Daggerheart vs Exalted
Compare Daggerheart and Exalted side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Daggerheart | Exalted | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Narrative, Collaborative, Heroic, Roleplay-Heavy, Fiction-First, Theater of the Mind, Character Building, Drama, Beginner-Friendly, Character-Driven | High-Power, Crunchy, Tactical, High-Fantasy, Martial Arts, Lore-Heavy, Character Building, Corruption |
| Core Mechanic | Roll 2d12 Duality Dice (Hope + Fear) and add modifiers vs. difficulty. Which die rolls higher determines whether the moment swings toward the players (Hope) or the GM gains Fear tokens to spend on complications. In combat, adversary attacks roll d20 + modifier against target's Evasion. | Roll a pool of d10s equal to an Attribute + Ability; each die showing 7–9 counts as one success and each 10 as two, measured against a target number of successes. Vivid descriptions of an action (stunts) add 1–3 bonus dice and can restore spent Essence, rewarding evocative narration on every roll. |
| Dice | 2d12 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | Very High |
| Accessibility | Very High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | High |
| License | Darrington Press Community Gaming License (DPCGL) | Proprietary |
| Cost | Free | $$ |
| Publisher | Darrington Press | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2025 | 2016 |
| Best For | Groups who want heroic fantasy with emotionally driven storytelling, where every roll shifts momentum between hope and fear. Great for Critical Role fans and narrative-focused tables. | Groups committed to a long campaign about demigod protagonists: mastering deep, individualized Charm builds, fighting Initiative-driven tactical battles, and navigating the political collapse of a mythic empire. |
| Highlights | Every action roll uses 2d12 Duality Dice, and whether Hope or Fear lands higher hands momentum to the player or the GM. Combat runs fiction-first with no fixed initiative, so the spotlight passes by the action rather than a turn order. Characters equip abilities as domain cards drawn from two domains, building a loadout the player can swap between. | Combat is a tug-of-war over momentum: withering attacks steal Initiative from enemies into the attacker's pool, and a decisive attack then spends that pool to deal actual harm, so the maneuvering before the killing blow matters as much as the blow itself. Each of the 25 Abilities has its own tree of Essence-fueled Charms gated by prerequisite chains, so heavy investment in one Ability yields a combat or social style a differently-built character cannot reproduce. Intimacies set hard limits on persuasion (social actions roll against a target's Resolve, attempts aligned with a Defining Intimacy are easier and those that violate one are impossible), so social conflict turns on stated stakes rather than GM fiat. |
| Considerations | The domain-card system runs best with printed cards, though it can be played from the character sheet alone. Players and the GM use asymmetric rules, so each side has its own procedures to learn. Mechanics are tied to the game's own setting and ancestries, which takes work to reskin for another world. | The core rulebook supports only Solar Exalted as player characters: the other Exalt types (Dragon-Blooded, Lunar, Sidereal) appear here as antagonists rather than fully playable PCs. Solars so outmatch ordinary opposition that lone mortal or even Dragon-Blooded foes rarely threaten them, pushing the GM toward Charm-wielding antagonists or massed battle groups to mount a real challenge. Artifact crafting uses three separate experience currencies across four project tiers with long in-fiction time requirements, so a crafting-focused character's payoff arrives only over a sustained campaign. |