Daring & Dread: The Roleplaying Game — Player’s Guide
Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Supplement by Darrin Drader Designs
Heroic fantasy is only fun when it’s heroic.
The greatest heroes aren’t those who win every fight. They’re the ones who face overwhelming odds, make difficult choices, and risk everything for a cause that matters.
Daring & Dread builds upon the foundation of the fifth edition fantasy roleplaying game to deliver a more challenging and more rewarding roleplaying experience. Drawing on the best traditions of old-school RPG fantasy and modern roleplaying design, Daring & Dread restores a sense of danger to the adventure. Monsters are genuine threats. Resources matter. Wounds have consequences. And when victory finally comes, it feels earned.
This isn’t Easy Mode, and it isn’t Nightmare Mode. It’s a return to Normal difficulty, where clever tactics, careful preparation, and sound decisions matter just as much as the character building choices a players has made.
Become the Hero You Want to Play
Create a character with a distinctive background, a unique identity, and their own place in a world full of danger. Choose from twelve classes, each with its own abilities, tactics, and subclasses, and develop your character from a novice adventurer into a legendary hero.
The Player’s Guide includes everything you need to create characters and play the game, including:
- Twelve Character Classes: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard, with four subclasses each that provide additional ways to define your character. All have been tweaked to encourage strategic play.
- Character Origins: Backgrounds, species, and languages that help establish who your character was before the adventure began.
- A Complete Core Ruleset: Rules for ability checks, combat, exploration, social interaction, damage, healing, character advancement, and everything else you’ve come to expect from a set of core rules.
- Feats and Character Development: Meaningful choices that shape your character’s capabilities as they gain experience. And, for those who remember them, the return of many favorite feats from a certain previous edition, updated to the current rules set.
- Equipment and Gear: Weapons, armor, tools, adventuring supplies, mounts, vehicles, and magic items.
- A Comprehensive Spell Collection: Spells for the game’s spellcasting classes, from basic magic to the reality-altering powers of high-level adventurers.
- Rules Reference: A glossary of game terms, along with appendices covering the deities and cosmology of Aeloria.
A More Dangerous Kind of Adventure
Daring & Dread reexamines familiar fifth edition mechanics to create a more grounded, consequential play experience.
Combat rewards tactical thinking rather than relying on characters hitting almost every attack. Healing and recovery require more consideration. Getting knocked unconscious has lasting consequences. Many over-powered abilities and spells have been reassessed to keep them from overwhelming the game’s challenges.
The goal isn’t to punish players. It’s to make their victories feel more memorable because they actually had to work for them.
When you face a dragon, you should have a reason to fear it. When you enter a forgotten tomb, the preparation you do before entering should matter. And when your party survives an encounter through ingenuity, cooperation, and courage, you should have a story worth telling.
Adventure in Aeloria—or Build Your Own World
Daring & Dread includes Aeloria as its default fantasy setting, with a focus on the continent of Androsa. Rival kingdoms compete to restore a fallen empire, dragons threaten the western lands, and ancient powers continue to shape the destinies of mortals.
Use the setting as presented, adapt it to your own campaign, or take the rules into a world of your own creation.
Daring & Dread: The Roleplaying Game — Player’s Guide gives you everything you need to create your characters and embark on adventures where courage, strategy, and hard-won victories matter.
Product Details
- 383-page PDF
- A complete, fantasy roleplaying game built on the foundation of 5th edition
- Designed for heroic fantasy with meaningful risks and consequences
- Includes all the rules you need to play from 1st through 20th level
Daring & Dread: The Roleplaying Game — Player’s Guide is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.
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