Materials

• The book is fantastic. Really well-organized, good writing, an easy read. My 14 year old (a 5e devotee) kept stealing it, then popping into my office every 10 minutes to tell me some other "cool" thing he found. We most appreciated the two full pages devoted to roleplaying disability, the Player Best Practices and GM Best Practices, and the 4 page Full Example of Play.
• I wish there was more art, but what art they have, they applied to the best effect. The ancestry pages really helped my players build a picture of their character.
• I pre-ordered from the Critical Role shop, and it included a free PDF. I feel entitled to a PDF copy when I purchase a physical TTRPG book, and am glad they deliver.
• The SRD (System Reference Document) was available promptly, and has a TON of content, way more than I expected. No classes or subclasses are missing (though with new classes and domains on the horizon, it remains to be seen if that will stay true).
• The cards are lovely, and give a great physicality to the question of "what can I do?" that so many players, especially newer players, struggle with. My players like having them, especially my wife who has always felt intimidated by TTRPGs (but graciously agreed to participate in the family experiment of trying out Daggerheart). But of course if you don't like cards, the website has a sheet you can download and copy down the information, just as you would with spells/etc in 5e.
• At first look, I thought the book was entirely missing information on rewards, items, etc. It turns out there are decent tables of improved weapons, magic items, and consumables. But compared to the many pages of illustrated and lovingly-described items in the 5e PHB, it feels a little lackluster. As for GM guidance on distributing loot, it is quite minimal. It's hard to say what will be balanced, but I would imagine that's true of every new TTRPG.
• I did not see any random encounter tables. Perhaps the concept runs a bit counter to the narrative-focused goals of Daggerheart, but they are always useful for a stuck GM. Obviously we can easily use tables from other systems here.
• I'm intrigued by the concept of Environment stat blocks. An argument could be made that liberal use of these will provide better guidance to the GM on what might happen in a given location, compared to a random encounter table.

Character Creation

• Caveat: Most of my experience is with 5e. I feel like character creation actually got more complex in 2024 compared to 2014 (though on the whole I really enjoy playing/GMing 2024).
• Building a character for the first time in a new system always takes some time. It took us about an hour, spent quite leisurely. My son finished much faster than that. To me, the process felt very straightforward compared to 5e 2024.
  • Both 2024 PHB and DH devote 8 pages to character creation. In DH, the content of those pages is more helpful. Two of them are just a list of class/subclass descriptions.
  • No rolling stats, only one simple array of modifiers.
  • No alignment.
  • No fine-grained skills to choose.
  • No conversion between ability score and modifier.
  • No feats (though leveling up has more choices than in 5e).
  • The choice of Community felt more interesting and inspiring in character creation, compared to 5e Backgrounds where you're really just looking for mechanical advantages.
  • Choosing a subclass is as simple as picking between two cards
• The "sidecar" page that you put under your character sheet and slide back and forth is so rad, my son lost his mind over it, it's such a clever way to keep the sheet simple and still have an easy way to explain each section of it.
• Again, the cards were a really tactile and fun way to choose abilities. Big hit at my table.
• Class-specific character sheets reduce work on the front of the sheet, and on the back of the sheet they provide great suggestions on armor/weapons/traits, etc. Also the background questions and connections are really helpful tools (I've stolen this for my 5e games) and the provided ones are class-specific for good reason.
• Answering background questions, connection questions, and filling out experiences took the most time for us. It was really cool to see the idea of each character start fleshing out more as each of these components was completed. Doing it together at the table resulted in very collaborative character creation, which really helped my wife through the process.
• I could tell that my son was struggling a bit with how to define his experiences. I suspect the 5e player in him wanted to optimize them a bit. Ultimately, he referred to the examples in the book and that really helped him. He felt good about them at that point.
• Level 1 characters are strong! They can do a lot of cool stuff! This is not like 5e where you feel crippled until level 3 or 5.

Gameplay

• I used the Quick Start adventure since I didn't have time to prep anything, and it felt good to have a tool that held my hand a bit since I'm still learning the rules.
• I followed the advice of the Quick Start and had my players participate in descriptions when we entered a new place or met new people. It was pretty fun, and sometimes silly (they insisted that the tavern in the small village of Hush had a brothel on the second floor), but it was great to see them embracing it.
• I repeat, Level 1 characters are STRONG! I was worried about them being outnumbered in a combat encounter, but that was D&D action economy thinking. Adversaries aren't guaranteed actions in a system without initiative. I was a little hesitant to spend my fear, which was a mistake, as they wiped out the first combat quite thoroughly (though not without taking some damage). There are maybe some different choices I should have made, but they still felt worried about the attack, and then felt very cool as they described their attacks and their victory.
• My son got a blast out of some combo moves he created for his seraph. He would shout for joy when he rolled with hope because it powered up the combo even more.
• It was great to see them collaborate about how best to spend their limited short rest actions. I could imagine some people trying to micromanage the party here, though. In our case it felt very positive.
• The Quick Start is light on details in a few places (specifically, in Hush), leading to some pressure on the GM to fill in the blanks with improv or extra prep. But based on earlier precedent, I felt empowered to ask the players to carry some of that burden for me, which ended up being a lot of fun.
• I've had trouble remembering that I am expected to make a GM move whenever a player fails a roll, or rolls with fear. I kept spending fear to take actions during combat, which I meant I had to spend quite a bit to be effective during the final fight of the adventure.
• We are all still learning how to balance the lack of turns during combat. Nobody hogged the spotlight, but certainly there were times where one person or another anticipated that they could do something immediately after another person took an action, when that person actually had a set of actions in mind. I'm glad there are optional rules for action tracking, though I don't think we need them.
• A disadvantage of the cards is that my wife kept looking at them for available actions, and forgetting she had a very capable weapon at her disposal. And the rest of us did not realize that her secondary weapon provided a bonus to her primary weapon attacks, and that her primary weapon had an additional special ability. Luckily we figured it out in time for her bard to fit in some very satisfying stabby stabby.
• The countdown mechanic made for a more satisfying resolution to combat than having to hunt down each individual adversary. It also allowed me to up the danger dramatically when the countdown was at 1, while the players spent all their resources to get that last little win to tip the scales into victory.

Leveling Up

• Leveling up is a fun process. It feels familiar because it has similarities to the short/long rest mechanics (where you choose two things to do from a longer list).
• My players appreciated the menu of choices, especially after they just had a hard battle and got to see what resources they felt they were missing (e.g. my son has a strong ability that marks stress, so he chose to gain another stress slot).
• I also like the idea of level tiers being a mechanical thing, where interesting things happen when you move between tiers. It definitely took a little explaining, but the guide on the back of the character sheet is actually very clear.
• Choosing a new domain card was a good forcing function for my wife's bard to consider whether she wanted to lean more into traditional bard roleplay or caster abilities (she ultimately chose the former).
• My son came up with the idea that the new experience he picked should be related to what had happened to him during the previous level. It was cool to see him embrace the narrative like that.
• As we move into Level 2, I expect that we will forget to use Proficiency correctly. Many abilities or attacks will say, for example, to roll "d8" for damage. This does not mean "1d8", it means "roll a d8 for each Proficiency mark you have". At Level 1 this means 1d8, at Level 2, 2d8. I wish they had used a more clear notation for this. But we'll see how much of a problem it ends up being after we play more sessions.