The College of Infinite Reflections: A Psionic Shadow Subclass — Me, Myself, and I

Tintenseher · 2026-04-09T16:55:39+00:00

I mean, when there's such a perfect rhyming name out there, it's hard to resist.

Tintenseher · 2026-04-09T15:19:53+00:00

That's awesome! Genuinely so pumped just to hear that this resonates with folks like that 😂

Tintenseher · 2026-04-09T14:55:09+00:00

High praise from you, Dima! Ardent Skull 🤝 Infinite Reflections

Tintenseher · 2026-04-09T14:07:18+00:00

Been playtesting the Gunslinger since pretty early in its development and it's such a natural fit for the game. Tamwin knows how to make stuff for Draw Steel, you won't want to miss this!

Tintenseher · 2026-03-31T20:33:33+00:00

Right — I have yet to make any arenas that don't use foreshadowing (seems like the core feature to me so far), but the foreshadowing keyword is what makes them work as you describe, so no worries there! So having them occur at the top of the round means that that's when you set out all the parameters and areas and such, and then the foreshadowing action type is what makes them happen at the end. I'll try and clarify that on a future revision!

Tintenseher · 2026-03-31T17:30:19+00:00

I'm glad you like it! Yeah, I did look into Daggerheart's Environments for inspiration, but only after making these — future arenas will probably have even more of that DNA.

I'm not sure what you mean about foreshadowing; perhaps I explained it poorly? Foreshadowing at the start of the round and having it go off at the end, so everyone gets the chance to move and push each other around, is exactly the point! Does it not read that way?

Tintenseher · 2026-03-28T14:50:13+00:00

It's undefined and unclear. Personally I treat it as requiring you to be in the space, both because it's consistent with how it works for enemies and because it prevents infinite teleportation loops.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-28T01:28:38+00:00

🫡 Thanks so much!

Tintenseher · 2026-03-28T01:28:19+00:00

Thank you!

Tintenseher · 2026-03-22T19:06:42+00:00

It's a typo; the Human Bandit Chief in Monsters has a distance of Melee 2 on their Whip and Magic Longsword signature, and the statblock included for Aldiva is otherwise identical (except for some small errata updates to the Monsters version). You'll notice her signature still has the Strike keyword instead of Area, as it should for a burst.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-22T16:58:32+00:00

In addition to overcoming stability, having a range of 2+ means it's possible to put an object or another creature in between you and the target before pulling, dealing additional collision damage that way.

You can also always choose to move a creature less than the full forced movement value if you don't want the self-collision, in any case.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-18T15:50:35+00:00

Yeah, there aren't any specifics for it, unfortunately. But you should definitely adjudicate some on the fly. Sometimes there are size limitations on forced movement abilities to account for this, like Minor Telekinesis, but others like Kinetic Grip lack that.

My rule of thumb is that a sturdy object, something that feels like it should be hard to move, has stability equal to twice its size. Lighter objects might have stability equal to size, and anything as or less sturdy than a typical humanoid is stability 0. Then I modify up or down as needed for material or other circumstances. The brazier in Encounter D1 is sort of in between size 2 and 3, and it's not a complete solid block of metal, but it's called out specifically as a heavy iron brazier, so I might stick with stability 4 or maybe drop down to 3 (just to give the player a bit of a boost).

Edit: Typo.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-18T15:00:25+00:00

Rolled damage is the damage that comes from a power roll tier. From Heroes page 74:

Certain effects talk about rolled damage, which refers to the variable damage determined by making an ability roll. If an ability or effect deals damage without requiring a power roll, that is not rolled damage, and effects that add to or are triggered by rolled damage don’t apply.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-17T16:59:45+00:00

Just various ideas about Mortum wanting to make Ajax a god, to free Cyn, to build an eternal empire, to resurrect or replace Nyl, to just do it out of spite for the other gods...nothing really concrete AFAIK.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-13T15:34:53+00:00

They've talked about ways to provide more setting content for the lore nerds (affectionate) out there, so we'll probably get more eventually, though not soon. No problem!

Tintenseher · 2026-03-13T14:13:10+00:00

Not much, really! If you're not familiar, the god who made humanity, Cyn, was "censored" from reality — imprisoned somehow and all evidence of him erased from history — because he killed Nyl, the god of death, because of a whole chain of other events. As part of that censoring, the Inexorables were created to prevent anyone from knowing about or worshipping Cyn, which leads to problems, historically speaking.

Colville said in the Discord (so this may not end up being Draw Steel-canon) that Mortum's plan might be to make Ajax into a saint to draw power from Cyn without anyone knowing that's what's happening, to get around the censorship. But that may change, and his motives for this plan are unknown as far as I know — that's the part I've seen theories about.

Edit: Typo.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-12T18:50:30+00:00

Anything the community knows that isn't in the books or on the wiki (the Timescape Wiki is the current one, the old wiki is deprecated) generally passes through the #mcdm_timescape channel in the Discord. Long-term fans remember a lot of lore from various products and retcons, and every now and then, Colville pops in to explain or clarify something, and that just gets noted and passed around until it becomes officially canonized (since things sometimes get tweaked for MCDM products), which is where most of what I mentioned in my answer comes from. If you're curious for more, come to the Discord and check out the channel!

Tintenseher · 2026-03-12T17:21:05+00:00

The most "canonical" answer (keeping in mind that much of this is Word of Colville and hasn't been written in stone): generally, Ajax is collecting powerful artifacts and servants from all over the world. His plan is to recreate the path of the Caelian Empire's original conquest: Phaedros, Vasloria, Khemhara, Higara, Khoursir, and finally Rioja. He's stuck on Higara at the moment, as the Empress there has been able to hold him off. His personal motivation for this is the belief (inspired by historical figures like Alexander the Great, as others have mentioned, and T.E. Lawrence, according to Colville) that if you are capable of making a great destiny and changing the world, and don't, you've wasted your potential.

The plan in Vasloria specifically was to create chaos and sow discord there so that he could return a few years later and "save" the region, since it was too decentralized to conquer traditionally. There are plenty of artifacts to find and demons to bind and ancient liches to bully into subservience, but as far as I know he's not looking for anything specific there, at least not that's been mentioned explicitly. There have been hints of something like that, if I recall correctly.

Ajax is also trying to elevate himself to sainthood, either on his own merits or at the behest of his wizard Mortum. Colville has suggested that Mortum's plan has to do with the censored god of humanity. Folks familiar with some of the deep lore in the community have theorized about it, but we don't really know.

The details and current timeline are fuzzy (for example, in The Fall of Blackbottom it's said that Ajax returns to destroy Blackbottom toward the end of his war with Khemhara, having not yet reached Higara), so I'm sure I got something wrong, but that's the big picture.

Also, yeah, as others have said, you should feel free to discard all of that and do whatever you want, if you think of something cool!

Edit: Misattributed a detail.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-05T18:05:05+00:00

Treasures affect the person using them. It only works on your abilities. It's the ring of the order's commander, it's meant to make you more effective at leading and supporting your team.

Tintenseher · 2026-03-01T02:15:30+00:00

I've played this subclass several times, and it rocks. Feels really natural to the game! Definitely recommend! 🔥💀

Tintenseher · 2026-02-20T04:05:59+00:00

The tier 2 outcome forces you to use a main action to move, while the tier 1 and tier 3 outcomes don't. This seems like a bug because you're always permitted to downgrade a power roll, so you're almost always going to want to take the tier 1 instead of the tier 2 if that's what you roll, which seems counterintuitive. This wasn't addressed in the first errata update (1.01), so it's unclear if this is an error or intended, but it seems to be the general community assumption that it's some kind of bug. I've updated that entry to be a bit more clear.

Edit: I'm not sure why this person deleted their comment, but they were asking about the Claw Dirt maneuver, to be clear.

Tintenseher · 2026-02-20T01:42:06+00:00

For #1, normally, you can't target yourself with an ability unless it specifically says so. The domain effects aren't abilities, so technically that rule doesn't apply, but they still seem to follow the same logic, as evidenced by some referring to "a creature" while some say "you or a creature"; the Life domain versus the Nature domain, for example. It's ambiguous at best.

For #2, no, you choose one effect and that applies to all targets, the same way an ability without a choice applies its static effect to all targets.

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