Several weeks ago, Badwolf Adventure Studios hosted a Daggerheart one-shot utilizing one of the campaign frames from the rulebook. I played Daggerheart once last year before the game’s release. I haven’t played it since the beta and was curious if there were any substantial differences. I was also watching Age of Umbra, which is Critical Role’s shorter series taking place in another campaign frame from the book. In the past, I expressed skepticism about the gameplay, specifically with the lack of initiative order and how rolling with d12s would work. I’m happy to say that I am impressed with Daggerheart as a system and I’d join a campaign if I had the opportunity to do so.

In our one shot, we had seven players. It was nice to see a full table of other players who were curious to see how Daggerheart would run. I ended up playing a Faun Ranger with the Beastbound subclass. This let me choose an animal companion. As a side note, you will never catch me having an animal companion in Dungeons & Dragons. Why? I would be emotionally destroyed if my animal companion were to die in combat. In Daggerheart, when the animal companion loses its health, it doesn’t die. Instead, it becomes stressed, either running away in combat entirely, hiding, or taking another action. At rest, the player can choose to clear stress, and if so, the animal companion comes back. This is perfect. It lets the Ranger class shine, but also allows players to have the comfort of knowing that the animal they choose will never die.

The Ranger in Dungeons & Dragons is notorious for not being as powerful as the other classes. I think it’s a shame, really. In Daggerheart, the Ranger has vastly improved. There are abilities that the Ranger can initiate, which include the animal companion. In our group, I had a robotic tiger named Petunia, and she could benefit from some of my Ranger abilities. I think that’s rad. There’s nothing more fun than sending a robotic tiger in to do some work. After our session, one of the players also commented on how much fun the Ranger was and how they would consider playing the class next.

In Daggerheart, there were two things I was skeptical about. The first being a lack of initiative order. During combat, players decide who goes first, and once a player rolls with fear, the GM goes next. Our group did a great job at asking other players who haven’t gone for a bit that they should take their turn next. Our group had seven players, so it’s easy for one person to accidentally dominate the game. With that said, our GM was great, and he queued players up as well, so they could take their turns. The overall gameplay experience was seamless.

The other thing I was skeptical about was rolling two d12s, one representing hope and the other fear. Our group, for whatever reason, always seemed to roll higher in fear. The GM could have wrecked our group, but chose not to. With this being a one-shot, I don’t think it was the GM’s goal to kill our characters. For Daggerheart campaigns, I think it’s important to settle on a difficulty level. Do players want an easier game or a tougher campaign? I think this would dictate how the GM spends fear based on what the players want. This was something I was nervous about, but in the two times that I have played Daggerheart, it was a non-issue.

Daggerheart has been a fun game to play. I’m curious to see what else is developed alongside the system. I wanted to give a special shout-out to Jordan from Sortilege, who was our GM for the game. He did a great job at keeping all seven of us on track. If Badwolf Adventure Studios decides to do more Daggerheart one-shots in the future, I will definitely be there.