Daggerheart: Hope & Fear Expansion (Review & Deep Dive)

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Table of Contents

• Introduction
• What’s included in Daggerheart: Hope and Fear?
• What is the new Domain like?
• What are the new Classes like?
• What are the new Ancestries like?
• What are the new Communities like?
• What are the Transformations like?
• What are the new Adversaries and Environments like?
• What is the new Equipment like?
• What are the new Campaign Frames like?
• What is the art and design like?
• Is Daggerheart: Hope & Fear Worth Picking Up?
• Final Thoughts & Review Score

When Darrington Press first launched Daggerheart in the spring of 2025, it marked the arrival of one of the biggest TTRPGs in years, capitalizing on the star power of Critical Role and showcasing a new narrative-focused engine. Since then, the game has sold out, snagged two Gold ENNIE awards for both Best Game and Best Rules, and become a bonafide hit.

Yet it’s still early days, and whether or not Daggerheart actually has staying power is far from certain. Which is why there’s a lot riding on Daggerheart: Hope & Fear, the game’s first major supplement and a rules expansion which promises new character options, loot, campaign frames and mechanics. First showcased at this past summer’s Gen Con, the book is finally available now in hardcover and PDF from local game stores, Darrington Press, DriveThruRPG and Amazon.

So does Daggerheart’s first big expansion succeed with hope or fail with fear? Find out below. (NOTE: While I have received review materials in the past from Darrington Press, I purchased a copy of Hope & Fear at my own expense).

What’s included in Daggerheart: Hope and Fear?

Hope & Fear is a 196-page supplement that acts as a direct companion to the Daggerheart Core Set. The book includes the following:

• Chapter One: Character Options (36 pages): Introduces four new classes (the Assassin, Brawler, Warlock and Witch), six new Ancestries (Aetheris, Earthkin, Emberkin, Skykin, Tidekin and Gnome), six new Communities (Duneborne, Freeborne, Frostborne, Hearthborne, Reborne and Warborne) and new Transformation rules that cover six options (Demigod, Ghost, Reanimated, Shapeshifter, Vampire and Werewolf).
• Chapter Two: Equipment & Loot (18 pages): Details 60 new items and 60 consumables. It also includes reference tables and breakdowns of specialized equipment.
• Chapter Three: Adversaries & Environments (54 pages): Includes 130 Adversaries and 28 environments, along with new rules for Pools (shared resources between enemies) and Evolutions (multi-stage enemies that become more powerful as they evolve).
• Chapter Four: Campaign Frames (65 pages): Provides four ready-to-run campaign frames: Castle High (a Hogwarts-style fantasy school with modern sensibilities), Reign of the Weredragon (a fairy-tale rebellion against a draconic sorceress), Dark Heart of Andaluria (a Spanish folklore-inspired monster hunt) and Journey to Horizon (an epic Lord of the Rings-style hexcrawl).

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What is the new Domain like?

The book introduces the new domain of Dread, a realm of living nightmares and terror that also includes a deck of associated domain cards. Adherents to the Dread domain can channel power over forces most mortals are too terrified to touch, summoning foul monstrosities, cursing their enemies and dishing out dark magical destruction. The vibe is creepy and clearly heavily inspired by the gothic horror aesthetic of Ravenloft. Mechanically, it also gives spellcasters a toolkit focused around manipulating Fear, draining resolve and imposing nasty status conditions.

Overall, the flavor and execution of the Dread domain mechanics are fantastic, but it does highlight one glaring thematic and structural miss: the expansion only includes one Domain that leans entirely into Fear. In a book explicitly titled Hope & Fear, it feels like an odd omission that there is no companion “Hope” or “Light” domain to balance the scales. And because domains directly influence classes in Daggerheart, dedicating the sole new domain to dark horror means the expansion’s magic options swing heavily in one direction, leaving players looking for radiant, holy or healing magic left in the dark.

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What are the new Classes like?

Hope & Fear introduces four new classes: the Assassin, the Brawler, the Warlock and the Witch. Many players will recognize these as Daggerheart’s distinct spins on classic D&D archetypes (the Rogue, Monk, and Warlock in particular).

• Assassin (Blade & Midnight): The game’s surgical killer. Its core feature, Marked for Death, allows you to spend Stress on a successful hit to paint a target, tacking on extra d4s of damage that scale with your tier. The Executioners Guild subclass turns this into pure lethal burst damage (amplifying Marked for Death to d6s and d8s, and doubling damage on your first hit in a scene). Meanwhile, the Poisoners Guild takes a more tactical route, spending concoction tokens to afflict targets with debilitating toxins like Ghost Petal (Vulnerable), Grave Spore (forcing Stress) and Gorgon Root (Restrained).
• Brawler (Valor & Bone): As the name suggests, the Brawler treats their own fists as primary weapons through I Am the Weapon, dealing scaling d8+d6 physical damage based on Proficiency. The core Combo Strike mechanic is an absolute blast. You spend a Stress after a melee hit and you roll your Combo Die (starting at a d4). As long as each consecutive roll is equal to or higher than the last, you keep rolling and adding to your damage pool. The Juggernaut subclass excels at brute survivability and battlefield control (tossing enemies around and reflecting damage via Eye for an Eye) and the Martial Artist subclass is easily the coolest and most mechanically inventive option in the entire book. Instead of static passive buffs, you use a dedicated Martial Stances tracking sheet fueled by a Focus pool.
• Warlock (Dread & Grace): Drawing power from an otherworldly patron across spheres of influence like Death, War, Chaos or Secrets, the Warlock manages a unique Favor currency. Favor can be spent to roll your scaling Patron Die on checks or activate subclass boons. The Pact of the Endless subclass focuses on refusing to die, utilizing Patron’s Mantle to elevate damage thresholds and Dark Aegis to spend Favor rather than mark Hit Points. The Pact of the Wrathful subclass is all about spiteful retribution, using Patron’s Fury to add Patron Dice to damage and reflecting incoming wounds right back onto the attacker.
• Witch (Sage & Dread): Walking the line between the natural realm and the realm of the occult, the Witch utilizes a signature Hex to penalize enemy damage rolls and Difficulties by their tier. They can also use Commune during moments of calm to receive sensory, auditory or psychic visions from otherworldly entities. The Hedge Witch serves as an empowering team anchor, boosting consumable potency, passing out protective talismans to absorb damage and drawing Circles of Power. The Moon Witch embodies celestial mystery, cloaking themselves in an illusory Night’s Glamour and rolling a d6 at the start of each session to cycle through Lunar Phases that grant passive buffs to evasion, thresholds or damage.

While those who followed playtesting on Demiplane and the Void will already be familiar with these classes, their final printed versions feel tight, balanced and extremely polished. They also successfully fill a few notable archetype gaps (namely the Daggerheart version of D&D’s Rogue, Monk and Warlock) without triggering power creep.

That being said, my one big criticism comes back to domain integration: two of the four classes rely directly on the Dread Domain. And because this is the only new Domain, that means half of the new class roster is mechanically tethered to the same dark, spooky card pool. It would have been great to see a second, radiant domain introduced alongside a light-themed, dedicated holy/cleric archetype class to provide a mechanical counterweight to two of the new classes.

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What are the new Ancestries like?

Hope & Fear adds six new playable ancestries (the game’s version of races/species):

• Aetheris: Daggerheart’s take on D&D’s Aasimar, these are descendants of angels from the Hallows Above, sporting feathered wings and glowing sacred markings. Mechanically, they are fantastic support anchors: Celestial Wings lets you spend Hope instead of an Armor Slot while flying, while Hallowed Aura lets you turn an ally’s roll with Fear into a roll with Hope once per long rest.
• Earthkin: Earthen humanoids composed of flesh combined with stone, clay, marble or gems. Their Stoneskin provides a permanent +1 bonus to Armor Score and damage thresholds, while Immovable prevents you from being lifted or moved against you will while grounded.
• Emberkin: Beings born of flesh and flame, featuring fiery hair and glowing veins. You are completely immune to fire damage and can use Ignition to ignite your primary weapon for extra d6 fire damage.
• Skykin: Flesh-and-air kin with shifting skytone skin and wispy cloud hair. Gale Force allows you to ride gusts of wind up to Very Far range and control fall speed, while Eye of the Storm grants an evasion buff to an ally.
• Tidekin: Semi-translucent, fin-eared aquatic kin with shifting oceanic hues. You are fully amphibious and can tap into Lifespring to heal wounds using small amounts of water.
• Gnome: Exactly what you’d expect from the classic tabletop species, but with a fun mechanical twist. Alongside Nimble Fingers (spending Hope to reroll Finesse Hope Dice), every gnome possesses Flicker Step, allowing you to magically teleport to any point you can see within Far range once per scene.

While all six ancestries are mechanically sound and feel like they fill some missing gaps (particularly in terms of the Gnome and Aetheris), my biggest complaint is that four of the six ancestries are all elemental kin. While their family traits and cultures are uniquely drawn out, they easily could have been grouped under a single modular “Elemental Kin” umbrella with four sub-lineages. Doing so would have freed up page space for more unconventional options. It would have been awesome, for example, to see a Daggerheart take on familiar D&D species like drow or kenku, or lean into something really weird and unique like sentient oozes or insectoids.

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What are the new Communities like?

As a quick refresher, Communities in Daggerheart represent a character’s cultural upbringing and provide a unique mechanical feature along with roleplay prompts. The six new options in Hope & Fear are as follows:

• Duneborne: Hardy peoples hailing from scorching deserts and desert oases. Their Oasis feature lets you or an ally reroll a downtime move die during a short rest and keep the higher result.
• Freeborne: Collectives who have actively fought for and won their liberation from tyrannical rule. Their Unbound feature lets you flip a roll with Fear into a roll with Hope once per session.
• Frostborne: Survivors from unforgiving tundras and glacial wastes. Their Hardy feature provides passive physical endurance, clearing a Hit Point automatically whenever you take any rest.
• Hearthborne: Folk from quaint, humble countryside villages and close-knit farming settlements. Their Close-Knit feature allows you to transfer your own Hope points directly to an ally within Far range once per long rest.
• Reborne: Individuals who have been exiled, severed from their ancestral culture or raised without a homeland. Their Found Family feature lets you spend Hope to utilize an ally’s Experience as if it were your own.
• Warborne: Communities defined and shaped by active warzones and generational conflict. Their Brave Face feature allows you to spend a Hope instead of marking a Stress once per session.

All of these are absolutely stellar additions that feel like they have a ton of utility in almost any campaign frame.

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What are the Transformations like?

One of the most intriguing new mechanical systems introduced in Hope & Fear is Transformations. These represent fundamental metaphysical or physical augmentations that can be chosen during character creation or granted dynamically by the GM as a narrative consequence mid-campaign. They function as extra heritage cards that don’t count against your domain limits, and every single one offers a powerful boon paired with a mandatory mechanical drawback. The six transformations are as follows:

• Demigod: Mortals blessed with divine blood. You gain Gifted (+1 bonus to all action, reaction, and damage rolls), but bear the Weight of Divinity (failing a roll forces you to mark a Stress or grant the GM a Fear).
• Ghost: Spirits of the departed trapped between life and death. This offers a unique way for a GM to bring back a dead PC rather than having a player roll a brand new character. Their Ephemeral trait grants resistance to physical damage and lets you phase through solid walls for 2 Stress, but inflicts double magic damage and binds you to an Unfinished Business goal that permanently passes you beyond the veil once solved.
• Reanimated: Decaying corpses brought back by necromancy or science. Through Corpse, you can’t heal Hit Points during a rest without harvesting fresh body parts from recently deceased creatures, but Won’t Stay Dead allows you to permanently burn a Hit Point box to automatically pass a failed Risk It All death move.
• Shapeshifter: Beings that can swap their physical ancestry for another during a rest via Change Shape, though Only Skin Deep restricts you to only ever accessing one ancestry feature at a time.
• Vampire: Cursed blood-drinkers with natural fangs. Their Feed mechanic stores blood tokens from biting living enemies, which can be spent to turn your Fear Die into a massive d20 on action rolls. However, running out of blood tokens slaps you with permanent disadvantage on all action and reaction rolls.
• Werewolf: Lycanthropes who enter Wolf Form upon taking damage, gaining a huge +1d10 bonus to attack and damage rolls. However, rolling with Hope while transformed forces you to mark Stress, and filling your Stress track triggers an uncontrollable Howling Rampage that blasts friendly allies and enemies alike with heavy damage.

The mechanics here are inventive and narratively rich, but the downside is that Transformations definitely add another layer of resource management to a system that is already pretty crunchy. Between juggling HP, Stress, Armor Slots, Hope, class resources and now Transformation tokens or rampage triggers, it can quickly overwhelm newcomers. Darrington Press even includes a note recommending that tables get a few standard sessions under their belts before introducing these options. That’s advice I’d definitely agree with and even then, seasoned players may want to avoid these if they’re already finding it a drag to manage their characters.

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What are the new Adversaries and Environments like?

The bestiary section includes 130 Adversary stat blocks, ranging from lowly skirmishers up to titanic campaign-enders. The book also introduce two new adversary mechanics: Pools (shared token reserves among coordinated enemies) and dynamic multi-stage Evolutions that alter monster stat blocks mid-fight. Both are very cool mechanically, although it’s worth noting that only a handful of creatures in the book actually use these new rules, so it seems like we’ll have to wait for future supplements to really see what they can do.

One other criticism I have is that a large chunk of the adversary roster feels like recognizable riffs on classic Dungeons & Dragons staples. Foes like the eye-tentacled Gobstalker, the subterranean Landshark, the Chicken-Foot Hut or elemental Titans aren’t exactly novel. And while their adaptation into Daggerheart’s action-token and Fear economy is solid, they still feel a bit overly familiar. That being said, getting these traditional tabletop archetypes out of the way in the game’s first expansion feels like table stakes, leaving future books free to venture into uncharted territory with more monsters veteran TTRPG players won’t instantly recognize.

And while the monsters may get top billing, the 28 new Environments tucked in beside them are quietly one of the best parts of the book. Rather than treating battlegrounds as passive backdrops, Daggerheart gives locations active stat blocks complete with their own difficulties and mechanical features that can shift the momentum of a scene.

These cover a huge amount of locations and tiers of play with everything from Creeping Fog (a low-tier environmental hazard that obscures sightlines and ratchets up tactical claustrophobia) and Sunken Catacombs (an oppressive subterranean ruin that tests party endurance with shifting terrain, rising water and structural instability) to Eldritch Storms (a chaotic high-tier phenomenon that lashes the battlefield with magical anomalies, forcing players and monsters alike to adapt on the fly) and the Crumbling Celestial Spire (a vertical, high-stakes battleground where falling debris and collapsing footholds make positioning just as dangerous as any enemy). The end result are environments that elevate encounter design far beyond standard slugfests, making this section alone well worth the price of admission for GMs who love running set-piece battles where the room itself is trying to kill the party.

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What is the new Equipment like?

With almost 20 pages of new gear, the equipment section of Hope & Fear is solid and definitely feels like it fills some gaps left in the core rule book.

• Weapons: The armory introduces plenty of specialized tools across tiers, ranging from bladed fans, lances and whipswords to rune pistols and rocket mauls. Ranged purists, however, might notice a surprising lack in the archery department as there is just one single dedicated new bow option (the Tier 2 Splintershaft Bow).
• Armor: The new armor options shine by focusing on unique reactive features rather than simply inflating armor values. Options like the Hawkguard’s Mantle (gliding and falling immunity), Spidersilk Tunic (wall-crawling) and Cloverweave Cloak (converting failures with Hope into successes with Fear) emphasize situational utility and flavor.
• Loot & Consumables: These are absolutely incredible with over 60 rollable magic items and 60 single-use consumables. Items like the Gravity Bomb, Instant Camp and Gossip Flower offer clever narrative tools that reward creative problem-solving outside of raw combat.

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What are the new Campaign Frames like?

Campaign frames remain one of the best parts of Daggerheart (a concept so good, Wizards of the Coast essentially stole it and adapted it for their own recent D*D sourcebooks). Hope & Fear includes four new campaign frames, each of which contains a mini-gazetteer that’s over a dozen pages in length and fully stocked with tailored environments, faction mechanics, key NPCs, session-zero tone guides and associated maps.

• Castle High (Levels 1–5): Leaning directly into urban fantasy and academic drama, this frame places players in the shoes of students attending an elite magical boarding school suspended high in the clouds. While it may sound like a Daggerheart version of Harry Potter, thematically it’s a bit closer to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and balances both classic, lighthearted YA tropes with a darker theme around missing students.
• Reign of the Weredragon (Levels 1–10): A grand, folkloric rebellion campaign set against a land groaning under the thumb of Forlorn, a tyrannical, shape-shifting draconic monarch. Prophesied by the stars to strike down the tyrant, the party must unite fractured regions, rally broken factions and wage guerrilla warfare across cursed battlegrounds. The standout feature here is its collaborative villain mechanics: the tyrant’s history, specific curses and emotional vulnerabilities are co-created with the players during session zero, ensuring the eventual confrontation feels deeply personal.
• Dark Heart of Andaluria (Levels 1–8): Drawing heavy inspiration from gothic horror fixtures like The Witcher and Castlevania, this frame drops players into Andaluria: a sun-drenched, superstition-laden country inspired by medieval Spain and famous for rich vintages, ancient chivalric codes and ancient family crypts. Beneath its romantic exterior, monsters stalk the countryside as the nights grow unnaturally long. Structured around an episodic “Monster of the Week” framework, it equips the table with investigation boards, folkloric tracking mechanics and deadly, puzzle-like adversary hunts.
• Journey to Horizon (Levels 1–10): Set a thousand years after a world-shattering cataclysm and the ultimate sacrifice of the goddess Aurelia, this epic, continent-crossing voyage is all about exploration. Characters depart from their magically shielded sanctuary into the untamed, blighted wilds of Valloren to retrace ancestral pilgrimage routes, confront corrupted primordial titans and restore the fractured world. It’s a solid option for tables that love hexcrawls, survival mechanics and epic, world-saving fantasy narratives.

All four campaign frames are absolutely incredible and the tonal diversity across them is impressive. If you’re a GM who was planning on digging into the new Age of Umbra setting for your next campaign, you might find yourself tempted to run any one of these rock solid frames.

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What is the art and design like?

The art in the original Daggerheart core rule book set an incredibly high bar, but Hope & Fear manages to raise it. The layout is impressive, featuring full-page splash art and dynamic character portraits that brim with personality and color. There are standouts scattered everywhere, particularly the visual spreads for the new subclasses and character heritages.

The character designs also feel like they have the potential to really shape gameplay. You might skim past an ancestry entry on paper, but seeing the illustrated depictions of elemental kin or the hallowed halos of the Aetheris instantly sparks the urge to roll one up. The inclusion of dedicated subclass card references and clear, easy-to-read tables also keeps the book functional at teh table while still feeling like an art book. Suffice to say, with Hope & Fear, Darrington Press has created a new standard for what a TTRPG book should look like. Wizards of the Coast and Free League: consider yourselves warned.

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Is Daggerheart: Hope & Fear Worth Picking Up?

Pros

• Tight, well-balanced new classes: The Assassin, Brawler, Warlock and Witch successfully translate iconic TTRPG archetypes into Daggerheart, introducing inventive mechanics like the Brawler’s stance-shifting Martial Artist without triggering power creep.
• Game-changing environments: Rather than functioning as static backdrops, the 28 new environmental stat blocks act as dynamic participants in combat that elevate set-piece encounters far beyond basic monster slugfests.
• Rich, ready-to-run campaign frames: The four included settings – from the academic intrigue of Castle High to the folklore mystery of Dark Heart of Andaluria – are bursting with creativity and serve as expansive, multi-tiered mini-gazetteers complete with factions, NPCs and custom maps.
• Stunning presentation and layout: The visual design sets a new standard for the game, utilizing full-page splash art, gorgeous character spreads and clear, functional reference tables that are easy to use at the table.

Cons

• One-sided Domain support: The expansion introduces only the fear-based Dread domain with no “Hope” counterpart, leaving half of the new class roster heavily tethered to the same dark, gothic horror theme.
• Repetitive Ancestry roster: Four of the six new playable options are elemental kin that easily could have been consolidated into modular sub-lineages, leaving less page space for more unconventional species.
• Overly familiar Adversary lineup: A notable portion of the 130 bestiary stat blockslean heavily into recognizable, predictable riffs on classic Dungeons & Dragons staples and the new Pool and Evolution mechanics are only available for a handful of creatures.
• Resource creep for beginners: Transformations add a unique layer to the game, but they also add a level resource management that could easily overwhelm and frustrate new players, or veteran players who already find the system too crunchy.

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Final Thoughts & Review Score

Hope & Fear accomplishes exactly what a debut expansion should: it broadens character customization, adds a plethora of new GM tools and rounds out the core game’s mechanics without bloating the math. The book does, however, have a few noticeable blemishes beneath its otherwise beautiful exterior. The monster designs play it a little too safe, the ancestries are a tad too thematically narrow, and the lack of more than one Domain feels like a major thematic and mechanical miss.

That being said, the final product also exhibits no signs of a sophomore slump. On the contrary, it elevates and enriches the best parts of the game, offering enough content to last for years of play. For existing fans, the book feels like essential purchase and for those who worried that Daggerheart might not be able to keep its momentum going, it’s proof that there’s little to fear and plenty to be hopeful for.

Final Review Score: 18 out of 20

Daggerheart: Hope & Fear is available now in hardcover and PDF from local game stores, Darrington Press, DriveThruRPG and Amazon.