Experience

In Daggerheart, your character’s Experiences are one of the core ways you express their backstory and expertise through mechanics. An Experience is a word or phrase used to encapsulate a specific set of skills your character has acquired over the course of their exciting life.

Your character starts with two Experiences at character creation (each with a +2 modifier), and they’ll earn more throughout your adventures. Before creating Experiences, you’ll want to have a solid idea of who your character is; the background questions are especially helpful for this. When you’re ready, work with your GM to create two Experiences that have shaped your character.

There’s no set list of Experiences to choose from (though we offer options for inspiration under “Experience Examples”). Instead, find a word or phrase that embodies something distinctive about your character. Each Experience should be specific. For example, Talented or Focused are too broad, as they can be applied to almost any situation; instead you might use Swashbuckler or Magic Studies. Additionally, your character’s Experience can’t give them spells or specific game abilities. For example, Take Flight or One-Hit Kill are too mechanically oriented; you might consider Pilot or Assassin instead.

You are also encouraged to add flavor to your character’s Experience to give it more varied use in play. For example, instead of just Assassin, you could choose Assassin of the Sapphire Syndicate. Details like this give your GM an exciting faction to weave into the campaign, and also make it easier to use this Experience outside combat. For example, if your character encounters an ally of the syndicate, they might be particularly adept at negotiating with that NPC based on their Experience.

Once you’ve decided on your character’s two starting Experiences, record them in the Experience fields of your character sheet and assign +2 to both.

Tip: If you’re not sure what Experiences to take, consider the style of the campaign you’re playing in and the actions you’ll want to perform. In a standard, battle-focused campaign, it’s never a bad idea to take your character’s first Experience in something that will help with combat and the second Experience in something useful outside of combat.

Using Experiences

When one of your character’s Experiences fits the situation at hand, you can use that Experience to showcase their expertise. Before you make an action or reaction roll, you can spend a Hope to add the Experience’s modifier to the roll’s result. Sometimes more than one of your character’s Experiences is a good fit for the situation (for example, if your character is trying to sneak past a guard in the dark, your I Live in the Shadows and Stealthy Experiences would both apply). If it fits the story, you can add more than one experience modifier to a roll, spending a Hope for each.

Changing Experiences

Your character has the opportunity to gain new Experiences as they gain levels. However, if you discover that your character has outgrown a previous Experience or it doesn’t feel right anymore, you’re not stuck with the ones you’ve already chosen. For example, you might find that your character’s Stealthy Experience no longer matches the head-on way they’ve learned to solve problems. Or perhaps your group likes to try to solve things diplomatically first, so your character’s Catch Them by Surprise Experience isn’t a good fit for the table’s collaborative story. That’s totally okay! Work with your GM to find Experiences that better align with your storytelling goals, and with the actions your character would be good at.