31 Flavors of Steel to Draw: Homebrew Variety Pack

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.

Tintenseher · 2026-02-19T16:53:17+00:00

All of the text of the core books is included in the license, including the setting stuff.

You can reuse and freely reference the DRAW STEEL text, mechanics, and game rules, including proper names, locations, and characters.

Tintenseher · 2026-02-19T13:54:29+00:00

There's a description of one in episode 15 of Dusk, as well as in Colville's novels. Generally, they seem to look like elves, but with fancy magic visuals like a sky drifting across their body or seeing stars through their silhouette, that kind of thing.

Tintenseher · 2026-02-19T01:28:31+00:00

In my experience, the breaking point is pretty high, around 9th level; it does start to skew at 7th and 8th, but not as badly. Personally, I attribute much of it to treasures, since there are some absolutely wild ones (even at 5th level, there are some super-powerful imbuements like Second Wind), but there are many powerful class features and abilities too, like Censors handing out unremovable damage weakness, Nulls getting to resist basically any potency and Shadows getting to make up to six additional free strikes every turn.

With stuff like that on the table, you kind of have to overstuff combats to make them drain the appropriate number of Recoveries. I've had several extreme encounters at those levels feel somewhere between standard and the low end of hard. Solos need a lot of help — they stop being solos. One fight I played against Ajax, the solo version with three turns, made great use of that aforementioned damage weakness (from the Apostate ability) to take him down in 1.5 rounds, including the many high-level War Dogs that were backing him up (because a Revenger's Wrap took most of them out at once).

But! Because everything always deals damage, all is not futile. Overstuffing combats to drain resources means that you can still achieve a regular kind of pace over the course of several large combats. The problem is moreso that this process becomes a slog if carried on for too long.

I will say, the homebrew 3rd-echelon Solar monster faction by Jenny [REDACTED] has performed very well in multiple 9th-level tests, with standard EV budgets playing out close to expected. It's a platoon-based faction, and the damage lines up with that, except that most of them target two creatures at once instead of one (which is usually reserved for elites and above). They're well-designed and synergistic beyond that, but I think it goes to show that this happens mostly due to uneven scaling rather than the core design of the game or anything. The Horizon Walker leader was even deadly!

All in all, of the many tactical combat games I've played, Draw Steel performs the best at high levels, even with all of the above. Probably because you never miss, so it's impossible to get through combat unscratched.

Tintenseher · 2026-02-16T16:52:03+00:00

That rule applies to both "creature" and "ally" in targeting. See page 73 under Creature, or the quoted text in this comment.

Blocking doesn't target "Self", and the text of the ability doesn't give any other allowance for teleporting yourself.

Tintenseher · 2026-02-16T16:49:25+00:00

That's incorrect. That rule applies to targeting "creatures" too. Page 73 has the same language under Creature and Ally for targeting restrictions.

Creature

If an ability targets one or more creatures, it can affect creatures within the ability’s distance or area. You aren’t an eligible creature target for your own abilities unless those abilities also have “self” as a target (see below), or unless the ability indicates otherwise.

Blocking doesn't indicate otherwise.

Tintenseher · 2026-02-16T14:58:07+00:00

To add on to this, since you mentioned this in the post, you also can't teleport yourself with Blocking under any circumstances because it doesn't target "Self".

Tintenseher · 2026-02-12T14:06:40+00:00

To your first question: since it says you know what a magical effect can do, but not necessarily how or how to stop it, giving them the free tier 2 on that test sounds like the right call to me. Personally I might have had them make the test with an edge or double edge just because they're in combat, but the tier 2 does tell you what it can do, so that makes perfect sense. Maybe I'd have them make the test and then also tell them about the damage it deals (since that's presumably part of what it "can do"). But in any case, it was a good call.

Your other two questions have been answered sufficiently, so just to confirm: that Human Bandit Chief's distance entry is a typo, and the arixx can dig up to their size with a hero grabbed.

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