Using Environments

Environments represent everything in a scene beyond the PCs and adversaries, such as the physical space, background NPCs, and natural forces.

Much like adversaries, each listed environment has a stat block that provides tools for affecting the PCs and the wider scene. These stat blocks aren’t restricted to combat—you can use environment stat blocks to enhance any scene, from the intrigue of a festive gala to the danger of crumbling ruins. Environments and adversaries are built to interact with and support one another, both mechanically and narratively. While the PCs and adversaries take focus, environments can represent hazards that originate from the world itself or the background characters who don’t need entire stat blocks. This section describes how to use each environment’s stat block, and the upcoming “Environment Stat Blocks” section presents examples of environments, grouped by tier to represent their general threat level. The environment framework is meant to be inspiring and practical, rather than unchangeable and prescriptive. It provides a way to organize and prepare ideas for important scenes. You can customize the environments to fit your game’s characters and events—for example, you could change the Imperial Court environment into a Queen’s Birthday Feast environment, or create a stat block for a Rebel Uprising based on the Pitched Battle environment features. And if you don’t want to use this adversary-like system for environments, you can ignore these stat blocks entirely—Daggerheart is just as enjoyable without them.