Daggerheart classes framed for the world of Tarim-Shaiel.
These are the classes available in Tarim-Shaiel. Each describes who you are and how you move through the world — your training, your temperament, the tools you've mastered. Choose one that resonates with how you see your character.
Every class has two subclasses — specialisations you choose that sharpen your approach. You'll pick your subclass after some initial play, once you have a better sense of who your character is becoming.
Assassin
Domains: Blade & Midnight · Subclasses: Executioner's Guild · Poisoner's Guild
Assassins are masters in the art of slipping past their opponents' defences to inflict terrible pain and deadly strikes. When an assassin marks someone for death, they pursue their prey with unwavering intent.
In the courts and counting houses of the region, the assassin is the argument made when all other arguments have failed — or when patience runs out before process does. Some work under contract; others follow ideological imperatives that are not for sale. The mark of skill in this world is not a kill count but the ability to end a conflict before it becomes visible.
Bard
Domains: Grace & Codex · Subclasses: Troubadour · Wordsmith
Bards are the most charismatic people in all the realms. Members of this class are masters of captivation and specialise in a variety of performance types, including singing, playing musical instruments, weaving tales, or telling jokes. Whether performing for an audience or speaking to an individual, bards thrive in social situations. Members of this profession bond and train at schools or guilds, but a current of egotism runs through those of the bardic persuasion. While they may be the most likely class to bring people together, a bard of ill temper can just as easily tear a party apart.
Storytellers at caravanserai fires, court musicians who carry political messages encoded in verse, travelling performers who pass through checkpoints unquestioned — bards occupy the spaces where information moves between worlds. Their voice is currency; their reputation travels faster than their feet.
Brawler
Domains: Valor & Bone · Subclasses: Juggernaut · Martial Artist
Experts in unarmed combat, brawlers hone their bodies into lethal weapons using impressive physical prowess. They develop mastery through either structured training or hard-won street experience, unifying body and mind.
The trade routes attract every form of conflict, and the brawler has learned that in a world full of weapons, the body remains the most reliable one. Street fighters, former soldiers, wrestlers from ancient traditions — the brawler's training is often difficult to name but impossible to miss in a fight.
Druid
Domains: Sage & Arcana · Subclasses: Warden of the Elements · Warden of Renewal
Becoming a druid is more than an occupation; it's a calling for those who wish to learn from and protect the magic of the wilderness. While one might underestimate a gentle druid who practises the often-quiet work of cultivating flora, druids who channel the untamed forces of nature are terrifying to behold. Druids cultivate their abilities in small groups, often connected by a specific ethos or locale, but some choose to work alone. Through years of study and dedication, druids can learn to transform into beasts and shape nature itself.
The wilderness of Tarim-Shaiel is not empty — it breathes. Druids serve the old agreements between settlement and the lands that tolerate it, reading the health of a valley in a bird's call or the quality of soil. Caravans hire them not for protection but for guidance through terrain that rewards patience over force.
Guardian
Domains: Valor & Blade · Subclasses: Stalwart · Vengeance
The title of guardian represents an array of martial professions, speaking more to their moral compass and unshakeable fortitude than the means by which they fight. While many guardians join groups of militants for either a country or cause, they're more likely to follow those few they truly care for, majority be damned. Guardians are known for fighting with remarkable ferocity even against overwhelming odds, defending their cohort above all else. Woe betide those who harm the ally of a guardian, as the guardian will answer this injury in kind.
The guardian's reputation is built on loyalty that doesn't bend to political pressure — they stay at their post when a city changes hands, keep promises made to dead employers, refuse to turn a weapon on someone they've sworn to protect regardless of the order given. Rulers desire them; smart rulers also fear what that loyalty might cost.
Ranger
Domains: Bone & Sage · Subclasses: Beastbound · Wayfinder
Rangers are highly skilled hunters who, despite their martial abilities, rarely lend their skills to an army. Through mastery of the body and a deep understanding of the wilderness, rangers become sly tacticians, pursuing their quarry with cunning and patience. Many rangers track and fight alongside an animal companion with whom they've forged a powerful spiritual bond. By honing their skills in the wild, rangers become expert trackers, as likely to ensnare their foes in a trap as they are to assail them head-on.
The trade routes cross deserts, mountain passes, and contested borderlands where city law means nothing. Rangers work in these margins — guiding caravans through routes too dangerous for casual knowledge, tracking what crosses those paths, hunting what follows it. Many work alone; most prefer it that way.
Rogue
Domains: Midnight & Grace · Subclasses: Nightwalker · Syndicate
Rogues are scoundrels, often in both attitude and practice. Broadly known as liars and thieves, the best among this class move through the world anonymously. Utilising their sharp wits and blades, rogues trick their foes through social manipulation as easily as breaking locks, climbing through windows, or dealing underhanded blows. These masters of magical craft manipulate shadow and movement, adding an array of useful and deadly tools to their repertoire. Rogues frequently establish guilds to meet future accomplices, hire out jobs, and hone secret skills, proving that there's honour among thieves for those who know where to look.
Information is the region's most traded commodity, and rogues are its brokers, forgers, and social architects. The best of them are invisible — you've already been dealt with before you realise you were negotiating. Guild affiliation is common; loyalty to the guild is not guaranteed.
Seraph
Domains: Splendor & Valor · Subclasses: Divine Wielder · Winged Sentinel
Seraphs are divine fighters and healers imbued with sacred purpose. A wide array of deities exist within the realms, and thus numerous kinds of seraphs are appointed by these gods. Their ethos traditionally aligns with the domain or goals of their god, such as defending the weak, exacting vengeance, protecting a land or artifact, or upholding a particular faith. Some seraphs ally themselves with an army or locale, much to the satisfaction of their rulers, but other crusaders fight in opposition to the follies of the Mortal Realm. It is better to be a seraph's ally than their enemy, as they are terrifying foes to those who defy their purpose.
The faiths of the region are many and tangled, their borders shaped by trade as much as doctrine. Seraphs carry their god's purpose into the world as practical imperative — they are not pilgrims, they are instruments. In a place where a blessing can open a gate or close a contract, the presence of a seraph changes the calculation of any room they enter.
Sorcerer
Domains: Arcana & Midnight · Subclasses: Elemental Origin · Primal Origin
Not all innate magic users choose to hone their craft, but those who do can become powerful sorcerers. The gifts of these wielders are passed down through families, even if the family is unaware of or reluctant to practise them. A sorcerer's abilities can range from the elemental to the illusionary and beyond, and many practitioners band together into collectives based on their talents. The act of becoming a formidable sorcerer is not the practice of acquiring power, but learning to cultivate and control the power one already possesses. The magic of a misguided or undisciplined sorcerer is a dangerous force indeed.
Innate magic is viewed with uneven eyes — feared in some courts, prized in others, hidden in many families for generations. A sorcerer who learns to work with what they carry rather than against it is rare, and formidable in ways that trained mages often are not.
Warlock
Domains: Dread & Grace · Subclasses: Pact of the Endless · Pact of the Wrathful
Those who've traded their lives, or perhaps even their souls, to an otherworldly Patron in exchange for incredible power are known as Warlocks. These characters typically reach desperation — protecting loved ones, aiding communities, seeking vengeance, or advancing ambitions — before making such a sacrifice.
Every major power in the region — city, court, caravan house, faith — has something it can offer. Warlocks have made the same calculation at a different scale, negotiating directly with entities that exist outside political geography. The terms are personal and binding, and what a warlock traded for their power is rarely fully visible to outsiders.
Warrior
Domains: Blade & Bone · Subclasses: Call of the Brave · Call of the Slayer
Becoming a warrior requires years, often a lifetime, of training and dedication to the mastery of weapons and violence. While many who seek to fight hone only their strength, warriors understand the importance of an agile body and mind, making them some of the most sought-after fighters across the realms. Frequently, warriors find employment within an army, a band of mercenaries, or even a royal guard, but their potential is wasted in any position where they cannot continue to improve and expand their skills. Warriors are known to have a favoured weapon; to come between them and their blade would be a grievous mistake.
A warrior's value is not only in what they can do with a weapon but in what they do with everything else — when to wait, when to move, how to read a room before it turns hostile. The fallen empire's wars left standing armies without states; the best fighters turned that freedom into a discipline no school could have taught them.
Witch
Domains: Dread & Sage · Subclasses: Hedge · Moon
Magical practitioners who commune with the forces of nature and entities from realms beyond, witches call forth their power through craft, rituals, incantations, herbs, stones, candles, and other tools to enact their will and conjure powerful spells.
The craft traditions of the region's folk practitioners are older than the empire that tried to classify them. Witches work through relationship with forces that don't recognise borders — spirits of place, patterns in natural time, the boundary between the living and the dead. They're found in cities as often as in wilderness, but rarely in places where their work is well understood.
Wizard
Domains: Codex & Splendor · Subclasses: School of Knowledge · School of War
Whether through an institution or individual study, those known as wizards acquire and hone immense magical power over years of learning using a variety of tools, including books, stones, potions, and herbs. Some wizards dedicate their lives to mastering a particular school of magic, while others learn from a wide variety of disciplines. Many wizards become wise and powerful figures in their communities, advising rulers, providing medicines and healing, and even leading war councils. While these mages all work toward the common goal of collecting magical knowledge, wizards often have the most conflict within their own ranks, as the acquisition, keeping, and sharing of powerful secrets is a topic of intense debate that has resulted in innumerable deaths.
The great libraries of predecessor civilisations still exist in pieces — private collections, monastery archives, merchant families who inherited knowledge without understanding its value. Wizards navigate this landscape of scattered inheritance with the patience of archivists and the ambition of collectors, governed by principles of magical stewardship that rarely agree with each other.