Daggerheart Diaries: Levelling Up In Combat
Today’s post is a bit different - no new stat block, instead I wanted to share a way of making levelling up in Daggerheart a bit more exciting. This is hopefully the first of a new series of posts that will be interspersed with the homebrew creations, with stories of successes and learnings from GMing an ongoing Daggerheart campaign.
Warning: Very mild spoilers for the mechanics (not story) of the Critical Role campaign 4.
Today's topic was heavily inspired by a technique Brennan Lee Mulligan uses in the latest campaign of Critical Role, where when players level up they are allowed to choose a narratively exciting time (even mid-combat) to mechanically gain the advantages of their new level. I thought it might be fun to do something similar in our current campaign, so when the time came to go from level 1 to 2 I started to plan!
After some consideration I realised that this wouldn’t work so well in its current form, particularly across a level up involving a Tier change, as the disparity between the levels would just mean everyone would choose to level up together. Huh, but maybe that’s ok? A great cinematic moment when everyone powers up in the face of a mighty adversary sounds pretty epic to be honest!
Making It Happen
It was also surprising straightforward to make happen. The first step is to make a suitable encounter - in my case, this would be a mini-boss at the end of a dungeon, so I created a leader stat block (see the Terror Eel from the last blog post!) with a large number of minions and hordes. I weighted it at mid-Tier 2 to make it difficult for players at Tier 1, scaled down slightly using an encounter builder to make it at least plausible. This was after a couple of other encounters in the same adventuring day to make sure it had the suitable level of peril!
The next step depends on how you are organising the sessions - for me it worked out to have a cliffhanger mid-combat at the point of level up, so I didn’t need to prewarn my group that the level up was coming, but if you want to do this mid-session you might want to give your players a heads up in advance to give them a chance to consider their levelling choices beforehand, so it doesn’t cause an awkward break in the middle of a critical scene.
Finally, choose a suitable moment to level up - perhaps when the tide turns against the players, or a pivotal moment happens. In my case, I went with when the Terror Eel summoned reinforcements:
The Terror Eel rears back and produces a grating screech that echos around the chamber. In response, swarms of eels and fangfish pour from the surrounding caverns, threatening to overwhelm you. However, you take a moment as a group to focus your will, feeling a rising determination to face the overwhelming odds and emerge triumphant - that’s where we’ll leave it for tonight, and when we return next week you will all be level 2!
Of course, you don’t need to do this with just combat encounters - perhaps a social encounter with a tense negotiaton leads to renewed focus and skills emerging! The main thing is to create that cinematic moment where the protagonists reach for new skills in a moment of need, without having to balance for different tiers at once. I think this is much more exciting than simply levelling up after a rest - but what do you think? Let me know if you give this a try, and don't forget to subscribe for the latest tips and homebrew! (Also, let me know if you like this new type of post, and I will consider making it a series of its own!)