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Let's Look at Some Treasures
🕑 Added 2024-08-16 15:08:27 +0000 UTCHey! I want to preview some treasures for Draw Steel.
It’s James again. I’m back with a look at some of the different treasure types you’re going to see in Draw Steel. By the way, if you haven’t looked over the latest playtest packet, you have until August 27th at noon Pacific US time to get us feedback on the survey.
Also, the items you’ll see previewed in today’s post were created by Carlos Cisco and our own Willy Abeel.
What Are Treasures?
Treasures are what we call magic and psionic items that heroes find and can craft during their adventures in Draw Steel.
Many of the treasures make use of the crafting and research rules, allowing heroes to craft potions, implements, weapons, armor, and more during respites. A treasure’s item prerequisites are the special ingredients you need to begin the process of crafting the treasure. But you’ll also need the research materials, which are the treasure’s “recipe” or “instructions” for creation before you can start. Once you have those, the project roll and project goal entries tell you how long it takes to craft the item. More information on that when we preview the Research and Crafting rules. But you can also gain treasures the more traditional way—by finding them in the hoards of vanquished foes and hidden in the depths of ancient dungeons.
There are four kinds of treasures in the game: consumable items, trinkets, leveled treasures, and artifacts.
Consumable Items
Consumables are treasures that can only be used a limited number of times before they expire and lose whatever makes them supernatural. You can only drink a potion once, and when you do, that’s it. It’s consumed. Other consumables might have a specific number of charges that can be spent. Once those charges are all gone, the treasure is useless. You can carry any number of consumables at a time. Consumable items are ranked, so a Director knows which tier of play they’re intended for. You can always award treasures outside their rank.
We showed off a couple consumable items, the Healing Potion and Snapdragon, in our most recent playtest packet. Let’s look at another! BEHOLD, the Growth Potion and Mirror Token!
Growth Potion (Rank 1)
A thick, green liquid that tastes of licorice and potatoes
Keywords: Magic, Potion
Item Prerequisites: 5 ounces of seagrass
Research Materials: Texts in Caelian
Project Roll: 2d10 + Reason or Intuition Project Goal: 45
Effect: When you drink this potion or pour it on top of an object size 2 or smaller as a maneuver, the potion causes the target’s size to increase by 1 and weight to increase by 3. Your current Stamina and Stability is doubled, you have edge on Might tests, and your weapon attacks deal bonus damage equal to your level. You shrink back to your original size after 3 rounds, losing all bonuses and halving your current Stamina and Stability. Objects permanently maintain their size.
Mirror Token (Rank 1)
A gold rimmed, mirror-faced coin that trembles in your hand as if it were repelled by you
Keywords: Psionic
Item Prerequisites: 3 sheets of glass, sunbaked gold dust
Research Materials: Texts in Variac
Project Roll: 2d10 + Reason or Intuition Project Goal: 45
Effect: If you are targeted by a ranged attack, you can use a triggered action and crush the mirror token to ignore the attack. Any effects and half the damage you have taken are suffered by the attacker.
Trinkets
Trinkets are treasures that can be used at will without a reduction in their potency. They generally provide a small benefit, like allowing you to see further distances or be a little bit better at lockpicking. You can carry any number of trinkets. Trinkets items are ranked, so a Director knows which tier of play they’re intended for.
The playtest packet features the Quantum Satchel trinket, but let’s see a couple more below—the Gecko Gloves and Mask of Many.
Gecko Gloves (Rank 1)
Scaled gloves whose palms and fingers are covered in near invisible, sticky hairs
Keywords: Gloves, Magic
Item Prerequisites: 10 gecko tails
Research Materials: Texts in Caelian
Project Roll: 2d10 + Reason or Intuition Project Goal: 100
Effect: When worn, these gloves make your grip impossible to break. You cannot be disarmed and cannot lose your grip while climbing. Creatures grabbed by you have a bane on tests made to escape.
Mask of Many (Rank 1)
A plain white mask lined with soft black velvet that smells faintly of blood
Keywords: Headgear, Magic
Item Prerequisites: 1 used death shroud
Research Materials: Texts in Caelian
Project Roll: 2d10 + Reason or Intuition Project Goal: 100
Effect: When worn, the mask allows you to change your appear to match into any humanoid of equivalent size that you have previously seen, but only as the last way you saw them, including whatever they were wearing. If they were wearing any treasures, the mask can’t recreate them.
Leveled Treasures
Like trinkets, leveled treasures can be used at will without a reduction in potency. Leveled treasures tap into your will, becoming more powerful and growing their capabilities as you level up.
Each leveled treasure has benefits that you gain at 1st, 5th, and 9th levels. You can’t use a treasure’s benefit until you achieve the benefits level. The benefits are cumulative.
Your connection with these treasures doesn’t just make them useful, it also makes them dangerous. Each leveled item is a quasi-sentient, purpose-driven entity. Magic swords wish to be used in combat. Psionic crowns wish to defy physics and bend reality. As such, a creature can only safely use up to three leveled treasures at a time. Otherwise the items become jealous of one another and fight for your attention, attempting to subconsciously influence you into using them and leaving the others behind.
If you carry more than three permanent items, you must make a Presence test during a respite:
11 or lower: One of your leveled treasures (chosen by the Director), grabs hold of your psyche. It forces you to sleepwalk or otherwise enter an active fugue state and discard the rest of your leveled treasures some place that you can’t remember. If you want them back, you better get looking before someone else finds them.
12-16: Your items physically will not allow you to move until you pick three and leave the rest behind.
17+: Nothing happens.
The Revenger’s Wrap from the latest playtest is actually a leveled item! Let’s take at its full text and a new one—Wetwork.
Revenger’s Wrap
A tattered cloak that fills the wearer with thoughts of revenge, even if they have no particular enemy in mind
Keywords: Cloak, Magic
Item Prerequisites: A cloak worn by a murdered monarch
Research Materials: Texts in Caelian
Project Roll: 2d10 + Might, Reason, or Intuition Project Goal: 450
1st Level: When a creature attacks you, they are marked for revenge until the end of your next turn or another creature attacks you. Attacks you make against a creature marked for revenge have an edge. When you damage a creature marked for revenge, they suffer bleeding (EoT).
5th Level: Each creature who attacks you is marked for revenge until the end of your next turn. When you damage a creature marked for revenge, they are bleeding (EoE).
9th Level: When you have three or more creatures marked for revenge and target one of them with an ability that targets only one creature, you target all creatures marked for revenge regardless of distance and line of effect.
Wetwork
This naginata whispers the names of its past victims to its wielder as they drift off to sleep.
Keywords: Polearm, Psionic
Item Prerequisites: A folded metal blade infused with blood
Research Materials: Texts in Higaran
Project Roll: 2d10 + Might, Reason, or Intuition
Project Goal: 450
1st Level: You gain a +2 psychic damage bonus to abilities that use Wetwork. If you kill a target with Wetwork on your turn, you can use your maneuver to make a melee free strike.
5th Level: Your psychic damage bonus increases to +4. If you kill a target with Wetwork on your turn, you can use your maneuver to move 2 squares before or after you make a melee free strike.
9th Level: Your psychic damage bonus increases to +6. If you kill a target with Wetwork on your turn, you can use your maneuver to move your speed and use a signature melee ability or melee free strike.
Artifacts
Artifacts are powerful, unique treasures that can’t be crafted (yet). They unbalance the game at any level, but they sure are fun to give out for a few sessions. Let’s take a look at the Encepter.
The Encepter
A bejeweled scepter with a spiraling porcelain handle, balancing an orb of light above its crown
Keywords: Magic
It waits high in the sky, resting within an endlessly raging cyclone. It waits for the one who will unify all people under its light. It awaits its champion.
The Encepter was said to have first manifested in a young world, doomed to apocalypse unless every last inhabitant could stand together. It’s said to impose either dominion or obliteration over any threat its light is drawn around. Today, it’s said to be known as a bad omen—should the Encepter reveal itself, then the world teeters on the brink of destruction. Whether any of the stories are true, the only living eyes that have witnessed the Encepter lay closed, belonging to dragons deep in slumber.
Shining Presence: The one who wields the Encepter is always cast in a brilliant glow. Any power roll made by the wielder that uses Presence automatically achieves the tier 3 result. You can still roll to see if you get a critical hit.
Champion’s Lasso: As a free maneuver, the wielder can begin tracing a glowing line of light wherever they move. If the wielder crosses over this line with the Encepter, all creatures and objects of the wielder’s choice that are encircled by the line are considered lassoed by the Encepter until the lasso is released or until a new line is drawn. The wielder can stop drawing a line as a free maneuver.
Dominion: Targets lassoed by the Encepter are restrained and can’t teleport. Anything caught in midair while being lassoed stays in place rather than falling.
Obliteration: As an action, the wielder raises the Encepter to the sky. Targets lassoed by the Encepter erupt into a prism of light, taking 10 psychic damage for each square horizontally encircled by the lasso. The lasso immediately releases.
At World’s End: If the Encepter was not taken from its resting place with the purpose of vanquishing a terrible threat, then a terrible threat emerges to threaten the world within three days of taking the scepter.
That’s It For Now!
Don’t forget to survey it up!
—James
Comments
Murilo Trigo
Wooo! These items me exited to play!
Dhavaram
Love all these specific items and the magic item system as a whole. I'm wondering if there will be items like the wands from older D&D versions that did a specific spell (e.g. magic missile or fireball) and had charges and then were rendered mundane when the charges were used up. Or will those kind of items be a leveled treasure that gives you a signature ability or a once per encounter ability or some such.
KingGurke
Dope stuff! Although I see a problem: When a Memonek drinks the Potion of Growth, their stability might actually decrease.
Ben Milne
I love these, and I especially love that the items have their inbuilt research and crafting requirements. Much of the trouble I find with d20 fantasy is the reliance on random loot or having the dm essentially pick out something for the players. I’m incredibly keen on seeing crafting rules implemented because I feel it’ll really help any magic items found or made truly be player driven. It’s their desire driving the acquisition of a certain item, and not just “oh hey a cool thing”
Barefoot Monk
This is my system! And I don't mean that like, oh how dare you steal my system. I mean, I've been homebrewing crafting this way for years and finally a game supports the way I run magic items!
BasCB
Already looking forward to have players looking at these and think about their own crafting plans!
BasCB
Surely, if you have your own setting where you play, you can either replace the language mentioned with languages in your own setting? And yeah, it could be a simple as replacing Calean with "common", having living/currently spoken languages by known cultures as more rare, and the rest as exotic and dead languages? The section on languages in the playtest already gives a pretty solid idea of these.
andrew burgess
Really like the limitations on the Mask of Many; flavourful and extra complication for players to consider.
Eugene Cheney
Yes! So excited to see a shit ton of these next to each other and let my players look through them
Michael Kling
Features like At World's End are the reason I love MCDM. An artifact isn't just a grab bag of cool powers, but comes welded to a huge plot hook!
Jacob Montague
At World's End is such a fun feature!
Paul L.
These are dope!
Austin Williams
Absolutely loving the items here, not loving the baked in language system for items though because it's an immediate roadblock to homebrew. I'd like to still have language be a mechanic involved but the explicit languages of this world may not be what I or others use in homebrewed worlds. Could it be simpler like common, exotic, and dead language? Also the wording on the mirror token is confusing. Did I ignore the attack or did I take effects and damages still that are then reflected. I understand where you're going but think it could be more explicit.
Drew Nelson
Super enjoying the Crafting thought behind consumables, interested to hear more about the recipe documents!
Callum Iles
Love the philosophy on Levelled treasures, always feels bad as a player or DM in another system to introduce magic items that immeidately get made redundant when a "stronger" item shows up - the connections system had me cackling thinking about the first time someone gets a Tier 1 result at my table!
AmbyNavy
Looks awesome!! The Encepter is absolutely BONKERS and i love it, a consistent 60-100 damage a turn on high-speed characters?!? amazing, EXACTLY what i want from an artefact.
Trey McLemore
I love the feature At World’s End! I could see a distant evil tricking some greedy organization to retrieve the Encepter just to sell it, and in the process it brings this distant evil to the campaign. To really twist the knife maybe retrieving the artifact is the first mission for a party? Can’t wait to see some dope ass art for magic items!
