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Lazy Improvised Monsters for Daggerheart

by Mike on 31 August 2026

While running Daggerheart, I found myself seeking a generic set of adversary statistics I could use to improvise monsters during the game while also simplifying the process for building encounters. While experimenting with this idea, I came to several conclusions.

I could use the improvised stats table to build just about any monster I wanted.
I could build new monster roles that make it easier to improvise whole encounters.
Total hit points in an encounter is the main dial of encounter difficulty, not the number of monsters.
Thus, you can modify the role of any existing monster by changing its hit points.

It’s All About Hit Points

The action economy of combat in Daggerheart isn’t like most other RPGs. Monsters don't take their own turns at a specific time. Instead, monsters are spotlit when a player fails a check or rolls with fear. Once they have the spotlight, GMs can activate other monsters by spending fear.

Because monsters don't take their own turns outside of these circumstances, the monsters' total number of actions isn't bound by the number of monsters in an encounter — it's dependent on the rolls of the players.

Thus, the main variable that determines the difficulty of a battle is the total number of hit points of all the monsters in that battle. Hit points determine how long the battle goes on and thus the difficulty of the battle.

If we reverse engineer Daggerheart's Battle Point system used to build encounters, we come to a specific number of hit points in a given battle:

A challenging battle has roughly 5 to 7 hit points per character.

This base rate of hit points doesn't change from tier to tier since monster hit points across tiers don't increase like they do in 5e games.

This target number of hit points per character lets us more easily improvise combat encounters than futzing with roles and Battle Points. Hard battles have more hit points than 5-7 per character. Easy battles have fewer total hit points.

Knowing this baseline number of hit points also lets us do something else — improvise monsters from scratch and modify existing monsters to fit new roles.

Improvised Adversaries and Environments

The following statistics let us improvise four new types of monsters: minions, soldiers, elites, and bosses.

Stats by Tier

The following general-use monster statistics are based on Improvising Adversaries on page 208 of the core book. Diff = Difficulty, Atk = Attack Bonus, Dmg = Damage, Maj / Sev are the major and severe thresholds, Minion is the minion value (more on this in a bit).

Tier 1: Diff 11, Atk +1, Dmg 1d10+3, Maj 7 / Sev 12, Minion (2)
Tier 2: Diff 14, Atk +2, Dmg 2d10+3, Maj 10 / Sev 20, Minion (5)
Tier 3: Diff 17, Atk +3, Dmg 3d10+4, Maj 20 / Sev 32, Minion (7)
Tier 4: Diff 20, Atk +4, Dmg 4d10+12, Maj 25 / Sev 45, Minion (11)

You're always free to modify these numbers to customize your monsters as you desire.

Monster Types

Minion: 5 per PC, HP 1, Stress 1
Soldier: 1 per PC, HP 5, Stress 3
Elite: 1 per 2 PCs, HP 10, Stress 5
Boss: 1 per 4 PCs, HP 20, Stress 10

Four Monster Types

These four monster types match up against a number of PCs in a challenging combat. Only hit points and stress vary since we're using the baseline improvised statistics.

On Minions

Minion values represent both their hit threshold (the amount of damage at which you kill additional minions on a single hit) and the minion's group damage when you spend a fear to have a group of minions attack. Using baseline statistics for minions makes them tougher than typical published minions, thus using roughly five per PC is probably right.

Improvised Effects

We can tailor our improvised monsters with some common effects.

Vulnerable: All rolls targeting the vulnerable target have advantage.
Restrain: Restrained targets cannot move.
Terrify: The targeted creature loses a hope or is forced to mark stress.
Momentum: When the monster hits, the GM gains fear.
Area Attack: Mark a monster's stress to attack more than one target.
Knock Back: The monster pushes the target to "far".

Build Encounters by Comparing Adversary Types to PCs

Instead of calculating encounters with Battle Points, you can calculate how many monsters of a given type you should have by comparing them to the number of PCs. If you have five PCs, you can have five soldiers, or three soldiers and ten minions, or an elite and three soldiers, or a boss and five minions.

The hit point amounts described above are definitely high for Daggerheart monsters, who typically cap out at 8 for a solo, but often with a significantly higher set of threshold values. 20 hit points can feel like a lot for a boss, but a boss is intended to stand up to four PCs, something a typical Daggerheart solo doesn't seem intended to do given its low Battle Point cost.

Change Existing Monsters by Modifying Hit Points

If you want to change the impact of an existing monster in Daggerheart, you can move its hit points up or down to make it more or less effective in the battle. If you want an Acid Burrower to actually take on an entire party by itself, increase its hit points to 16 to 20.

Using Improvised Stats for Environments

One thing I like about Daggerheart is that locations and environments themselves can act like monsters when we spotlight them. The core book includes a table to improvise environments, but we can use the same statistics for environments that we use for monsters. Instead of a big monster, we might use the soldier statistics for a big tentacle breaking out of the ground and slapping at people. Cut it down and it dies like everything else.

An Initial Experiment

These ideas come from my own Daggerheart game which hadn’t yet reached tier 3 by the time we moved on. They’re likely not perfect. For me, they solved several problems. They gave me the flexibility to build any monster I could dream up on the fly. They simplified encounter building so I could improvise whole encounters as well. They let me change the impact of existing monsters to fit the fiction. Normalizing around hit points let me either build brand new monsters quickly or modify existing ones to fit whatever role I need them to fill.

For me, these concepts helped bring Daggerheart's combat system in line with the improvisational focus of the rest of the game. If you're running Daggerheart yourself, maybe you'll find them useful for you as well. Give them a try.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

is Daggerheart's License an OGL-level event?

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Death of a Morza — Dragon Empire Prep Session 78 and Solving the Quest NPC Betrayal Model.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Ask players to describe interesting objects or features of battle areas.
Take turns around the table with downtime turns in which a character focuses on one particular downtime activity.
Use single hit minions as a great way to show off character power against lots of foes. Combine their attacks and damage together.
Offer clear choices for downtime and let players come up with their own options.
Introduce non-violent heralds or emissaries of your villains. Give the characters villainous NPCs they can talk to and debate.
Come up with two or three sub bosses of your main villain. Who are their trusted lieutenants?
Consider villainous themes that flavor a whole group of adversaries with common abilities based on their boss’s position.

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