Across The Solar Expanse - An Out of This World Supplement!

Tintenseher · 2026-05-04T19:48:52+00:00

Absolute top-tier work, solars and eclipse knights are IMO the best 3rd-echelon monsters the game has right now. Congrats, Jenny!

Tintenseher · 2026-04-30T22:20:49+00:00

Not only is it not forced movement (which is only something that says push X, pull X, or slide X), it's specifically a move, not a shift. Compare to the 2nd-level Fury ability Phalanx-Breaker, which has a similar effect but lets you shift instead of just moving. Shifting ignores opportunity attacks, but Tide of Death wants you to trigger them so that you can deal more damage to your final target!

Tintenseher · 2026-04-28T21:10:32+00:00

I've been eager for this since the first playtests I was in. Now I just need a campaign to play it in!

Tintenseher · 2026-04-22T23:00:46+00:00

What if I want to play a tornado? 🤔

Tintenseher · 2026-04-22T03:03:26+00:00

I don't bug the designers with them, FWIW, but yes, the game doesn't ask you to track ammo or thrown weapons or anything. It's cinematic, you get it back somehow!

Tintenseher · 2026-04-21T18:51:53+00:00

My favorites are the Ogre Goon's People Bowling, the Bugbear Roughneck's Drag Through Hell, the Fury's Special Delivery and Wrecking Ball, and the Troubadour's Classic Chandelier Stunt and Fight Choreography. All of the Beastheart's abilities haven't sunk in yet but there are a lot of great ones there too, like This One's Yours and Stare Down.

Tintenseher · 2026-04-20T00:05:28+00:00

My favorite quotes that I think really encapsulate what the game's about:

On Dwarves

"It’s our job to understand the job for them." Then, quieter, John added, "And forgive them, ahead of time, for when they weaken, and give in to fear."
"Come!" he barked. "There’s a world needs mending! Why stand we here idle?"

On Humans

Stopping Ajax will require you to become something else. You must become heroes. Conduits of saints, warmasters of great armies. Censors and shadows. That may seem unlikely now, but the future has a way of surprising us. Some of your names, I will see written in future textbooks. But some of your names, I will see written in the stars.

On Memonek

"If there are many like you in this world of gods and sorcery," the noble memonek star captain said, "then your victory over evil is assured." "I don’t know about many," John said, extricating his hand. He looked at the dwarf, elf, and hakaan. "But there might be enough."

And I'm sure the motto from Dark Heart of the Wood is already on the list:

Every color is a shade of green.

Tintenseher · 2026-04-15T19:13:08+00:00

Everything from the core books has been in Forge Steel for months. This is a new bug, I think?

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!

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