u/9Napier

My players will go to Tain Gala next session and I'm not sure how should I make this session. I plan on using this map for the Gala because it will be a kind of dungeon, I'm still open to other map suggestions tho.

For preprations, do I need to write bunch of npcs to interact or some npcs and bunch of improv. And I'm using a vtt so would using default noble tokens without art and just selecting a npc from my list when they interact be okay?

One of my villains is Cyra ir'Tain herself and I'm thinking about an surprise event in the Gala, a sort of heist like Jokers in the Dark Knight. This Tain Gala will be a sort of charity event for The Fallen and Cyrans because its the month of Olarune. And in the middle of the event a break occurs that steals all of the money gathered. You may ask why? Because of insurance money and blaming Kundarak and Deneith for making this happen. Cyra's and her groups goal is defeating dragonmarked houses so they are trying to make anything that will make them look bad.

Maybe I can give the party the goal of rescuing Cyra in this mayhem, encountering them with magical chaotic terrains, fights and social encounters (trying to calm the nobles and let the part pass).

Is this interesting enough? I will still try to make some social encounters before the incident but I've not been DM'ing for a couple of months and got a bit rusty plan an encounter this big.

I dont know if any advesary has something similar but for Solo advesaries with heavy armor or shield, armor slots could be a cool feature to add. For a fierce leader, I think grabbing and using an minion for armor slot would be both hillarious and terrifying. I have limited experience in daggerheart combat, only did 2 so far but in my boss fight I felt like they drained the boss too quickly. I used an upgraded tier 2 leader as a solo, I know its not that good of an idea to use 1 advesary but it was a little rushed and I wanted it to feel like a dark souls boss. They had mostly all physical group with a brawler (the main guy who did damage) and the boss had physical resistance but they still drained the boss pretty quick. Brawler did roll pretty good tho, he rolled 13 on combo dice twice.

I DM'ed and played my first game of daggerheart yesterday, it was a blast. It was an age of umbra inspired oneshot where players was trying to reach Crimson Capital, the rumored last standing city in crimson cursed lands. I put out a 10 week countdown and between major scenes, made them roll a group check to how their journey was in time skips. They loved the system, especially the part that spending resources isnt a bad thing because it regenerates as you do things and this pushed them to do more thing in the session. But I have some rules and DM'in questions about the system.

I used crossing rivers and climbing mountains as encounters for them, but I think I got the countdowns a bit wrong. In the river, for whatever reason they split off and one of them tried to cross the river while others tried to find another way. So I made them roll individual strength checks to get across but I realized countdowns should represent party as a whole after the session was over. They got too many hopes from these rolls and made them a bit strong for the last fight. I made similar mistake in climbing mountains too but there I made group rolls and they just blasted trough it unlike the river where they spent 1 hour to cross. Other than these two siutations, what happens if PC's roll equals to the difficulty of something, do they fail or pass? They rolled equal on end boss difficulty 2-3 times and because I didnt knew how it worked and wanted it to feel like a hard Dark Souls boss, I said I didnt knew the rule but would spend a fear and made their roll fail as this was meant to be a hard boss. Eventually they demolished the boss and finished the session without any casualties.

What could I have done better in these situation?

I played Elden Ring but never dived deep into the lore. It's been a while since I've played the game so I might've forgotten some obvious things my questions. Recently I started reading about the magic of elden ring as I am interested in it, and I started to wonder what are ashes of war? They are techniques sure but bending gravity and using air strikes sounds something magical to me. Are they magic, if they are what kind of magic they are.

I hope I used the right tag as its about daggerheart and campaign world. I am creating a Elden Ring inspired world right now, and while I was writing about its magic I tossed onto a wall called "Splendor Domain". Nearly all magic is fluid based and non-arcana domain casters need to drink a type of water called "Star Sap" which allows them to temporarily see and access magic. Of course this is mostly an description thing, I wont bore players with resources. But I cannot think how splendor and seraphs are exception to this concept.

I can understand healing wizards but in a world with gods having mortal bodies, I think I need to explore seraph and splendor to create a diversity rather than calling its just divine. But the problem is I dont know how to do it because I'm not used to this kind of heroic fantasy and divine power. Normally I would say their magic is unexplained miracles like magic of game of thrones but seraph is just too majestic to be mysterious. Especially winged sentinel drives me mad. My mind cannot fathom a knights having celestial wings to fly, its just too cool to be real for me.

I am at the point where I'm deciding where my settlements should go. But I cant decide how large I want my world to be. I would like to have it in earth like scale but I just cannot fill a world that large and I dont want to add a 1000 villages to every kingdom. In my current draft, every continent in the world has 5-6 kingdoms or cultural borders, you can find borders of the map in a previous post of mine.

Is there a good reference map you guys can suggest? I dont want to end like Westeros for scaling my map. I've heard Westeros has a england size politics with a continent sized lands.

Hello, I am currently writing my own world and I want to add aquatic ancestries to it too but there is a problem. Other than closed seas, which only exist 2 of them, and lakes there is no safe water to swim. Ocean is regarded as the realm of dead because you cannot swim, sail or do anything on ocean. It was once normal, so aquatic ancestries lived in it once. But in current time, other than a type of flying whale there is no life in ocean. So giving amphibious to a ancestry feels useless and cruel for the player who is going to play it.

How can I replace this ability to a better fit for this world?

I dont know "beginner question" is the right tag for this but I am new to daggerheart and I am planning on running a daggerheart game in my own setting. While looking at ancestries I saw fungril and its network ability and I can decide if I should allow fungril or not. How do you use this ability?

What kind of uses did you see for this ability? Normal uses I can imagine is contacting a fungril to ask base level information about a place party planing to visit or creating a spy web among fungrils. Tbh fungril spy agency would be hard but how can I deal if my players try to ask everything to other fungrils?

I dont want to ban a race because of its abilities but I know my players and I know if one of them takes fungril, they will attempt to use this ability for every piece of knowledge they will find. Because you can do things like "Hey dear fungrils, do any one of you know what is the god with 4 arms and a snake body?" and honestly I dont know how can I balance this. If I dont give them a reasonable information it wont be fair for them, if I give information it wont be fair for me because its like a shortcut to most information.

For example one of my players once had a weapon made of magical quicksilver. They once tried opening a lock with this quicksilver and I found it clever and allowed them, but for the rest of the campaign he tried to open every single lock the same way. I am not blaming them for creative use but I know they are very persistent if they find easy shortcuts.

Hello, I am currently writing a world to play with daggerheart. I am heavily getting inspired by Elden Ring and I tought something like ashes of war could be cool, specific techniques of weapons. How can I do this in daggerheart? I know blade domain exist but the thing about ashes of war is all of them are techniques and blade doesnt have that much of them, only early level accesible one is whirlwind. What can I do to implement them? Maybe a domain or magical items thats attached to the weapons? Or just straight up add them as different actions of weapons? There is the option of "Its just a roleplay flavor" but I love them being individual techniques so I'd rather avoid this option.

Hello, I'm currently writing my first world and this is the magic system I'm thinking about, it is inspired by glintstone sorcery in Elden Ring and an unnamed redditor who wrote something like this but deleted their account.

1. Stars and Basic of Earth

Earth is flat with 6 unique moons surrounding it, all of the moons are a pillar of creation in earth. It is a sealed cosmology, there is a big barrier surrounding earth and its moons. This barriers stop creatures of void from entering the world.

Stars are something similar to these moons, but they are undeveloped failed ones. They radiate magical energy to the places their light reaches, this magic is an unintended effect of their spoiled nature. Sometimes these stars drawn to eachother and form a constellation and they start to radiate their magical energy in the same frequency. An additional note is this universes sun probably isnt a star like these because of other lore reasons. At most, sun is tied to divine magic.

2. How is this Magic Used

Starborn sorcerers and shamans who controlled star energy or starfeed plants were a known thing for humanity until they found a way to extract this starlight energy. They found out if you use certain lenses made of meteorites (a filled term, will detail it later), you could extract this starlight energy into a liquid. And with this revolution they created magical items, potions and other magical things that are used in a normal fantasy world.

Wizards were another thing humans created. With the access to star waters, humans found a way to imitate what sorcerers could do. If you ingest a small amount of star water, it could allow you to see and control flow of magic around you, but it was temporary and it wasnt as powerful as a sorcercers. So countless mages across history studied constellation in order to wield their powers, constellations were a constant and it was steady in comparison to mass of chaotic energy created by individual stars.

3. Detailed Usage of Star Water

Star waters were hard to get, they were distilled at highest peak of world and brough back to cities. Potions were made with heating these liquids and mixing their vapor with potion mixes. Special inks made with them were used in runecrafting and crystalized ones were used to enchant ores while smiting.

Most of these star waters werent pure tho, people were mixing them with other liquid in order to multiply and change their effects. An example is if a person used their blood that ink becomes more powerful but it boils the users blood when digested so it was banned and deemed dangerous.

While talking about ingesting this liquids, wizard and most other spellcasters ingested these liquid in a crystalized ice form. It was more controlled as you only licked or breaked a part of them and cheap ones came with lots of flavor! This crystals can be used to create starlight beams without ingestion too but it isnt much powerful and only used by people who have a chance to be in a fight like adventurers or soldiers.

4. Souls and How it's Use on Magic

Soul in this universe is different from the "soul is mind" kind of approaches. Soul is everything a person is, from their personality to their body. These are examples how a person life can change their way of souls working.

• Determination to improve physical abilities makes a person soul tougher and more flame like.
• Person who trained their agility for swords arts or other kind of things makes their soul lighter and they adapt to other things faster.
• Control over their body like steady hands or craftsmanship allows a person to use their soul in similar precision. To cast a spell they kind of shape magic around them, think of it like making a pottery.
• Curiosity for knowledge deepens your soul and allows you to consume even more knowledge without normal restrictions of memory.
• And lastly, a strong personality of a noble or priest makes their soul heavier and forces of their will bends others will.

All of the things a person does influence how their soul evolves and how they can use it.

Using a soul isnt a conscious decision. It's mostly noticed in exceptionaly strong person with a soul thats extreme. Regarding using magic, when a person who honed their body, strong or not, gains ability to cast magic. Their first approach is generally how they trained their best skill. A thief with steady hands tries to gain steady and precise control over starlight while a mage who learned it from grimoires tries to shape starlight with their gained knowledge. This control is universal, no matter if you use divine, starlight or other kinds of magic.

Examples of usage of star magic is:

1. Constellation magic who is based around grimoires of old mages. Also constellations allow wizard to use divine like powers such as light and healing spells. It is theorized that maybe divine powers share the same origin as starlight magic.
2. Bards also use same ways of wizard but their primary way is their creativity. Their personality and influence over their soul allows them to bend magic instead of studying them for years.
3. Sorcerers who at birth is chosen by starlight, they have instinctual control of light and more chaotic magic around them.
4. Shamans are similar as they control chaotic side of starlight magic. But instead of controlling light, they control plants/nature that feeds on light. They dont control but they can communicate and use animal spirit powers too. Shamans are this way because of non-magical shamanizm culture they grow up. Line between Shamans and Sorcerers are determined by the culture they are born and grew into. Because of this reason, it is more common to find Shamans from treefolk as they feed of this light and nomadic humans who got shamanizm from them too. But a human sorcerer who grew up in and adopt nature becomes a shaman instead of sorcerers.

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What do you guys think about this magic system? Is starlight ingestion a good or bad idea? I'm fairly new to creating magic systems and trought my research I've found this is the best place to ask for something like this. I am open to all kinds of feedback and questions as I am still at the development stage and these kind of interactions is the best way for me to improve it.

If you dont know, crucible is a game system developed by Foundry VTT developers. It's a classless system where you advance in a skill tree and it has a cool magic casting system with combining runes with gestures to get the effects. Normally I wanted to play a game in this system but its at version 0.10 so there is a long way until it is completed and is suitable for a long campaign. Is there a similar classless system for a fantasy game?

I'm getting bored of DnD and my other best alternative Daggerheart is too focused on narrative that there isnt mechanical diversity. An idea of a classless system is both refreshing and it suits the game in my mind. I'm planning on making a Elden Ring like game where party will explore the world. And a classless system where player can figure out their build on the journey is fitting to the game in my mind.

Hi, I am preparing myself to DM an future daggerheart campaign, and while learning the system one of the only things I didnt like about daggerheart was the loadout rules. It is complicated and I always found myself wondering why I need to turn off my bare bones to get another domain card. So I came up with an idea about what if loadout isnt a static 5 cards but it is a scaling point system using stress and recall costs?

Recall cost already is made to indicate how costly an domain card is to get and it is already tied to your stress. My idea is that you can have any number of domain card provided that their recall point total is equal or lower than your maximum stress.

Of course "X-Touched" abilities must be reworked because in original they need you to have %80 of your loadout to be X domain. But other than this, does it need other adjustments? I'm not experienced in the system so I would be glad to hear more experienced peoples comments!

Hello, I am asking this for an TTRPG campaign, it seems like there are a lot of actual writers so I am a bit shy asking this for a TTRPG game but I wish it isn't a problem. I am not a person thats great with medieval history or history in general and there are many thing about mercenaries there, what I want to know is what is an mercenary band, both how are they used in fiction and how are they in real history. I dont like how fiction uses most things so I'm planing on mixing both things. For basic basis I know they are sellswords who act like one unit but I dont know what are they generally hired for, how big are they ,whats the difference between mercenary band and a company because I see a lot of people mentioning bands and companies.

I take a lot of inspiration from a lot of things when I am creating stories, a mercenary band idea came to me from Griffiths Band of the Falcon, so when I say mercenary band this is what I think. But due to setting I am using, conditions on berserk and my story isnt same because there isnt feudal lords and obviously there is common use of magic so I cannot use it as my reference.

What I have in mind for a mercenary band is a band named "Sigilstar", name of the north star in that world, and they are a mercenary band who favors win over the honor of war. They use dark cloaks and often makes ambushes at dark, I know name sounds wrong for this kind of group but the reason they are named after the north star is after they start the ambush and enemy becomes aware of them, they deploy a special kind of magic to light the battlefield because they are still humans and attack on dark is hard for them. Rather than their tactics, their aftermath of artifical light on the sky earned them this name. If there is any mistake I've made I hope you can point it out, as I said I'm not great with history so I dont know war tactics I have in my mind would work in a real scenario.