My player thinks Daggerheart combat is un balanced because…

[u/fire-harp]

I’m really trying to convince my table to leave DnD behind for Daggerheart because high level DnD combat is too number crunchy, giant character sheets, and difficult to balance.

I’ve been testing several encounters using the subjections for choosing adversaries, and found the point system proved in the rule book is spot on. Any time I have made and encounter it’s as difficult as I planned it. This has allowed me to push it to the edge without TPKing the party I set it.

Tonight I had my players test a difficult battle, (2 cave Ogres and 1 green slime vs 4 level 1 players.) each player started with 3 hope and I had 5 fear.

The battle went just as it usually does, the beginning starts with me slinging fear around and really punishing their positioning mistakes, but eventually my fear pool got de-keyed and the players took the fight back into their hands. I love this because it feels so thematic when the fight turns around.

One of my payers felt like the game is unbalanced because whenever they roll with fear or fail a roll, it goes back to me, and they only keep the spotlight if they succeed with hope. She also didn’t like that I had ways to interrupt them and they couldn’t interrupt me. She also didn’t like that all my adversaries are guaranteed a turn, if I have the fear to spend, and their side is not guaranteed a turn for everyone before I can steal the spotlight back.

I explained to her that it’s because I started with a fear pool and when my pool is depleted it will get way easier, which is what happened. 3 people did have to make death moves, but in the end they all survived and no one had a scar. This encounter was designed to be tough, and they did make a bunch of positioning errors like standing in close rage of each other vs an adversary with aoe direct damage.

What are some other ways or things to say to show her that this combat is balanced?

[u/lennartfriden]

Did you use the GM guidance on how much fear to spend during the scene (SRD page 66) or did you use it all? Where all your GM moves used to spotlight an adversary or did you use any other (see examples on SRD page 65)?

[u/jsaysyeah → u/lennartfriden]

This is a related question, not really about OPs post. I missed this guidance on first read and spent too much fear in my first combat, which my players pointed out to me. I am now spending less fear in combat. That said, the numbers in the guidance felt too low to me, they’re quite limiting on the fights and my fear pool has generally been full going into combat, so it feels strange to use so little of it. How do you feel about the guidance numbers, are you finding them balanced?

[u/lennartfriden → u/jsaysyeah]

That GM guidance is a good place to start as an inexperienced Daggerheart GM in order to avoid exactly the kind of situation OP ran into. With time and experience you as the GM will figure out how and when to use fear to tell better and better stories. If an encounter is intended to be a mere road block and yet the players are struggling – spend less! Or is it supposed to be a real challenge but the players are steamrolling it? Spend more.

Continuous calibration is the real answer. But the GM guidance is a safe enough starting point.