Daggerheart: How To Choose Your Ancestry

When it comes to Daggerheart, there are a ton of ancestries and even more options for how to customize them to your liking. Ancestries determine your character's appearance, and they also come with two ancestry features that'll affect how your character plays. Some ancestries have features tied to their anatomy, granting them elemental breath or flight among other things.

Daggerheart: Every Ancestries Lifespan, From Lowest To Highest

How long will your next character live?

Choosing an ancestry can help complement your chosen class if you're interested in maximizing your character to its fullest potential. If you don't know which ancestry to choose, though, or how to go about fulfilling their best options, you have several ways to determine which ancestry is best.

All Ancestry Features

The first thing you'll want to do when choosing an ancestry is to determine what features your character will benefit from the most. Because Daggerheart insists that you choose your class before your ancestry, your class will give youFoundation, Specialization, and Mastery features.

These features lay out the way your class works and give you several benefits. While it's not exactly a complete match, there are ancestry features that can work best with certain class features.

Here is every ancestry feature in Daggerheart for you to consider when choosing which ancestry you want to play as.

Ancestry

Features

Clank

• Purposeful Design: Add a +1 bonus to an Experience of your choice.
• Efficient: You can recover a long rest move during a short rest.

Drakona

• Scales: When taking Severe damage, you can instead mark a Stress to mark one fewer Hit Points.
• Elemental Breath: You have a breath weapon that deals d8 magic damage for the chosen element.

Dwarf

• Thick Skin: You can mark two Stress when taking Minor damage instead of marking a Hit Point.
• Increased Fortitude: You can halve incoming physical damage by spending three Hope.

Elf

• Quick Reactions: Mark a stress in exchange for advantage on a reaction roll.
• Celestial Trance: You can choose an additional downtime move while resting.

Faerie

• Luckbender: After an action roll, you can spend three Hope to reroll the Duality Dice.
• Wings: You can fly, granting a +2 bonus to your Evasion at the cost of marking a Stress.

Faun

• Caprine Leap: Leap anywhere within range as if you were using normal movement.
• Kick: When succeeding on an attack, mark a Stress to leap from your opponent and deal an extra 2d6 damage, knowing back yourself or the target.

Firbolg

• Charge: After an Agility roll to get closer to the enemy from Far range, mark a Stress to deal 2d12 physical damage to all targets in Melee range.
• Unshakable: Roll a d6 when you would mark a Stress, if you roll a six do not mark the Stress.

Fungril

• Fungril Network: Roll an Instinct Roll, and on a success, you can communicate with another Fungril across any distance.
• Death Connections: Mark a Stress and extract the memory of a recently deceased corpse.

Galapa

• Shell: Get a damage threshold bonus equal to you Proficiency.
• Retract: Gain resistance to physical damage, but also disadvantage on attack rolls while retreating into your shell. You can't move while inside it.

Giant

• Endurance: Get an additional Hit Point slot during character creation.
• Reach: Anything that uses a Melee range is treated as Very Close range instead.

Goblin

• Surefooted: Ignore disadvantage on Agility Rolls.
• Danger Sense: Force a reroll against you or an ally within Very Close range by marking a Stress. Can only be done once per rest.

Halfling

• Luckbringer: Everyone in the party gains a Hope at the start of each session.
• Internal Compass: You can reroll ones on the Hope Die.

Human

• High Stamina: Gain an extra Stress slot during character creation.
• Adaptability: Mark a Stress to reroll any failed roll that utilizes one of your Experiences.

Infernis

• Fearless: Mark 2 Stress to change a Fear roll into a roll with Hope.
• Dread Visage: You have advantage on rolls to intimidate a hostile creature.

Katari

• Feline Instincts: Spend two Hope to reroll your Hope Die when you make an Agility Roll.
• Retracting Claws: Use your claws to scratch a target with an Agility Roll while in Melee range, and on a success, the target becomes temporarily Vulnerable.

Orc

• Sturdy: When you have only one Hit Point remaining, all attacks against you have disadvantage.
• Tusks: After succeeding on a Melee range attack, spend a Hope to deal an extra 1d6 damage using your tusks.

Ribbet

• Amphibious: Breathe and move underwater naturally as if you were on land.
• Long Tongue: Use your tongue as a Finesse Close weapon by marking a Stress, dealing d12 physical damage

Simiah

• Natural Climber: You gain advantage on Agility Rolls that involve staying on balance and climbing.
• Nimble: You get a +1 bonus to Evasion during character creation.

When choosing an ancestry, you'll notice that some have static increases at character creation while others allow you to play with Hope and Fear. While static increases are great in the long run, you want to ensure you pick an ancestry that revolves around your playstyle.

Daggerheart: How To Level Up

Need help leveling up your player character in Daggerheart? This guide has you covered.

Which Ancestry Should You Choose?

Ancestries can fall into a few categories based on their features. To simplify which you should use, we've separated them into different categories based on how you want to play your character in Daggerheart.

Play Style

Ancestry

Description

Fighting/Action Style

• Orc
• Galapa
• Firbolg
• Faun
• Dwarf
• Drakona
• Ribbet
• Giant

These ancestries are perfect for players looking to capitalize on classes and opportunities revolving around dealing damage or controlling the battlefield. Dealing extra damage, surviving, increasing your thresholds, and gaining resistances, these ancestries are great options for class combinations that want to do the same. Perfect for players who want to jump into the action of Daggerheart and use their physical features to their advantage.

Buffing Yourself/Party and Playing Support

• Katari
• Infernis
• Human
• Halfling
• Goblin
• Faerie

For players who want to support the party or tend to choose more supporting roles at the table, these ancestry features fit well. Balanced play, the ability to reroll Hope die, or even switch Fear die for Hope Die rolls, making the enemy Vulnerable, or giving Hope to everyone in the party, these ancestries are great for support-style players. This also works for ancesties that have abilities that can help them survive or help the party such as intimidating other enemies.

Roleplay

• Fungril
• Elf
• Clank
• Simiah

These ancestries are great if you just want to roleplay. They don't require much else and can work with any class combination. They utilize their features specifically for their physical attributes well and can enjoy using them creatively during roleplay. These ancestries mostly don't use features that support the party or deal extra damage, but are great for getting their features worked into the campaign in a way that helps with your Experiences.

Creating A Mixed Ancestry

If none of the ancestries appeal to you, you can easily create a character of mixed ancestry. To do this, you can combine two of the available ancestry options from the Core Rulebook.

However, you can only choose the first feature from one ancestry and the second from another. You may not choose two of the first ancestry features for your mixed ancestry character.

This means an Elf Faerie cannot take both Quick Reactions and Luckbender, as they are both the first feature for each ancestry. They can, however, take Luckbender and Celestial Trance or Quick Reactions and Wings.

You can adjust ancestry features or replace them as needed for the type of character you want to play. Work with your GM, as Daggerheart is very lenient with creating the perfect character your way as long as you keep them balanced.

You can make an ancestry that's more than two ancestries combined. However, you can only choose two features from two of the involved ancestries. You can represent the third or extra ancestries in other ways, such as appearance, or specific backstory, and Experience interactions.

Daggerheart: Combat Guide

No matter the adversary you're facing off against in Daggerheart, it's important to be prepared. Here's how combat works in Daggerheart.