emotions, developing NPCs and the wider world they inhabit. When bandits raid a village, they’re not just looking to hurt others—their motive might be greed or desperation, but either way, violence is their means to an end. The following sections give guidance for creating emotionally resonant combat scenes.

Layering Goals into Combat

The drama of a battle should stem from narrative goals, rather than solely from the risk the PCs will die. Daggerheart isn’t a particularly deadly game, and the players likely know that. The PCs typically fight for a reason, such as defending loved ones or subverting a villain’s schemes—if their battle relates to multiple goals or narrative threads, this adds uncertainty to the outcomes and increases dramatic tension. You can do this by ensuring that the adversary’s motivation is front and center and introducing an objective that goes beyond “kill or knock out the opponents.” If you establish a special objective for the adversaries (or PCs) before the conflict begins, the scene suddenly has more dimensions and characters have immediate options for actions to take beyond just trading attacks. Another way of thinking about action scenes is to consider the defining action verb. Is this scene just about fighting the enemy or is the party securing a position so that the wizard can conduct the ritual by the solstice? The follow example illustrates a combat with three objectives:

Example: After the blood mage Caressa kidnapped the governor’s husband Osten, the PCs tracked her across the Shattered Mountains. When they confront her in the Ruins of Nix, she’s conducting a ritual to seize Osten’s latent magical power. The PCs want to stop the ritual, save Osten, and capture Caressa. But which of those goals is most important? If the PCs are winning the fight, what happens if you put Osten in danger and make the players choose between rescuing him and capturing Caressa?

The outcome of the previous example is uncertain, entirely dependent on the PCs’ choices and luck. They could achieve a partial victory by capturing Caressa after Osten dies or allowing Caressa to get away to save Osten. With cleverness and good rolls, they could stop Caressa, capture her, and save Osten, accomplishing all their goals. The uncertainty is what makes the combat dynamic and tense. When in doubt, you can use the following table to randomly generate an objective to work into a combat or action scene. Roll 1d12 or pick an option to use as the goal of the adversaries (or the PCs).

Objective Generation Prompt

1 Acquire (obtain or steal) an important item or items. 2 Capture one or more of the opponents. 3 Activate a magical device. 4 Frame a character or tarnish their reputation. 5 Drive the opponent into a corner or ambush point. 6 Stop a magical ritual, legal ceremony, or time- sensitive spell. 7 Hold the line—keep the enemy from reaching a specific area or group. 8 Plant evidence or a tracking device on a target. 9 Secure a specific location ahead of another group’s arrival. 10 Harass the opponent to deplete their resources or keep them occupied. 11 Destroy a piece of architecture, a statue, a shrine, or a weapon. 12 Investigate a situation to confirm or deny existing information.

Using Fear for Drama

During battles, spend Fear to keep the characters on their toes. Duality Rolls cause momentum to dramatically ebb and flow as the PCs fail their rolls or succeed with Fear in the fight. While a lucky streak of Hope Rolls means you don’t automatically get a GM move, you can still interrupt the players’ momentum by spending a Fear to make a GM move. Because of this, we recommend keeping a few Fear on reserve, especially during battles, so you have the ability to interrupt the scene and create more tension as needed. When spending Fear, think about what move will most powerfully impact the scene. Change the energy or nature of the fight by activating a powerful foe’s ability, bringing reinforcements into the battle, shifting the environment, or having the foes move boldly toward their objective.

Phased Battles

Battles become more memorable when the nature of the foes or the boundaries of the space shift mid-combat. These phases of battle create a sense of natural evolution and escalation, increasing the dramatic tension. Consider the following ways to introduce phases to a combat: Change the Terms of Engagement Turn a fight into a chase, reveal information that turns the group’s allies against them, or give the party reason to temporarily ally with a faction they’re battling.

Example: During a pitched battle with an infamous thief, you use a GM move to have the thief steal an important artifact from the PCs and attempt to flee. This results in a chase, keeping the story dynamic and forcing the players to adapt.

Change the Battlefield During a battle, use a natural phenomenon, an arcane effect, or an adversary’s action to alter the environment. This change can be mechanical, such as a raging blizzard reducing visibility, or aesthetic, such as a powerful wizard dominating the sky with arcane runes while channeling a powerful spell. Some battlefield changes repeat themselves—for example, an earth dragon might occasionally crash into the walls of their lair, dropping boulders and changing the shape of the battlefield. This move might occur on a countdown loop. Other changes only happen once, in which case you might create an Environment move triggered by a specific narrative or mechanical event. A god’s champion might sunder the coliseum in a divine realm when she marks her last point of Stress, shattering the floor and dropping the party atop a pane of otherworldly glass surrounded by the rich colors of the cosmos. If you plan this type of move ahead of time, you might prepare two maps: one for the start of the fight, and another for when the space changes. Change the Foes Video games often change their bosses at a certain point in a fight, such as when their health is halved or they’re seemingly defeated. Taking a cue from those battles, you can change an adversary in behavior, form, or both: A massive, lumbering enemy splits into multiple, more agile adversaries who act in perfect synchronicity. A defeated foe courses with eldritch power that remolds their flesh into an unspeakable form and grants them sinister new powers. In Daggerheart, you can create a phase change for an enemy in a few ways. You might give the foe a passive feature that triggers when half of their Hit Points are marked, or you might prepare two adversary stat blocks, one for each phase. This book presents several adversaries with the “Phase Change” feature, which you can use as inspiration for creating your own. If you didn’t prepare a phase change but the party is defeating a major foe more easily than expected, it’s okay to let the PCs have the easy win. However, if that feels anticlimactic, feel free to improvise a phase two. Describe how the adversary seems to be defeated, then narrate them standing back up or surging with new energy, clear some of their HP, change some of their statistics or base attack, and improvise a new feature or two to represent how they’ve changed. An enemy that throws off their armor might lower their damage thresholds but gain Relentless and move about with blistering speed. You might even switch to a different stat block on the fly as the foe transforms into a new and unexpected form. When an enemy takes a new form, try to draw upon the story to explain the second phase. A blood mage holding out a bloody hand and channeling a powerful spell to transform into an Abomination is both surprising and inevitable. But if the players never learned that the enemy was a blood mage, that reveal won’t be as satisfying. Foreshadow information about enemies in advance as much as you can, but if you have to create connective tissue in the moment, you can treat it as a reveal as the transforming enemy boasts about not having demonstrated their full power.

Using Downtime

Downtime lets the players recover resources during short and long rests, but it also provides an opportunity to zoom in on the relationships between characters and how they process the intense emotions of their adventures. You can use downtime scenes as a pressure release valve to vary the intensity of the story and give the PCs room to breathe. Empower your players to frame their own downtime scenes. Ask the players what it looks like as they tend to their wounds or unwind together, encouraging them to take the reins and work with other players whose characters are involved.

Projects During Downtime

The Work on a Project downtime move requires more GM input than other downtime moves and is best suited for long- term endeavors the PCs wish to undertake. These projects are typically tracked using a Progress Countdown. When deciding the starting value of the countdown, consider the complexity of the project, the availability of relevant tools, and the impact of the project on the story. If completing the project will give the group essential information they need to move on, you may want to set the starting value at a low number to ensure the group doesn’t have to wait too long for the next clue or story beat. If the project isn’t tightly linked to other parts of the story and it simply requires time, you might start the countdown at a higher number. Simple projects might tick down the countdown each time the player uses the Work on a Project move. However, if the project is skill dependent, you can ask how the PC makes progress and then call for a roll using a trait that matches their approach. When a player rolls to progress their project, it doesn’t feel great if the roll simply ends in failure. If you use the Dynamic Countdown Advancement table in the earlier “Countdowns” section, consider letting a failure give the PC special insight into their goal, which grants them advantage on their next roll for that project. Alternatively, you can instead use the following criteria so the PC always makes progress even on a failure:

• Critical Success: 4 ticks

• Success with Hope: 3 ticks

• Success with Fear: 2 ticks

• Any failure: 1 tick

Gm Downtime

When players use downtime to rest and refresh, you gain Fear and can progress a countdown happening in the background:

• On a short rest, gain 1d4 Fear.

• On a long rest, gain an amount of Fear equal to the number of PCs + 1d4 and advance a long-term countdown.

This helps make the world feel alive—and it reminds players that the more resting they do, the more the world moves without them, so they might want to be careful how much they rest.

Extended Downtime

If you’re fast-forwarding the story across multiple days (or longer), you probably don’t need a separate scene for each long rest during that time. During these longer stretches, consider talking to your players about what their characters want to accomplish, then using montages to illustrate the passage of time. You gain 1d6 Fear per PC and can advance the long-term countdowns as appropriate for the extended period of rest. Some PC goals might require a single roll (or none at all). Others might call for a series of progress countdown rolls to advance a project across several long rests. It’s trivial for a bard to gather rumors during a week-long stay in the city, but you might ask them to make a Presence Roll to see whether they learn some especially important information in the process. Similarly, you could ask your warrior to make a Finesse Roll if they’re trying to enhance their armor with rare materials obtained in their last adventure.

Character Death

Adjudicating and overseeing the death of a PC may be among the most difficult tasks for a GM. In a game focused on character relationships, personal story arcs, and heroic adventure, the death of a PC should not happen casually. As the GM, you’re charged with honestly portraying the world, and death is more permanent in Daggerheart than in other games of the same genre. Use the following principles to help you navigate these moments fairly and empathetically.

Tip: Adversaries follow different rules for death than PCs; see “Defeated Adversaries” on page 208 for details.

Choosing a Death Move

When a PC marks their last Hit Point, they must make a death move. Two of the three moves give the player full control over whether their PC lives or dies: with Blaze of Glory, the player is accepting the PC’s death, and with Avoid Death, the player is defying the PC’s death. Risk It All comes down to a dice roll— the PC has a nearly even chance of living or dying. When a player is considering which death move to choose, make space for them to work and talk through their decision. You might give them a moment to think by shifting focus to another PC, or keep focus on the dying PC to let the player take the reins of the story. Character death is not always satisfying in the moment, especially if the character’s cause of death isn’t directly tied to their personal story. But in a heroic fantasy adventure, death is always a possibility for characters trying to change the world. Death moves give a fatally injured PC a chance for a memorable moment, whether it’s going out in a Blaze of Glory or Risking It All on a roll of the dice.

Avoid Death

If a player is certain they aren’t ready to say goodbye to their PC, this death move ensures the PC’s survival—though they have a chance of taking a scar and permanently crossing out one of their Hope slots. If the character only has one Hope slot remaining when they make this move and they gain a scar, the player must retire the character. Even so, that ending may be preferable for players who would rather see their character give up the adventuring life than die. Using this move, the PC stays unconscious until healed by an ally or until the party’s next long rest. Try to give the player chances to participate in play if the party isn’t able to heal their PC or finish a long rest in short order. You might invite them to temporarily control an NPC in the meantime or, for something more character focused, narrate a scene of their PC on the knife’s edge between life and death. On this precipice, they could be visited by the spirit of a departed loved one, receive a vision of a disaster they need to avert, or encounter something else that keeps them involved in the story. Even without gaining a scar, this move still comes with a cost: the current situation worsens, no matter the PC’s fate. Work with the player to determine how that manifests. The situation might escalate as a new wave of enemies approaches or a countdown ticks down. Alternatively, the PC’s fall might be what turns the tide of battle in the enemy’s favor—they might seize an important item from the heroes or draw power from the character’s suffering.

Risk It All

This is the move that the GM has the least say in. The Duality Dice decide the character’s fate, and with the exception of the 10th-level Resurrection spell (which can only be used once), that roll is final unless you provide another means of resurrection in your story. If the player rolls with Hope, help them decide how to divide the value of the Hope Die between Hit Points and Stress to clear. You might remind the player that if they choose to clear only a small number of Hit Points, they may be forced to make another death move after just one further blow. Though it is important to reward your player if they roll with Hope by spotlighting this moment when their PC defies death, it is just as important to reward your player if they roll with Fear and their character meets their end. Let them have some final words with a friend or a memory that plays as they fade from consciousness. This gives them a moment to say goodbye to their character in a way that feels important and satisfying.

Blaze of Glory

If the player decides that their character will go out in a Blaze of Glory, work with them to ensure that the one action they take is as meaningful as possible without breaking the integrity of the story. When the seraph goes out in a Blaze of Glory, you might rule that their final attack is fatal, even if the adversary had more HP left than a critical success could possibly deal. But it might be a bad idea to let that same seraph shatter the barrier between the Mortal Realm and the Hallows Above to allow their god to walk freely among mortals. Consider the group’s agreements about tone established in your session zero when deciding the scale of action the Blaze of Glory can accomplish.

When Disaster Looms

There are times when a fight goes poorly for the PCs and they’re bound for total disaster. When multiple PCs are making death moves and there’s a real risk that everyone will die, it’s important to check in with the players as the scene unfolds. How do they feel about the scene and the chance that the whole party will be left dead or incapacitated? Is this a good place for the campaign’s story to potentially end? Should the PCs cut their losses and flee? Since PCs that choose Avoid Death are helpless without assistance, the party is left at the mercy of their adversaries or fate (the GM) if every PC takes that option. It’s also useful to consider the motivation of the adversaries present. Do the adversaries want to kill the PCs, or do they just want the party out of the way so they can pursue their motives? Would they be more likely to leave the PCs for dead, take them prisoner to gloat, or capture them to extract information? If your players aren’t interested in a heroic tragedy at the moment, work with them to decide what makes sense in the scene. Death is a real threat in Daggerheart, but the game is always a collaboration. If the party is going to meet their end, it should be because everyone at the table wants to tell that story. If the players don’t want the party to die here but it’s difficult to come up with a way they survive, look to their background questions and their relationships with factions and prominent NPCs. Are they taken captive by the enemy? Does an old ally show up with reinforcements to drive off the enemies? Does an agent of the seraph’s god or a nature spirit friendly to the druid whisk the PCs away to safety? Does an associate of the Syndicate rogue provide cover for the PCs to withdraw? If the group decides that their party’s story is done but they want to continue the overall campaign, hold a mid-campaign session zero to make new characters and figure out how to connect this new party to the existing story in a way that everyone is excited about. The following section provides additional guidance for introducing new characters, whether one or two new PCs join the party or a new party picks up where the previous one left off.

Introducing a New Character

If a PC dies or retires from adventuring, you should collaborate with the player between sessions to develop a new character for them to play at the current level of the party. If your player and group want to, they can answer the usual connection questions, giving them existing relationships to everyone in the party. You can also advance the party’s story by taking a more dramatic route—skip the normal connection questions and instead ask one or more of the following questions:

• You have vital information the party needs to continue on their journey. What is it, and how did you obtain it?

• You are in desperate need of help that only the party can provide. What danger follows you, and what do you have for the party in exchange?

• You know somebody in the party very well and have searched them out. What happened the last time you saw this person, and why are you seeking them out now?

• You lost your last adventuring party to something or someone terrible. What caused their downfall, and how is this new party connected to those previous adventurers?

• You are part of a faction that opposed the party, but now you want to align with them. What happened that made you seek them out, and how are you going to prove to the party that you can be trusted?

• You have been charged with delivering a lost item to a member of the party. What is it, and what personal quest is it tied to that requires working with the party?

Leveling your Party

You can level up your party any time you wish, though it’s often simplest to do so at the end of an important session— such as when your party reaches the end of a story arc (see the “Planning a Story Arc” section on page 189). All players should level up at the same time, following the “Level Up” section on their character guide. Ask them to reflect on what their character learned in the previous arc and how it might have changed who they are, then choose two options from the list in their Level Up guide. If you are running a short campaign, you may want to level up every other session (or whatever cadence feels appropriate for your campaign length). This accelerates the power growth of your PCs, but it also allows them to experience the full arc of their characters’ mechanics before the campaign ends. When your PCs level up, they’ll gain new abilities, spells, damage thresholds, Experiences, and more, so be sure to review what changed for them. This is a good time to plan opportunities for your players to use those new features over the next arc. For example, if a PC’s new ability helps them eavesdrop on conversations, you could begin the next session with an espionage mission where that skill comes in handy. Similarly, if a PC chooses the Animal Whisperer Experience, they’d likely enjoy encountering wild animals that could be tamed during the upcoming arc.