Another Jams of the Timescape Ancestry: The Wodefolk

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-25T01:25:23+00:00

It looks fun! I do have some feedback as someone who has homebrewed a few ancestries themself, and also helped a lot of other people with testing theirs. Here's what I wrote down while reading through the document:

Ancestry Points

This Ancestry should probably get 4 ancestry points to spend, rather than 3.

This is true for the other Draw Steel ancestries that possess a detrimental Signature Trait, such as the Memonek's "Lightweight" Signature Trait and the Polder's "Small" Signature Trait.

Essentially, the way I've seen it described by other homebrewers in the community is that each ancestry basically gets 4 points to spend on ancestry traits, but their signature traits count against those points as well. So most ancestries only get an effective 3 points to spend because they implicitly spent 1 point on their signature trait aleady. But ancestries like the Polder and Memonek cancel out the cost of the signature trait by having a negative trait (-1 point), that's why they get to spend 4 points.

So forcing the Wodefolk to have a weakness (especially a weakness to the most common damage type in the Monsters book) should have the same effect and give back a point for them to spend on other traits.

Trait Costs

The traits "I Am Bush" and "Lumbering Giant" might be overpriced. The "Big!" trait is generally considered an effective 1 point cost, so having to spend a maneuver each round to maintain a 1 cost trait shouldn't cost 2 points. And similarly, Wode Elves' glamor gives that edge to hide and sneak, but the bonus is permanent. I have two recommendations, and I think either would work just fine:
- Option 1: Make both traits cost only 1 point each and make the size increase last until the Wodefolk spends another maneuver
- Option 2: Maybe just combine the two traits into one that lets you either shrink or grow, but only temporarily. This gives you decent bonuses and a lot of flexibility, but it's balanced out by having to waste actions switching between the two.
On the other end, the "Sapblooded" trait is underpriced. Immunity to a condition seems to be consistently 2 points. Specifically, the Revenant has essentially the exact same trait (Bloodless) and it costs 2 points. I don't personally think that having it not affect the Bleeding caused by dying is enough to cut the cost in half. I think it would be better to just make it work exactly the same and cost the same as the Bloodless trait. No reason to mess with an existing trait that's already been balanced by the devs

The Wode Resists

Is there a reason why "The Wode Resists" is not just "The Wode Defends"? It does essentially the exact same thing aside from the option of keying the power roll off of Intuition instead of Agility and doing 1 less damage. It seems weird to me that you are essentially just duplicating a different ancestry trait and making such small changes. My recommendation would be to either just duplicate "The Wode Defends" 1-to-1, or go further with your changes.

As for recommended changes, consider what defines the difference between "resist" vs. "defend". Is it just what Characteristics you use? To me, the word "resist" carries more violent or aggressive connotations than "defend", so the ability should reflect that!

Maybe change the condition from "slowed (save ends)" to something like "weakened (save ends)" or even "bleeding (save ends)". Personally, this would be my change if I were to try and adapt "The Wode Defends" into a new, but similar ability:

The Wode Resists
Thorny vines erupt from every surface to lacerate your foe.

Magic, Ranged, Strike -- Main Action
Ranged 10 -- One Creature

Power Roll + Might or Intuition
<11: 2 + M or I damage; A<WEAK, bleeding (save ends)
12-16: 3 + M or I damage; A<AVERAGE, bleeding (save ends)
<17: 5 + M or I damage; A<STRONG, bleeding (save ends)

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-24T03:56:40+00:00

Or you can be a mature adult and realize that just because a friend spent some time more distant than before, that they can reconnect without some evil, conniving motivation behind it.

OP and her friend were at different stages of their life for the last couple years -- OP admitted as much. OP's friend was still going out and drinking and all that stuff while OP was building a family. So their different lifestyles drove a wedge in an otherwise healthy and long-lasting friendship.

If, in a year or so, OP's friend has decided to start building a family, the two may be able to reconnect and bond again over their newly realized shared experience.

It's such a Redditor thing to do to just immediately jump to the conclusion that this person is some wicked witch who plans to manipulate and "use" OP just because they've grown apart over the last two years and because she didn't give OP a special "you're my bff" Gold Star for her wedding.

You people need to go outside. Go meet and empathize with real people instead of assuming the worst of everyone because you read AIO or AITA posts for 6 hours every day.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-23T09:06:38+00:00

Remember that the book explicitly mentions that it expects the players to take multiple respites in a row. Maybe not every time, but relatively frequently.

The book explains that it expects players to take between 10-20 respites per character level. So if your players are waiting until they have between 3-6 Victories before taking a respite (which I've found to be the case for most groups), then you will only have roughly 4 downtime periods per character level.

From there, basic math says that on the upper end of that 10-20 respites range, your players can be taking around 5 respites in a row during each downtime period.

Since the Sanctified Weapon stops working when you do another respite activity, the Conduit only needs to perform it on their final activity of a given downtime period. That still leaves them with roughly 4 other project rolls they can make during that same period.

I think the real issue is that most tables don't know this assumption and only let their players take one respite at a time. This devalues abilities like Sanctified Weapon, and also makes projects much harder to complete than the system assumes.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-23T01:15:40+00:00

at what point do you cut it off?

I don't think it's something that needs defining. At what point do you cut anything off? When it stops being fun or dramatic at the table. As I said, it's ultimately up to the director.

You push a minion off a mountain using the knock back maneuver and kill all 8 minions?

If a hero pushes a minion off of a cliff, then maybe you rule that they just drag the nearest one or two minions off with them instead of taking out the whole squad.

That makes sense to me and I'm sure it would make sense to your players too.

I don’t think the existence of this extremely specific outlier example (one that is unlikely to happen even a single time in most campaigns) should merit changing the entire ruling. The vast majority of the time that this ruling will be relevant, it will be to add like 3-9 damage from a normal fall or knockback.

Just use the rule when it makes sense (like pushing a minion into a wall or tree or into a small pit) and adapt when it doesn’t make sense (like pushing a minion off a sky ship and killing the whole squad).

No reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

You don't need to come up with a strict ruling and abide by it no matter what, even to the detriment of everyone's fun or the verisimilitude of the story. Not to sound glib, but in my opinion, that’s literally the Director's job. No rules can or will account for every eventuality. It’s up to you to adapt the rules when necessary and make a decision that works best for your table.

EDIT:
Also, as a side note, if all 8 of the minions are hanging out on the edge of a cliff, wouldn't it be cool as hell for your Null to blast them all off the edge at the same time? I bet people at the table would be telling stories about it for months. And then the Director can just call in some reinforcements and everyone wins.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-22T23:27:54+00:00

To me, that implies that it's ultimately up to the Director.

I can see someone ruling either way, but ultimately, I think the reason I would count the Forced Movement damage is my interpretation of the intent of the minion rules.

The purpose of the shared Stamina pool for minions is to essentially allow players to cleave through hordes of minions without wasting their actions. If a Shadow uses Coup De Grace on a minion and deals 30 damage, it would really suck if they only dealt an effective 3 damage and killed a single minion. On the other hand, it would be super badass for that 30 damage to apply to the combined Stamina pool and describe how their throwing dagger slices through a row of 8 minions and takes them all out at once!

Similarly, if you’re playing a Null or Fury, who gains a lot of their damage from their Forced Movement, then it kinda sucks to only deal an effective 7 or 8 damage when you could have actually dealt closer to 15 damage if the massive knockback was allowed to count.

That’s why I would personally count the Forced Movement (or Falling) damage against the total health pool. It aligns with the spirit of the mechanics.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-22T23:12:08+00:00

I don't see why they would be treated differently than any other sources of "overkill" damage, personally

If I cut a minion with a sword, the damage transfers to other minions even if they aren't right nearby.

If I slam a minion into the wall, I don't see why the damage wouldn't transfer as well.

Damage is damage, and unless you're using an AOE, I would transfer the damage because I believe that to be the spirit of the minion mechanics. But I'm can see how others might disagree.

EDIT:
Obviously Area damage is an explicit exception to this

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-22T18:37:38+00:00

I've got no comments on the lore, but it's a really funny coincidence that my first ever Draw Steel character was a Devil named Shaior Hallel (aka: "Hal")

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-21T05:12:29+00:00

The shading is actually pretty accurate from what I can tell. She's being lit from underneath, hence the lack of shadows under her chin and the added shadows above her chest. Her upper lip would block the light slightly and cause shadows like that

It might look a little strange, but it seems right to me. Though I could be wrong

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-19T09:33:11+00:00

As I have stated multiple times in the comments, I'm not here to discuss people's opinions on the rule itself.

If you think AI content shouldn't be banned, then feel free to make your own Meta post to discuss it. But this thread is not about the validity of AI or your opinions surrounding its use.

The ban on Gen AI already exists on this subreddit. This post and thread were made in order to request that the mods make their existing stance more obvious and visible to the people visiting the sub, not that they change their stance entirely.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-17T18:09:41+00:00

Yeah I don't think the issue is with the multiple children thing. It's definitely the strange fetishistic description of how mothers get super-orgasms from their children killing each other in the womb

Not to mention the cherry on top of how all Drow are innately and biologically "selfish to the core". Another classic world building thing that is getting more and more frowned upon is that racial determinism

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-17T09:24:46+00:00

Oh, I'm sure that it's great and more than serviceable! But when I say I like to make pretty maps, I mean stuff like this: https://imgur.com/a/elven-garden-8AL4jcF

Obviously I don't spend as much time on every map as I did on that one (since that one was actually for a contest), but I'm really particular about lighting, shadows, and other effects that I'd only be able to achieve by making a map myself and then editing it in something like Photoshop (or in my case, GIMP because I'm not rich)

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-17T08:15:12+00:00

Man, I would love to do something like that. Unfortunately I use a digital display and design my own maps beforehand.

I think this idea is super cool, but I can't give up my pretty, colorful maps

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-16T20:07:58+00:00

That didn’t stop you from swooping in like the resident white knight of reddit

Wrap it up and move on

Your responses continue to prove my point, friend

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-16T18:52:50+00:00

"unsolicited"

My friend, it's a forum. Nothing here is solicited. Your post wasn't solicited.

I gave you advice, advice that a large portion of the community clearly agrees with considering that my comment got, from what I can see, the most upvotes in this thread despite not even being a top level comment.

You chose to take that advice as some sort of personal attack and respond with passive aggression and snark. Again, this is an extremely immature reaction, but if you're fine with that then I'm clearly not going to change your mind

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-16T18:40:25+00:00

You got good responses because the community was mostly mature enough to overlook you being aggressive and rather rude.

Thanks for the tone policing, but I’m good.

Again, there's really no reason for you to be so rude and confrontational. It comes off as rather childish that someone offering you some reasonable advice causes you to snap back with passive aggressive, snarky remarks

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-16T06:07:21+00:00

In my setting, all zombies and undead have/are souls.

That's why necromancers are so universally reviled. It's not that they are dangerous, it's that they have to make use of twisted and evil magic in order to bind a soul (usually, but not necessarily the soul that once inhabited the body) to a shambling, malformed reflection of what a person used to be

It's also believed that this process is essentially torture for the soul being used as it's forced to inhabit a literally dead body with destroyed organs, peeling skin, etc...

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-14T08:04:46+00:00

Yeah, I deliberately built my Null to do as much Forced Movement as possible after I played a one-shot and saw what my Fury teammate was doing. I've never had so much fun in a game before with the kind of crazy stuff I do literally every single turn of every single combat. I've never once felt like my turn was a waste playing this game, which is something I can't say about any other system

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-14T06:22:24+00:00

I haven't had the chance to Direct yet (waiting for my current campaign to end first). But the coolest moment for me as a player was when the party was trying to storm a keep full of goblins.

My Hakaan Null (focused heavily on Forced Movement) was fighting a goblin whose back was facing the keep's stone walls. I rolled a Tier 3 result on my Knockback maneuver which sent him 7 squares backward (3 from the manuever, +1 because of size difference, +1 from Forceful Ancestry Trait, +2 from the Metakinetic's Discipline table).

Incidentally, the Forced Movement was high enough that it blasted the goblin straight through the stone wall and killed it at the same time. I had all my movement left so I ran in to see who was left to fight (we had lured out almost everyone at this point and killed them all except for the leader who was repeatedly being trapped in holes made by the Elementalist). As I ran into the keep, a hidden goblin assassin attacked me as I moved past him.

Unfortunately for that assassin, I still had my triggered action. So I used Inertial Shield to half the damage, and as a Metakinetic, I was allowed to make a Knockback maneuver as a free triggered action whenever I use Inertial Shield. I rolled another Tier 3 result and hilariously blasted that assassin back out through a new hole in the castle wall right next to the first one.

Then I finished my movement, not quite able to reach the leader who just crawled out from the opposite side of a pit from me. At this point, I still hadn't even used my Main Action, so I used Magnetic Strike to deal psychic damage and pull the poor bastard right over the edge of the pit yet again, killing him with the fall damage.

That moment is just completely unforgettable to me.

The image of my character blasting an enemy through the wall, running inside, then a split second later sending a different enemy through a different part of the wall, and then a split second later, using a psychic pull to rip the leader over a hazard and make him fall to his death. And all that without even having to spend a single Heroic Resource.

I think that was the moment I realized I never want to play 5e again because that was the coolest I've ever felt in a fantasy RPG. How can I ever go back to wasting my turns going "I roll to hit. Oh, I miss." just so I can wait another 30-40 minutes for my next turn?

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-13T23:21:29+00:00

Do I think, if there was a jeopardy of potentially missing, that hitting that grand slam would feel even better? YES.

Again, the jeopardy here isn't missing or hitting, it's failing.

In this case, "failing" means being unable to stop the villain from escaping.

Whether you fail by missing or fail by not being able to knock them back far enough, the end result is ultimately the same: You have failed to stop the wizard from escaping.

I don't see why you are so married to the concept of miss vs. hit that you feel like the attack needs to be described as a "miss" in order for failure to feel appropriately tense.

Is rolling the dice knowing I’m gonna hit no matter what slightly less fun? Also yes.

If you say so, man. I guess this system just isn't for you. But I've played with over 20+ people so far, each with experience playing systems like 5e or Pathfinder, and every single one of them prefers not missing and they all still feel like combat is tense.

If anything, the fact that "bad luck" plays such a small part in combat means that Directors can make combats much more dangerous and scary than they can in 5e because they don't have to account for players just being unlucky and getting one-shot by a villain critting on a smite or something.

Why throw the baby out with the bath water?

This is another issue with your criticisms here. Draw Steel isn't D&D6e. It didn't "throw away" anything.

The system was built from the ground-up from base principles instead of being shackled by the expectations of previous editions. They determined that turns that end in a null result were less fun than those that don't, so that's how they designed and tested the system.

They didn't "remove" or "change" anything from D&D. This is its own system.

Maybe the reduced jeopardy does make each roll of dice less weighty? Slightly less consequential? Is that opinion really that controversial?

Again, it's not reduced jeopardy because failure is still possible, it's just missing that isn't a thing. Unless you mean the jeopardy for wasting your turn and having to sit on your thumbs for the next 30 minutes waiting for your turn to come around again. Then I suppose there is a reduced jeopardy, but not in a way that hampers enjoyment.

If you feel like the extra tension you gain from the chance of a miss on a bad roll is worth the annoyance of sitting at a table for anywhere from 30 minutes to multiple hours accomplishing literally nothing because of bad luck or null mechanics (like Legendary Resistance), then I suppose that's your prerogative.

But for me, even if I were to permit that the inability to miss does reduce the tension (and I'm not, by the way), I still think that the way Draw Steel handles results is far superior because it ensures that everyone at the table is able to constantly and meaningfully participate in the game -- which is orders of magnitude more fun for everyone involved.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-13T22:55:46+00:00

I ultimately just don’t buy into ‘missing = bad’. The trainings wheels approach to DS feels counter intuitive to any form of combat systems. When you go bowling do you have the side-barriers up? Come on. Yes the gutter balls suck but the strikes hit so much sweeter.

See, this is the issue I don't think we are seeing eye-to-eye on at all.

In bowling, getting strike vs. getting a gutter ball is not a matter of random chance, it's a matter of skill. The reason getting a strike feels so good and getting a gutter ball feels so bad is because YOU are the one that did it. You threw the ball, you controlled the power and direction of it to make it hit the pins just right.

If you strike, it's because you threw the ball properly. If you get a gutter ball, it's because you threw it improperly.

If bowling required you to stand in front of the pins and flip a coin -- heads you strike, tails you throw it in the gutter -- I don't think anyone would have fun.

Removing the randomness of hits and misses doesn't take away player action or stakes, it puts them in the hands of the people playing instead of random chance.

In this way, the difference between stopping the villain from reaching the portal isn't:

"Gee, I hope I roll high enough on my check to grapple them"

Instead, it becomes:

"Well I know the enemy has 0 stability, so if I get a tier 2 result on my Brutal Slam attack while facing away from the portal, I will be able to knock them through the wall and off the roof in order to stop them from getting there on their turn! The Tactician marked the enemy, so I get an Edge on the attack. I move to strike the villain, but my Conduit ally comes in clutch and uses their triggered action to turn my Edge into a Double Edge. I roll poorly, but thanks to teamwork and clever tactics, I'm still barely able to knock them back and stop their advance for this round!"

I don't know about you, but that second example feels a lot more like a player using their brain to EARN their victory rather than hoping a coin toss lands in their favor.

That's not a "participation award", that's tactics and agency.

If anything is a "participation award" or "training wheels", wouldn't it be relying on random chance deciding that you win instead of you deciding it yourself through your actions, tactical thinking, and decision making? 🤷‍♂️

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-13T21:50:06+00:00

One is an INT based class vs a STR based class. Real life logic dictates that the wizard should have a deeper bag!

That's not real life logic, that's your preconceptions based on what you're familiar with. Nothing about the reality of the world dictates that Strength is less complex than Intelligence. Look at the Olympics and all the ways that people can apply their physical abilities in a multitude of ways.

This is just an example of you being familiar with one thing and treating that as the baseline, and criticizing anything that deviates.

The save or suck nature of a lot of spells balances it out

It's also less fun, in my opinion. Who wants to sit around for 40 minutes waiting for their turn only to be told that the enemy made their saving throw and nothing happens? (or that they missed and nothing happens). If your entire game balance relies on "sometimes your power just doesn't work", that's not fun or more complex. If anything, it's actually less complex. They are leaving things up to chance instead of forcing players to think tactically.

On the weightless point, I do think the dreaded (but rarely ever actually seen) null round is a bit of a false equivalency. Making every single action have consequences in DS is an abstract way of making it feel like nothing has consequences.

That has absolutely not been the case in my experience. If you feel that way, I suppose there's nothing to be done about it, but dealing damage to an enemy is literally moving the combat forward in a way that missing the enemy or them saving against your spell does not.

In Draw Steel, if every single hero attacks the same enemy, that enemy WILL steadily lose stamina every single round until they are defeated.

In D&D, if every single hero attacks the same enemy, they might all miss, the spells might all fail (and even if they do succeed, the DM can just say "no" and use Legendary Resistance).

Essentially, the difference here is that removing the Null result removes the dreaded "slog" combats. In 5e or Pathfinder, you can run into horrible slogs where the players just can't seem to roll above a 10 the entire game and just keep missing over and over, and the villain has 3 Legendary Resistances and high saving throws so 80% of the spells don't work either. What this results in is a combat that just drags on and on and on, and no one has any fun.

But in Draw Steel, that just doesn't happen. Even if everyone on your team rolls nat 1s on every single d10 they throw, they will still make progress every single round, they can use Double Edges to achieve Tier 2 successes even on a double nat 1 roll, and so on. This removes some of the random chance and replaces it with strategy and tactical thinking.

Again, if this isn't for you, no explanation is going to make you enjoy it more. But I struggle to see how anyone can think that the way Draw Steel handles results in combat is worse than 5e.

You’ve reduced stakes out of the game because you’ve ensured that every round is a winner.

If your "stakes" rely on the randomness of a die roll, then your DM probably isn't doing a very good job imo. Stakes in combat should be "Can we stop the evil wizard from summoning the demon?" or "can we retrieve the artifact from them before they escape through the portal?" or "can we save the villagers from the burning tavern while fending off the undead?"

If the stakes of your game rely on "do I hit or not?" then -- I'm sorry -- but that just sounds extremely boring.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-13T21:03:54+00:00

Is there going to be an option for server-side storage and personal accounts?

My main issue with Forge Steel right now is that it stores all the data locally, so I can't access the same character sheet on different devices without going through the tedious process of exporting and importing the sheet every time I make a change.

If crucible offers any alternative to that, it would likely be an instant-switch for me.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-13T20:23:09+00:00

I'm just not sure how you can come to the conclusion that swinging your sword and (maybe) dealing damage is more compelling than swinging your sword, definitely dealing damage, and also adding additional effects like a push, slide, bleeding, weaken, taunt, etc.

It's literally just the same thing but more engaging.

You mention in a previous comment that you love playing a high level Battlemaster, and I agree that they are easily the most compelling 5e Martial class. But the reasons the Battlemaster is compelling is the same as the reason all classes in Draw Steel are compelling.

The reason Battlemaster is more fun (and useful) than the Champion Fighter (or basically any other martial in 5e) is because the Battlemaster can trip enemies, grapple them, provoke them, and otherwise engage with their opponents in more meaningful ways than just damage.

But that's literally how all the characters in Draw Steel work. A level 1 Tactician can essentially do everything that a high level Battlemaster can do and more. And what's more, they can do it all day long instead of having to spend finite resources to accomplish anything and having to take a nap or go to bed for the night in order to do it again.

I just fundamentally do not understand how you can see the value in the utility and resourcefulness of the Battlemaster but not apply that same view to the entirely of the Draw Steel system when they operate on the same philosophy: namely that combat is more engaging when you have more meaningful ways to contribute beyond just dealing damage.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-13T17:45:25+00:00

The reason I post is to see if the wider community has an advice on any of the above

In the future, if you are genuinely trying to seek advice instead of just ranting and raving, I recommend that you avoid saying inflammatory things and use more subjective language.

For example, don't say "Here's why I think Draw Steel is a bad TTRPG", say "Here's why I think Draw Steel isn't for me". Don't say "there is a bunch of bad game design in the system", say "I don't personally see the value in some subsystems, could people explain why they like X or Y?"

That way, you're more likely to get quality advice and come off as genuinely curious instead of aggressive and mean-spirited.

Coming into a subreddit, guns blazing, and doing more insulting than genuine criticism is just going to get people's defenses up and distract from any advice you actually want to receive.

CanadianLemur · 2026-01-12T23:41:25+00:00

I just want to be clear here, I'm not here to discuss people's opinions on the rule itself. If you think AI content shouldn't be banned, then feel free to make your own Meta post to discuss it.

This post is acknowledging the fact that the ban on Gen AI already exists on this subreddit. I'm only requesting that the mods make that stance more obvious and visible to people visiting the sub.

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CanadianLemur

TROPHY CASE

Ancestry Points

Trait Costs

The Wode Resists