Daggerheart Gamemasters, you need to stop designing adversaries. Not because I or anyone else are coming out with adversary packs, but because you don’t need to. Not in the way we’ve been approaching it so far. Right now, myself included, we’ve been focused on writing down all the exact features for every adversary.

Stop that.

There is a better way. An easier way. A more flexible way.

How it started

I’ve been running Daggerheart for a few months between online games and in person games at my FLGS. Like many of you, I’d found the limited number of adversaries to pull from a bit frustrating. Yes, I could just re-flavor what we had, but the features still felt the same from encounter to encounter.

When I had the time, I would design custom adversaries for encounters but always felt that time could be better spent elsewhere. So, I took a step back to find a simpler approach to adversary design. How could I be a Lazy GM? An effective GM?

With that step back I realized there was already a solution in an existing game I’ve run for years. One I love dearly and one that Daggerheart already points to as inspiration.

Let’s play Cypher System.

If you’ve never read or played Cypher System before, you’re in luck, as the current SRD is online for free to read and play! While there is a lot to love about the game, what I want to focus on is how they handle adversaries and where I see the inspiration for Daggerheart.

basic mechanics

Very simply, a foe in Cypher System is rated on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the hardest. That one number handles everything. How hard it is to interact with it, how much damage it deals, to how much health it has, etc. By multiplying that number by 3 you have what you need to roll on a d20 to overcome them. Level 3 monster? It takes a 9 to hit it, to dodge it, to seduce it, whatever. It has 9 HP and deals 3 damage.

Now here is where it gets fun. What about the features and abilities? You’ll basically never find a list of abilities. Sometimes, maybe, but mostly it’s just a plan language write up what is may be capable of. This approach lasers in on the narrative approach to GMing.

When you just focus on that, the narrative, then the adversary can and should be able to do whatever is necessary to serve the story. Focus on what makes sense for them and what serves your player’s fun.

That’s it.

Do you have a shark? You know what a shark is, so why do you need a stat block. They swim real fast, probably should get extra benefits from blood in the water, which we could call a rage type of ability. Between the scene and its motivation, you have everything you need to run that adversary.

daggerheart does this

In every adversary’s stat block is a motivation. That sets us up nicely. Then we figure how the motivations can effect the scene and environment. For Daggerheart we have their difficulty number. Just like Cypher System’s difficulty, it’ll handle all our needs for reaction rolls, when to over overcome effects, and any type of interaction needed. How much damage does it cause for their base attack? Daggerheart has helped us out a ton with Tiers. Each tier adds an additional die to the die type. Want it to deal a d8 damage? Each Tier adds an additional die.

This is a simple start of course. We can adjust as needed but for on the fly we’re 90% there.

features on the fly

With all that, features are a cake walk with the Fear/Stress system. You, as the GM, can do whatever makes the scene the most exciting by using your Fear and the adversary’s Stress. These are both fantastic limiters to let you have big moments that can change the narrative.

Here is a concrete example.

I was running a game at my FLGS with a little dungeon crawl. For the big fight, I had this crazy amalgamation burst into a small room to fight them. I had established that there were huge canisters with floating creatures inside and one was busted open. I described this area before even considering to add this creature. Which meant I didn’t have any stats prepped. That’s OK, I have everything I need. Motivation and Environment.

The Amalgamation

I’d mentioned dangling tubes everywhere. OK, environment imposes disadvantage to attacks as their weapons could get caught in the tubing. I decided a failed roll meant having their weapons get caught in the tubes and now they must spend time extracting it.

The thing they would fight? An experiment gone wrong. An average difficulty seemed good, so a 15. Give it a low Major threshold because its big and easy to hit deal some superficial damage. But a high Severe threshold because it will take a lot of hits to bring it down.

In my description I said it had a gorilla-like body but a long centipedal head. Once I said that I knew its features. Spend a Fear and it can grab you with those huge gorilla arms, Reaction roll of 15 to stop it. Once grabbed, the centipedal head bites into your neck.

When it gets the spotlight, the Amalgamation can mark a Stress to begin draining anyone grabbed for 2d10 physical damage, and healing the adversary HP by threshold. Since it must use Stress we can make the damage a bit bigger; it won’t happen too often. And for good measure, once the centipedal head had you, the gorilla body could go back to fighting with basic slam attacks. They’re Tier 1, so 1d10 physical is good.

That was it. And boy when that thing got a hold of someone and let go to keep fighting their eyes bugged. A fantastic moment.

trust the narrative

I wish I had really let that moment cement in my head. Instead, I got caught in the trap of needing to design every feature. We don’t. As GMs Daggerheart has given us all the tools we need to run incredible adversaries by following the narrative, trusting the scene and our instincts, and letting the adversary tell us what makes the most sense.

Stop making adversaries, and start living in the world.