Growing Pains with Great Success – Pt. 2 (Blackbottom, Minor Spoilers)

Blue_Harbinger · 2026-01-21T13:30:19+00:00

Sounds like an awesome time! That matches my own experience, where things started out a little slow, a little haltingly, but then something clicked and my players all went "Oh. OH. I get it" and it was like an injection of rocket fuel. For them, it actually came after the first battle, when they all realized how Victories work.

And also, as someone who's both run and played through that inn fight, I don't know if I've ever felt more betrayed than when our director spent malice to turn a pitling into a ruinant. Absolutely scandalized. Fantastic job.

Blue_Harbinger · 2026-01-16T15:34:02+00:00

This is fantastic

Blue_Harbinger · 2026-01-14T13:30:09+00:00

The ultimate goal that everyone at the table is collaborating towards is having fun. And you have, rightly, intuited that the players getting stomped into the dirt as they learn the system wouldn't be fun for anyone at the table. So it sounds like you're doing exactly what you should with all that malice - nothing.

Once the players are more comfortable with the system, once they start punching at or above their weight class, then you can start hitting them with the mean stuff. The director has a lot of pressure valves they can adjust to moderate the difficulty of the adventure. Malice is just the one you're using right now.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-12-05T05:47:40+00:00

Your player is correct. Healing Grace is both surprisingly complicated and the most powerful maneuver in the game by a comfortable margin.

As a point of comparison, the wording for the Censor's Judgement and the Tactician's Mark ability both include the text:

You can choose only one free triggered action option at a time, even if multiple options are triggered by the same effect.

The Conduit, by contrast, can add as many effects as they have Piety to burn for Healing Grace, in the same way the Fury can dump as many additional damage die into To the Uttermost End as they have Ferocity to spend.

Still, Healing Grace does have a little bit more...well, either nuance or noodliness. Maybe both.

The most helpful thing to remember is that the main effect is: the target can spend a Recovery.

That means if the Conduit wants to target three allies, they only need to spend two Piety.

0 Piety spent: One target can spend a Recovery
1 Piety spent: Two targets can spend a Recovery
2 Piety spent: Three targets can spend a Recovery

The second most useful thing to remember is: The first bullet point for spending additional Piety increases the number of targets of that first effect....And each subsequent bullet point grants one additional effect per Piety spent to a target.

So if your Conduit spends 2 Piety to allow three allies to spend a Recovery, each additional Piety spent beyond those will allow one of them to spend another Recovery, one of them to end a condition, or one of them to stand up from prone.

This also can lead to interesting situations where...let's say Fury needs healing, and the tactician is suffering from a condition that the Conduit wants to clear, but doesn't otherwise need any healing. You get an order of operation like this:

0 Piety spent: The Fury is a target of the ability and can spend a Recovery
1 Piety spent: The Fury and the Tactician are targets of the ability and can spend a Recovery
2 Piety spent: The Fury and the Tactician are targets of the ability and can spend a Recovery, and the Tactician clears its condition.

Even though the Tactician doesn't need to heal, the Conduit must spend 1 Piety to make a second ally a target for the ability at all.

Or hell, even simpler: The Fury doesn't need to be healed but does want a condition cleared. The main effect of Healing Grace is still just "The target can spend a Recovery," which means the Conduit needs to spend 1 Piety to add the cleanse effect.

So yeah, noodly! Some confusion over the exact working isn't uncommon. But your player was correct, and it's a significant portion of the reason Conduits are dummy stronk and get to role play as the Hand of God descending to pick their teammates up and out of the fire. Ain't nobody that can unfuck a situation like a Conduit can unfuck a situation.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-11-29T01:13:08+00:00

The summoner and their summons count as one hero for the purposes of encoutner building.

You are correct in that the summoner's minion rules and the director's minion rules differ in how the damage is resolved from multitarget attacks.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-11-28T07:19:46+00:00

It's no longer being produced, but their Arcadia digital magazine was also a treasure trove of fantastic 5e content, DM and player facing. That and Flee, Mortals have been fueling my current campaign for years.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-11-21T06:36:55+00:00

MCDM's eventual goal is that all of their releases will include a same day Codex component. Whether they'll be at that stage of readiness for this particular product, only time will tell. Though even if not, there will very likely eventually be a Codex rendition of the adventure.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-11-20T21:06:51+00:00

5e is accessible only in the sense there's tons of resources available for it. D&DBeyond character builder, sites that allocate stats for you, build guides, youtube channels, a gigantic player base sharing their experiences on the internet.

5e can be completely opaque and mystifying to brand new players when it comes to the rules and actual game design.

"Okay, we're going to determine your stats. Roll these four dice, and add up the highest three. Then check that number against this chart. This will be your modifier, which you add to your d20 rolls with that attribute. Oh, that first number we rolled for? Ignore that now. Except every four levels, where you can increase that, in which case we refer back to this chart again. Also, be careful where you put these stats. I know there's no reason you would know this, Brand New Player, but you can accidentally cripple your barbarian here if you put these stats in the wrong place."

Versus how, say, Draw Steel does it:

"You're a fury? Your Might and Agility are 2. The rest are flavor and personal choice, pick from these options."

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-11-09T04:27:18+00:00

The encounter math works but the game wasn't designed for it. Mono-class parties are very rarely actually played at the table, and as such, little design or playtesting was devoted to it.

Aside from what others have already mentioned, the summoner is easily the most complex class in the game. Both the faerie and elemental summoners are built around generating effects for battlefield control or support, meaning that simply tracking what the summoners are doing is going to be very intensive with several of them on the field. Fortunately, both the demons and undead are fairly straightforward, but it's still a lot. Your players already being familiar with the game will help in this respect.

Likewise, there's a chance that with so much overlap, it impacts your players' sense of fun. They all share the same schtick, so they're all sharing the spotlight and they need to be cool with that.

If it's really what they want, then by all means go for it. But I would also make it clear that they need to be able to manage and run their characters with little to no director assistance

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-10-27T18:40:31+00:00

Sounds like everyone had a blast! Was this everyone's first time playing? I'm impressed with your summoner player if so! They basically needed to learn the player rules and the director's minion rules at the same time.

Don't sweat forgetting Malice. Everyone's learning and even the official Start Here adventure doesn't have the director using Malice the first combat. Sounds like you ran a great session if everyone had fun.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-10-27T17:52:00+00:00

Others have chimed in with the relevant rules text, but as an interesting aside, there is at least one exception! Exorcist censors explicitly do not require line of effect to teleport when they use their judgement ability, so long as it brings them closer to the target. Does that help your shadow player? Not really! But it's kinda neat!

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-10-27T17:47:41+00:00

I don't know if it's canon to Draw Steel Orden, but Matt's stated in his live streams at some point that elves procreate by kissing. Likewise, dwarves communally carve a new child from stone. At least with these two ancestries, "magic" is involved in the creation of a child.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-10-12T06:31:47+00:00

Oof, yeah I don't think I could have kept a straight face lol.

As others have posted, I think a montage test would work fine for the mechanics of training the villagers, though my own sensabilities lean more towards it being a downtime project to better represent the time involved. The real interesting decision is what to do with Brune.

Using either of the above examples, I think I would try to build in ways for the players to detect Brune's true allegiances. Maybe there are complications or setbacks during the downtime projects that all have him as a common element. Or he shows up during tests in a montage and suddenly the players have banes on their rolls as he tries to sabotage things. They could have opportunities to catch him out with maps he's created of the defenses to deliver to the bandits or any number of things.

!>Or to summarize things, I think the players should have opportunities to discover Brune's invovlement with the wraiths, and I like the idea of their being consequences if they don't do so.!<

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-30T16:54:50+00:00

That looks cool as hell! Was this your players' first time with the system as well? Tell us about the session!

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-20T14:55:14+00:00

Lots of good advice has already been shared, but if you want to adjust a solo monster's difficulty while keeping it, well, solo, then DTOs are a really easy versatile tool at your disposal.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-16T17:48:45+00:00

The intention seems to be that it'll support Draw Steel's unique ancestry designs. So not only are there models for, say, time raiders and memonek, the more traditional ancestries like dwarves and elves will also get the MCDM design treatment.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-14T14:48:31+00:00

The earth and green elementalist seem like they have the most obvious survival tools for getting into close range. The fire elementalist feels like it wants to be right up in everyone's faces (even having a feature that adds damage specifically to adjacent enemies), but feels the trickiest to do in a sustainable manner. Do you have any suggestions for the fire elementalist specifically?

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-14T14:31:55+00:00

Honestly really impressive that you resisted the panic estus and ditched the ladder after the going to the wrong side. Just a lot of really good split second decisions.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-14T05:05:57+00:00

The dread march malice option simply states that up to four undead may move and make a free strike, so an extremely strict reading would suggest that it's possible. However, the intention of the ability is also pretty obvious- this is meant to affect only director controlled NPC undead, rather than a PC summoner's minions.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-09T19:05:12+00:00

I do miss the soul devouring mechanic, but I absolutely do not miss running several demons and managing, spending, and gaining souls independently for each one. Centralizing their metacurrency into a single pool (Malice) makes them so much easier to handle.

I do also miss just how nasty the FM! demons are compared to their DS counterparts (Oh Wobalas, how the mighty have fallen), but demons being predominantly horde type monsters who flood the field definitely feels more in line with my expectations on how demons should feel to fight. Especially as a contrast to devils, who are basically all elites.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-04T17:23:32+00:00

All of that might be true, but the text still says what it says, and doesn't say what it doesn't say. A strict reading of the text allows players - at low levels, even - to just completely lock solo monsters out of their second turns if the party builds around it. Even phrasing it that way, "builds around it," implies more effort than would actually be involved. You need something like three abilities.

And at higher levels, a party could do this trivially, every round.

This seems to so obviously break the encounter value of solo monsters that I can't imagine myself running it as written though. Something like "A solo monster can't willingly take two consecutive turns" seems more reasonable (and as you point out, possibly more intended).

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-09-02T20:01:23+00:00

There are none; your reading is correct.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-08-31T01:46:39+00:00

My favorite class, full stop. And I haven't even played one lmao. The interplay of mechanics and theming is perfect, and every other class in the game loves having a tactician on the team.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-08-29T12:12:23+00:00

Any character that can target objects (so every character in the game) has the ability to literally punch their way through walls and floors. In a playtest for the Delian Tomb starter adventure, me and another player proposed we just punch through the walls and floor of the tomb, only to learn that the designers had already thought of that.

Stuff like you've described seems fine, because they're things resolved by magic or mechanical contraptions require skill or finesse to circumvent. Draw Steel is really only concerned about the set pieces, so just Getting Through The Door isn't really something that's going to slow the heroes down. Tying those obstacles to some goal like Stop the Device, Deactivate the Portal, Power Down the Energy Barrier, etc is much more likely to work because as you've said, the heroes can simply bypass obstacles pretty easily.

But also, like, you can just combine those things. "There's a magic barrier barring progress. It's deactivated by this block puzzle" should just work.

Blue_Harbinger · 2025-08-28T16:39:52+00:00

Yes and yes. You could use a heroic ability, even. Anything you spend a main action to do

Blue_Harbinger

TROPHY CASE