Daggerheart Combat & Meaningful Choices
As we were doing Stars & Wishes at the end of my in-person Daggerheart game the other day, one of the players highlighted something that two other players enthusiastically seconded: that the “combat” that night had let them make interesting choices which immediately impacted how the scene played out each time; success or fail.
This got me thinking, because implicitly this suggests that most of the combats we’ve done throughout 13 months of play and ~ 25 sessions have not had this feeling. In fact another player highlighted how it felt nice to not “just go in and attack.”
Quick breakdown of the combat sitation: the players have finally met up with an elusive NPC Duke to warn him of various plots that are afoot - including that a number of his troops under one of his officers have just responded to a neighboring polity’s intrusion. The Duke rides to the aid of his troops, accompanied by his squires & the adventurers. I framed the scene starting on a crest of a hill with the two forces engaged below, a clear wizardly type behind the opposing forces (with the Duke’s lady who may or may not be In On It captured beside), and the Duke making it clear he’s going to charge in as heavy calvary to try and turn a flank.
From there, I got action declarations from all players on what they were going to try to do next; and we played it out. Players used their Domain Cards and other abilities to give them fictional permissions to affect the tide of battle (teleporting away from a downed horse; blasting troops trying to pen the Duke in back; so forth).
I only turned to the Adversary mechanics for the point where the Rogue & Guardian ganged up on the Wizard, everything else was handled via the fiction and appropriate Action Rolls.
Why I think this felt good: Constant Meaningful Choices. Each Action they took affected more then just “did we hit/did they lose HP.” The players defined their priorities for the scene up front, and then got to follow through (“protect the Duke” or “keep troops from dying”) They had freedom to take an ability, suggest how it might fit the moment, and test that. By having a framing of a wide dynamic situation, it kept the action moving and allowed me to front new threats that demanded response. “An assassin springs free of the crowd and plunges a dagger toward’s the Duke’s back” feels very different in the moment then “the ogre roars with rage and swings out at you again” because the stakes are so different in scope.
Does the system inherently create “Meaningful Choices?” In its core setup, I don’t really think so. The more sessions I’ve run, the less impressive I’ve found the base level adversary design in inherently creating dynamic situations the players feel like they either need to respond to or can affect in material ways. Generally the question boils down to “which ability do I have enough currency for, and how much damage do I want to do.” There’s some nuance beyond that, and certain domain abilities do create opportunities for allies in neat ways, but at least in levels 1-5 I haven’t seen all that much of that sort of thing - since most of the implications of teamwork get shuffled into the Tag Team Roll which mostly boils down to “tell dramatic fiction together and then guarantee Severe damage by stacking rolls.”
Contrast to a game like D&D 4e, or Draw Steel!. Both have genuine choices in ability usage very early - powers will do very different things, affecting the post usage combat map significantly. Things like teamwork building buffs, movement and flanking, critical debuffs and so forth start right at the get go along with everybody getting interesting Reactions.
Conclusion: If nothing else, this has gotten me thinking about how I can add a layer of dilemmas or priority setting to each combat within systems that don’t establish that implicitly via their core design. I don’t think that resource expenditure or “most efficient killing method” is interesting enough here for the people I play with to highlight - since they were already doing that sort of thing.
As I work on my own hack of Daggerheart for swords & sorcery style play, I’m pondering how to bring this sort of decision space in without tacking all the way over to grid-style play. One thing I’m contemplating is using something akin to the Combat Maneuvers from Odd Skull, as rinsed through my awareness of how the fighting Move tends to go in Dungeon World descended PBTAs to add moment by moment choice on both sides of the table to how a “combat” goes. Needs some work and play testing, but might get us there!