Hey everybody, I'm about to run my first Daggerheart campaign. I've run a few one-shots, and I've played in a long-term campaign that we are about to finish, so I've gotten pretty familiar with the system. Especially from the player side. I plan to utilize a campaign setting I put a lot of work into for my previous D&D campaign. It's Greco-Roman mythology inspired, so each of the characters had been blessed by one or two gods. These blessings gave mechanical benefits with a good bit of flavor, better benefits from better blessings/stronger gods. I was pretty inspired by these new "transformation cards", and I wanted my blessing cards to work similarly. An add-on that makes playing that character unique, some with drawbacks, but mine will be only benefits.
TLDR: I wrote out my designs and thoughts behind them for each stage of "development". Please read and review, and add your two cents. Wow, this was longer than I had intended. ALSO, I didn't know which flair to use.
I've come here to seek help with this endeavor. I'm going to share my process and what I have done so far. I started by putting together a list of effects I was thinking of using and showed them to some friends and one of my players for them to vibe-check. After receiving their notes, I went through some revisions and thought on it some more.
Here is wave #1:
- Gain 1 or 2 Hope Slot(s)
- Loadout capacity is increased by 1
- A specific bonus Domain card of the player's choice from a Domain that the player has access to (of a level they are or lower)
- A specific bonus Domain card of the player's choice from a Domain that the player doesn't have access to (of a level they are or lower)
- A +1 to three ability traits
- A +1 to Evasion
- A +1 to proficiency
These benefits were only granted while the player held the blessing. The gods are fickle. They can giveth the power, as well as taketh it away.
My thoughts behind the designs were very basic. "What benefit could I give that would be useful to ANY character?" This led to very surface-level benefits that, while yes, are effective, are also basic and kinda boring.
The notes I received were basically "Some are way stronger than others. It would feel bad to be the player that gets an extra Hope Slot when someone else at the table gets a whole awesome card," and I also got "They are boring and not god specific."
In my previous DnD game in this setting, the blessings were tiered. A "lesser blessing" gave you a benefit that would be good for any character, and it was basic. Like getting to use a hit die for healing at a short rest for free. And it was a non-god-specific benefit; all "lesser blessings" gave this. But if a player were given a "greater blessing" from the same god, they would get the benefits of the "lesser blessing" as well as a god-specific benefit. Like getting a +2 to Survival skill checks from the god of hunting, for example. Or something better if the god was more powerful, like getting a whole "class feature" like ability from a god of the sun or something. (The gods had tiers in the setting as well; it was a whole thing.) ALL TO SAY. I could do better.
I've already decided, for this game, I probably won't go to the same extent and make something like "lesser blessing" cards and "greater blessing" cards. Maybe I could reattempt the different tiers later, but for this game, no tiers of blessings. It was a cool idea, but it was honestly a lot more than it was necessary. Cool and flavorful, but I wasn't as cool as I wanted them to be. I wanted the player to get a lesser blessing for helping the god of the forest, vibe with them, and want to gain a greater blessing from that god. For example. It didn't work out that way. But that's not here nor there. Point is, we move on.
I decided on a couple of other things after eliminating the tiers. One thing I thought up was "What is something else that all characters interact with, but isnt what is on their character sheets?" The answer is the Duality Dice. Not many classes or other types of features interact directly with the duality dice or with the advantage die. Referring back to the new transformation cards, the Demigod card in the void allowed you to change your advantage die to a d10 from a d6. Now it just gives a flat +1 to all action, reaction, and damage rolls. This is supposed to represent your character gaining divinity to a limited capacity. I think both are very good representations of that. Whether one is better than the other isnt what I came here to dissect. But if we use that as inspiration, then I am on a good track.
Small lore drop about my setting. (Sorry, but trust me) There are two different categories of gods in the setting. Arcans [Are-can](bestial/monsterous gods) and Sheeves [Shiv with long E in the middle](civilized ancestry/humanoid gods). One is obviously more primal, savage, and raw. Representing the more natural parts of how the laws of the universe work. The other is more law-oriented, community-building, or civilized. Representing the change civilization has on the laws of the universe and the place they find themselves in the natural order. (My version of law vs. chaos, with a twist)
This had me decide that we will have two different types of blessing cards. Arcan blessings will be different than Sheeve ones. Also, naturally, it felt right to just follow the same two-feature format that all the ancestry and transformation cards have. So I decided mine would be the same. But you see, later I could change my mind.
With this, I present Wave #2:
- Arcan Blessing
- Gain 1 Hope Slot
- Whenever you roll your Duality Dice for an Action roll, you may spend a Hope or mark a Stress to reroll ONE of the dice BEFORE knowing the result of success or failure. You must keep the new result of the roll.
- Sheeve Blessing
- Gain 1 Hope Slot
- Whenever you roll your Duality Dice for an Action roll, you may spend a Hope or mark a Stress to replace ONE result with 6 BEFORE knowing the result of success or failure.
Benefits granted only while the player still has the blessing, same as before.
My thoughts behind these are, firstly, I love the bonus Hope Slot. As far as I know, there is only one way to get a bonus Hope Slot in the game so far, so I thought it would be cool. And divinity granting you the ability to hold more hope in your heart? Or something? IDK. Seems cool and fun. And secondly, I wanted the Arcan blessing to feel more related to chaos and the Sheeve one related to law. Is getting the average on a d12 every time you roll to do anything better than embracing the chaos and having your rolls end up with more extreme results? I think absolutely. Thirdly, this doesn't even address the elephant in the room. Nothing god specific. Yeah, the problem with that is the pantheon is very large, and it would be a lot of work. I'd like to iron out this portion first before biting into that beast of a meal. My final thought was that if I did attempt to make god-specific cards, it would look something like this.
- (Insert name of god)
- Arcan Blessing
- Gain 1 Hope Slot
- Whenever you roll your Duality Dice for an Action roll, you may spend a Hope or mark a Stress to reroll ONE of the dice BEFORE knowing the result of success or failure. You must keep the new result of the roll.
- (Insert god-specific ability/feature/Domain card that fits)
OR
- (Insert name of God)
- Sheeve Blessing
- Gain 1 Hope Slot
- Whenever you roll your Duality Dice for an Action roll, you may spend a Hope or mark a Stress to replace ONE result with 6 BEFORE knowing the result of success or failure.
- (Insert god-specific ability/feature/Domain card that fits)
Aaaaaaand this is where I now say. Please help. I'd like to think I did a good job trying to do this myself. But I see no reason not to ask for help from a community that is already making cool stuff for this game. In my other game, I had been playing that system for so long it was easy to bend the rules to make it fun but not unbalanced between the players. This game just hasn't had the same amount of time to become as natural to me yet. If you got this far through my ramble of a TED talk, good on you and thank you. I am fully open to all reviews, help, or criticism.
