Dungeons and Dragons rival Daggerheart was released on May 20 by Darrington Press, but by May 21, the Critical Role publishing house has already shared new playtest material. A new website called ‘The Void’ appeared on Daggerheart’s release day, and it contained early rules for a Warlock and Fighter class.
Based on a recent interview with Daggherheart’s designers, we should have seen this speedy move coming. Senior game designer Spenser Starke told Wargamer that Darrington Press was “currently working on stuff that comes next”, and the design team already had plenty of unused material from the early design stages to work with.
Flavor-wise, both of these new character options vaguely resemble their siblings from the DnD classes. Warlocks still gain their supernatural powers from a patron, and Fighters still specialize in martial attacks. However, that’s where the similarities end.
In Daggerheart, a Warlock’s primary resource is Favor, which they gain by spending downtime actions to pay tithe to their patrons during a long rest. The two subclasses included in the playtest offer different ways to spend Favor.
A Pact of the Endless Warlock, for example, can spend Favor instead of an armor slot, to improve their chances on a near-death Risk It All roll, to reduce the odds of enemy attacks, or to avoid marking hit points. The Pact of the Wrathful uses Favor to reroll missed attacks, reroll damage dice, deal extra damage with weapon attacks, or mark hit points on close range targets.
Fighters are adept at all forms of melee combat, including unarmed strikes, which deal 1d10 plus your tier in physical damage. They can pull off multi-hit combos that get more powerful over time, and they have Fighter subclasses to choose from, the Juggernaut and the Martial Artist.
The first of these gains a bonus to their Severe damage threshold and can spend hope to inflict Stress on an enemy. As they grow more powerful, their unarmed strikes deal more damage, and they can force attacking enemies to take as much damage as they cause. They gain extra Hope on critical successes, and can eventually gain Hope or Clear Stress any time they mark a HP.
The Martial Artist learns a number of stances with varied combat, which can be activated by spending Focus points. Focus is obtained by marking Stress, and at later levels, it can also be spent to make extra attack rolls, reduce the chances of an incoming attack, or reduce damage done to the Fighter.
It’s not clear how long the surveys for these playtests will be open for. If you’d like to learn more about each class, you can find the full documents on Darrington Press’ new website, The Void.
For more on tabletop RPGs, here’s all you need to know about DnD races and DnD 2024 backgrounds. We’d also be keen to hear how you’re getting on with Daggerheart in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
