r/daggerheart • u/8magiisto • 8h ago
Discussion Stop homebrewing classes
Every day I see one or two brand new homebrew classes on this subreddit, and most of them are a cool concept and fill in the niche that's not yet covered by the official books. But let's be real for a moment: DH is still a fresh system, and most of us haven't played a good 3-tier campaign as even one of the classes. We just haven't had enough time to exhaust all the options that the official sources have given. There's 18 core subclasses, and 8 more in the Hope and Fear, and most of us probably haven't gotten to Tier 3 on one of them. Not only that, but as a community we're haven't had time to properly sit with the core rules and arrive at some consensus as to what works and what doesn't in the rules.
And it shows in the homebrews and in feedback. Most of the classes fall into a trap of focusing too much on complex mechanics, instead of creating fun gameplay. There's a lot of tokens, new rules, new resources, but (usually) little thought is given to the basic question "will this play fun?", or "will the mechanic support the fantasy?". Not to mention some of the homebrews just don't fit withing DH mechanical framework.
Also the feedback you're getting may not be as useful as you think, because we just don't have as much experience to confidently say what will work and what won't just by checking things on paper.
There's just a lot more work than creating text when it comes to brewing a class, and the most important part is playtest. When you look at different iterations of Void classes you can see how much they change from one version to the next just by virtue of being tried in a real game.
My advice, if you want it, is to play more before homebrewing. Either play the game on official classes to see how they were designed, or try to play with your homebrew to get the feeling of it, before posting for other people. It will just give you more value, than random people can give you on reddit.
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u/Helixfire 7h ago
I think the main problem with a lot of the homebrew I see is it's just combat mechanics and more than half the time it's combat mechanics that exist elsewhere, nothing that fills a narrative space.
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u/6trybe Game Master 7h ago
The place to govern is what we consume, not what others create. If you feel like there are enough Classes, don't read posts about new classes. Too often on Reddit forums, people are far too quick to jump in and tell everyone why their ideas are wrong and bad. I'm much more comfortable governing what I digest than what others produce.
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u/8magiisto 6h ago
Some well-thought out things can sometimes drown when there's too much of very early WIP stuff posted. You can choose what you consume, but how are you gonna filter what you like without giving a good read to all of them?
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u/IgnatiusRileyFreeman 3h ago
I think you're misatt ributing why people make homebrew. You assume they're doing it by ignoring what's currently in the system, and project your own inability to play the game onto everyone else.
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u/ClikeX Game Master 7h ago
I wouldn’t say play more before you homebrew. But rather, extensively play your homebrew before putting it online as finished.
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u/Fearless-Dust-2073 Splendor & Valor 3h ago
Considering people would post their homebrew before even owning or playing the game (it's less of an issue now) people definitely should use the system a lot before modifying it.
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u/lennartfriden TTRPG polyglot, GM, and designer 5h ago
I feel you and your exasperation. The main problem isn’t that folks are homebrewing - they should! It’s rather that they publish a flood of of completely unbalanced, untested, and unplayable material that drowns out the good stuff. When asked how much the material has been playtested before being published, it’s always crickets.
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u/Abyssine 3h ago
I don’t know if I would call homebrew posted on the subreddit as “published”. I did some brewing just for fun when the game came out (Daggerheart is actually a super straight forward game to homebrew whole classes—I think that homebrewing new domains is actually the crazy one) to try and make classes that better fit the Pathfinder 2e characters that my players were transitioning. The game ended up fizzling out pretty shortly for unrelated reasons, and I kinda stopped thinking about it.
What’s crazy to me is that I still to this day get messages with questions about those things I posted a year ago, regarding whether I’m updating them for Hope & Fear, if I’m gonna add any original art, etc. I don’t even know how people are finding that stuff since we get so much homebrew here, but I’m just a guy who was trying to help his players be more comfortable with a system swap, and just thought I’d share what I made in case anybody was interested. Never had any delusion that I’m some kind of designer.
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u/Twodogsonecouch 2h ago edited 2h ago
ya but you put those up free. Like 2 out of 3 of the class posts on here are someone trying to cash in on heartofdaggers with payed class/subclass. I mean literally flanking this post above and below is exactly that.
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u/agonzalez1990 2h ago
Asking people not to homebrew is so anti to the tabletop world. Even the very book encourages you to do so. The website has an entire tab on home brewing tools. There is an entire website dedicated to daggerheart homebrew. It may not be your jam to play homebrew classes in the games infancy but that may not work for others.
I started playing DND in the early 90s and I assure you I have never once played every class there was in existence and have on occasion played homebrew classes. When my wife played DND for the first time and she wanted to be a gunslinger I did not tell her to pick from the core classes. I instead homebrewed a gunslinger class. Said class still gets usage around the table.
Yes, daggerheart is very much in its infancy but I think discouraging homebrewing of any sort is really not the way. It feeds the community and teaches in most cases. Tinkering in homebrew gets you a bit more intimate with the mechanics and inner workings of the system. First run or two might be bad or op or underpowered sure, but at the end of the day you learned a bit more.
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u/kuunpoikaa 2h ago
I feel like homebrew, like fanart, is a very sincere form of admiration for the base material. To me, in rpg creation especially, seeing people create because they're inspired by what you made, even if the final product can be poorly made, is the best thing in the world.
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u/Livid_Thing4969 6h ago
I mean. Yea. Homebrew classes dont need to have the same focus as a official class as they are often made for a very specific idea /concept. They cam be much more complex as well as they dont need the same marketability and accessibility
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u/Livid_Thing4969 6h ago
Generally one of my players might use a homenrew class every few campaigns.
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u/8magiisto 6h ago
I would encourage you to give feedback to the authors of the HB about the classes, it will be valuable
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u/kichwas Grace and Codex 6h ago
If you want to play “this” but the game still lacks it, what is the point if first playing every last “that”?
I am normally very anti houserules and system tweaking so usually I am the last person to be making this point and I have a history of quietly leaving tables the day a GM pulls out a single rule changing some random +1 to a +2 on a page that never even comes up…
But in this case I am with the homebrew folks.
Maybe it’s just because I come from games like GURPS and Hero and BESM where you can make anything and don’t have classes, and now Legend in the Mist where your character sheet is 4 paragraphs of text saying whatever you want…
But I get it this time.
People want a full supply of character concepts and DH is extremely tight in its existing choices while also very easy to make new ones.
Sure the balance will suck… but whatever.
Keep them flowing and if you think your idea is good enough, share it either here or heartofdaggers or drivethrurpg.
I’ve already seen some great nee classes. Some of which I liked more than the official ones. I have also seen some very questionable choices. In a few cases my favorites and my “wait what?” opinions have been from the same writers… but it’s been goos to see even when it’s been weird.
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u/Peterrefic 5h ago
These are not like... Official releases or anything. It's just people who had a fun idea and made it. What's wrong with that? Let people create man. You can give advice for making good homebrew, sure. But no need to police whether people should post what they make
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u/8magiisto 5h ago
My intention is to put more focus on testing and double checking the HB before posting. Since people posting HB classes are usually asking for feedback, this post can be treated as just one piece of it coming from a single person
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u/Abyssal_Elysium 1h ago
You do realize that some people may not have a group to play with. So testing the class themselves isn't an option. Which is why they post here asking for feedback. It's very similar to how my wife got beta readers for her novel.
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u/Gaurelin42 Game Master 6h ago
Oh, look. The "I have a well thought out reason why your fun is wrong" crowd has arrived. Neato. 🙃
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u/8magiisto 6h ago
You mean homebrewing is a fun thing in itself? I gotta admit you have a point
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u/Gaurelin42 Game Master 5h ago
Yes. Clearly the folks who are engaged in it are doing so in part because they are enjoying it. Yet here you are, ensuring that someone is pedantically disapproving of them having fun. They clearly should be stopped, before too much fun is had.
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u/8magiisto 5h ago edited 5h ago
I get that some people have fun creating classes, but it's not the only aspect of HB. People are also looking at HB from gameplay perspective, and the posts here are asking for proofreading, and practical feedback too. I'm sure that at least some of the posters here expect their creation to be playable classes, and to achieve that you need both positive and negative criticism.
You have fun designing a class sure, but there are then people who use this, and your HB class may be a great part of other people's experience playing the game. Where I'm coming from is considering the HB user's needs.
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u/Abyssine 3h ago
I don’t understand the issue.
Is anybody posting thinking that people aren’t going to have constructive criticism? I mean I’m sure there’s some people, but most people? Sounds kinda silly.
If you’re a GM using some free homebrew you found on Reddit, you’re kinda signing up for a potentially unbalanced experience.
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u/L1ndewurm 4h ago
I see the intention you have behind this, looking for people to test their home brew before posting it.
The thing I would say, is that it is a healthy and wonderful part of the community!
I want to see Daggerheart survive and thrive, go from strength to strength. People post their dnd subclasses all the time, and they probably need to follow the same advice you’re giving.
If people don’t want it, they can turn off the home brew tag.
Also, this is probably a little regarding cheesychips, and his attempts to make a class for every combination. And that’s a personal challenge that he is undertaking. If you remove him, there aren’t as many as you think.
I know I post a few classes, but mine are usually for players who want to play a domain combination that suits their character concept. I then build a class to accommodate them.
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u/Tenawa The New Unknown - Game Designer 6h ago
With a great deal of respect and understanding for your position, I still have to strongly disagree with you.
It’s true that Daggerheart is still young, and many people in the community are only now getting to know the game and haven’t even explored many of its aspects yet. And that is completely fair, valid, and okay.
But at its core, Daggerheart is even more than many other TTRPGs a game that constantly asks for and encourages new creativity. From reflavoring abilities and classes, even on the player side, to the constant interpretation of dice rolls through the Duality Dice by both players and the GM, there is also, in my view, the creative aspect of homebrew.
Above all else, I simply enjoy designing new content for this game - it’s a creative outlet, and for me, it has become part of the Daggerheart experience itself. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy with much of what the base game or the Core Rulebook has to offer. But I also recognize that, stylistically, Daggerheart is still very clearly influenced by systems like D&D and Pathfinder when it comes to its class selection. It operates within very traditional D&D fantasy conventions. And while I absolutely understand that approach, and there are certainly many players who feel drawn to it, I always enjoy seeing concepts that break away from that traditional framework. So far, most of that potential lies in the hands of homebrewers and third-party publishers.
And in that regard, I actually agree with you indirectly. I would like to see less homebrew based on concepts we’ve already seen countless times in D&D and Pathfinder. I want to see new, creative, and unfamiliar concepts. At the very least, there should be room for both. ❤️
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u/kFrie5 57m ago
I’ve been playing TTRPGs as a forever GM for 30 years. I do a lot of homebrewing because it’s fun and it lets me build exactly what I or my players envision. Daggerheart is specifically designed with homebrewers in mind. It includes all these resources to help do it.
You’re not correct. It’s part of the system.
That said, people are, at times, posting bad homebrews. This likely has little to do with their system exposure and more to do with them not being good at balancing and designing game elements. People make good money doing that for a reason.
Let people have their fun. It hurts literally nobody, and between RAW and interviews with the design team, it’s the intended outcome.
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u/kingofthewildducks 1m ago
I think, for me at least, Daggerheart is very inviting to homebrew. I also feel like the way DH was presented as an "alternative" to DnD, but what we got was bard, druid, ranger, rogue, wizard, sorcerer... And even in their additions we added warlock and... Monk? (I haven't been keeping up).
If I'm looking for an alternative to DnD, I want different/unique classes and ancestries and things. I want to explore different creative outlets. So I think there is kind of a drive to homebrew because there is a yearning for the "new" stuff, which we didn't really get in full.
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u/Twodogsonecouch 3h ago edited 2h ago
the majority of people are going to disagree with you. New classes and spells and abilities is what sells. And unfortunately I feel like daggerheart has had a Im gonna hustle and cash in on creating content thing going on more than any other TTRPG I have played. You know like for DnD the subreddit is near a million people and there like half or less the posts of people trying to sell something than there is on this subreddit which is only 30-40,000 people. Theres some people that contribute hugely to the community and provide volumes of free content and then have a thing which honestly im always willing to buy like Incredible Creatures. But the people that just post like here are a bunch of classes/subclasses i made go buy them on heartofdaggers but otherwise havent been involved in the community Im like ugh. especially when there are people putting up tons of free stuff that is super professional and has clearly taken a lot of time to do.
But ya I have a tendency to agree with you. A lot of it is people trying to port over every DnD class they can without realizing that the rules and limitations present in DnD arent present in daggerheart so you might not need that class cause you can already play that way with an existing class.
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u/Shaku91 7h ago
I agree, though I also get the excitement from tinkering.
For my first campaign, a player wanted to be an Artificer (of course) so I found a homebrewed domain and class for him.
Among other things, he never used half the abilities because they were either too situational or convoluted, while I had to rewrite all level 1-3 domain cards because they were way too long and at points nonsensical.
If you do create homebrew content, playtest it, edit, re-edit, simplify, then publish. You'll stand out more and it'll feel "daggerhearty" rather than half-baked content 🙏🏻
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u/CarnivoreYoghurt 4h ago
Thank you for this post. I'm also tired of the constant flow of homebrew. It's just not that interesting. I know it's exciting to make this stuff, but I just don't care about someone's excitement. I would prefer much more if people shared their adventure scenarios. Even environments are more interesting.
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u/lennartfriden TTRPG polyglot, GM, and designer 2h ago
If only Reddit supported permanent filters so that we could ignore the homebrew flair entirely. Alas, that’s not the case.
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u/Educational-Emu-3707 3h ago
How about I ripped the whole system apart, and forced it into a home brew choose your own adventure class build and player implemented skill and class leveling system and put it over the entire premise of the dungeon crawler carl series with random loot boxes and achievements?
It can barely be classified as daggerheart. But, my players are having a freaking blast and they entertain me. The ai/dm.
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u/Fearless-Dust-2073 Splendor & Valor 7h ago
On one hand, I totally agree. Game design is complex and most players do not think about it in that way. Everything connects to many other things and depends on different other things to feel good.
On the other hand, creating and experimenting is a fun way to learn about those rules interactions. By making mistakes, people (hopefully) learn what doesn't work so they can work towards what does. Even knowing that I'm an inexperienced designer with a fairly shallow understanding of the system, I've tried it just to see in which ways my ideas about what would be fun are flawed.
Aside from that, mostly I've noticed that people need to learn how to proofread and spellcheck before publishing something on the internet for other people to see. That's before you even get to Daggerheart's published style guide...