SO! I wrote this post on the Sly Flourish discord, and my friend Patchwork Paladin encouraged me to make it into a blog post. And, lo, I am nothing if not a servant to my adoring public.

This post might be useful if you're GMing a Daggerheart game (or plan to soon). Someone asked how to challenge their PCs in combat, after a climactic battle felt like a pushover. This post is the advice I offered.

Before we start, though, you should go use my Daggerheart Adversary Search tool! It's also downloadable and self-hostable, along with my scripts to transform your adversary-filled PDFs into usable data.

You can filter the list of all SRD adversaries by ATK bonus, tier, type; search by text; and even see the full statblock, courtesy of Old Gus. I've found this process to be extremely useful when setting up battles in my Daggerheart game.

A quick preamble:

• This advice is based on 30 sessions of a campaign
• In those 30 sessions, I've had 2 PC permadeaths, 1 death and resurrection, and provoked probably 6 or 7 Death Moves in total
• I'd be happy to explain more about my justifications in a follow-up post if people are interested
• I prefer a deadlier game and not everyone does
• This stuff has worked at my table but might not at yours

Prefer Fewer, Harder-Hitting Enemies.

Don't run solos solo, but also, don't have 5E brain and try to overwhelm the PCs. Use Bruisers more often than anything else.

Basically, it's always going to be more fun to have less enemies on the field that hit PCs for a lot of damage than more enemies that hit for less damage. In 5E, action economy is king; many 5E DMs know that a way to challenge PCs is to overwhelm them with actions.

Daggerheart has no such economy. [Ed. Note: insert a lazy but clever Marxism/capitalism joke here.] More enemies make fights take longer but not necessarily any deadlier.

That said, don't run a Solo without friends. It'll get crushed by the sheer volume of stuff the PCs can pump out.

I find Bruiser statblocks are my go-to for a typical encounter, in terms of damage output, thresholds, and fun abilities.

At Tier boundaries, use higher tier enemies.

Level 4 PCs will shred Tier 2 enemies, even Solos. Use Tier 3, it's fine.

Daggeheart's PC levels are divided into Tiers: Tier 1 = Level 1; Tier 2 = Levels 2 - 4; Tier 3 = Levels 5 - 7; Tier 4 = Levels 8 - 10. Adversaries are also divided into Tiers.

But! That means a Tier 2 Bruiser can go up against a Level 2 AND a Level 4 PC. The problem is that what bruises a Level 2 PC will barely scratch a Level 4 PC. They're very different in terms of mitigation capability!

So, what I've done is just...go up a Tier for adversaries. As PCs advance through a Tier, I use more of the next Tier up's adversaries. For our Level 4 finale, I used 100% Tier 3 enemies. This ups the challenge, but not in an unwinnable way.

Select statblocks carefully, choosing ones that do resource drain AND generate Fear.

Features like Terrifying or Shredding really make a big difference. Pick enemies that have higher ATK bonuses.

Not all statblocks are created equal, even within a Tier and type. For every fight, I like to have at LEAST one way to generate Fear besides Action Rolls (Momentum), and one way to drain Hope or Armor besides PC choice (Terrifying; Shredding; etc).

I find that without these, the fights can turn VERY quickly to stomp-fests where even typical rolling cadence (55/45 Hope/Fear) is extremely advantageous to the players.

You need Momentum or similar because in order to challenge PCs, you GOTTA be spending Fear like it's burning a hole in your pocket. If you don't, either to spotlight your bruisers or to use their neat abilities, there's a high chance PCs will stomp you.

Also, ATK bonus range is wild. PCs have access to 2d12 which is a much more consistent process to generate double-digit numbers. The GM attack die d20 is SO swingy that without some bonus like +4 or above, you risk hitting your PCs with no more than a light tickle. In Tier 2, I suggest having a floor of +3 for ATK. Maybe the floor bonus should be +3 + Tier? IDK, I am not a mathematician.

Never spend fear to add adversary Experience; spend it to change the battlefield or impose/remove conditions.

+2 or whatever isn't as impactful as rolling with advantage, or restraining a PC, or clearing the Poisoned condition on your boss.

Each Fear spent should make the players go "fuck." Adding +2 to a d20 roll that sums to 7 will not make them go "fuck." QED don't spend Fear on Experience. [Ed. Note: maybe Arrowed IS a mathemetician afterall?]

When I spend Fear in combat, I do it to:

1. Spotlight a new adversary (or the same one via Relentless);
2. Remove a condition from an adversary (shout out to my Druid player who always Poisons my baddies) after its had a satisfying effect;
3. Impose a new condition like Restrained or Vulnerable for some sensible reason, even if the statblock doesn't say I can
4. Use some ability an adversary has built-in to their 'block

Any other Fear spend in combat is probably not worth it.

To Sum Up

Hit hard, hit fast, juice the stats and the Hope/Fear/Armor economy.

Do any of these tricks work in your games? I'd love to hear about it! Comment down below.