Critical Role’s TTRPG system, Daggerheart, puts a greater emphasis on story-telling than some of its peers. A year after the core book was released, Daggerheart offered players and Game Masters new options for telling their stories.with the system’s first expansion.
As someone who plays a variety of role-playing games on both sides of the GM screen, I’m always hungry for more options. More gear for my heroes to use and more vicious monsters to sic on my unsuspecting players.
Daggerheart: Hope and Fear adds a plethora of toys to the toybox, but if you weren’t a fan of the core book, don’t expect this expansion to change your mind.
Before diving into what’s new, for those unfamiliar, Daggerheart is a narrative-focused tabletop RPG system. It uses a rather handy card-based approach to help create and manage your characters and does away with the traditional initiative mechanic during combat. One of the most defining mechanics of Daggerheart, however, is its Hope and Fear dice.
These two twelve-sided dice, one representing your Hope value and the other Fear, can either cause your checks to earn you a 'Hope' resource that can be used to pull off extra special actions, or give your GM a 'Fear' point that they can spend. A proverbial "wrench in the gears" sort of treat, depending on which die rolls higher during the check. This mechanic also serves as the namesake for the system’s first expansion.
For players who have been wanting to make some new characters, a plethora of options await you inside this nearly 200-page tome. The Hope and Fear expansion comes with four new classes, each with two subclasses, six ancestries and communities, over 100 new pieces of gear and loot to dig through, and a brand-new domain. GMs get some new toys too, with 130+ new enemies to sic on those pesky heroes across 28 environments and four campaign frames (think of these as rough bases to build a campaign around). By far, though, my personal favorite inclusion in H&F is the brand-new Transformations system, but more on that gem in a bit.
The new domain, Dread, actually has some pretty interesting effects. The ones I found most intriguing and beneficial were abilities like Avatar of Terror, which makes you stronger the more Fear the GM has, and the spell Dire-Strike, which straight-up takes some of the GM’s Fear away. The idea that my friends and I could gang up and shut down the bullshit my GM might pull during a game instantly shot this new Domain to the top of my list for the next character I make.
Two new classes, the Assassin (a standalone, more stabby-focused rogue) and the Brawler (Daggerheart’s punchy monk-like class), utilize the core domains that came in the core book, while the other two new classes, the Warlock (make a pact with a thing, get cool powers) and the Witch (mess with enemies by hexing them), take advantage of H&F’s new Dread domain.
The new ancestries, which for D&D folks are basically Daggerheart’s equivalent to species, will feel familiar to anyone who’s played that other high-fantasy TTRPG. The Aetheris are winged, angel-y beings, while Elemental Kin—consisting of Earth, Ember (fire), Sky, and Tide (water) varieties—are individuals descended from powerful elementals. And then you have Gnomes, which are, well, gnomes.
All certainly good to have, but both the new ancestries and some of the new classes seem like such core fantasy staples that it feels odd to me that they weren’t included in the base release. Glad they’re here now, though, and gnomes being able to just teleport around with their Flicker Step feature is silly fun.
For the forever Game Masters out there (you are the real heroes), Hope & Fear’s new campaign frames offer good flexibility for running games for hesitant brand-new players or grizzled vets that want a challenge. My favorite out of the four offerings, surprisingly, is also the least complex: Castle High. Think modern-day wizard school where teenagers fly around on brooms while scrolling on their phones and take classes on giant floating islands in the sky. While I haven’t yet played or run the frame, the idea of swapping out my sword for pencil and paper and sneaking out of school instead of dungeons is a fun change of pace.
Of course, if you want to slay a dragon, or in this case a weredragon tyrant, you can do that too with Reign of the Weredragon. The most complex of the new offerings, Journey to Horizon, has you working to resurrect a goddess.
Now we can get to my favorite addition: transformations. Becoming a demigod, a werewolf, a vampire, or even living out your Danny Phantom dreams by transforming into a ghost is now possible! All of the transformation options in H&F (of which there are six) come with some sort of bonus or ability in addition to a downside. In Danny Phantom’s case, you take less physical damage but double magic damage, and can pass through solid objects at the cost of taking on some Stress.
I love transformations as a way to add further depth of your character or as a narrative plot thread, and the fact that they don’t count against any sort of domain or character limit (outside of only being allowed a single transformation at a time, but that’s what house rules are for) opens up all sorts of possibilities. Now, if Darrington Press could just make an official Super Sentai / Power Ranger transformation equivalent, I’d be all set! Castle High already features teenagers with attitude as the player characters, after all.
Daggerheart: Hope & Fear is a good first expansion, though it feels like a safe one. It adds a fair amount of new content for both players and GMs to mess around with, which is always great, even if some additions feel like they should have been included from the start. The Dread domain and how it can mess with the GM’s plans directly is a really fun twist. I’ve already gushed about the transformations, and I can’t wait to see what new options get added down the road.
That all said, since it launched, Daggerheart feels like a game that is far more intimidating to play for those who aren’t comfortable with improvisation and narrating what they are doing, and Hope & Fear doesn’t really help with that. I enjoy what it adds, but if you were already overwhelmed by the core game, don’t look to this expansion to save you. Daggerheart as a system is still, comparatively, in its infancy, and I would love to see a well-put-together starter kit or more hand-holdy expansion to help new players get into things.
