Daggerheart: Hope & Fear Is Now Available!
Written by Terry on August 25, 2026
Are you looking for new and intriguing worlds to explore in Daggerheart? Or perhaps you’d like to embrace your inner witch and use magic and mayhem to reach your goals? Maybe you’d like to subvert death and handle unfinished business from beyond the grave? For all of these scenarios, and more, Daggerheart: Hope & Fear has you covered!
Newly released from Darrington Press, Hope & Fear is the first expansion for the Daggerheart Core Set, and it is now available on:
- Critical Role shops (US, UK, EU, AU, CA)
- Darrington Press Guild Stores
- Demiplane’s digital Daggerheart Nexus
Other friendly local game stores, Amazon, and bookstores will have their copies available on September 22nd.
Plus, our friends at Botch Dice have crafted four gorgeous Daggerheart: Hope & Fear Class Dice Sets inspired by the assassin, brawler, witch, and warlock classes. Each 9-die set features bold class-themed artwork, and their first-ever metallic gold Hope d12 and opalescent purple Fear d12: Available now in the US Critical Role shop and the Botch Dice website..
What's Inside Hope & Fear
Inside the box you’ll find a rulebook filled with new rules, items, and adversaries – along with four new campaign frames – all guaranteed to enrich your Daggerheart games. This includes four new classes (the witch, warlock, assassin, and brawler classes) each with two subclasses, and the brand new Dread domain, which offers ghastly, macabre magic and abilities.
Transformations
Dread Domain
New Classes, Ancestries, and Communities
Alongside the Witch and Warlock, there are two other new classes – and all four come with two Subclasses, meaning you have a plethora of options to refine your playstyle: Do you want to strike with precision and finesse from the shadows? The deadly and cunning Assassin Class could be for you. Or perhaps you think brute force is the path of least resistance – in which case the hard-hitting Brawler Class might be the perfect choice. You’ll find all the details needed to play these roles in the rulebook, while the box includes Subclass cards which allow you to specialize even further.
And speaking of specialization, Daggerheart: Hope & Fear also includes new ancestries and communities to further develop characters that feel unique, exciting, and tailored to the worlds you want to create. You’ll find the rulebook full of explanations and details, along with Community and Ancestry Cards in the box, allowing you to step into the role of the winged Aetheris, four kinds of Elemental Kin, or the cunning and diminutive Gnomes. There are also options spread across six new Communities which will allow you to fine-tune your character’s story and Experiences.
Campaign Frames
Of course, what are perfectly customized characters without an adventure to thrust them into the jaws of danger? Hope & Fear contains four new Campaign Frames to tell stories across a range of genres and levels of complexity. Embrace that back-to-school anxiety and excitement with Castle High, where students of a prestigious floating academy must solve mysteries and endure adolescent angst. Or embark on an epic journey of discovery in the hex-crawl odyssey Journey to Horizon. Or perhaps you’d like to revisit the heyday of dark fairytales through the grim and whimsical vibes of Reign of the Weredragon, (which will be highlighted in a forthcoming mini series on Critical Role channels!), or revel in the indulgence of a deadly-yet-decadent world, in Dark Heart of Andaluria.
You’ll find everything GMs and players need in the rulebook to weave stories collaboratively, and you can visit daggerheart.com/downloads to find more free materials to get you going, such as campaign frame materials and print & play cards.
Homebrewers, Creators, and Actual Players!
With the launch of this expansion, we’ve updated our Darrington Press Community Gaming License (DPCGL) and our Daggerheart System Reference Document (SRD) to give you build upon multiple elements of Hope & Fear, including the classes, the new Dread domain, transformation cards, equipment, and more.
Plus, we have a new section of Supplemental Campaign Mechanics that takes select mechanics from campaign frames (which are not included in the SRD themselves) and brings the settingless version of them to your fingertips for use in your campaigns and for building upon in your creations. So dive into faction tracking as seen in Five Banners Burning, colossal adversaries from Colossus of the Drylands, curses a la Reign of the Weredragon, and more.
We hope you enjoy our DPCGL 2.0 and our newly expanded Daggerheart System Reference Document! We can’t wait to see what you create.
PICK UP YOUR COPY!
Dive into the expansion and pick up your copy today:
- Critical Role shops (US, UK, EU, AU, CA)
- Darrington Press Guild Stores
- Demiplane’s digital Daggerheart Nexus
You’ll find everything GMs and players need in the rulebook to weave stories collaboratively, and you can visit daggerheart.com/downloads to find more free materials to get you going, such as campaign frame materials and print & play cards.
We can’t wait to see the stories you’ll tell with all these new options, and we hope you’ll continue sharing them with us! Check out the full list of contents below:
The 196-page hardcover book includes:
- 4 new classes: the Witch, Warlock, Brawler, and Assassin, each with 2 unique subclasses.
- 130+ new adversaries and 28 environments, plus a rip pad of blank adversary sheets to help you easily create your own.
- 100+ weapons, armor, item, and consumable options.
- 4 new Campaign Frames.
The cards include:
- A completely new Dread Domain set of cards.
- Subclass Cards for all 8 new subclasses.
- 6 Transformation Cards: Vampire, Werewolf, Reanimated, Shapeshifter, Ghost, and Demigod.
- 6 new Community Cards: Duneborne, Hearthborne, Frostborne, Warborne, Freeborne, and Reborne.
- 6 new Ancestry Cards: Skykin, Tidekin, Earthkin, Emberkin, Gnome, and Aetheris.
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