Just a quick one today to say I recently discovered a new website for Daggerheart homebrew content called Heart Of Daggers! It fills a gap I've been feeling since moving over from D&D left by D&D Beyond's encounter builder, by providing not only an excellent encounter builder for Daggerheart, but also a great homebrew repository full of awesome content too (I'm impressed. I'll be adding my homebrew to that site over the coming days, starting with the Leafcloak Panther. I'll go back and add links to old posts so they are all accessible from there too. I'm going to keep writing on this blog primarily, as here I can expand on descriptions and worldbuilding, but hopefully having the stat blocks in both places will make them easier to discover and use! _Let me know if there's any other cool websites like this for Daggerheart! Also, back to the normal homebrew next time!_

The party managed to traverse the ruins of Lepiditia, and now they emerge back into the jungles of Veridia, returning to Monarch Camp to continue their quest. However, while sheltering under a tree to escape the rains of a tropical storm a horde of poisonous frogs started to appear - one or two at first, then gradually more and more until the tree is totally surrounded... Today's creature is the Poison Frog Horde! These little critters make the jungles of Veridia their home. They may look cute, with their large eyes and multicoloured bodies, but they are surprisingly aggressive, perhaps driven by the overwhelming magic that fills this region. _Disclaimer for this week's stat block - my players cleverly avoided this encounter so it hasn't been playtested, so there might be some rough edges!_ This horde is pretty deadly, particularly if you have a few to surround your players with! One issue I've had sometimes with Daggerheart is during exploration sessions it can be quite hard to drain player's resources (Stress/Hope etc), as they get enough rests that it makes the session's encounters not have enough impact, as there is typically only one or two encounters per travelling day. To counter this, I've been experimenting with making adversaries that can drain various resources from the players - and these frogs are an option for causing Stress! Comboing Binding Tongues with Poison Touch will hopefully reliably cause a few Stress points, making players consider their choices carefully - do they get close to finish off the horde, or keep their distance and use their more expensive abilities? * * * The house move continues so these posts are admittedly a bit shorter than I'd like, but I wanted to make sure I still put up some content to use in the meantime! I've got some cool stuff coming up for once the move is complete (hopefully by next month all being well!), including an Environment for the Veridian Rainforest (and another mystery Environment...), and more adversaries including underwater foes! Sign up to be notified when these are ready for you! Thanks for reading! Poison Frog HordePoison Frog Horde.pdf33 KBdownload-circle ## Sign up for The Merithayan's Tome Worldbuilding, homebrew, and tips for D&D and Daggerheart Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

The party have battled and defeated the Lupine Wraith, and now they venture further into the ruins to search for a lost elf. Exploring the druidic groves and once-grand butterfly houses of the city, they eventually come across a fallen temple where the elf they were seeking is trapped by a ferocious monster - a Vine-Wrapped Revenant! This terrifying creature is the result of the protective magic of the city interacting with a recently fallen elf that came to investigate the city, and the vines that make up its jungle home - imbuing them with the overwhelming desire to protect at all costs, even if that means trapping its target. _Sidenote: Yes, this is another large brutish monster. I have some fun encounters planned with hordes of smaller creatures or other types of creatures, but it just so happens we've been on a streak of these more solo/brute style creatures recently!_ The Revenant is an interesting foe as it has the option to swap back and forth between being defensive focused and attacking. After using it in my most recent session I'm considering whether the Protective Vines feature needs to be more powerful (either a fixed modifier or larger die) as that didn't actually affect a single roll in our game, but I present it here unmodified as I'm concerned that adjusting this might push it a little into overpowered territory. The Vengeful Strike worked as intended though - encouraging movement to prevent the players from getting caught in the swing. A nice synergy was Relentless and the stance swapping - it could swap stance as its first spotlight, then hit with an attack on the second spotlight (or vice-versa), giving maximum flexibility. I think this creature has a lot of potential as a mini-boss if it had slightly enhanced stats - in retrospect I question whether it truly counts as a Tier 2 Solo, perhaps it is more of a Bruiser instead. It did have great story impact though - as it took damage, I could narrate how parts of the body inside showed through the vines, creating an emotional moment when they realized what the creature actually was. Sometimes the best monsters are not the most powerful, but those that have a particularly good story impact! _Another short one today as I'm still in the midst of house moving. More coming soon though!_ Vine-Wrapped RevenantVine-Wrapped Revenant.pdf65 KBdownload-circle If you like this series, be sure to subscribe - it's free, and you can have the latest Daggerheart creations sent straight to your inbox! ## Sign up for The Merithayan's Tome Worldbuilding, homebrew, and tips for D&D and Daggerheart Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

_A short article today, as I'm in the midst of house moving stress, but hopefully I'll have more regular updates coming soon!_ We have ventured into the jungles of Veridia, and have now arrived at the ruins of the capital, Lepiditia. Once a grand city of druids, it was destroyed in the magical blast that caused the continent to be overrun by forest. It is now a haunted ruin, the fallout from the druidic energies bringing life to all manner of monstrosities. Some of the creatures here can be represented by the skeleton stat blocks in the Daggerheart core rulebook, but I wanted some creatures that fit the druidic theme of the place. One landmark in the city the party visited was an ancient breeding centre, where the druids made creatures to help them in the war they faced, so I thought a suitable monster could be one of their experiments that had been reanimated by the magic afflicting the city. Thus, the Lupine Wraith was born! The Lupine Wraith is designed as a single mini-boss monster. Its Lingering Crunch can be used to give players a brief debuff (and the random element of the countdown leads to a fun dynamic - is it worth the risk to just take the hit and hope for a short Curse, or do they need to keep their distance?). This is compounded by the Fearful Visage ability, which means attacking the creature can come at a cost if you fail... It then rounds out its ability list with the usually required abilities to make sure it can get some actions going even when facing a party of 5. * * * Let me know how you find the Lupine Wraith! Coming soon we'll have some different types of creatures - I've been mainly homebrewing solos so far so it'll be fun to try some different styles of combat soon! _(Also, if you're still interested in the world that these creatures inhabit, I'll also be writing some articles about that eventually too - starting with the jungles of Veridia!)_ Lupine WraithLupine Wraith.pdf55 KBdownload-circle

Continuing the theme from last time, for today's post we're still in the mysterious jungles of Veridia - the party have survived their initial encounters and are now exploring the ruins of the fallen kingdom. I wanted a slightly more challenging monster for them to face that started to play with some interactions in Daggerheart mechanics, while also letting them stretch out the abilities of their new characters. Enter the Oneg'low! > _Petrus paused, the leaves of the trees rustling in the gentle wind. Something wasn't right, Lena should have been back by now. The forest was eerily silent, the usual cacophony of birds and insects conspicuous by their absence, the scent of fear drifting through the mists. He pushed through the branches straining for any sight of his companion, seeing nothing but foliage and fog, until he caught a movement in his periphery. He spun around, only to be confronted by a strange dancing light. All other thoughts left Petrus's mind, the beauty of the dancing green light taking all his focus. That beauty was the last thing he saw before the claws came down._ The Oneg'low is a large, hulking creature - a gorilla-like monster recognisable by the haunting cluster of lights that dangles in front of its face like an anglerfish. It distracts and lures prey off the jungle paths, bringing them into its domain where it tears them apart. In our game it ambushed the party as they entered the ruins of one of the ancient cities of Veridia, but it could also be found in your games in any jungle or forest, or even in mountains or other remote places. The observant among you have probably noticed that this is labelled as a Tier 2 Solo. One thing I've already noticed while playing Daggerheart with a fairly large group of 5 players is that they deal with Tier 1 creatures very easily - even at level 1, without sending a horde of enemies at them it's hard to provide a proper challenge. (And this is with the large amount of Fear I had from a recent Long Rest, without that ability to spotlight several creatures a turn it would have been a walkover). I suspect this is with how the game scales to larger groups at lower levels - it'll be interesting to see how it goes at higher tiers of play - and perhaps I've just been unlucky as the group has been rolling with hope a lot. Regardless, one Tier 2 solo seemed to be a good match for a more tense fight for my 5 players - particularly with Daggerheart's HP system meaning it's much harder to 1 hit KO a player accidentally. The Oneg'low is also good for getting players to try new tactics, and rely on other party members - so far, the up close fighters had been the stars of the show. The Oneg'low's Hypnotic Glow ability encourages the players to keep moving, and gives ranged players a chance to shine (having said that, it was a close-combat character that managed to slay it in the end!). I adjusted this slightly mid-battle - originally players could get affected by the glow multiple times, but that was leading to some players not able to take any actions so we adjusted it to be once per battle, which still seemed a risk enough. When combined with the Lure and Pounce action, it becomes fearsome. A fun way to introduce this predator is to have the creature stalk the party through the wilds. Have them notice the occasional rustle of leaves or feel the eyes upon them. Then, when one of them is a little way away from the others spend a Fear to have them notice the lure, make the Entranced save, and start the ambush! * * * I hope this monster can provide an interesting encounter for your games! Next time, we'll venture inside the ruins of Lepiditia, and see what lurks inside... Oneg'lowStat Block for the Oneg'low, a monster for Daggerheart.Oneg'low.pdf54 KBdownload-circle

The group I GM for has just started our latest campaign, this time using Daggerheart, and one thing I've immediately noticed is there is how much I used to rely on online content for D&D that hasn't quite been replicated for Daggerheart yet. I thought it might therefore be useful for me to post the home-brew creations I make for our games here in case anyone else is looking for some quick statblocks/environments etc. to use in their own games! This week's post is a short one to kick things off - my players have just started exploring the enchanted jungle of Veridia that formed as the result of a spell at the end of a magical war. In the first couple of sessions, they've encountered a few of the monsters that lurk in its depths. The first is a modified zombie from the Daggerheart rulebook, with some abilities picked from other stat blocks - nothing very original here. I merged it a bit with the Skeleton Warrior to better represent a fallen soldier from the magical war that continues to defend its home. (Note - I made this in a program to make them appear more like Daggerheart official stat blocks, but I'll include the PDFs at the end of the post for those who want the text not the image!) The Festering Maw ability is a weaker version of the Brawny Zombie's Rip and Tear - this was for the group's first session, so I wanted a thematic but simple enemy so they could get used to Daggerheart combat again (the jungle humidity probably encourages rot and festering wounds from things like Zombie bites). We've only done a couple of one shots so I didn't want anything too complex for their very first enemy! The second creature is from the second session, and was a bit more experimental. Predictably, the group tore through the Zombies with ease, so I wanted something a bit "meatier" for them to tackle. These panthers were a good level of challenge for a group of 5 - I used 3 of them in the encounter and it seemed to balance OK. The stalk/ambush combo worked really well on a map with plenty of trees and bushes, and had the group watching their backs! The Pack Tactics and Vine Lash combo is also pretty sinister if the panthers get close together - I started them out surrounding the group to allow it to be a later combat surprise, but it would also work as a pack hunting together too for a more difficult ambush! That's all I have for today - I have other jungle stat blocks prepared, but I'll reveal these next time as my party haven't got that far yet! I hope this is useful for someone - I'll include PDFs of the stat blocks below for those that can't view the images or want a copyable text source. Thanks for reading! Leafcloak PantherLeafcloak Panther.pdf60 KBdownload-circle Veridian ZombieVeridian Zombie.pdf46 KBdownload-circle

My regular Wednesday night D&D group recently finished our latest long-running campaign. As always, it was a bittersweet moment - it ended really well, with an ending that was as much as surprise to me as it was to the players I think, and satisfactorily brought that story to a close. However, in this case it also meant saying goodbye (for now!) to a world we'd spent many years playing in, as we're moving to a new homebrew world - and a new system! - for our next campaign. This brings me to address why there hasn't been any posts on this blog for a while! When I first started out on here, I had planned to write about worldbuilding for the most part, creating a world just for this blog while also maintaining the world where I actually play my TTRPG games separately. That lost shine quickly for me though, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I found the process of documenting each step in my world building process interrupted my actual flow of designing - I'd go a while and create some things, only to realize I forgot to screenshot/write about the steps and need to pause while I went back to document. If it wasn't already apparent my thought process is pretty chaotic, so that distraction was often enough for me to lose my train of thought, and that spoiled some of the fun of the process. More importantly, though, I discovered I really liked this world I was building! I wanted to be able to use it in the games I play, and there was a real risk if I walked through all the behind the scenes for the world then it would get spoiled for my group! Sadly, this means the Building Merithaya series was not going to last. However, the other change we're making to our group for our next campaign is we are moving from D&D 2014 edition to Daggerheart, and this gave me a new idea! There isn't currently a lot of homebrew for Daggerheart campaigns in the same way as there is an enormous library of content for D&D, so I thought it might be fun to share some of the creatures and environments I create for this new campaign here for others to use. It'll still feature the worldbuilding elements, and I might even combine everything into a Campaign Frame for the world of Merithaya eventually. To avoid spoilers for my group, I'll publish things once they've encountered them in game - to keep the surprise for them! This means the publication schedule will be a bit erratic as I'll post when there's something new to share, but hopefully over time this will become a useful Daggerheart resource for everyone to use! The campaign starts in three weeks (assuming I finish planning in time!) so you can expect to see the first creations shortly after that. I hope you enjoy this new start for the blog, and apologies to those who did follow Building Merithaya so far for the change in direction (but I expect you might see some familiar places coming soon)!