Daggerheart
Designed by Spenser Starke, Carlos Cisco, Rowan Hall, John Harper, Matthew Mercer, Alex Uboldi, and Michael Underwood
Daggerheart is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of brave heroics and vibrant worlds that are built together with your gaming group. Create a shared story with your adventuring party, and shape your world through rich, long-term campaign play. In addition to dice, Daggerheart’s card system makes it easy to get started and satisfying to grow your abilities by bringing your characters’ background and capabilities to your fingertips. Ancestry and Community cards describe where you come from and how your experience shapes your customs and values. Meanwhile, your Subclass and Domain cards grant your character plenty of tantalizing abilities to choose from as your character evolves. Craft your unique character through the cards you choose and the story you tell, and become the hero you want to be!
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Daggerheart Reviews (23)
See what other Game Masters and players are saying about Daggerheart
That_DeAngelo
Ran 6 sessions
Daggerheart is a great system that is easy to pick up and play while still having a great amount of depth. I absolutely love the lore, abilities, and enemies! There is a lot to enjoy in this system!
Scottish Sensei
Ran 17 sessions / Played 3 sessions
Daggerheart truly allows those who enjoy a creative outlet to express that creativeness through gameplay. It’s a lot more flexible than other game systems when it comes to player input. Both the players and the GM tell the story together. I regularly run sessions and encourage players at the table to contribute with their own ideas and thoughts on how something might look. I don’t get bogged down with rules too much using this system. There are rules but they’re supposed to be followed loosely. Leaving a fair amount of room for interpretation and improvisation. I love world building with players and going on an adventure somewhere that everyone built together.
F Young
Ran 172 sessions
I started running this game at release and I've run it a fair few times. Nothing hits quite like Daggerheart! I've been playing traditional games like D&D since the late eighties. I also have played just about any weird wild indie game released in the last ten years. So I can say with full confidence that Daggerheart is this perfect spot right between a real traditional Pathfinder/DnD like experience and some weird Apocalypse World/Blades in the Dark sort of experience! For me, it satisfies both itches really nicely! If you haven't tried it yet, you SHOULD try it if you can.
Isaac
Ran 49 sessions
Daggerheart is quickly becoming my go-to system for stories I want to tell through role-playing games. If you're coming from a D&D background, some aspects of the game take some time to get used to, but once it starts making sense, I feel like the game lends itself so much more naturally to creating exciting, breathtaking, collaborative moments. This is for sure a game for those who feel held back in one way or another by some of the rules of D&D and want more freedom to express their character in creative ways!
Erick
Ran 22 sessions
Definitely my new favorite system.It lends itself to be story focused but has enough crunch to allow players to customize their character the way they want. The pre-campaign (session 0) tools makes it easy for the players to get invested in the game allow them to build the world and to build bonds between the other player characters. This makes the game easier to pick up and play with other strangers. This system solves a lot of issues with the most popular system, allowing for more engaging combat and dice rolls that REALLY matter rather than arbitrary pass or fail rolls. The campaign frames allow for great story worlds that give players and GMs great guides on how to customize characters and stories that will everyone can agree on. Daggerheart is an amazing system.
Luke (LittleBoyBlue)
Ran 2 sessions
I’ve GM’d thousands of sessions across a variety of TTRPG systems and developed my own distinctive style of storytelling and table management. Over time, I’ve created countless homebrew rules and adapted existing ones to ensure my games are engaging, balanced, and tailored to the needs of my players. When I discovered Daggerheart, it immediately clicked with me — it captured exactly how I love to run games. After running a few one-shots for an event, I was completely hooked. Daggerheart feels fantastic to run: the rules are intuitive and easy to learn, yet offer deep potential for strategy, creativity, and character-driven storytelling as you dive deeper into the system.
How to play Daggerheart
When it’s time for the game mechanics to control fate, players roll one HOPE die and one FEAR die (both 12-sided dice), which will ultimately impact the outcome for your characters. When Hope die is higher, you also take Hope to power future abilities and turn the tide in your favor! If the Fear die is higher, the game master takes Fear, which they’ll use to challenge the characters and richly complicate your narrative. This duality between the forces of hope and fear on every hero drives the unique character-focused narratives in Daggerheart.
Frequently asked questions about Daggerheart
Explore Daggerheart Classes
Bard
As a Bard, you know how to get people to talk, bring attention to yourself, and use words or music to influence the natural world around you.
Druid
As a Druid, you are a force of nature, preserving the balance of life and death by channeling the wilds themselves through you.
Guardian
As a Guardian, you run into danger to protect your party, keeping watch over those who might not survive without you there.
Ranger
As a Ranger, your keen eyes and graceful haste make you indispensable in tracking down enemies and navigating the wilds.
Rogue
As a Rogue, you have experience with sidestepping the law and dealing with the underbelly of society, preferring to move quickly and fight quietly.
Seraph
As a Seraph, you have taken a vow to a god that helps you channel sacred arcane power to keep your party on their feet.
Sorcerer
As a Sorcerer, you were formed and shaped by the will of the arcana, and you’ve learned how to wield that power to get what you want.
Warrior
You run into battle without hesitation or caution, knowing you can strike down whatever enemy may stand in your path.
Wizard
As a Wizard, you’ve become familiar with the arcane through the relentless study of tomes and scrolls.
