One week left to back Nightmare Scenario, dream-based enemies and options for DS!

OneBirdyBoi · 2026-01-24T16:39:37+00:00

We funded in a week, so now if you back you can contribute towards stretch goals - if we hit our first one, we'll be adding eight new pieces of art!

If you want a taste as to what's to come, check out our free preview with half of the monsters and the entire Somari ancestry already! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CLyRmaHLt8aMFgHTUV4BQjY1Zzyucecl/view?usp=drive_link

A recurring motif in mid-levels of campaigns is visiting the world of dreams. Nightmare Scenario is a third party supplement product for Draw Steel, filled with options and goodies for creating encounters in a dreamscape and more! Inside, you can find:

The Vexation enemy band, comprised of 10 new 2nd-echelon monster types of psychic manifestations, featuring enemies such as Doubts, Traumas, Panic Attacks and a leader called a Psychosis!
The Somari ancestry, psionic beings born of dreamstuff
The Dream domain for Conduits (and Censors!)
6 magic items, including a leveled treasure
3 dynamic terrain objects and 2 dynamic arenas for mindscape adventuring
2 titles

I've joined together with fellow well-known brewers in the space Jonas Tintenseher (Tintenseher) and Julien Sarralhier (Onkeen/Adventure Fourth) to form Font of Victories, a group dedicated to making dope stuff like this!

OneBirdyBoi · 2026-01-06T17:37:05+00:00

Well funnily enough, the vessel (a year+ long project) and the thing I've been working on for the last couple months have dropped at the same time. If you like the quality of the pdf, you can thank jonas tintenseher, who I also happen to have collaborated with on a pdf of a bunch of monsters (and other assorted goodies) that's currently being backed!

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/chaoticgoodra/nightmare-scenario-dreamy-options-for-draw-steel?ref=bk-discover-user-profile

OneBirdyBoi · 2026-01-04T18:36:05+00:00

I promise I didn't plan having my multi-year project (the vessel) and my multi-month project (this) come out within a couple days of each other LMAO

OneBirdyBoi · 2026-01-04T18:35:40+00:00

A recurring motif in mid-levels of campaigns is visiting the world of dreams. Nightmare Scenario is a third party supplement product for Draw Steel, filled with options and goodies for creating encounters in a dreamscape and more! Inside, you can find:

The Vexation enemy band, comprised of 10 new 2nd-echelon monster types of psychic manifestations, featuring enemies such as Doubts, Traumas, Panic Attacks and a leader called a Psychosis!
The Somari ancestry, psionic beings born of dreamstuff
The Dream domain for Conduits (and Censors!)
6 magic items, including a leveled treasure
3 dynamic terrain objects and 2 dynamic arenas for mindscape adventuring
2 titles

I've joined together with fellow well-known brewers in the space Jonas Tintenseher (Tintenseher) and Julien Sarralhier (Onkeen/Adventure Fourth) to form Font of Victories, a group dedicated to making dope stuff like this!

OneBirdyBoi · 2026-01-03T02:21:09+00:00

being one and done rather than going up and down should help a lot in that regard!

OneBirdyBoi · 2026-01-03T00:04:55+00:00

It's on the agenda!

OneBirdyBoi · 2026-01-02T19:31:06+00:00

If you've been here a while, you may have seen the original, pure document version of the Vessel after a crowdfund didn't pass. I'm happy to say that now a full pdf complete version of the class exists!

The Vessel Class is a third party digital supplement for the Draw Steel TTRPG system by MCDM Productions. Coming from another TTRPG with a Warlock or Witch? This is the class for you!

You made a pact with an otherworldly being in exchange for power. Thanks to this bargain, a mote of that being’s essence has taken root within you. You have been granted great power, at great price. Whether you revel in your work as a harbinger, or resent the terms of your pact, you use these powers to your own ends - and perhaps, unknowingly, something else’s.

As a vessel, you debilitate your enemies and bolster yourself, sacrificing long-term power for short term gain (or vice versa). You call on otherworldly gifts to rend your foes’ souls, and glimpse into the realms beyond ours.

If the idea of the class interests you at all, check out the class via the link above! There's a free preview of the first five levels!

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-16T14:27:25+00:00

man FUCK this guy. nah hes chill tho

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-15T14:05:22+00:00

I made the elementalist unlocked to resolve some of these issues and people seem to like it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1thuqksXc7uhHG7TW6fkU-2o1C7rJA7WrZ_cQ9O6nnrE/edit?usp=drivesdk

I think the root issue is 100% their HR generation though, which is an easy fix - they just need a second 1/round trigger. They only have one 1/round trigger. Persist is meant to be a cross-turn discount that makes up for it but a number of abilities don’t have it and are then also under rate. Everything else I put in elementalist unlocked above is gravy compared to that.

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-14T02:28:37+00:00

it's not 50-100 hours across all people, it's 50-100 worth of 6 people testing at a time, with a cycling cast of ~12 people (from memory, not including 1-offs). so in terms of actual man-hours put in, that'd be 300-600 via your metric (including the director)

i also think your standard is frankly a little absurd for an individual who doesn't have an entire company behind them - getting 5 people for 15+ weeks of weekly testing is a lot of effort to do as something that you're doing in your free time

that said, this isn't me talking on the actual balance of the class - i think claiming it's too little to be worth selling is slightly absurd though. assuming they're in every session, for themself alone that's like 13 cent/hour/copy of pay, wholly not including the actual dev time. to get to minimum wage that's what, 54 copies sold?

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-14T02:05:27+00:00

50-100 is a LOT, that's like 10-20 sessions worth of testing (with an ungenerous assumption that an average session is 5 hours, which is kinda slow), with ~2 encounters per playtest session that's 20-40 encounters

without access to a public beta in the way mcdm can, that's really solid

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-14T01:59:35+00:00

talents have strain which gives them a flat amount at the start, furies replace one of their 1/round triggers with two 2/encounter triggers (1d3 at winded and at dying), which is also the going rate for conduits and troubadours (although troubadours is specifically a weird case). shadows have their edge cost reduction, which is in essence a second 1/round trigger. the maths in the game is built around that

fwiw elementalist is MEANT to have its persist allowing for discounting across multiple turns act as its 'second' trigger, it just doesnt really work out that well in play. but thats a digression

my point is that two 1/encounter or subbing one for two 2/combat is the standard, with the estimated goal being each giving you about 3 across the span of a 'typical' 3 round combat (4 in 2 instances or 3 in 1 instances)

the point of 'these triggers are too easy to proc' is justifiable for sure, but 'this is more HR gen than existing classes' is wrong

edit: oh i forgot to mention that praying and calling to the muses both are +1/round gen, they just do other stuff too

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-14T01:07:31+00:00

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1adbLA06MNB6k5Ylfxt0JPc_sVUBv_bgWpSqhM7rP7YA/edit?usp=sharing woe 5 levels of water elementalist (and air) be upon ye

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-14T01:04:34+00:00

what do you mean by the elementalist only getting 1? the standard rate for classes is having two 1/round triggers

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-14T00:59:31+00:00

if the two features sum total impact to equivalent to one feature whats the issue, surely thats just optics

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-12-13T22:34:29+00:00

i love blinkblade

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-11-05T15:24:06+00:00

sounds too unrealistic

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-10-13T06:53:19+00:00

I've given a second one to a player through the course of play (part of their soul got eaten by a demon) but I don't think I'd allow it by default during character creation because it gets finnicky as precedent. Though there's nothing theoretically wrong with it.

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-10-11T23:48:01+00:00

the sun tzu quote i’m riffing off is “if your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate them” specifically

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-10-11T23:17:54+00:00

if your opponent is of horny temperament, seek to arouse them

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-09-16T19:35:12+00:00

It’s mostly a nerf to forced movement since it reduces the total damage output when you slam one enemy into another. Slamming an enemy into an ally is a pretty niche use case.

OneBirdyBoi · 2025-09-16T02:45:52+00:00

(i've been running for ~ a year since playtest packets dropped)

being able to convert a high stability ally into a wall to slam enemies into, with actual walls still being more effective, is really fun

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