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Daggerheart: Hope & Fear
Not yet published
Expected 22 Sep 26- GenresRole Playing Games
196 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication September 22, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Received my copy directly from the publisher through a preorder.
Pros:
- I really like the new transformation mechanics to change your characters in vampires, werewolves, and more.
- The new equipment section is excellent: so many new (literally hundreds) of items and consumables to give out as loot, plus many new weapons and armor.
- New monsters, so many new monsters! Sure, some are just kind of filler mundane animals, but most are quite interesting and creative. We get almost as many monsters here as we got in the core book - very generous, and of course gorgeously illustrated.
- New environments and encounters! Also so many of them! Some of them are a little over-written in my opinion, but most are really quite good. The ocean voyage and the dungeon environments in particular are a very interesting way to do these in a more narrative game like Daggerheart.
- Two of the new campaign frames are really quite good in my opinion: Dark Heart of Andaluria (think Witcher meets Bloodborne meets Van Helsing and Berserk) and Journey to Horizon (Fallout meets Zelda meets Wheel of Time or Malazan - trust me, it makes sense). The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The new Dread Domain abilities are a really interesting way to engage with the Fear and Stress mechanics. The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The art is gorgeous throughout and is fully made by human artists. There are also new nice maps and helpful handouts for players.
Cons:
- The new ancestries (races) are boring. They are reskins of D&D races like Aasimar, various Genasi, and Gnomes. That's it. Also some of them are markedly better in mechanical terms than others. I'm sorry but I find Daggerheart ancestries in the core book to be pretty boring too and Hope & Fear does not improve on them.
- New communities are also boring. There's one that lets you take aspects of communities of other party members - that one's neat. The rest I found were uninspiring.
- Two of the campaign frames were really not my cup of tea. One was a very Harry Potter-coded Castle High setting (only set in a fantasy world with both magic and modern technology) and the other was Reign of the Weredragon (very classic Disney cartoons and fairy tales coded). Neither were as interesting as they could be and neither had much in the ways of new mechanics or systems. Reign of the Weredragon at least has a neat way to randomly generate a bunch of important plot points for the campaign like you would do with the Tarokka Deck reading in the very popular Curse of Strahd campaign for D&D (no surprise since one of the authors of the Curse of Strahd is also the credit author for Reign of the Weredragon).
All in all though, I think we get a ton of new materials here for both players and GMs, plus the new cards (very pretty and handy), handouts, and tear-away pads for GMs to use for encounter building. This is great value for the money despite some deficiencies.
Pros:
- I really like the new transformation mechanics to change your characters in vampires, werewolves, and more.
- The new equipment section is excellent: so many new (literally hundreds) of items and consumables to give out as loot, plus many new weapons and armor.
- New monsters, so many new monsters! Sure, some are just kind of filler mundane animals, but most are quite interesting and creative. We get almost as many monsters here as we got in the core book - very generous, and of course gorgeously illustrated.
- New environments and encounters! Also so many of them! Some of them are a little over-written in my opinion, but most are really quite good. The ocean voyage and the dungeon environments in particular are a very interesting way to do these in a more narrative game like Daggerheart.
- Two of the new campaign frames are really quite good in my opinion: Dark Heart of Andaluria (think Witcher meets Bloodborne meets Van Helsing and Berserk) and Journey to Horizon (Fallout meets Zelda meets Wheel of Time or Malazan - trust me, it makes sense). The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The new Dread Domain abilities are a really interesting way to engage with the Fear and Stress mechanics. The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The art is gorgeous throughout and is fully made by human artists. There are also new nice maps and helpful handouts for players.
Cons:
- The new ancestries (races) are boring. They are reskins of D&D races like Aasimar, various Genasi, and Gnomes. That's it. Also some of them are markedly better in mechanical terms than others. I'm sorry but I find Daggerheart ancestries in the core book to be pretty boring too and Hope & Fear does not improve on them.
- New communities are also boring. There's one that lets you take aspects of communities of other party members - that one's neat. The rest I found were uninspiring.
- Two of the campaign frames were really not my cup of tea. One was a very Harry Potter-coded Castle High setting (only set in a fantasy world with both magic and modern technology) and the other was Reign of the Weredragon (very classic Disney cartoons and fairy tales coded). Neither were as interesting as they could be and neither had much in the ways of new mechanics or systems. Reign of the Weredragon at least has a neat way to randomly generate a bunch of important plot points for the campaign like you would do with the Tarokka Deck reading in the very popular Curse of Strahd campaign for D&D (no surprise since one of the authors of the Curse of Strahd is also the credit author for Reign of the Weredragon).
All in all though, I think we get a ton of new materials here for both players and GMs, plus the new cards (very pretty and handy), handouts, and tear-away pads for GMs to use for encounter building. This is great value for the money despite some deficiencies.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
BIG fan of the dread domain so far. Adds a lot of grim and dark extra bits to the game which are my favourite! Vampires & werewolves wins me over every time.
One of the campaign settings is inspired by Bloodborne, Vampire Hunter D, Castlevania & The Witcher which is like… perfect…to me.
Added adversaries are so sick and the art is amazing as expected. Warlock and Witch getting added is also hype to me.
One of the campaign settings is inspired by Bloodborne, Vampire Hunter D, Castlevania & The Witcher which is like… perfect…to me.
Added adversaries are so sick and the art is amazing as expected. Warlock and Witch getting added is also hype to me.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Disappointingly thin, though that may very well be the norm for such extensions.
There are a few things I dislike and will certainly remove/alter in my own games, but the building blocks for some very interesting ideas are here, and you can't fault the additional items/armour/weapons that are provided.
Also the name sucks. 'Hope & Fear' is not a mechanic that is new or exceedingly relevant to this book in particular. The title should have had something to do with 'dread,' given that is the only new domain provided.
There are a few things I dislike and will certainly remove/alter in my own games, but the building blocks for some very interesting ideas are here, and you can't fault the additional items/armour/weapons that are provided.
Also the name sucks. 'Hope & Fear' is not a mechanic that is new or exceedingly relevant to this book in particular. The title should have had something to do with 'dread,' given that is the only new domain provided.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews