mcdm
patreon
Draw Steel Patreon Packet 3 is now available!
🕑 Added 2024-10-26 01:46:12 +0000 UTCUpdate: The surveys for this packet are now available.
Let's take it up a level ... or two!
The next Patreon packet for Draw Steel is attached to this post, so let's talk about what's new and what's changed.
New: Classes up to Level 3
The biggest news is that you've got the five classes you got last time (conduit, elementalist, fury, shadow, and tactician) plus the censor, null, talent, and troubadour. Together, this is all nine classes that will be in the core rules up to 3rd level! We're eager to see what you all think about leveling up and the new classes.
New: Perks
Perks are non-combat features, like Camouflage Hunter, which allows a hero to hide in the wilderness without cover or concealment, or Pardon My Friend, which lets you step in and make a Presence test to to cover for friend who just failed a Presence test of their own. Perks fall into six categories: crafting, exploration, interpersonal, intrigue, lore, and supernatural. The supernatural perks let you do fun magic or psionic tricks, like summon a familiar or send a telepathic message to a nearby creature.
New: Treasures and Titles
Now that we've got multiple levels of play, you Directors out there need a few rewards to throw to your players for hard-won heroics. This packet includes treasures (magic and psionic items) as well as titles, powerful features that give your heroes new capabilities in and out of combat. A hero doesn't just get to choose any old title they want. Titles have to be earned through adventuring, and each has its own special prerequisites. You can't get the Mage Hunter title without defeating some enemy mages, and you can't get the Ship Captain title without acquiring an airship.
New: Downtime Rules
For the first time, you'll get to see our downtime rules in all their glory! This includes rules for crafting the treasures we're going to reveal to you, plus original armor, implements, and weapons. Oh yeah, and airships! Plus there are rules for research projects and other downtime activities, like visiting your loved ones or going fishing!
New: Monsters
We have a whole new batch of baddies in this packet for you. We've got some solo critters, like the ankheg, bredbeddle, and chimera. We've also got dwarves, elves (both high and wode flavor), gnolls, kobolds, minotaurs, undead, and a bunch more. Also, check out the new rules for generating more Malice (formerly Villain Power).
Changed: Build-An-Ancestry
After the last playtest, we saw that folks far and away LOVED the devil ancestry's modular nature, and we decided to roll that out to all the ancestries. Every ancestry has one or more signature traits which every hero of the ancestry gets and then has purchasable traits which can be mixed and matched.
Changed: Names
We've renamed a lot of the class features and abilities to give each class a more unified theme. We've included the old names and their new counterparts in name change document.
Changed: Kits
If you've been following the updates here on Patreon, you know that we replaced caster kits with more class options for caster classes. All of the changes shown off in that update are in this packet.
Changed: Surges and Shields
In a previous post, Matt discussed one of the biggest changes we have in this packet: surges and shields. You'll see the changes Matt discussed in that update in this very packet!
Changed: Challenge
After the first playtest in December, most of you thought the game wasn't very challenging for the heroes. After the latest playtest, most of you reported the game was more challenging, but still not at the level where you expected it to be, particularly as heroes accumulated more and more victories.
Since the corest of rules are now in a place, we're now looking at balancing the abilities, particularly when it comes to the amount of damage each can deal. In previous versions of the game, the heroes were dealing too much damage and had a lot or Recoveries. So we toned down damage, particularly at tier 2 and 3 of abilities, and we also reduced the overall number of Recoveries many heroes have. Tamping down damage means that we don't have to sacrifice all the cool effects that heroes have while still keeping the game challenging. Heroes feel even more heroic if their deeds are earned!
Change: Locking It Down
One other big piece of feedback we've gotten from players who like building melee-focused heroes is that they had a hard time locking down their foes and protecting their counterparts. Similarly, Directors had a hard time protecting their squishy artillery, hexers, and controllers with brutes and defenders! So we made it a little harder to shift. Instead of being able to shift half your speed with a move action, you now can take the Disengage move action to shift 1 square (with some character options allowing to shift 2 squares). You also can't shift into difficult terrain.
More in the Changelog
There are a whole lot more tweaks and updates noted in the changelog of this version!
All the Rough Marks
Full disclosure, what you're getting hasn't been looked at by an editor yet. You're truly seeing the sausage in a pretty raw form at the moment. The layout is temporary, there will be typos, and there isn't a character sheet for this version. We've neem working up until the last minute just to get you all the rules. Now the polishing begins! We thought you'd want to see it in this rough state though. If you'd rather wait for the next packet, we totally get it!
Surveys Coming Next Week
We've got two separate surveys coming at you next week. One for the hero manuscript and one for the monsters document. Once those arrive, you'll have until Tuesday 11/12 at 8AM Eastern US time. This packet has a quick turn around time so that we can get you another one or two before the end of the year!
What About the License?
There is no updated license for this version of Draw Steel, because it is not publicly available. We plan on updating the license for Draw Steel when a new Backer packet is available, likely sometime in December of this year.
Come Talk About The Game
If you want to engage with other community members about Draw Steel, come and join us on Discord or on the new Draw Steel subreddit.
Being a patron means you get access to the patrons-only channel in the discord, that’s where all the talk will happen so be sure to link your Patreon account to your discord account!
Thanks, folks! I am really looking forward to seeing you think of this packet.
—James
Comments
John C
I noticed in the changelog it mentions changes to Fall of Blackbottom but there's not an updated adventure to download. Is there an updated version of the adventure available?
Jeremy Poulin
I'm happy about the addition of the Null. I feel like the monk class archetype often gets left out of fantasy RPGs or ends up being added later on or without the same level of support as the fighter/cleric/thief/wizard. It's nice to see it appear here but supercharged with psionics. Great stuff!
Ernge
Honestly I feel like no matter what they call it, I will want to make up my own name depending on the encounter. If the heroes are breaking in to a not-evil castle to meet the regent and clear their names, then it would be pretty weird to say the guards used their "malice" against you.
Lagrange0
I think Matt talked about it in a stream many months ago (when they decided to split the lairs out of flee mortals). Essentially, if I remember correctly, with the binding method their printer is using if the book has more than something like 450 pages the book could still be printed but the durability would suffer a lot. So at mcdm they feel that going thicker than that is not right because the books they make are for playing, not just for reading it once every few years (meaning that durability is very important). That number of pages that makes the book too big to print is what has sometimes been referred to as “Page Count Von Glauer”; if they go above that page count they have to start removing stuff they would otherwise want to keep in
Ernge
Maybe this has been said somewhere else, but is 400 pages the limit they're working with?
Abroad American
honestly did not expect this happening so quickly, even though it makes sense given the time scale and amount of effort and brains going into it. BRAINS! love the rpg so far, can't wait to run it!
Lagrange0
Great!
MCDM Productions
It looks like we're gonna come in comfortably under 400 pages.
Lagrange0
I just noticed that the rules document is already over 200 pages of VERY dense text, by the time you add images and formatting and such how close does this get to the limit?
ERIC NORMAN
Is there a new adventure coming as well, or just the rule changes for now? I love the game so far, and my players are so engaged by it! I should've slowed the progress of Fall of Blackbottom! Now I'm out of game to run people through!
Zoopshab
Thank you
DTmanic
https://sorcereroftea.com/where-did-gnolls-come-from/ (Credited to Lord Dunsay, 1912 in 1974 D&D and hence not copyrightable) and hence not a DnD original (for legal purposes) And the Ankheg is in the 5e SRD, which is now under the creative commons and hence *generally* free to use https://www.dndbeyond.com/resources/1781-systems-reference-document-srd (obvs not legal advice and such, so take with plenty of salt :P)
Ernge
Yeah I can't read .xlsx files on my computer
Zoopshab
Did you check copywrites on Ankheg and Gnoll?? Those are DnD original monsters. Unless you can show me prexisting mythology source material like Minotaur.
Eran Arbel
I ended up finding an online viewer. Still somewhat annoying. Can easily have been a pdf.
Joseph Coffa
In the meantime you could use an application such a Libre Office (which is FOSS) to view the files as-is and wouldn't need to upload/download them with a file converter or whatever you're doing currently. Just a suggestion!
Eran Arbel
Can we have the change files in a non-proprietary format? I would like to avoid an upload and download to read it.
Hunter Brown
Yay! My memonek can have some Stability again! The new rules around them getting thrown around are so much more elegant.
Ashley Guinn
Wait, same! That is crazy, how many tables in the world did this happen to do you think? They did drop it on a Friday night so that probably helped up the chances
Ashley Guinn
My table and I were literally sitting down, half way through our character creation for our new Draw Steel campaign when BAM, here comes this packet. The Void Mage Elementalist at my table was particularly pleased with the new abilities!
zebwinkler
can't f'ing wait!
Kyman201
I'm really looking into these new rules and I want to try a lot of these out. However I did notice a little something - The Censor doesn't establish what its base Ability is to determine the Potency of its resistances. I'm assuming it's either Might or Presence, probably Presence, but something to earmark for the next iteration.
Aphrodyte
I have convinced myself not to bother printing anything just yet. Learned my lesson.
Paul
I am loving this packet can't wait to run it!
Jake Walsh
Let’s GOOOO!
Braeden Perkins
Lol no joke y'all dropped this as my players where making characters with the first packet! Super excited for all the new things!
Alan Millard
Thanks MCDM team for all the hard work in getting it out this week! Can't wait to dive into it over the weekend!
Mitchell Stevenson
You guys worked very. very hard releasing this to us, and I want to sincerely thank you for all the effort. This means so much to me, and you all have been amazing steward for this thriving community.
Colin Davidson
Well, guess I know what I'm doing this weekend :)
Tyun
Awesome!!!!
Jesse
Wow, this is BIG update! I can't wait to read it!
Jens Stein
Malice!!!! Yes! What a cool name!
