DaggerHeart: Trinity of Flame, Root, and Mind

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ClosedDaggerheartPublic4 / weekrunekyndig
Campaign Frame: Trinity of Flame, Root, and Mind
"Fly high. Hunt deep. Choose a side."

Tone & Feel
Adventurous & Epic: Bold quests across dangerous frontiers and fractured cities.
Heroic & Thrilling: Players are exceptional individuals, but mortal.
Dynamic & Political: Choices have consequences; alliances and caste roles matter.
Underlying conflict Nature vs Magic vs Man

Touch stone and inspiration
The D&D eberron setting.
Kingdom Come Deliverence 2
Babylon 5
A mix of the official Daggerheart campaign Frame Witherwild and Fire Banners Burning


Core Conflict
Civilisation stands on the brink. The old world is burning slowly—reclaimed by magical wilderness, torn by ambition, and shaped by beasts whose bones fuel empires.
The great houses squabble while the wildlands reclaim what was once tamed. Flying ships rust in forgotten ports. Magic runs rampant in the wilderness. In the shadows of ruined cities and among broken castes, new powers stir.
The ordinary man, woman and child just have to live here

World
https://i.imgur.com/fR7zqYy.png
The Threefold Caste System

A rigid system governs society, divided into three major castes, each with its own internal hierarchy:

1. The Working Caste The backbone of society, harshly divided by how "clean" their labor is:
  1. Lowlies (Dustborn) – Latrine-cleaners, tanners, chimney sweeps. The invisible class.
  2. Fieldfolk (Graincallers) – Farmers, fishers, hunters. Close to nature, often ignored by the upper tiers.
  3. Makers (Forgehands) – Blacksmiths, carpenters, masons. Highly respected among workers.

2. The Arcane Caste Power from within or through study—but it comes at a social price:
  1. Artificers (Ironbinders) – Technomancers. Tainted by association with manual labor.
  2. Sorcerers (Soulmarked) – Magic in their blood. Mysterious, feared.
  3. Wizards (Scriptlords) – Scholarly elite. Gatekeepers of arcane knowledge and law.

3. The Ruling Caste Bloodlines and magical privilege define power:
  1. Knights (Shieldsworn) – Enforcers of noble law and order.
  2. Barons (Stoneholders) – Regional power-holders and administrators.
  3. Dukes (Skydukes) – Airship-owning, reality-shaping masters of society.
OOC:
The higher the number, the more socially powerful
Movement between castes is rare and frowned upon.
Yet cracks are forming in tradition...

Civilized Regions
Scattered city-states and noble enclaves, connected by magical trains and the occasional airship—reserved for the highest elite.
Each city enforces the caste system with different intensity, from brutal dogma to barely veiled disdain.

The Wildlands
Once-tamed regions now reclaimed by magical nature.
Ruined cities, haunted relics, and untamed megafauna (think magical dinosaurs, rogue dragons, or arcane leviathans).
Stories tell of forbidden wizard-forges, sunken airship vaults, and cults living among the beasts.

Why it's wild:
Civilization pulled back due to rising magical corruption and beast aggression.
The natural world is evolving, reacting to the overreach of magic.
OOC:
As you can see, this is an incompleat world.
Cities, families, traditions, taboos are yet undefined. Lets make something cool together.
The number one rule is: It has to make sense somehow!
Themes to Explore
Cultural Clash: Caste boundaries are being questioned, broken, or enforced with renewed fervour.
Ends Justify the Means: Will you break laws to save lives? Kill beasts to preserve cities?
People vs. Nature: Magic behemoths are reclaiming the world. Can harmony exist?
Divided Loyalties: Family, caste, creed—which comes first?
Transformation and Change: Entire bloodlines, castes, or cities may fall or rise.
Tradition vs. Innovation: Is the old way worth preserving?

The pitch
You have gotten the opportunity to join a private airship, going into the wild to hunt mega fauna and harvest their magical components.
This is a chance of a lifetime, but it's also is dangerous and you will have to study the creature and make a thorough plan before even attempting to down it - or be downed yourself.

Offgame Note
I'm not an expert in the Daggerheart system. We will mess up, but we will learn together.
This idea of meaning a airship going mega fauna hunting, is one that I have been toying with for a while now and its going to be the root for my new homebrew campaign world.


Jul 5, 2025 7:33 pm
I'm not an expert on DaggerHeart system, but I want to learn, so now I'm taking a stab at GM'ing and creating my one Campaign Frame.
Quote:
You have gotten the opportunity to join a private airship, going into the wild to hunt mega fauna and harvest their magical components.
This is a chance of a lifetime, but it's also dangerous and you will have to study the creature and make a thorough plan before even attempting to down it - or be downed yourself.
If you think the campaign frame sounds cool, and you have an idea, share it. I have my own ideas and chatGPT helped me refine them.

How to apply
1. Read the pitch in the game description.
2. Come up with a rough character idea and present it
3. Dont rush - I will pick a group by the end of the week (Thursday/Friday 10 or 11th of July)
OOC:
Be aware that I am a fool who is starting up a game 2 weeks before I am going on vacation, where posting will be intermittent
Special considerations
Everyone is welcome. I don't care about your minority group or favourite flavour of ice cream. I care about players who shows up and participate.
I plan to keep this game public, so anything controversial, like torture, violence towards kids or activities of a sexual nature will be kept in closed posts if at all.
Last edited July 5, 2025 7:41 pm
Jul 6, 2025 6:25 pm
I just got my physical copy and I'm in if you're gm'ing.

I'm only as far as character generation but reading away.

So, to update, I'm thinking about a clank sorceress. Constructed out of marble with gold veins, running through it or maybe brass bronze little pieces of clockwork sticking out. Or maybe a Satyr / Fawn.

More later, I'm driving right now.

Wanderborn Faun who moved up the social ladder when she manifested Sorceress powers. Her clan were a part of the network that keeps the cities and towns of the realm connected.
Last edited July 7, 2025 2:20 am
Jul 6, 2025 10:49 pm
Oh, I love your pitch and your world building! And I am also eager to try Daggerheart out, so this would be a huge 'yes' on my end... if only I was not going to be offline for the following 10 days or so. :-(

I'll keep an eye on this thread when I'm back online, and who knows, maybe there's still a spot available...
Jul 6, 2025 11:25 pm
I'm definitely interested. I've played one session of the Beta (I think the last one before final.)

I'm interested in trying a Rogue. I'm considering a mixed ancestry, if you're open to that, otherwise a Faerie.

Here's the broad sketch I'm thinking of:

Talin Windborne never fit in with his people, a tight knit clan of Faerie who's traditional forest home has been regularly encroached upon by a growing town with aspirations of being a city. Many of their native trees form the walls and beams of the houses in the town. Similarly, Talin was born from the mixing of the communities. How he came to be is shrouded in mystery, even his parentage uncertain, but when he was found by the clan his features marked him as clearly one of them, if a bit large. As he grew up, he stayed on the periphery of both communities, being more connected to other outcasts in town and only having friends amongst the most adventurous and open-minded faeries. He sees the opportunity to join the airship as a way to get away from the situation and start something new.
Jul 7, 2025 1:30 am
Hi there, I just got my hands on the corebook and am slowly making my way through it. But I'm enjoying it so far and would love to give it a try! I tend to make characters to fill whatever role is needed by the group, but have been toying around with an Infernis Guardian concept that might be fun to play;

A former town guard that had been conscripted into a campaign of battle heavy border disputes, she returned home to find the place that she once protected had changed almost as much as she had. Removed from her station after a dispute with a nobleman, she now tries to find her place and a purpose in a world already shifting, bracing for more change yet to come.
Jul 7, 2025 3:52 pm
I wonder if there's a way to have GP roll the fear and hope dice is different colors.
Jul 7, 2025 4:02 pm
I'd be interested in trying my hand and learning a new system, since I feel Daggerheart is going to get more traction than some others, just due to name recognition. May as well get a feel for it.

Plus the setting sounds interesting, so I'm down for the story.
Last edited July 7, 2025 4:02 pm
Jul 7, 2025 5:16 pm
I'm interested too. I've played with Ember, Bullseye, and MaJr, and thoroughly enjoy their posts, so I'd be in great company if I got picked.

Not sure what type of character yet, I picked up the corebook a while back but haven't really had chance to look through it much yet. I might go with a Goblin Seraph (Winged Sentinel) who's perhaps Orderborne as a protector for his community. Not sure which caste, but would probably be lower rather than higher in the wider world, while respected in his own community. I'm considering that something happened to the community while he was away on some sort of mission for the community (perhaps sent away by one of the community's seers, who had an inkling that something was going to happen?) connected with the magical wilderness threat. He seeks to understand what happened, why, and what can be done to stop it from destroying other communities while still respecting nature's course.
Jul 7, 2025 5:59 pm
Emberskyes says:
I wonder if there's a way to have GP roll the fear and hope dice is different colors.
None of us have figured it out yet. The dice code doesn't include comparing dice in quite the right way. You can mess with the method of rolling and get some of the information but it doesn't work for the rest (1d12-1d12 produces the same curve and any result of 0 is a crit success, but the totals aren't right to compare to target numbers with hope and fear, any high roll would be one way and low roll the other and that's not what we want.)
Jul 7, 2025 6:02 pm
Since you roll two dice, why not just say the first die is always the hope die, the second is the fear die?
Jul 7, 2025 6:09 pm
Couldn't you just roll each seperately?

That was my recommendation for the old WEG Star Wars game, with the wild die... roll it seperately, so you could adjust results as needed.
Jul 7, 2025 6:12 pm
I think the easiest way (until we figure out something better) is just 1d12, 1d12 and have a convention that the first is Hope and the second Fear (or the other way around, just so long as it's consistent.) At the table it's not so hard to remember to read the dice once you get used to it. I think if you just want the dice to be different colors, that could be done. What we haven't figured out is if it can show the RESULT as Hope or Fear by recoloring the roll.
Jul 7, 2025 6:33 pm
I'm with Lemming, just first dice is Hope, second is Fear.

They do need to be added up and there's always a modifier -1 to +2, not to mention someone could give you Hope, which is a d6. The thing woth Hope is it should to be declared before the action is taken and it has to be someone else's Hope you use which makes it awkward. I auppose you could declare your intent to provide Hope as a part or your action.
OOC:
I cast Fickle Finger of Fate on the ogre and I offer up a Hope dice as I attempt to distract the ogre by mooning it.
This would be a first come first served kind of thing which would of course favour people in your time zone. The alternative would be to declare your Hope.
OOC:
I cast Fickle Finger of Fate on the ogre and I give a Hope dice Willow by attempting to distract the ogre by mooning it.
I think, given we have people all over the world the second is likely a better option, and if Willow goes down the Hope isn't spent.

Some of the defensive actions like "I am your shield" might require some co-ordination and group actions would have to be discussed in advance.
OOC:
Anyone want to help me do a group action to knock this guy off the parapet?
Last edited July 7, 2025 6:39 pm

Rolls

Duality - (1d12, 1d12)

1d12 : (11) = 11

1d12 : (6) = 6

Duality - (2d12)

(84) = 12

Jul 7, 2025 6:55 pm
Daggerheart's advantage system is easier (on the player side) than DD5e (it's basically identical on the GM side if I recall). Hope isn't the only way to gain advantage, but it's one way.
Jul 7, 2025 7:10 pm
Yes, but Fear... yikes.

Because Fear is a commodity I think the GM is going to have to start posts with.
OOC:
FEAR - 7

GM's post.

FEAR - 6
Or something like that.
Last edited July 7, 2025 7:15 pm
Jul 8, 2025 2:08 am
Withdrawing my interest. Best of luck with the game.
Last edited July 10, 2025 12:45 pm
Jul 8, 2025 2:40 am
Reading more... Goblin Wizard, so many fun ideas.
Last edited July 8, 2025 2:40 am
Jul 8, 2025 5:30 am
Bullseyepsa says:
I'm considering a mixed ancestry, if you're open to that, otherwise a Faerie.
I'm open to mixed ancestry as it is in described in the core rules, but you are expected to explain your abomination mixed ancestry ;)
Lemming23 says:
Since you roll two dice, why not just say the first die is always the hope die, the second is the fear die?
We always assume that the first die is the hope die
Bullseyepsa says:
Daggerheart's advantage system is easier (on the player side) than DD5e (it's basically identical on the GM side if I recall). Hope isn't the only way to gain advantage, but it's one way.
An advantage is + 1d6 to a roll
I found this lovely flowchart on reddit
https://i.imgur.com/hXMCcx2.png
Jul 8, 2025 6:45 am
Not interested in this game, but if that can help you with the dice, we figured out a way to roll different colour dice for a game called Hard City, a while back.
It looked like this:
https://i.imgur.com/839t3Os.jpeg

There were tickboxes on our character sheets to determine how many white and how many back dice to roll, then you pressed an auto roll button.
Last edited July 8, 2025 6:45 am
Jul 8, 2025 9:13 am
Dr_B says:
Not interested in this game, but if that can help you with the dice, we figured out a way to roll different colour dice for a game called Hard City, a while back.
It looked like this:
https://i.imgur.com/839t3Os.jpeg

There were tickboxes on our character sheets to determine how many white and how many back dice to roll, then you pressed an auto roll button.
Thank you Dr_B, I will think it over, but I think its good enough to just claim the first d12 is the hope die, and the second d12 is the fear die. We need a the total after all
This result would be "a 20 with fear"
Last edited July 8, 2025 9:14 am

Rolls

check - (2d12+1)

(910) + 1 = 20

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