Daggerheart Evasion and the odds of being hit

A tier 1 adversary swings at a Guardian with Evasion 9 and needs an 8 on its d20 after adding +1, which it gets on 13 faces of 20. The same swing at a Rogue with Daggerheart Evasion 12 needs an 11, and lands on 10 faces of 20. Three points of Evasion moved the attack from roughly two hits in three to a coin flip. Evasion is the Difficulty for every roll made against a player character, and each point of it is one face of the GM's d20.

Evasion as a Difficulty

In the Daggerheart SRD 2.0, Evasion stands for a character's ability to avoid attacks and other unwanted effects. Any roll made against a PC uses the PC's Evasion as its Difficulty. The rule runs one way only: when a player attacks an adversary, the roll is compared to the adversary's Difficulty, and adversaries have no Evasion score of their own.

The GM does not use the Duality Dice. When an adversary attacks, the GM rolls a d20, adds the adversary's Attack Modifier, and the attack succeeds if the total meets or beats the target's Evasion. A natural 20 succeeds automatically and deals extra damage.

That makes Evasion easy to read at the table. Subtract the attacker's modifier from the Evasion, and the result is the number the GM needs on the die.

Starting Evasion by class

A character's base Evasion comes from their class. The SRD 2.0 lists these starting values:

The spread is three points, from 9 to 12, which the table below turns into three faces of the GM's d20.

Domain cards, equipment, conditions and other effects can raise or lower the base. A few examples from the SRD: the simiah ancestry's Nimble feature adds a permanent +1 at character creation, the Warhammer's Heavy feature costs −1, and the Greatsword's Massive feature also costs −1. A Guardian carrying a Warhammer starts at 8.

Hit odds by Evasion and tier

The SRD's adversary benchmarks give an Attack Modifier of +1 at tier 1, +2 at tier 2, +3 at tier 3 and +4 at tier 4. Against those benchmarks, the number of d20 faces that hit looks like this:

Read across a row and the attacks get one face better per tier. A character who never raises Evasion slides from tier 1 odds to tier 4 odds by three faces. A Rogue at 12 facing tier 4 benchmarks is hit as often as a Guardian at 9 faces tier 1, on 13 faces of 20.

The table also shows why every +1 is worth the same amount. The GM's d20 is flat, so one point of Evasion removes exactly one hitting face whether the character sits at 9 or 14. This is different from the players' own 2d12 action rolls, where a +1 is worth more near the middle of the curve than at the edges.

Advantage, Fear and the multi-target roll

Three GM tools change the arithmetic. An adversary with advantage rolls two d20s and keeps the higher. Against a Rogue at 12 facing a +1 attacker, that turns 10 hitting faces of 20 into 300 of the 400 possible pairs, three hits in four. Disadvantage keeps the lower die and drops the same attack to 100 of 400, one in four.

Before rolling, the GM can also spend a Fear to add a relevant Experience from the adversary's stat block to the attack. The size of that bonus depends on the stat block, so the effect on any one character is the Experience value in faces: a +2 Experience is two more hitting faces of 20.

When an adversary's action hits several targets, the GM makes one roll and compares it to each character's Evasion separately. A total of 11 hits the Guardian at 9 and the Warrior at 11 and misses the Rogue at 12. In a party with Evasions spread from 9 to 12, a single area roll sorts the table by that column.

Raising Evasion through play

One level-up advancement option is a permanent +1 to Evasion. Against a d20, that removes one hitting face from every attack the character faces for the rest of the campaign. The comparison worth making is against the other options available that tier: a +1 to Evasion stops one attack in twenty from landing at all, while options that add Hit Point or Stress slots change how much a character can absorb after a hit.

Evasion only decides whether an attack lands. Damage that gets past it is compared to the character's Hit Point thresholds, and marking Armor Slots is how a character reduces that damage.

Reading the number in play

Two habits keep Evasion fast at the table. The player says the Evasion out loud when an attack is declared, and the GM subtracts the modifier before rolling so the target face is known in advance. For area attacks, list every character's Evasion once at the start of the fight; the single roll then reads straight down the list.

A Guardian at 9 facing a tier 3 attacker with advantage is hit on 375 of 400 pairs, so for that character the question in any given exchange is how much damage gets through.